The next morning, Jessie found Luke asleep in a chair outside the infirmary room where the Tiefling was under observation. Theo had arrived with Lena, the school’s resident physician and head of the Aquamancer house, in less than the thirty minutes he’d predicted. As a Terramancer, Theo had used his ability to manipulate the earth around him to create a smooth path to transport their guest back to the school through the woods with Puff in the lead and Lena in the small trailer with the Tiefling. The school was still shut down for the Winter Holidays, but the essential staff lived there permanently. It left the college campus eerily silent, but Jessie had ground accustomed to the ebb and flow of daily activity over the school years.

She’d come to MERCE five years before in the Fall of 2015. Her first few weeks had been a rush of activity, a shit ton of life packed into a very short time. After that, it had been pretty quiet. She’d settled in as Luke’s T.A. in his classes and spent her free time organizing communications for the Spirare, using MERCE as a base of operations. The Spirare still policed the overall Mancer community, making sure they didn’t use their powers in a way that would draw attention to them. But the instability of the Veil separating the Mundane World from the Other Side had leveled out significantly. Fewer tears in the fabric of reality had allowed the Spirare community to come together more frequently, giving her the chance to get a bead on their actual numbers. She and Luke were two of the approximately five thousand around the world. At first, that number seemed big, until she realized that meant that was little more than one Spirare for every major city in the world.

Bonded Pairs were down under a thousand, which left seventy-five percent of the Spirare in the world without a partner to help them balance. The energy they drew on naturally drove them insane without someone to keep them level. The total isolation that came with their reclusive natures didn’t help. Isolation Madness was no fucking joke. Especially when it was juiced by the energy. It gave the proverbial angel and demon on everyone’s shoulder personalities and voices of their own. Spirare were often mistaken for schizophrenics by Mundane doctors. Jessie had been one of them. She’d been prescribed Thorazine back in the day, but having Luke around had allowed her to get off it. Taking a deep breath, she set the large travel mug of coffee she’d brought her husband down on the floor and touched his cheek to wake him up.

He’d fallen asleep with his head resting on his left shoulder and someone, probably Lena, had covered him with a grey fleece blanket at some point. The harsh stubble on his cheek that grown through the day before and overnight scratched her fingertips as she brushed them gently against his jaw. With a tired groan, his ruby eyes blinked open slowly. As soon as he started to move the blanket fell away and he stretched his long legs out in front of him, barely missing the travel mug as he did. She scooped it up out of the way and stepped to the side as his stretch continued with arms raising up and back behind his head. With a few cracks and groans, he blinked harder and looked up at her with a wane smile.

“Is that for me?” he asked and she handed him the mug full of black coffee.

“How the patient?” she asked.

“Stable,” he said after he took a sip from the mug and lifted it in appreciation. “Lena wasn’t sure if giving her painkillers would be advisable since we’re not sure how closely her physiology matches up with a human, but x-rays showed breaks in both forearms and shins. Her hips and shoulders were dislocated and she also broke fifteen individual ribs.”

“Jesus,” Jessie said. “And she didn’t die?”

“She’s a tough bitch,” Luke said looking up at her again. “Remind you of anyone?”

“Great, now I’m going to have to contend with your inner horny nerd having a crush on a non-human, aren’t I?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at him with a smirk.

“Never,” he said. “That’s what I have you for,” he added, hooking his hand behind her thigh and pulling her forward so he could kiss her.

“How long for the recovery time?” she asked, straddling his thigh to sit on his knee facing him.

“If she were human?” he asked rhetorically. “I’d say she had six to ten months between healing and physical therapy to bring her back to average. But, with the way her surface injuries have been healing, it might not take anymore than four. Lena wants to run a few more tests once she’s awake so we can get a baseline with her input.”

“You think she’ll cooperate?” Jessie asked. She wasn’t put off by the fact that the Tiefling was non-human. Her adopted son, Puff, was a hellhound for Christ’s sake. What she was worried about was a resurgence of activity like they’d dealt with when she first got to MERCE.

“She doesn’t have a choice,” he said bluntly. “If she wants to not end up in a holding facility underground, she’ll comply.”

“Where do you think she came from?” Jessie asked. “I’ve seen ghosts, demons, angels, and whatever those weird zombie things were back in New Orleans. But I’ve never seen a race that resembles a Tiefling before. Even the demons we’ve encountered were more like shadows than devils.”

“Devils and demons are two different races,” Luke said for the millionth time.

“In D&D,” she said with an implied duh. “But we don’t know for sure with her.”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding slightly, “but what we do know is that you were able to sense her, which means she has to have some connection to the Primal Source. She’s one of ours, Jessie. And we take care of our own.”

“You think an angel knocked up a devilish race to get some kind of hybrid?” she asked with a frown and shook her head.

“She at least came from the other side,” he said. “I’m not saying she’s Spirare in any way, but you have to at least be open to the idea.”

Before Jessie could respond, alarms started going off in the room where their topic of discussion was sleeping. A guttural cry of frustration marked the moment Jessie opened the door, having jumped off Luke’s lap an instant before he stood. Practically slamming it open, Jessie saw the Tiefling desperately trying to break out of the plaster body cast she was wrapped in, snarling and spitting curses in a language that sounded like a combination of shrieks and hisses.

“Cool it,” she barked and the Tiefling’s blue eyes focused on her in surprise.

“Help,” she whispered, her eyes turning desperate.

“What’s wrong?” Jessie asked, coming closer but staying a few feet from the bed.

“My charm,” she said. “Where’s my charm?”

With a frown, Jessie looked back at Luke. He moved farther into the room behind her and over to the plastic bag containing the Tiefling’s belongings on the table in the corner of the room. After digging through it for a minute, Luke turned back around with a tear-drop ruby the size of a walnut hanging from a thick, wide-looped metal chain. As soon as the Tiefling clapped eyes on it, she let out a pained whine and her fingers flexed as she tried to reach for it against the plaster.

“Please,” she begged. “Please, give it to me.”

Luke hesitated for a few moments before he moved, and in that time the Tiefling started to break down into tears as she repeated her pleas. Jessie didn’t have to touch her to understand the look in her eyes or feel the desperation pouring out of her. Being so close to what she wanted and having it held at bay was torturing her. Taking the charm from Luke, Jessie brought it over to her and placed it gently in her bruised palm. Her black clawed fingers wrapped around it, clutching it tightly as she exhaled in relief and looked at Jessie with naked gratitude in her eyes.

“Thank you,” she said with a shuddering breath.

“What is it?” Jessie asked.

“Mystra,” she said quietly.

“Wait, what?” Luke asked, looking from the Tiefling to Jessie and back.

“Mystra gave it to me,” the Tiefling said. “It’s all I have left of her.”

Jessie chested ached. Even if she wasn’t talking about the Goddess of Magic Jessie knew from D&D lore, it was obvious that she’d meant something important to the Tiefling and she’d lost her. Jessie was no stranger to grief, or the furious need to cling to the trinkets left behind. To that day, she still had the small purple elephant plushie her nephew had called Grape Jelly sitting on her nightstand.

“You speak English,” Luke said and the Tiefling frowned.

“I speak Common,” she said. “And Abyssal, Infernal, and Sylvan.”

“Ok, that’s weird,” Luke said, looking at Jessie pointedly.

“Where are you from?” Jessie asked.

“A lot of places,” the Tiefling said, closing her eyes and resting her head back on the pillow with a harsh wince. “I feel like I’ve been trampled by a Nightmare.”

Luke was looking at Jessie with an expression that looked like a cross between a nerdgasm and a stroke. Jessie gave him a serious look and raised an eyebrow at him.

“What’s your name?” Jessie asked.

“Lilliana Stormwalker,” she said tiredly. “My friends call me Lilly.”

“Jessica Mead,” she replied. “That brute in the corner is my husband, Lucifer Interitus.”

“Lucifer?” she asked, looking back at Luke with a similar look to the one she’d given the charm.

“Luke,” he corrected her gently, but she didn’t seem to care.

As she squeezed the charm and looked at Luke, she started crying again in a way that Jessie didn’t understand. She almost seemed relieved. Without thinking, Jessie touched her hand. The instant she made contact with the Tiefling’s skin, her emotions and surface thoughts flooded into Jessie. The chaotic mangle of emotions and half-formed thoughts was so overwhelming, Jessie jumped back, grabbing her hand and clutching it to her chest as it felt like her heart was caving in.

Luke came over to her and looked down into her face in question. Pulling him outside the room, they left Lilly alone as she struggled to pull herself together.

“What is it?” he asked, concern coloring his face.

“I know why I could feel her,” Jessie said. “She reminds me of me,” she added quietly, looking back into the room at her. “Before I met you.”

Understanding dawned in his eyes and he pulled Jessie close to his chest.

“How close is she to the day I first saw you?” he asked and she didn’t have to look to know he was clenching his jaw.

That very first day she’d lost her shit in a big way, causing the kind of damage that had her on trial for murder and arson. Losing her nephew had snapped her sanity, bringing her down to the level of grief-induced psychosis that had taken a year of intensive therapy and medication to get under control enough to function. Even then, she’d been prone to lashing out with her abilities at the slightest offense. It wasn’t until she’d come to MERCE and met the people that would become her family that she’d finally started getting a grip on reality and started to truly heal.

“She’s got a stronger hold on her sanity from what I saw, but not by much,” she said. “We’re going to have to watch her, Luke. Closely. Not just for our sake. For hers.”

Luke took a deep breath and nodded, looking back at Lilly through the door.

“Let’s give her a chance to rest some more before we start peppering her with questions,” he said. “But if you say she’s in the danger zone, I trust you.”

“Jessica,” Lilly said as they came back into the room. She’d managed to calm herself, but her eyes were still red and swollen.

“Jessie, please,” she said.

“Jessie,” she repeated tiredly. “May I have something to drink?”

“Any preferences?” she asked without thinking, giving Lilly a wane smile at her politeness.

“A Greater Healing potion would be nice,” she said with a laugh that ended in a harsh coughing fit. “But I doubt you have that here.”

“Will water work?” she asked.

“Yes, please,” she said. “How long do I have to wear this armor?”

“It’s a cast,” Luke said, “and until your bones are healed.”

“World without magic,” Lilly muttered. “Could take weeks without a way to recharge,” she concluded in a voice that spoke volumes. “This sucks ass.”

Jessie couldn’t help but chuckle a little as she poured some water into a plastic cup from the pitcher of ice melting on the bedside table and put a straw in it. When she held it close to Lilly’s lips, the Tiefling stared at her with a frown.

“Just put your lips around it and suck,” she said and Lilly snorted a laugh.

“That sounds familiar,” she said before following Jessie’s instructions, drinking the water greedily with a small moan of pleasure. “Thank you,” she said and put her head back down. “You don’t seem too shocked by my appearance,” she pointed out. “In a world without magic, I’m surprised you’re not freaked out to be talking to a non-human.”

“We’re not exactly human either,” Jessie said and Luke cleared her throat. “Oh, relax.”

“Human Variants?” Lilly asked.

“Spirare,” she answered and Lilly raised a sculpted eyebrow at her. “We’re half-angel. Celestials?” Jessie asked when Lilly gave her a blank look.

Lilly gave out a derisive snort.

“No, you’re not,” she said. “I’ve known a handful of Aasimars in my time and you look nothing like them. Unless you’re using something to hide your true appearance,” she added curiously.

“Nope,” Jessie said with a shrug. “No illusions.”

“Then you’re not Celestial,” she replied.

With a deep breath, Jessie closed her eyes and summoned the black spectral wings she’d developed after passing the test to confirm she was, in fact, a Spirare. When she opened her eyes, Lilly was frowning at her deeply.

“See?” Jessie asked.

“Would it be weird to ask if I could touch them?” Lilly asked and Jessie shook her head after thinking for a moment. As she stepped closer to allow Lilly’s clenched fist to come in contact with them, she felt a shiver race up her spine where they connected to her back. “Mystra?” Lilly asked.

“Uh,” Jessie said, looking at Luke. “Jessie,” she said slowly.

“No,” Lilly said and then frowned. “I need to put my charm down. All I can feel is magic.”

Jessie blinked at her and then took the charm from her hand, setting it on the bedside table before allowing Lilly’s outstretched fingers to touch her wing again. The Tiefling closed her eyes again, her round features screwed up in concentration.

“You’re not Celestial,” Lilly said as she opened her eyes again. “I’m sorry.”

Jessie looked up at Luke, not sure how to respond.

“If we’re not part Celestial, what are we?” he asked Lilly.

“My guess?” she asked and he nodded. “Human children of Mystra. Your wings,” she said, looking back at Jessie, “are pure magic. But I don’t understand. I thought there was no magic here.”

Jessie dismissed her wings and pulled the armchair in from the hall to sit beside Lilly’s bed.

“There is, but there isn’t much,” she said. “We refer to it as channeling energy.”

“Yeah, that tracks,” Lilly said, watching her closely.

“How so?” Luke asked, bringing her attention back to him.

“You remind me of someone,” she said with a slight chuckle.

“Who?” he asked.

“Me,” she said bluntly, chuckling harder. “In make form.”

“Huh?” Jessie asked.

“What are you?” Luke asked and Lilly bit her lips together. “It’s only fair. We told you about our secret. And we need to know what you are to better treat your injuries.”

“I’m a Changeling,” she said after taking a deep breath. “I don’t have enough magic in my system left to change forms, so if you know what a Changeling is, please don’t ask me to prove it.”

“Well, there are a couple of iterations of Changeling in this world,” Luke said. “The first is a legend in fairy lore that says Changelings are ugly fae that are swapped out for human children.”

“Ok, ouch,” she said. “And the other?”

“It’s from a game in our world called Dungeons & Dragons,” Luke said, pulling out his phone.

“What in the Hells is that thing?” Lilly asked as Luke came forward to show her the screen. “Unholy Lords, that’s,” she said looking at the image on the screen of the stock photo of a Changeling. “That’s pretty similar to what I look like in my natural form.”

“Luke,” Jessie said, knowing the question she knew was brewing in her husband’s mind, “what are the chances that her world,” she asked, letting the sentence hang.

“I’ll get the books,” he said shaking his head, pausing to drop a kiss to Jessie's lips before leaving the room, muttering to himself in Romanian.

“I think you may have broken his brain,” Jessie said. “He’s been teaching me his native language since we got together and he was just bouncing between his class syllabus and the implications of having a native to the worlds the game is based on.”

“He’s a teacher?” Lilly asked.

“The Mythology and Ecology of the Fantasy Races,” Jessie said with no small amount of pride. “A lot of our folklore has been watered down and altered, if not lost altogether when it comes to the denizens of the Other Side and how they relate to us as Mancers.”

“Mancers are what you call magic users?” Lilly asked curiously and Jessie nodded. “Really?”

“What?” Jessie asked with a frown.

“I don’t know, it sounds kind of cultish to me,” Lilly said with a timid wince. “In my world, we call them by their class. Wizards, Warlocks, Sorcerers, Bards, Clerics, Paladins,” Lilly started listing and Jessie let out a sharp bark of laughter that made her stop. “What?”

“Luke is going to shit himself,” she chuckled. “Ok, how about this? Just talk to me like I know what you’re talking about and I will ask you for clarification. It might make things easier for you.”

“Ok,” Lilly said apprehensively. “Pretend like you understand me?” she asked slowly and frowned at her a little. She didn’t seem upset by the notion if anything she was scared.

“Exactly,” she said seriously.

Jessie understood her fear, looking in her eyes she could see the same fears she’d had before MERCE. Always existing on the outside and feeling isolated was easy to recognize in the madness. Especially if she’d always been like that. Jessie had grown up in a small, religious town in Texas. Being born with the ability to channel the element of Spirit, she’d unnerved everyone around her with her presence. Adding that to being a precocious child, and one had the perfect recipe for a loner. Depending on the receptions she’d had in the past, she may even fear violence as a response.

Lilly took a deep breath and nodded slowly.

“Ask me anything you want,” she said.

“The technical questions, I’m going to leave for when Luke gets back so you don’t have to repeat yourself,” Jessie said and then nodded when Lilly thanked her, “right now, I’m more interested in you as a person. And, yes, before the doubt starts clawing at the inside of your skull,” she said holding out her hand as Lilly inhaled to speak, “I know because I’ve been there. Yes, I am interested in getting to know you for a couple of reasons. First and foremost is the safety of my family. And before you start debating if you should keep some deep dark secret, I was imprisoned six years ago for killing thirty people. I was acquitted, but that only because I used my power to do it which left no usable evidence.”

“Why did you kill them?” Lilly asked quietly.

“They kidnapped and murdered my nephew,” she said bluntly. “He was my twin sister’s but I raised him as my own until he was five.”

Lilly looked nauseated and tears sprang to her eyes.

“I don’t blame you,” she said as tears rolled out of her cheeks.

“You had a child,” Jessie said.

“Sixty-nine of them, actually,” Lilly admitted with a mirthless chuckle. “Not all mine. Adoptions. Sort of. I took care of them until they were adopted and then looked after them from a distance after that. If anything had happened to a single one of them, I wouldn’t have recovered.”

Lilly paused for a moment, and Jessie let her collect herself as she grabbed a tissue from the bedside table and gently wiped the tears away. After she’d calmed, she spilled her deep dark secret about killing a court that had been involved with child exploitation and how it involved the kids she’d taken care of.

“I can barely keep up with Puff,” Jessie said, completely bypassing the slaughter portion because Lilly’s reasoning was sound. “How the fuck did you keep up with sixty-nine kids?”

“One at a time,” Lilly said with a chuckle. “I went through this thing called the Demon Trials, and I know you said pretend like you understand, but this is a weird one. To my knowledge, I’m the only mortal that has undergone them. Usually, when an immortal being undergoes the Trials, they do it in succession. One lifetime after another. I had to create a time loop to do it.”

“Wait, you can do Time Magic?” Jessie asked, sitting forward.

“Sort of,” Lilly said. “I’m a Portal Jumper. To be able to establish a time loop, I had anchor two portals together in my timeline. Since I hadn’t anchored any other portals, I had to use the first one I went through. When I chose murder in cold blood, it fractured my soul and woke up the old demons. One for every life I saved. To keep the demons from tormenting my children, I opted to create a time loop so they could torment me instead. Each one taught me a different life lesson to pass on to other people. When the last child made it into old age and passed naturally, I went back to the one last time to see if I would make the same decision.”

“And did you?” Jessie asked and Lilly nodded.

“To give them that chance, I’d always do it again,” Lilly said. “But it still fractured my soul, regardless. This time, though, after the kids were placed with the parents I knew would take care of them, I went back to the Abyss and submitted to the demons to gain their sigils burned into my soul to keep it together. Technically, I’m a Demon Lord, by the way.”

“See, this is why I want to get to know you,” Jessie said with a chuckle at the nonchalant way Lilly dropped that nugget. “How do their sigils keep your soul together?”

“They create a kind of spiritual armor that keeps it contained, unfortunately, once a soul is fractured, it becomes unstable and starts to fluctuate in power,” she said. “It usually only manifests in the mind, but with me it was volatile. My inherent capacity for absorbing and retaining magic is exponential to the point where Mystra tapped me as a kid to be her guinea pig. The longer I stay in an immaterial, magical plane, the more I absorb. Here, the level of magic is so low, if I am absorbing it, it’s extremely slow. In my world, I’d be healed by now.”

“I thought you said you could retain magical energy,” Jessie said with a frown.

“If I had my essence, I’d have more than enough, but I left it in Gehenna with Lucifer,” Lilly said and Jessie blinked with her head tilted slightly. “Yes, I mean that Lucifer. The Celestial one.”

“That’s why you started crying at Luke’s real name,” Jessie said as it clicked. “Lucifer is a friend of yours in your world,” she said and Lilly nodded.

“It was kind of comforting knowing some iteration of him is close by. Do you know him from your game?” Lilly asked and Jessie laughed.

“Uh, not quite,” she said, “he’s been in our lore since long before the game was invented.”

“That figures,” Lilly said with a chuckle and a rueful smile. “Again, a comfort.”

“I have never really seen someone react that way to Lucifer before,” Jessie admitted.

“Same in my world, don’t worry if anything will hold, no matter the world, is Lucifer’s reputation for being a bad boy,” Lilly said with a grin. “And, yes, he is as bad as they say, but he’s actually really sweet once you get to know him.”

“Oh, my God,” Jessie said with a laugh. “I have used that same argument about mine.”

Lilly’s face broke out in a genuine smile as she laughed in a way that lit her face up despite her bruises. The two of them giggled together for a minute and it seemed to do the Tiefling good.

“Ok, so what is your essence?” Jessie asked.

“The essence is the power behind the immortal construct of your soul, which is what makes you who you are,” Lilly explained. “When you separate your essence from your soul, you give up your capacity to retain magical energy to purpose into spells. I expelled all of my magic and used it to light a beacon for someone. I could access it as needed in my world through that charm on the table. Here, I’m completely cut off from it, so all I have is what’s in there.”

“What happens when it’s gone?” Jessie asked.

“I’d shrug, but this cast armor is preventing me from moving my shoulders,” Lilly said with a sad expression. “But that’s all I have left of my girlfriend. So, forgive me if I’m not in a hurry to find out.”

“Is she still alive?” Jessie asked carefully and Lilly nodded.

“She damned well better be,” Lilly said with a half-smile. “She’s a goddess.”

“Oh, shit, you really were talking about that Mystra,” Jessie said. “You’re dating a goddess? Wait, didn’t she do experiments on you?”

“With, my darling, with,” Lilly said, laughing. “I volunteered to test out the boundaries of magic. Her way of trying to prevent another Spellplauge from happening. She gave me free rein to come up with my own spells to do the most random shit. Anything was allowable for submission. Once she looked it over and approved it for a test run, we’d either cast it in a pocket dimension to prevent anyone from getting hurt or, if it was a combat spell, she’d permit me to use it once to see if it was too overpowered. She reasoned that, if my twisted mind could come up with it, anyone could. Which meant she had to build safeguards for the future.”

“Ok, that makes sense, except why you?” Jessie asked. “I don’t mean any offense by that question, by the way.”

“It’s ok,” she said. “And it’s because I’m an Old One. Nyarlathotep is technically my grandfather.”

“Ok, yeah, Luke’s going to have a field day with you,” Jessie said with a laugh. “The first time he and I met, he was wearing a Cthulhu for President shirt.”

“The day any Lucifer becomes a cultist for that squid-faced, bubble-butted bastard is the day I hang it up,” Lilly said with a derisive snort. “Please, tell me it was a joke.”

“It was,” Jessie said and then made a face. “Though, the way things are in the world right now, I’m starting to wonder if it would be better.”

“Trust me, Outsiders and Old Ones do not belong in charge,” Lilly said. “Too Chaotic. And remember, the only place the geometry is ever truly wrong is inside your head.”

“Ow,” Lilly said, touching her fingers to her forehead and leaning forward in her chair.

“You ok?” Lilly asked.

“Yeah, it’s just that statement works on a lot of different levels,” Jessie chuckled.

“The closest equivalent to Deep Speech in Common is the use of layered statements,” Lilly said. “I apologize ahead of time. But, you can think of it this way, you spend enough time with me and you’ll be able to speak it, too,” she added.

“Hey, if I can learn Romanian, I can learn Deep Speech,” Jessie said.

With Lilly being open and relaxed, they continued chatting for a couple of hours and Jessie was able to get a solid picture of what kind of person she was and she liked her. She was guarded in a lot of ways, still feeling out the world and Jessie, but she was honest. Neither Jessie’s natural bullshit detector nor her instincts went off in the Tiefling’s presence or flagged anything she said as false. On top of that, she had no reason to lie. None of the clout she might have had in her world was gone.

But, if there was one thing that got Jessie more than anything else, it was the way she talked about her family. She didn’t mention any blood relatives, but her friends seemed to be her family to her. Jessie understood that more than anything. All she needed was a place where she was accepted to be able to move on. The more Jessie got to know her, the more she wanted her around. Not out of pity, but because she was useful.

Over the last five years, with her father, Zadkiel, stepping in as the school’s dean after the last one was killed, they had been working on revamping the school. Jessie hated the fact that Puff was confined to the grounds and dreamt of a world where creatures like him and Lilly could walk freely in the open. Lilly had a better chance than Puff did, considering she looked like a cosplayer as long as no one looked too closely at how her horns and tail were attached. But it was going to take a lot of work to get people to accept Puff.

“Is that how you ended up here?” Jessie asked after Lilly mentioned she’d been traveling through Sigil labeling and assessing the different worlds connected to it.

“No, that was,” she said and then breathed deep. “That was me being done with the bullshit,” she admitted. “Truthfully, I was hoping to be taken back to the Astral Library.”

“It was a suicide attempt,” Jessie said in understanding.

“Yes and no,” she said. “I didn’t want to be erased, I was just done with the constant judgment and posturing. I was just drunk enough to think it was a great idea to just check out and walk away from it. I figured best case scenario I ended up back home on the Outside.”

“What about the worst case?” Jessie asked.

“It didn’t work and I would be stuck in a world I never felt like I belonged to,” she admitted.

“And, what would you consider this situation?” she asked.

“The scariest option,” Lilly said. “I’m completely on my own for the first time. No gods, no friends, no magical powers. Just a Changeling. Well, I guess I might as well just own the Tiefling skin.”

“It looks good on you,” Jessie said and Lilly smiled a bit. “It suits your personality.”

“Thanks,” she said, a little uncomfortable at the comment.

“You’re not used to people complimenting you, are you?” she asked and Lilly shook her head. “Well, you better get used to it pretty quick,” Jessie warned her. “Mancers are pretty affectionate overall and have no qualms about giving compliments onto each other.”

“How do you know when it’s genuine, though?” Lilly asked and she took a deep breath.

“People here aren’t like they are in the Nine Hells,” Jessie said. “I’m not going to lie, there are some people out there that would love to take advantage of you. But those people are a lot rarer than you think, especially at MERCE. We’re all connected through the energy that we channel, so we tend to take care of each other. When I first got here, it felt like everyone was trying to butter me up or something. Afterward, I found out that it was a pretty common practice. Now the only person I truly believe when they complement me is Luke.”

“Good to know,” he said from the doorway with a backpack over his shoulder.

“Speak of the devil,” she said with a chuckle.

“Ah,” Lilly said with a smile. “Deep Speech.”

“Huh?” Luke asked and they both chuckled. “Oh, no. You’ve bonded. What did I tell you about adopting strays, draga mea?”

“Text you first?” she asked and he rolled his eyes. “You knew it was going to happen.”

“What does ‘draga mea’ mean?” Lilly whispered.

“My sweetheart,” Jessie said with a slight lift to her mouth.

“That’s adorable. Mine calls me petal,” she said and Jessie touched her hand.

“Your what?” Luke asked.

“Oh, honey,” Jessie said, standing with a stretch to relinquish her seat to him. “Brace yourself.”