Dresden Rocks

Chapters

Harry Gets No Intelligence
Harry Gets No Luck
Harry Gets No Dignity
Epilogue: Harry Gets No Perfect Ending
Harry Gets No Respect
Harry Gets No Useful Advice

Harry Gets No Intelligence

My half-brother stared at us in blank incomprehension for a good ten seconds after he answered his door. In his defense, I’d never showed up at his apartment door with a bound and gagged teenage girl before. “This isn’t what it looks like,” I hastily explained, slightly out of breath from taking the stairs all the way up to his place.

“That would be a bit more reassuring if you weren’t about to make me an accessory to whatever this is.” Despite the smartassery, Thomas opened up the door and waved us inside. Either this was a big sign of trust on Thomas’s part or my life was so screwed up that the people who knew me just expected this type of thing. “So, what are you getting me mixed up in this time?”

Sonata groaned and put up a token struggle as we dragged her inside, but thankfully the duct tape was still holding out. Also-thankfully, my brother lived in one of those big, fancy apartment complexes where there were only a couple units on every floor, so we didn’t have any neighbors poking their heads out and wondering what the fuss was.

“How’d you get past security, anyway?” Thomas idly asked while helping us haul the siren in. “I really hope you had enough sense to not sign in at the front desk while dragging in a kidnapping victim.”

“Magic’s handy stuff.” Holding a veil over all three of us all the way from the parking lot to Thomas’s apartment had just about tapped me out, though. Especially since we had to take the stairs instead of using the elevator. My magic usually won’t short out an elevator, but I didn’t want to take the risk with the way my luck has been lately.

Illusion work always made me miss my old apprentice; Molly had a real talent for it. Sunset, unfortunately, didn’t. Using unicorn magic would’ve saved me from hauling Sonata up twenty flights of stairs. Even with Sunset’s help and all the working out I’ve been doing lately, that was pretty hard to pull off. Especially while keeping the veil in place too.

I groaned and sank down onto one of Thomas’s very modern and fashionable couches. Like most things modern and fashionable, it wasn’t especially comfortable, but I wasn’t in any position to be picky. My brother’s place was a bit more lived-in than it had been back when he was masquerading as a gay European hairdresser, but it still had a long way to go before it matched my standards. Granted, my usual furniture budget was ‘Hey, someone left this couch out by the dumpster even though it doesn’t smell that bad!’

Thomas on the other hand was loaded with cash. He was my half-brother, and the other half of his family was a lovely little collection of succubi and incubi who’d spent the last few thousand years building up a financial empire. White Court Vampires were, at least theoretically, nicer than the other vampire courts, though that had nothing to do with any moral compunctions on their part; being ‘nice’ was a superior business model. After all, the Black and Red Courts had both been driven to the brink of extinction by playing hardball.

There were risks involved in coming to Thomas for help. The vampire side of his family tree kept tabs on him, and this was complicated enough without involving them. However, since his brand of vampires fed on emotions, I figured he might have a bit more insight into how the sirens might operate. Not to mention that his vampire powers made him superhuman in just about every sense, which is the kinda thing that can always come in handy.

While Sunset and I sat down and caught our breath, Thomas casually hauled Sonata over to one of his spare seats and set her down. I’m not sure if that really counted as a display of vampiric super strength though. From the looks of her, Sonata weighed about eighty pounds soaking wet, and that was counting ten pounds of hair and another ten from all the tacos she’d eaten.

My inner smartass couldn’t avoid commenting on that. “You really need to eat more, assuming human food has any effect on your appearance. Seriously, you’re just skin, bones, and hair. How much shampoo does all that hair take?”

Sonata’s gag limited her response to, “Mmmph!”

Sunset was quick to jump on board the snark train. “Well, now we know what they spend their royalties on.”

“Um, hey Harry.” Thomas waved at me from across the living room. “Feel free to clue me in on what the hell’s going on anytime now.” He sauntered into the kitchen and opened up his fridge. “Want a beer? And I’ve got soda for your apprentice and kidnapping victim.” A couple seconds later he came out with my beer and two cans of coke.

Or rather, not coke at all. “You only had diet? They’ll add another year onto my prison sentence for making her drink that.”

Thomas shrugged. “It’s the only thing Justine will drink.” He took a seat on the couch next to me. “So, I’m going to guess she’s not an ordinary, helpless teenage girl?”

“Nope, she’s a siren.” I took a sip of the beer, then waved the bottle towards her taped-over mouth. “Thus, the gag.”

My brother briefly frowned in thought, then nodded along. “Right, right, I remember the myth. Mind-control singing, lures sailors to their doom.”

“This one works a bit differently. Still got the mind control magic, but she feeds on negative emotions to power it.” I shrugged. “Blame the differences on her being out of a Saturday morning cartoon instead of ancient Greek mythology.”

“Saturday morning car—” He broke off, glancing at Sunset.

“Yeah, she’s from Equestria,” my apprentice confirmed.

“Great.” Thomas sighed, slumping back on his couch. “More Equestrian monsters showing up on Earth. That’s gonna complicate things.” He paused, then shot me a look. “I should probably warn you, Lara’s interested in cutting a deal with Equestrian changelings. You can probably guess why.”

“They eat love, and you guys are vulnerable to it.” I groaned and ran a hand over my face. Lara Raith was dangerous, and the last thing I needed was for her to get her beautiful, expertly manicured hands on something that could bypass the one silver bullet the world had against her vampires. I kind of had my hands full with the current crisis, but I did make a mental note to warn the powers-that-be.

With the cheerful thought of the next crisis lingering in my mind, I turned my attention to solving the current one. I taped the siren down to her chair, earning me some complaints from Thomas about how I was ruining the upholstery. “Now then ... Sonata, right?” My prisoner nodded. “Okay. I'm going to remove the duct tape over your mouth. If you try and pull your any sort of mumbo-jumbo or even so much as start humming, it goes right back on. You understand me, Son-taco?”

Sonata thought it over for a moment, then very reluctantly nodded. Sunset and Thomas both tensed, ready to make a move the instant she tried anything. I had to borrow some scissors from Thomas to get the tape out of Sonata’s hair, but there was no way to save her skin. “Er, sorry about this.”

I ripped the tape off. “Owww!” Despite knowing she was an evil mind-controlling monster, that still got a guilty flinch out of me. Sonata’s arms twitched against the duct tape holding them down as she tried to free them, presumably to rub at her red, irritated mouth.

I quickly clamped down on the urge to apologize some more; it would ruin my efforts to be an intimidating interrogator. “Now then, I have some questions for you.” I settled back down on the couch, sitting across from her. “The more you cooperate, the better this’ll go for both of us.”

Sonata answered with a glare. “I just wanted tacos and to sing for you, and then you guys punched me and tied me up and ripped tape off my mouth, which really hurt! What’s your problem?!”

“Mostly the fact that after the tacos and the singing you were gonna have a side of world domination for dessert. Evil, evil dessert. Like cheesecake.” Thomas and Sunset were staring at me like I’d taken a couple too many hits to the head, which in fairness I probably have over the years. “Or something of that variety. The point is, once you reach a certain level of evil it all starts to blur together for me. So why don’t you spill the beans?”

“Why would I wanna spill beans?” Sonata shot back. “If you cook them right they’re good. Besides, I don’t have any beans, and I couldn’t spill them while I’m all tied up like this.”

The peanut gallery started chuckling at me, which was just doing wonders for my intimidation factor. I finished off my beer; I had a feeling I was going to be needing it by the time we were done. “I wanna know what you and your siren buddies are up to.”

“I'm not saying anything!” she spat back defiantly. She paused, then spoke up again a second later. “Well, I’m not saying anything other than to tell that I won’t be saying anything.”

I switched gears in the hopes that it might throw her off. “But why not? I brought you home with me, let you sit on my furniture.” Thomas shot a pointed look. “Well, his furniture. Same difference. Hell, I'll give you some food if that would help you open up.”

Sonata’s eyes briefly brightened. “Well I am kinda hungry again...” She frowned, then shook her head. “No, wait, no way! I’m not gonna fall for that! You better let me go right now, or else you're gonna be really sorry when Aria and Adagio show up to rescue me. Which they will, 'cause we're totally besties.”

“Besties, huh?” Sunset asked with an innocent smile. “Well if you three are so close, how come your friends weren’t with you?”

Sonata sighed and rolled her eyes. “‘Cause they don’t like tacos? I dunno why. I mean, you can put anything inside a taco shell and it’ll taste good. Well, not anything, since you can’t put negative emotional energy inside a taco, and apparently that’s all they care about eating.”

I was tempted to make a tasteless remark about how Thomas could get his emotional energy fix by eating certain types of tacos, but that was a bit too crass for me to say in mixed company. Granted, Sunset and Sonata weren’t exactly delicate flowers, but there are some things a guy just shouldn’t say around women. Instead, I kept on topic. “If you’re hungry, Thomas and I might be able to scratch something together in the kitchen. But before we do that, I'd like to know a bit more about these friends of yours.”

Sonata thought that over for a minute. “I guess I could tell you some stuff, as long as it’s not anything secret like the fact that Aria snores.” Her eyes widened, and she clamped her hands over her mouth. “Er, don’t tell her I told you that? Please?”

“It’ll be our secret,” I promised. “So, anything else to tell us?”

“Oh, there’s a lotta stuff.” She paused, and a grin worked its way onto her face. “Oooh, but you're gonna be sorry you ever messed with me, ‘cause Aria and Adagio aren't nearly as nice as I am. Like, Aria can be totally mean sometimes. So can Adagio, but she's more like ‘evil mastermind’ while Aria’s more like ‘push you down in the mud and laugh at you’ mean. I know, ‘cause she did that to me when I used a pun.” She pouted as best she could while taped to a chair. “I thought it was really funny when I asked her ‘Aria mad?’ but...”

Thomas and Sunset groaned, but I couldn’t quite stifle a snort of laughter. “I guess you could say that was ... so not a good joke.” More groans followed, and Thomas smacked me upside the head hard enough to sting. Worth it. “So, back on topic, I’m gonna guess your two buddies do a lot of evil things?”

“Well yeah they do!” Sonata stared at me incredulously. “We're sirens! Being evil is, like, what we do!” She scoffed and shot a look over at the others. “Geeze, he doesn’t know anything, does he?”

“Nope,” Thomas quickly agreed, displaying typical sibling loyalty.

“He might know a few little things,” Sunset allowed with a smirk. “We try not to hold that against him. He's a work in progress.”

I really need to find new friends who aren’t such smartasses. Of course, if none of my friends were snarkers, they probably wouldn’t be willing to tolerate my own smartassery. It’s a delicate balance. “Yeah, I guess I don’t know much, which is why I'm asking questions. So let’s start with the basics. I'm still not 100% sure about what a siren is or what you guys do.”

I’d gotten a pretty good briefing from Celestia, plus Bob’s conjecture, but there was no harm in seeing what I could get Sonata to spill. She might give away something new, or put a new perspective on the facts I’d already been given. Sonata looked like the type who might let a few things slip out if I caught her off guard.

Thankfully, Sonata wasn’t sharp enough to figure out my clever scheme. “And Aria says I'm dumb. We sing, and that makes people give us food.”

“You feed off the people you sing for? That must be a handy trick.” I tried something a bit more probing. “So how do you do that anyway? Is it something all sirens are born knowing how to do, or is it something unique to you three?”

Sonata’s eyes brightened, and she cheerfully gave that up. “There aren’t any other sirens. We were actually ponies a long time ago, before Adagio made our—” She abruptly cut herself off.

“Before she made your what?” I prompted.

Her eyes nervously darted around the room. “Um ... tacos. ‘Cause she made us some tacos one time, and they were really good!”

I was tempted to call her out on trying such a blatant lie, but I didn’t think it would be in my best interests. Trying to browbeat her into confessing seemed likely to just make her dig her heels in harder, while I’d nearly gotten her to give up a big secret by finessing things a bit. I might have all the subtlety of a sledgehammer most of the time, but I could be sneaky when I applied myself.

So instead I let her think I’d bought it. “Right, tacos. Those are pretty tasty.” The siren’s cheshire grin told me plenty, but I noticed Sunset frowning. I kept my focus on Sonata for the time being. “So, I'm willing to bet that isn't the only thing that you guys can do, is it? I mean, considering how fearsome your reputation is and all...”

Sonata ate the flattery up. “Well yeah, we can do all kindsa stuff!”

“Like what?” Sunset demanded, slamming her hand on the table. “Give us something useful, before we start thinking about where we’re gonna lock you up and throw away the key!”

Just like I’d feared, the threat only made the Siren clam up. “Nuh-uh! Maybe you’ll lock me up for a bit, but Aria and Adagio are probably already on their way to come rescue me! I’m not gonna tell you how to stop them!”

I sighed and tried to do some damage control. “So, how about I get to work on those snacks for you? I’m sure Thomas has something edible in his refrigerator.” I paused, then grinned at my brother. “Then again, last time I was here the only thing in your fridge was beer and soda, and you were living on pizza delivery and chinese takeout.”

My half-brother rolled his eyes. “Relax, now that Justine’s living with me I had to stock up on real food. No more bachelor diet for me.” He paused in thought, then shrugged. “Not that it really matters all that much what I eat.”

That was the disgusting truth. Thomas managed to maintain a physique most underwear models would be jealous of while living on nothing but pizza and beer. I eat way healthier than he does, and I still look like a creepy scarecrow-man. Stupid sexy vampire powers—life is so unfair.

I groaned and stopped wallowing in self-pity. “You mind keeping an eye on her while I make the snacks, Thomas?” It seemed a bit rude to kick him out of his own kitchen, but there’s a reason the guy had mostly lived on delivery until Justine moved in with him. It had taken him a long time to get used to living without his family’s small army of servants. On the bright side, since Thomas almost never cooked for himself, the kitchen was sparkling clean. Of course, it was also full of high-tech appliances I had no idea how to use and would probably break if I so much as turned them on.

Thankfully the kitchen wasn’t fully enclosed, so I could still keep an eye on what was going on in the living room while I worked. Sunset followed close behind as I got to it, and I knew what I was in for the second I saw the scowl on her face. I’ve dealt with way too many pissed-off women over the years. “Harry, mind if I have a word?”

I rubbed my forehead in an effort to stave off the growing headache. “I have a feeling you're going to have more than one.”

Sunset flicked a hand, and my ears popped as the air pressure within the kitchen adjusted. I knew enough about Equestrian magic to recognize that as a privacy spell. Once it was in place, she turned on me with a fierce scowl. “What are you doing?”

“I’m pumping her for information,” I answered matter-of-factly.

“Really?” Her frown deepened. “I thought you were about to make her dinner. What next, are you gonna ask her if she wants some cake too?”

“Maybe, if I think it’ll get her talking.” I opened up Thomas’s fridge and started digging out meat and veggies with the vague notion of making sandwiches. “What were you expecting me to do, try and beat the information out of her? That almost never works, and I couldn’t do that to her anyway.” Regardless of what she really was, she still looked like a girl. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think it’s alright for a guy to hit a lady. Well, not unless she’s some sort of murderous insane super-powered monster, but then she’s not exactly being a proper lady.

I tried to find a way to explain my plan to her. “Look, I think with Sonata we’ll have a lot more luck playing good cop than we will playing bad cop. Whenever we try to push her she’ll just clam up, and I can’t really threaten her with all that much.” About the worst I was prepared to do was lock her up in Demonreach, and that wouldn’t break her as long as she believed the other sirens were coming to rescue her.

Sunset’s eyes narrowed, and I could hear her teeth grinding. “I never said anything about torturing her, for Celestia’s sake! I’m just saying that you're letting this get away from you. You’re supposed to be her captor, not her damn maid! You're ceding control of the entire interrogation before it's even started. If you want to play Good Cop then fine, but at least do it right. Tell her she doesn’t get her snack until after she gives us something solid and useful.”

“I’m pretty sure withholding food until she confesses isn’t a Good Cop strategy.” I passed Sunset some greens, then sliced a tomato for the sandwiches. “I just don’t think we’re gonna get very far squeezing her. We’re better off making her feel safe and comfortable, maybe even a little bit confident that she can outsmart us. Let her think she’s in control, and she’ll be a lot less careful about watching what she says.”

Sunset didn’t say anything else for a while, silently helping me prepare the rest of the sandwiches. Once we were mostly done with it she let out a resigned sigh. “I hope you know what you’re doing.” She turned and walked back into the living room, dropping the privacy spell on her way out.

Sunset stalked back over to Sonata, picking up her chair and deliberately moving it to slightly behind and to the side of the captive Siren, so that Sonata would only be able to see her out of the corner of her eye.

It was a good technique for making Sonata nervous and uncomfortable without being outright menacing, but Sunset hadn’t accounted for who she was dealing with. Rather than remain in place, Sonata started twitching and tugging at her bonds, trying to shift the chair to face Sunset. Instead, she just managed to topple the chair over, landing heavily on her side. “Um ... little help here?”

Thomas let out a barely concealed snort of laughter, while Sunset groaned and buried her head in her hands. “Really?”

Sonata stared up at her as best she could with one cheek buried in the carpet. “Please? I don’t think this guy’s vacuumed in, like, forever.”

“It’s only been a week,” Thomas muttered under his breath. Which made it a pretty safe bet that the last time Justine had visited his place had been a week ago—left to his own devices, my brother’s a complete slob. He sighed and walked over to Sonata, easily picking up both her and the chair and setting them right-side up. “Don’t do that again. That carpet is worth more than Harry makes in a year.”

Sunset sighed and shifted back to sitting directly across from Sonata. “So while we're waiting for the help, anything you'd like to tell us?”

Sonata glared at her. “It really hurt when you punched me. Which was totally a jerk move, by the way. Why’d you have to hit me?

“You were going to use your magical mind control music on me if I didn’t stop you,” Sunset countered. “And once we were doing the whole kidnapping thing, I didn’t think smacking you once or twice to subdue you would be that much worse.”

“Well it still hurt,” the Siren grumbled. A moment later her eyes brightened, and a mischievous smirk worked its way onto her face. “Tell you what, though. Untie me and give me a free shot at you. That way we’ll be even.” She stared at Sunset eagerly, waiting to see if she would fall for it.

Fortunately, Sunset hadn’t been born yesterday. “Yeah, I’ll tell you what. I’ll do that right after I finally grow my wings and become an alicorn.”

“Cool!” Sonata paused a moment, then cocked her head curiously to the side. “So how long is that gonna take, anyway? ‘Cause, y’know, being taped to this chair kinda blows.”

I couldn’t resist the opening for a bit of my patented brand of smartassery. “Not to mention wanting to become a giant unicorn horn is a pretty weird ambition to begin with.”

Sunset spared an annoyed glare for me. “For the millionth time, Harry, in Equestria we call a winged unicorn an alicorn. Deal with it.”

“Why do you automatically assume all of your ‘alicorns’ are winged unicorns?” I shot right back. “It sounds like you’re some kind of unicorn supremacist. I mean, we know that at least one of them is actually a horny pegasus.” Because he’s horribly immature, my brother laughed at that. Then again, I was immature enough to say it in the first place.

One of Sunset’s eyes was twitching, and I could see her fists slowly clenching and unclenching. I know it’s probably not the best idea to poke my apprentice with a temper problem, especially when Sunset losing it tended to involve setting things on fire, but sometimes it’s just too much fun. Besides, this would help her develop a thicker skin. It was for her own good, really. There were plenty of baddies out there who were more than willing to get under your skin and were a whole hell of a lot better at it than I was.

Sonata leaned forward as much as she could while taped to a chair, an eager grin on her face. “So Sunset, you’re from Equestria? And a unicorn too, huh? That’s interesting.”

Stunned silence descended over the gathering, until Thomas broke it with a loud snort. “Did ... did she just outsmart you guys?”

“No.”

My brother’s grin widened. “That’s funny, ‘cause it sure looked like she did.”

“Thomas, you’re not helping,” I grumbled.

“Aside from giving you guys a place to hide out from the cops,” he responded. “Oh, and letting you borrow my kitchen and food. And you’ll probably need some other stuff too. Plus, if these sirens are as nasty as you say they are, I’m probably gonna get dragged into fighting them. But aside from that, I’m definitely not helping at all.”

I stepped out of the kitchen carrying a plate loaded down with sandwiches. “Just for that, I’m not cutting the crusts off of your sandwich.” I set the platter down on Thomas’s coffee table where everyone but Sonata could reach it.

The imprisoned Siren immediately started straining against her bonds, and I found the first problem with my current plan. Unless one of us wanted to feed her, we would have to at least untape her enough to let her eat. After thinking it over for a moment, I reluctantly stepped over and cut her hands and the lower part of her arms free. It would make it easier for her to escape, but I didn’t think it was too much of a risk as long as Sunset, Thomas, and I were all there watching her.

“Thanks!” Sonata chirped, immediately snatching up one of the sandwiches. “You know, for a creepy weirdo who kidnapped me off the streets, you’re alright.”

“Thanks. I think.” At least she wasn’t coming up with inventive new expletives to hurl at me. “You thirsty? We’ve got some beer, if you want it.” I felt a bit bad about offering alcohol to a creature that looked like an underage teenage girl, but I rationalized it by telling myself that she wasn’t human or anything close to her apparent age. It would make her comfortable, and if the alcohol loosened her lips, then so much the better.

“Sure!” I retrieved a bottle of Mac’s ale from the fridge. I felt a bit bad about wasting such wonderful stuff on a monster, but we have to make sacrifices for the greater good. I set the bottle down in front of her, and she eagerly guzzled about a quarter of it down. “Thanks! Aria says this place is the worst ‘cause we can’t get anything to drink without getting carded. I mean, we usually just sing the cashier into letting us have it all for free anyway, but...”

“I think I know how you feel.” I remember one night when Anastasia and I had gone out to dinner, and she’d been asked for ID when she ordered a glass of wine. Considering she’d been born back when the horse-drawn carriage was how most people got around, she’d been quite flattered by the request.

I let her enjoy the snack for a little bit, then moved in for the kill. “Alright Sonata, since I’m trying to be a good host and all, I was wondering if you could give me something to help me out.”

Sonata paused to swallow her current mouthful, then wash it down. “Um, like what? ‘Cause the only thing I have right now that isn’t taped up is the scrunchie for my ponytail. You can have that if you want it, 'cause I've got a lot more back at my apartment.”

Sunset groaned and slammed a hand down on the table, nearly knocking over Sonata’s beer. “We want you to answer our questions!”

“But you haven't asked anything yet!” she protested, quickly saving her bottle of Mac’s ale.

Sunset screamed in exasperation, her forehead joining her hand on the table with a loud thump. I took that as my cue to move in and try to salvage things. “Alright, you want some questions, let’s get down to business. What else can sirens do, besides controlling people's emotions with their singing and the whole mind control thing? Is there any way to block it besides willpower exercises and just stuffing my ears? What about ways to break the mind control once it’s established?”

That last was an especially big concern of mine. I’m not sure how it works with Equestrian magic, but mind control does bad things to people outside of cartoonland. It can cause serious psychological damage, or even drive the victims insane, and that damage doesn’t go away just because you’ve beaten the bad guys. If the Sirens really had gotten their hooks into a huge chunk of the world’s population...

“I dunno about all of that.” The captive Siren shrugged. “I just kinda ... y’know ... do it.”

Of course she wouldn’t know all the technical details of how her magic works. Hell, I’m a proper wizard, and I’m a bit clueless when it comes to a lot of the technical theory behind magic. I dropped that subject and moved on to something a little more productive. “Where are the other sirens hiding out at?”

“No way!” She struggled against the duct tape holding her down. “Aria and Adagio would be so mad if I told you that!”

“Maybe they would, but how would they know unless I told them?” They’d probably decide I’d used magic to figure it out. In my experience, once people learn I’m a wizard they tend to assume I use magic to do everything. “Think about it this way, Sonata: the quicker I find them, the sooner they’ll deal with me and free you, right?”

That gave her some food for thought. She chomped another one of the sandwiches to give herself some food for food. “That’s true....”

I gave her another little nudge. “And even if they found out that you told me, you could just say that you were sending me into a trap.” I’d be worried that she might actually try something like that if she’d shown even a hint of kind of brainpower needed to pull that off.

Her face brightened, and a sneaky little grin spread across her lips. “Oh yeah, I could do that!” She paused, then quickly amended. “But I’m not! If I tell you where to go, it’ll be absolutely, one hundred percent not a trap. For realsies.”

“Don’t worry,” Thomas assured her. “We believe you. You give us the info we need, and we remember you helped us out when all this is over. If your Siren buddies come out on top, you tell them you sent them a big, stupid meal and stopped someone who could’ve messed up their plans. Either way, you come out on top.”

That scheming smile got a bit wider. “Yeah, that’s true.”

Sunset frowned, and murmured to the two of us. “Are you sure we should give her ideas?”

I dropped my voice and muttered back, “How clever do you think she can get? I mean look at her.” The Siren in question was in the process of very sneakily trying to snatch another sandwich of the platter while we were all distracted by the conversation.

“I’d keep an eye on her anyway,” Thomas advised. “Just saying, I’ve managed to dodge a lot of trouble over the years by seeming stupid and harmless.”

That was a distinctly worrying thought. Then again, it didn’t change much. If Sonata wasn’t as dumb as she looked and was actually some sort of genius mastermind conning me, the best move was to let her think it was working. “Alright, so now that we’ve settled that it’s okay to tell us where they’re at...”

“They’re probably back at our place.” Sonata let that answer hang for a bit before finally elaborating. “It's this really big apartment building with a lot of guys who have those gun things you humans use. Well, they weren’t there when we moved in, but Adagio had us find some guys and sing to ‘em.”

Thomas raised an eyebrow. “Guards, huh? Well there’s only two types of apartment buildings that can have a bunch of armed thugs hanging around without it raising a bunch of awkward questions. Either somewhere ridiculously expensive, or run-down and shoddy. Considering we’re up against mind-controllers, I know which my money’s on.”

Sonata smiled and nodded. “Yeah, it’s this super-nice building on the Gold Coast.” Thomas was right, that was the ultra-rich section of Chicago. “Um ... I think the building’s called Golden Pines or Golden Oaks or something. Some kinda gold tree. Which is weird, cause the building isn’t gold or a tree. I mean, why call it Golden Pines, then make the building out of concrete that’s painted white? It’s just weird! Why are human names so weird?”

“If it’s any consolation, most of your names sound just as weird to us,” Thomas cut in. “Seriously, who names their kid something like Sonata?”

“Um ... my parents? Duh!”

Ask a stupid question, get an obvious answer. I tried to drag things back to a more productive front. “So how many guards does Adagio have?”

“Like, a lot of them!” When Sonata’s answer earned her a round of glares, she tried to justify it. “I didn't remember the names 'cause they're all boring ones, and they all look really boring and same-y compared the last universe we were in. You guys only have, like, four hair colors! What’s up with that?”

“In our defense, we use hair dye to address that.” I suppose I could bring up skin color and body types too, but those probably don’t make a big difference to someone who’s used to living in technicolor cartoon land. “So your Siren buddies pretty much just hang out in your apartment all day? That doesn’t fit.”

“Well they don’t spend all day cooped up,” she explained. “I mean, we have to go out to eat and go do music stuff and whatnot, but it’s still our home base.”

“Right, right, gotcha.” I would have to stake it out for a while anyway to make sure I knew what I was dealing with, so waiting until both the Sirens were inside wouldn’t be a problem. “Anybody else been hanging out with you?”

“Not really.” She frowned, and amended, “I mean, we do get visitors and stuff. Mostly music people helping us set up that big concert. Adagio said some more of them were coming by later today. Then Aria said I should go out while they were there, 'cause she thinks I'd say something dumb.” She rolled her eyes and scoffed. “Like, whatever! So that’s when I went to go get tacos, and you know the rest.”

“I know, right?” Thomas chimed in sympathetically, reaching over to pat Sonata’s semi-restrained shoulder. “How could anyone think that?” He gave that a moment to sink in, then hit her with a question. “Hey, Sonata—about those guards you sang for. Are they regular guards, or are any of them armed?”

She nodded eagerly. “They had those gun things, yeah.”

“Any magic-users?” Sunset cut in.

Sonata’s eyes went wide with shock. “Wait, there are humans who can use magic?” She turned back to me, and I could see the gears in her head shifting. “So that’s how you got past that security guy in the lobby without him noticing me!”

That was an interesting little nugget of information. I decided to probe a bit deeper. “Of course humans can’t use magic. Don’t be ridiculous.”

She frowned for a moment, then figured it out. “But I bet she can, right?” She levelled an accusing finger at Sunset.

Sunset answered with a self-satisfied smirk. “I'm not human, I’m a unicorn.”

Thomas chuckled and nodded. “That’s Harry, always expanding his entourage.”

“Nah, celebrities have entourages.” I waved towards my vampire half-brother and unicorn wizard apprentice. “I just have a bunch of weird crazies hanging around me and helping me save the world in the most insane ways imaginable. I'm a bleeding head that way.”

“I think you mean bleeding heart,” Sunset corrected.

“Nah, head.” I tapped the side of my noggin. “I've taken a few blows to the old cranium over the years, and half of them are from helping people like you two.”

“That, and all the times you tried to break through a brick wall by bashing your head against it.” He chuckled and elbowed me in the ribs. “Though more often than not, the wall gives out first.”

“I'm special like that,” I agreed.

“Special needs, maybe,” my apprentice snarked.

I briefly lamented my chivalrous streak. It might be rude to a hit a lady, but there are times when I’d really like to smack my apprentice upside the head. Not hard or anything, just ... you know, enough to make my point. “Quick history lesson: back in the old days, masters would throw mouthy apprentices into burlap bags and beat them with reeds. They’d keep doing that until the kids stopped being insolent. Just tossing that out there.”

Alas, Sunset did not seem impressed by my grasp of old teaching practices.

Sonata fidgeted against her bonds, staring at us as we bickered. “So, um, are you guys gonna ask me any more questions, or are you gonna let me go now?”

I shook my head and cleared away the empty sandwich platter. “Sorry Son-taco, but you're not going anywhere just yet.” She pouted, which made her look entirely too cute for an evil mind-controlling would-be world-conqueror. “Life is filled with disappointments. Trust me on that one, ‘cause I have lots of experience with it. You’ll just have to learn to live with it.”

Thomas stepped up, gently brushing me aside. “I thought you were supposed to be playing the Good Cop, Harry.” He put a reassuring hand on Sonata’s shoulder. “Relax, kid. It doesn't have to be all doom, gloom, and boredom while you're here.”

She looked up, a hopeful little smile on her face. “Yeah? Sounds good. What do you have in mind? If you have any video games, I love all the Rock Band games.”

“People still play those?” Thomas asked incredulously. “I thought they went out of style years ago.”

“They were still popular back in High School-ville,” Sunset provided. “But that place is pretty different from over here.”

I shrugged. “Don’t look at me, I can’t even look at one of those computer game things without them melting.”

Thomas sighed dramatically “And that’s what I get for expecting Harry to have the slightest idea about what is or isn’t in fashion.” He shook his head and dropped the drama queen act. “In any case, I've got enough movie subscriptions, music, and books to keep you occupied for weeks.”

Sonata reluctantly nodded along. “Well I guess that's okay then. I mean, being a prisoner still sucks and all, but...”

To be honest, whether the Siren was a happy prisoner or a sad one didn’t rate very high on my priority list. “That sounds fine. I'm sure there's something to watch on the—how many channels do you get these days? Three hundred?”

Thomas snorted and rolled his eyes at my continuing ignorance of technology. “Add another zero and you're getting there. Though the whole concept of channels is really starting to die off anyway, since you can stream and download just about everything worth watching.”

Stupid high technology world. And stupid wizard powers for making me unable to use any of that high tech stuff. I miss the old days, when using magic just gave you warts and boils. I hear they make a cream for that kinda thing, but there’s no treatment for being a walking techbane.

Sonata frowned, and raised her hand as best she could with the upper half of her arms still taped down. “Hey, thanks for the TV and all, but I just realized that if you keep me locked up here I'm gonna get hungry.”

Sunset snorted and waved towards the kitchen. “He has food.”

Sonata rolled her eyes and let out an exasperated groan. “Not that kinda hungry!”

If she expected to be let out so she could make with the music, she was badly mistaken. “You've been feeding on how many people lately? I think you'll be fine.”

Sonata grumbled and tugged against her bonds. “It doesn’t work that way! I can’t just stockpile energy like that. If I don’t eat for long enough, I’ll end up dead.”

Oh. Dammit, that was a problem. Hopefully this whole Siren business would get wrapped up before we had to deal with that particular moral quandary. I’m not enough of a bastard to lock someone up and force them to slowly starve to death. Especially when you were talking about something that looked like a teenage girl. On the other hand, I couldn’t just let her loose on the city to go feed on whoever she wanted to. Even if she didn’t use it as an opportunity to escape or cause general mayhem, it’d be letting her hurt other people when I had the power to stop her.

Thomas stepped over to the two of us, his voice dropping down to a careful whisper. “Don’t worry about her. I’ve got plenty of first-hand experience when it comes to handling emotion-eating predators. She’s small-time compared to my sisters. I can keep her under control, and if it really looks like she’s about to starve to death, I can find a way to get some food that won’t hurt anyone.”

I wasn’t too happy about that, but if Thomas could deliver on that promise, it was probably the best option we had.

Rather than linger on that, I focused on giving my brother a hard time. “You sure you got this? I don't want to come back and find out that she conked you on the head with a fancy vase and ran for it.”

“Getting duped like that's your job,” he shot right back. “I'd hate to step on your toes. Besides, which one of us has superhuman strength and endurance? I don’t think I’m in too much danger from a girl whose arms are about as thick as pipe cleaners.”

“I’d be more worried about her getting into your head with her magic, personally,” Sunset offered, frowning thoughtfully.

That suggestion gave him cause for pause. “Do you know how well her magic works on non-humans?”

To be honest, I barely even knew how her magic worked at all, let alone how effective it would be on non-humans. “The only other people I know who’ve been on the receiving end of it were the Equestrians. If it can work on ponies and humans, I’m not inclined to take any chances.”

Thomas conceded the point with a nod. “It’s generally pretty tough to get into our heads, though. Kind of a requirement, with the way a lot of the White Court’s internal politics work.” I shivered at the reminder: emotional manipulators tend to establish dominance by forcing emotional control onto those beneath them. And since Thomas was an incubus, that meant lust.

I should also mention that the White Court is a family business.

Thomas saw my shiver and probably misinterpreted the source. “Relax, Harry. I'll keep my earbuds in. As long as I can’t hear her she can’t get to me, right? I mean, that’s how it worked with the classic sirens.”

“Yeah, theoretically as long as you can’t hear her singing, she can’t get into your head.” I noted my brother’s frown, and quickly explained. “Everything I know says earplugs will work, and I got an expert opinion to back me up on that. Just saying I haven’t put in earplugs and let one of them hit me at full blast to test it out. It’s your call to make, but it isn't exactly going to break my heart if I come back and her mouth is covered by duct tape again.”

Before my brother could answer that, the phone started ringing. Or at least, I eventually discovered that’s what it was. For some reason, Thomas had apparently replaced his phone’s ringtone with some girl singing a song about letting it go.

Ugh, I hate feeling more and more out of touch with pop culture. Being old and cut off from all this internet stuff sucks. I was nearly a year late finding out they were making a new Star Wars movie because all the publicity for it was online. Well, that and nobody told me because they were afraid I’d talk about it non-stop once I found out.

Thomas sighed. “Uh, I should probably get that.”

“No need,” Sunset remarked with an idle smirk. “Just let it go.”

“You’re hilarious.” Thomas rolled his eyes. “But that’s Justine’s ringtone. She loves that song.” He picked up the phone, quickly carrying it to a safe distance away from me even though it was a landline. “Hey Justine.” His smile quickly faded from there. “Yeah. Yeah. Okay.” He paused, then said just a bit too loudly, “Hi Lara!”

Oh crap. Big Sister Raith was calling. That rarely meant good things for me, even though she was on my side more often than not.

I patiently waited, trying to shake off the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as Thomas continued talking to his sister. “Which channel? I have a few thousand.” He paused, and I could hear Lara’s silky, seductive voice on the other end of the line. “That’s only because it's a pretty white girl. And really Lara, out of all the places to get your news from, you picked them?” My brother sighed, picked up the remote, and turned on his ridiculously huge flatscreen TV.

At first it was just commercials, but after a minute or so it came to one of those twenty-four hour cable channels. As soon as I saw the headline, I knew that bad feeling in my gut was about to get some justification.

Police Searching for Suspects in Celebrity Kidnapping

A minute later I was watching some really grainy footage of myself and Sunset stuffing Sonata into the trunk of my car. Thankfully, the quality was terrible, and whoever was recording it was doing so from a building across the street; I had checked for witnesses, but I couldn’t exactly go door-to-door clearing every single building. Obviously I must have missed someone.

“Horseapples!” Sunset hissed, summing up my thoughts quite nicely. Or at least as well as anyone could while limited to an Equestrian vocabulary.

I could definitely feel a headache coming on. The footage was low-quality enough to make a positive ID tricky, but Sunset and I do both stand out in a crowd. I’m tall enough to play basketball and am one of the only guys who runs around in a black leather duster, while Sunset’s got her bacon-hair. Enough people would recognize us to make life really complicated. “Oh come on! I did not need this! At all!”

Thomas let out a strangled squeak. “Hey Lara, I'm going to have to call you back.” He shakily set the receiver down.

Sonata took the news much better than the rest of us. “Hey! I'm on TV! Cool! I'm gonna be faaamous!”

The three of us stared at the TV in dull horror. Sunset was the first to break the silence, grabbing the two of us and quickly dragging us into the other room. “So ... how do we fix this?”

I took a moment to calm down and try to find a rational solution. Mostly because running down the street screaming expletives at the top of my lungs wouldn’t accomplish anything. “Okay, so this is bad. But the good news is that I don't think the quality of the film was very good. Plus, a lot of people still think I’m dead, and Sunset doesn’t have much in the way of official records here. That should slow down anyone identifying us.”

“But you guys do still look pretty distinct,” Thomas pointed out. “I mean, even with how bad the footage is, anyone who looks at it then looks at the two of you is gonna make the connection.” He paused, then grinned at us. But this was not a light, happy sort of grin. It was the horrible, pure evil grin of a brother who has discovered a chance to screw with one of his siblings. “Looks like you guys need a makeover and wardrobe change. The duster’s definitely got to go.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding!” I protectively wrapped it around myself. “I’ve got it enchanted to keep me safe. And even you admitted the duster has style, dammit!”

“Of course it does,” Thomas agreed reasonably. “The problem is that right now it has enough style to get you arrested if you walk out the door wearing it.”

“You suck when you're right,” I groaned, reluctantly removing my duster. “You suck diseased horse wang.” I blinked as I remembered there was a lady present. A horse lady, at that. “Er, sorry. No offense, Sunset.”

“Real mature, Harry. And in front of a lady, no less.” Thomas turned to my apprentice, waving a hand accusingly in my direction. “You see the abuse I have I to deal with every single time he drops by?”

Sunset snorted out a laugh. “I have to admit, you have it pretty bad. He's even worse with you than he is with me. And much whinier.”

I put on my best prim and proper not-quite-fake British accent. “I am not whining, I am complaining. Would you like to hear whining?”

“No,” my brother answered firmly. “Seriously, are you five, Harry? All I'm asking you to do is put on some different clothes and dye your hair. Maybe wear a hat. You've done worse to save the world, so just run it until the heat dies down. You can go right back to being horribly tasteless once you’re no longer a suspect in a high-profile celebrity kidnapping that’s going to have your face plastered all over the news.”

“But I like my duster,” I whi—complained.

Sunset rolled her eyes. “Oh stop being such a baby, Harry.”

“I wouldn’t get too cocky, padawan.” I pointed out her almost-as stylish piece of black leather. “If my duster’s out, your jacket needs to go too.”

Now that her black leather was on the line, Sunset was singing a different tune “Hey, wait a minute! That’s not the same at all!”

For once, my brother backed me up. “He's right. Leather's out right now, and that means you too, missy.”

Sunset sighed, and very reluctantly began taking her jacket off. “Promise you’ll keep it safe? It’s got sentimental value.”

Thomas held up his right hand. “I solemnly swear that any and all fashionable articles of black leather entrusted to my care will be returned unharmed as soon as the crisis is over. Once the heat dies down you can go right back to wearing them with utter disregard for weather and social appropriateness.”

I groaned, surrendering my duster. “I guess that’ll have to do.” Fortunately, another idea quick sprang to mind that rapidly improved my mood. “You know, you should probably do Sunset’s hair too, Toe-moss. Assuming you're not too out of practice from your old stylist job.”

“Don’t worry, I still know how to do it all.” He looked Sunset over, frowning thoughtfully. “So, what to do about that hair of yours? It’s way too long, and not too many people have striped red and yellow hair. It makes you stand out way too much.” Sunset glowered threateningly, and my brother did some quick damage control. “Don’t worry, I’ve got a pretty good stock of supplies in the closet. It won’t be a salon-quality job, but you’ll still look fine when I’m done. I’ll probably turn you redhead since you’re halfway there already. And change your makeup a little. You’d be surprised what a difference it can make.” He turned to me. “It’s always trickier to dye dark hair. I might have to get a little ... creative.”

I definitely didn’t like the sound of that. “Creative, huh? Just remember I know where you live.” I shot a look at Sunset and was slightly consoled by the fact that she looked just as unhappy about the news as I was.

I might be suffering, but at least I wasn’t suffering alone.

Thomas let out a patient sigh. “I can’t believe you two. It's just different clothes and some hair dye. I'm not asking you to chop off a limb or something like that. You can go back to having a complete lack of fashion sense after we've dealt with mind-altering singers.”

I groaned and stepped forward, eager to get it over with as quickly as possible. “Yeah, yeah... The things I do to save the world.”

Author's Note

As always, thanks to the many awesome member of my pre-reading team for smoothing out the wrinkles in this chapter and catching my numerous spelling and grammatical flubs.

Also, I would like to thank all my dedicated Patreon supporters. You guys are awesome.

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Harry Gets No Luck

Everything about my head just felt ... wrong.

I checked my reflection in one of the many mirrors around Thomas’s apartment, and a stranger looked back out at me. A bald stranger.

I don’t care what Thomas said about how shaved heads were ‘in’ right now, I’m still convinced he just cut all my hair off to screw with me. I really should’ve known better than to let my brother cut my hair. It was just too perfect of an opportunity to mess with me. Sunset got a nice new haircut and some brown dye to help her blend in, but apparently there was no way Thomas could render me unrecognizable other than shaving every last bit of hair off my head.

“I miss my hair.”

“You’ve complained about that twenty times,” Sunset groused, rolling her eyes. “Get over it. Your hair’ll grow back. And honestly, it’s not like you were doing anything that great with it to begin with. It was just kinda ... there. Lying on top of your head. You barely even bothered to brush it.”

“And that’s how I like my hair,” I shot back. “Lying flat and completely unstyled on top of my head, keeping me from being bald.” I shivered as a gust of wind passed over my freshly shorn head. I wasn’t used to feeling air on my scalp, and I could only hope I would have a full head of hair again before I got too accustomed to it.

Sunset scoffed. “Fine, I get it. You miss your hair. Shall we go back to the apartment, gather it all up, and give it a proper burial? Or would you rather focus on dealing with the evil mind-controlling sirens running loose and the fact that we’re technically wanted fugitives now?”

“I miss my clothes too.” I picked at the button-down shirt I’d borrowed from Thomas. “My duster was cool, stylish—and most importantly, loaded down with enough enchantments that bullets bounced off of it.”

“Not to mention you traded out a ratty Spider-Man t-shirt and patched up jeans for fashionable khaki slacks and a silk shirt,” Sunset swooned melodramatically. “You poor, poor thing. I don’t know how you’ll survive being properly dressed for once. You might even start looking respectable.”

“Hey, I wore a tux once.” I paused, then amended. “Well, after about five minutes I was wearing the shredded remnants of a tux. Still, totally respectable. And at least I’m not wearing heels.”

Sunset grumbled, briefly wobbling on the high heels she’d been forced to replace her boots with. “I swear, if I ever find the person responsible for inventing these things...”

“You could’ve borrowed Justine’s sneakers instead,” I pointed out.

Sunset glowered down her nose at me. “Those shoes don’t go with this skirt.”

“And obviously the fashion police would arrest you right away if your skirt didn’t match your shoes.” I nodded sagely. “We’ve got enough troubles on our hands without adding them to the mix.”

My apprentice stuck her nose up in the air and sniffed haughtily. “You really don't have the slightest clue how women's clothing works, do you?”

That wasn’t entirely fair. I knew high heels were uncomfortable, and after a bit of fumbling around with my first girlfriend I’d figured out how to unhook that strap thingie that holds a bra on. Oh, and I knew that they looked good when they were dressed up nicely. So, about average for a normal human male. “Oh yes, I subscribe to all the girly magazines and just can't stop myself from picking up and reading all those gossip papers about how Oprah's doing on her weight this year.”

Sunset groaned melodramatically. “If you were half as funny as you think you are, you'd be twice as funny as you actually are.”

I wasn’t going to let her out-snark me. “Your argument is based on the idea that you can put numbers on how funny something is. Everyone knows that you can't quantify good humor.”

She smirked and fired right back. “You’re right, it’s impossible to numerically calculate anything about good humor. Bad jokes, on the other hand—” The rest of whatever attempted smartassery she was about to deliver vanished as she wobbled precariously on her high heels. She quickly grabbed my arm for support until she’d steadied herself, glaring furiously down at her own feet. “Stupid shoes! I am so burning these once we're done!”

I didn’t even try to clamp down on my snorts of laughter. I suppose it was a bit unchivalrous of me, but I just couldn’t help it. “You know, I’m starting to think men have the right idea about how clothes work. What with you wearing those torture devices on your feet and being one gust of wind away from flashing your underwear at the whole world.”

“Now you know why I wear shorts underneath my skirts.” Sunset sighed and straightened the skirt she’d borrowed from Justine’s closet. “Or at least, that’s what I normally do. But in any case, what are we doing about those Sirens?”

I was all for changing the topic away from how much clothing was covering my apprentice’s naughty bits. “That is the question of the day and why we’re both dressed up so weirdly right now.” I frowned thoughtfully and rubbed my chin. “Considering they're surrounded by a bunch of vanilla mortals, most of whom have guns, I don't think we're going to be able to just go up and ring their doorbell. The place is probably gonna have more cops than a donut giveaway now that the video of us snagging Sonata is headline news. Even with our fancy new clothes and hair, I’d rather not risk too much close scrutiny.” I’m pretty sure the cops would be smart enough to expect that the kidnappers might change their appearance after their faces were plastered all over the news.

“I assume the brute force approach is out, then?” Sunset frowned. “It’d get really messy if all the cops got involved. I’m pretty sure hurting them would fall under that whole rule you’ve got against letting me do evil things. And when it comes to defense, I think I could block bullets, but I'd rather not test that out for the first time by having a bunch of people shooting at me.”

No kidding. Especially after what happened with my last apprentice. I’d put a lot of time and effort into teaching Molly how to put up a shield, and she’d still caught a bullet in the leg that left her limping for a couple years. That had always been my preferred way of doing things, but I did like to think I’d gotten a bit sneakier over the years. “So we need a better plan than charging in guns blazing. Shame we can't just dump them in another dimension like you ponies did however long ago. Though even if we could, throwing a bunch of villains on another dimension isn't exactly the most neighborly way to deal with a problem.”

Sunset nodded. “Yeah, it just makes them someone else's problem. I’m not okay with that.”

“Real class act, that Starswirl.” I had a feeling he’d get along real well with a lot of the old wizards I knew on the White Council. If nothing else, they’d be able to bond over comparing their beards. I think it must be a guild rule: if you’re a powerful old wizard and a jerk, you must have a massive beard. It would explain why the current Merlin of the council is sporting some truly impressive facial hair.

Sunset scoffed and waved her hand dismissively. “Yeah, I've always thought he was a bit of an ass. Great wizard who established a lot of the underlying principles of modern magic, but that doesn’t make him any less of a jerk.”

“Seems to be the way it goes with wizards,” I opined. “The more powerful they are, the more they become insufferable assholes.” I paused, then amended, “Well, except for me. I was an insufferable jerk back when I was still just a punk apprentice. I guess I’m special that way.”

“You’re certainly something,” Sunset muttered under her breath. I thought about calling her out on that, but I suppose I had left myself wide open to that snark. Thankfully, she spared my pride any more damage. “Anyway, I'm guessing storming one of their public events is also a no-go?”

I immediately shook my head. “Considering the potential collateral damage? No, we're going to put that idea on the shelf for now. Having a magic battle in front of a live audience is not a smart move.” I couldn’t help but think about the one time my brother had dragged me into a bunch of kids doing a live action roleplay of vampires.

Yes, that’s right, my vampire brother was roleplaying as a vampire. He has a weird sense of humor sometimes. It had been all fun and games until one of the players who’d been kicked out of the group decided to crash the party with her new buddies, a fresh batch of for-real vampires. I’d manage to contain the fallout before it got too bad, but we came way too close to a whole lot of innocent kids getting hurt.

Sunset frowned, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “So we can’t go after them where they live, or risk picking a fight out in public. That leaves us with ... luring them into a trap?”

I nodded, secretly pleased with her tactical reasoning. “Exactly. If we can’t go after them, we have to make them come to us. But you need a couple things for a good trap. First off, you need bait: right now the Sirens are being offered everything they want by a bunch of corporate executives who are tripping over each other to hand out big fat paychecks. Oh, and serve up the chance to perform in front of thousands like it's some giant banquet.” I grinned, and decided to toss a little test Sunset’s way. “Though we do have one thing the Sirens would want, don’t we?”

“Sonata,” Sunset instantly answered.

“On the nose, padawan.” I grinned and poked her little button nose just to make my point. “Given how the power of three normally works, and the fact those studio executives are going to want the full set of them for concerts, they can't perform without her. At least not as well as they normally would be able to. Thus, they need her.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured.” Sunset frowned, kicking off her heels and going barefoot. “So how do we let them know that we have Sonata? Are we gonna phone in a ransom demand to lure them into our trap?”

I snorted at that. “Only if you want to bring every law enforcement agency down on our heads. The FBI takes hostage situations really seriously.” Considering my history, the last thing I needed to do was show up on the FBI’s radar again. “The only way to make it work is to keep it just between us and the Sirens.”

Sunset sighed and nodded. “Yeah, I'd rather not have a bunch of mortal cops jumping us. This is gonna be hard enough with just the evil mind-controlling musicians, not to mention it would make the disguises moot. But we still need to get in touch with the Sirens and let them know we have Sonata.”

“Yeah, not much of a trap if we can’t bait them in.” I rubbed my freshly shaved head as I thought it over. “Shame they haven't signed onto the Accords, because then I'd have a covert way to get in touch with them.”

Sunset sighed and massaged her forehead. “And the FIB or whoever is probably going to be tapping their phones and keeping an eye on them.”

“That’d be standard procedure,” I agreed. One advantage of spending so many years as a consultant for the Chicago PD was getting a passing familiarity with police procedure. “We did get caught kidnapping their buddy, after all.”

Sunset thought it over for a bit, then tossed out a new suggestion. “Maybe we could get in touch with them in a way that makes it clear we're clued in on the magical angle?” She drummed her fingers against the living room table. “I mean, if they know we’re magicals, they might be willing to ditch some of the mortals around them to keep it just between us.”

I nodded along. “True. They would probably be able to get rid of their followers if they really wanted to. Not to mention those in the magical community like to keep those who aren't keyed in on magic that way.”

Sunset grinned enthusiastically. “I mean, they could just enthrall the cops who listen in on the phone call to let them handle it all themselves.”

“Yeah, they could.” Of course, if they could enthrall the cops enough to make them leave, they might also be able to turn the cops into thugs. But if that happened, we still would be better off than if we tried to face them on their home turf. Sometimes you just have to grab every little advantage you can find and hope they all add up to enough to make a win.

“We will have to try and keep any messages about the spooky side of things subtle,” I reluctantly pointed out. “I don't want the Sirens to have to psychically lean on the cops too hard to make them stay. It would take a lot of mind mojo to make them not respond to a kidnapping case—enough that it could really hurt them.” I just hoped that the way Siren magic worked was more like cartoon-style harmless mind control than the way it worked in the real world; I’d rather have all the Sirens’ victims be fine once the spell was lifted than have them all be psychological wrecks who would need years of therapy to recover.

“Right. So we need something low-key and sneaky.” Sunset glanced over at me, then smirked. “I guess that means I'm the one who needs to come up with the plan, right?”

I rolled my eyes at that totally unjustified attack on my character. “I've learned how to be sneaky over the years. It took a lot of beatings and hard lessons for me to learn, but I did learn. It’s been years since I entered a building by blasting the door off its hinges.” Going through the wall’s a lot safer anyway. People boobytrap doors a lot more often than they do random sections of wall.

“Yeah, I’m sure you know all about being subtle and sneaky.” Sunset’s sarcasm was so thick I could’ve cut it with a knife. “So, fearless leader, what's the game plan? Maybe try and slip in a couple sneaky key words during the conversation?”

“It's one possibility,” I conceded. “But tricky to do without any definite frame of reference. It’s hard to spout out a bunch of meaningful code words when we’ve never even talked to them before. I mean, I could call them saying we're the Magical Singing Taco Delivery Service, but they might just think it was some sort of weird wrong number.”

I sighed as the inevitable unpleasant solution sank in. “Really, this would all be a lot smoother if we could get a third party to contact them for us.” I rubbed my newly-shaved scalp as I felt a nasty headache coming on. “As much as I’ll probably regret it, I might have to ask Thomas if he can arrange something. He and his sister have contacts in the upper echelons of society, including some parts of the entertainment industry.”

Sunset frowned skeptically. “Won't that mean you'll owe them a favor? That's usually bad news, isn't it?”

“Yeah, being in debt to the White Court vamps is not a situation I’d ever want to be in unless I had no other options.”

“That bad?” Sunset asked, frowning. “I thought you get along pretty well with the White Court.”

“Oh yeah, Lara’s the head honcho, and she definitely likes me.” I paused a moment for effect, then added, “But the White Court are still predators at the end of the day. She doesn’t see any conflict between being personally fond of me and eating my soul the instant I become inconvenient to her plans. Or if she’s just hungry enough.” I shivered as I recalled the one time she’d tried making a meal out of me. “Owing the White Court is almost as bad as owing a favor to one of the Sidhe—and they're only second in that category because the Sidhe are better at blackmailing you into cutting more bargains with them just to get out of the first deal you gave them. If Lara gets my balls in a vice, she won’t hesitate to squeeze.”

“Thanks for that lovely mental image,” Sunset groused, her lips curling up in disgust. “Anyway, let's save that for our Plan B. Which would mean a lot more if we had a Plan A.”

“Can we even have a Plan B before there’s a Plan A?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure it’s not supposed to work that way. Though I guess we technically do have something resembling a Plan A, even if it’s looking like a lot of stumbling around in the dark.”

“So pretty much your normal way of doing things?” Sunset snarked.

“It worked fine when I went up against you,” I shot right back. “And to be fair, most of the time I'm looking for someone or something, and they can be very hard to find.”

“Too bad you can’t stop the Sirens by just pulling a gun on them,” Sunset countered with a smirk. “But that means you're developing some variety in how you do things. Better late than never.” She paused for a moment, then surprised me by actually tossing out a helpful suggestion instead of more smartassery. “Maybe we could have Sonata make the ransom call? She'd know what to say.”

“She probably would,” I conceded. “But even if we can get her to stick to a safe script, we still have that same issue with the police. It would just be a different caller.”

“Good point.” Sunset conjured up a small fireball and began idly flicking it between her fingers. I thought about warning her to be careful, but my brother has enough cash that he can afford to replace one or two singed pieces of furniture. Besides, that bastard had just shaved me bald. He was lucky I wasn’t letting Sunset burn the place to the ground.

Apparently playing with fire helped her concentration, because a couple seconds later Sunset tossed another idea my way. “Maybe if we mention Equestria?”

I thought that over and found myself slowly nodding along. “Yeah, that’s actually a pretty good idea. That, and maybe tossing out a couple more words like Starswirl would definitely let them know we’re clued in, but should go right past any cops who might be listening in. Good thinking, padawan.” Sunset grinned proudly at the praise. Underneath the snarky, smartass attitude she did seem to like having my approval. “So now that we’ve baited the hook, we just have to pick where we're going to meet them. And by meet them, I mean ambush them.”

Thankfully, Sunset continued to be full of good ideas. “Any chance we could lure them out to that island of yours?”

“Maybe. It's not that hard to rent a boat to sail out there if you know the coordinates.” When it came to picking a place where I had the home field advantage, it would be pretty hard to beat Demonreach. I’d bound myself to the island’s genius loci, which gave me a ton of incredibly unfair advantages in any fight where I had my feet on Demonreach’s soil.

“The tricky part would be getting them all the way out to my creepy, isolated island without them realizing it might be a trap.” I grimaced as I thought it all over. “They’ll have to suspect that we’re luring them out into the middle of nowhere so we can jump them while they’re alone with no witnesses around. It won’t be much of an ambush if they know we’re planning on jumping them.”

“Yeah, they’ll probably suspect we’re after them as well,” Sunset conceded. “Especially if we name-drop Equestria and Starswirl the Bearded. That would be enough to give away that we know they’re after world domination too, but I don’t see how them knowing it’s a trap changes anything for us.”

I thought it over for a moment, then agreed. “Our bait’s too good for them to pass up. Between getting their bandmate back and finding out what we know about their ties to Equestria, we’ve got way too much leverage over them for the Sirens to risk letting us get away. Yeah, they’ll know it’s a trap, but they’ll have no choice but to spring it and hope they can out-sneaky us.”

“Out-sneaky?” Sunset asked with a skeptical frown. “I think you mean outwit. You know, since that’s actually a real word.”

“I meant what I said,” I grumbled. Stupid apprentices correcting my grammar. “I expect the songbirds are gonna be packing some kind of nasty surprise for us, but they’ll have a hard time catching me off-guard on Demonreach.” Having instant and complete knowledge of every single living being on the island would make setting up any kind of ambush just about impossible as long as I was paying attention. Granted, if I was in the middle of a knock-down drag-out fight with the Sirens, I might be just a little distracted.

“You do know that place like the back of your hand,” Sunset agreed. “And it’s a safe bet the Sirens have never been there before.” She frowned thoughtfully. “Too bad we don’t know anything about what magic they might have at their disposal besides the whole mind control singing thing.”

“Mind control singing’s not enough?” Even as I asked the question, I realized she was probably right. “Yeah, they’d have to have some kind of backup plan. From what you and Celestia said, they’ve been around for more than a thousand years. If all it took to render them completely powerless was a strong will or a set of earplugs, they wouldn’t have lasted that long.”

“So they’ve probably got a Plan B too,” Sunset concluded. “If they’re bringing mind-controlled minions and they’ve got combat magic, we’ll be in for a tough fight.”

“Yeah, we will.” I was tempted to call in some extra support, but I just didn’t feel comfortable taking that kind of chance. Any friends I turned to might have already been compromised by the Sirens, and even if they were clean I would be putting them at risk of getting mind-whammied by them. While I’m still not wild about the idea of ever putting my friends in danger, even with the world on the line, in this case there was also a more pragmatic angle to it. I wasn’t just protecting Murphy, I was protecting myself from getting shot in the back by Murphy. It just seemed a lot safer to keep as few pieces on the board as possible.

I groaned and rubbed my forehead. “I guess I could try talking them into surrendering peacefully, but I wouldn’t bet the family farm on that working.” Hell, I wouldn’t bet a penny on that working.

“Hey,” Sunset grinned over at me. “Relax. We handled Sonata. We can take the other two.”

“There’s a big difference between jumping someone in a dark alley and taking them on when they know a fight’s coming,” I cautioned. “You’re an ex-bully, you should know all about that. Since the Sirens seem to be some sort of practitioners, if narrowly focused ones from what we've seen, they'll be a lot more dangerous when they know trouble's coming.”

Sunset smirked and tapped her ears. “Yeah, but we'll know to bring earplugs to the fight.”

I chuckled. “That will help. And I’ll pack two extra rolls of duct tape.”

“But of course.” Sunset agreed.

“Right.” I got up from the couch and stretched. “So let’s tie a young woman up in some duct tape, take her to my haunted island, and use her as bait so that we can capture two more young women. Nothing creepy about that at all.”

“Don't forget the other young woman you've conned into being your accomplice in all these kidnappings.” Sunset paused, then giggled. “You know, I don't think this was what Celestia had in mind when she made me your apprentice.”

“I'm probably not doing the best job of being a good influence on you,” I admitted. “I suppose it was inevitable; first I was teaching ponies human curse words, and now I’m making you follow me into a life of crime. I needed a new hobby, so I guess corrupting the youth will do.”

Sunset got up as well, shrugging. “Don’t worry, I think I'm still less corrupt than I was when we first met. I mean, it’s been a while since I tried to conquer the world.”

“Good point.” I retrieved my staff. “You haven't tried to steal any magical artifacts while my back has been turned, have you?”

“Nope.”

I nodded, quite satisfied with her answer. “Then we're getting somewhere. As long as you haven't used taking Twilight's crown as a gateway drug to worse things like mass mind control or ritual sacrifices.” I sighed melodramatically. “You know how it goes: one day you’re stealing the prom queen’s crown, the next thing you know you’re breaking into an elementary school to steal some first-grader’s arts and crafts project because you’re jonesing for a fix.”

“Guess it’s a good thing you helped me beat all my bad habits, then.” Sunset paused, then grinned and opened the door for me. “So, onwards with the ransom demand for our kidnapping victim?”

I chuckled. “How else will I drag victims back to my evil island?”

Sunset pursed her lips in thought and tapped her chin. “Well, we could always get a windowless black van and offer them some candy...”

“One step at a time, padawan, one step at a time.”

“Why is it so hard to find a fricking payphone?!”

We’d spent nearly an hour driving around Chicago to try to find one, but thus far I’d had no luck at all. It was nuts.

“Do they even still have those?” Sunset asked, frowning. “There’s not much of a point to them now that everyone has a cell phone.”

“I don’t have a cell phone.” Have I mentioned how annoying it is that magic and technology don’t get along? “And even if I could use one, there’s probably some way to track those things. Same deal with a landline.” That was why I wasn’t just borrowing Thomas’s phone; you don’t use a friend’s phone to call in ransom demands. I owed my brother some payback for shearing off all my hair, but siccing the FBI on him was going overboard. Now, if he dyed my duster pink while it was in his care….

“You really need to find a way around those tech issues,” Sunset opined. “You’re already missing out on cell phones, the internet, social networking, all that good stuff. And it’s only going to get worse over time. Soon you’ll be reduced to living in a cave while the rest of the world is like something out of a science fiction movie—especially if what you told me about how long human wizards can live is true.”

That was actually a rather scary thought. Considering how crazy technology was, I was probably only a couple decades away from my techbane status turning me into a complete social pariah. The last couple times I’d gamed with the Alphas, there’d been some good-natured grumbling about how they couldn’t use digital character sheets or references, use their dice-rolling apps, or look up anything online because I was there.

Personally, I thought it was more fun to do our geeky gaming with a pencil, paper, and dice the way the ancient cavemen did in the early days of RPGs. Thog roll initiative to smack with club!

To be honest, one of the reasons I hadn’t been in any hurry to stop living on my creepy island in the middle of nowhere was because of all those technology issues. If I tried getting a new apartment I’d probably ruin my neighbor's cell phone, internet, computer, and everything else. In ten or twenty years it might be even worse. What if everyone wound up being so loaded down with new gizmos that I couldn’t walk down the street without shorting out thousands of dollars worth of electronics? And that didn’t even account for stuff like implants. I already worried about shorting out some old guy’s pacemaker just by sitting next to him on the bus; imagine what it would be like once everyone was a cyborg or something.

Hell’s bells, my grandfather could remember back when the U.S. had just been a bunch of British colonies, and the world hadn’t slowed down an iota since his time. How crazy would things be by the time I was an old man?

“Hey!” Sunset jabbed me in the shoulder, dragging me out of that reverie. “Let’s try a bus station or train station, maybe the airport. If any place is still gonna have payphones, it’d be a big travel hub like that.”

“Good thinking.” I hit the brakes and quickly reoriented myself within my mental image of Chicago to figure out where the closest place would be. “Let’s try Union Station. It’s not that far away, and I’m pretty sure I saw some phones there last time I visited.”

I was reasonably familiar with Union Station, thanks to my habit of taking old-fashioned trains over high-tech, fragile planes. I’ve always liked Union Station; it’s got a huge, classical grandeur to it that you just don’t find in modern architecture. I certainly liked it a lot better than all the newer buildings that felt the need to constantly shove how high-tech they were in your face by making everything out of glass and metal. Union Station was a grand old dame, and proud of it.

Pity the inside’s not as nice as the outside. Sure, there are still some places that have the good old style, but a lot of the interior’s been redone so it looks like an airport—all sleek, modern, efficient, and soulless.

Admittedly, they’d probably needed to do a lot of repair work after that one fight I’d had here about five years back. Gruffs, hobs, and angry wizards do tend to cause a lot of collateral damage when they throw down. Still, they’d left a few retro-ish things in place after the renovations—one of which was payphones..

I quickly located one that was reasonably far away from anyone who might inconveniently listen in on my conversation, then slipped in far too many coins for my liking. I could just be feeling nostalgic for the days when phones were only a quarter, but I think in this case I was just feeling cheap. Maybe I could try billing Celestia once this job was done?

I punched in the number I’d gotten from Sonata and waited. The phone rang nearly half a dozen times before it got picked up, which inclined me to be suspicious. Maybe it was paranoia, but that long of a delay could mean all the cops and FBI guys were busy getting all their phone tracing stuff ready to go.

“Yes? Who is it?” The voice on the other end was female and smooth, almost musical. Very fitting for a Siren, I supposed.

“Yes, this is Henry Drafton from Equestrian Delivery Services. Who am I speaking to?” Not my best alias, but it got the job done. And hopefully the name-drop would catch her attention while at least being in the same neighborhood as subtle.

There was a slight pause, then she answered. “You’re speaking to Adagio Dazzler. I assume you’ve heard of my band, the Dazzlings?”

“Can’t say I have, no.” When in doubt, it never hurts to poke the bad guys in the ego. Given that Adagio had named the band after herself, it was a pretty safe bet she had one. Besides, she was a cartoon villain. All cartoon villains have big egos. Adagio didn’t say anything, but I could just imagine her eyes narrowing and her grip on the phone tightening. I let her stew on that for a couple seconds, then got back down to business. “It seems that Starswirl the Bearded was supposed to deliver a package, but it's gone to the wrong address and needs to be returned to the sender.”

This time she was silent for a long, long time. Name-dropping Equestria could’ve just been brushed off as a coincidence, but Starswirl was a lot more specific. When she finally answered, she sounded a lot warier. “Exactly who is the sender this package would be returned to?”

“It’s listed on the form as a ... Princess Celestia.” I faked a chuckle. “Man, the names you guys come up with are something else.”

“Uh-huh,” she answered neutrally. “And what do you want?

I decided to move in for the kill, and discard what little subtlety I’d been using so far. “Well, we thought you might want to pick up some singing tacos you've misplaced. We can let you know where to come to get her—them.”

There was another long pause, and I heard some muffled conversation in the background. Hopefully that was Adagio talking to her bandmate and not to the cops. Finally, she answered. “And what do you want for them?”

Man, would it be awkward if she showed up expecting us to actually have tacos instead of Sonata. My face would be so red... “Tell you what, why don't you come pick them up, and we'll work out the details from there?”

“Works for me.” Adagio drummed her fingers on the phone’s receiver. “It better be a good deal. If I find out you’re wasting my time, I’m going to be very annoyed. And you wouldn’t like me when I’m in a bad mood.”

I couldn’t pass up a perfect opening like that. “Sweetie, I grew up reading Incredible Hulk comics, and you’re neither incredible nor hulking. I’ve seen your videos; you’re a toothpick. Seriously, I’d suggest eating less negative emotions and more cheeseburgers. That’s the only way you’ll ever bulk up those pipe cleaner arms.” I let her chew on that for a moment, then continued. “You wanna know what I’m offering? How about an all-expense paid vacation back to your homeland? I bet you miss it.”

“It has been a millennia plus since I’ve been in Equestria,” Adagio agreed. “Still, I’m settling in rather nicely here. I’d certainly be up for a homecoming tour to take care of some old unfinished business, but I was thinking of setting down permanent roots here.”

“Pity, I was hoping for more of a long-term relocation.” I tsked and shook my head. “Princess Celestia told me that she’s already set aside some lovely rooms just for you girls. Seriously, Equestrian dungeons are better than my house.”

Adagio chuckled and brushed my comment away. “Tempting, but I think I'd rather move into the royal accommodations. They're much nicer.”

“Princesses do have all the nice little perks, like the little bit of chocolate on your pillow before you go to bed at night.” I quickly scanned the area to make sure our conversation was still relatively private. “Of course, there is the slight problem that Celestia’s using the royal quarters for herself right now.” Well, herself, her sister, and however many other princesses they’d added by this point.

Adagio chuckled, low and throaty. “I’m not worried about that. I can be very convincing when I need to be.”

“So I've heard.” I decided to tweak her ego again and see what happened. “Though to be honest, I thought your song on YouTunes kinda sucked, and your video on iTube was really lame.”

Sunset groaned and whispered something to me. I quickly covered the receiver so Adagio wouldn’t hear my response. “Oh who cares? They’re pretty much the same thing anyway. Tube, tune, it’s only one letter’s difference.”

On the other end of the phone, Adagio sniffed haughtily. “If you don’t like our music, then that’s just proof that you don't have any taste. Or you’re jealous of our musical talents.”

“Oh please, if anything it’s you who would be jealous of me!” I could play a pretty mean guitar as long as there was an angel inside my head taking care of all the actual playing. “Just be glad I'm not challenging you to a sing-off. You’d go down hard.”

Adagio answered with a cold, mocking laugh. “I believe it. I can tell just by listening over the phone you'd make my ears bleed by singing.”

That was hardly fair. In all my years of singing in the shower, I’d only ever made Mouse’s ears bleed once, and he’s a dog with sensitive hearing. I tossed another verbal volley Adagio’s way. “While I strongly recommend earplugs to anyone who ever listens to your songs. Granted, that's mostly because of the mind control rather than how terrible your music is. Good thing I'm strong-willed enough to brush off a weak spell like that.”

“Oh, you haven't heard anything yet.” I could practically hear Adagio’s smirk over the phone. “We're just getting warmed up. I’ll admit, the performance loses something when you’re just watching a video. Seeing it live and in person will be—”

“Do you guys take requests for your live shows?” I cut in. “Do you do polka? 'Cause I know a guy who has a polka suit, and we could probably get him to help out. He’s really good; he even managed to stop a zombie T-Rex from going on a rampage with his polka powers. Bet your Siren magic can’t do that.” I grinned as a particularly wonderful idea sprang to mind. “Maybe we could have Pinkie Pie come over with her polka suit and make it a duet?”

Adagio scoffed. “Polka? Sorry, we only do cool types of music.”

Oh no she didn’t! There are a lot of things I can tolerate, but there are some lines you just don’t cross. Ever. I glared at the phone, my voice deadly serious. “Polka will never die, bitch.”

“I don’t think something can die if it was never really alive to begin with,” she shot back. “But in either case, polka’s not what I’m planning to kill. You, on the other hand ... well, you’re just a fragile little human.”

“A lot of folks have bet that. Most of them were wrong.” I threw a little extra menace into my tone. “I’d give you some references, but most of the people who tangled with me aren’t in any condition to answer questions.”

“Big man.” Her voice shifted, sharp and mocking. “It’s easy to talk, but I bet that’s all you’ve got. I think I’m going to enjoy turning you into another one of my thralls. You’ll be in charge of cleaning out that nasty gunk that builds up under my toenails. It certainly sounds like something that would suit your talents.”

“Bring it on, songbird. I eat monsters like you for breakfast, and right now I’m very hungry.” Before she could toss out any more threats, I decided to cut the potential pissing contest short. “Also, my dick’s bigger than yours. Because you’re a girl. Well, unless you Sirens are packing some extra equipment under the hood. Not that there'd be anything wrong with it if you were. Considering the crazy stuff I deal with on a daily basis, that wouldn't even register as significant.”

I could hear the plastic case of Adagio’s phone creaking in protest as her grip tightened. I’ve always had a talent for pissing off the bad guys. The mocking tone had vanished from her voice, replaced with barely controlled anger. “Where's the meet?” I gave her Demonreach’s map coordinates. “Are you stupid or something? That's in the middle of the lake!”

“There's an island there,” I assured her. “It doesn’t show up on a lot of maps, but trust me, it's there. That’s where Sirenbowl is going down.”

“There better be an island there,” she growled ominously. “Because if you think you can get away with making a fool out of me, you’ll spend the rest of your life learning how very wrong you are.”

I rolled my eyes at the villain bluster. It’s nothing I hadn’t heard dozens of times before. “Yeah, sure, I called you guys and risked exposing myself just so I could send you all off on a wild goose chase. You want your buddy back and to eliminate a potential threat, I wanna take you guys down before you cause any damage. Might as well fight it out now and save ourselves the trouble of playing cat and mouse for weeks.”

“Fine,” she answered shortly. “When do you want to meet?”

“I’d rather not wait until tomorrow for high noon to come around again, so how about we make it midnight? Nice and dramatic that way.”

“Works for me,” the Siren growled. “Enjoy your last hours of freedom.”

“Back at you.” I paused, trying to come up with a really nice, snappy one-liner to finish the conversation with.

Adagio didn’t give me enough time. “Get ready for a performance you'll never forget.”

I couldn’t let her be the one to deliver the final one-liner, so I quickly shot out the best thing I could come up with on short notice. “I will. And then I'll boo you off the stage. With my boot. Which I'll be kicking your ass with.”

I mentally groaned at my own incompetence, then slammed the phone back into the cradle before Adagio could start laughing at me. My snappy one-liner powers always fail me at the worst possible time.

Sunset, who’d mostly been dutifully quiet while I was on the phone, couldn’t resist the golden smartassery opportunity I’d handed her. “Next time, think of your witty comeback beforehand. That way, you’ll have it ready for the end of the conversation.”

“Bite me, padawan.”

After a couple final bits of last-minute preparation, Sunset and I headed out to Demonreach. I was a bit surprised by how much I didn’t like that I was going it alone for this fight. I’d always told myself I was a big tough loner, but this was the first time in a while that I’d really gone into a fight with a heavy hitter without a lot of my friends backing me up. Sure, I had Sunset helping out, but the closest I’d come to fighting alongside her was when I’d fired a gun in her general direction.

Sure, there’d been practicing since then, what with her being my apprentice and all. But that was still—well, practice. There’s a big difference between doing some exercises together and going into a knock-down drag-out life-or-death fight with her as my only backup. Still, beggars can’t be choosers. She was the only heavy hitter I knew who I was completely—well, ninety-nine percent sure wasn’t under Siren control.

That’s the nasty thing about fighting mindbenders: it really fuels the old paranoia. And this is coming from a guy who regularly checks to make sure that are no invisible demons trying to eat his face.

That’s why I wanted to make sure I had an ace in the hole for this fight, something Sunset didn’t know about. If the Songbirds got to her, she couldn’t give away information she didn’t have. I sent her off to go do a quick check around the island to make sure there were no nasty unexpected surprises, but I was mainly just keeping her busy while I did my thing. “Alfred? Hey Alfred, I need to talk to you!”

In the time it took for me to blink, the entity appeared. A twelve foot tall, vaguely humanoid thing wrapped in a black cloak, with unnaturally bright green eyes. It was the island’s genius loci, literally the spirit of the place.

A long time ago, the original Merlin had decided to build a giant prison for every single nasty thing he could find. Since I’m just a lucky guy, I’d stumbled onto the island and somehow wound up becoming latest warden of the prison. Naturally, a prison that holds everything from skinwalkers to a couple fallen gods needs some seriously powerful mojo to keep all the inmates contained. That’s where Alfred came in; he was basically the intelligence coordinating all of the island’s magical defenses.

Plus he was kinda like my butler. Thus, Alfred. I’m clever like that.

Most importantly for my purposes, he didn’t watch any videos on iTube, and he could pack one hell of a punch. I’d seen him face off against two Sidhe queens and more than a dozen of their retainers, plus an army of attacking Outsiders and their cultists. That had been enough to overpower him, but it had been a pretty close fight. I was willing to bet the Sirens weren’t in that weight class. If they were that badass, I don’t think a gut punch and duct tape would’ve been enough to contain Sonata.

I got straight to business; Alfred’s not one for small talk. “We’re going to have guests in a couple hours. A pair of Equestrian Sirens. Sunset and I should be able to handle them on our own, but I’d like to have you on standby in case things go wrong.” I thought it over for a minute, then added, “Once we’ve got them subdued, lock them up somewhere. As long as I’m running this magical super-prison, I might as well use it.”

Alfred was silent for a long time. He’s not much of a talker. Though I think part of that is because he could give Luna’s Traditional Royal Canterlot Voice a run for its money. “EQUESTRIAN SIRENS? HOW DO THEY DIFFER FROM GREEK SIRENS?”

One thing I’ll say about talking to Alfred, it really cleans all the wax out of my ears. “Well, from what I can tell they still do the whole mind-control singing thing. They’re a bit more like White Court Vamps in that they feed off emotion. Their magic basically turns everyone who hears their songs into an asshole, and that makes them stronger.”

Alfred mulled that over for a bit, staring at me with mildly disturbing intensity. I jumped a little when he finally spoke. “THEIR MAGIC IS SIMILAR TO THAT OF YOUR NEW APPRENTICE?”

“Um, yeah.” I shrugged. “I mean, it’s still Equestrian magic, not Earth magic.”

“PROBLEMATIC,” Alfred announced. “YOU SHOULD NOT BRING OUTSIDERS LIKE THEM TO THIS PLACE. THEIR MAGIC DOES NOT FOLLOW OUR RULES.”

Alfred sounded ... annoyed. That couldn’t be a good sign. “Well I couldn’t fight them in the middle of the city. They can turn everyone who hears them into thralls. I’d be swarmed by a bunch of mind-controlled people, and I wouldn’t have many ways of stopping them without someone getting hurt.”

“EQUESTRIAN MAGIC IS DANGEROUS,” Alfred growled. “UNPREDICTABLE. INSUFFICIENT DATA. THE EQUESTRIAN SIRENS SHOULD NOT BE HERE. NOR SHOULD YOUR NEW APPRENTICE.”

“Whoa, chill out, Alfred.” It had been a while since I’d seen him get this agitated. “What’s the big deal, anyway? I mean, yeah, Equestrian Magic doesn’t mess with technology and can do a few things earth magic can’t, but it’s still magic, right? You can handle them.”

“INSUFFICIENT DATA,” Alfred answered.

“You ... can’t handle them?”

“INSUFFICIENT DATA.”

Super, his record had started skipping. I sighed and tried a new line of inquiry. “Okay, so you don’t know exactly how their magic works, and that makes you wary. I get that. Gimme a worst-case scenario. I mean, it’s not like they could mind control you.”

Alfred glowered at me, then answered, “INSUFFICIENT DATA.”

That caught my attention. “Wait, you’re saying they might be able to take control of you? Turn you against me, tell you to let loose all big nasty monsters you’re holding ... everything? Then use more of their magic to take control of all the prisoners?”

“IT IS POSSIBLE.”

“Oh.” My knees started shaking. I might’ve just given the Sirens the ultimate army of evil minions. “Oh crap.”

Author's Note

As always, thanks to the many awesome member of my pre-reading team for smoothing out the wrinkles in this chapter and catching my numerous spelling and grammatical flubs.

Also, I would like to thank all my dedicated Patreon supporters. You guys are awesome.

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Harry Gets No Dignity

I was in a tight spot. No sense in denying it. I had a pair of pissed off mind-controlling sirens heading straight for me, and I’d just learned that they might be able to turn my ace-in-the-hole against me.

In hindsight, I should’ve realized it was a possibility. One thing that I’d learned over and over again while tutoring Sunset was that Equestrian magic didn’t follow the rules I was used to. And yet, I’d never considered the idea that Demonreach could be controlled. I mean, Demonreach doesn’t really have anything like a human mind. I didn’t know all that much about mindbending on account of it being against the White Council’s rules, but one thing I did know for sure was that a wizard couldn’t put a mind whammy on anything that wasn’t at least partially human. You can’t control a mind whose thought processes were totally alien to your own.

Pity nobody told the Sirens that was impossible.

Still, there was a way out of this. Things looked grim, but I’ve dealt with worse in the past. Hell’s Bells, I don’t consider one of my jobs properly started until I’ve gotten out of at least two situations where it looked like I was utterly screwed. Not to mention I hadn’t gotten beaten up yet. Until I got some bruises or broken bones, this was still a softball case. All I needed was a little time to think it over, and I’d come up with some insane plan that—

“Harry.”

“Not now, Sunset.” Normally I wouldn’t have growled her away like that, but I was sitting on the john at the moment.

What? Wizards have to poop too.

Besides, the bathroom’s a nice, snug, relaxing little room. Even if this particular bathroom was an outhouse where all the waste went down into a hole in the ground instead of a proper flushing toilet. At least it didn’t build up and get all stinky—presumably Demonreach broke it all down and used it fertilize some flowers or something. Though I pity the flowers that have to grow off of what I leave behind.

Sunset knocked on the door again. “Harry.”

“I’ll be out in a minute, okay!” I grumbled. “If you need to go that badly, just go behind some bushes or something. For that matter, why do you even need a bathroom? You used to be a horse! I spent a couple years on a farm, so I know horses have absolutely no inhibitions about taking a dump wherever they happen to be standing when nature calls. Besides, it’s like a circle of life thing. You poop on the grass, the grass grows, then you eat the grass and poop on it again.”

“This isn’t about the bathroom!” she snapped through the door. “You need to get out here right now. We have a problem.”

A problem. Of course. Because things hadn’t gone badly enough for me already.

A second later I discovered what the problem was as a dull, steady whumping sound began echoing off the outhouse walls. It sounded familiar, but it took me a couple seconds to place where I’d heard the sound before. “Stars and stones, they brought a chopper!”

I scrambled out of the outhouse as quickly as I could manage without tripping over my own pants. Sure enough, there was a helicopter steadily approaching the island. Once it got a bit closer I realized that those pods underneath the wings weren’t fuel tanks, they were weapon pods. “That’s a military chopper! How’d they get their hands on one of those?!”

“Gee, I’m gonna take a wild guess and say the answer involves mind control music,” Sunset shot back, rolling her eyes.

“When all you have is a hammer...” Though credit where it was due, the Sirens were being distressingly smart about how they were using that hammer. I’d been expecting some dumb muscle, not a freaking military gunship.

Sunset glanced my way and grimaced. “Hey, Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“Your pants are still down around your ankles.”

I cursed under my breath and hastily pulled them up. Hopefully the Sirens were still too far away to have noticed that. It would be nice if I could keep at least a small shred of my dignity. Just once, for a change of pace.

The chopper came in over the island and hovered over the two of us, letting me finally get a look at Adagio Dazzler. She’d thrown open the copter’s side door and was casually leaning against a minigun, smirking confidently down at me. Sure, I’d seen her music video, but she looked different without all the makeup, bright lights, and whatnot. Not to mention she was dressed in simple military fatigues instead of being all costumed up.

Oh, and she had a pair of those ridiculously big pistols strapped around her waist. Those were new too. Though I bet that much gun would snap her twiggy little arms in half, especially if she was going to try using one in each hand. Despite what action movies will tell you, using a gun in each hand only works if you have superhuman strength, reflexes, and coordination, or if your favorite tactic is spraying a whole lot of bullets in someone’s general direction and hoping you get lucky.

Either Adagio was an idiot or she was really dangerous. And given which way my luck tends to run and how successful Adagio had been up to this point, I knew which one I would bet on.

Adagio opened her mouth, but I couldn’t hear a word she was saying over the roar of the helicopter's rotors. However, after several seconds I could hear the faint chords of Adagio vocalizing, and a moment later the chopper was hovering the air completely silent. I wasn’t about to complain about that little bit of convenience, especially since it tipped her hand about a Siren trick I hadn’t known about. Villains always love showing off.

“So,” she said, drawing the word out. “You’re the one Sonata let herself get captured by. I was hoping for someone a bit more formidable, but I suppose Celestia had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find anyone willing to oppose us.”

And now it was time for the obligatory pre-fight trash talk. Good, she was playing to my strengths. “Nah, more like she's contracting out to take care of some old garbage that's reared its ugly, excessively hair-sprayed head again.”

“Oh really?” She looked me and my apprentice over, then smirked. “Looks like she should've spent a few more bits to actually get someone worth hiring, but I suppose the royal budget must be limited. So how about you tell me what you’ve done with Sonata.”

The other Siren in the chopper stepped forward. “She might be a useless waste of space, but she's our useless waste of space.”

Aww, it was cute how the bad guys were coming together to protect their own. “Oh, she's wasting space somewhere near here. And don't worry, she's doing it uselessly.”

Adagio glowered at me for a moment. “How helpful. I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell us where exactly she is?”

A moment later I heard her softly vocalizing under her breath, and I could feel tendrils of magic poking at my brain. I grimaced and quickly shook the spell off. Thankfully, Siren magic was more about sneaky mind control than the brute force approach. Now that I knew to look out for it, it wasn’t too hard to stand up to. “Hey now, keep it friendly, or our negotiations are gonna start becoming very aggressive. Throw around more of that mind mojo, and I might take offense.”

Adagio mockingly slapped the side of her face and turned to her buddy. “Oh no, Aria! I think I hurt the kidnapper's feelings! That makes me feel just awful!”

Aris snickered, and I got a bit annoyed. I hate it when someone out-smartasses me. Honestly, I think getting beaten up bothers me less. “Just warning you, if my feelings are hurt, they won't be the only things hurting here in a minute. I like to deal with my anger and pain in constructive ways, like using it to beat up bad guys.”

“Oh, so pain helps you, does it?” Adagio turned back to me, smirking again. I had a feeling she smirked so often that it was pretty much her default facial expression. I suppose that's fitting for a Saturday Morning Cartoon villain, though. You gotta have the evil smirk and evil laugh—those are just classics. She proved me right by letting out a sinister chuckle before adding, “Well, I was thinking of shooting you a few times. I mean, it seems a waste to steal a military helicopter and not even use it.”

“Please, I've been shot at by everyone and their mother. Hell's Bells, I've been shot by one of my best friends. I’ve even hired a mercenary to shoot me.” Admittedly, I’d never been shot at with a minigun and rockets before, but it was only a matter of time.

“Well, I have some good news for you,” Adagio announced, her cartoon villain smirk widening. “Once I’m done with you, nobody is ever going to shoot you again.” Her smirk vanished, replaced by an angry glare that promised all kinds of unpleasantness. “Last chance. Where is Sonata Dusk?”

“You really want to stop the chat already?” I asked, affecting an innocent tone. “But we're having so much fun together. I really feel like we’re connecting. Come on down, we’ll have a beer together and talk it all out. Why Aria in such a bad mood, anyway?” Okay, stealing puns from Sonata was a bit bad, but if it succeeded in pissing them off ... well, angry people tend to make stupid mistakes.

Aria glared poisonously down at me. “Can we just kill him already, Adagio? He’s obviously not going to give us Sonata, and even if he did we’d still kill him anyway.”

Oh wow, the bad guys weren’t planning to deal honestly with me. What a shock. I chuckled and shook my head. “You know, you two are some of the most impatient immortals I've ever met. Really, show some class.”

Sunset, who’d been quietly standing by my side while we exchanged banter, finally got in on the act. “Class? From them? You obviously haven't listened to any of their music.”

Ah, smartassery always works better when you’ve got a partner to work with. “No, I have. That’s why I'm telling them they should try and show class, padawan. It’d make a great change from the drek they’re putting out right now.”

Adagio’s teeth clenched and her eyes narrowed. Well, it looked like I’d finally found their weak spot. I guess it figured Sirens would be pretty vain. I mean, you can’t think you deserve to be worshipped and adored by the entire world without having a pretty high opinion of yourself.

I decided to show Adagio what a proper smartass smirk looked like. “Don't feel bad, a lot of beings that live as long as you lose all sense of fashion. And good taste. And any concept of what a reasonable hairstyle looks like. It just comes with old age. Though I feel kinda bad for you guys getting your idea of what a good hairstyle looks like from the eighties, of all times. I mean, out of all the decades to get your fashion sense stuck in...”

“And I guess it figures their songs would all be old and stale too,” Sunset quickly agreed. “I mean, there's no way they could keep coming up with fresh material for a thousand years even if they were the most talented musicians in the history of Equestria. And since they’re obviously not that talented, well...”

“Yeah, they've long hit the point where they can't even claim that they’re so retro that they’re cool again.” As a fairly old-fashioned guy myself, I’m pretty familiar with where that point is. “Nope, their expiration date went out a while ago. Now they’re like sour milk, all thick and gross and with clumps of gooey white stuff in it.”

Well, if I was trying to piss them off, this was definitely working. Adagio was glaring bloody murder at me, while Aria was fingering the handle of her gun as if she was moments away from riddling me with bullets.

I figured they needed one last push before they’d completely lose their cool. As always, I was happy to provide. “If it wasn't for the mind control, nobody would’ve given them a second look. It's all the same-y, derivative crap. Really, you guys are just a couple of burnt-out hacks who haven’t done anything good since the Renaissance.”

“Yeah,” Sunset chimed in. “They clearly sold out a long time ago.”

Adagio turned towards the pilot’s seat and barked out a few words. I couldn’t make out exactly what she’d said because she’d also cancelled whatever spell she’d been using to silence the rotors. However, it was pretty obvious what she’d said as the helicopter turned around to face us, and the minigun started spinning up.

Right, piss off the people with a military attack helicopter. Great plan, Harry.

I quickly turned to my apprentice. “Padawan, I don’t think we want to be here anymore.”

“Right.” She grabbed my wrist, and the two of us vanished in a flash of light moments before several dozen bullets passed through the space we’d been occupying.

Sunset and I popped back into reality about thirty feet away, beneath a thick grove of trees. Hopefully the cover would give us time to come up with a good gameplan. I hadn’t expected to be up against a gunship.

Of course, there were ways I could knock a helicopter out of the sky. Heck, I could probably do the job with just a simple hex; a modern helicopter would be crammed with all kinds of complicated technology. Or I could freeze it up or fireball one of the rotors to knock the chopper out of the sky. Either one was likely to result in a spectacularly explosive crash, at least if every action movie I’ve ever seen was to be believed.

Except that was the problem: knocking the helicopter out of the sky wouldn’t be too healthy for the people inside of it, which included at least one ordinary human being who’d just been mind-controlled into working for the bad guys. I wasn’t cool with the idea of collateral damage. Not to mention I’m pretty sure the Council would take issue with me killing someone via magic, even if it was indirectly. They closed that particular loophole in the laws of magic a long time ago; you can’t magically shove someone off a cliff, then claim that technically it was gravity that killed them rather than your magic.

I did what any smart mentor would do, and checked to see if my apprentice had any good ideas worth stealing. “Sunset, how do you think we should take down that helicopter without turning it into a giant ball of whirling fiery death?”

Sunset frowned as she thought it over, then her eyes brightened. “Maybe we could damage the fuel tank? Obviously we can’t use fire for that, but if you just punch a hole in it with something that won’t ignite the gas, that would force them to land.”

“Good idea.” Sure, it would require a fairly precise bit of evocation, but I like to think I’ve developed a bit beyond the days when I just hurled a bunch of energy in the bad guy’s general direction and hoped I hit something. However, there was a slight problem with that plan. “Uh ... do you know where the fuel tank is on a chopper?”

She grimaced and shook her head. “Maybe I could look it up online if we could get any service out here. And if being close to you wouldn’t break my phone in ten seconds.”

“So much for that plan, then.” I scowled and tried to come up with something else. I could always try to knock out some of the chopper’s weapons, but that was easier said than done. After all, it was a long-distance shot at a moving target, and between the gun and the rocket pods I’d need to land at least three hits. Not to mention that violently ripping explosive weapons off the helicopter might just set them off.

Maybe a wind spell to try and force the helicopter down? It would take a lot of raw power to pull it off, but I just might be able to manage it. Of course, forcing it down without wrecking it would also require some precision. While I can manage precision, and I have plenty of raw power, I still hadn’t quite figured out how to do both at once.

I wracked my brain for anything useful I could remember about helicopters. It probably would’ve helped if I knew much about them beyond what I’d seen in movies and old TV shows. Hollywood tends to play fast and loose with the laws of physics when they think it’ll make the movie more entertaining. After all, people don’t go to the movies for reality, they go there to get away from reality for a couple hours.

Eventually, I remembered a useful tidbit from this one movie I’d seen way back that had been set on top of a mountain. The helicopter had trouble getting up to the top of the mountain because the air got thinner the higher up they went—something about how the blades couldn’t produce enough lift if the air was too thin. If I could find a way to imitate that, it might drop the chopper to the ground. Hopefully the helicopter would still be working well enough to make it more of a really rough landing than an outright crash. There would still be some risk involved, but I didn’t think there was any risk-free way to knock a flying vehicle out of the sky. This seemed like the safest option I could think of.

I spent a couple seconds trying to come up with a good spell for thinning out the air, until I realized I already had something that would do the job. Maybe not the perfect tool for the job, but I’d rather adapt a spell I’m already comfortable with than try to come up with a brand new one on the fly. I leveled my staff at the area just below helicopter. “Ventas servitas!”

Normally I use that spell to produce a gust of wind. Technically I was still doing that. I was just changing how exactly the wind was blowing. I figured if I had a strong enough breeze blowing in an outward circle around the helicopter, it might create a vacuum or at least reduce the air pressure enough to cause problems.

Apparently that worked, because after a few seconds the helicopter lurched and wobbled, then dropped down. By the time it got out of the area affected by my spell it had built up some downward momentum. While the pilot managed to regain partial control of his vehicle, it was only enough to ensure that they touched down relatively safely.

Of course, they would be right back up in the air again in a couple seconds. Thankfully, now that the chopper was down I had a lot more options for disabling it without killing everyone inside. “Forzare!” My blast didn’t dramatically snap off the helicopter’s tail rotor the way I’d hoped it would, but it did bend the whole thing about forty-five degrees in the wrong direction. I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure that was enough to make it unflyable.

I guess the Sirens must have agreed, because it didn’t try to take off again. Unfortunately, they had a backup plan to deal with that. Apparently the pilot wasn’t the only military guy they’d mind-controlled, because half a dozen soldiers in full combat gear filed out of the helicopter and got to work securing the perimeter.

This was ... very not good. Sure, my shield spells and enchanted duster could stand up to military-grade munitions, but holding up a shield against half a dozen guys all blazing away at me on full auto was pushing it, and my duster was still sitting in Thomas’s apartment. Not to mention they’d probably do something smart like try to flank me, which would be a problem because my normal shield spell only covers my front arc. A bit of a weakness, but a shield that covered everything would drain my energy way too quickly, and most of the time someone’s hit me from behind I didn’t know about the attack in time to bring up a shield anyway. The whole point of hitting someone in the back is that they can’t see it coming, after all.

Plus, just like with the pilot, I didn’t want to kill anyone. Which is tricky to pull off when they most certainly wanted to kill me. Nonlethal incapacitation spells have never really been my forte. Not to mention the Sirens might be able to cancel out anything I tried. I didn’t know how much they could do magically, but it would suck to go to all the trouble of working a sleep spell on one of the soldiers just to have Adagio sing him awake a couple seconds later.

It didn’t look like I was going to have much time to think about it either. The soldiers all had flashlights attached the barrels of their gun, and pretty soon one of them found the both of us. I probably should’ve tossed up a quick veil to hide us, but knocking out a helicopter had been just a little tiring, and Sunset wasn’t good with illusions.

“Target spotted!” the enscrolled soldier shouted, bringing his rifle to bear on us. “Engaging!”

I threw up a shield just in time to send a bunch of bullets ricocheting off of it. Unfortunately for me, the Sirens spell didn’t seem to have disrupted any of the soldier’s tactical knowledge, because once he saw I was blocking his bullets he stopped shooting rather than run his clip dry in the vain hope that one bullet might slip through. I was a little surprised he wasn’t freaking out at me having a bullet-deflecting force field, but maybe the Sirens had a tight enough hold him to prevent that kind of thing.

Fortunately, I wasn’t limited to total passivity. “Arctis!” The soldier’s rifle acquired a thick coating of ice rendering it completely unusable. He dropped the gun and immediately went for his sidearm, but another ice spell froze the pistol in its holster. For lack of a better option, the grunt pulled out his combat knife.

I chuckled. “Yeah, I’m sure a sharp chunk of metal will work where bullets didn’t.” He hesitated for a moment, and I froze the blade, then followed up with a force spell to shatter it into a bunch of frozen steel chunks. A couple of the shards hit the soldier, but none of them were too deep or in anywhere vital.

Maybe it was a little heartless of me, but I was okay with that. Sure, the guy was just a mind-controlled dupe, but he would still kill me given half a chance. I wasn’t hurting him any way that he wouldn’t make a full recovery from, which is more than I could say for what would happen if he put a couple bullets into me. Sure, I’d survived getting shot in the past, but the last thing I wanted was to spend another year with Alfred keeping me on magical life support followed by another dose of Mab’s idea of physical therapy.

I didn’t have time to waste getting philosophical, though. Not with five more guys armed with very big guns closing in on myself and my apprentice. I threw out a quick one-two punch to buy myself a little more time to maneuver. “Infriga terra!” I covered as much of the ground around myself as I could manage with ice in the hopes of tripping them up. One of the many perks of Winter Knight-dom was that I could walk on ice without slipping and falling on my ass. Sunset would be in just as much trouble as everyone else, but she could always teleport and stuff. Besides, she was adaptable.

I followed that up by tossing a quick and dirty veil over myself. Illusions have never been my strongest skill, but this didn’t need to be a perfect veil—just good enough to throw their aim off. Besides, the distortion effect surrounding my veiled self might freak them out if they knew their eighties action movies.

“Forzare!” I carefully measured how much power I was putting into the spell so that I wouldn’t do much worse than knock the wind out the guy, and maybe crack a rib or two. By sheer coincidence, it knocked the guy straight back into the helicopter’s open doorway. I couldn’t stop myself from adding in a faux-Austrian accent, “Get to da choppa!”

That was probably a mistake, since another one of the soldiers whirled around and chucked a grenade my way. I quickly threw up a shield and closed my eyes just before the bomb went off, but even with my shield blocking most of the explosion it still hit hard enough to stagger me, and I heard something whiz by my ear and tug on it, producing a hot, burning sensation.

“Sonuva!” I reflexively clapped a hand over my ear, and was horrified to discover that the fragment had practically split it in half. Not that I would have much time to mourn it, since my shout and the fresh blood falling to the ground had given the gunman enough information to bring his rifle to bear.

I tried to call up my shield, but my brain was just a touch scrambled from being so close to an explosion. Nothing that a second to catch my breath wouldn’t fix, but I didn’t have a second to spare.

Which meant it was a very good thing that I wasn’t working alone. Before he could pull the trigger, Sunset teleported in underneath him, sliding on her back along the ice. As she passed between his legs she punched straight up with a flame-covered fist. The guy’s eyes went wide in shock and pain, and he fell to the ground, clutching the damage.

I winced sympathetically. I mean, come on, the dude just got punched in the balls. By a fist that was on fire. Nobody deserves that. Well, okay, I could think of a couple guys who did, but aside from them...

Sunset followed up her slide by teleporting a few feet up and to the side, so that she landed a flying tackle on another one of the grunts. She followed that up with two more teleports: one about twenty feet up into the air, where she quickly let go of the guy before porting just herself back to ground level. He hit the ground hard, but not too hard.

However, her flurry of teleportation had left her a bit winded, and with myself still partially invisible she was the only target for the two remaining soldiers on the field. I wasn’t especially eager to test her ability to block bullets by having two guys with assault rifles hose her down.

Besides, she’d just saved my bacon. If I didn’t return the favor, I’d never hear the end of it.

Thankfully, I had the perfect spell for the job. I broke out one of the first spells I’d ever created, back when I was still apprenticed to Justin DuMorne. It was a simple binding spell that I’d almost forgotten about it since anyone who had a lick of magical ability or a working brain could figure out how to snap it apart without even trying. That was why I’d practically forgotten about the spell; it’d be useless for just about everything I’ve ever dealt with.

However, right now I was dealing with guys who, as far as I knew, didn’t have any magical abilities or know-how. Heck, I wasn’t even sure how much of their brainpower was under their own control. On the one hand, they still seemed to have at least some of their tactical knowledge and military training working for them; on the other, they hadn’t freaked out at all when I started slinging spells around. Most people who firmly believe that there’s no such thing as magic tend to be very disturbed when a wizard starts tossing out spells that prove them wrong.

In any case, I slapped a cocoon of hardened air around the two of them, effectively pinning them in place. Well, at least they’d be pinned as long as the Sirens didn’t notice the spell’s glaringly obvious weak point, where all the binding energy was tied together in a neat little ribbon at the top of the spell. The whole thing would unravel with just a little nudge, but hopefully Sunset and I would keep them too busy for them to spend any time studying my spellwork in depth.

With all their minions out of the fight, Adagio and Aria finally deigned to step out of their wrecked helicopter. Adagio was still smirking confidently, her hands casually resting on the handles of her paired pistols. Aria was scowling furiously at the both of us while brandishing one of those nasty little guns that’s designed to spit out a whole lot of bullets very quickly. I wasn’t too worried about their gunplay, though. Sure, a gun in anyone’s hands is dangerous, but unless they had superhuman speed and perception, their guns wouldn’t be any more dangerous than the ones the soldiers had been using. Maybe less so; with those thing twiggy arms the recoil would probably ruin their aim.

Their opening move was no surprise: they started singing. I suppose when mind control is how you solve all your problems it’s going to be the first tool you try, even when it’s not likely to work.

I could feel the insidious tendrils of their magic trying to subtly work its way into my brain, but I blocked it out. To be honest, it was a lot easier than I’d expected it to be. After all, a simple recording had gotten past my defenses before. Of course, this time I was ready for the attack instead of being completely blindsided. There was more to it than that, though. There was something missing from the spell—presumably Sonata’s contribution to it. After however long the three of them had been working together, they couldn’t adapt very quickly to being down one member. Assuming they could even get it perfectly without all three of them working in unison. It threw everything off, and with any sort of subtle, sneaky magic you needed to have everything perfectly lined up.

No wonder they wanted Sonata back so much. Without her, they’d have to completely rework their mind control mojo. At the very least, I’d set their world domination plans back by several years. Which was a quite a relief, since by the looks of things they were one major public appearance away from having their own private army.

I took a shot at ending the fight before it even properly started. “Infriga!” I targeted Adagio’s mouth, since I figured it was a pretty safe bet that a Siren who couldn’t sing wouldn’t be doing much in the way of magic. Unfortunately her reflexes were faster than I’d expected, and she managed to duck under my attack. Mostly.

“You froze my hair! she snarled indignantly. Though really, with that much hair hitting it was only slightly harder than targeting the broad side of a barn. Several frozen clumps of hair down the center of her head fell off and shattered, leaving her with a bald strip straight down the middle of her eighties ‘do. While I hadn’t thought such a thing was possible before, I’d somehow managed to make her hair look ever worse than it did already. Though considering the recent loss of my own hair, I wasn’t exactly shedding any tears for her.

Adagio snarled, took a deep breath, and unleashed the kind of high, piercing note you would expect from an opera singer. You know, the kind that makes glass shatter when you’re watching a cartoon. Except that in this case, the glass was my eardrums and soft tissue.

Aria joined in on the fun, and Sunset went down, clamping her hands over her ears in a vain attempt to block out the sounds. Blood was already trickling out of her ears, and judging by how warm mine felt, the same was happening to me.

For lack of a better idea, I threw my shield spell up and ducked as far beneath it as I could. That seemed to help; the sonic attack was still making my ears throb, but it was far less overwhelming. I quickly shuffled to the side to cover my apprentice as well, which seemed to help judging by the pained but grateful smile she sent my way.

That left myself and the sirens at a stalemate. As long as I was holding my shield I couldn’t launch the direct energy attacks I normally favored; any fireballs, force blasts, or ice lances would just bounce off the inside of my own shield. Which meant it was a very good thing that I was a wizard.

Magic-users come in a lot of different flavors. Leaving aside all the folks with just one or two vaguely supernatural talents, a lot of the spellcasters out there were one-trick ponies. They could fling around fire, whistle up minions from the Nevernever or commune with the spirits of the dead, but that was it. A wizard, on the other hand, has versatility.

“Geodas!” The ground dropped out from underneath the Sirens, dropping them both down into the sinkhole I’d just created underneath their feet. I followed it up with another nasty bit of earth magic. “Gravitus!” Everything on Demonreach hovered up about six inches into the air as for a brief instant I concentrated all the gravity on the island into a single point at the bottom of the sinkhole. A very nasty-sounding wet squish emerged from the bottom of said hole.

“I hope that wasn’t it,” I called over at the hole, “‘cause I have to say, if I took you guys out with two spells, that’d be really anticlimactic. I mean, it’s just plain rude to come all the way out here for big magical throwdown, then get knocked out in two hits like a chump.”

Moments later, an arm about as thick around as a pencil shot up out of the sinkhole, and Adagio hauled herself out. She was definitely looking worse for the wear, her clothes and hair now splattered with thick black mud. Her glare was positively poisonous, so I answered with a smarmy grin. “Where’s the other half of your three-girl act?”

“I can kill you on my own,” Adagio snarled.

“Aria sure about that?” Sure, I’d done that joke already, but it was just too easy.

Adagio’s right hand dropping down to retrieve one of the pistols holstered at her hip. “And yeah, you are so going to die now. You’d be too much trouble to keep as a minion.”

She leveled the gun at me, and I quickly threw up a shield to block the incoming bullet—which proved to be an unnecessary precaution, since her gun didn’t fire when she pulled the trigger. A quick look at the gun in question made it obvious why: there was mud all over it. Apparently Adagio had gone for a big fancy gun over my preference for tough, simple guns that could keep working after a troll stepped on them, let alone getting a little muddy.

“Forzare!” I aimed to knock her back into the mudhole again, which would leave her in a terrible position to dodge any follow-up spells. Plus, I figured knocking her ass back into the mudhole would be funny. It might even be humiliating enough that she’d throw in the towel then and there. Which suited me just fine; even if I knew the Sirens were really ancient mind-controlling abominations, a part of me couldn’t help but feel like I was beating up teenage girls. Returning them to Celestia alive and reasonably undamaged would be easier for everyone.

Granted, that didn’t mean I was going to deliberately pull my punches. I’m a big believer in the idea that when someone tries to kill you, you’re perfectly within your rights to try and kill them right back.

My force blast knocked Adagio’s feet out from underneath her, but she shrieked out another painful note, and this one blasted a chunk of earth out from beneath her while propelling her backwards. She backflipped several times, then landed perfectly on her feet. I tried another blast, but she countered by humming something softly under her breath, and my spell bounced off a shield that looked to be made out of pure sound.

Adagio smirked confidently. “Oh, I’ve forgotten how good it feels to be feeding properly again. I haven’t had this much power in ages.”

“Too bad it didn’t make your singing any better.” I pointedly tapped my bleeding ears. “I mean, I’ve heard the phrase before, but I never thought someone’s singing could actually be that bad.” I winced as I was reminded that one of them had recently been mangled. Useful as the near-immunity to pain I had on account of being the Winter Knight was, it could be a bit disconcerting to realize that I was barely even feeling some rather nasty injuries.

Sunset chucked a fireball Adagio’s way, but the spell just bounced off the Siren’s shield. I frowned over at her and shook my head. “I’ll handle the queen bee, you check that Aria’s down.”

If I’d hit her with my gravity crush spell she wouldn’t be much more than a pile of crushed goo, but I still wanted confirmation that she was out of the fight. My connection with Demonreach told me that she was still alive, at least. The last thing I needed was to get blindsided by her in the middle of the standoff with Adagio.

After Sunset dropped down into the hole to deal with Aria, I turned my full attention back to Adagio. “Looks like it’s just you and me now.” I grinned and rolled my shoulder. “One shall stand, one shall fall.”

Adagio snarled wordlessly instead of providing the requisite followup line, which just goes to show that she has no appreciation for the classics. Though it seemed horribly wrong to be fighting an evil songstress without some awesome background music. I mean, you’d think she could do something to make this whole final battle seem suitably epic.

She was still hiding behind her shield, so I figured my best bet was to toss out another spell that would get around her defenses. I’m a lot slower with earth magic than my usual combat evocation, but when I get a couple seconds to focus on it I can manage.

I was about to get started on the spell when I realized something was wrong. Adagio was just hiding behind her shield, waiting for me to make my move. She didn’t strike me as the type to focus on a purely defensive strategy, sitting back and letting me pound on her shield until I wore myself out or found a way through. It struck me as a lot more likely that she was up to something sneaky. If that was the case, I needed to out-sneaky her.

I levelled my staff at her, but made sure to not channel even a smidgen of actual magic through it when I shouted, “Terrum druptus!”

Apparently Adagio had enough working knowledge of badly mangled Latin to figure out what ‘spell’ I was casting, because she immediately used a blast of sound to hurl herself up and away from where she’d been standing, closing in on me way too quickly. If I’d actually committed to the spell, I would’ve been wide open for the kick she’d been aiming at my face. Instead, I managed to block it with my forearm. I had a perfect opening to slug her in the face in response, but I hesitated for a bare fraction of a second.

I admit, I’m just not the kinda guy who would punch something that looks like a teenage girl in the face without taking a moment to remind myself that she’s not actually a girl. Stupid chivalrous instincts.

Adagio thanked me for my chivalry by pulling out her other pistol, which hadn’t been clogged up with mud, and shooting me in the leg.

I went down hard. Even though the bullet didn’t seem to have gone through anything that would render the leg completely unusable, the impact still made it fold faster than a poker player with a hand full of nothing. Adagio casually stepped over me, leveling her ridiculously large gun at my forehead. “Any last words, Mr. Dresden?”

“Yeah. Chivalry is overrated.” I’d kept a hold on my staff after going down, so I quickly swept it around, catching the back of Adagio’s knees and sweeping her legs out from underneath her. I didn’t give her any time to recover before pouncing on top of her as best I could with my wounded leg. Thankfully, the Winter Knight mantle had already shut out the pain, so as long as I didn’t bleed out I’d be fine.

The first thing I did was get that gun out of her hand before she could use it to shoot me again. It really wasn’t a fair contest; in an ugly brawl like this I had the overwhelming advantage of being two hundred pounds of semi-muscular man while Adagio had arms about as thick around as a straw and was maybe half my mass, even counting the hair. However, despite my manhandling she kept a stubborn hold on her gun, and when she managed to kick me in my bullet wound I felt it even through the mantle’s pain-dulling effect.

“Right, no more Mr. Nice Guy.” I found a rock poking up from out of the mud and slammed her wrist down on it. Hard.

Adagio shrieked as several of her bones snapped, crackled, and popped, her hand springing open of its own accord as the gun tumbled out. I would probably feel bad about that later, but at the moment I was still running on adrenaline and anger, so instead I twisted her arm behind her back in a way that would be nasty and painful even if I hadn’t just broken her wrist. “Throw in the towel before this gets unpleasant.” I snarled, twisting her arm a bit to emphasize my point.

While I waited for Adagio’s answer, I took a moment to check my magical connection with Demonreach to see how the rest of the battle was going. Sunset was still down in the mudhole with Aria (or whatever was left of her), the chopper pilot was still obediently waiting inside his vehicle for more orders from his mistresses, and five soldiers were all lying around wounded or otherwise incapacitated, while the guy whose weapons I’d destroyed had managed to get his hands on a new gun and was trying to get a clear shot on me while I grappled his boss.

Man, Intellectus is handy. I needed to remember to ask my island if somebody was about to shoot me in the back more often.

I tried a quick roll to put Adagio between myself and the gunman, but I hadn’t factored in my wounded leg. It might not be causing much more than a dull ache, but the Winter Knight’s power only dulled the pain—it didn’t repair all the tissue damage. The leg didn’t have enough pushing power when I rolled onto it, so instead of quick and agile I wound up limply flopping like a fish instead. Adagio squirmed, wriggled, and managed to kick her way out of my loosened grip. She immediately scrambled clear of me, shouting at her minion to shoot me.

The mind-controlled soldier wasted no time following orders, but when it comes to a quick-draw competition, magic wins every time. After all, he probably needed almost a full second to register the order, aim, and pull the trigger. That might not seem like a lot of time, but it can be in a life-or-death battle. Especially when I’d gone up against plenty of bad guys whose speed and reflexes were far beyond what an ordinary human could use.

“Arctis!” Ice covered the rifle’s barrel an instant before he pulled the trigger, with distinctly unpleasant results. The gun exploded in the man’s hands, sending him staggering backwards in shock. I slapped a quick binding spell on him, and was about to go after Adagio again when she blindsided me with a sonic blast that sent me tumbling ass over teakettle. The soldier might not have shot me, but he’d bought enough time for his mistress to recover.

As I slowly climbed back up to my feet, heavily favoring my uninjured leg in the process, Adagio held her broken wrist up to her lips and softly hummed to it. After a second, the bones shifted about beneath her skin until it looked good as new. I groaned, all too aware that my own injuries wouldn’t heal up without a couple weeks of bandages and bedrest. “That is incredibly unfair.”

Adagio answered with her best evil smirk. “Who said anything about this being a fair fight? You should just go to sleep. You’d probably enjoy being my loyal minion.”

“Sorry, Mab’s already claimed my minion-hood.” I chuckled and shook my head. “You clearly haven’t heard of her, because you’re not looking anywhere near scared enough by me name-dropping her. Trust me, you don’t want to get on her bad side—which, incidentally, is what will happen if you do get lucky and manage to kill me. She doesn’t like it when other people break her toys.” I planted my staff in the ground, partly for dramatic effect, and partly to support my wounded leg. “You don’t get it, do you? Sure, you’ve gotten away with the whole Siren act so far, but you’re fixing to kick a hornet’s nest that’ll have every supernatural power on the planet gunning for you. And lemme tell you, out of all the people who could be sent to take you down, I’m the nice one.”

“Yeah?” Adagio snarled out defiantly. “Well I hope they give you a nice funeral. I’ll make sure to send flowers.” She shifted back to the evil, confident smirk she seemed to constantly wear. “Assuming I leave enough behind to bury.”

I scoffed. “Please. In terms of evil psychotic monsters that have tried to kill me, you don’t even make the top ten.” Which, come to think of it, gave me a little extra incentive to not die here. I was so used to being the underdog in all my fights that it was a novelty for me to fight someone at my own level, much less in a lower weight class. If I didn’t lose to demonic superbeasts, zombie hordes, or armies of bloodthirsty vampires, I certainly wasn’t going to let some two-bit songstress take me out.

I leveled my staff at her. “Infriga!” Adagio countered with another sonic shriek, and our attacks met each other halfway. The resulting explosion of sound and ice shards knocked us both flat on our asses, and I felt several spots of dull cold pain where I took hits from ice splinters. Adagio took some damage too, but since Sirens can cheat she patched herself up with a little bit of humming.

I took advantage of her occupation with patching herself up to get in another hit, growling in pain and leveling my staff at one of the largest remaining ice shards. “Forzare!” The dagger-like chunk of ice shot straight for Adagio’s throat.

I’d managed to catch her by surprise for once, and she didn’t get a shield up in time. However, her reaction surprised me. Instead of trying to dodge or throw her arms to block the attack, she turned her back, taking the hit right between her shoulders.

She screamed in pain, but quickly set about healing herself again. However, as she did so I noticed one hand protectively resting over her throat, specifically the large gem sitting in a necklace around it. Come to think of it, Sonata had a gem just like it, and I was pretty sure Aria did too. At the time I’d assumed it was just jewelry, but if Adagio was willing to take a nasty hit just to avoid the possibility that I might damage it...

I concentrated and opened up my metaphorical third eye. A wizard’s Sight is a powerful tool, letting you look past any illusions and deceptions to see things as they truly are. If there was anything up with her gem, my Sight would tell me. The downside to it was that anything you see with your Sight stays with you. Forever. And when you go up against big nasty monsters as often as I have, you end up seeing some really ugly stuff. The kind of things that provide plenty of fuel for a lifetime of nightmares.

The first thing I saw with Adagio was what she looked like when she wasn’t human. A weird hybrid creature with a dragonlike head, the forelegs of a horse, and a giant fish tail on the back. I guess that was close enough to what the classic sirens looked like, once you adapted them to account for being equine instead of humanoid.

However, the gem was what I was focused on. A slow, steady trickle of red mist seemed to be continuously flowing into it from all around, presumably her online food supply. That power spread out through her entire body in thick veins of blood-red energy, all of which emanated outwards from that gem.

I closed my Sight and grinned triumphantly. “Gotcha now. Smash that gem, and all your nasty mojo goes bye bye.” I raised my voice to make sure my apprentice heard me. “Go for the gem, Sunset. That’s their weak point.”

I quickly consulted Demonreach to find out where exactly my apprentice was, then got my answer half a second later when a fireball slammed into my back, knocking me flat on my face.

Dammit, I said I was going to make a habit of checking with Demonreach if someone was about to backstab me.

I quickly flipped over, assessing the damage and relieved to find that I wasn’t sporting the nasty third degree burns a serious fireball can cause. Sunset and Aria were standing together, a triumphant grin on the Siren’s face and a blank look on my apprentice’s. “Why would I want to damage their gems?” Sunset asked tonelessly. “Their songs are so beautiful...”

“Good job, Aria.” Adagio declared, smirking gleefully down at me. “Looks like your apprentice wasn’t as devoted to being Celestia’s lackey after all.”

“Yup.” Aria threw an arm that still looked rather crushed and mangled over Sunset’s shoulders. “It’s no surprise, though. We know all about what Sunset was like before you got her. And really, once a villain, always a villain.” She chuckled maliciously. “Or at least a useful tool for a better villain. It was so easy to get her to see things my way...”

“Sunset...” I carefully rose to my feet. “Fight it. You’re better than this.”

“Am I?” She asked, slowly wrapping an arm around Aria in return. “I was a bad student to Celestia, then a high school bully, and then I planned to take over the world by turning into a she-demon and raising an army of mind-controlled highschoolers. Do those sound like the things a good pony would do?”

Adagio laughed mockingly. “Oh, you mortals are all the same. You think you can change who you are, never realizing that you’re just a bunch of easily manipulated puppets. You think you can escape your past? Please. It’s your past that defines you. Don’t even try to pretend that’s not true.”

Much as I hated to admit it, the Siren had a point. I mean, look at me. My distrust of all authority figures came from having real rotten luck with them in my past. My occasional temptation to dip into the Dark Side? Also from the past. Heck, if our life experience are what define us ... well, by definition any experiences we have are in the past.

Of course, she was also completely wrong. “Yeah, our past influences us. But it’s what we do with it that matters.” I tried to stand tall and defiant, but my wounded leg gave out on me, sending me sprawling back down into the mud. At least I kept hold of my staff, so I wasn’t completely helpless.

Not that it stopped the Sirens from laughing at me. “Aria,” Adagio declared between guffaws. “Have your new pet kill this annoying wizard, would you? Much as I would enjoy turning him into a slave, we can’t risk letting him live now that he knows about our gems.”

Aria nodded dutifully, then turned to Sunset. “You heard her. Try to make it as painful as possible, but don’t drag it out. We need to get Sonata so we can get back on schedule.”

“Yes, mistress,” Sunset answered dully, her arm around Aria’s neck shifting slightly. “Mistress, before I kill him, there’s one thing you should know.”

“What’s that?” Aria asked, feigning disinterest.

Sunset winked at me, and her hand closed around the gem on Aria’s throat.

“My past is not today.” Light flashed between Sunset’s closed fingers, and when she opened her hand, the shattered remnants of Aria’s gem fell to the ground.

“Nooo!” Aria dropped to her knees, desperately trying to grab all the pieces of her lost gem, while Adagio watched in numb shock. I sprang back to my feet, no longer pretending my wounded leg had all but crippled me, and smacked her in the chest with a good, “Forzare!” She bounced off the trunk of a nearby tree, leaving a nice Adagio-shaped dent behind.

I strode over to her, intent upon handling her gem exactly the way Sunset had taken care of Aria’s when she did something that surprised me. Rather than try to fight back, she threw her hands up over her head. “I surrender! Take me back to Equestria, I won’t fight you anymore! I give up, go ahead and lock me up in Tartarus!”

After a couple seconds of surprise, I realized what must be going through her head. From what I’d been able to piece together, those gems were the source of the Sirens’ power and immortality. Given a choice between a few centuries of Equestrian jail and getting knocked down to powerless mortality, Adagio preferred the former.

“Fine.” I stepped back. “Surrender accepted. You can patch yourself up, but after that you don’t so much as whistle unless you want me to grind that gem down into powder. And as soon as I find something that’ll work, you’re getting gagged.”

“Deal.” She picked herself up off the ground, humming out some more of that healing music of hers. For a moment I was tempted to ask if she could fix me up as well, but I quickly thought better of that. Giving her free reign to mess around with my body was a terrible idea.

Though I started wondering if even accepting her surrender had been a good idea when her confident smirk returned. “I’d just like you to know that once I get to Equestria, I’ll be sure to tell Celestia how terribly sorry I am, and that I’ve definitely learned a valuable lesson from this. I’ll even promise to never, ever do anything like this again.”

Oh, so that was her angle. Pretend to be reformed and repentant, and hope that after a while the ponies decided to give her a second chance. Not a bad idea, really. Stars and stones, they’d given Discord a chance to redeem himself. Actually more than one, since he’d backstabbed them during the whole Tirek thing. The ponies seemed to really want to believe that the bad guys could be redeemed, and that was a message I could get behind. After all, Sunset had been a budding supervillainess before I took her in.

However, I’d also seen bad guys take advantage of the decency of others. And to be honest, not much pisses me off more than that. “Let me tell you a story, Adagio. It’s about a guy named Cassius. He was a Knight of the Blackened Denarius. Maybe you’ve heard of them, maybe not. But in any case, they’re the kind of evil your worst nightmares wish they could think of. One day, he ran afoul of myself and some friends of mine.” I stepped into her personal space, looming threateningly over her. “He got the bright idea of trying a fake surrender too, because he knew that my friends were obligated to accept it. The thing he forgot was that I was there too. So you know what I did? I asked my friends to step outside, and then I took a baseball bat to his arms and knees.” I glared down at her. “So, what do you think that says about my tolerance for bullshit surrender offers?”

Adagio swallowed and took half a step back. “But—but Celestia wouldn’t let you—”

“Celestia,” I growled, “isn’t here right now.” I turned my head a few feet to the side. “Alfred, you’ve had a chance to get a good look at Siren magic by now. Do you think you can hold her?”

Alfred himself didn’t appear, but he didn’t really need to. My connection to the island gave me the answer as soon as I’d asked the question. Alfred could handle Adagio just fine as long as she didn’t have other Sirens backing her up. “Do it.”

Before anyone could ask who this ‘Alfred’ guy was that I was talking to, vines sprouted up out of the ground, wrapping around Adagio’s feet and ankles. She let out a startled scream that abruptly cut off when the vines yanked her straight down into the earth. Once things were a bit more settled, I’d have to remember to ask Alfred which crystal he’d imprisoned her in.

Aria was still in shock over losing her powers, and without them she wasn’t a threat in any case, so I went over to my apprentice and gave her a quick slap on back. “Good work, padawan. I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks.” She smiled, but it slipped a bit as she added. “Sorry about hitting you in the back, They thought I was under their control, so I had to make it convincing, and—”

“Yeah, no sweat.” She’d softened it up enough that it wasn’t much of a burn. To be honest, it barely even registered compared to my mangled ear or the bullet hole in my leg. Speaking of which, I should probably have her teleport me to a hospital or something once Aria was dealt with. I’ve yet to figure out some magical way to fix holes in my body.

I grinned and pulled my apprentice into a one armed hug, but Sunset glanced down, blinked, then grimaced and quickly squirmed out of it. “Er ... Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re not wearing pants.”

I looked down, and discovered that she was correct. Apparently my pants had been knocked off at some point during the fight, and I’d been going through the fight in my underwear. “Oh.”

So much for my wizardly dignity.

Author's Note

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Epilogue: Harry Gets No Perfect Ending

Two days later, I met with Celestia at Burger King. Most of the injuries I’d picked up from the Siren fight had been appropriately tended to, which was a definite plus. Thankfully, Aria had been one of the least troublesome prisoners I’ve ever had to deal with. It seemed like all the fight had gone out of her after she lost her Siren gem.

“So...” I shot a look the prisoner’s way. “What happens with her?”

Celestia shot an evaluating look at the ex-Siren. “Well, Tartarus might be overkill at this point. I think a long period of community service and reeducation might be enough. Closely supervised, of course.” The princess reached over and gently squeezed Aria’s shoulder. “I know you’re very upset about losing your power, but think of this as an opportunity to start over with your life. I think if you really try, you’ll be much happier now.”

“Happy?” Aria answered flatly. “How am I supposed to be happy? I just lost everything! My life is ruined because of you!”

Celestia sighed and shook her head. “I think that if you open your heart to the magic of friendship, you’ll find that there is so much more to experience. You would never have found true happiness by forcing others to bend to your will.”

“Yeah, until I die,” Aria growled sullenly. “You know, since I’m mortal now.”

Celestia sighed and shook her head. “Aria, plenty of ponies live very rich, fulfilling lives even though they’re limited to a mortal life.”

“That’s rich, coming from somepony who’s lived thousands of years,” Aria grumbled. “If you think mortality’s so great, why don’t you give it a shot?”

Celestia sighed, then turned back to me. “It ... might be a bit difficult to reform her. Still, we will do our best.”

“Good luck with that.” To my surprise, I meant it. I couldn’t blame Aria for being a bit bitter, but after my work with Sunset I guess I was a little more open to the idea that you could win people over from the Dark Side.

However, the supreme ruler of Equestria didn’t seem terribly happy when I told her that Aria was the only Siren I’d be giving her, at least if I was judging by the faint frown creasing her lips. “While I’m very grateful for your help, Mister Dresden, might I ask what happened to Adagio and Sonata?”

“I’ve got Adagio locked up elsewhere.” I answered simply. “Don’t worry, it’s very secure. A lot more secure than your prisons, judging by the fact that ancient evils seem to escape from the moon, Tartarus, and wherever else you have them sealed away on an annual basis.” I smiled to let her know I wasn’t trying to be an asshole about this. “I don’t see much gain in just shifting her from one prison to another, and to be honest it’s probably going to be a lot easier to hold her if she’s not in the same place as her buddies.”

“And Sonata?”

I sighed and chowed down on my burger to buy a little time before I answered. “That one’s a bit more complicated. I left her with a friend who’s a White Court Vampire for safekeeping while I dealt with the other two Sirens, and...” I groaned, then got the bad news over with as quickly as possible. “She came to the attention of the big boss of the Whites.”

In hindsight, I should’ve thought of the possibility that Lara would decide to pay her brother a visit. I already knew she’d taken an interest in Equestria, and she was probably smart enough to put two and two together and realize that if I was kidnapping a musician with a name that practically screamed Equestrian, that might be related. From what Thomas had told me, she’d dropped by his apartment with a couple of her sisters, smiled politely, and walked out the door with my Siren.

I was a bit annoyed with my brother for losing her, even though I knew there wasn’t much he really could’ve done to stop it. When Lara decides she wants something, she generally finds a way to get it. It’s one of the perks that comes with being the power-behind-the-throne of the White Court Vampires.

Celestia frowned. “So one of the Sirens is in the hands of the vampires? That sounds like a serious problem.”

“It’s a long way from ideal,” I agreed, sipping my coke. “But I don’t think there’s too much we can do about it, at least in the short term. I mean, we could try appealing to have her returned under the Accords, but the Whites know how to play the political game. Odds are they’d bog the whole thing down in procedure and legal disputes for years. And trying to take her back by force would start a war and ruin the whole frienemy thing I’ve got going on with them right now.”

“I see.” Celestia tapped her chin thoughtfully, then daintily ate a french fry. “Do you think she’ll be dangerous there?”

I thought it over for a moment, then shrugged. “Not compared to how she was with Adagio. The White Court likes to keep things happy and stable, and Lara might be a monster, but she’s also a big believer in pragmatic cooperation with the good guys. The Whites are emotional predators too, so she’ll fit in.”

Celestia frowned, still not entirely satisfied. “What if she teaches these vampires about how Siren and Equestrian magic works?”

I stared at her incredulously for several seconds, then chuckled and shook my head. “You’ve never actually met Sonata Dusk, have you? Trust me, she wasn’t the brains behind Adagio’s operation. She barely even knows how her own magic works—I think we don’t need to worry about teaching anyone else how to use it. All things considered, it could be a lot worse. I’m a lot more worried about some rumors I’ve heard that she’s trying to get in touch with your version of changelings.”

The ruler of Equestria stiffened at that, a faint frown creasing her lips. “Yes, Chrysalis has caused quite enough trouble already. After what happened with Discord and the Denarians, the last thing we need is another alliance between villains from Earth and Equestria. I will make every effort to keep Chrysalis and her brood from crossing over.”

“And I’ll keep a close watch on Lara’s whamps.” Since the princess looked rather baffled, I quickly explained, “You know, white vampires. Whampires. Whamps for short. Well, shorter. Anyway, all we can really do is keep a close eye on them, and try to keep Chrysalis locked down and Lara from getting any more Equestrian resources. At least she’s not likely to go all world conquest crazy. She likes to play the long game.”

The princess poked at the slice of cheap fast food cake she’d ordered. “I suppose so. I don’t like it, but if our only option for taking Sonata back is to start a war with the White Court ... well, I think I can learn to live with it. Perhaps a change of scenery will be good for Sonata. I always felt that she was far less malicious than Adagio and Aria.”

“Yeah,” I wolfed down the rest of my burger. “Lara’s no friendly neighborhood vampire, but she knows the world runs a lot smoother when everyone plays by the rules and nobody does anything needlessly stupid or evil. Plus, she got Sonata to call off the manhunt on me.” I didn’t know how she’d gotten Sonata to play ball, but apparently the Siren had trotted into Chicago PD’s headquarters and spun a whole story about how it was just a big misunderstanding. I probably owed Lara one for that ... which was almost certain why she arranged it. Only the Fae love collecting favors more than White Court Vamps.

Aria, who’d remained silent for a while, finally added in her two bits. “So Sonata gets to keep her power, her freedom, and her immortality? She really is the worst.”

Celestia turned on her charge, a pleasant smile firmly in place. “If you behave well, I might be able to arrange for you visit her at some point. Or vice-versa.”

Aria was quiet for a long time, then reluctantly grumbled. “Well, someone has to keep an eye on that airhead. She’d probably forget her own name without me around.”

Maybe she wanted her back in the hopes that Sonata could fix her gem, or was even thinking about snatching Sonata’s. Or maybe she just missed her. I was on the fence about it, but given the small smile on Celestia's face, I knew which option she was hoping for. It was a long shot by my reckoning, but then again, I'm not a thousand-year-old magical princess.

And hey, maybe Celestia was right. Friendship is magic, after all.

Author's Note

As always, thanks to my pre-reading and editing team for all their hard work. Also, I would like to thank all my dedicated Patreon supporters. You guys are awesome.

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Harry Gets No Respect

Life takes you weird places. A few years ago, I’d just been another wizard private eye. Well, okay, not another one, because I’m kind of unique that way. Not many wizards go into the private investigating business. But you know, my life was as normal and grounded as a wizard who regularly fights demons and monsters can get. I had a normal guy’s problems, like ‘this toad demon is spitting face-melting acid at me’ or ‘every relationship I have with a woman ends in misery and pain’ or ‘the rent is late.’ You know, standard stuff.

But lately, my life has gotten weird.

My apprentice, Sunset Shimmer, teleported into my cabin on Demonreach. She can do that, you see. Instant teleportation is something wizards have never figured out, most likely because it’s one of those spells that combines two traits that discourage experimentation—namely, it kills you the first time you screw it up, and it’s complicated enough that nobody ever gets it right on their first try. Sunset, however, had a bit of a cheat: unicorn magic doesn’t work like human magic.

Granted, Sunset was running around in more-or-less human form right now. Thankfully she looked a bit less like a cartoon character and more like an actual human being, though that came with problems of its own, especially since the Winter Knight mantle kept trying to kick my libido into overdrive. It was hard not to notice that Sunset’s new mostly human body was pretty darn attractive.

I say mostly human because she could still use unicorn magic, which only works with a horn. Sunset didn’t have a huge honking horn sprouting out of her forehead, but from what Celestia had explained, Sunset’s anatomy was still a bit off-human. Close enough to pass for human when she went walking down the street, but most folks on the spooky side of things would be able to tell she wasn’t normal. I imagine that if she wound up in a hospital for a bunch of complicated tests, they would also notice something was off about her.

So there was my apprentice, the not-unicorn. See what I mean about my life being weird?

I waved at her. “I’ve got some hay and alfalfa in the icebox, if you’re hungry.”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “That joke gets funnier every time you use it.”

“Which is why I keep telling it,” I shot right back, smirking. “So which one do you want next, the stable joke, or the saddle one?”

She groaned and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I know this is a completely crazy suggestion, but you could spare me from any more bad jokes.”

I grinned and slapped her on the back. “You’ve been my apprentice for three months. You should know by now that the jokes are never going to stop. In fact, they’ll probably just get worse and worse.”

“Trust me, I know.” She walked over to the ice box and pulled out a coke. “It’s no wonder Celestia likes you so much. You’re like her on one of her especially mischievous days, except you don’t need to hold back for the sake of your royal dignity.”

Of all the things I’d ever expected to be compared to, pretty white pegacorn princess was pretty far down on the list. And yes, I call her a pegacorn—I don’t know where the cartoon got the idea that ‘alicorn’ is the right term for what she is. Alicorn is the substance a unicorn’s horn is made out of. Though I guess the people making a children’s cartoon didn’t have all the arcane research aids I do.

Those issues aside, it was no surprise Sunset would measure me against her other teacher. I can’t imagine that comparison made me look good. I’m not so hot at the being wise and all-knowing thing. Then again, Celestia can’t crank out nearly as many smartassed pop-culture references, so I guess it takes all kinds.

Sunset sipped her coke, then started tapping her foot. “So, what’s on the agenda for today? Much as I’ve been enjoying the ‘how to be a decent pony’ talks, I was hoping I could work on my magic some. After all the time I spent trapped in high school-land I’d really like to stretch myself out a bit. Maybe you could even take me along on one of your jobs.”

I wasn’t too sure about that. That seemed to be a common desire for my apprentices, though. They wanted to jump right into the deep end. Most of my jobs were a bit ridiculously dangerous. Just look at everything I’d put Molly through.

Of course, Sunset was different from my last apprentice. Molly had a knack for sensitive magic that required a delicate touch, while Sunset was much more from my school of spellcasting. Sure, we could do the sensitive and delicate stuff if we wanted to, but our default tactic was to apply large amounts of fire to the problem until it stopped being a problem.

From what I’d seen of her skills, I wasn’t worried that Sunset couldn’t handle herself in a fight either. She might be out of practice at magical combat, but a few months of work had honed her skills nicely. Spellcasting is like riding a bike; you never really forget it, unless you go to a lot of effort to deliberately block it off.

Sunset shuffled her feet, then walked over to one of my couches and flopped down on it. “Yeah, I know, you’re sick of me asking to come on a job with you. I just ... I wanna do something. Practice is important, but all I’ve done is practice. I have my magic back. That counts for something.” She leaned over towards me, idly playing with her half-empty soda can. “I spent more than a year after I found myself at Canterlot High trying every single trick I could think of to get my spellcasting back. None of it worked. It was infuriating.”

I could believe that. When you’re a wizard on our level, your magic’s more than just a tool; it’s a fundamental part of who you are. Having that taken away would be just like going blind or having one of your limbs crippled. The times when my magic had been taken or just outright unusable were among the scariest experiences of my life, and considering how ridiculously terrible my life has been, that’s saying something.

Sunset got up and started pacing around, clenching and unclenching her free hand. “What more do I have to do? I listened to all your lessons, and my magic’s as good as it was back when I was with Celestia. I bet I could keep up with you just fine, one-on-one. Maybe even beat you. I went through all the redemption stuff, learned my lesson, and now I wanna make good on it.” Her grip tightened on her coke can, making the aluminum crunch in protest. “I’m one of the good guys now, Let me go out and help you, so I can prove it.”

Sunset had plenty of fire, and I couldn’t fault her enthusiasm for kicking evil’s ass. Those weren’t bad things by any stretch, but they could pretty easily lead her down a bad path. As a very old and very wise muppet once said, once you embrace the Dark Side, forever will it dominate your destiny. After all, a couple months ago she’d been one of the bad guys, even if she hadn’t crossed the line into being irredeemable. A lot of my missions can get hairy, and the middle of a fight is no time for a trust-building exercise. I’m not saying I expected her to stab me in the back the first chance she got, but I wasn’t going to put a knife in her hands and turn around either.

Sunset was frowning at me, and I guess she could read me well enough to figure out what was going through my head. Figures; controlling an entire school through manipulation and lies requires some of those pesky people skills I’ve never quite mastered. The soda started fizzling, and a few wisps of smoke drifted off her hand. “I’ve been busting my ass for months. I’ve done everything you’ve asked, and haven’t started a lick of trouble. I’ve been a model student!” The soda can crumpled in her hand. “What else am I supposed to do? You’re gonna have to trust me not to go all she-demon on you sooner or later. I’ve had plenty of chances to go back to being bad if I wanted to, but I’ve stuck with staying one of the good guys. Doesn’t three months of good behavior earn me a little credit?”

“Sunset, calm down.” A part of me was suddenly very intensely aware that I was in a small cabin full of very flammable furniture, and I did my best to sound very authoritative and in-control. Pyromancers have a bad habit of setting things on fire when their tempers get a bit too frayed. I’ve experienced that first hand. Admittedly, a fallen angel had been working to make me even more hot-tempered than usual, but I’d still done a couple thousand dollars worth of property damage just because my temper was fraying. And more importantly, I hadn’t double-checked that all the buildings I’d damaged were empty beforehand.

It’s easy to lose your temper. It’s a lot harder to take back what you do after you blow your top.

Funny thing about her being my apprentice: there wasn’t really much for me to teach her about casting spells. Hell, she’d taught me as much as I’d taught her, given the differences between human and unicorn magic. Her spellcasting was flawless. But then, that had never really been the lesson she needed to learn.

I had the exact same problem when I was her age. Being a teenager is rough. Being a teen with a ton of magic at your fingertips and a couple bad decisions haunting you is a lot worse. I hadn’t made the same sort of the bad decisions Sunset had, but I easily could have. I’d spent of lot of time being angry and not having any healthy way of dealing with it. I could’ve ended up like she did, lashing out at everything and everyone.

Thankfully, someone had been there to help me through all of that. Sure, Ebenezar had taught me a few things about magic, but he’d taught me a lot more about how to be a good man. That’s what Sunset needed from me.

Well, okay, she needed to learn how to be a good woman, but you know what I meant.

I walked up and put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s hard, isn’t it? Feeling like nobody believes in you?”

“What are you talking about?” Her voice came out a bit sharper and terser than it usually did. A bit more like how she’d been when I first met her, running around as a high school bully.

“It’s why things got so bad between you and Celestia, isn’t it?” I’d never pushed her on this particular topic before, mostly because I was pretty sure bringing up the incident that made her turn to the dark side was hazardous. “It was because you didn’t think she believed in you anymore. Your lessons stopped feeling like she was helping you unlock your full potential and shifted to, ‘Here’s the list of things you’re doing wrong.’ Must’ve been frustrating.”

“It was.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Y’know, I still remember the moment it changed. There was this one colt I knew back in Canterlot. A bit of a nerd, and one of those types who’s always just a bit too eager to be your friend. Constantly hanging around, trying to talk about whatever’s on his mind, even when you’re sending every signal you can that you’re not interested. You know the type, right?” She waited for my acknowledgement, then continued. “So, one day he was sitting next to me at the library, blathering on about some new models he’d added to his Warmarechine army while I was just trying to study. I had this really important test coming up, and he just wouldn’t shut up...”

“So you let him have it,” I concluded.

“Yeah.” She slumped down in her seat, curling her free arm over her stomach. “I tore him a new one. And for a moment after he ran off it felt so satisfying. But then I realized all the yelling had attracted a crowd, including Celestia. And she just ... she just gave me this look.” She shivered and downed the rest of her coke, looking like she wished it was something a lot harder. “It’s kinda hard to put it into words. It wasn’t like she was disappointed or something. I could’ve handled that; even in the good times, we butted heads every once in a while. But this time, it was like she wasn’t even really seeing me. Just this problem that she was going to have to solve. Things went on for more than a year after that, but it just ... wasn’t the same.”

She sighed and crushed the empty soda can. “I guess I understand it all, now that I know the full story. She probably wanted me to be the one to use the Elements to save her sister and realized I might not have what she wanted. At least, not without a lot of work. It just ... it felt like she’d given up on me. Maybe she had—she likes to plan things in advance. She probably went looking for a replacement student later that day. And I guess she found one.” She brought her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “In the end, I had failed. And maybe worse, I was completely replaceable.”

Ouch. I could sympathize with that. It wasn’t exactly the same, but I’d been through something like that with the White Council. Most of the Council had treated me like some sort of ticking time bomb. Like it was just a matter of time before I turned into a psychotic warlock. They’d all given me up as a lost cause before they even met me, just on the basis of who my teacher was. If not for my grandfather sticking his neck out for me, they probably would’ve killed me right then and there. Dead before I even got a chance to prove myself.

My grandfather had been the only person in the world who’d believed in me, right then. If I’d lost that ... yeah, I might’ve gone bad too.

Sunset had a lot of problems. She was still full of anger, with no real healthy direction to toss it in. I’m no psychologist, but I’d bet that a lot of that anger had turned inward with no other target to go after. Tearing herself apart for every mistake and bad decision, then lashing out at anyone nearby to distract herself. That kind of anger isn’t the sort of thing you can solve overnight, and I didn’t have a huge rainbow of light handy to blast her with.

Taking Sunset on one of my jobs was a big risk, whether it was taking care of Mab’s dirty laundry or just hunting the usual the monster of the week. Anyone with that much anger could be a loose cannon. I know I had been. Hell, I’d survived a lot of my earlier jobs because I’d been in a place where I was okay with doing the stupidest, most suicidally insane thing imaginable, which caught the bad guys completely off guard. Most monsters don’t know what to make of a guy who has no sense of self-preservation.

At the time, I told myself I was just so full of the usual youthful piss and vinegar that I’d beaten all those bad guys with sheer audacity and good looks. Now that I was a bit older, and theoretically a bit wiser, I had a different perspective. Back then, when I was still sure I’d burned my first girlfriend along with Justin, I’d had a lot more of that internally directed anger. Maybe I’d been so pissed off at myself that a part of me would’ve been okay with buying it. Not that I was gonna go down easy—I’m too much of a stubborn bastard to make anything easy, even dying—but a nice heroic last stand for a good cause would’ve been fine with me. Any cause would do in a pinch. In those days, I didn’t have much else but a cause to live for. Or die for.

So yeah, not the healthiest place to be, psychologically. Certainly not the sort of place where Sunset should be going into battle. So why was I thinking of taking her along with me?

I guess it went back to what we’d talked about earlier. I would’ve been lost if my grandfather hadn’t taken a chance and believed in me. Sunset had a made a choice to leave the dark side behind, and right now she needed someone to believe in her, even if that wasn’t the smart move. And hell, I’ve never been good about making the smart move anyway.

As luck would have it, Sunset and I didn’t have very long to wait for the next bit of work. There’s always some monster waiting to go bump in the night. I let my contact know to meet me in the usual place, and then hooked my arm around Sunset’s. “Can you get us to the mainland?”

There was a flash of teal light, and next thing I knew, we were in a rather nice suburban Chicago house right across the street from where my daughter lived. Molly had picked the place up for me so I could have a home away from my creepy island that nobody liked, but I’d already settled in at Demonreach. Plus, when you’re training a temperamental young apprentice with a talent for fire, a deserted island in the middle of nowhere is a better choice than a highly flammable city. Mrs. O’Leary’s cow has nothing on an apprentice pyromancer. Besides, now that I had Sunset, she could just teleport me to and from Chicago in the blink of an eye. That took away a lot of the urgency of moving back into the city.

“I really wanna learn that trick.” Sure, I could travel halfway around the world in about half an hour using shortcuts through the Nevernever, but there’s a big difference between that and instant teleportation, even within a limited range. For one, I didn’t have to worry about little things like giant fairie spiders trying to eat me every time I wanted to get someplace.

Sunset had her hands on her knees, breathing a bit heavily. Carrying a passenger always added some extra strain to her teleportation spell, and Demonreach to Chicago wasn’t a short jump. “Sure, I can teach you right now. First things first, you need to channel magic through your horn...” She trailed off and smirked.

Why are all my apprentices such smartasses? I don’t know where they get it from, but it certainly isn’t me. I tell you, I get no respect, no respect at all.

After a few more minutes of catching her breath, Sunset started to get back on her feet. I offered her my hand out of habit, but she waved it away. “So where’s the meeting at?”

“We’re meeting with one of the most powerful and important and influential wizards alive,” I told her. “A man of such power, wisdom, and experience that even fricking Mab treats him with respect. He could've become the Merlin or the Blackstaff if he’d wanted to." I caught the blank look on Sunset's face and quickly explained. "Basically, the head of wizards, or else our black ops guy. Hell, maybe even both at the same time.” I finished up my impromptu speech, then turned to her with the utmost solemnity. “There’s only one place I could meet such a distinguished figure.”

Sunset might only have been my apprentice for a few months, but she was already getting to know me pretty well. “Burger King?”

“Burger King.”

My visit to Burger King got off to a great start. I walked past a cluster of kids using those little portable music players on the way in, and my general wizardly-ness messed up all their high-tech gizmos in the middle of a song. I felt a bit bad about that, but there wasn’t much I could do. Wizards and technology just don’t agree with one another.

Rashid the Gatekeeper was already waiting for us when we got to Burger King. I gotta say, seeing one of the oldest and most powerful wizards on the planet sitting on a cheap plastic bench at a fast food restaurant made for a very strange image. I’d only ever seen him in good old-fashioned wizard’s robes before, but those tend to stand out a bit too much when you’re not off wizard-ing. He’d traded them out for a suit that looked like it was almost a hundred years out of style, but it fit him. He was sporting an eyepatch, which made me briefly wonder if he picked it up from the same place Vadderung got his.

Traded away an eye for wisdom, insight, or magical power? Shop at Jim’s Discount Eyepatch Warehouse! They had to cancel the buy one get one free deal, though—apparently someone complained that it was in bad taste.

What caught me by surprise was the woman sitting next to the Gatekeeper. Tall, thin, pale, and just as sharply dressed as him, her hair was a long flowing mane of pastel green, pink, and blue. There was something eerily familiar about her, but it was Sunset’s surprised hiss that finally let me place the woman.

I flopped down onto the bench across from them. “Always nice to see you again, Rashid, but you should’ve told me to expect royalty. I would’ve dressed up a bit.” I glanced down at my ratty jeans and the old t-shirt I’d been wearing for the last three days. Sure, my natural inclination is to be a bit of a slob (okay, a lot of a slob), but even I would at least throw on a clean shirt and pants without any holes in them for most royalty. Not Mab, though. The Ice Queen has to deal with me as I am.

Princess Celestia answered with a gentle, understanding smile. “It’s quite alright, Mister Dresden. This isn’t an official visit, so I hardly expected a golden chariot and an honor guard.” She glanced at Sunset, and a teasing grin crossed her lips. “Besides, I have seen far worse from students on the tail end of a week-long cram session.”

I glanced back at my student, then over to her first teacher. “You two want a minute to catch up? I need to grab a burger anyway.” A thought occurred to me. “Er, that’s not gonna be rude or something, is it? Eating meat in front of you?” See, I’m totally capable of being thoughtful and sensitive. Sometimes. Occasionally. Well, at least this one time.

“I won’t be offended, if that’s what you mean,” she reassured me. “Being a ruler requires a certain degree of tolerance for other societies’ customs and cultural mores. So long as you aren’t consuming the flesh of a sapient animal, I’ll spare you any moral outrage.”

I stole a joke Butters had used once. “As a rule, I don't eat any species that has members who can do calculus.” Though that rule does mean I would be fair game if not for the world’s population of people with a better mundane education than I have. Even when I was still going to public school, Justin never really cared about my grades all that much. He probably only sent me to school because not doing so would’ve drawn too much attention.

I got in line and ordered my burger while Sunset made small talk with the princess. It was the usual exchange of pleasantries, catching up on news, and making sure I’d been doing a good job taking care of her student. That led me to briefly wonder if pissing off Celestia by being a bad teacher would be worse than if I had messed up with Molly and faced Michael’s wrath if he ever found out just how much of a mess I’d made of Molly’s life. There was going to be a reckoning for that someday.

Once I had my burger and fries, I went back to the table and chowed down. The princess politely waited while I had lunch, and I was uncomfortably reminded of some of the stuff I’d been forced to tolerate when playing diplomat, like the feeding habits of vampires. To a pony perspective, me eating a cow probably wasn’t all that different than when vampires ate humans. That didn’t do my appetite any favors.

I set what was left of my burger aside for the moment and got down to business. “I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you’re not just here for a social call.”

That was a pretty safe guess, all things considered. Princess Celestia and Rashid the Gatekeeper are both very busy people ... well, person and pony. The point is, if this was just something like Celestia checking in on Sunset, she probably would’ve asked me to bring her to Equestria, or sent a letter and arranged the visit well in advance. Dropping in unannounced probably meant trouble.

The fact that it was Celestia and the Gatekeeper together gave me a worrying premonition about just what kind of trouble, too. “Something from Equestria got here, didn’t it?”

“Yes,” Celestia confirmed. “Though it’s a bit more complicated than just that. From what we’ve been able to piece together, creatures were imprisoned in the same dimension that Sunset was living in. As best we can tell, it seems that your own activities alerted them to the location of the portal between their world and Equestria, and they crossed over before it closed.” She paused to very regally eat a french fry. “At least, that’s what we pieced together from the guards I left watching the entrance and a few logical inferences.”

Oh. Great. So this was indirectly my fault. In hindsight, firing off a gun on a school campus and effectively kidnapping a student probably did cause a bit of a stir. Hell, the people back in Sunset’s home dimension had probably assumed I’d murdered her and buried her body in a shallow grave somewhere. More importantly, Sunset’s little minions had heard enough before they ran off that anyone else who’d come through that portal could connect the dots about where Sunset and I had come from.

“Okay, so what are we dealing with?” Hopefully it wasn’t anything as bad as Discord. Judging by the fact that the planet hadn’t been plunged into chaos and panic, it was a safe bet that he was still statue-fied.

“Sirens.” That alone was enough to give me a pretty good idea of what I was dealing with, but Celestia gave me a bit of quick exposition anyway. “Three of them. They’re monsters who use music to control the minds of sapient beings and encourage chaos and disharmony, then they feed on the negative energy that creates.”

Okay, a bit different than the classic Greek myth, but still close enough that I knew what I was dealing with. Looks like I needed to invest in some earplugs if I wanted to avoid the mind control music. I could probably stand up to it, since it wouldn’t be the first time I’d gone up against a supernatural critter that wanted to mess with my head, but why take that chance?

I thought about asking why they’d come to Earth instead of staying in Equestria, but the answer seemed pretty obvious. Equestria presumably knew what they were dealing with and how to beat them, while Earth wouldn’t. Not to mention that for monsters who feed off of negative energy, Earth probably looked like an all-you-can-eat buffet compared to the cartoon pony land of sunshine and rainbows.

“Okay, so they use music for mind control...” The gears started turning as I worked out what their plan would look like. “They’ll want a big audience, which means they’ll need a venue. Somewhere they can get a whole lot of people together at once, then slap the mind-whammy on all of them. Do you know anything that could help me narrow down where they are?” Even if I knew to check concert halls and music festivals, it might be just a bit hard to find them if they could be literally anywhere on the planet.

Rashid turned to me with a faint frown. “In all likelihood, they arrived at Earth by following your trail. Crossings between here and Equestria are very rare and tightly regulated.” A hint of a mischievous smirk crossed his face. “And, no offense, you leave behind a much more noticeable trail than I do.”

“Well, excuse me for not having centuries of experience in trans-dimensional travel.” Considering my limited experience, I thought it was pretty darn impressive that I hadn’t scattered my atoms across the multiverse. “If they followed me, that probably means they’re set up somewhere in Chicago. It’s a good place to start looking, at least. Certainly plenty of places they could use.” I looked over at the two heavy hitters. “I’m gonna take a wild guess that I’m on my own because you two have other fires to go put out.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” For a moment I wondered if Celestia was actually going to help me out, but then she turned to my apprentice and smiled. “After all, you won’t be alone with Sunset helping.”

“That’s right.” Sunset grinned at me, looking entirely too eager at the prospect of taking on a nasty trio of mindbending monsters. Kids.

“Well, if you’re so eager to get right into the thick of things, then let’s not waste any more time.” I got up and nodded to Celestia and the Gatekeeper. “Unless there’s anything else to cover, we should probably get to work. I’m gonna assume there’s some sort of ticking clock involved, and that bad things are gonna happen if I don’t stop them in time.” Neither of them had said anything like that, but my life’s been pretty consistent that way. Just once, I’d like to face off against some bad guy with a non-urgent plan. Maybe an evil cult planning on blowing up the world four hundred years from now, instead of some time in the next twenty-four hours. It would be a nice change of pace.

“I think we’ve told you as much as we can.” Celestia paused and put a hand on Sunset's shoulder. “Well, one last thing. Take care of Sunset for me.”

To my surprise and mischievous delight, Sunset actually blushed a bit at that. “I can take care of myself, Princess. I’ll be fine.”

I wasn’t the only one who spotted that opening, either. The barest little smirk crossed Celestia’s face, and she grabbed a napkin from the dispenser. “You have a little bit of mustard on your cheek, Sunset. Let me just...” She promptly went to work scrubbing her former student’s face and generally fussing over her, drawing many more half-hearted complaints from the girl. “And really, we need to do something about that jacket. Don’t you think black leather’s a touch too aggressive?”

“Considering my own fashion sense, I feel obligated to point out that black leather is timelessly cool.” Granted, I went for a black leather duster rather than Sunset’s shorter jacket, but we black leather wearers have to stick together. It’s like a sacred brotherhood.

Sisterhood.

Siblinghood. Whatever.

Celestia turned a rather pointed look at my unwashed t-shirt and ratty jeans. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t really need to. The point got across loud and clear.

Having thoroughly cowed me, Celestia turned her attention back to her cringing student. “I hope you’ve been eating properly. You barely touched your salad. At least I’m reasonably certain your studies have been going well. How are you doing on bits? Or ... thalers, was it?” The non-stop barrage of maternal care continued, making Sunset blush harder and harder as she desperately tried to sink into the floor.

For such a benevolent being, Princess Celestia can have a bit of a mean streak when it comes to teasing. It’s probably why I like her so much.

The first stop on our grand investigation was Butters’s place. Waldo Butters was something unique in the supernatural community, on account of being a well-equipped and clued-in mortal. More than that, he was a guy who’d put way more work into figuring out how magic worked than a lot of people who could actually sling spells. I was usually alright with just knowing what I could do, but Butters always wanted to know why I could do those things. Not to mention he’d put a fair bit of work into finding ways to pull off magic tricks without having any magic of his own. And since he wasn’t a proper spellslinger like I was, he could keep himself equipped with all the latest tech.

Right now, I was visiting since he was one of my best ways of getting in touch with the Paranet, a network of minor practitioners which kept an eye out for any supernatural weirdness. Keeping up with the Paranet was always difficult for me, since it was an internet thing which I got along with about as well as any wizard got along with technology. I could ruin a computer just by being in the same room as it, unless I was very careful about controlling my magic. Thankfully the lower-level talents the Paranet didn’t have enough magic to cause any problems.

Because unicorn magic is horrendously unfair, Sunset didn’t have that problem. However, she still spent enough time hanging around me that she couldn’t really use any high tech stuff either. She’d picked up a new smartphone (whatever that was) a couple days after coming to Earth, only for me to break it a few hours later. Needless to say, she was still a bit annoyed with me over that, despite the fact that it was still covered by her warranty. Apparently breaking a phone she got an instant free replacement for was still enough to earn me a black mark in her book.

Thus, the two of us had to sit in the hallway outside Butters’s apartment while he checked in with all his contacts. The Paranet was usually pretty good at spotting anything going on in the supernatural world so long as it wasn’t too carefully hidden. To break out a ridiculous analogy, they couldn’t tell you what the Dark Overlord’s evil master plan was, but they could tell you a lot about where his troops were going. And for my purposes, someone might have noticed a big musical performance in the works that seemed just a bit off.

Sunset was pacing up and down the halls, occasionally grumbling under her breath. Clearly, patience wasn’t one of her virtues. I could relate; when I was her age, I would’ve hated being stuck in the hallway waiting for results too. Like Sunset, I had been absolutely certain that I should be going out there and doing something rather than standing around while somoene ese did all the hard work. Now that I’d gotten a bit older and wiser, I’d learned that more often than not spending five minutes to get the right information will save you hours of pain later.

I decided to share some of my wisdom with her. “Patience, young grasshopper.” Sunset stopped pacing and shot me an annoyed glare, which I answered by narrowing my eyes in muppety wisdom. “Patience you must have, my padawan.”

Sunset huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “When are you going to learn that quoting human movies I haven’t seen yet doesn’t work?”

Ugh. This is what I get for taking on a non-human apprentice. All my wonderfully witty pop culture references were wasted on her. I really needed to set aside a week or two of her education to get her properly steeped in the classics. Though that was going to require a bit of effort when my current residence was a cabin on a deserted haunted island. Hopefully Michael or Thomas or someone else would let us borrow their place.

Before I could come with a good snappy one-liner to restore my smartass cred, Butters stepped out of his apartment with a large folder tucked under one arm. “Good news and bad news, Harry. The good news is the Paranet came up with plenty of information. The bad news is it’s one of those cases where none of it’s an obvious smoking gun.”

“I guess it was too much to hope that there’d be a concert hall booked solid with performances of ‘The Evil Siren Mind Control Band.’” Sure, most of the Equestrian baddies I’d run into had the Saturday Morning Cartoon brand of villainy, but that didn’t mean they were stupid. Besides, knowing my luck if there was a band with that name, it would be some weird postmodernist thing instead of the actual bad guys. Or some unrelated monsters that would want to kill me once I stuck my head into their business.

“So it’s just chasing down a bunch of vague leads and hoping one of them pans out?” The grunt work of being a detective is never fun, but it’s something I’ve dealt with before. Plus, I could always call up some of my supernatural sources too. Drop enough hooks into the water, and I would eventually get a couple bites.

“How sure are you that they’re working out of Chicago?” Butters asked. “Because I’d think someone local would’ve noticed if we had sirens building up an army of brainwashed thralls. Plus you said they’re supposed to create a lot of negative energy wherever they’re working, and things have been as close to quiet as they ever get lately.”

“All we know for sure is that they crossed over from Equestria in Chicago,” I admitted. “It’s the first place we should check, but it’s entirely possible they’ve left.” If the sirens shared the ponies’ ability to speak most of Earth’s major languages, they could potentially be just about anywhere on the planet. That would make tracking them down impossible until they became powerful enough to not care who noticed them. I didn’t exactly like that idea.

“It would help if we knew what their goal was.” Sunset leaned against a wall, staring down at the floor. Her voice was a bit gentler and more subdued than normal, probably because she was thinking back to her own villain days. “If they just want to gather power and followers before returning to Equestria for payback, they’d probably still be close to where they crossed over. If they’re fine with taking over Earth instead...”

“They could be anywhere,” I finished for her. A second later, I amended that thought. “No, not anywhere. They’ll want to be somewhere with a big audience. If people need to hear their music to get mind controlled, they’ll wanna be somewhere that lets them reach as many people as possible. Probably a major city. Maybe one in one of the uglier parts of the world, so the negative energy they’d be building up wouldn’t stand out so much.”

Great. That pointed towards the sirens operating somewhere that was way out of my comfort zone. I’ve got plenty of contacts, but almost all of them are based in the United States. The sirens would probably be better off operating somewhere in Africa or Asia. The more problems their base of operations had, the better. Nobody would assume any built up negative energy was coming from evil magic when it was happening in a city where food, clean water, and electricity were all hard to get.

On the other hand, if they operated in too much of a hellhole, they might not get noticed at all. Since these were Saturday morning cartoon villains, it was a pretty safe bet that their end-game was world domination. Maybe instead they’d head for Washington and put on a private performance for the President, or go to the headquarters of the UN? That would be a risky move—most of the major players in the supernatural world kept an eye on world leaders to prevent exactly those sorts of shenanigans. That didn’t mean the sirens wouldn’t try, though, and even the best security in the world doesn’t have a one hundred percent success rate.

Some music drifted in through the open doorway into Butters’s place. Nothing I’d heard before, but it had a nice beat to it. That was probably his girlfriend, Andi. Somehow, despite being one of the nerdiest men I’d ever known, Butters had landed a bombshell redhead, and she was a werewolf on top of that. Meanwhile, despite being a monster-slayer with rugged good looks, the closest thing I had to relationship was that non-starter of a thing with Murphy that had been stuck on the ground floor for almost a decade. Oh, and the time I kissed Rainbow Dash and promptly got kicked in the junk for it. From there it just went downhill. Life is so unfair.

“So what’s the plan from here?” Sunset demanded. “Even if we don’t have any rock-solid leads, we have to start looking somewhere.”

“Yeah, we do.” I passed Butters’s folder full of info over to her. “Since you can actually use that internet stuff and phones without melting them, call up all the concert halls and music venues in Chicago, find out who’s performing at them, and then do some research on them. The sirens can’t have been on earth for more than a couple months, so look for any group that’s popped up out of nowhere and become way too popular way too fast. I’ll see what I can dig up on my side of things.”

Sunset’s eyes narrowed, and she let out an annoyed grumble. “So I get stuck with all the boring pointless drudge work while you get to actually do something interesting that’s likely to yield results.”

Oh, I was not in the mood for any attitude from her. “Yeah, that’s how it is. It’s one of the perks of me being the master and you being the apprentice.”

“Some master,” she scoffed. “I think you’ve learned more from me than the other way around. And we both know that if it came down to an actual fight between us, I’d tear you to bits. The only reason I’m here is that you pulled a gun on me in a null-magic zone.”

I’ve always had a bit of a temper, and becoming the Winter Knight had only made that worse. Give me some stress like a back-talking apprentice, and... “You think you can take me, bacon-head?” Not my best one-liner, but her hair did look kinda like bacon. I shook out my shield bracelet and pulled out my blasting rod. “I think it’s time we reestablished what the pecking order is. You think the only reason I won our first match was because your magic was locked up? Fine, let’s put that to the test. Right here, right now.”

Butters ran between us, holding his arms out. “Whoa, guys, chill! I don’t know what’s got you two so pissed, but don’t throw down in the middle of my apartment building!”

“Stay out of this, Butters!” I snapped. “This is wizard stuff between me and her, it’s none of your business.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and did his best to stare me down despite the fact that I was a foot taller than him. “If the two of you are gonna burn down my home as part of some stupid dick-measuring contest, I’m pretty sure it is my business.”

“All of you, shut up!” Andi called out from inside the apartment. “I can’t even hear the song over all of you arguing!”

“You shut up!” Sunset shot right back. “Nobody cares about your stupid music!”

I was about to give Sunset a piece of my mind for yelling at one of my friends when something clicked in my head. I closed my eyes for a moment and concentrated on the music itself. I couldn’t make out the lyrics, but I could still follow the beat—and once I concentrated on it, I quickly noticed something else. A subtle undercurrent of power, laced with several very nasty compulsion spells. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together. “Andi, turn that music off! It’s the sirens!”

“They’re not the sirens, they’re the Dazzlings! And they’re the best band ever!” She shot back. Then, just to be contrary, she turned up the volume. Now that I could actually hear it properly, the siren song was hitting a lot harder. I’m a pretty tough guy, mentally speaking. I’ve had enough things try to get into my head that I’ve got some experience holding them off, even if my success rate leaves something to be desired. Now that I knew to resist it, the music wasn’t too bad, but it was obviously still getting everyone else, and I couldn’t hold it off indefinitely.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. “Sorry, Butters.” I pointed my staff towards his apartment, specifically the computer Andi was sitting at. “Hexus!”

A couple thousand dollars’ worth of electronics abruptly and noisily died, taking the siren song with it. The pressure against my mind abruptly ceased, and the others all stood there, blinking and looking vaguely confused.

I turned to them all and put my best smart-assed grin on. “Good news, everyone! I found the bad guys.”

Thankfully, Butters kept enough spare parts on hand to fix the damage I’d done to his computer. I was sitting on his couch, which now sat in the middle of a nice big circle of salt that should keep my ambient magic contained enough that any electronics would be safe.

While Butters and his girlfriend worked to get his computer back up and running, Sunset had pulled her new smartphone out of the lead case she kept it in whenever I was around and was doing some research on the band. With the sound turned off, of course. “Adagio Dazzler, Aria Blaze, and Sonata Dusk, aka The Dazzlings. They just popped out of nowhere a couple weeks ago and posted YouTube’s biggest new hit music video. Nobody knows much about them yet, but according to the comments, they’ve already got a couple record companies looking to sign them.”

“Great, they’re going Hollywood.” I guess it made sense if what they wanted was a big audience. Especially now that we knew their siren tricks could work over the airwaves. If they could get their mind-control mojo playing over the radio, we would have a real crisis on our hands. “Well, at least we found them before they got too many people under their spell.”

Sunset grip on her phone tightened. “Harry, their YouTube video has almost a billion hits.”

I blinked, and checked that my ears were still working properly. “You said billion with a ‘b,’ right? Not million?”

“That’s right,” she confirmed grimly.

Wow. I had no idea the whole internet thing was that big. “So a billion people have already heard the evil monster mind control song?”

Butters frowned. “Without getting into a whole lot of complicated internet stuff you wouldn’t understand and a lot of fuzzy statistics ... let’s just say that it’s entirely possible a billion people have been exposed.”

“Oh.” The Sirens already had a decent-sized chunk of Earth’s population under their spell, and from what little I knew about how the internet would work, it was only a matter of time before they got the rest. “Oh crap.”

Harry Gets No Useful Advice

Sirens and Equestrian Magic were both big blind spots of mine, and unfortunately there was only so much Sunset could do to help. Especially since the way Equestrian magic interacted with human technology was (obviously) something that had never been studied before. If I was going to stop whatever take-over-the-world scheme these sirens were hatching, I needed to know as much as possible about how their powers worked. In other words, it was research time.

I sent Sunset off to see what she could dig up from Equestrian sources. Normally I would’ve loved a chance to dig through some books on their magic, but a crisis wasn’t the best time to make my umpteenth attempt at figuring out how to replicate Equestrian teleportation and flight spells. Besides, the whole point of sending Sunset off to go do research on her own was to have her not be here while we were doing stuff I didn’t want her knowing about. See? I can totally be subtle sometimes.

Once Sunset was safely away, Butters brought Bob out. Bob was a spirit of air and intellect who’d been working with me ever since I’d graduated from my apprenticeship. He was kind of like a big magical library. The problem was he wasn’t especially picky about who he shared that knowledge with; whoever held the skull that served as Bob’s vessel had full access to everything he knew. When a nasty coven of necromancers had stolen him from me, Bob hadn’t hesitated to help them figure out a spell that would’ve killed everyone in Chicago to fuel their leader’s ascension to godhood.

Needless to say, that’s the kind of temptation that Sunset didn’t need to face right now. Plus, I’ve got a healthy level of paranoia about keeping Bob secret from anyone who doesn’t need to know. If Twilight ever found out about him, I’d never get a moment’s peace until I let her borrow him and pick his brain. Well, skull.

While I sat safely contained in a magic circle to contain my wizardly tech-busting power, Bob’s skull sat on the desk of Butters’ freshly repaired computer, watching the video. While I don’t have much of an ear for music, the Sirens did seem pretty good, even without the mind-control compulsions. I guess that was to be expected, though. Luckily, the circle kept me safe while Butters and Andi stuck with the old-fashioned solution to Sirens: earplugs. From what I could tell, their exposure to the Sirens’ song wouldn’t have any lasting effects, but subtle mental stuff isn’t my area of expertise.

In any case, when it came to understanding any weird new magic I’d never seen before, Bob was pretty much my go-to guy. Being a spirit gave him an ability to see and perceive magic in ways I couldn’t, not to mention centuries of experience working under one wizard or another. Even if he didn’t have any direct knowledge on the Sirens, he’d know enough to make some very educated guesses. Whenever I wanted a deep, in-depth magical analysis, nobody could do a better job of it than Bob.

Once Bob had watched the video for the third time, though, my patience was starting to wear thin. “So what do you think?”

The skull spun around to face me, orange lights glowing in its empty eye sockets. “Well sahib, I’ve gone over the video like you asked, and I’m ready to dish out my expert opinion.” Bob let that hang in the air for a while until I waved for him to get on with it. “Adagio has that nice classic beauty to her and the best breasts. Not the biggest, mind you—that goes to Sonata—but bigger isn’t always better. Aria has more of that lean ‘bad girl’ look to her; not really my thing, but still pretty nice. Sonata's the cute one of the bunch, but with just enough edge to keep her from being cutesy. And she has the best ass.” Bob spun back around to face the computer, starting up the video again. “Yeah! Shake your tail, baby!”

Oh, Bob’s also a total perv. Did I forget to mention that?

I groaned and suppressed the urge to apply a blunt object to Bob’s skull. Just once, I’d like to have a supernatural information source that helps me out without demanding payment, trying to steal my soul, or being annoyingly quirky and eccentric. Is that really too much to ask? “Do you have anything that’s actually useful, Bob?”

“I think knowing which of the three chicks is the most bangable is incredibly useful information,” Bob answered primly. “After all, you could use that information to seduce one of them into turning on the other two.” The skull paused for a moment, and amended, “Okay, you couldn’t do that, but someone a lot more charming, sophisticated, and better-looking could totally pull it off.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Bob.”

“Oh, and let’s not forget smarter too. And you’d need better impulse control. And to get rid of some of your pesky moral hangups. And—”

“Careful, Bob. This stupid guy with poor impulse control might just decide to smash you now and worry about the consequences later.” I considered tossing in a crack about trading him to the bad guys in exchange for them stopping their evil plan, but Bob would probably love the idea of serving a trio of attractive women. “So if you’re done being a smartass...”

Bob rolled his eyelights. “Yeah, you of all people complaining about someone being a smartass. That’s not hypocritical at all.”

Clearly, it was time to break out the oldest trick in the book: bribery. “If I give you one of those trashy romance paperbacks you like, will you stop messing around and start telling me something useful?”

Bob snorted, which is quite an achievement for a skull with no nose. “I’ve got the internet now, Harry. I don’t need to read books for my porn. There’s even porn of your cartoon pony friends. Lemme dig one of my favorites out...”

“No!” I totally didn’t sound desperate or terrified at all by that. And it definitely wasn’t going to feature prominently in my nightmares.

“Rule 34 is the greatest thing you monkeys ever came up with.” I had no idea what this Rule 34 was, but I was pretty sure I was happier not knowing. Thankfully, the skull got down to business after that. “Okay, here’s the deal: from what I can tell, their magic is woven into the music itself, so pretty much any form of aural exposure is dangerous. That said, the quality of the recording matters; I found one really bad version of the video with the sound all messed up, and the magic was gone.”

“So that tells us they’ll want the best recording equipment they can get.” Which would mean they’d need a proper studio and probably some technicians to run all that expensive gear. That would tie them down to a specific base of operations, at least. If the Sirens could put out mind control songs just using one of those cheap camera-phone things, there’d be no way to track them down. “Okay, that’s good. What about the spell itself? Is there any easy way to counter it? And how dangerous is exposure to it? Am I gonna be dealing with armies of mind-thralls the instant the Sirens realize I’m a threat? Will they be able to mess with me now that I’ve been exposed to the song?”

“I think you should be safe on that front, boss,” the skull assured me. “The Sirens weren’t targeting their spells at anyone in particular. You can’t do any really heavy-hitting mind control on a mass basis—you have to one-at-a-time it. The only spell they’ve got worked into this song right now is a general ‘love our song and share it with all your friends’ compulsion along with the usual standard ‘adore us and obey us’ thing any half-competent mindbender would use. I guess they’re still building up their fanbase right now. Using anything stronger might get them noticed faster.” Bob was briefly distracted by staring at the Sirens’ dancing, but got back on topic before I lost my temper. “Even if the White Council or some other heavy hitter found out about these guys, they’d probably assume that the Sirens were just low level warlocks trying to make a quick buck. Not that this is stage one of a world domination scheme. That puts them a lot lower down on the priority list. You sure they’re planning to take over the world?”

“They’re Saturday morning cartoon villains,” I answered flatly. “Their goal is always going to be world domination.” I frowned as I spotted a problem with Bob’s explanation. “Wait, so why did we all start fighting after we heard their song? You’d think that would attract attention.”

“Nice to see you’re not a total dummy, Harry.” Once more I was tempted to smash the skull. It’s a hazard of working with Bob. “The song is fueled with a kind of psychic negative energy, which is why all of you got nasty. Though normally it wouldn’t be all that strong. Maybe the effect got boosted in your case since you and your new pet muffin are both pretty strong wizards, and have a lot of negative emotional energy hanging around you. Plus, she’s from the same universe as them, so that could also be a factor.” Bob’s eyelights widened, and he started sounding just a touch too eager. “I couldn’t say for sure unless you let me meet her, though.”

I groaned. “We’ve covered this before, Bob: no meeting my apprentices.”

Despite the utter lack of facial expression or body language, I got the definite sense that Bob was pouting. “Harry always likes to hoard all the cute little muffins to himself. It’s not fair. And don’t tell me it’s a coincidence that you keep picking young, nubile, teenage girls to train, ‘cause I’m not buying that for a second.”

“And another thing,” I ground out, struggling to resist the urge to come up with some suitably ironic punishment for the skull. “My apprentices are not muffins. Or cupcakes, or doughnuts, or any other type of baked good.”

“But they totally are!” Bob shot back. “I read this one story on the internet where they used the word ‘muffin’ to mean—”

“Nobody cares, Bob!” The last thing I needed was to be regaled with one of his porno fantasy stories. “Now behave, or I’ll send you to a monastery for a couple weeks. And not one of the monasteries from those Naughty Nuns videos you keep watching.”

“Aww, but those are some of my favorites.” Bob sighed, then got back to business. “But yeah, it looks like their Siren songs pull out negative emotions. That makes sense, since those are a lot better for enforcing control. And the spell itself is fairly low power, but also designed to draw in energy from others.”

“And a wizard like me is going to have a lot more energy to draw upon,” I finished. Not to mention I had plenty of negative emotions to tap into. I usually kept a pretty good lid on them, but it’s easy to keep your dark side in check when you’re handling average day-to-day stuff. When the pressure started mounting, I could get real nasty real quick.

Bob continued on. “I would also guess that your new muffin’s magic might have some kind of interaction with Sirens’ magic, though I can’t say for sure since someone refuses to let me have any fun at all. That Siren spell seems singularly good at drawing out and tapping into her magic. Guess it figures, since the Sirens made that spell to feed on ponyland energy.”

I groaned and started massaging my temples as I felt a headache coming on. So my apprentice who was still working on overcoming her own inner demons was going to be extra-vulnerable to the mind control spells that tap into the target’s inner darkness. Which Sunset definitely had plenty of. “Do you have any good news?”

“A couple of things,” Bob replied. “The fact that you guys are extra-vulnerable means that their control’s generally a lot weaker, so you’re probably safe from anyone the Sirens haven’t had direct contact with. At least for now. If your info on them getting stronger the more people they feed off of is accurate, then that might change after a while.”

I frowned as another worrying possibility occurred. “On top of building up their fanbase for a bigger food supply, fame would make it easier for them to get into direct contact with more people, and before long, important people. How famous do you think they need to get before someone like the President decides to listen to their song?”

“Or just putting on a big concert that’d let them directly eat ten thousand people at once,” Bob agreed. “What they get over the internet is a trickle compared to putting on a live show. The whole subtle puppetmaster routine is fun, but they’d also want to juice up on raw power.”

“Great, so they’ve got two ways to cause untold amounts of damage.” Whether they went for subtle mind control or brute force, we probably didn’t have very long before the Sirens became a lot more dangerous. Because of course I couldn’t have a case that didn’t involve a ticking clock counting down to some sort of catastrophe.

Good thing I do my best work under pressure. I waved for Bob to shut down Butters’ computer. The skull reluctantly stopped leering at the Sirens and turned it off. Once there was no more nasty mind control music, I signalled the all-clear to Butters, and he and Andi removed their earplugs. “Bob’s pretty sure they have to be operating out of a well-equipped studio with all the latest high-tech gizmos, so is there any way you can use that to track them down? Y’know, check sales of all that gear, run a pattern analysis, and triangulate their locations?”

Butters stared at me for a couple seconds, then groaned and shook his head. “This is what I get for being friends with a guy whose knowledge of computers comes solely from Batman comics.”

That wasn’t fair—I’d watched all the Batman movies too. Though I was really more of a Spider-Man kinda guy; gimme a wisecracking smartass over a dark and brooding loner any day. My parents were dead too, but you don’t see me dressing up in weird outfits and being all obsessive about it thirty years after the fact. Or hanging out with teenage boys who aren’t allowed to wear pants.

“Look Butters, you handle all the computer mumbo-jumbo and I’ll handle all the magical mumbo-jumbo. That’s how this deal works.” In fairness, though, Butters had begun branching out into magical knowledge ever since he started taking care of Bob. Shockingly, having a talking magical encyclopedia in your house is a good way to learn more about magic. Pity I couldn’t figure out all this technology stuff the same way. “Look, my point is that you have computer skills, right? You can hack into people’s cars and stuff.” I was reasonably sure that was something he could do. Well, I’d seen it in a movie once.

Butters put his head in his hands and let out a rueful chuckle. “You really are clueless about computers. I’m reasonably tech-savvy. I know how to fix my computer when something goes wrong with it, how to upgrade it, and even enough to help set up the ParaNet. What I can’t do is cast magic spells by typing on anything with an internet connection.”

At some point I really needed to find out more about all this new high-tech stuff. In my defense, it’s hard to avoid being computer-illiterate when computers die whenever I spend more than a minute around them without being shielded in some way. Butters had mentioned looking into what exactly caused tech to die around wizards and trying to find a way to fix or at least mitigate it, but so far he hadn’t had any luck with it.

Now wasn’t the time to worry about that, though. “Just spread the word about the Sirens over the ParaNet. The fewer people who see their videos, the better.”

“I can try,” Butters offered, “but protecting the ParaNet won’t do much good if they get the rest of the world. And I hate to say it, but ‘this popular music video contains secret mind control messages’ is usually the kind of thing that gets dismissed as lunatic rambling. Odds are for every one person who actually listens to us, a hundred will go watch the song just to see what the big deal is.”

Much as I hated to admit it, he was right. Back in my rebellious teenager days, I always listened to music that was supposed to have subliminal satanic messages you could only hear by playing the tapes backwards.

I took a good look at Butters. The guy looked about how I felt: tired, frustrated, and just a bit scared. Snapping at him certainly wasn’t going to help anything. “Just do what you can, okay? I’ll see what I can find on the spooky side of things.” First step, I needed to get a dozen pizzas. Faeries love pizzas.

Several dozen little faeries descended on the pizza like a pack of rabid wolves, except with more pixie dust. Sunset watched the spectacle, her jaw hanging open in shock. “You weren’t kidding. They’re like parasprites.”

“At least they don’t reproduce by puking out little baby pixies.” As far as I knew, they made baby pixies the old-fashioned way. Heck, Toot-Toot, the self-appointed leader of my little band of faeries, had a massive unrequited crush on a girl faerie. Not that I really wanted to know all the details of pixie reproduction. Some things are better left a mystery.

One thing to be said for how quickly the little folk ate everything, it meant we could get down to business pretty quickly. Once he’d finished gorging himself, Toot drew up his subordinates and snapped off something that vaguely resembled a salute. “What can we do for you, ‘Za Lord?”

“Za Lord?” Sunset repeated incredulously.

“I provide them with pizza on a semi-regular basis. Ergo, ‘Za Lord.” Twenty bucks a week on pizza, plus more whenever I needed a special favor, was a small price to pay for the little folks’ loyalty. They’re probably some of the best information gatherers in the world, at least when it comes to simple, everyday stuff. They might not have the attention span or intellect of something like one of the demonic information brokers or an oracle spirit, but they’re small, fast, and numerous. Not to mention faeries work for pizza; demons and oracles have much higher fees. I’m rather fond of my soul, battered and stained though it may be.

I pulled out a couple still images of the Sirens that Butters had printed out for me. “I need you guys to find these three girls and tell me where they are.” The little folk didn’t have the mindset needed for something complicated like tracking equipment purchases, but they had the numbers and speed to just canvass the entire city. While it was possible the Sirens had left Chicago, my gut told me they were still around. If I were in their position, I’d want to stay close enough to the portal back to my home dimension as a fallback option.

Toot turned around and started barking orders at all the pixies who had the dubious pleasure of serving the ‘Za Lord, and they scattered. Sunset watched them all go, a faintly bemused smile of her face. “Well, that was certainly something. How long will it take for them to get back with an answer?”

“Not too long.” With how short the little folks’ attention span was, they pretty much had to finish tasks in a short time period. Whenever I gave them jobs that took more than half an hour, they were liable to get distracted by something shiny and forget all about the task I’d put them on.

While we waited, I gave Sunset a quick rundown of what I’d learned from Bob, though I left out any mention of Bob himself. That didn’t take very long, so before too long we were just waiting for Toot to get back. To pass the time, Sunset threw a quick protective circle around herself, then pulled out her phone and started messing around with it. Unicorn magic is incredibly unfair. My own magical talents had come in right when portable video games were getting started, so I’d had just enough exposure to know what I was missing out on. Not to mention all the problems in my life that could’ve been solved if I had a working cell phone instead of being stuck with old-fashioned communication.

We weren’t waiting around for too long before Toot showed up again. One look at the proud smile on his face told me that his mission had ended in success. He pointed at the picture of Sonata. “We saw her at the taco place.”

Sunset, lacking my familiarity with how the minds of the little folk work, asked a perfectly sensible question. “Which taco place?”

“The taco place,” Toot answered patiently. Pixies don’t exactly grasp the finer points of urban navigation like street addresses. Don’t misunderstand, they can get around just fine—they just don’t have the same frame of reference or use the same landmarks.

I could’ve swooped in and saved Sunset any further embarrassment by asking Toot to guide us there, but I decided to sit back and see how my apprentice would solve this issue. It would be a learning experience for her. I wasn’t doing it just to laugh at her frustration. Honest.

Sure enough, Sunset already had her eyes closed and was resting her forehead on a few outstretched fingers. “Okay. The taco place. There are probably thousands of taco places in this city. Is there anything you can tell me about this specific one?”

“It’s the one next to the pizza place!” one of Toot’s little helpers offered.

“Which pizza—” Sunset caught herself and groaned. “Of course, it’s next to the pizza place.”

Toot and his companions nodded eagerly, pleased to see that she was starting to get it. One of them began jumping up and down, buzzing his wings frantically. “Oooh! Oooh! I just remembered! There’s another pizza place across the street from it, and the other one has stuffed crust!”

“Stuffed crust?” one of the pixies scoffed. “The other pizza place has better sauce, and puts that flavoring stuff on its crusts. That’s way better than stuffed crust.”

That drew a chorus of horrified gasps from half the little folk in attendance. One of them leveled an accusing finger at the speaker. “Nothing is better than stuffed crust! You take that back!”

The rest of pixies rallied behind the one who questioned the value of stuffed crust. “He’s right! You’re the ones who’re wrong! Get them!”

Thus began the first Stuffed Crust vs. Flavored Crust Holy War. The battle lasted for thirty-five seconds of hair-pulling, wing-twisting, and limb-biting. The bloody conflict reached a shaky truce when Toot broached the possibility of a pizza with flavoring and cheese stuffing, which both sides could agree was the best of both worlds.

While I’d been watching the spectacle, Sunset was tapping away at her phone again. She looked optimistic at first, but it wasn’t long before she was growling in frustration. “Urgh, if I could get a map of all the pizza places in Chicago and a map of all the taco restaurants in Chicago, then I could cross-reference them and figure out where we need to go.”

“That’d work a lot better if you were using the bat-computer instead of a cell phone.” I might be clueless about tech, but I never forget a good smartass opportunity. With that seen to, I turned to Toot. “Can you just lead us there?”

“Sure!” Toot grinned. “It’s right next to two pizza places.”

“Great.” I grinned down at the little fairies. “If this pans out, I promise I will find a way to get you guys a pizza that has stuffed, flavored crust.”

That drew a chorus of cheers from the little folk.

Sure enough, Toot led us to a middle-of-the-road taco restaurant that had a Pizza ‘Spress right next to it and one of the competing pizza chains across the road. I knew this part of town fairly well, since we were only a couple blocks away from the university. In hindsight, the fact that there were two pizza places right next to each other should’ve been a giveaway. Only college kids scarf down enough of the stuff to justify that many pizza restaurants.

I pulled into the parking lot and hopped out of my borrowed car. I still hadn’t gotten around to replacing my poor old Blue Beetle, which had been crushed by an Ick. Fortunately, there were a few perks to selling your soul to the Queen of Winter. Not only did Mab have some very nice classic cars to loan out, all of them had killer air conditioning too. Chicago summers are nasty enough to make you appreciate that.

Sunset climbed out of the passenger seat while I quickly confirmed with Toot that our target was still there. From what I’d been told, the Sirens ate by turning everyone around them into jerks, then feeding off the negative energy. Tacos didn’t exactly fit with that, unless this restaurant attracted particularly grumpy patrons. That seemed a little small-time compared to their take-over-the-world scheme, though.

Sunset seemed to be on the same page. “Why’s she here? Seems like a big risk for her to be out in public and alone. And it’s not like they actually need to eat food, is it?”

I shrugged. “Maybe she just likes how tacos taste?”

“We can ask her ourselves.” Sunset stretched out, then snapped her fingers, grinning at the little spark of flame that produced. “So what’s the plan? I’m guessing we can’t follow normal Equestrian policy and just charge right in and arrest her?”

“‘Fraid not. Chicago PD doesn’t recognize ‘Being a monster in the first degree’ as an arrestable offence.” It really was amazing just how far a lot of people would go to rationalize away the existence of magic. The idea that magic isn’t real was just so ingrained into people’s minds that they wouldn’t believe in it even when the reality was staring them in the face. Sure, someone might admit they’re up against an ogre when one grabs them and hauls them into a dark alley, but once they got away and had some time to ‘think’ about it, they’d tell themselves that it was just some really big, ugly guy. After all, it had been a dark alley, and everything had happened so fast. Besides, everyone knows monsters aren’t real.

Sometimes ‘everyone’ has no idea what they’re talking about.

“So I guess we try to get her somewhere isolated?” Sunset suggested. “Your little faerie buddies say she’s on her own right now. Seems like the smart move is to grab her now while her friends aren’t around to help. Plus, we might be able to squeeze some information out of her.”

Not a bad plan, all things considered. A little vague on the details, but I tended to make up most of those as I went along. Not that I’m saying planning was useless, just that you need to keep your plans loose enough to be adaptable. “Any ideas on how to get her out of the public eye? If we want to avoid making a scene, we need to find some way to make her come with us willingly.” I’m not averse to ignoring a few inconvenient laws in the name of saving the world, but kidnapping someone in broad daylight in front of dozens of witnesses was pushing it. That would get the cops on my case, and I knew from my previous run-ins with the law that I was a pretty easy guy to recognize. The instant the cops got a report of a tall, skinny, creepy weirdo with a staff and a black leather duster kidnapping someone, they’d be after me.

“We could always try talking to her, see what that turns up.” Sunset paused, smirked at me, and amended, “Well, I could try talking to her. Your social skills are kind of horrible.”

“They are not.” Much to my annoyance, I sounded kinda whiny when I said that. “But fine, if you wanna take the lead, then go ahead. It’ll be a good learning experience.”

“Yeah.” Sunset smirked. “For you.”

“You’re like a kid poking a bear with a stick. Someday I’m gonna wake up and maul you. Except with smartassery instead of, y’know, mauling.” Truly, I am a master of wit and biting insightful commentary.

Though I wasn’t all that eager to admit it, Sunset probably had a point about letting her take the lead. “I’ll give you one thing, a slightly scruffy-looking adult man trying to convince a teenage girl to go into a dark alley is gonna have a hard time of it. Especially in a restaurant full of reasonably paranoid people.”

“Which is why you aren’t doing this alone.” Sunset grinned, looking entirely too eager to get on with the show. “I'm your accomplice. I’ll put her at ease, and make you look less suspicious and disreputable.”

Oh yeah, this wasn’t sounding creepy or wrong at all. I swear, at this rate I was gonna end up on one of those TV shows about dangerous criminals. Do they still have those on? I don’t watch much TV due to my minor problem of making electronics explode. I hope not, because my life’s complicated enough without every soccer mom in the world keeping an eye out for depraved pedophile, Harry Dresden. “The things I do to save the world...”

I quickly cased the place before we went in, giving it all a quick once-over to make sure there weren’t any nasty surprises waiting for me. No magical traps, no army of mind-thralls waiting to jump me the instant I threatened their mistress, nothing. Just cheap plastic chairs and benches done up in a gaudy pseudo-mexican color scheme. Typical for a taco joint, I suppose. I took a deep breath and braced myself. “Once more unto the breach...”

I opened the door.

The first thing that hit me upon entering was the music. It sounded like a mariachi band and a techno one had been tossed into a giant blender, and we were listening to their screams of agony. Maybe I’m just a music snob, though. It probably says something about me that most of the bands I listen to are older than I am.

It wasn’t hard to pick my target out from the crowd. Sonata Dusk—or as Bob had called her, the cute one. Her two-toned blue ponytail was pretty unique, not to mention she was still wearing the same outfit she’d used for the music video. From what I could tell, fashion sense in freaky high-school pony land was kind of weird. I’d seen Sunset’s closet, and it was just a dozen versions of the same outfit. Though I guess that was better than dealing with a humanized pony who’d never dealt with humanity before. After all, the cartoon ponies believed clothing was strictly optional. That would’ve been awkward. Bob would’ve loved it, though.

Judging by the small mountain of wrappers on her table, Sonata had been here for a while. She got up and headed for the line to place a new order, but there were several people in front of her. She waited patiently for about half a second, then began tapping her foot and squirming. When that didn’t make the line move any faster, she took a deep breath, and the large ruby fastened around her neck glimmered. Then she started singing.

“I’m gonna eat me some tacos
Because it is Taco Tuesdaaaay
And tacos are really yummy
So why don’t you get outta my way?”

The subtle mental pressure of her magic hit me, but now that I was ready for it I could guard my mind. It probably also helped that I wasn’t the target. Once her little ditty was done, everyone in line let her cut straight to the front, their eyes dull and glassy. A minute later she was parked back on the cheap plastic bench she’d claimed as her resting place, leaning to the side and kicking up her legs so she took up the whole thing. There were two fresh, fully loaded tacos in sitting in front of her. From the gluttonous grin on Sonata’s face, the two would soon be joining the rest of their taco brethren in her stomach.

I sent Sunset to pick up our orders, lest I fry the cash register. Bean tacos for herself since she’s a vegetarian like most ponies, and a steak burrito for me since I believe dead cow is an important part of any healthy meal. Once she had our food, she walked over to the bench across from Sonata and stopped right next to it, giving the Siren a friendly smile. “Hey, is this seat taken?”

Sonata’s mouth was stuffed with taco when Sunset approached, so it took a couple seconds for her to swallow and answer. “Nah, you can sit there if you wanna.” I couldn’t help but notice that she pulled her remaining taco-and-a-half a bit closer to herself once Sunset took her seat, and was warily watching the other girl out of the corner of her eye. That girl really loves her tacos.

I settled in next to Sunset and unwrapped my burrito. I’m not much of a Mexican food fan, but I have to admit it looked pretty good. Kind of like one of Mac’s steak sandwiches, except the bread was a giant tortilla instead of bread.

Sonata frowned as I joined them, and I wondered if maybe I should’ve just stayed back and let Sunset handle it all. The Siren’s eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute ... are you guys with one of the record companies? 'Cause I'm not allowed to sign anything that Adagio hasn’t looked over first. Sorry. But hey, at least you got tacos out of it!”

I made my best effort at a charming smile. She didn’t recoil or flee in horror, so it must not have been too bad. “Trust me, if we were from the record company, we would be eating something a lot nicer than fast-food tacos.”

“Yeah, we’re just hungry people who want some tacos.” Sunset offered Sonata her hand. “I'm Sunset, nice to meet you.” I was pleased by her holding back half her Name. While it wasn’t part of Equestrian magic, in human-land there was power in names. Give a wizard like me someone’s full Name from their own lips, and it could be used as a conduit for all sorts of nasty magic. Or at least, that’s what I’ve heard; thankfully I haven’t had anyone screw me over too badly by using my Name against me. Yet.

Besides, a name like Sunset Shimmer wasn’t exactly normal in human-land. If Sonata had half a brain, she would peg Sunset as an Equestrian in an instant.

Sonata wiped most of the taco sauce off her hand, then shook Sunset’s. “Sonata Dusk, nice to meetcha!” She grinned. “That's a good name, Sunset. Much better than the ones around here. I mean, most of these guys have names like Tom, Bob, and Harry. Those’re such boring names. They don’t even mean anything!”

I couldn’t resist an opening like that. “Hi Sonata, I’m Harry.” The smile froze on her face. “And for the record, ‘Harry’ derives from Harold, which comes from the Old English Hereweald, which means ‘army leader.” I turned to Sunset and smirked. “See? I know things!”

Sunset acknowledged me long enough to roll her eyes, then turned back to Sonata. “Well, it fits. He's a pretty boring guy.”

Just once, I’d like to have an apprentice who doesn’t sass me. Sunset was even worse than Molly about it. Maybe some day I’ll get an apprentice who’s quiet, attentive, and respectful. Probably right after hell freezes over. Instead, I answered sass with snark. “Sorry, not everyone gets a character defining noun-adjective name.”

“Whatever.” Sonata shoved the rest of her taco into her mouth, then messily chewed and swallowed it. “So, like, what’s your deal anyway? ‘Cause you don’t look like Sunset’s dad or anything, and you’re way too old to be boyfriend and girlfriend.”

Sunset turned on me, her lips curling in incredulous disgust. “What, him? My boyfriend? NO! Ew! Ew Ew EW!”

Okay, while I was glad to know my apprentice wasn’t harboring an inappropriate and doomed lust for her teacher (this time), she didn’t have to sound that disgusted by the idea. I mean, I’m not gonna win any contests, but I like to think I look semi-decent considering my age and all the abuse I’ve put my body through. Or at least, not so ugly that women regard me with horrified revulsion. I definitely didn’t rate four ‘ews’ on the attractiveness scale. Maybe two, max.

Sunset shivered and set her taco down, then shoved the tray away. “Y’know what, I’m so grossed out that I'm not hungry anymore.”

Ow. Right in the pride. I wasn’t overly fond of this entire line of discussion, so I decided to move things along to a better topic. After all, we were supposed to be grabbing the evil mind control monster, not making small talk with her. I turned to Sonata and plastered on my best effort at a friendly smile. “Anyways, what’s your deal?”

“Eating tacos,” she answered, getting to work on her last one. “What does it look like?”

Sunset took over the fishing expedition. “I think what Harry meant to ask was why did you think we were with a record company?”

Sonata made a vague sound around a mouthful of lettuce and ground beef, and quickly chewed and swallowed. “Because a lot of people have been coming up to us asking to sign some deals ever since we did that video, or something. I dunno, Adagio and Aria take care of that stuff. The only thing they said I had to do was write my name down on a piece of paper when they found the right deal. As long as I get to sing, I’m happy.”

She would just sign whatever contract her band-mates picked without even reading it first? That’s a good way to get yourself into all kinds of legal trouble, not to mention how nasty contract law can get when magic’s involved. I’ve spent enough time around the really old creatures of Faerie to get a real appreciation for just how sneaky and elaborate they can make a seemingly simple deal.

It all led to an inescapable conclusion: Sonata wasn’t the brains of the outfit. I suppose if we were trying to pick out a weak link to squeeze info out of, that made her a good candidate.

Meanwhile, Sunset continued making small talk. “So a lot of companies are trying to sign your band? I guess that means you must be a really good singer. You said something about a video...”

“Duh!” Sonata set her taco down with a proud grin. “The Dazzlings are only the hottest thing right now! Our YouTube video has a bajillion hits! You’ve seen it, haven't you?” She pulled out a shiny new phone, which was probably moments away from dying horribly now that it had been exposed to me. “I'll show it to you. It's totally the bomb.”

I cut in before Sonata could start messing with her phone. I didn’t know how familiar she was with how things worked on Earth, but I didn’t want to risk giving away that I was a wizard when her phone died. “Why show us a video when we could hear you sing for real?”

Sunset was quick to support me, like a good apprentice. “Yeah. recordings are nice, but there’s nothing like a live performance.”

Sonata blinked in surprise, then grinned. “Oh my gosh, you're totally right! I'll do that right now so everyone can hear.” She sat up straight and cleared her throat.

“Wait!” I didn’t want all the innocent people in here exposed to her siren song. Plus, I could see my sneaky plan coming together. “How about we take this outside? I don't think the acoustics in here will be really good, not to mention you’ve got that music in the background and everyone talking and stuff. Also, we might bother people.”

Sonata paused and frowned. “Hey, everyone loves dine-in entertainment. And trust me, once I start singing, nobody’s gonna be paying attention to anything else.”

“Yeah, but this still isn’t the best place to give a performance,” Sunset offered, putting a hand on Sonata’s arm. “You can't let people get a bad opinion of your singing just because you got caught in the wrong place, right? You know how fickle fame can be. All it takes one bit of bad publicity and you’re a washed-up has-been.” She waved at the other diners. “I bet most of them have phones. What if one of them records you and it gets out on the internet?”

Another idea popped into my head, and I took a stab in the dark. “And you have to think about the other members of the group too. What do you think Adagio and Aria would say if you gave a bad performance that threw off their plans?”

I didn’t know anything about the internal dynamics of the Sirens, but I could make a pretty good guess about how much respect Sonata’s bandmates had for her. If they were telling her not to talk to anyone important and she was signing contracts purely on their say-so, then she was probably the lowest rung on the ladder. Not to mention Sonata hadn’t exactly struck me as an intellectual giant. I felt pretty confident betting that mentioning the possibility of messing up the group’s plans would shake her up a bit.

Sure enough, Sonata’s shoulders slumped slightly, and the friendly smile of her face flickered for a moment. “Yeah, I wouldn’t wanna upset them. Alright, we can go somewhere else. But lemme finish my taco first.” She wasted no time tearing into the last taco on her plate.

Sunset glanced down at her unfinished one, then nudged it towards Sonata. “Here, you can have mine too. I’m not all that hungry.”

Well, if the apprentice wanted to bribe the siren with more tacos, then more power to her. Personally, I paid for my steak burrito and I was darn well going to eat it. I picked up the pace a bit, though. I didn’t want to be the only guy left holding food once Sonata’s plate was empty.

“Score! Thanks, Sunset.” Celestia had mentioned that the Sirens were over a thousand years old, but judging by how fast Sonata had scarfed those tacos she still had a teenage metabolism to match her body. Well, that or the Sirens worked differently from humans. Heck, if she lived by feeding off negative emotional energy, did she even need tacos?

The closest earthly equivalent to the Sirens that I knew of were the White Court Vampires, who were also emotion-eaters. Despite mainly feeding on lust, fear, and despair, the White Court Vamps liked mundane food and drink just fine. From what I understood, they could survive by just eating emotion, but forgoing mortal food meant spending some of their supernatural energy to make up the difference. Most preferred to stick with mundane foods for mundane needs and save their supernatural mojo for when they needed it.

Besides, just because Sonata didn’t need tacos doesn’t mean she wouldn’t like eating them. After all, people can survive on nothing but bread and water, but that hasn’t stopped us from adding thousands of things we don’t strictly need to our food to make it tastier.

Sonata loudly slurping her drink put an end to that little philosophical tangent. The tacos were gone, and by the aggravating sound emanating from her cup she’d finished off her coke too. Sure enough, once she set it down she grinned and announced, “Okay, all done.”

Sunset got up with a friendly smile plastered on her face. “Great! Harry knows the perfect place, so if you’ll just follow us...”

Sonata bounced out of her seat, grinning eagerly. “Okay! Once you hear me sing it’ll knock your socks off!”

“I bet it will.” I put on my best not-at-all-creepy smile. “I think I know a great spot.”

Sunset shot me a sassy grin. “Lead the way then, old man.”

“I'm not old.” I started heading for a nice dark deserted alleyway. “Just seasoned.” Since we were reasonably close to the college, I knew the perfect place to take Sonata down. Fittingly, I’d discovered the place when I’d nearly been killed there myself. Hopefully there wouldn’t be any ninja assassin ghouls lurking there this time.

Once we got there, Sonata was frowning around in obvious confusion. I couldn’t blame her. A dark alleyway behind a second-hand bookstore wasn’t exactly the sort of place most people would pick. Hell, the acoustics here were probably horrible. “Are you sure this is the best place to sing? ‘Cause it looks like a dump.”

Sunset was already busy making sure nobody was watching us. I guess being an ex-bully would give her some experience in that kind of thing. There was one girl, college-aged, who was working on a cigarette, so I stalled for time. “Yep, it’s perfect for the type of performance I'm looking for. We just need to get you in the exact right place. You know, for the acoustics.”

Sonata stared at the overflowing pile of garbage next to a dumpster. “If you say so...”

Great, she was already starting to figure out something weird was going on. I didn’t want to risk her running off on me. Not only would it cost me this chance, but she’d probably warn Adagio and Aria too. Sonata might have been limiting herself to using mind control magic to cut in line for tacos, but I had a feeling her partners-in-crime wouldn’t. At the very least, they’d start keeping an eye out for me, and maybe hire some mortal security guards.

So I improvised. “Oh, hey, before we get started, can Sunset and I get your autograph?” I desperately searched my pockets, and pulled out a crumpled pizza menu and a stubby little pencil. “It’s just, you’re the first real celebrity we’ve ever met, so...”

Sonata’s face brightened up at that, and she eagerly took the pencil and paper from me. “Sure thing!” While she was jotting down her signature, Sunset gave me the all-clear signal. Because I’m paranoid, I double-checked anyway. Better safe than having a police sketch artist’s rendering on the six o’clock news. I confirmed that we were safe, and Sonata grinned and handed back my pizza menu. “Okay here you go! Ready for some singing?”

“Ready,” I confirmed.

Now I just needed to figure out some way to disable her. I’m usually pretty good at flying by the seat of my pants, but I’d run into a bit of a problem with Sonata.

The thing was, even though she was really a thousand-year-old monster that turned people into jerks as a form of sustenance, Sonata Dusk looked like an ordinary teenage girl. Heck, she acted like one too. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m a bit too chivalrous to be okay with smacking around a girl. I don’t take the principle to suicidal extremes or anything—way too many monsters are good at looking like attractive women—but I just wasn’t comfortable with sucker-punching Sonata.

Sonata cleared her throat while I wracked my mind for a solution. I could try a binding spell, but those are always a bit hit-or-miss. Especially when I still didn’t know enough about how Siren magic worked beyond being pretty sure that it was tied into their singing. If I gagged her that should at least take care of her magic, which just left tying her up. I hadn’t seen any signs of superhuman strength, so that shouldn’t be too hard.

Geez, I was planning how to get a bound and gagged teenager into the back of my car. This wasn’t creepy or wrong at all.

Sonata took another deep breath, and I realized she was about to start singing. While I still hadn’t come up with a plan for how to subdue her, thankfully Sunset was one step ahead of me. Also, as a girl, she lacked any of my compunctions about hitting girls. My apprentice waited until Sonata’s lungs were full, then slammed a fist into her solar plexus. The breath left Sonata’s lungs in a pained wheeze, and the Siren went down, clutching her stomach and gasping.

I stared at my apprentice in shock, which she answered with an annoyed glower. “What was I supposed to do, let her sing? Besides, we wanted to grab her, right?” She pulled a roll of duct tape out from under her jacket and slapped a strip over Sonata’s mouth. “Come on, help me tie her up. The longer it takes, the more likely someone will see us.”

I sighed and pinned Sonata’s arms to her sides as gently as I could so Sunset could get to work taping them down. I guess Sunset was right about the fact that we would have to take Sonata down, and that was always going to require a bit of violence. That didn’t mean I had to like it. “Where did you learn to punch like that, Sunset?”

My apprentice answered with a somewhat rueful smile. “Well I was a high school bully. You pick up some skills.”

I sure know how to pick my apprentices. “I thought you girls did all your bullying by spreading nasty rumors and calling each other fat. Punching and dunking people’s heads in toilets is how guys do things.”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “First off, that’s a stereotype. Second, I liked using rumors and lies because they don’t leave behind evidence, not because those are ‘girly’ tactics. Principal Celestia was too much like the real Celestia to let me get away with blatant bullying, but she wouldn’t punish me when she couldn’t prove I’d broken any rules, so...” She trailed off uncomfortably, then shook her head. “Look, I know how to throw a punch. Can we just leave it at that? I don’t like talking about the stuff I did back in High School-ville.”

My vague understanding of dime store psychology told me that I should probably push her on this at some point, but mid-abduction probably wasn’t the time or place for it. I couldn’t resist a bit of smartassery, though. “Did you learn about kidnapping in high school, too?”

Sunset took my snark and responded in kind. “Nah, I'm just making this up as I go along. Now get the car while I hold her down.”

“Got it, just try to keep her quiet until I’m back.” By this point Sonata was thoroughly bound in duct tape. She’d recovered enough from the sucker punch to start struggling, but duct tape is wonderful stuff. I’m sure she’d manage to work her way free eventually, but it would take her a while. Just to be safe, I went with multiple layers of it all the way around her head. In my experience, there’s no such thing as overkill when it comes to restraining the bad guys.

Hopefully all that tape would last long enough for us to get her to wherever we would be holding her for our interrogation. That raised the question of which one of my friends I should impose on for a bit of hospitality; getting Sonata all the way out to Demonreach might be a bit problematic.

So, which of my friends did I trust enough to ask them if they would be okay with having their mugshot next to mine in one of those crime shows?