Some days, having good parents was almost as bad as having bad parents.

  In seventh grade, Becca had confessed to me that once she was eighteen she was going to move out, find a job, and get money until she could afford to study to become a mechatronics engineer. It was an obsession, with machines, with robots, with neat little things. I didn’t understand why it was so important for her at the time, or why we always had to meet up at my place until I visited hers for the first and only time.

  Her home was messy, and not in the lived-in way. Her parents were hoarders. The kitchen was pungent, take-out boxes and dishes cluttering every surface. The carpeted floor was stained dark. I had to squeeze past a door that only opened three hands wide until it abutted against folders of family photos and the red envelopes of missed water bills. Hers was the only room with enough space on the floor to sit on. Her parents didn’t care that she got three separate facial piercings from a local shop without their permission, nor did they care why she arrived home sloshed after any one of our high school escapades. I’m pretty sure they put their daughter on the same level of importance as the hundreds of half-finished drinks sitting everywhere. Her father once told her to her face that he’d wanted a son instead.

  My parents weren’t like that. My parents were great. And that, to some small, but significant part of my brain, meant that I too had to be great, in some way. Anything else was failure, and disappointment.

  So, when we were just standing there in the middle of the road, gawking at all the un-looted houses, and suddenly Dad walked out of the house, waving at me, I panicked.

  I hid behind Addy. It was entirely futile. Even in her half weretanuki, half human form, she was only about as tall as me. My elbows were poking out, all of them. While I could play off my secondary eyes (the small ones were barely as large as a thumbnail), the extra arms were going to be more difficult.

  Crap, I had four arms. Dad was going to see. He was going to ask questions and I’d have to answer them and it was going to be awkward, embarrassing, terrible.

  His gangly walk stopped at the edge of the fence.

  “Heya there Tanya,” he said. “Haven’t seen you around in a bit.”

  “Oh. Uh. Yes. Hello, Mister Rubens.”

  His smile turned even more genuine. “I told you to call me Howard. That goes for your tall friend too.”

  “Adelaide. Professional magical… professional Custodian.” She stood professionally, fuzzy hands held behind her back. There was no way she was conscious of how that pose stretched her shirt and put all the focus on that ridiculous joke shirt. And her boobs.

  Dammit, stop thinking about boobs. This is serious.

  “Custodian?” His eyebrows rose as he took in her fluffy ears. “Of what, if I may ask?”

  “The whole world.”

  “Well, that’s quite a whole lot. Consider me reassured. Is that my little Sammy hiding behind you?”

  Oh boy, here goes.

  I peeked out and gave Dad an awkward wave. “H-hey Dad.”

  Both of my right arms answered instead of just the one. For a moment, Dad’s smile faltered and his eyes bulged. The last time I’d seen him this surprised was when I returned from playing outside with a male Mexican tarantula in my ten-year-old palms.

  Suffice to say, Mom was not happy. Here’s to hoping she’s not afraid of man-sized spider people.

  “Woah!”

  His gaze was like a physical weight. I could feel it patting me down, taking in my arms, my fidgeting hands, the connector bits around my double shoulders. They were, for obvious reasons, the most interesting part about me, since even now I didn’t know how they worked. We were both seemingly interested in the mechanics as I lifted the arm up and down. Briefly, he looked at the rest of my getup splattered with mimic blood before staring me right in the eyes.

  I swallowed heavily. “It’s me.”

  “It is. That is…”

  Unbelievable? Scary? Weird? Disgusting?

  “...new.”

  He blinked. It only seemed to occur to him now that Addy wasn’t wearing fake tanuki ears, and how after meeting my new inhuman friend I had inexplicably grown some extra bits of my own. There was a connection there, even if it was wrong. I could practically hear the gears working inside his head.

  “I got these arms myself,” I blurted out. “Addy had nothing to do with this.”

  Both Addy and Dad turned to stare at me.

  “I mean, technically I got them as part of a pact that gave me superhuman magical girl powers, except those powers come with caveats, like needing to make money by murking aliens and saving the day and hey, did you know that apparently the government is in on this whole conspiracy keeping people in the dark about how weretanukis and vampires are doing battle against enemies from beyond human understanding?”

  That was about one percent of everything I wanted to say. Only ninety-nine percent to go. I took a deep breath, but Dad raised a hand.

  “You ladies look like you’ve been through a lot. How about you come inside and we can discuss this over some coffee and cocoa?”

  We all shared a look before vigorously nodding.

  I breathed a small sigh of relief. Hurdle numero uno, partially overcome. Dad still saw me as his daughter and didn’t friggin shoot me on sight. Now it was just a question of how many times I was going to get slipper’d by Mom for staying out of touch for five days during a mimic apocalypse, and if Dad could convince her to stop afterwards.

  We walked as a group past the short fence and back inside. The smell alone was a wave of nostalgia as I crossed into the living room. It wasn’t any specific smell, but a melange of everything that I grew up with. Like a comforting blanket of old wood, scented lemongrass, and the smell of freshly brewed coffee all mixed into one. Maybe it was the complete lack of acrid mimic blood and the smell of fear in the air. Maybe, after two days of fighting for my life, I’d been feeling a tad homesick.

  Addy nudged me in the side, pulling me out of my thoughts. “Your dad has a pleasant voice. Very happy. Very genuine. Like Bob Ross minus an afro.”

  “Who?”

  Addy blinked at me. “You need to watch more television. The classics.”

  I snorted. “Girl, you need to spend more time on the internet. The memes you’re missing. The memes! Look, I’ll watch any one movie or series you recommend if you make yourself a social media profile.”

  Addy paused. “I don’t think weretanukis can have social media profiles.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t have an ID?” she said.

  “You’re a Custodian. If there’s a reason you can’t get on social media, it’s an excuse. In fact, I dare you to make an account,” I said, poking out my tongue at her, “so, there you have it.”

  Addy was momentarily stunned. She squinted, then stuck her tongue out at me.

  “I’ll do it.”

  “I bet you won’t.”

  “I will.

  “Nuh-huh.”

  “Yah-huh.”

  “Can you two stop flirting for five minutes!?” Tanya muttered before flinching as we both turned to her. “I’m sorry, I mean, ummm… gay is okay?”

  “We weren’t—”

  “I wasn’t—”

  We shared a look. Addy broke it, looking away with a blush. My face was also burning up and with her new hybrid form I had to come to a damning realization.

  She was hot. Hunky. That sounded superficial but dang it, superficial was effective. Her voice had lowered an octave, which was just doing things to some part of me that my animal brain really enjoyed. Maybe some part of me was subconsciously trying to flirt because I’d recognized that the more we talked, the more it felt like there could be something more here.

  Was I being overly optimistic about my chances? Absolutely.

  Was I going to pursue them anyways when I had pretty much a day or so to live or die? Hell no.

  I caught myself staring at the back of her neck nonetheless.

  We sat down at the living room table while Dad rummaged around in the cupboards.

  “Where is… oh darn, did I put it…” he mumbled. “Looks like we’re out of java. Dang.”

  A 400-pack of instant coffee appeared out of nowhere and slammed onto the table. Tanya and Dad yelped. Addy shot to her feet, one hand on her katana sheath. She stared at the stack of coffee before turning to me with an accusatory gaze.

  “Sam, really?”

  “It was an impulse purchase!” I cried. “I know my parents’ habits. A cupboard of coffee doesn’t last long around them. But the moment I thought of that, the shop opened up and gave me a deal too good to pass up, and I didn’t, and then I got distracted and forgot about it until now. Isn’t that scary? The thing was listening to my thoughts, and then it turned that information into product placement.”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  My voice turned a bit shrill towards the end. Everyone was giving me an odd look, even Dad. Like sure, as if having your daughter return home with an extra pair of arms wasn’t enough, now she was also randomly conjuring coffee from god knows where. He was going to think that I’m weird.

  But when I looked up Dad had his back turned to me, already busy making coffee.

  “Espresso. No milk,” I muttered.

  “I’ll make you a double, Sammy.” His tone spoke of comfort, and a tinge of nervousness. “But uh, no magic in the house. Your Mom’ll have a fit.”

  “You’re taking this awfully well,” I said. “Magic apocalypse and all.”

  “Would it help if I panicked a little?” His laugh was nervous and petered out towards the end. “I have to say, the news broadcasts haven’t been this entertaining in decades! It’s a fascinating time we live in, from aliens to magic and all sorts of stuff from outside our comfortable box…”

  He kept jabbering a million miles a minute. That was Dad. His brain never stopped bouncing from topic to topic, and when you flicked a switch, neither did his mouth. He talked when he was happy, he talked when he was nervous. Mom said we worked on the same wavelength. I think it annoyed her that I took after him in everything besides looks.

  Currently, he’d somehow managed the precipitous leap from comparing the invention of the seismometer and the revelation that magic was real, to how the decor of a living room environment measurably changed the neurochemistry of whoever was living with or without it.

  Addy was doing her best woodpecker impression as I sipped my espresso. “Mmmmh, liquid gold, the best kind of reward after a morning jog slash almost-being-murdered-by-aliens.”

  Everyone gave me a look.

  “What?”

  Dad sighed. “Samantha, you’re making it really hard to circle around some pressing questions. Are you alright?”

  I blinked, sitting up a bit straighter. “I’m, uh, doing cardio like you always told me to. Soft ground, correct foot angle, don’t let the knees alone cushion impact.”

  He licked his lips. He knew that I knew that he wasn’t asking in a general ‘how d’you do’ kind of way. But I could still navigate this discussion, like all the ones before, without having to reveal some things I’d rather keep well hidden away. It was like a rhythm-game: Say the right things at the right times and just maybe I could pass by this conversation without triggering any awkward questions.

  “How’s university?” he asked, stirring tea.

  I didn’t flinch. My heart nearly skipped a beat though. “Good.”

  I’d answered that one correctly many times before. All you had to do was expand a bit on what ‘good’ specifically meant, maybe throw in a few difficulties for a change.

  “I’m still in First-Class Honors — that’s around a 4.0 GPA. Haven’t had the time to call because my evenings are stuffed. I am not looking forward to BioChem classes. They’re the worst.”

  All individually true statements. He looked interested, in the way that a parent was obligated to be interested in their child the same way they were obligated to worry.

  “The last written test was a breeze.”

  Not technically a lie, just that it wasn’t a test on medical stuff.

  “I, uh, met some people from high school on the way back.”

  “Clementine and that jock friend of hers?” he asked.

  “No, someone else.”

  The cloying silence was there again. Dad had stopped stirring his unsweetened coffee. To the side, Addy had finished drowning hers in milk and sugar, sipping it obliviously.

  “Samantha,” he finally said, “I, uh, know you’re not enrolled in Cambridge anymore. Not for a medical degree at least.”

  Fuuuuuuuu—

  “You managed to get into med school?” Addy asked, completely flabbergasted.

  —uuuuuu—

  “With flying colors too,” Tanya noted. “Wouldn’t shut up about it too. Gotta say, I was a bit jealous that she got to go to the UK on a scholarship.”

  —uuuuuu—

  “Is she ok?” Addy asked. “She hasn’t said anything or moved a muscle in almost a minute.”

  —uuuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. My life is over. It was alright while it lasted. This is awful. I’m awful. I’d rather be outside getting dissected by a mimic than spend one more second sitting here. I’m a failure. I’m a failure I’m a failure I’m a failure.

  “I…”

  I can still salvage this. Just act normal, play dumb, distract, divert, deny. You can still do this Samantha.

  “I didn’t…”

  … except what would be the point? Dad knows. If he knows, Mom knows. I could keep lying, build a castle of cards and spend the rest of my life maintaining the veneer of competency.

  Can I do that? Rather, do I really, truly want to live a lie?

  “I mean…”

  Is that what magical girl Samantha would do?

  No.

  “I…”

  I think I have to be honest, for once.

  “I just didn’t want to be a disappointment," I said meekly.

  It was as if a dam that had been building for ten years suddenly burst. I broke into tears. The truth was out. Now it was time to be judged. I was going to be judged harshly. It was what I deserved.

  Dad gave me a smile. That was a good sign, probably.

  Addy patted me on the back. Mechanically, awkwardly. It came as such a surprise that I completely stopped everything just to stare at her, snot-nosed and teary-eyed. This was the first time I’d ever seen her openly approach a social situation outside of combat.

  Maybe this is how Addy feels all the time. Always expecting to exceed, always the entire world watching.

  This was awkward as hell. It was awkward for Tanya as well. Small victories, I suppose.

  Sniffling, I wiped my face on my uncuttable sleeves and tried to look Dad in the eye. “I’m sorry.”

  “I know, Samantha. Thank you for being honest with me, at least today.” He got up and spread his arms. “Hug?”

  I nearly leapt over the table at him. In lieu of that, I fell off my chair. Addy practically lifted me back up on my feet. I gave her shoulder a squeeze before going on to give Dad a hug with all four arms. He jumped a bit at the unfamiliar sensation before relaxing. He didn’t say a word.

  Then his ribcage started creaking.

  “Samantha. Air.”

  “Sorry!” Crap, let go already you big dumb idiot. “Sorry. I didn’t really know how much stronger I’ve been getting. I’m not exactly running around punching mimics like Addy is.”

  “I don’t punch them,” Addy muttered.

  “You could try.”

  “Their skin is rough, like coral, or barnacles. I’d cut my hands.”

  “You could get knuckledusters,” I offered.

  “Or giant mecha punch-gloves!” Tanya said, before shrinking back into herself. “Sorry. Um. You can continue having your moment now.”

  I chuckled. Dang, this type of Tanya was downright enjoyable. She was fidgeting all over, trying to look anywhere but in my direction. She had her own issues, probably. Then again, half of my own issues were directly caused by her, so… eh.

  I’ll deal with them later.

  “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think another year of med school would have helped me much now that I’m… this.” I gestured down at myself, derisively, as if I hated what I’d become. It wasn’t true. I only hated how not fitting in made people feel like they had a right to judge and exclude me. And regular rehearsals for King Lear had started to teach me not to care about those opinions either.

  So, all in all I lost out on the prospect of a super stressful job full of prestige, and in turn gained a whole lot of self-discovery. And that was fine. Even Dad said so.

  “Life is short and full of risks, you gotta take some of them,” he said. “So, what’re you doing now?”

  Studying wise, future-wise.

  “... theatre studies.”

  That finally got Dad to react. He choked on a sip of coffee, because that was the absolutely last thing his quiet, awkward daughter would ever dare to do.

  Sorry Dad, that’s the old me, an extrovert cut and pruned and beaten down until all she knew was how to stay in a tiny weird box.

  He wiped his mouth, giving both of us time to think and reflect. When he next spoke up, he was staring me straight in the eyes.

  “Your mother and I, we were never mad at you, Samantha. We were sad that you thought you needed to lie to us, that you didn’t trust us when you needed help. We’re your parents. No matter what happens, you’ll always be our Sammy, always. That includes… this.” He mimicked the motion I’d just used to describe myself.

  My eyebrows rose. I gestured at every one of my hands with a different hand, creating a circle of pointed fingers.

  “This?”

  “This… whatever it is. Is it dangerous?”

  “No?”

  “Is it infectious?”

  “What? No! God, no.”

  “Oh. Alright then. And you’re fine with…?”

  “Becoming part spider?” I paused, chewed the question over in my mind. “If I had to change into anything at all, I would have chosen spider ten times out of ten. And the changes are cool. Helpful. They’re always giving me something to work on, something new to do, new ways to see the world.”

  “You always did need something to keep you busy, even as a toddler, or you’d get all fidgety.”

  “I can even grow more eyes at will. See? More Spider Eyes.”

  Two eyes popped up on my cheeks. Dad yelped, nearly falling off of his chair before I caught him.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I was just… surprised.”

  “... I can make them go away as well,” I muttered.

  Addy snorted. “With what fear charge?”

  Right. Darnit. Well, at least the extra depth perception and field of view were going to make walking through our house just that little bit more interesting. Having eyes on my forehead gave me a pretty nice view of the ceiling. There was nothing much to see there, besides some house spiders in the corner, and the splotch of mocha that Mom managed to kick past the fan a few years ago after spotting a cockroach.

  “My daughter can do magic,” Dad said, voice somewhere between confused and defeated. He turned to my friends. “Sorry if I made things awkward for you two. Thank you for putting up with us, and for keeping my girl safe. Now, if I got this right you’re some sort of… secret magical alien-fighting organisation?”

  “Yyyeees?” I said, side-eying Addy, who just gave me an unhelpful side-eye in return. “But how do you know that?”

  “Ask your mother. But since you’re already here, I’d like a second opinion on something. Something… magical.”

  +++

  There was a coffin fused in the wall. A coffin in our basement. It looked sized to house a giant.

  “Dad. That’s a coffin.”

  “Yep. A loadbearing coffin.”

  I blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Is that bad?” Addy asked.

  “Ever played Jenga?” he shot back.

  “I am aware of the concept.” She frowned. “So, take this coffin out and the house collapses?”

  “Bingo.” Dad said. “It won’t crash the entire house. But, quite critically, it is fused with the wall in a way that makes it both structurally integral, and removing it impossible. I’d have expected the metal to have corroded by now, but all it does is get dusty.”

  “Someone really didn’t want whatever’s inside to get out,” I said.

  “Or whoever.”

  I looked to Addy, then back to Dad. “Yeah, this is probably some magic bullcrap. How long has this been here?”

  “Frankly? Whoever this poor fellah was, he or she was entombed when this cellar was first built in the 1800s. I only noticed because I was tearing the ol’ wooden lining away, looking for the reason why we keep on getting mold down here. Metal conducts instead of insulates, y’know, and with a perfect thermal bridge like this you’ve got the ideal circumstances for condensation and—”

  “We get it, Dad. You’re an engineer.”

  “They’re powering the barrier,” Addy said out of nowhere.

  “...run that by me again?”

  “That’s the only explanation,” Addy said. “The barrier needs a power source. Whatever is in here is both powerful enough to do that, and dangerous enough to have been permanently fused with the wall. Likely as punishment and to secure it. A two-in-one deal, and a method used by… pre-Society bounty hunters.”

  “So, we’re not removing this anytime soon,” I hedged. “But on the flipside, whatever’s inside hasn’t left in two hundred years, so it probably won’t leave now either.”

  “That’s reassuring. We prepared a bug-out bag and stuff just in case.” Dad sighed before turning to us in a chipper tune. “Say, Adelaide, are you into sports?”

  Addy paused, caught completely off guard. “... I play hockey on occasion.”

  “Oh really? What team?”

  “Blue tigers. There aren’t that many Society teams, so our opponents mostly rotate between the ironbiters and winebloods. Werepeople versus vampires.”

  “Wow. I gotta watch a match sometime.”

  Addy and Dad chatted along while I was still digesting how exactly it had come to this. Home always seemed like the only place devoid of the ever present ghosts that haunted my life. Now I knew why. The barrier hadn’t broken in two hundred years.

  How did the lone mimic make it into my parents’ bedroom then?

  The same way me and Addy made it in. Someone must have carried it.

  A terrifying thought.

  As we left the basement, the door to the living room creaked open. I met Lily’s eyes, and Mom’s. Lily’s were set in a wide eyed stare, gaping mouth and all. Mom’s were nearly closed, and almost useless. Retinitis Pigmentosa was a bitch. Photoreceptors died, the field of view gradually shrunk to a tunnel, then total blindness. No cure. The only halfway functioning therapy that worked needed to be applied as soon as possible; effectively useless. Outside of growing a whole new eyeball, there was nothing I could do.

  Or get a regeneration potion. One more reason besides Ted to save some soulcoins.

  She still stared directly at me, not fully blind yet, but doomed to lose the light in her eyes within the decade. Her eyes shifted to my arms, then Addy, her ears, and her nervously swishing tail. Notably, Mom was holding a shotgun in her lap.

  Her eyes returned to me. “Samantha.”

  “Mom.”

  “You remember what I said I’d do the moment you brought a second colossal spider into the house, don’t you?”

  I cringed. “You, er, were going to flush it down the toilet.”

  She nodded once. “Luckily, all I see is my girl. C’mere.”

  I tip-toed over and gave Mom a hug. Lily came over and joined us once she determined that my extra arms weren’t a threat. I ruffled her hair while preventing her from escaping with two right arms.

  Haha, yes, I am mighty, I am unbeatable!

  “Sam-Sam,” Lily faux-whispered. “You’re famous!”

  I blinked. “What?”

  Mom grinned. The last time she grinned like that she was holding the biggest pike she’d ever caught by the gills.

  “Don’t you know? You’re all over the news.”