Lucky Rabbit

Bryan flinched, but to his credit, he didn’t try to dodge the subject or tell her he would explain later. Sitting heavily in one of the kid-sized chairs at the table, he heaved a heavy sigh and began to speak.

“I didn’t feel that I had a choice. I was…doing some things I wasn’t supposed to do. I’m certain you know that already.” His eyes were sad, and he rubbed his chest again, a gesture Pandy didn’t remember him making before, though he’d never spent much time with Thaniel when he was still ‘alive’.

Waving around to indicate the room, or possibly the whole house, he said, “I had gone to purchase something that was difficult to find, but I needed for my work. On my way home, some people intercepted me on the road. They told me soldiers were already on their way to our estate. At first I didn’t believe them. I swear I insisted that they leave me alone and let me get back to you. They were, ah, very convincing, however.”

He gave a tiny, wry smile. “They said they could provide a substitute that would convince even the Kingsman, but I would have to pretend to be dead. And-” He hesitated, then began to unbutton his shirt, revealing sparse gray hair, a sunken chest, and a black stone set into his flesh, just above his heart. “I had to give up my magic.”

Pandy gasped, staring at the stone. It looked almost exactly like Thaniel’s heartstone, but there was something missing. There was no life in it, no shine. The heartstone didn’t have facets, but it still gleamed. This was flat, dull, and very unnatural.

She started to reach out to touch it, but Bryan pulled back, quickly doing up his buttons. He gave her a pained smile. “You don’t want to do that,” he told her. “It’s not like yours. There’s no…kindness in it.”

He sighed, shaking his head. “In any case, that was the agreement I made. Give up my magic, pretend to be dead, and work for them, or be arrested and see my house, and you boys, dishonored. Not that I didn’t know that would be the result if I was ever discovered, but my greatest weakness has always been arrogance. I thought I would never be caught because no one was allowed to come to the estate. Clearly, I was mistaken.”

Giving a humorless chuckle, he reached out and patted Pandy awkwardly on the shoulder. “I did get them to make one concession. I told them they had to bring you to me before tomorrow. They cut it close, but here you are.” He tried to smile, then, looking down at the table, he said, “Do you know what tomorrow is?”

There it was. Pandy had some idea why these people wanted Thaniel. In fact, there were probably several reasons, and here was another. But why now? What was special about this random Tuesday? Or, apparently, this Wednesday. Which it already was, technically, so maybe he actually meant Thursday?

But Augustus and Professor Beeswick together hadn’t been able to come up with an answer. They eventually decided there must be something about that date that made it work best for the organization. Maybe some particular person was in town, or they were getting a delivery of possessed spiders…or shipping out a bunch of infected people, which would now include Thaniel. That was the idea that Pandy definitely liked the least.

The one thing they hadn’t thought to do was ask Thaniel himself. But he also hadn’t mentioned any important dates coming up. His birthday was in summer, so that wasn’t it. Pandy didn’t actually know when Lian’s birthday was, since it wasn’t celebrated in Gacha Love, unlike the other boys’ birthdays. But Thaniel would have been itching to get his brother a gift, so surely that wasn’t it. Was it Bryan’s birthday? Grace’s? Or could it be-

Her eyes came up, fixing on the closed portrait-book on the shelf. Bryan followed her gaze and nodded. “We lost her two years ago tomorrow. And very nearly lost you as well.” He offered her a tiny, fragile smile, possibly the first truly genuine one he’d produced since his expression of pure joy when he first laid eyes on her.

“I’m so glad,” he said, choking on the tears she could see in his eyes, “that you’re here. Thaniel, you-” He swallowed hard, reaching out to grip her shoulder. “You’re the light in our lives, just like your mother was. Lian and I… We’re too serious, too caught up in what could be to stop and enjoy what is. You’ve always been able to do that, though, even when you were very small. I’d find you and Grace out in the garden, both wearing crowns of flowers and dancing in the rain. All I wanted to do when it rained was go inside and read.”

“Reading is good, too,” Pandy said, unable to help herself.

He chuckled. “It is, but now I wish I’d danced with the two of you at least once.” Looking up, he struck the moisture from his cheeks. “Tomorrow, we’ll celebrate your mother, and-” He stopped, his jaw flexing as he gritted his teeth, but said, “I have a project you can help me with.”

Nope. Pandy had been feeling all warm and fuzzy, thinking she’d gotten Thaniel’s father all wrong, but that did not sound good. Pandy didn’t want to help Bryan with anything he was involved in in this place, and Bryan shouldn’t want to involve his son, either. But this was what she was here for. They needed to know who, what, when, where, how, and, most importantly, why all of this was happening. She was just along for the ride, especially if they were planning to send her back to Falconet, which would save her from having to figure out how to escape without revealing that she wasn’t really Thaniel.

So rather than giving him a disbelieving look, she nodded, hoping he thought her lack of enthusiasm was because she’d just been reminded of Grace’s death. Would even Thaniel be enthusiastic about the idea of helping the man who’d just admitted that he knew had been well-aware of the potential consequences for himself and his family if his activities were discovered? Honestly, Pandy wasn’t sure. She knew the boy’s feelings about his father were complicated, to say the least, but would he come down on the side of anger or just be glad to have his father back?

Bryan nodded back, seeming blissfully unaware of the thoughts going through Pandy’s mind. Standing, he pointed to the wardrobe. “They managed to get some of your old clothes from home. You’ll find some nightclothes and the suit your mother got you for parties in there. You,” he hesitated, “haven’t grown, have you?”

Pandy shook her head. As far as she knew, Thaniel hadn’t grown so much as a quarter of an inch since the day his mother died and his father used the heartstone to heal him. Did that mean Thaniel was as dead – or undead – as Pandy? She didn’t think so, but truthfully, it was hard to be certain. She didn’t seem particularly undead most of the time either, so the fact that Thaniel had Health Points rather than Life Force was the main reason she was able to hold out hope.

“I’ll give you some privacy,” Bryan said, opening a small chest of drawers near his bed and removing a folded nightgown. He gave Pandy’s shoulder one last pat as he went by, exiting out into the main room, and then, judging by the sound of a door opening and closing again, either into the hall or the bathroom. Hopefully the bathroom, because the idea of being alone in this apartment with the two Bound just outside the door made her skin crawl.

Quickly, Pandy checked her clothes over for blood before putting the coat into her Inventory. Then she stripped down and changed into one of the nightgowns she found in the wardrobe. She longed to hide between the wardrobe’s partially-closed doors – or at least do as she’d done when she had to change for Physical Education in school, and slide the nightgown over her head so she could do most of the changing within its capacious folds. She settled for changing as quickly as possible and diving into bed. 

By the time Bryan returned, dressed in his own nightgown, which was a larger version of the one Pandy wore and exposed his thin, gray-furred calves, Pandy was in tucked up with the blankets pulled to her chin. Bryan crossed to her and rather tentatively bent to kiss her forehead, pausing to stroke her hair back gently.

“You look so much like your mother,” he murmured, his eyes soft. “She had this same lock of hair that always escaped, no matter how tightly she pinned it up.” He tucked the hair back, and it promptly sprang forward again, making him chuckle.

Pandy felt her heart warming toward him again. She’d never had anyone look at her like that, and even though she was only pretending to be Bryan’s child, she could see his love for Thaniel was very real. How was it possible that someone who cared for his son so much could have taken the risks and made the decisions that he had?

“Do you want me to read you a bedtime story?” The Father asked, glancing back toward the bookshelf. “I made sure they got all of the Pirate Pete books.”

A terrible impulse took hold of Pandy, and before she could shove it back down, she said, “Do you have Alex and the Dark Magician?” Alex was a cautionary tale of a boy whose dog died, and the Very Bad things he did in order to try to bring back his pet. The book was one Bryan himself had written and Grace had illustrated, while they made Pirate Pete the other way around.

Bryan’s flinch was so pronounced that he actually stumbled back a step. “No,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t have that one.”

Desperately trying to recover her innocent persona, Pandy gave him a brilliant smile, making sure to Invoke the Dimples. Then she yawned hugely, doing her best to make the adorable sound Thaniel produced when he was really tired. “I’m super sleepy,” she told Bryan, rubbing at her eyes with her fists. “Can you read t’me tomorrow?”

“To me,” Bryan corrected, but there was still a little puzzlement in his eyes as they rested on her. He tucked the blankets in tight around her before saying, “Nox,” which caused Pandy to all but leap from the bed. The lights in the room dimmed until all she could make out was a shadowy form moving toward the other bed, and she realized that this must be the magic word for ‘lights out’, as well as a certain judgemental elemental’s name.

She heard the bed creak and whispered, “Good night, Daddy.”

There was a brief hesitation before he whispered back. “Good night, Thaniel.”

She lay there in the darkness, her eyes closed, just in case something or someone really was watching her. With nothing else to occupy her mind, she counted Bryan’s breaths, listening as they slowed and deepened, gradually shifting to a quiet snore. Only then did she roll over on her side, tugging the blankets up until just the top of her head was visible before checking her Inventory.

Simulacrum – a magical doll crafted by a great and powerful Dragon to precisely copy Nathaniel Conroy.

The Dragon in question was, of course, Professor Beeswick, and he had given the object to Pandy on Tuesday. It was exactly as described, to the point that for one horrifying moment, Pandy had actually thought the Dragon was handing her Thaniel’s body. The cold-blooded reptile actually laughed at her full-body recoil before giving her instructions on how to use the simulacrum. She had placed it in Thaniel’s bed at Falconet, arranging it carefully, then stored it into her Inventory in preparation for just this moment.

The idea was, if the kidnappers didn’t intend to sacrifice Thaniel to their Dark God right away, then they’d have to let him sleep. Since Pandy-as-Thaniel had ‘run away’ just after two in the morning, she had four hours until Shifting Faces reset at six, then another five hours until it ran out again. That meant the shortest period of time she should have to infiltrate the enemy was just under nine hours.

With the simulacrum, that time could be extended by however long ‘Thaniel’ was allowed to sleep, so long as no one looked at the figure in the bed too closely. After that, she would have to wing it, but since winging it was what Pandy did ninety-nine percent of the time, that was actually the least frightening part of this whole plan.

Once she’d settled into the same position the simulacrum had been in when she put it away, Pandy removed the toy-boy from her Inventory while simultaneously dismissing Shifting Faces. There was a brief moment when the blankets started to fall inward, but the extremely realistic shape of the simulacrum quickly filled them out again. Bunny-Pandy froze beneath those blankets, a roaring sound filling her ears as she waited for lights, sirens, or at least a sudden influx of Bound, pouring into the room as they detected the use of magic.

Nothing happened, and she crept slowly upward, finally poking her nose out into the cooler air of the bedroom. First she checked to make sure that the hyper-realistic-but-also-not-real body beneath the blankets was only visible as a few tufts of golden hair between pillow and blanket, then she peered through the darkness toward Bryan. His quiet snoring sounded the same, though he’d shifted onto his side at some point since she last looked in his direction.

Time stretched, as it did when fear and boredom warred for dominance. At last, Bryan turned again, snorting softly before settling back into the easy rhythm of sleeping breaths. Only then did Pandy hop down on silent paws, moving toward the door. When she reached it, she changed into her human shape, quickly removing the necklace Augustus had given her so she looked like Ms. Wellington again. It wouldn’t do to have someone see Eurydice Haupe, aka Lady Avington, sneaking around Bad-Guy Headquarters, if that was what this was. Much better for a dead woman to take the blame.

After putting the necklace in her Inventory, she opened the door and slipped out into the other room.