The Parts We Play

Order Your Fine Horses, Be With Them At The Door

"Irene?" Victoria shoved her familiar's bedroom door open with her head. "Irene, there's a matter we need to discuss."

Irene looked up from where she was writing notes about a spell she was trying to construct. The cat was very precise in her use of language- no "we need to talk". No, Victoria used phrases like "there's a matter we need to discuss" to mean "we have an outside problem", and "you need to handle this situation" to mean "you screwed up". There was never any question with Victoria.

Which meant, given Victoria's tone, there was a serious outside problem.

Irene set her notebook aside and spun her chair around. "Here we go again... hit me."

Victoria leaped onto Irene's desk and settled her tail neatly around her paws. "My brother has informed me that there's some manner of threat rising in Arcadia." She gave an irritated little cat look. "Again," she added wryly, agreeing with Irene's response.

"Any details?" Irene prompted, resting her arm on the desk and tapping her fingertips on the surface.

"Humanoid," Victoria said. "But no discernable features, not even any exposed skin. Archie's eyes are better in the dark than his familiar's- with the glasses, anyway. He says he saw some sort of oddly worked black leather armor on this person. And their face was covered in pure shadow, with glowing red eyes."

Irene sat up, face pulling together into a frown. "... yeah, okay, I don't like that."

"It gave off some sort of dark magic aura," Victoria added.

Irene sighed, looking at her desk. "Has anything happened? Is anyone hurt?"

"Not yet," Victoria said, "as far as we're aware. But Archie said it seemed to sense their presence. It seems to only be a matter of time."

"They come out at night, I'm guessing?" Irene looked at herself in the mirror before heading to her closet.

"We haven't had any sightings to the contrary," Victoria confirmed. "Yet."

"Good." She dug her way through the hung up yards of sheer fabric for the ballerinas, and emerged with a cherry red puffer jacket and matching sunglasses. "Let's go for a walk?"

Victoria hopped off the desk, shifting into a raven as she did and flapping her wings to stay aloft. "Let's." She paused. "Are you really wearing that jacket?"

Irene shot Victoria a withering look, to which Victoria just raised one eyebrow.

"What? It's distasteful."

"Distasteful???"

"Are you hearing-impaired as well as visually defunct?"

"My hearing and vision are perfectly fine– this–" she started putting the jacket on, "-might attract attention from creeps, must we go looking for them."

"Isn't attracting attention from the 'creeps' the last thing you want?" Victoria asked flatly. "I recommend a nice, unobtrusive black. You don't want this thing catching wind of you, if Archie's description is accurate."

"It can't be that bad? I've definitely dealt with worse," Irene muttered weakly, already looking for another jacket. "I'll go with brown, but that's it. Black's your color."

Victoria smirked wryly to herself. "For now," she murmured, before flying out the window.

"And if my parents ask why I look like the main character of a post-apocalypse show, it's on you!" Irene called after Victoria, who did not bother to reply.

***

Two days after their first rehearsal, Cara summoned the boys for a main trio practice session, as promised. Krel and Gage happened to arrive at the Arcadia rec center's practice rooms at the same time and, thus, got stuck walking the rest of the way through the narrow halls together.