“I know your tricks now,” I warn the deimovore. My fingers tighten around the trigger of my magically-modified handgun. “You can’t hurt me with anything but words, and I’m not the same girl you tormented before. I can leave any time I want.”

The other Rachel tilts her head curiously. “Then why haven’t you? No, really. I can taste your fear; right now you’re scared, but not of being hurt. No, you’re afraid that I’ll bite you again and learn something. My, my, what secrets are you keeping?”

I grit my teeth. I should probably just shift back, but I still want answers from Hastur. The King in Yellow sent this monster to terrorize me the first time I visited the World of Glass. She used it to prepare me for my encounter with the egregores. Is this another test from Hastur? Do I need to beat the deimovore at its game again for Hastur to answer my questions? More ridicule, more barbs, more needling at my suffering. But maybe that’s what I deserve for being such a coward about the resolution I made last time I faced it.

“Maybe you want this,” the deimovore muses, lacing her hands behind her back and leaning in. “Maybe you need it. The catharsis, the flagellation, the reminder of what you really are. I can help. I helped last time, didn’t I?”

I flinch. This thing can read me too well. Fuck it, I don’t need this right now.

I conjure a shifter and move to activate it, but before I can, the fake Rachel raises her hands, eyes wide, and shouts, “Wait! Don’t!”

I pause. Tilt my head. “Don’t? Why not?”

The deimovore hesitates. I toy with the shifter. With a groan, it claws at its hair—at my hair, thank you very much—and pleads, “Please, I want to talk. Just hear me out.”

I return the shifter to flame, but I keep my expression cold and stony. “Tell me why I should. You tortured me. I’m going to need a pretty good reason to have a civil conversation.”

“I’ll do anything,” the other Rachel says bluntly. “I’ll take any form you ask and beg however you like. That’s how serious I am. I would have taken Sophia’s shape, but I know that’d just piss you off. Please.”

My curiosity is piqued. The offer is tempting, but more interesting is the stink of desperation to the monster’s plea. “What do you want, fear-eater? You aren’t getting any new terror out of me. Surely you have better prey to chase.”

“If only,” the deimovore snarls. She turns away from me and starts pacing around the shop, her ethereal feet passing through the ash of the ritual circle without disturbing it. “That’s exactly the problem. Do you think I enjoy an existence spent wandering aimlessly in search of a passable meal? I can’t leave the World of Glass like my cousins. Instead, I’m forced to experience the pleasures of your world every time I feed, bombarded with the memories of food that I can’t eat, movies that I can’t see, air that I can’t breathe. I can’t smell the flowers of your world, can’t walk beneath your sunlight, can’t taste a fucking churro. Do you know how badly I was craving a churro after I drank your memories? It’s agony.”

“So what?” I mock. “Why should I—”

It clicks. The monster wearing my face glares at me in hunger and loathing. “Figured it out, have you? I need your fire. I need your magic. If you can transform that brat into something with spine, you can transform me into something capable of leaving the World of Glass. And then I’ll be free of that whore god’s cage! Free of my wretched, unloving maker and this prison of a dimension. Freedom, Rachel. That’s what I crave.”

I smile thinly. “Well, this is exciting leverage, but you haven’t explained why I should care. Making every magical girl in Visage get on their knees and call me ‘Mommy’ doesn’t seem quite worth unleashing you on Earth. It’s a pleasant visual, don’t get me wrong, but I have a very vivid imagination; I don’t need your help to get off.”

The other Rachel rolls her eyes. “I know you’re just saying that to get a rise out of me.” She returns to pacing around the bookstore, but this time she changes as she moves, taking a new form every time I blink. Agatha, Kira, Radiance. In a regal voice, Radiance says, “Surely you can see the advantage of a shapeshifter ally. Whatever you’re doing with that cabal of women, you’re doing it under the watchful gaze of those damnable cats. But they’re not expecting me.”

It takes a moment for that to sink in. I raise an eyebrow and conjure a ball of green flame in my hand. “You’re suggesting an alliance. Would you do as I say? Abide by my demands, be bound by my limits?”

“Yes,” the deimovore says in a heartbeat, back to looking like me. “Absolutely.”

“I find that hard to believe.” I extinguish the flame and narrow my eyes. “A creature motivated by freedom accepting a new set of shackles? You’d be constantly scheming to get out from under my heel.”

The fear-eater laughs. “What heel? Rachel, I know you.” Then she’s Howl, cocky and grinning, with a vicious glint in her eye. “‘You’re one of the real monsters,’” she quotes. “Did you ever figure out what she meant by that? I did.”

I tense up. “Bullshit you did. You never got a bite of her.”

“Didn’t need to,” she drawls. “It was obvious. You know it, you just don’t want to admit it.” She’s Rachel again, posing dramatically upon the ashen stage with hands spread and head lowered. “We are an empty thing. We are an abyss of yearning, hollow and ravenous. We would sacrifice anything and anyone to secure our happy ending with our sweet, precious beloved.”

“That’s not a monster,” I insist. “That’s what anyone would do for love!”

“If Agatha knew what you were, she would never have trusted you to cast that spell,” says the simulacrum of Agatha standing with hands clasped and eyes wide, voice now soft and clinical. “She’d call you a teleological monster, which is the kind that you are. Every interaction you have with another living soul is measured by the pursuit of ends. Every word, every expression, every conscious shift in body language, all calculated to achieve certain goals. You’re empty, Rachel.” The deimovore smiles. “That’s why I can trust you with my leash.”

I feel a prickling on my neck and under the skin of my arms. I shouldn’t have let it start talking, but now I can’t stop listening. Is that really what I am? “You don’t—”

“Imagine you give me a body and I go and kill thirty people,” Sophia says calmly. “How would you react? Tell me.”

The sudden appearance of Sophia sends a train through my thoughts and startles an answer from my lips before I realize I’ve said it. “What if Sophia finds out?”

Rachel smiles at me. “See? No guilt over the lives that might have been ruined because of your actions, only concern that Sophia might judge you for your actions. So no, I won’t feel confined by your limits or try to wriggle out from under them. The only restraint you’d really ask is that I avoid doing anything that could bring harm or unhappiness to you and Sophia. Keeping away from her, not bringing heat on you, it all falls under that umbrella, doesn’t it? Am I wrong?”

I clench my stupid, trembling hands to stop them from shaking. I hate everything she’s saying—the idea that I’m some empty thing, devoid of morals, in love with the kindest, most caring girl in the world and completely unable to share her perspective. But I can’t deny it. I breathe out. Why bother pretending? Anyone who’s watching already knows what I am. “Fine. You’re right. That still doesn’t mean I can trust you.”

Agatha throws herself forward and presses herself against me, staring up at me with those big, round eyes. “But I’ll be completely at your mercy. You said you can take the spell back at any time, right? That means you can banish me back to the World of Glass on a whim. I want to eat churros and chimichangas and chili fries without worrying if that meal will be my last, Rachel. I’d do anything to keep that life. Anything.” The deimovore cycles through Agatha, Bombshell, Ferromancer, Sweet Tooth, Radiance, and Lilith before settling into the girl who flashed me at the Ossuary, now topless, plush and warm against my body. She smiles at me coyly and licks her lips.

I can’t stop the shiver that passes through me. There’s an animal part of my brain that wants to rip my clothes off and tangle my limbs with the hot girl in front of me, and there’s a deeper, hungrier part that wants to ask the deimovore to turn back into Sophia first. God, it’s been too long.

But I’m not so pent-up that I’m going to let my cunt think for me while dealing with a shapeshifting memory-stealing fear monster. “Change back into me,” I order the deimovore as I push it away. “You wanna make a deal, let’s deal, but I’m not going to let you manipulate me through my fucking libido. Who do you think I am?”

The other Rachel shrugs. “I mean, it worked for Chloe Denning at your sixteenth birthday party when she was trying to steal your mom’s jewelry box. And for Abigail Winters when you were seventeen and she needed someone to write her English essays. And for—”

“Okay, okay!” I am not blushing, I am not blushing, I am not blushing. “I may or may not have a history of doing really stupid things because a girl promised she’d have sex with me if I did. But that stopped when I met Sophia, and I’m not going to be unfaithful to her just because you have the ability to look like her. It’s qualitatively different and frankly kind of creepy.”

“If you weren’t at least a little interested, you wouldn’t have said the qualitative part,” the deimovore says with a wink.

“Not the point!! Big whoop for you, you can look like hot women I want to bang!! Cool party trick!! Are you done??”

I feel like I’ve been spun around in a tornado. Fear, curiosity, calculation, and lust have all melted together into one big soup of confused emotion. That’s probably what the monster was aiming for, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t bring myself to dismiss it entirely and just teleport away.

A shapeshifter ally would be useful. And for the gift I can offer to be worth anything to the deimovore, the leash would have to be real as well. The risk of having its new form taken away would keep it in line.

And, as much as I hate to admit… I like the attention, too. It’s stupid of me, but I like being needed by someone. Even by a monster. Seven years a worthless fucking leech, wanted by no one, needed by no one. Seven years of wishing Sophia would love me like I love her, needing her like I need the air in my lungs and wishing she felt the same way.

I take a deep breath, straighten up, and center myself. The deimovore has been watching me in silence, giving me the breathing room to process everything. This creature’s nature is to needle me, but I think it’s genuine about its bitterness toward Hastur and the World of Glass. It wants out of the cage. I can grant that wish.

What kind of goddess would I be if I didn’t answer this poor supplicant’s prayers?

“I’ll give you my blessing,” I tell the deimovore. “I’ll grant you my power and let you do whatever you like in the real world, so long as you don’t bring suffering to me and mine. And in return, you’re going to help me make a world where Sophia never has to fight again. You’re going to help me kill the egregores.”

“Gladly.” The deimovore answers instantly, its lips curling into a vicious grin that looks unsettingly natural on my face. “You have my word, frozen in glass.”

Something ripples through the air at the creature’s words. I know with strange certainty that the pact she just uttered was not made lightly. “My part, then,” I murmur. Then I look down at the ashen circle and sigh. “Redrawing that is not going to be fun.”

The other Rachel chuckles. “Don’t bother. I’ve been following you since you left the tower, so I heard everything; it needs the proper meaning, right? That ritual circle wouldn’t do anything for me no matter what I drew. There’s a more obvious way to connect us to each other. A more intimate way to pass the spark from your body to mine.”

She’s phrasing it provocatively to rile me up, but I can read her meaning clearly. “You want to bite me again.”

The creature smiles beatifically. “It’s the most efficient transmission vector.”

I briefly wonder if this was all just a ploy to get at my neck again, but I dismiss that line of thinking as nonsense. If all it wanted was a bite, it wouldn’t have sworn an oath. It probably could have grabbed me from behind and bitten me the second Agatha was out of sight. I sigh. “Goddammit. I hate that I know you’re right. Alright, give me a second.”

Got another one for you, Prometheus. This one’s a real doozy.

I project the image of the emerald spark at Prometheus, then imagine it forming inside me and being drawn out through the mouth of the deimovore. To my surprise, I get an immediate sense of confirmation from my power. The green flame flickers to life inside me.

“Okay. Do it.”

The deimovore is on me in an instant, fangs appearing in her mouth. She bites down, one Rachel sinking its teeth into another. Ice shoots through my veins and is met by molten fire rising from my core.

The cold in my limbs, paralyzing me. The lips against my neck, oddly warm as they draw in the heat from my body. Pain that doesn’t feel like pain. Her hands, gentle against my back as she cradles me. I am held and frozen and destroyed, and from that destruction blooms fire and life and a strange, impossible connection.

I can taste the deimovore’s hunger, violent and all-consuming. Obsessive, yearning, ruinous desire. Empty. Hollow. An abyss. A monster just like me. My hopes, my dreams, my fears, my hungers, all bleeding out of me and spreading into her like ink in water. I can’t tell where I begin and the deimovore ends, but in this frozen moment we burn together.

The spark passes, the other me swallows, and red lips are torn from my neck. It feels like the first second after a long kiss, my lungs screaming to take in air.

My doppelganger looks effervescent. She flexes her fingers and stares at them in awe. “Magnificent,” she whispers. She snatches my hand and squeezes, hard.

“Ow, what the fuck?” I wince and shake her off.

The awe on her face only increases. The other Rachel cackles—a better villainous laugh than I’ve ever managed—and screeches, “Yes! I can hurt people! I can finally hurt people!”

Comprehension dawns.  That wasn’t just mental, that was physical pain. The deimovore can touch me now. “Well, shit. Congrats, I guess.”

Other Rachel—I really need a better name for her—giggles to herself. Then she freezes in place, eyes blinking rapidly, before whirling back toward me and demanding, “You met a motherfucking wizard? What?”

“I resent the insistent terminology,” I grumble. “There’s no proof she’s ever fucked any mothers. The wizard part seems pretty real, though.”

Rachel 2—nope, not that one—smooths her hair back and blows out air. “Okay. Okay. Hot damn, girl, you’ve got some heavy hitters in your corner. I think we can actually do this. Is that crazy or what? I thought this was a suicide pact, but we might actually win. And then I get infinite churros and chili fries! Muahahaha!”

I’ve created a monster. “I guess that’s technically a vote of confidence. Anyway, you should probably, like, pick a different face? Also, do you have a name I can call you or am I going to have to come up with something stupid like Demi Vorato? Fake Rachel, so, Fachel? No, that’s terrible.”

“Huh? Yeah, sure. I don’t know, Phoebe for Phobos.” The newly-named Phoebe squints and her hair turns bright blue. Her features soften, which is really weird to watch, and her eyes darken. “Okay! That should be good. And now I’m going to go enjoy the feel of real fucking dirt beneath my real fucking boots! Oh, and you should forget about that stupid promise you made and just tell the girl you like her. Phoebe out!”

I open my mouth to stop her, but before the first word’s left my lips she’s already a hummingbird. Phoebe zips past me and disappears into the otherworld Forks.

“Goddammit,” I mutter. I can feel her spark, which grows distant as she flies away and then muted as she presumably finds a crossing point over to the real world. “We didn’t coordinate any code words!” I complain to no one. Well, to Hastur, probably. “Hey, King in Yellow, are you listening? I’ve made more chaos for you! Gonna reward me for that with an audience, or are you just going to leave me here to stew in my annoyance?”

Silence is the world’s response. An amused silence, if I cared to characterize it, which I do, because I am a petty bitch.

I sigh. “Welp. This is probably fine, right? Yeah. Sure.”

I fly away from the ransacked bookstore. As I fly, I wonder which of the two rituals I did today will come back to bite me harder.

[commentary]

The deimovore has a name now! Say hello to Phoebe, everyone.

A special thank you to my Grandmaster-tier patrons, whose support has kept food on my table: Adrian CC, Ashlyn, CaosSorge, Crows Danger, Demi, Lirian, M, Mgbm, Mhai Wind, Morrigan, October, Paige Harvey, PR4v1 Samaratunga, and Selacanis. Wow that’s a lot of you! Thank you so much!

If you like this story and want to see more of it, please go to the RR page and leave a rating or review! Web serials live and die on audience support, and this one is no exception. The better the story does on RR, the more people click through and read, the more motivation I have (both on a mental health level and on an “able to pay rent” level) to keep writing and to write faster.

The next scheduled break week starts on the 8th of February.

[/commentary]