To Prevent Chic Costumes Read online

  Magical Mayhem Part 2:

  To Prevent Chic Costumes

  by Emily Martha Sorensen

  Copyright © 2017 Emily Martha Sorensen

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: The Desperation

  Chapter 2: The Sisters

  Chapter 3: The Realtor

  Chapter 4: The Catch

  Next Book

  Chapter 1: The Desperation

  Quiet and stillness drifted through the night. Chronos slumbered softly, savoring the rarity of a peaceful somnolence.

  “It’s been fifty-eight hours, and I still haven’t changed my mind!” a voice screamed.

  Chronos jerked awake, her heart pounding wildly. She spun to her other side to look at the door to her bedroom, but Kendra was already on her way out.

  SLAM!!

  Chronos sat there in the darkness, her heart pounding from the shock of being jerked awake. Her eyes ached from exhaustion, and the clock beside her glowed 4:15.

  Doesn’t she ever sleep? Chronos thought in numb disbelief.

  “See you in an hour!” the unwelcome voice called.

  Chronos plucked her digital clock off her bedside table, gripping it in her tense fingers. Four am. She glowered at the clock as if that would change the facts. That makes five hours in a row she’s done this.

  The first time had been at 11:40, exactly an hour after Chronos had gone to bed to end the former magical girl’s latest argument. The second time had been at 12:55. The third at 2:06. The fourth at 3:07.

  From the living room, Chronos heard a quiet thump. It sounded like someone jumping back onto the couch to catch another comfortable hour of sleep.

  Chronos’s eyes squeezed shut. What was with her insane and incredibly unwanted houseguest?

  Maybe this was normal for magical girls who defected to villainy. Such occurrences weren’t common, and Chronos had never paid that much attention to them.

  She knew someone who did, though. Someone who was an expert in them.

  I could ask Rhea to . . .

  She cut off the thought viciously. NO!

  If there was one thing worse than an unwanted houseguest, it was her older sister. It had been five years since they’d last laid eyes on one another, and Chronos wanted to keep it that way.

  A traitorous thought drifted across her mind.

  Except . . . there’s still no chance of Kendra leaving anytime soon . . .

  Chronos smashed the alarm clock into her bedside table, feeling sick and angry. Sure, she couldn’t see futures that she herself was involved in. Sure, that meant there might be some possible future in which she convinced the former magical girl to leave. But she’d tried everything that she could think of, and it had just made the girl all the more determined.

  The first thing she’d tried, of course, was to tackle Kendra and shove her out the front door. The pest had easily broken loose, apparently much stronger in human form than your average magical girl.

  “Is that all?” the teenage girl had asked casually. “I’ve had arch-nemeses who did much worse than that. It’s not like I’ve only trained while transformed.”

  Chronos had clenched her fists and promised herself to try again a few hours later with the power of surprise on her side.

  But that time hadn’t worked much better.

  “Really?” Kendra had asked, dodging as Chronos dove into a wall. “Why wouldn’t you assume I’d be on my guard against that?”

  Chronos had rubbed her head, and sworn to try again later.

  The third time had been just as unsuccessful. And the fourth time. The fifth time, she had finally succeeded, seizing the unresisting former magical girl, shoving her out the front door, slamming and locking the door, and leaning against it in relief.

  Kendra had teleported back in. “Are we done with that game now?” she’d asked with a bored look on her face.

  Two days later, Chronos was starting to fall apart at the seams.

  She thrust her tangled blankets aside, twisted her bedside table lamp to turn it on, rummaged through the drawer, and came up with a pad of paper and a mechanical pencil. Then she started scribbling in large, blocky print.

  how to regain peace and quiet

  throw kendra out

  she’d teleport back

  steal the watch?

  how would she get back home?

  That’s hardly my problem, Chronos told herself fiercely. She showed up her where she wasn’t welcome. Let her find her own way back home.

  Without thinking, she added a second bullet point.

  ask rhea for help

  She immediately scribbled it out, furious with herself for even thinking of it. To remind herself of just how bad an idea that was, she added:

  NO WAY!!

  Biting the inside of her cheek, Chronos quickly moved on. She had to figure out something. Something. Something. Surely there would be some way to get her houseguest to leave.

  explain to kendra that she needs to leave

  tried this. will not listen!

  call or telegraph kendra’s family

  with what? don’t have those machines

  move somewhere else myself

  she’d follow me

  steal the watch back

  Chronos paused at this idea. The former magical girl was sleeping right now. If she snuck into the living room now, she could unbuckle the watch from her unwanted guest’s wrist, put it on her own wrist, and go anywhere she wanted. The pest wouldn’t be able to follow her, and, well, Chronos didn’t really have any possessions that she was attached to.

  Of course, stealing the watch back and stranding the pest here would be a nasty trick. But following Chronos to her home had been a nasty trick, too.

  The more Chronos thought about it, the more she liked it. True, it would be a nuisance to replace her books and find a new place to live, but that was nothing money couldn’t fix. In fact, in a show of graciousness, she could even continue paying for the pest’s groceries so that the pest could stay here indefinitely.

  It was such a perfect plan, she couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to her earlier. Being forced to interact with someone wearisome for two days had exhausted her even more than just lack of sleep, it seemed.

  Yes. Of course that was the right thing to do. Let the former magical girl have her apartment. She could go somewhere else.

  Smiling to herself, Chronos added,

  should try again

  underneath the bullet point about explaining the situation to Kendra, just in case. But she was confident that this would work. All she needed to do was get the watch off someone who was sleeping for one second and teleport away. How hard could that be?

  Chronos reached under her bed and pulled out her fluffy bunny slippers, the ones she’d had since childhood that were now too tight and had holes on the bottoms, and squeezed her feet into them. She shuffled across the carpet and opened the door, which had squeaked two days ago but which Kendra had oiled on her first day here, and padded across the hallway to the couch in her living room.

  The former magical girl lay stretched across it, eyes closed, chest rising and falling slowly. Her arm with the watch dangled off the side of the couch, loose and unguarded.

  Perfect, Chronos thought smugly.

  She reached out softly, ever so softly, her fingers brushing the tip of the wristband —

  A hand jabbed across her throat.

  “That’s mine now, soothsayer,” Kendra hissed, eyes wide open.

  “Do you sleep at all?!” Chronos exclaimed, yanking her arm back.

  Kendra pulled her arm back, but kept it hovering by Chronos’s throat. “Lightly.”

  “I need you to leave,” Chronos said through
clenched teeth. “This is my home. You’re not welcome here.”

  “Some home,” Kendra said succinctly. “It was a pigsty before I cleaned everything.”

  “I liked it that way!”

  “You mean you were lazy,” Kendra corrected.

  “No, I mean I liked it that way!”

  “Impossible,” Kendra said, sitting up and stretching.

  Chronos made a dive for the watch, but Kendra yanked the arm away and shoved it behind her back, using the couch cushion behind her to shield it.

  Chronos made a growl of frustration.

  “Really, soothsayer, don’t be so stubborn,” Kendra said. “We’re meant to work together. We’d be a perfect team.”

  “I have no interest in being part of a team!” Chronos exclaimed.

  Kendra shrugged. “Neither did I, originally. It grew on me. Teams can accomplish far more than one individual alone, and we both have goals we need the other to accomplish.”

  “I have no goals at all,” Chronos snarled.

  “Yes, you do,” Kendra said calmly. “You want to stop having nightmares about bad things. I eavesdropped on you while you were sleeping the first night. You talk a lot in your sleep.”

  Chronos gritted her teeth.

  “Meanwhile, I want to save the world,” Kendra said reasonably.

  “Did you not learn anything from what I told you?” Chronos demanded. “If you’d just stop trying to save the world, maybe it wouldn’t need saving!”

  “Yes, it would,” Kendra said calmly. “Somebody else is bound to rise up and take my place. You’ve proven that your power can predict that and prevent that.”

  “My power can give me nightmares and apparently tremendous inconveniences named Kendra,” Chronos muttered.

  “Precisely,” Kendra said, not looking the least bit bothered by the insult. “That’s why we need to work together.”

  Chronos folded her arms and glared. “If you want to be a villain now, whatever. I really don’t care. Go get a job as a Deathwave minion. If you perform well, you can get promoted and eventually become an arch-nemesis in your own right —”

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” Kendra said coolly. “I know how the Deathwaves work. I want to save the world, not make it a more dangerous place.”

  “By being a villain,” Chronos muttered.

  “Precisely.” Kendra smiled. “That’s why I need a teammate who is both a villain and not.”

  “I’m not a villain at all!” Chronos shouted.

  “Knowing how to save the world and choosing not to act on it? Sounds pretty villainish to me.”

  Chronos spun around and stormed back to her bedroom.

  “See you in an hour!” Kendra called after her.

  Chronos slammed the door to to her bedroom, flopped on her bed, and seized her pad of paper and pencil.

  She added to the two bullet points she had just attempted, heart pounding in rage and indignation.

  explain to kendra that she needs to leave

  tried this. will not listen!

  should try again

  STILL WILL NOT LISTEN!

  steal the watch back

  wears when she’s sleeping

  light sleeper

  did not work at all!!

  At the bottom, in extreme frustration, she wrote in all caps:

  HOW DO I GET RID OF THAT GIRL?

  Chronos stared at the list, wanting to fling it against the wall. This was worse than before she had dreamed about the future Avenging Angel. Worse! At least before, she’d had privacy during the day. Now she had a permanent houseguest!

  Her eyes fell on the second option she had written, the one she had scribbled out.

  No! Chronos thought, burying her face in her knees. I like that it’s been five years! I don’t want to see Rhea’s new store! Even an unwanted houseguest can’t make me go back!

  The pad of paper seemed to stare back at her with its lack of answers and its many dead ends.

  Chapter 2: The Sisters

  Rhea hummed to herself as she designed her latest outfit for a magical girl. It was one of her favorite challenges, designing something classy enough to keep her reputation as a high-end fashion designer intact, and yet slightly . . . dull.

  Magical girls who cared enough about appearances to hire a professional to design the costume for their magical girl form or their next power-up tended to be the perfect targets for her favorite hobby.

  She finished it off, adding a flourish of ruffles and little puffed sleeves, the current most popular fashion for ten-year-old magical girls in Paris, and quickly ran down the checklist of items her customer had asked to have included.

  Pleats in the skirt. Check.

  Knee socks with ribbons on them. Check.

  Super duper high heels. Check.

  Hair ribbons for her pigtails. Check.

  A pink, purple, and turquoise color scheme with no plaid in it, unlike her original costume, which she was no longer happy with because her older brother had made a fake version and worn it on Halloween to make fun of her and it had been the most embarrassing thing ever. Check.

  Rhea smiled to herself. She knew exactly how she would have made this costume stunning and distinctive, but she wouldn’t do that for the magical girl version. Oh no.

  Gleefully, she reached out for her lightbox and began to trace the design onto a new sheet of paper, adding the small touches that she knew the perfectly-fashionable-but-very-generic costume needed. A few spikes here, a red underskirt there, a slightly darker color scheme with a few dabs of black in just the right places to make the soft pastels seem vibrant . . .

  A knock came at the door, startling Rhea from her colored pencil reverie.

  “Madam!” her assistant called. “There’s a fashion disaster downstairs in the lobby.”

  Rhea sighed impatiently. This was why she’d hired an assistant: so that she didn’t have to deal with customers unless she personally felt like it.

  “So what?” she called back. “Get rid of it!”

  “I can’t!” her assistant’s voice protested.

  Rhea felt her eyes narrow. Minerva wasn’t usually so helpless. “Why not?”

  “It claims to be your sister.”

  Rhea leapt out of her chair and burst through the door, running down the stairs to the customer floor of her shop. She didn’t even stop to tell Minerva to please tuck in her tail while in her shopgirl uniform, although she made a mental note to speak about it sharply later.

  “Chronos!” Rhea cried, flinging her arms wide as she ran through the curtain from the room marked Employees Only. “How’s my baby sister?”

  A rumpled mess of absolute disaster awaited her. There was hair that clearly had not been brushed in days, a once-white-and-now-greyish T-shirt that was coated in wrinkles, a pair of pajama bottoms with little sheep on them, and, in a new low, her sister was wearing bunny slippers. The same bunny slippers she’d had since she was six years old.

  “. . . Still unable to dress herself, I see,” Rhea said. “Did you have to wear that in public?”

  “I don’t have the watch,” Chronos muttered. “I couldn’t just teleport in.”

  Rhea paused. That was interesting information. She wished, not for the first time, that she could observe scenes from the past that her sister had been involved in.

  “Oh?” she asked hopefully.

  Unfortunately, Chronos didn’t elaborate.

  “Did you have a reason for coming, or are you just here to drive all my customers away?” Rhea snapped, turning towards the curtained entrance to the back room of her store.

  “Want me to leave?” Chronos demanded.

  Rhea drew herself up to her full height. “Don’t take that attitude with me! You’re the one who wore that out in public in Paris, of all places! You’re the one who didn’t show up at our parents’ funeral last year!”

  “They died trying to kill a bunch of thirteen-year-olds,” Chronos muttered. “I didn’t feel like paying respect to tha
t.”

  “Ah, your sanctimonious ‘principles,’” Rhea said acidly, waving her hand. She pushed her way through the curtain to the back of her store, certain that her sister would follow her and thus be out of sight of customers outside. Sure enough, her sister did. “If you’re here for money, forget it.”

  “I was hoping for advice to get rid of an ex-magical girl,” Chronos said flatly. “I’ve got a defector in my home that I can’t get rid of.”

  “You’ve been harboring defectors?” Rhea burst out, unable to contain her joy. She spun around. “Chronos, that’s wonderful!”

  Her little sister’s narrow-eyed glare appeared to disagree. “Well, I suppose it beats killing children.”

  Rhea sighed. Apparently her younger sister had not seen the light . . . or rather, the darkness. It was really quite embarrassing to be related to someone who was so unwilling to be helpful to the rest of the Olympian villain family. While she herself was not particularly well-loved by Great-Uncle Nico, his animosity had merely come from her attempted coup to replace him six years ago, a perfectly respectable thing for a villain to do.

  Deciding that prolonging the argument would do no good, Rhea plopped onto the stool of her designing desk that she kept in the back room. This was where she made adjustments to costumes while customers were present. Real customers, not the magical girls she charged a pittance to outfit as a hobby.

  All around them were the mannequins covered in spiked or shredded outfits that were waiting for their customers to pick them up just as soon as they broke out of prison. One was for a minion who hoped that a change of costume would earn him a promotion in the Deathwaves. One was for a brand new boss who hoped to cow her minions by wearing twice as many spikes as they did. One was a black cloak with stars that Rhea planned to charge double for because she knew that villain could afford it.