It was six twenty, the sun hovered over the tops of the skyscrapers outside the apartment window, and Dante was very tempted to put on his evening clothes and throw his legs up on the couch behind him. A letter arrived a few minutes ago, and no post service delivered this late. He had a feeling he knew who it was from, and he desperately wanted to open it now. But it needed his full attention, and his customer could be arriving any minute. Begrudgingly, he stayed up and paced the room, watching the clock as his ears trained towards the door. For some reason, it had become socially acceptable to be late for everything, and twenty minutes late was, apparently, nothing. But he wasn’t allowed to complain. After all, this was a paying customer.
Bella Hanna Marble had sounded like the absolute worst kind of person Dante had ever had the pleasure of talking to, and as much as he dreaded that personality tonight, he knew it was to his advantage. After all, the bitchier they were, the more money they often had. He could probably squeeze a couple grand out of her for the tiniest problem. Maybe even extend that if she chose the payment plan. He could get himself a nice ten grand if the problem required him to “take time off to recover.” Besides, the more strung-up they were, the more eager they’d be to have whatever petty problem they had gone. Any price would be better than living with whatever stupid ailment plagued them.
So, though begrudgingly, Dante paced, waiting for the doorbell to ring, or for the wooden frame to protest someone striking it. Just hurry up, I want to get out of this damn suit.
It was six twenty-eight before any noise came from the door, a long buzz that made Dante cringe. He rolled his eyes while he still could and took the couple of strides required to open the door.
“Miss Marble…” He stopped himself once the door opened, his eyebrows knotting as he looked down at who stood on the other side. “… and Miss Marble as well, I presume?”
He looked between the two women in front of him. Short with bob cut blond hair and glaring green eyes. Identical twins.
“Bella Marble,” one said, holding out her hand for him to take. He reached down for it, still reprocessing everything in his head.
“Hanna Marble,” the other said, extending her equally short hand out for him to take. He bent low at the waist to reach them. But of course, they wouldn’t lift their hands to his height.
“Pleasure,” he said. “Please, come take a seat.”
They didn’t come in right away, both eyeing him nervously, like they thought he might be the butler or something.
“Where’s the Reich’ler?” Bella asked.
Dante sighed and did his best not to roll his eyes. “I’m Dante Reich. Now please, come in.”
He stepped back from the door, waiting for them as patiently as he could while trying to give them a push with his eyes. Finally and together, they stepped into his apartment, allowing him to shut the door behind them.
They headed straight for his couch, which was why it was placed facing the door. He didn’t like the idea of a bunch of strangers sprawling out all over his furniture, so he placed the one piece of furniture he could clean - the couch with the cover - directly across from the door, so that everyone would sit there without thinking. Otherwise, he’d guide them there himself.
“So,” he said as the door shut behind him. The twins marched past him with purpose, and turned their pencil skirt and blazer ensemble around in a sharp snap to sit on the couch. They had a stick shoved so far up their ass that even the their hairs stayed straight. Their eyes showed no emotion, though the line of their lips were taught with anger and frustration. “How can I help you ladies today?”
“You’d better be able to help,” Hanna said.
“We’re fucking sick of this,” Bella said.
“We won’t stand another day of this.”
Dante sighed and rolled his eyes. “Well, what exactly is it?”
“We’re linked.”
Dante’s eyebrows raised involuntarily at the statement, said completely in sync. He kept his comment on the irony to himself. “Linked as in… telepathically?”
“Link as in everything,” Bella said.
“More than twins ever should be,” Hanna said.
“In ways no one ever should be,” Bella said.
“You’re going to need to be more specific, if you want my help.”
Dante kept his sigh to himself as he looked between the two, waiting for a clear explanation with disinterest. When they looked between each other for a minute, he did let out his sigh and turned, headed towards the kitchen.
“Should we?”
“Why should we?”
“We need to stop it, don’t we?”
“He doesn’t need to know.”
“Why the hell not? What’s he going to do?”
“Would you like a glass of water or something?” Dante said, calling to them from behind the open door of his fridge. He pulled out his water filter and looked back to them, waiting. They’d both looked over at him, as if expecting him to answer on their behalf. He gave them a moment, and when they didn’t answer, he turned away and poured himself a glass. He heard them bickering again as he grabbed a glass from the top shelf, but didn’t listen until his glass was full and the filter was back in the fridge. He took his time coming back to the couch as they continued whispering amongst themselves.
“Well?”
“No,” one of them hissed to the other. Dante couldn’t remember if it was Bella or Hanna.
The second, who Dante thought might be Hanna because of one stray hair on her head, rolled her eyes at her sister, her jaw tight, and turned back to Dante. “Here,” she said.
Dante didn’t say anything, taking a sip from his water as the girls on the couch sat there, completely still a moment. Bella went to protest, but there wasn’t enough time. Whatever Hanna was going to do was done, and now, instead of watching two blonde women glaring at him from the couch, he was staring at two carbon copies of himself.
His glass stayed at his lips a moment as he took in what had just happened. Two men sat staring at him, one with his white eyebrows raised way up into his white hair, the other glaring at him uncomfortably, his white eyes narrowed into slits, his long arms folded tight across his chest. Dante took the scene in just a moment longer before he lowered his glass enough to speak.
“Oh,” he said. “Linked.”
He brought his glass back up as the girls, now men, sat watching him, waiting for him. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen a shapeshifter in his apartment, and though they rarely shifted for him, he had witnessed the act before. Some were awful at it, struggling like a werewolf into their new body. These women were obviously professionals. He downed half his glass then set it down on the separator between the kitchen and the living room. He rolled his shoulders and turned back to them.
“So, anything you do…”
“She does,” Bella said, spitting the words out like venom.
“And likewise,” Hanna said.
“I see,” he said. “So you’re linked at the molecular level.”
“We’re completely linked,” Bella said.
“Untrue. You’re speech and actions are completely independent.”
“Does that make it better?” Hanna asked. “I mean, easier?”
Dante shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen this before.”
Bella growled and crossed her arms tighter, bringing her knees up closer to her chest. Or rather, Dante’s arms, legs, and chest. “So you can’t help us,” she said. “You have no fucking clue what you’re doing.”
Dante rolled his eyes, this time not trying to hide it as he reached for his glass again. He crossed one arm under the other, the glass hovering halfway to his lips. “Look, most problems that walk through my door, I never even knew were possible, let alone how to fix them. But there hasn’t been a problem I haven’t been able to fix yet. It’s just a matter of how hard it’s going to be and how much energy it’s going to take.”
“I doubt he even has the energy,” Hanna said. Bella cocked an eyebrow at her, but Dante knew what was coming. They always noticed. “Look at him. I mean, look at yourself for christ’s sake. He’s sick.” She looked back to Dante. He kept his face blank held her gaze. “You are sick, aren’t you?”
It wasn’t really a question, so Dante didn’t answer it. He did his best to keep his voice level and emotionless. “I assure you, my illness will not at all affect my ability to help you.”
“No, of course not. The real determinant is money. And how much it’s going to cost to pay your medical bills,” Hanna said, the venom in her voice now matching that of Bella’s. Bella, on the other hand, was unfazed by this.
“We’ll pay anything,” she said, ignoring her sister entirely. It was nice that one of them, at least, had the slightest bit of faith in him. “Just fix this.”
Dante took another drink, finishing the glass this time, and set it down, watching them the whole time, trying to determine how much he might get out of them. Bella would give him the world if he asked for it, it was Hanna who would hold her back. He’d have to find a balance.
“Alright,” he said. “Let me take a look at this link of yours.”
They didn’t question him, which was nice. They just watched him and waited, so he sighed and adjusted himself, closing his eyes so that he didn’t have to stare at himself while he checked the link.
He felt around between them, like with hands in a separate dimension. He could feel the power in the air, the different densities of magic which hovered around the room. When he reached the twins, the density hit him like a brick wall.
He could feel the strands of power between them, like trillions upon trillions of tiny fibres strung between each molecule. Some were thick tree trunks, others were hairs, but they were all strong wires, and would take a lot of work. He opened his eyes and looked back to the two girls, the feeling of wires and magic density slipping away from him. The twins were watching him with his white eyes wide, expecting.
“Alright,” he said. “First of all, if you could just go back to normal, or whatever form you prefer, that would be fantastic for my concentration, at the moment.”
Bella didn’t clue in right away, but Hanna just sort of nodded, and in a blink, they were the short bob cut blonds again. A tension released in Dante’s chest he hadn’t even noticed was there. He breathed it out, thinking over his options.
“This is going to take a lot of energy,” he said. “I would likely have to cancel my appointments for the next few days. If you want this done tonight, it’s going to need to be worth my while.”
“And if you don’t do it tonight?”
He shrugged. “It’s like a wart. I could blast it off in one go, and it might hurt like hell, but it’ll be gone. Or, I could do it once a week and slowly burn it away. I don’t know how long that would take, but the payments could be less. Though honestly, in the long run, you’ll probably be spending more than if you just blasted the link away now.”
“But you can do it,” Bella said. “You can get rid of it?”
Dante shrugged and nodded. “There’s nothing stopping me from doing it. It’s just a very strong link and will be tough to break through. But it’s just ordinary magic. Nothing special. Nothing impossible, anyway.”
“What?” Hanna said. “What do you mean ordinary magic? Seems pretty rare to me.”
Dante sighed. “There are two types of magic. White magic, which is completely unpredictable, but not lingering, and black magic. This is black magic, which is just a… substance, let’s say, that you can manipulate to do whatever it is you want it to do. In this case, it’s linking you two together. But it’s the same stuff I’d us to lift a pot across the room or set a fire down the hall. So, no, nothing special, nothing rare.”
“And why should we trust you?” Bella said, her arms crossed again, her jaw tight.
Don’t roll your eyes. Don’t roll your eyes. “Well, it is my job. It is, after all, what warlocks do. Don’t forget, you came to me.”
“I’ve never trusted witches,” Bella said in a mumbled, turning away from him.
“Well, it’s warlock, so…”
“We don’t have much of a choice, do we?” Hanna said. She looked back to Dante. “How much are you thinking?”
“Week by week,” he said, shrugging as he though about it. “I could do it for nine hundred.”
“For how many weeks?”
Another shrug. “I don’t know. About five or six. Could be more, though. Depends on how much time it takes, really.”
“But you just told us you could do it in one night.”
“I could, but it would drain me entirely. If I did it week by week, I’d go as far as I could without draining myself, so that I could take on other customers that day or the next.”
“And so, how much for one night?”
“Four thousand.”
“So, four thousand or forty-five hundred,” Bella said. “Real big difference.”
“Except it could be more than forty-five,” Hanna said. “Depending on how much he plans to rip us off.”
“Then let’s just do it tonight,” Bella said. “Get this damn thing over with.”
“Do you have four grand on you?” Hanna said, her voice sharp, her nose curling slightly.
“I take paypal or check,” Dante said. “If that helps.”
“But you won’t start treatment,” Bella said. “Until we pay you, is that it?”
“Of course.”
They growled and looked at each other, as if communicating telepathically. Dante watched them, his fingers tapping on his arm, his foot aching to tap, too, though he controlled it. The sun hung low in the sky now, the rays nearly blinding him as they broke between the buildings out his window. He needed to get these ladies out soon.
“Fine,” one said, calling his attention back to them. He shrugged when that was all they said.
“Fine what?”
“Do it tonight,” Hanna said. “How do we pay you?”
Dante tried for a smile, though he was too annoyed at this point to make it genuine, and pulled his blackberry out of his pocket. “Paypal or check.”
Hanna sighed but Bella was already on it. She ripped her phone out and fiddled around with it for a minute until she finally addressed Dante, he nose still pointed into her phone. “What’s your account?”
He told her how to find him, and she wasted no more time.
She typed furiously for a moment, then addressed Dante again. “Four grand?”
“As you like.”
She typed again, then stopped and looked up, waiting for Dante to react. She must have sent it.
Dante watched her, matching her expectant look, until his phone beeped and he looked down to see his new email. He quickly went through the process of accepting the money and depositing it in his account. After another minute, his looked back to the girls.
“Are you ready, then?”
“For God’s sake, yes.”
“This will likely hurt,” Dante said. “Know that I won’t stop, even if you start screaming. Are you alright with this?”
“As long as it doesn’t kill us.”
Dante nodded. “Alright, then. Sit tight.”
He took a deep breath as the women sat staring at him. They were trying not to squirm, he could tell. Too well pressed to show discomfort. He sighed and closed his eyes, shaking himself slightly and feeling out the link again.
He pushed through the thin magic in the room to their strands, thick as wires and tree trunks. He could pull across them like guitar strings, though they hardly reacted to his touch. How should he do this? Cut them? But they might string back together before he finished the rest of the bonds. He tested it, just to see. He cut a small one, getting a feel for the resistance he’d meet. It snapped easily, but already began rebinding itself the moment he finished the cut. So that wouldn’t work. He’d have to burn it, just like a wart, as he’d said. Alright, then. Here goes nothing.
He picked one, a mid-sized one, not so thin as the last, but not a tree trunk either. He felt at it, as if buying himself time, then reached deep into the centre of the string. He could weave his magic right into the heart of the cord with ease, it was tearing it which was the hard part. But he didn’t need to tear it, he needed to explode it. So he focused all his energy, centred it in a small ball, then burst outward, sending strand of the magic wire stringing off into the air around them. He fixated on theses strands and caught them on fire, burning them back toward their respective owners.
Easy enough.
He focused on a few more this time, each with their own ball, and exploded them, sending them outwards burning. Then he tried a clump, a non-specific area with a few dozen wires. Explode and burn. He tried a bigger area, filled with the mid-sized and wire links. He didn’t focus on their individual cores, just on one core at the centre of them all, exploding everything in the area around it, so that all flailing ends caught fire and retreated. He tried for one of the tree trunks, and managed to take a couple smaller wire out with it, as well.
He repeated this, over and over, until his chest started to hurt and he could feel his arms shaking. He kept his jaw tight, like it might give him focus. One more shot here. One more here. Another, Dante, another. He was losing strength, but not fast enough to discourage him. He fought an invisible war, where the other team’s only strength was their walls and barricades. He blew through them, feeling their magic dissipating into the air around him, along with his own magic. Somewhere far away, he could hear the twins grunting and holding back shouts of pain, but it didn’t matter to him. Nothing matter but the jungle of magic, now.
Breathless, and with the last tree trunk blasted away, taking every tiny wire left with it, Dante opened his eyes to look at the women on his couch. They were breathing just as heavy as he was, their hair disheveled, their stick up the ass posture bent and frayed. If nothing else, he’d at least broken that down.
They looked to him, then to each other and, after a moment’s hesitation, Bella changed. It was a subtle change, her hair grew out a few inches, turned a few shades darker. Her eyes shifted slightly, as did her ears and chin, though her nose stayed the same. Her clothing, too, change, from the pencil skirt to dress pants, from the blazer to a ruffle shift. And Dante realized they weren’t identical twins, they were fraternal. And one of them never got to change back to herself.
“Oh dear lord,” Bella said. “This feels good.”
“Oh hush now,” Hanna said. “It hasn’t been that long.”
“It’s been long enough since I’ve looked at your eyes with my own,” she said.
Dante wanted to ask if they’d ever been able to be themselves independently. It made sense, after all, since they didn’t have to “change” into themselves, just “unchange.” But he decided he didn’t care that much, and wanted to settle in for the night.
“That should do it,” he said, looking between them as they looked at each other. “If you have any problems in the future I’d be glad-”
Bella changing into his double again cut him off. Hanna then turned into someone he didn’t recognize, and Bella became another person entirely. Dante rolled his eyes. “I’d be glad to help you out, should anything… reattach itself.”
“You’re a genius,” Bella said, turning to Dante, now easily identifiable. “You’re a fucking genius.”
“We won’t forget this,” Hanna said, turning to him, too, and getting to her feet. “Anything you ever need, you let us know.”
Dante shrugged. “Your payment was sufficient. You don’t owe me anything else.”
“Oh, we owe you,” Bella said, getting to her feet as well. “Anything you ever need. You want money? We’ll sent you customers by the dozens.”
“By the hundreds.”
Dante cringed at the idea of having to deal with hundreds of people, but took the comment for what it was worth, anyway.
“That’s very thoughtful of you,” he said, trying to edge towards the door. Of course it wouldn’t work. He couldn’t get them out of his apartment with a crow bar.
Bella looked at him just a moment, and was back on the couch, holding her head. “Actually, I could go for that glass of water you offered earlier.”
Except that I offered it early and the offer is no longer open, now that I have your money. He sighed and went to the fridge anyway, pulling the filter back out before straightening up to get a glass.
He turned back, glass in hand, leaving the filter out in case the other sister wanted some, to see Hanna wandering the apartment, like she couldn’t find the front door. He was never getting them out.
“Here,” he said, taking two long strides to Bella to give her the glass. “You might feel dizzy for a while, but you’ll be fine. A link that was there for a long time no longer is, and it’s going to take you a while to recover.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hanna said, looking at on of the doors along the wall. “I feel fine. Come on, Bella, we should leave the poor man be, so he can recuperate. I’m sure that took a lot of energy.”
“It did,” Dante said as Hanna headed for one of the doors. “But you’re not going to leave through that door.”
She looked back to him, an eyebrow cocked. “Why? What’s behind this door?”
At this Bella stood up, though shaky. Dante did his best to keep his cool.
“Not the hallway,” he said.
She reached for the doorknob, like the idiot she was, and Dante rushed forward. He didn’t reach her, but she stopped herself. “What is it?”
“Open the door and you’ll find out.”
Dante grit his teeth, because he hadn’t said it, nor had the other two. They stopped dead and looked at him, eyes wide. Dante just looked back, because there was nothing he could do about it now, unless he could get them to leave.
“Who was that?” Hanna asked, her hand still hovering over the knob, her voice a low hiss.
Dante rolled his eyes. “It doesn’t matter. You’re unlinked, the money’s exchanged, and the sun is setting. You should get going before it gets dark out.”
“No no,” came the voice from the other side of the door. “Stick around. Stick around at least until the sun goes down. I’d love to meet you.”
They looked back to Dante in horror. Dante just sighed and looked away.
“What monster are you keeping in here?”
“You don’t need to stay,” he said. “Nor do you need to open that door.”
“Oh, please do,” the voice said. “Please.”
“Fine,” Dante said when Hanna just looked at him, like a petrified kid begging to be scared again. “Go ahead and open it. But I’m not responsible for you, remember that.”
Finally Bella snapped out of it and rushed up to her sister, the glass of water she held sloshing around in her grip.
“Come on,” she said, grabbing Hanna’s hand. “Let’s get going. We should go tell the others about what’s happened. He’s right, before it gets dark.”
Hanna hesitated, watching Dante a while longer. He just raised his eyebrows and she gave up, following her sister to the proper door as they dropped out into the hallway, taking Dante’s glass with them.