Janet needed to burn down her uncle's beach house in an accidental-looking fashion. She had a plan. It was a simple plan, really, but a plan that failed to account for Equestrians being so... non-human.
Janet inherited an oceanfront house at Myrtle Beach when her uncle died. Said beach house was from the 1970s and falling apart, more of a liability than an asset. In fact, a lawyer friend estimated the liabilities exceeded the assets by roughly half a million dollars. The respectable rental agencies refused to list the house because of the stained carpet, the mouse infestation, and the residues from her late uncle's methamphetamine-manufacturing enterprise. (It was, of course, the methamphetamine manufacturing that led to her uncle's cause of death being "police sniper.")
Janet had neither the money nor the credit to refurbish the house, much less to tear it down and build something new. That's what got her: she knew that an ultra-modern beach house, right on the ocean and convenient to Myrtle Beach airport, could be a tremendous cash cow once she got it listed and New Yorkers with more money than taste, yet who still had just enough taste to avoid Florida, started renting it from her.
Having watched Goodfellas several dozen times—Janet had a crush on Ray Liotta—her mind naturally went to arson and insurance fraud.
However, Myrtle Beach's fire inspector was accustomed to people in Janet's situation doing exactly that, and a South Carolina prison didn't seem very appealing. On Reddit, she found an internet sorcerer claiming to be from Agrabah and Janet sent $500 in Dogecoin for him to hold a seance to summon a hurricane to knock the house over. Sadly, the house was unscathed and the hurricane only succeeded in destroying two fire stations, several elementary schools, and a battered women's shelter.
So Janet found a new plan, based on the recent advent of inter-dimensional travel and thus tourism. She listed the house on AirBnB and advertised it exclusively on IP addresses tagged in the Kirin Lands on the far side of the new Equestrian portals.
She quickly got a booking and then began Phase Two of her cunning plan.
They pulled up in a Tesla, parking it on the gravel pad under the beachhouse, which stood up on tall stilts to protect it from storm surges. Janet figured a Tesla was about that same fire risk as a kirin, inherently. Janet didn't know much about Equestrians, but as they got out of the car, she saw clearly that only one of the two was a kirin, and the other was a species she didn't recognize. She hoped one kirin would be enough.
"Hi!" said the smaller one. "I'm Autumn Blaze, and this is my boyfriend Terramar!"
"Cough," said the taller, feathery one into a clenched talon.
"I'm Autumn Blaze, and this is my platonic mane-care technician Terramar who is most certainly of the local legal age of consent which we researched before booking your fine establishment, and will be sleeping in a separate bedroom from me!"
"Awesome, great story," the feathery one said. "I'm sure she suspects nothing."
"This is South Carolina," Janet replied, holding the keys out, "so age of consent is certainly no issue. Welcome to Myrtle Beach. I hope you have a lovely week!"
Terrarmar grabbed the keys in his claws, slung a suitcase over his back, and flapped up to the house's front porch, a story above the carport. Autumn Blaze levitated the other bags and pranced up the rickety wooden stairway.
"Call me if you need anything!" Janet shouted.
The two disappeared into the house. She heard hoofbeats above her. She used her keys to enter the small ground-level closet that contained the utilities and she shut off the circuit breaker to the hot water heater.
"Let's see how 'no hot water' affects her cool..."
Janet's phone rang a few hours later. The caller ID said the incoming call had a foreign dimension code. "Hello?"
"Hi! Janet? This is Autumn Blaze!"
"Yes?"
"There's no hot water." A raptor-like squawk sounded in the background of the call. "And my platonic... uh... um...
"Mane-care technician," Janet supplied.
"Was that my cover story? Well, Terramar wanted to take a shower. And the water's cold."
"Oh, I'm sorry," Janet said, disappointed at how happy the kirin still sounded. "I'll drop by."
"Thanks!"
When Janet arrived and entered the utility closet under the house, she could hear water sluicing down the drain pipe. She touched the drain pipe and found it warm. Not just warm, but hot. She pulled her hand back.
She stood on tiptoes and touched the pipe heading up to the shower. Cold. She touched the hot water heater. Cold, the circuit breaker still off. She turned the power back on to it, the lightbulb dimmed momentarily, and a deep sixty-hertz hum started as it began warming up again.
She touched the drain pipe from the shower again, and yanked her hand back before it could blister her.
Janet cocked her head. She heard the crashing of the waves on the beach just over the sea-oat-covered dunes. She heard the electrical hum of the hot water heater. She heard the wind blowing in the sea oats. She heard the water rushing down the drain pipe from the shower above.
She also heard a very quiet, very rhythmic thump thump thump thump sound from the shower directly above her.
She eyed the hot drain pipe suspiciously. "Oh!"
Janet unplugged the ethernet cable that fed the beach house its internet, locked the closet, and drove off.
"Hello! This is Autumn Blaze!"
Janet frowned. The kirin sounded way too happy for someone without the internet. "Yes?"
"Did you know there were mice in the house?"
Janet blinked. "Oh no, I'm terribly sorry, I had no—"
"Do you have any more?"
Janet pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at it for a second, then put it back to her ear. "What?"
"My platonic, uh..."
"Mane-care technician."
"He was really hungry after his totally-relaxing-all-by-himself cold shower that I was not involved with in any way, thermal, amorous, or any combination thereof, and then he caught all the mice, but he's still hungry. Do you have more mice?"
"No, I'm sorry." Janet felt a headache coming on.
"Well, in that case, I need to order DoorDash but the internet is out. Can you fix the internet while we go to the beach?"
Janet replugged the ethernet cable, giving the house its wifi back, then went upstairs. She could see the kirin and her boyfriend—'hippogriff,' Google had informed her that the species was—on a beach blanket on the far side of the dunes.
She let herself in with her passkey. Yep: she saw no scurrying feet or naked tails or glinting eyes in the corners or shadows. Terramar had, indeed, cleaned out the mice.
"I wonder what a pet store says if a hippogriff wants to buy a dozen mice...?" She shook her head and moved to the living room. She used the TV remote to enter her parental code and engaged the parental block on every channel but one.
(Janet hoped breaking the TV would just anger them, and not lead to them thinking of their own ways to make entertainment. She didn't want to be one of those AirBnB hosts whose houses ended up on Pornhub.)
"Hi!" said the voice on the phone. "It's Autumn Blaze!"
"Did you get your DoorDash?" Janet asked.
"Yeah, pet stores won't deliver but Great Wall Palace was almost as good."
Terramar's voice came from the background: "Although they didn't have chopsticks and we're having to eat with forks like barbarians!"
"Well, I'm glad the internet is working," Janet said
"Did you know the TV is only showing one channel?"
"Oh? What is that?"
"Disney Channel. Kid's show. Bluey, it's called."
"Oh, I'm sorry that the TV is—"
"This show is awesome, I'm glad we found it. Just called to say 'Thanks.'"
Janet tried cutting off the air conditioning during the heat of the day; the two guests just went swimming in the Atlantic. She cut off the heat during the cool night—not so much as a text. (She imagined the kirin qualified as a heater.)
She had a work crew "accidentally" splatter paint on the Tesla; Autumn Blaze explained she'd bought the extra insurance when they rented it.
The work crew starting early in the morning didn't seem to bother them either. In fact, Autumn Blaze and Terramar didn't seem to sleep at all; perhaps that was the methamphetamine residues in the walls? They also didn't say so much as a word about the meth-kitchen smell that permeated the walls and carpet.
Janet wondered exactly what it took to set off a kirin into a nirik rage. It clearly wasn't easy. Maybe this was just a strangely good-natured kirin and the next one she booked would be easier to set off?
...or maybe the 'platonic mane-care technician' knew how to keep her nice and mellow, so to speak.
After a week, Janet met them in the carport to collect the keys and finalize payment.
This was Janet's last chance, and she knew it. She readied their invoice with "resort fees" and "kitchen restocking fees" and "hidden fee reveal fees" and "sales tax tax" and everything else she could think of. It was going to cost three times as much as the two vacationers had expected, and they would surely complain to AirBnB, but if she got the house to burn down, a black mark from AirBnB would hardly matter—the rebuilt, post-insurance new house would belong on boutique rich-people rental apps that peasants weren't allowed to download, not AirBnB.
Janet smiled.
Terrmar put on aviator sunglasses and slid into the Tesla's driver seat. Autumn Blaze, sitting in the passenger seat of the Tesla, just looked at the invoice, nodded, and levitated her wallet out of a shoulder bag. "We had a great stay, we'll tell all our friends about this place!"
Janet deflated. As much as she was going to appreciate the inflated rate Autumn Blaze was about to pay, she'd been counting on the place burning down!
Autumn Blaze tapped her credit card against Janet's square reader. Then again. Then again. She glared. "What's wrong?"
"Oh, I don't take Pony Express," Janet said, squinting at the credit card. "Just Visa."
And that's how Janet's uncle's beach house burned down.
