LXXXIV
The calendar didn't lie. A week.
Only a week had passed in the waking world while I had been sprinting through 1920s timelines, mirror realms, mob funhouses, and astral corridors. My body had been gone from this world for several eons, and time had been moving at a relative trickle here.
I checked my phone, plugging it into the wall charger. Dusty.
Battery nearly gone.
Notifications stacked like a guilt‑trip.
Then you saw them, Lorian's messages.
The first one timestamped just after you'd boarded the plane:
Text me when you land, little star. I want to hear your voice.
Then nothing for hours.
I brought up the news from the last week.
A headline, a tragedy.
The plane I had boarded in Spain, was reported missing.
All passengers presumed dead. Lost at sea.
I stared at the screen, heart thudding.
"I guess that's a better explanation than being eaten by a cosmic planet‑eating worm," I muttered. "More plausible."
The cat, curled on the velvet chair, cracked one eye open.
"Pet… your boyfriend is going to be furious."
"Yeah," you sighed.
You dialed Lorian's number.
It rang, and rang, and rang.
Straight to voicemail.
My breath hitched.
I tried again. Voicemail.
Finally, I left a message, voice shaking, frantic, too loud in the quiet library.
"Lorian—Lorian, I'm alive. I'm okay. I wasn't on the plane when it crashed. I'm home. I'm safe. Please—please call me back. I'm not dead."
You hung up, staring at the phone like it might bite you.
The cat stretched, tail flicking.
"He'll call," he murmured. "Fairy men always call when they're worried. They're dramatic like that."
You sank into the dusty armchair across from him.
"Yeah," you whispered. "He's going to pitch a fit."
I then left a message for my family. I was home from vacation. Not that it was anybody's business, but they'd probably try to declare me dead for the money if someone had informed them of my travel plans. I also left a message for my great-aunt's lawyers just in case.
I went to bed a little upset.
The ringtone drilled straight into my skull, the kind of sound that announces trouble before you're even fully conscious. I fumbled for the phone, hair a mess, face pressed into a half-folded pillow.
"Yes—what… I'm up…"
Lorian's voice came through, warm and shaken, like someone who'd been holding his breath for days.
"You're alive," he said, and the relief in his tone was almost painful. "I'm so glad you're alive, love."
I exhaled, sinking deeper into the many bed accessories.
He'd been asleep before, of course he had. Europe was hours ahead. I'd forgotten the time difference entirely.
I told him everything you could without sounding like a lunatic: that you weren't on the plane, that you were safe, that you were home. He listened, breath catching, voice softening, the way he always did when he was scared for you.
But then his tone shifted. "Love… we have a small problem."
I sat up straighter. That tone never meant anything good.
"My mother," he continued, "who didn't know you existed… has set me up with a fairy‑blood woman. For an arranged marriage. To strengthen bloodlines, she says."
I closed my still tired eyes.
Of course she did.
"I have no idea how to get out of this," he added, voice tight with frustration.
I pinched the skin between your brows, the beginnings of a headache blooming like a storm cloud.
"Lorian… seriously?"
He sighed, long and miserable.
"She's already spoken to the woman's family. They think I'm going to show up for tea tomorrow. Tea. As if I'm livestock being inspected."
The cat, curled on the armchair beside you, cracked one eye open.
"Pet," he murmured, "fairy families are dramatic. This is normal for them."
I groaned. "Normal doesn't mean acceptable. He's an adult man. Isn't an arranged marriage too last century?"
The cat shrugged, whiskers twitching.
"Still dramatic."
I rubbed my temples. There had been a touch too much to handle this week.
A crashed plane, a week‑long astral detour, paleolithic caves, the mob, the tapdancing man who used to be my cat.
And now an arranged marriage.
This was absolutely the beginning of a headache.
But Lorian's voice softened again, almost pleading.
"I don't want her. I want you. I just… don't know how to tell my mother without starting a war."
I breathed out slowly.
"Well," I said, "good thing I'm home. Because we're going to fix this."
"Get ready hat-cat. Take a good long nap. Looks like we're going back to Europe, the prince is going to save a fairy maiden from an arranged marriage. Except Lorian's the maiden and I'm the prince." The cat mewl-growled in reply.
I hit the luxury district like a woman possessed.
After everything — the astral detour, the mob timeline, the mirror realm, the plane crash report — I needed control over something. And if I was going to march into Europe and face Lorian's fairy‑blooded mother, I needed to look like someone she couldn't dismiss with a single sniff.
So I went shopping.
Not normal shopping.
Not "I need a new pair of jeans" shopping.
I went great‑aunt's‑millions shopping.
I tore through boutiques like a whirlwind, letting silk and cashmere and tailored lines rebuild me from the outside in. If Lorian's mother wanted pedigree, I'd give her the illusion of it, wealth, polish, confidence. I wasn't going to show up looking like someone who'd just crawled out of a funhouse full of mobsters and mirror hounds.
I had my dark brown hair permed into soft, expensive waves.
My eyebrows shaped into elegant arches.
Everything waxed, buffed, shelacked until I gleamed like a woman who had never been astrally yeeted into another timeline.
I didn't need any of this for Lorian.
He'd take me in sweatpants and a messy bun.
But his mother?
She needed to see someone who had her own power, her own resources, her own future. I had to be someone who wasn't a fragile mortal girl who'd "miraculously survived" a plane crash.
When I finally looked in the mirror, I almost didn't recognize myself.
"Thank you, great‑aunt," I murmured. "Rest your soul."
Her money had saved me from a lot of things, cursed antiques, debt, boredom, but today, it was going to save me from a fairy matriarch with opinions sharp enough to cut glass.
I handled it like someone who'd already survived a plane crash, a mob funhouse, and a cosmic worm. I was cool, calm, decisive, and absolutely done with surprises.
First thing I did was call the European Council.
Not the human one. The other one.
The one that keeps track of supernatural border crossings, astral anomalies, and powerful beings who should not be allowed to wander into Europe without a permission slip.
I told them, in my most professional "I am not currently covered in mirror dust" voice, that the hat‑man was re‑entering Europe.
They didn't scream, but I heard the sharp inhale.
A shadow‑being with timeline‑altering abilities entering their turf?
Yeah. They needed the heads‑up.
I kept it simple:
"He's stable. He's small. He's tired. He won't eat anyone unless provoked."
The cat, curled in my lap, flicked his tail.
"Pet, that's slander. I would never eat anyone. I would simply… nibble."
I ignored him.
The Council thanked me in that strained way bureaucrats do when they're grateful but also terrified and promised to prepare the appropriate wards and diplomatic nonsense.
Then I called Lorian. I needed him at the airport.
He would need to see me alive, and that I wasn't a ghost calling from the afterlife.
He picked up on the second ring this time, voice still warm from sleep.
"You're coming here?"
"Yes," I said. "Pick me up."
There was a pause, soft, relieved, almost reverent.
"I'll be there."
I hung up, staring at the phone, feeling the weight of everything pressing in: the alternate timeline, the hat‑man curled like a warm shadow in my lap, the fairy‑blooded mother waiting with her arranged marriage plans, the fact that I had to walk into Europe looking like someone who could stare down a matriarch and not blink.
I smoothed my new perm, adjusted my expensive coat, and whispered to myself:
"Alright. Let's go cause problems in Europe."
The cat purred.