"Definitely not the house cleaning."

Those five words, delivered with that particular smile, were enough.

The entire room shifted.

Spines straightened. Heads turned. Every pair of eyes in the space locked onto the door with the kind of apprehension usually reserved for exam results and hospital waiting rooms.

"Who’s it?" Aaron asked.

"Guilds?" Eva guessed.

"Uhm..." Claire coughed delicately into her palm, and then did something that Aaron found immediately, deeply unsettling. She looked directly at him. Not at the group. Not at the door. Specifically at him, with the kind of loaded eye contact that meant whatever was on the other side of that door was absolutely his problem. "Someone I believe we know."

Aaron processed that for a second.

"We as in ’we’ or ’WE’?" he asked, blinking several times.

There was a crucial difference between those two things and both of them knew it.

"Uhh..." Claire slowly pointed back and forth between herself and Aaron, her voice dropping to something just above a murmur. "We..."

His eyes went wide.

One name. That was all his brain offered him. One single name that rose to the surface immediately, like it had been waiting there the whole time.

Ariana.

But that made absolutely zero sense. She lived outside of the city. It had been barely an hour and a half since he’d last spoken to her on the call. One hour. Maybe a bit more. That was it. No reasonable human being could have physically traveled here in that window of time unless they had completely lost their mind or had access to some kind of instant transportation that Aaron was not aware of.

Did she teleport? Did she just teleport here?

"So uh..." Claire scratched the back of her head, watching the visible panic flicker behind Aaron’s sunglasses. "I kind of just slammed the door on her face, so we can’t really be waiting too long for this, right?"

Right. Yes. The door. The face. The slamming.

Aaron stood up, stumbled slightly in a way he would deny forever if asked, fixed his sunglasses, and then nodded with a calm that was entirely performed.

"You’re correct," he said. "We can’t leave her— them waiting."

Eva, who had been watching all of this with the expression of someone trying to solve a puzzle with half the pieces missing, stood up immediately after him. She didn’t know what was happening. She didn’t know who was at the door. She didn’t know why Claire had the energy of someone who had just accidentally made eye contact with a predator. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

But she was going to find out.

She fell into step behind Aaron, one hand landing on his shoulder as she leaned in close, her voice dropping to a whisper.

"So, so, who is it?!"

"You’ll know."

That was all he gave her. Two words. He kept walking toward the door like a man approaching something he couldn’t outrun and had accepted that fact about thirty seconds ago.

Behind them, the three remaining girls stayed exactly where they were. Katie, Jaq, and Lia had collectively and wordlessly agreed that this was not their situation. Whatever was unfolding here belonged to Aaron and Claire, and the most entertaining thing they could do right now was sit comfortably and watch Claire — who was usually the picture of composure — continue to look like she’d just seen a ghost in business casual.

Far more interesting than trying to piece together what was actually going on.

Aaron reached the door.

He stopped.

Took a breath.

Then, quietly, in a voice low enough that only he could really hear it, he gave himself the only pep talk available to him under the circumstances.

"Okay... just a sister. No big deal. I’m a smart, strong man."

He opened the door.

The woman on the other side was stunning in the way that occasionally made people forget what they were about to say. She wore a black overcoat that came down to her knees, her brown hair falling with lighter highlights running through it. A pair of tinted sunglasses sat on the bridge of her nose, hiding her eyes, and she stood at around 5’2 — maybe 5’3 on a generous day. Her face was sharp and symmetrical in a way that looked less like luck and more like a dare.

She didn’t look weak. That much was obvious from a single glance. The kind of build and presence that put her somewhere around Claire’s level, possibly above it.

Aaron was grateful for the sunglasses. It meant his very obvious assessment of the situation went undetected.

"Hola, missed me?"

Ariana’s face broke into a smile the moment she saw him. Before he could say a single word, she had one arm looped around the back of his neck, pulling him down to her level with an ease that made it very clear the height difference was not a disadvantage for her in any practical sense.

She rose on her toes and pressed a quick peck to his cheek.

"How’s my baby brother doing? Feeling like a star?"

She said it like they had planned this meeting for weeks. Like she hadn’t spoken to him exactly one to two hours ago on a phone call that ended with what Aaron had fully processed as a casual goodbye. Not a travel itinerary. A goodbye.

Aaron blinked himself back to reality and created a small, diplomatic amount of distance between them.

"What are you doing here... sis?"

Ariana shrugged her shoulders in a way that briefly revealed the black crop top and shorts she was wearing under her coat, looking for all the world like a woman who had simply stepped outside for a leisurely stroll and happened to end up in a completely different city.

"What, can’t I come to meet my lovely little brother? I was worried about you." She tilted her head like the answer was obvious. "And why are you so surprised? I said see you later on the call, didn’t I?"

She said it innocently. Completely innocently. With a smile that suggested she genuinely believed see you later was a legally binding statement of intent to physically appear within two hours.

Aaron opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Before he could begin constructing a response to that logic, Ariana had already moved on. She craned her neck to peer past his shoulder into the room, eyes landing on Claire, who was standing off to the side doing her absolute best impression of a person who was completely fine.

"Claire Reed~ long time no see!" Ariana’s voice lifted with genuine delight. "You guys still friends or finally a little more? Also, that door slam was rude. I am inviting you over to my place so I can do the same to you, please come, alright?"

"Ah, uh, sorry, uh, yes, I’ll be there...?" Claire replied, her lips slightly parted, the words leaving her mouth before her brain had clearly finished approving them.

Ariana had that effect on people.

Claire had thought it before and she was thinking it again now, even more firmly. From the outside, Ariana looked completely normal. Came from a strong, respectable family. Grew up a little entitled, sure, but had gone ahead and built her own name anyway. By any reasonable metric, she was just a person.

But there was something. Something that Claire couldn’t pin down and had never been able to pin down, something that sent a faint, unplaceable signal up her spine whenever she was in this woman’s presence.

It was the way Ariana always seemed to be playing along with something. Like she already knew the ending and was simply enjoying the Chapters.

It gave Claire the creeps. It had always given Claire the creeps. She was never going to not find it creepy.

Meanwhile, Aaron was undergoing almost exactly the same internal monologue, standing in the doorway watching this unfold with the blank face of a man who had accepted that his sister operated on her own rules and the rest of the world was simply expected to keep up.

And what did she even mean, see you later?

That was a phrase. A normal, everyday phrase. Humans said it constantly. It meant nothing. It was the verbal equivalent of a closing parenthesis — it wrapped up a conversation, it didn’t announce a surprise visit.

How was he supposed to have decoded that?!

"Right..." he managed. "It might’ve slipped my mind. So..."

"So..." Ariana nodded along thoughtfully, like she was genuinely playing his game, her gaze drifting past him into the room again. "Been quite a while since we met, right? The last time was when you were in university... Ah wait, I think you still are."

"Yes," Aaron said, the sarcasm arriving naturally. "Still learning music. Exciting stuff."

"What, I told you that you can quit if you don’t really like it. Everyone already knows you were never really interested in it anyway."

"They do?"

Ariana reached up and took off her sunglasses.

Emerald eyes. Sharp and clear and currently staring at her brother with the expression of someone delivering news that should not be news.

"Well, your class’s name ain’t musician or guitarist, is it?" She smiled, slow and sarcastic. "It wasn’t hard to guess that when you said you were playing guitar it was actually you getting played, mr boy t—"

"That ain’t my class."

"Oh, of course I believe you." The smile didn’t move an inch.

Aaron looked at his sister.

His sister looked at him.

And then, without breaking eye contact, Aaron raised his hand slightly and snapped his fingers.

He’d picked up the motion from the primordial sisters not too long ago. It felt appropriate now.

For a couple of seconds, nothing happened.

Ariana’s expression shifted just barely, the first flicker of something that might have been genuine uncertainty crossing her face as she glanced at his outstretched hand.

Then everything changed.

Four distinct colors of energy began curling and swirling around his hand like living light, wrapping around his fingers like he was wearing the most dramatic bracelet in recorded history.

Aaron let the display speak for a moment before he scoffed.

"A boy toy can’t do this, can he?"