Limitless Evolution As a Snake

The thing about being a genius is that nobody else ever notices it in real time, so I have to keep telling myself.

”Come on,” I hissed, my voice still smooth, ”you’re not safe out there alone this late. Come stay at mine.”

She looks up, those big blue eyes wide with a soft, manufactured gratitude, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think she actually bought the whole damsel thing. But I do know better, because Old Mate flagged the poison in the coffee and the daggers in her bag about ten minutes ago, and I’ve just been vibing with that information ever since instead of doing anything useful about it.

[System: mate this is objectively the dumbest thing you’ve ever done and you once tried to fight a minotaur with just bubbles.]

Shut up. I’ve got a plan, and I won that.

[System: you do not have a plan, and you only sort of won it.]

I’ve got half a plan and I’d say that’s basically a plan if you round up.

We get to the apartment and I nudge the door open with the tip of my tail, all casual, like I bring assassins home every day. Which, to be fair, is starting to feel less like an exaggeration and more like once a week for me.

Lyra’s on the couch when we enter, tablet in her lap, green elf eyes flicking up the second the door creaks. She takes one look at Channel, one look at the bag slung over her shoulder, and her whole face goes still, not in an ” oh my god, my boyfriend is cheating, but an ” oh my cop brain has fully activated.

I watch her eyes drop to the bag’s side pocket, the one that’s zipped just a little too carefully, and I know she’s already clocked the vials and the daggers without even opening it.

She looks at me. One eyebrow goes up, slow and deadly, like a judge reading a verdict.

I give her the closest thing I have to a shrug, a quick lift and drop of my upper coils.

”It’s okay,” I rumble, real chill. ”Let’s see how it goes.”

Lyra’s eyebrow does not come back down. If eyebrows could file a formal police report, hers would be halfway through writing one right now.

Channel, meanwhile, is doing her best impression of a woman who has never held a poison vial in her life, all wide-eyed and soft-spoken, thanking Lyra for having her, saying my apartment is so warm and lovely, laying it on thick enough that I almost feel bad for her, almost.

That’s when the door bangs open again, and Cherry comes bouncing in like a drenched, horn-twitching hurricane, clutching a box of pastries against her chest like it’s a newborn baby.

”Matt! Matt, I got the ones with the cream in them; the lady at the shop said they’re new and-” She stops dead the second she spots Channel wrapped around my flank like a limpet, and her whole face lights up with pure, unfiltered curiosity. ”Ooh, a new girl! Is she our pet?”

I hear Channel’s breath catch, actual, real shock this time, not the fake kind she’s been performing all night.

”Nah,” I say, my tail giving a lazy flick, ”just a friend of the family.”

The silence that follows is so loud I swear I can hear Channel’s whole professional identity crumble in real time. Her grip on my coils tightens like she’s been personally insulted at gunpoint, which, considering her job description, is kind of funny when I think about it.

[System: mate her ego just made a sound only dogs can hear]

Lyra sets her tablet down on the couch cushion, slow, like she’s still doing math in her head. ”Wait,” she says, ”is she a new girlfriend?”

And that’s the moment everything goes sideways in a direction I did not see coming.

Channel practically levitates off my flank. The whole assassin composure just evaporates, replaced by something that looks suspiciously like genuine excitement, and my brain short-circuits. Wait, hold on, that wasn’t the plan. Except I already established I don’t actually have one, so I guess this checks out.

”Oh my gosh, really? You’d want me to?” Channel presses both hands to her chest like Lyra just offered her a puppy instead of induction into a group of women who could probably kill her with kitchen utensils. ”I mean, I would love that.” Her gaze drops for a second, the perfect assassin facade cracking. ”I’ve never really had, um... friends.” The last word is quiet, as if she’s surprised to hear it herself.

”Wait, wait, wait.” Cherry’s already mid-bounce, pastry box abandoned on the counter without a second thought, which tells me how serious this has gotten because that box had the cream ones in it. ”New girlfriend? We’re getting a new girlfriend?”

”I didn’t say that,” I start.

”She’s so pretty,” Cherry says, completely ignoring me, horn stumps twitching like they’re picking up a signal only she can hear. ”Look at her wings, oh my god, are those real, can I touch them?”

”You can absolutely touch them,” Channel says, already leaning down so Cherry can reach, and my jaw is somewhere around my tail tip because thirty seconds ago this woman had poison in her bag and murder in her heart, and now she’s letting Cherry pet her like a golden retriever at a dog park.

[System: mate she’s improvising harder than you are right now and that’s genuinely impressive.]

I know, and I hate it.

”Okay, but does she know the rules?” Lyra says, still sitting there with her arms crossed, eyebrow still up, voice completely level like she’s conducting a job interview instead of watching my house get hijacked in real time. ”Group chat, house meetings, who has him what night?”

”Wait, we had house meetings? Why’d no one tell ME this?”

”There are meetings??” Channel asks, delighted, like this is the best news she’s heard all week.

”There’s a whole system,” Cherry says proudly. ”I made a spreadsheet.”

”You made a spreadsheet?” I repeat, because apparently that’s news to me too.

”Colour-coded,” Lyra adds.

I raise a coil, about to ask if I get a say in this, but both of them turn and look at me at the exact same time with the exact same flat, unimpressed expression, as if I’d just asked if water is wet.