#meanwhile vivi's already halfway there

[zecoritheweirdone]

so i saw this old-ish post about an au centering around a villain lewis and a hero arthur,,, and i. may have gotten attached to it,, dkdndkdjs. so i decided to make some edits + doodles based on it!! i also really wanna make a lil oneshot about it as well,, but uh... whether or not i actually follow through on that, we'll see,, skdjsojdks.

edit: good news, gang,, i wrote the fic!!

[pull-the-hoodie-strings]

Family Dinner

My giftee for this years MSA Holiday Spirits ended up being @phantoms-lair! This was a lotta fun to write and I hope ya like it :D 

My constant curse is making things too long but I think I managed this time.

Summary- After reuniting with Lewis with his family, the Peppers invited (read: insisted) that they all come over for a dinner like they used to. 

"I just think it's too... formal."

Vivi was trying to be patient, she really was, but if Lewis changed his mind about what to wear one more time she was gonna lose it. It wasn't like the guy actually had to change clothes either. A flash of ghostly flames and he could go with whatever look he wanted. Normally Vivi would be all over that but the novelty had worn off a bit after the first six times.

"Lewis, babe," Vivi hopped up before he could switch again, grabbing onto his shoulders, "I promise you look great."

Despite the compliment Lewis just seemed to slump more. "Yeah?"

The sunny smile Vivi had managed dropped a bit then. Lewis had been a nervous mess all morning, not able to even sit still. They both knew it wasn't really about the outfit.

Vivi gave his shoulders a squeeze. "It's gonna be fine, Lew. They love you."

That got a frustrated noise out of him. "I know that but last time-" he trailed off, crossing his arms.

Last time was definitely... something. Obviously a big item on their to do list after Lewis rejoined the group was reconnecting with his family. The poor guy was terrified back then, barely able to keep hold of his human guise. Arthur and Vivi had gone in first, trying to prepare the Peppers a bit at least.

And then Lewis walked in.

The whole room had fallen fell deadly silent. Mrs Pepper had dropped the plate she'd been holding. Mr Pepper dropped to the ground himself. There was a lot of yelling and a lot of tears afterwards, the Peppers practically yanking their son into a bear hug.

The only wrinkle was Lewis's little sisters. Cayenne and Belle were a little wary of him now. Little Paprika spent most of the night hiding behind her older sisters, hardly looking at her brother. Lewis's death was the first big loss they'd experienced. Though he was thrilled to be able to see his family again, Vivi could see the disappointment in his eyes.

Now the Pepper's had invited (more like insisted) they all come to dinner tonight.

Lewis let out a sigh. "I don't wanna scare them, Vi."

"And you won't. They're probably confused, Lewis, you just gotta show 'em you're still their big brother." Vivi paused, thinking for a moment. "Plus once Cayenne figures out you can shoot fire out of your hands and everything..."

A snort. "That'd end with the restaurant burning down."

The mood a bit lighter now, Lewis settled on his usual human appearance, ascot and all. He was still fussing with the cuffs of his shirt as Arthur came downstairs.

"You guys ready?" Arthur's keys were jingling in his pocket, nervous smile on his face. Shooting a glance back to Lewis, Vivi nodded.

"As we'll ever be," she said, forcing a bit of the usual excitement into her tone for her boys. It only worked a little bit. The all piled into Arthur's van and then they were off. The drive to Pepper Paradiso was a quiet one. Arthur was glancing from the road towards the two of them occasionally while Lewis stared out of the window, fidgeting.

Vivi frowned, watching Lewis in the rearview mirror. Slowly, she asked, "Do you guys remember our prom night?"

Lewis frowned, meeting her eyes through the mirror. "Yeah? What part of it?"

"I think we had dinner at your parents restaurant, right?" Despite getting the important memories back, little bits and details were still hard to grasp sometimes.

"Yeah we did," Lewis leaned back into his seat. "We all just went together since we didn't have any dates."

Arthur snorted from the driver's seat. "That probably should've been a sign, considering."

"Yes, well," Lewis shrugged, "mom was ready to give both of you the shovel talk either way."

"What?" Arthur had paled a bit, glancing towards the back seat. "Dude that would be terrifying, don't tell me that right before we get there!"

"I'd say I'd protect you Arty," Vivi said as she patted his shoulder, "but Mrs. Pepper is a force to be reckoned with."

"She's not that bad," Lewis argued as they both gave an exaggerated shudder.

The banter petered off as they pulled in front of the restaurant. It was later in the day, the Peppers having closed earlier than usual so they could host the little dinner. Lights still shone out past the closed sign in the window. The restaurant had always been welcoming, almost a second home for them when they were younger. Now though? It wasn't foreboding exactly but the concept of trying to get that homey feeling again...

Arthur put the van in park, leaving it run as he turned in his seat. "Hey, we don't have to do this if you're not ready, big guy."

But the ghost was already shaking his head. "No. No I want to go. Besides, it's not like I can put this off forever."

Then Lewis was clambouring out of the van, Vivi and Arthur sharing a glance before following. The door to Pepper Paradiso swung open easily. Immediately the smells of food cooking hit them in the face carried on the warm air inside. The tables for regular customers were all bare, cleaned and ready for tomorrow. Vivi could hear distant voices from the kitchen.

Lewis seemed to freeze for a moment as the door shut behind them. Mr. Pepper heard them apparently, swinging open the door to the back and waving them on in. The kitchen was still on the smaller side just enough to serve the Pepper’s needs. Vivi remembered vaguely of Mr. Pepper waxing poetic about his dream renovation of the room. Set towards the back, past the ovens and countertops, was a larger table. A bit beat up over the years, they used it for dinners both with family, friends, and co-workers after long nights.

Mrs. Pepper was stood at the stove, sauteing vegetables. She gave them a small smile before turning and yelling up the stairs.

"Girls! Dinner is almost on, come down and set the table."

They were all roped into helping set up one way or another. Grabbing some more chairs, getting drinks, or in Lewis' case: hesitantly offering to help set the table.

By now the girls had arrived, glancing between Lewis and their parents. Lewis had a few plates in hand, hovering on the opposite end of the table. Vivi could see how tight he was clutching them halfway across the room. They'd already broken enough plates last time.

Finally, just as Lewis went to say something, Belle interrupted.

"It's your turn," she said softly.

Lewis blinked. "Huh?"

She pointed to the still empty table. "To set the table. It's your turn."

Cayenne hesitated a moment before nodding wisely. Lewis, meanwhile, looked like he was trying to do some math.

"I always set the table," he argued, baffled, "you guys just try and hide upstairs and Paprika is- was too short."

"Well you haven't done it in forever," Cayenne crossed her arms. "So you should do it the next like- twenty times. Plus the dishes."

For a moment all Lewis could do was stare. Then, as Vivi watched, he let out a small, disbelieving laugh. It built into one of those warm, deep laughs she loved to hear from him. The smile on his face was just as welcome.

"Right," he said with a nod. Even though his voice was shaky, the smile didn't dim. "Sure, twenty times at least."

"At least!" Cayenne made sure to emphasize that part.

Vivi smiled as she finished grabbing drinks, making her own way to the table. It wasn't perfect, not by a long shot, but they fell back into the familiar sort of sibling banter they used to have. She imagined Lewis would have to sit down with them sometime and explain a bit more but right now? Even little Paprika was smiling.

Cayenne pulled urgently on her sleeve and Vivi leaned down so the girl could whisper in her ear.

"Does his hair always do that now?" Cayenne excitedly pointed towards Lewis, whose pompadour was decidedly more wispy and fire like than before. He was half arguing and half laughing with Belle, who was currently trying to pawn off more chores onto him.

Vivi smirked, whispering back. "Only if you make him laugh."

"Cool," Cayenne said slowly.

Yeah, she thinks they're gonna be alright.

[flyingfoxwriter]

“…Lewis?”

It was not a push; not even a motion forward. His hand just opened.

And he let go. No struggle, no desperate grasp. Not anymore. With only one whisper, Arthur let his only hand open too, release the fearful hold it had on his arm.

The fall was all the same nonetheless. The same rush of air, the same spikes down below waiting to rip flesh… the same horror in those eyes. Now he knew how he himself had looked as he plummeted to his death.

Somehow, for reasons he could not grasp, he felt doubt. Doubt, as his murderer descended to the same fate he had cast him to. His ghostly eyes lost the rage he had shown seconds ago, his skeletal body shivered at the memory of his own flesh being torn. Seeing himself in his enemy, his heart locket seemed to crack again, loudly and painfully.

His hand even moved; it rose halfway, in contemplation. The spikes below seemed to struggle to keep their form. In fact, they barely did.

However, he took too much time contemplating his own actions… and there was no one to stop him. No one halted the ghost in his blind pursuit of justice.

No, as a loud rip and thud echoed, even Lewis knew it was not justice. He shivered like if a shotgun had pierced through his chest behind him, like if he was again down below bleeding to death; because that was what was happening, just to another person, not himself.

Arthur hanged motionless, with the very same expression with which he had fallen. But the seconds passed, and so came the pain. Slowly, he blinked; struggling, he stopped staring up above at that ghostly figure, to look down instead.

At first, he thought he saw green, perhaps a remnant of a memory buried in the deepest corners of his mind. But no, that spike was not green, but purple, like the very eyes he had looked into moments before. However, as he began to tremble, he could not mistake the red color on its point.

It had stopped his fall, after all.

With what little strength he had at the moment, he glanced upwards again. He could feel the spike crack below his weight, its ghostly form weak. But he could not think about how they were dissipating, not even about the one through the right side of his chest; there was a fact that hurt much more, more urgent if possible.

He’s… dead?

A yell echoed to him from above, a familiar gruff voice, but he could not register it. There was the sound of a shotgun; the ghost seemed to turn in shock, finally stopping watching frozen from above. The cave around him dissolved.

What had been sharp edges turned into simple loading boxes, which barely held his weight as their surroundings changed. The blood still poured all the same, managing to flow away from where his body was slightly concealed. A truck, the one in which that wraith had chased him, now his soon to be grave.

As he finally breathed in a raspy intake of air, he heard multiple shots. He heard the ghost move, a gasp from his uncle. And all he could do, even at the thought of the ghost hurting Lance too, was think who that ghost was.

He had not known Lewis was dead. All he had been doing was looking for him, desperately, haunted by the memory of an accident. An accident in a cave that made Lewis vanish, Vivi suffer memory loss, and him…

His prosthetic managed to move at last. The pain in his fake limb was different from the one his body was feeling, just a phantom. His eyes fixed on the blurs in front of him, purple, red and… gray.

A little reach, a weak grasp. But he managed to take the small locket on the ground.

Just a small distance away, the ghost shivered; his hold on the fainted man was gone in an instant. Lewis felt the touch on his metaphorical heart. He turned instantly, knowing who had touched it.

But as he saw, he could not care about his shattered heart. He had torn another one.

Arthur wheezed, sitting weakly against the boxes. He could be holding the wound on his chest, yet he was only focusing on keeping something in his hand. His eyes stared blankly at the picture; Lewis and Vivi first, and then what had really been.

When Arthur looked up to him with horrified eyes, Lewis felt something black gather in his sockets, something that looked nothing like the tears he was seeing.

“W-why would you…?”

Dead, while I am alive.

The answer was there in his thoughts. The picture had been of only Vivi and Lewis at first, surely what he most wanted. There had not been any third wheel in the picture, and Lewis must have not endured the thought of becoming one in death. The chase, the fire, the crash; it all clicked together. The murderous intent was there.

Arthur could understand revenge. He could. If he only knew or could remember that night in the caves clearly, he would understand the real emotions in Lewis. But with no clear memory… he could only see a petty murderer.

“Y-you-“ A cough of blood; Lewis would have stepped closer. He would. But he found himself frozen. “You idiot.”

Arthur had been dying; and yet, his next move should have not been possible. In an unnatural motion, his arms slammed on the ground of the truck, pushing up from behind. In a slow jolt, he stood upright, snarling instead of wheezing. In the dim light of the truck, his body seemed to pulsate, much more than what dying breaths would cause. And where had been a literal broken heart, a mass of flesh grew where the spike had torn him open. From that wound, the skin seemed to blacken, and not due to death or dried blood. His neck seemed to crack, as Arthur gave Lewis a shadowed glance, with a smug fanged smile that should not be there at all.

“What the-“

Lewis could not finish.

There was a huge burst, a green rush that seemed to blast out of his victim, both from the wound on his chest and his fake arm, which had suddenly collapsed into itself. Not only green mist engulfed them, but blinding sparks and electricity, perhaps energy.

And as Lewis crumbled back out of the truck with the force, a voice called, mocking, guttural and unlike the one of his enemy.

“You may not have eyes in those sockets, but this is just ridiculous.”

“Arth-?”

“Arthur’s not listening now, numskull. Better just let him think he’s dead right now, murdered. It’s not like… he’s going to wake up again.”

As the figure advanced out of the truck, Lewis finally saw that was not Arthur. Two enlarged eyes glinted into the light of the moon outside, just slightly bigger to reach the feeling of uncanny valley. With a green glimmer at first, they gained more demonic fleshy colors as he leaned out, his right arm slamming on the frame of the opening in which he threw him minutes ago. Somehow, that grasp bent the metallic frame; his hand did not look human anymore, clawed and green. It contrasted with the color the rest of his skin had, black as night; right above his wrist there was no green tonality, but a hue that looked like blood dried ages ago. As he took the last step out into the moonlight, his left arm swung from behind him, like a scythe. It could not be called an arm anymore; that blast had torn the metal from the inside, its shards now seemingly floating around its former shape, pulsing and twisting around what could only be described as a long wave of electricity. But it was no electricity, or those malfunctioning sparks that had been tormenting him for days. Right from where his real limb had been torn, his flesh seemed to pulse, open, releasing a wild multicolored stream of raging strikes of light. The two most chaotic ones were of violet hues, their twists and turns towards the ghost apparently more intent. He had not grown much in size… but he did, with sickly cracks as he took an aggressive stance. The last nail in the coffin, what grew out of the mass that had closed his wound: a huge fleshy eye opened, glancing blindly around until it stopped, to rest over what had become his enemy: a crying mess of a ghost.

Arthur, or what had been him, smiled wide, seemingly taking an intake of fresh nightly air. Then, he looked downwards with his three eyes, at the figure that was fainted by the truck.

“Ah, this lazy fucker.” Lewis’ sockets widened in fear, as that metallic bundle of sparks and sharp shards swung to take drive over Lance. “Couldn’t grab that shotgun any sooner, could ya?!”

Like a long whip, that stream rose and descended. But it did not strike Lance. Arthur’s already abused body trembled more when two fists slammed on his arms. Past black tears, Lewis’ eyes glared into those three eyes, clarity seeming to sink in. Inside the truck, a locket seemed to shatter even more, as Arthur let out a chuckle.

“Is he still the one you hate the most, little ghost?” Lewis shivered, as Arthur’s mouth opened again, lined with rows of sharp teeth, letting out a whisper that shook his entire being. “Maybe he will be, when I’m done.”

Those eyes twitched sideways, the sparks letting out another burst that scorched his suit. But he did not let go. Arthur was looking past them both, at a scene that had escaped the ghost. Mystery was on the ground, a pool of blood under him. Meanwhile, Vivi herself was near him, a cut on her side. Her bat seemed to smoke coldly, near a weed-like carcass.

“Ahh, I could have waited just a little more… that hurt in his eyes is as horrible and torturous.” The thing shrugged under his hold, finally reclaiming his horrified attention. “But this will do.”

Next thing Lewis knew, Arthur’s hand had slammed onto his chest, right where a spike had pierced him and where his locket should be. There was a blinding light again; those streams pierced into his skeletal body, flowing through him like venomous snakes.

Arthur grinned sickly; he was pleased to see the ghost tumble a few feet away, as unmoving as that weed Vivi had dried with a swing.

That finally took her attention. She looked up from Mystery’s bloody fur with a gasp, her eyes widening as she noticed the ghost shudder nearby. Then, she heard footsteps, strong yet almost silent. A shadow loomed over them, even if there were so many hues tangling with it.

Both Lewis and Vivi shivered, looking up at him. And he only answered with a mocking whisper.

“Hi, Viv.”

[r5h]

Moving On—Interlude III: The Scientist

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Major props to @hecallsmehischild, without whose help this chapter wouldn’t be out for quite some time. (Go read her fanfiction, it’s good!)

“Take it,” Cherry said.

Her brother leaned forward in an old, upholstered chair. Its dark fabric combined with his skull face, funeral clothes, and lurid locket to paint a bleak, moody picture. Cherry imagined him in some of the poems from that Edgar Allan Poe book—Lewis had given it to her for Christmas a while before—and decided he fit perfectly.

Lewis looked down at the Sailor Moon-themed bandaid outstretched in Cherry's hand, which did not fit perfectly. “Cherry, thank you, but....” He looked down at his cracked locket, then back into her eyes. “I don't know if this will help.”

“Bandaids always help. Take it!” She shoved it closer to his locket.

“That doesn't seem to be how it heals,” he said, holding the locket in both hands. “And it's already better than it was before, right?”

Cherry had to agree: before the locket had been cracked all the way across its front, but now the damage only went halfway across the face. She wasn't sure when it had happened: one moment she'd seen it cracking worse than before in the restaurant, then they were all making up, and then the next time she'd gotten a look at it, all the new cracks were gone, and so was a lot of the old crack.

But that was no excuse. Cherry glanced up at him: just up enough to see the skull, and then she looked straight forward at the locket before she could see his fire—his hair. “You gotta put a bandaid on it,” she said, pouting because this was first grade stuff, and she was at least third grade smart: he knew more stuff than her in turn, so shouldn't he know this stuff too? “So that it can heal properly.”

Lewis just kept looking at her—he saw his sockets staring blankly in her peripheral vision—so she groaned. “So your soul goo doesn't leak out! Duh! You're gonna get a ghost infection!”

“I don't think I....” Lewis stopped talking, then laughed gently. “Well, all right.”

He didn't move away as she pulled the paper off the bandaid and applied it, ever so carefully, to his locket's crack. When she was done, the whole crack was covered, and Cherry smiled. “There,” she said. “Now mean ghosts can't slip in and possess you.”

Lewis lifted a finger halfway before stopping and tilting his head; then the finger moved to rest lightly upon the bandaid. “Hmm.” He traced the length of the crack under its cover, wincing slightly as he did so. “Thank you,” he said. There was something in the way he held his head: even though she couldn't see a mouth, she could see him smiling.

Cherry felt herself beaming—almost as if actual light was coming from her, not just a smile. “By the way,” she added, “there's this thing I wanted to ask you, but Dad said to ask Mom, and Mom said to ask Dad, and maybe you know it?”

Lewis nodded, leaning toward her once more, still with that undefinable smile.

“You know that word Ginnie said yesterday, the one she got in trouble for?” His smile seemed to be disappearing. She persevered. “What does it—”

The phone rang from the kitchen. Lewis immediately stood from the seat and stepped clean over her head to stride over there. Cherry followed with a disappointed pout—but she'd be able to ask later.

Lewis picked up the phone. “Hello, Pepper household.” A pause, and then Cherry saw his shoulders relax a little with happiness, as he said, “Vivi!” Then, however, he frowned—well, his face didn't frown, because he didn't have one at the moment, but his whole body sort of frowned. He leaned forward slightly, slumping his head with annoyance. Then, he groaned and pressed the 'speaker' button on the phone's charging dock. Immediately, Vivi's voice rang out:

“—gonna assume that's Lewis trying to talk to me—Lewis, you're a ghost now, regular cameras can't see you, and regular phones can't hear you. If that is you on the other end, you're gonna need someone to transcribe—trans-say, whatever—so that I can hear you, okay?”

“Would you, please?” Lewis murmured, glancing down at Cherry.

“I'm just gonna keep talking,” Vivi continued, “until I hear someone—”

“Hello?” Cherry asked.

There was a pause. “Bell! Hello, how are you doing?”

“I'm... Cherry.”

“Cherry, Cherry, oh my gadzooks I am sorry!” Nervous laughter came through the phone line. “The audio quality's not that great. Anyway, Lewis is there, right?”

“Yeah,” Cherry replied.

“Hello, Vivi,” he said.

“He says hello.”

“Hi, Lewis! Okay, um. This is going to be weird if your little sister is the intermediary, but... whatever, it was gonna be weird no matter how I said it. Lewis, I'd like for you to....”

A series of “ums” and “ahs” followed, as Vivi tried to figure out how to say whatever it was she was going to say. Meanwhile, something occurred to Cherry—how come a phone couldn't hear Lewis, but she could?

She remembered what Dad had told her—sounds were actually vibrations in the air, and then they vibrated your ear and that was how you heard things. She pulled out a chair from under the kitchen counter, climbed up on it, and grabbed a napkin. “Testing,” she said, with the napkin almost touching her mouth: the napkin fluttered as she spoke.

“Okay, I think I'm ready,” Vivi said. “Still there, Lewis?”

“Yes,” he said. Cherry echoed him as she laboriously pushed the chair over to his side, the friction making sounds like a brass horn. “What are you doing?” he asked, looking down at her.

“What are you doing?” Cherry asked, then realized—with a blush appropriate to her name—that this line hadn't been meant for Vivi.

“What I am doing,” Vivi replied, “is saying this: Lewis. I would like. For you. To come over to my house.”

Cherry was finished pushing the chair, and she clambered upon it again as Lewis leaned forward expectantly. She held the napkin in front of where his mouth would be.

“Privately,” Vivi added.

“Privately?” Lewis asked, eyesockets widening. The napkin didn't flutter at all. Cherry repeated the word, the implications filling her mind. Mostly the implications about the napkin, though she knew 'privately' probably implied things too, even if they weren't as interesting things.

“Privately,” Vivi repeated. “Okay, wow, I guess we've probably said 'privately' four times and I'm totally semantically satiated, privately privately privately shut up Vivi.” Resonant slapping sounds cut her off: she was probably smacking herself in the head. “It is not, let's be clear, a date. Not exactly. But it is at least a friendly visit between two people, one of whom would like to get to know the other one better. So, uh, what times work for you this weekend?”

Lewis pressed his fingertips against his chest and scratched without seeming to realize it. “I... don't have a job, per se, so... tell her any time,” he said, glancing down at Cherry before his stare returned to nothing in particular.

“Lewis says any time,” she said.

“Awesome! Okay, then let's go for noon on Saturday. Sounds good to you?” Vivi's voice was accelerating. “Sounds good to me. Oh, almost forgot, bring your violin, okay? Okay, Lewis and Cherry, thanks! Talk to you later! Bye!”

Cherry thought she heard a deep breath heaved on Vivi's end of the line, one which sounded like the first of many, just before the call ended. Then again it could have been static. Whatever—the conclusions she could draw from this were huge!

“You're psychic!” she exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air.

“A date!” Lewis said, scratching his chest more rapidly. “A date with Vivi!”

“Lewis, didn't you hear me? You're a tele—wait,” Cherry said, squinting. “Didn't she say it wasn't a date?”

“My violin,” he said, turning around absentmindedly and walking out of the kitchen. For Lewis, it wasn't a fast pace—for Cherry, whose legs clocked in at approximately a third of the length of his, it was pretty fast. “She wanted me to bring it. I think I left it in my room—it's been a year, have Mom and Dad been tuning it?”

“Come on, Lewis, listen!” Cherry ran up the stairs behind him as he took them, with unthinking ease, three at a time. “If you're not talking with regular sounds, then either you've gotta be talking with weird ghost sounds, which is crazy, or you're just using telepathy to talk right into people's—”

Lewis walked into his room, and forgot to open the door first. His body phased right through, leaving Cherry stuck outside. “Brains,” she finished.

She looked up and realized she wasn't the only thing stuck outside. The Sailor Moon bandaid she'd applied not ten minutes before had failed to pass through the door with the rest of Lewis, and was now adhered to the dark brown wood.

Cherry frowned. Sometimes, Lewis didn't know how to worry about the important stuff.

Lewis stared at Vivi's tiny, yellowing front lawn, and imagined the smell of October grass. Then he stepped up to her porch, violin case in hand.

He'd had all sorts of plans. An impressive entrance in a cloud of flame and smoke, astonishing Vivi as he appeared out of nowhere and swept her off her feet upon the doorstep. And perhaps a full choir of Deadbeats, who would have happily provided backing vocals on any lovesong he could have cared to name: “My Girl”, “Fly Me to the Moon”, anything—he could take his pick. Dozens of grand romantic gestures had paraded their way though his head, in the sleepless nights leading up to their date.

Except, of course, that it wasn't a date. She'd been insistent on the point.

Lewis reached up to knock at Vivi's simple, slightly disrepaired wooden door. He hesitated, opened his case, pulled out his violin, and quietly tested that it was in tune. Satisfied, he returned it to its case, and stood straighter as he knocked three times.

It wasn't a date. Of course. But no point in doing this if he wasn't doing it right, after all. Fifth impressions were important.

After a couple of footsteps from inside, Vivi opened the door partway, and the first thing he noticed was the awkward smile on her face as she looked up. The second thing was the strap over her shoulder. “Vivi,” he said, nodding in greeting—was that enough? Should he do something friendlier?

“Hey there!” She half-extended her hand to shake, before raising it for a clumsy wave. “So, ready for our re-first non-date?”

“Hm?”

“Or maybe our first re-non-date....”

“Perhaps—” Lewis decided: he offered his hand to shake. “Just a meeting.”

“What kinda made-up word is that?” Vivi laughed, and grabbed his hand. After a few good shakes, she quickly released it and turned slightly—Lewis made to walk forward, but she was just lifting the strap from her shoulder, and hefting what it was attached to.

“So,” she said, holding up her guitar in front of herself. “I found this in my closet. Look familiar to you?”

Lewis's eyes widened: he hadn't seen it in a while. Vivi's guitar wasn't particularly well taken-care of: the clean curve defining the guitar's face was marred with chips and scratches, like dog-ears in a well-read book. It looked a little dustier than he'd remembered—but yes, he recognized this.

“Because here's the thing,” Vivi continued, “it doesn't look familiar to me. I think I know how to play it a little bit, but I can hardly remember ever seeing this thing. I don't remember noticing it all year—I must have been tripping over it and not realizing every time I used that dang closet.” She snorted with something like frustration. “Which means, something about this guitar has a lot to do with you, right?”

Lewis nodded. “We met a lot, before we were officially dating—you wanted me to help you learn to play the guitar. I told you I only knew how to play the violin, but you said it was close enough.”

“Well, it is, isn't it? They're basically the same idea.”

“I eventually decided it was just an excuse to spend time with me.”

Well, it is, isn't—” Vivi caught herself, with a blush that seemed to glow brighter than Lewis could. “Anyway, the point is that thanks to you—” she shot him a stink-eye, but without actual malice to it “—I no longer remember how to play guitar. So I was wondering if you'd be willing to help me relearn.”

Lewis smiled. “I would be delighted. May I come in?”

He rested his violin on his shoulder and, once more, made to step forward—but Vivi didn't budge, and her shoulders were tensed. She stared up at him and, after a few seconds, blurted out, “So, how's the family doing?”

His eyes narrowed as he gently lowered his foot. “Are you stalling?”

“Yes I am.” She looked relieved to have been found out: her shoulders relaxed immediately.

“Hm.” He considered this for a few seconds. “Why are you stalling?”

“Well.” Vivi leaned against the doorframe. “Erm. The thing is... the thing is....”

A compact white shape interposed itself between Vivi's legs and the door. “I believe this is where I come in.”

Lewis looked down at the voice, and saw Mystery—small dog Mystery, not giant kitsune Mystery—standing in front of her. “Hello, Lewis,” he said.

Lewis stared at him. “Hello, Mystery,” he said flatly.

“Sorry, am I butting into your private time together? I wouldn't want you to feel uncomfortable just because I'm around.” Mystery wore the most self-satisfied grin Lewis could remember seeing. And Lewis distinctly remembered the vetala.

“Uh, yeah,” Vivi said, as her lean deepened into a slump. “He's 'the thing'. Sorry.”

Lewis looked back her way, jabbing his index finger down. “What is he doing here?”

Mystery laughed. “You know I live here, right?”

“Ugh, come on in, I'll tell you.” Vivi opened the door fully and walked inside, with a more sullen gait than Lewis was used to seeing.

What a day.

Vivi slumped against her front door with a groan, dawdling for a minute before she pulled out her key. She hadn't had much time to dally after the vetala was destroyed, and after Lewis reconciled with his family: she had to run back to Tome Tomb, if she wanted any chance at keeping a job.

Somehow, Duet had been satisfied with her vague explanation of “family troubles”, albeit after one of his weird, personal-space-invading forehead touches. So she'd gotten to keep her job—which was somewhat difficult to get excited about.

And then there had been Chloe, and the tedium, and her muscles still aching, and just somehow her day had managed to be the perfect mix of bad supernatural stuff and bad mundane stuff. Like some sort of combination fan-vacuum, it both sucked and blew.

At last she pulled out her key, shoved it in the lock, and opened it. She was so ready to fall into a bed.

Vivi barely had time to comprehend the white blur of movement before it slammed her, knocking her hard on her back against the slats of the porch. She'd instinctively exhaled just before impact, so she didn't have the wind knocked out of her, but that didn't exactly make the experience fun. She blinked the spots out of her eyes.

When her vision cleared, she saw a tiny pair of yellow spectacles, resting on a panting snout in front of furious black eyes. “Er... hello, Hobbes?” she said, as hot, dry breaths abraded her face.

“That's not my name,” Mystery growled. “What were you thinking?”

He was big. Not as gigantic as she'd ever seen him, but certainly bigger than the lap-dog he usually masqueraded as. This seemed to be an intermediate form, big enough to pin her but small enough to fit through her door. She could see a sort of haze behind his head where his tails would be—or maybe that was just the recent cranial trauma messing with her vision.

Vivi glared back at him, as best as she could. “Could you get more specific? And also, off me?” She struggled to lift her arm to push at him, but it was held down by his paw. Mystery had successfully held down Lewis, so Vivi guessed she didn't have much chance of getting free, but she had to try.

“You were dealing with an immensely dangerous creature, and your best idea was to attack it with someone who would make it more dangerous. What were you thinking?”

“We didn't,” Vivi said, enunciating each syllable in her frustration, “have a lot of time—”

“You had me!”

Mystery's fangs were bared, right up against her nose. He snarled again, before continuing, “Or at least you would have had me if you'd thought. You could have come and gotten me, and I would have been in and out of that restaurant in a minute. No stupid emotions, just one destroyed vetala!”

He pushed himself off of her, briefly putting a shock-load of force on Vivi's forearms: she let out a muffled cry of pain, to her displeasure. He turned around and slowly walked back into the house. “What were you thinking,” he muttered.

With many a grunt of discomfort, Vivi pushed herself to her feet. “If you were so consarned concerned, maybe you could have come on your own? No one was stopping you.” She rubbed her inner forearms, trying to mitigate the pain, as she stumbled through the door.

Mystery glared at her over his shoulder, as he stalked his way over to the other end of the room. “I don't know if you understand this, but I have a cover. There's a reason I don't go around everywhere at full size, and it's not just because of your pitiful human ceilings.”

“So come over as a regular dog!”

“How fast does a regular dog run? And that's not the point—the point is that you need to start taking some responsibility for your team's well-being.” Mystery turned in a circle on the spot, like an angry cat, then dropped into a resting position. His illusory tails curled around his entire body with their tips pointed slightly up, like some sort of huffy lotus flower.

“Oh, like you did?” Vivi slumped onto her couch with the approximate grace and self-control of a crash test dummy. “Don't act like your phone call thing was any sort of great idea, either. Getting me to guilt-trip Lewis just after the nick of time—what were you thinking?” She flopped an accusatory hand at him.

“You're all still alive, aren't you?” His eye swiveled her way, but the rest of his face stayed sullenly pointed away. He shifted a bit, burying his snout deeper into his body, and muttered, “At least the ones I could keep alive, this time—”

Mystery cut himself off, and glanced her way: then, with a muffled growl, he turned entirely away.

Vivi sighed. From here, he looked... well, she was starting to get the feeling she wasn't great at reading people, and she could only imagine reading dog-kitsune-intermediate-stage things would be even tougher. But, if she had to hazard a guess—and life seemed to be telling her, loud and clear, that she did have to—then she'd have said that Mystery looked worried.

“Mystery,” she said, “I'm sorry I didn't—”

“Keys,” he interrupted, without moving.

Vivi blinked. “What?”

“Another reason I couldn't exactly come on my own? You lock your condo up each day you leave for work, and you don't leave a key in here. It's like you think you live alone, without any other sentient creatures in the building.”

He uncurled a bit, enough to glare at her with both eyes, though without any apparent genuine anger. Or genuine anything, for that matter. All she saw was the smarmy, annoying amusement she was coming to really dislike. “For all my many talents, Vivi, I'm not very good at opening locked doors. No—let me rephrase that.” He laughed, briefly, and in a way that seemed designed to flash as many teeth as possible. “I am exceptional at opening locked doors, provided you won't ever need to close the door afterward. But I think you might prefer to just leave me a spare key.”

Vivi inelegantly shoved her hand into her pocket: jack-kitsune though he might be, Mystery had a point. “Here,” she said, as she pulled out her keyring, wound her spare key from it, and tossed it onto his body. “Where are you going to put it?”

“You let me worry about where I'm going to put it.”

Vivi sighed with indifference and let her eyes sag shut, ready and willing to take a nap without transferring herself the few feet to her bed. Her breathing became regular, all ambient noise faded away, and then she felt the couch sinking to her sides, sinking into two points of pressure.

With great regret, she opened her eyes once more to see Mystery's eyes not three inches away, his paws surrounding her legs. “Actually,” he said, “as long as we're talking, here's a few more ground rules.”

“And one of the ground rules is, whenever I'm in contact with any potentially dangerous supernatural entity, Mystery wants to be there. And potentially dangerous supernatural entities includes you.”

Vivi slung her guitar into her arms and leaned against the wall as she finished speaking, too frustrated to sit. Lewis, to her right, settled into the room's couch; he shrugged in response to the new rule, and his head tilted briefly to the side. What was that, Vivi wondered? If nodding indicated agreement, and shaking the head meant disagreement, then maybe this head tilt was the middle option: “I don't quite agree, but I can't dispute it either.”

From the other side of the room, resting in a doggy bed, Mystery smirked. Well, he continued to smirk. Vivi didn't know if it was a conscious effort, or if he just had resting... lady-dog face.

She looked away from Lewis, and also away from Mystery as best as she could. “Son of a musket, I'm sorry,” she mumbled at the wall. “I made this big deal about you being here privately, and now he's here too.”

“Might I repeat that I live here.” Mystery rolled his eyes. “What would you have done, tie me outside?”

Vivi grunted. “Keep bringing the sass, mister—see what happens.”

“Oh, please. I'm the superior life form here. I'd be the one putting you outside to think about what you did. But if it makes you feel better, I'm not—” he interrupted himself with a big yawn, stretching out and turning over to find a more comfortable position. “Oh, that's better. I'm not actually interested in your date, I'm just here—”

“Not a date—”

“—call it what you like, Vivi—I'm just here to make sure no one does anything stupid.” Mystery flicked a glance at Lewis. “Just pretend I'm not here, and have fun, you crazy kids. Don't do anything I wouldn't do,” he said, winking at Vivi.

“Sure thing, Dad.” Vivi felt her eye twitch. She closed her eyes. One, two, three, four....

She took a deep breath, reopened her eyes, and focused on Lewis. “So,” she said, and crossed the room to squeeze her keister onto the couch, in the scant space that Lewis did not occupy. He felt warm beside her. “Are you ready for some guitar teaching?”

“Hm.” Lewis pulled out his violin. “What do you know already?”

“Well, I wanted this meeting to be fun as well as instructive, so I got some of the boring stuff out of the way already. I learned what the different guitar parts are, I learned how to tune it—” she pulled gently along the strings, strumming each one in turn and playing their notes: Lewis nodded in approval “—and I can do a scale.”

As scales went, it was a disjointed, halting thing. Squinting in concentration, she took two or three seconds between some notes—then jumped between other pairs in a moment. But when she'd traversed up, and then down, an entire octave without a single mistaken note, she had to beam with pride.

And then she had to stop, when she looked up and saw Mystery wincing with his paws over his ears. “What?” she blurted.

“Nailed it,” he mumbled, wincing—he had to be exaggerating, the little son-of-his-mom. “Now can you do something about the rhythm?”

Vivi groaned, and turned away, leaning her head to Lewis before motioning toward the bedroom. “Look,” Mystery continued, as she walked into her bedroom and Lewis followed. “It's not my fault that I have such a keenly developed sense of musical theory and timing, which your playing so rudely offended—”

Vivi shut the door, trying not to slam it. “Jackass,” she whispered.

“He does have a point.”

Vivi glared at Lewis, who shrugged and held up one hand. “A small point,” he explained, with his thumb and middle finger infinitesimally close together, almost touching. “About as small as... hm.”

“As an actual, mathematical point?” Vivi slammed her butt onto the bed. “As in, no volume at all? As in, he has no point at all. I played all of those notes perfectly, thank you very much.”

Lewis hummed, and hemmed and hawed, as he pulled up Vivi's desk chair from by her computer and made to sit in it—but then seemed to think better of it, standing up straighter again. “You did use to have a stronger sense of rhythm, though. Before... well.” He sat down on the adjacent corner of the bed, which sank heavily toward the floor, and laid his violin on the desk.

“Hence, this visit.” Vivi strummed out a few F chords—slowly, so that no one could complain about her rhythm—and tried to control her scowl. “Whatever. I'm not really here to play chords or scales. I wanna play a song!”

“That does sound more fun.” Something about Lewis's voice traced a smile onto his features, even if his mouth only moved a little. “Any suggestions?”

“Well, I already know an entire scale and how to play chords, soooo....” Vivi grinned cheekily, as if storing acorns. “I was thinking, Classical Gas—”

“No.”

“—would be a terrible idea. Gotcha!” She giggled. “And that's why you shouldn't interrupt. Honestly, though, what are some good songs for beginners?”

“Four minutes and thirty three seconds,” Mystery called from the other room. “On repeat, please.”

Oh, good. Now, at the age of twenty-four, Vivi had a snarky overbearing parent, and it was her dog. “Play it yourself!” she yelled, pounding on the door a couple of times. “Anyway,” she said, returning her gaze to Lewis and socketing a smile onto her face.

Lewis, for his part, was leaning over her laptop, sparing her swivel chair. “May I?” he asked, and Vivi nodded, leaning forward to unlock it—but Lewis typed in a password, and her desktop appeared. “Good to know I can use keyboards, at least,” he grumbled, pulling up a web browser.

Vivi stared. Eternal, undying love—or whatever—was one thing, but she'd given him her password? Hare Krishna and the Sorcerer's Stone! she swore internally, trying to think of a new one.

Lewis hummed with indecision as he typed and deleted a few likely search strings—“beginner guitar song”, “guitar tutorial beginner”, “basic guitar chords”—before sitting up straighter, all of a sudden. “Here's one I'm fond of,” he said, typing in a less generic search string: “coldplay the scientist tutorial”.

“It's not a guitar song originally, but it sounds nice on one. Oh, but don't tell Arthur,” Lewis mentioned as an aside, glancing Vivi's way as he opened the video. “I don't need a spat regarding my musical infidelity and unrefined tastes.”

“I don't think he'd insect you about stuff like that.”

Lewis just stared at her: was he failing to parse 'insect' as 'bug'? But a realization approached Vivi like an oncoming train: distant at first, but before too long, blaring and far too close. “Oh, come on.” She pouted with all her might, sinking forward into a huffy leaning pose. “I'm only supposed to have forgotten stuff about you!”

“Did that only come up when we were all together?” Lewis scratched his chin. “Hum.”

The music tutorial played uninterrupted in the background, as some bearded man spoke in a curiously high-pitched voice about the particular chords involved. Funny, how there could be an awkward silence even with so much background noise.

“Turn it off!”

In a way, it was almost a relief when Mystery barged through the door and leapt onto the desk. Almost but not quite, because, well, Mystery.

“What in dangnation are you doing?” Vivi managed, as he struck the laptop's touchpad repeatedly until he hit the left mouse button, pausing the video. She winced at the sound of claws on plastic. “Hey, don't scratch my laptop, that's expensive!”

“You're welcome,” Mystery said, an intense look in his eyes. “That wasn't just any video, it was a mind virus.”

Lewis glanced at the friendly-looking bearded man on the screen, then stared at Mystery, head tilted incrementally to the side. It would have been redundant, Vivi imagined, to say something like “A what?”, “What's a mind virus?”, or “That's the stupidest thing I've heard all week.”

Mystery growled at him, perhaps hearing the unsaid jibes. “A mind virus! Encoded in online data. It's inserting instructions into your brain, that you'll carry out later!”

“Mystery.” Vivi squinted. “You just described a tutorial.”

“Don't be snarky about it—I mean subliminally! I heard him trail off mid-sentence as it devoured his brain!”

Lewis sighed. “I finished my sentence,” he said, standing up fully. “And then I stopped talking for a while, because that's how conversations work.” His head brushed the ceiling, and his hair might have been stirring—Vivi certainly hoped not, for the sake of having a roof over her head. “Now,” Lewis said, “get out.”

Mystery grunted, and hopped down to the rolling chair. He leaned forward and grew just enough for illusory tails to appear behind himself. They sprouted forward, jacking into every kind of port the laptop had: HDMI, USB, even the headphone input. Vivi watched, eyebrows raised, as the video returned to the start, then played at incredible speed. Mystery's eyes locked wide-open.

Before a minute had passed, the twelve-minute video was done. Mystery sighed, his voice coming out at a deeper pitch in his larger form. “All right. False alarm. But you would have been very grateful, had there been a subliminal message.”

With jerky movements, his tails pulled out of the holes where they'd been implanted. “At least take my laptop out to dinner first,” Vivi muttered.

“Vivi, it's a laptop. It consumes electricity, not food. Don't be ridiculous.” Mystery stared at her.

Vivi stared back. There wasn't really any response to make.

“Ah. An awkward silence.” Lewis loomed further over Mystery. “Now you know. Should I repeat myself, or will you get out?”

“Fine,” Mystery groaned. “I'll get out of your hair... but not the room.” He retreated to the back corner, near the head of the bed. “I know it's hard, but just keep ignoring me.”

As Lewis restarted the video, Vivi counted in her head until her hand relaxed from its claw-like shape. She watched in relative silence with Lewis for a couple minutes, as the man on the screen played a snippet of the song.

“Doesn't seem hard,” Lewis said, picking up the violin. “Basic chords are D minor, B-flat major, F major....” He sawed them out on his violin in quick succession. “And then this one's a little tricky, but not much. It's called a Fadd9. Or maybe an F-add-9,” he amended, pronouncing the second one as 'eff-add-nine' instead of 'fad-nine'. “I don't... know how it's pronounced, I've only ever seen it written.”

He drew another chord, one which sounded sort of... harmoniously dissonant, Vivi decided. “Let's see if I was right,” Lewis continued.

The first thing the video described was the placement of the capo—a sort of guitar clamp to change the pitch of the notes, which Vivi wasn't sure if she owned. Drat. “Hm,” Lewis said, as the capo went on the fifth fret. “That changes the absolute but not the relative pitches of what you play.... A minor, F major, C major and then Cadd9, or cee-add-nine. Whichever.”

Lo and behold, as the video went on, the bearded fellow named each chord in turn—except the last, which he just described as 'C but with a D on top, like so'. Lewis grunted. “I was hoping to learn to pronounce it.”

“You know a lot about this music theory stuff,” Vivi said, turning his way. “But it sounds like you didn't learn it out loud?”

Lewis looked her way—then stopped himself, turned back to the video, and paused it. Then he returned his gaze to meet hers. “Mom had this violin, and a bunch of leftover music theory books. She used to play back when she was younger, but with a restaurant and one-two-three-four kids, she didn't have much time to keep it up. It was actually one of the first things I saw the first time I got to the Peppers' house.” He laughed gently. “But I must have told you this story a hundred times.”

Vivi rolled her eyes, and after a moment of realization, Lewis jolted in his seat. “Oh, of course. Well, I didn't have much time either, too much catch-up for missed years of school—and then the restaurant, before long. But I wanted to learn to play, even if I couldn't attend one-on-one lessons. So I devoured those books, got more from the library, listened to classical CDs. Anything.” He smiled. “But I'm rambling. You've got a song to learn.”

“No, keep going, it's interesting rambling! Actually, wait,” Vivi said, frowning in consternation, “if it's 'interesting', can it still be called 'rambling'? Or is that an oxymoron?”

“You invite me over for a guitar lesson, so you can hear me ramble about my mom's old music books.” Lewis lifted an eyebrow. “Almost as if the guitar lesson still isn't the point.”

“Ah, you've seen through my charade. Yes, I admit it, I'm tricking you all into social situations so that I can learn more about the members of my team. How devious of me.” Vivi smirked, and punched Lewis in the arm. “And besides, it's totally relevant. Similar instruments, remember?”

“I remember. All right.” Lewis sighed. “But that's actually where the story ends. Sorry to disappoint.”

“Ugh, fine. Lesson it is.” Vivi propped the guitar up on her lap, made to strum, then stopped herself. “Ah, shoot. Do I have a capo?”

She looked up at the ceiling, trying to think of whether or not she'd seen such a thing in her house, but then Lewis's hand moved in her peripheral vision. She looked back down to see his index finger pressing down on the fifth fret. “You have me,” he said.

She smiled back, then positioned her hand for the A minor chord—the one that would become D minor with the improvised capo. Fingers went here and here, and—she strummed.

The notes flew out exactly as she was hoping for, and matching the video. She strummed eight times—one and two and three and four and—then paused to reposition her fingers for the Bb major, or rather the F major chord.

Another eight strums. Another pause to move her left fingers around for the tonic chord, and then another eight strums. The video had said she just needed to pick up her middle finger to switch chords on this one, so without pausing she did so after the eighth chord and kept going.

A single laugh escaped her, and she kept going, emboldened enough not to pause. D minor, eight strums—Bb major, eight strums—F major, sixteen strums but with lifting the middle finger on the ninth.

And she was into the first verse. “Come up to meet—” she said, and her playing immediately went to heck in a hamper. The jarring, discordant notes stopped her cold.

“Don't do that,” Lewis said, gently and without admonishing. “Singing while playing is tough for beginners. It's like trying to control a couple of new, extra limbs.”

“Wow,” drawled Mystery's voice from behind them. “That sounds so hard.” Vivi glanced his way to see him with one of his tails curled far forward, scratching his nose.

With obvious care, Lewis removed his hand from the guitar, then clenched it into a crushing fist. It shook with the strain for several seconds; then Lewis relaxed it and returned it to the fifth fret. “Start from the top. I'll keep time. One, two,” he counted off at a slow, steady pace, “three, four—”

Vivi restarted, and Lewis's tapping foot provided a steady, thudding metronome. Eight strums in D minor, eight in Bb major, eight in F major, another eight in Fadd9, and then repeat—

Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry,

You don't know how lovely you are....

Vivi vaguely heard the words in her head, even as she focused on the pattern of her fingers. She must have heard this song before.

I had to find you, tell you I need you,

Tell you I set you apart....

There came a humming—outside her head, not inside. Was that Lewis?

Tell me your secrets, and ask me your questions,

“Oh, let's go back to the start....”

And was Lewis singing? A bulb of jealousy blossomed, the idea that Lewis got to sing and not her—except that wasn't Lewis's voice.

“Running in circles, coming up tails,

Heads on a science—”

The chord shattered like dropped china as she whipped her head around, and at that moment Mystery stopped singing. He was staring into the wall, apparently not by design. “Wrong,” he murmured, with the same quiet volume he'd been using. “Gotta focus, lift your middle finger off the chord.”

She glared at him, strumming halted. I'll show you lifting my middle finger!

In time, he looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “What? I absorbed the whole video, remember? Now after this, there's the chorus, you'll have to stay in Bb major for sixteen—”

Lewis released the guitar, stood up, and was in front of Mystery in two strides. “You know, all things considered,” Lewis said, “I've kept quite calm.” His tone agreed; he seemed to be musing out loud.

Then he grabbed Mystery by the scruff of the neck, lifting him like an empty plastic bag. “That will soon change dramatically,” Lewis hissed, as the flesh vanished from his face, leaving the skull to stare Mystery down. “Stop ruining this.”

Mystery flinched, then snorted. “How terrifying.” His grin glinted, and he seemed no more rattled than he had a moment before, coiled up and snoozing. “Pardon me, to be sure, but where I come from we like to do things correctly. Especially music.”

Vivi blinked. “Hold on. Where you come from?”

Lewis growled, and his grip tightened: Mystery might have been on the cusp of opening his mouth, but instead his grin now seemed more like gritting his teeth. Vivi stared at his muzzle and remembered another muzzle, like that one but shorter. Howling along to some tune playing in the car.

Faking it, of course. Because he'd been lying about literally everything, including being a dog. So clearly he'd faked that too. Right?

“Lewis!” she called out, as he wound his arm back in preparation to toss Mystery out. “Put him down!”

He glanced back at her, arm still cocked. “Why?”

“Because—” Vivi couldn't very well say the real reason why. Not with Mystery in hearing range. So she'd have to find something else, something convincing.... “Because... animal abuse is wrong!”

Aw, stag, that wasn't it. The two of them were briefly united in squinting at her. “Because, well, don't sink to his level!” she managed. “You've been trying to control your anger—don't let him rile you up, okay? Just... count the beat with me. One, two—”

“Three, four.” Somehow, even with no lower jaw, Lewis's voice seemed to be coming out through gritted teeth. “One, two... all right.”

He dropped Mystery without ceremony. The kitsune landed with (inappropriately, for his supposed species) catlike grace.

Lewis stalked over to the foot of the bed and sat down, not bothering to account for his weight. Vivi winced, hoping she hadn't heard a crack. “Why,” Lewis muttered, “are you—one, two, three, four—why are you tolerating this?”

“Look, I know he's being a little turd, but—just trust me on this, okay? I've got an idea.”

“What idea?”

“I really can't explain it—he can probably hear me.”

“Yup,” Mystery piped in. “Don't think too loud, either. What are you talking about, anyway?”

Lewis trembled, and Vivi rested a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, I've still got some chords to learn, right? How does the chorus go?”

After a few seconds, Lewis heaved a sigh. “You're right. He just wants attention.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Vivi saw Mystery blinking. No snappy comeback this time.

“Anyway,” Lewis said, “if I'm right, the next chords are....”

It had been fifteen minutes—she had kept track, for purposes of bragging rights—and now Vivi was confident in her ability to play the song through. Or at least the chords.

It was time for phase two.

“Give me a beat?” she said to Lewis, who still held the fifth fret. He nodded, smiling more easily than before. Mystery hadn't had any further lip to offer after Lewis's shutdown, which probably explained it.

Lewis tapped his foot in time. “One,” he said for two beats, “two—”

They counted together: “One, two, three, four!”

Strum. She'd done it so many times in the past fifteen minutes that she barely knew where her left hand was, and still the notes seemed to be coming out correctly. Her fingers changed position after eight strums, and then again, and again. It was second nature.

“You're a natural,” Lewis said.

“Pun intended?”

Suddenly, speaking threw her whole body back into mind, and she felt like she had a hundred feet to keep track of. Her hand spasmed in panic, but she remembered: F major next, and then Fadd9—lift that middle finger.

“What pun?” Lewis asked.

Vivi ignored this, and not just for fear of further speech. The first verse was starting, and she wanted to listen. Would phase two of the plan work.

Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry,

You don't know how lovely you are....

No, he wasn't singing yet, but if she'd read him right, he wouldn't be able to help himself. Faintly, she thought she heard humming.

I had to find you, tell you I need you,

The humming evolved to a murmur—

“Tell you I set you apart....”

—and the murmur evolved to a gentle croon.

“Tell me your secrets, and ask me your questions,

Oh, let's go back to the start....”

Lewis's eyes widened with what was probably realization. Vivi spared him a wink, which was about all she dared manage: she had to keep the beat.

“Running in circles, coming up tails,

Heads on a science apart....”

Otherwise, what sort of backup guitarist would she be?

“Nobody said it was easy!

It's such a shame for us to part... Nobody said it was easy! No one ever said it would be this hard—”

Vivi scooted her butt around on the bed, rotating bit by bit until she could see Mystery in something other than her peripheral vision. She was just in time for the end of the chorus.

“Oh, take me back to the start.”

Mystery lay in the corner, looking slightly skyward as if experiencing revelation. There was something strange about his face, and she couldn't figure it out with the limited brainpower she had at the moment. F major for eight, Bb major for eight, and then F major for another sixteen—then back to the first pattern.

“I was just guessing at numbers and figures, Pulling the puzzles apart...

Questions of science, science and progress, Do not speak as loud as my heart....”

Mystery's voice suffused the room like palpable warmth, and quite frankly, it was beautiful. Maybe even beautiful enough that Vivi wouldn't mind paying him the compliment—especially since, even with those incredible ears, he didn't seem to hear his own singing.

And it wasn't just that he hit the notes.

“Tell me you love me, come back and haunt me, Oh, and I rush to the start...”

It was, basically, because he sounded like he gave a damn. No begrudging half-effort, no snark, no self-righteous anger. And no guarding.

“Running in circles, chasing our tails, Coming back as we are....”

Finally, Vivi realized what was so strange about his face, and she could have laughed—but she had a chorus to play.

“Nobody said it was easy!”

It was the simplest thing in the world. He was relaxed.

“It's such a shame for us to part...”

The way he had looked when he was playing the role of a happy little dog. And of course he'd been faking it, she'd concluded, because now his features seemed taut and tense all the time, whether smirking or growling—

“Nobody said it was easy!”

No. Not even close. The tension was the put-on—this was real.

“No one ever said it would be this hard—”

He took a breath, and he looked like the kitsune who'd admitted to caring about their little group, not so many days prior.

He looked like her dog, from too many days ago.

“Oh, take me back to the start.”

No more words were left: just the outro, with some wordless 'ooh's to finish it out. Mystery howled them out with the same quiet passion he'd brought to the rest of the song, and they echoed in Vivi's head long after his mouth finally closed.

It was done. Vivi released the guitar, shook out her achey hands, and glanced up to see that Lewis, too, had been staring at Mystery the whole time.

The subject in question blinked a few times, then glanced toward them. At once he noticed the twin gazes pinning him, and he drew himself more upright, closer to the wall. A hint of tension leaked into his face once more.

Vivi spoke quickly. “That—that was really good.”

Mystery's head cocked to the side, like a dog trying to interpret a sound. Finally, he said, “Um... thanks. It wasn't terrible, I suppose.”

“No, really,” Lewis said, glancing at Vivi. “Do you have training of some sort?” Vivi gave him a wink, which she hoped Mystery missed.

“Not as such... where I, um.... where I came from, there was always a lot of music. Not like your music—” he gave out a short, harsh laugh “—you probably couldn't appreciate it, but it was good. Good like that.”

“Where you came from?” Vivi blurted.

“Where I—”

He blinked, and Vivi cursed herself internally with a few choice words from the NC-17 shelf. “I see what this is,” he said, smirking. The tension was back: she'd pushed too hard. “You think you can just pry me open with a pretty tune, and I'll spill my guts about my tragic childhood and emotional neuroses, is that it?”

“Mystery—” she began.

He was sitting up straight now, with none of that floppy relaxation in his body. “It's none of your business. Nice try, but I'm afraid I've got a brand to live up to—it's in the name, remember? Now, if you'd named me 'Tedious Backstory Exposition', we might have a different situation, but no.”

“I wasn't going to ask about your neuroses—”

“Good, because it's none of your business!”

His teeth were bared. Vivi couldn't help but think, in a drably amused way, that they were the only part of him to be so.

“This is enough,” Lewis said, abruptly standing. He offered a hand to her. “Vivi, would you mind if we went somewhere else?”

Vivi squeezed shut her eyes for a few moments, then sighed and stood, pulling herself up with his hand. “You're right. Let's go.”

“A-hem—isn't there someone you forgot to ask?” Mystery stood on all four legs now. “You'll have to tell me where this new, romantic location is.”

Lewis folded his arms. “You're not coming. Clearly.”

“And you think you can stop me?” Mystery laughed once, and loudly. “I found you in another reality. I can run as fast as you can drive. No matter how fast you go, no matter what barrier you erect—there is nowhere, land or sea, where I can't pursue you.”

Lewis just smiled.

“Now, this is a C7. Mind if I—”

Vivi nodded. Lewis leaned over the back of her thick, oaken chair, and let her left hand off the frets for a moment, so that Lewis could finger it. She paid close attention to where his fingertips rested, and then strummed once, producing a sound that was less like the Gadd9, more... “Jazzy,” she mused aloud.

“It is used often in jazz.” Lewis waited until she'd placed her fingers by his, then lifted his hand and walked back around her chair. From the end-table next to his much larger chair, he picked up his violin and bow, then sawed out a few notes in an arpeggiated sort of C7, until they resolved to a C major by way of F major and F minor. “'Sweet Home Chicago',” he explained, with another self-satisfied smile like the one he'd turned on Mystery about twenty minutes before. “Who says I don't appreciate the classics?”

“Who does say that?” Vivi asked.

Lewis paused, stock still. “Hm... long story.”

A knocking sound drew their attention, and they looked to the room's large, glass windows. A single Deadbeat was bonking its head against the window, its stubby arms occupied by a pile of books.

“The music theory!” Vivi said, beaming as Lewis opened a window to let the Deadbeat—and a fair amount of rushing wind—inside. “Good job, little guy.”

The Deadbeat dropped the books in a heap on the end-table, then zipped under Vivi's outstretched hand for scritches. Its need satisfied, it darted into a corner and curled up, instantly snoozing.

“These are....” Lewis picked up the heap of books and frowned. “About half of the theory books I asked for. Also, several cookbooks—Mom's going to want these back—and one Ikea manual.” He sighed. “Deadbeats.”

“Hey, you can't be mad at a little buddy like that, can you? Come on.”

He smiled back at her, for a moment; then he looked at her. Maybe even through her. Vivi couldn't help feeling on edge, or perhaps on trial, as he sat down without breaking eye contact.

“I saw what you were doing with Mystery,” he said. “It almost worked.”

Vivi groaned. At least he wasn't judging, or rather he was judging in her favor. “Almost is the marketer's word for didn't. Sorry to mess up our date for that.”

“I—er, I thought it wasn't a date?” He leaned forward, and his eye-lights brightened a degree.

“It's kind of a date.”

Vivi stared out the windows. Lewis had created this room of the mansion especially to order—exactly cozy enough for two people and zero dog-things. A row of windows lined the opposite wall, revealing the kind of view that could sell for millions in the big city. All crystal clear and simple.

She groaned. “I just don't get him! What's to gain from pulling back, huh? What's so bad about—is it so wrong to want to know things about your team?” She slumped forward. “Being team leader sucks sometimes.”

“Hey.” Lewis leaned forward, smiling. “Nobody said it was easy.”

She shook her head, looking down at her feet. “No one ever said it would be this hard.”

“I told you already, you don't get to sing—it'll ruin your playing.”

All right, fine—she gave in, and chuckled. “All right, let's keep going. What was that thing you mentioned, 'Sweet Home Chicago'—I wonder if I can find a video?”

She pulled out her phone, but after a second of squinting, she put it away and chuckled. “Oh, of course. Shame—there's no WiFi up here.”

“Lewis! This isn't funny!”

Stupid, clever humans.

Mystery's eyes fixated on a black point, high in the air. He tensed his haunches, then took off like a shot across Vivi's backyard, accelerating quickly. One leap landed him on the peaked roof: he gained what velocity he could running up the shingles, then jumped up with all of his might—

And got nowhere close to the single room of Lewis's mansion, floating hundreds of feet directly above Vivi's condo.

With a heavy, even clumsy landing, Mystery returned to earth, kicking up a plume of dust. “Get down here!” he yelled, before realizing he'd landed in the front yard: he quickly shrank back to his doggy disguise and padded around the back.

Stupid Lewis with his ill-defined powers. Stupid Vivi with her prying. Stupid Coldplay with their... cold playing. Why did I ever fall for that?

He groaned and looked skyward, but not at Lewis's room.

And why her? Of all people, why was I thinking of her?