Unreal Alchemy Read online

  Unreal Alchemy Copyright © 2020 by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  Cover art © 2020 Teresa Conner of Wolfsparrow Covers

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  “Fake Geek Girl” originally published in Review of Australian Fiction ©2015.

  “Unmagical Boy Story” originally published on the Sheep Might Fly podcast ©2016

  “The Bromancers” originally published on the Sheep Might Fly podcast ©2017

  “The Alchemy of Fine” originally published as a Patreon exclusive ebook ©2017

  ISBN: 978-0-6484370-7-9 ebook

  ISBN: 978-0-6484370-8-6 print

  Created with Vellum

  Unreal Alchemy

  Tansy Rayner Roberts

  Contents

  Fake Geek Girl

  1. Hebe + Phoenix Boy = OTP

  2. Sage Doesn’t Hate Karaoke Night (But He’s Not Gonna Sing)

  3. Friday Night Set List - revised! By! Holly!

  4. The Elegant and Articulate Diary of Miss Juniper Cresswell, Gentlewitch and Scholar.

  5. Hebe & the Magical Fire Alarm Meet-Cute

  6. Texts from Monday!!!

  7. Sage’s Coffee Shop AU

  8. Hurt/Comfort and Holly

  9. A Gentlewitch’s Guide to Saving the World, by Miss Juniper Cresswell, Esquire.

  10. Hebe and the Library Resource Cupboard of Doom.

  11. Generic Love Song (Something About Spoilers)

  Unmagical Boy Story

  I. Monday Morning

  1. 9am, Far Too Early

  II. 2am, Ill-Advised Hook Up

  2. 7pm, Little Black Dress Alert

  3. 8pm, Cover Charge: Two Drinks

  4. 9pm, I Hate That Song So Much Right Now

  5. 10pm, The Band Takes A Break

  6. 11pm, Second Set Contains New Material

  7. A Long Time Ago, We Used To Be Friends

  8. Midnight, After Party

  9. 1am, Regrettable Things You Shouldn’t Have Said

  10. 2am, Ill-Advised hook Up

  11. 3am, Clearing The Air

  12. 4am, Second Wind

  13. 5am, Crash Space

  14. 6am, Best Hangover Breakfast In The City

  III. Monday Morning Again (Still)

  15. Adulting is Over-rated

  The Bromancers

  1. Hebe Plans For Failure

  2. Sage Says: 10 Out Of 10, Would Break Up With Again

  3. True Bromance, Mei-Style

  4. Hebe Is Unexpectedly House Proud

  5. Whatever Happened To Miss Juniper Cresswell, Gentlewoman and Cellist?

  6. Sage To The Rescue

  7. Mei Makes A List

  8. Hebe and the Very Big, Completely Fine No Big Deal

  9. The Secret Diary of Miss Juniper Cresswell, Under New Management

  10. Sage Can't Solve All His Problems With Coffee

  11. Holly's Resting Witch Face

  12. Sage Has Never Taken A Boy Home Before, But Don't Start Thinking This Means Anything, OK?

  13. Hebe & the Fangirls

  14. The Intimate Thoughts of Miss Juniper Cresswell, Cellist and Committed Bromancers Fangirl.

  15. Sage and the Bro’d Trip

  The Alchemy of Fine

  1. Holly & Hebe & Sage & Nora & Juniper Are All Pretty Damn Fine

  2. The Manic Pixie Dream House is a Tower of Comfort

  3. Nora & Juniper Know When They’re Not Needed

  4. Hebe & Holly are Superstars at the Gay Bar

  5. Hebe Knows That Juniper Is Going To Be Fine

  6. Nesting with Hebe & Sage & Holly

  7. Holly & Sage & Nora Hold An Audition

  8. Holly Catches A Cellist

  9. Holly Adds Nora To Sage And Stands Well Back

  10. Holly’s Crisis Management Technique Is Made Of Rainbows

  11. Sage & Hebe Are Totally Going To Be Fine

  12. Sage Figures Something Out

  13. Hebe Flies Better Than Holly

  14. Sage Learns A Surprising Fact About Hebe Hallow

  15. Holly Spots A Cute Boy

  Author’s Note

  More Belladonna U

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  About the Author

  Fake Geek Girl

  Chapter 1

  Hebe + Phoenix Boy = OTP

  TUESDAY

  My sister Holly is a fake geek girl. A card-carrying, blatant, “I pretend to care about superheroes to get attention in public” fake geek girl.

  It’s not like the world doesn’t know this. Her friends know. My friends know. The fans of her band know, though I suspect a lot of them assume that the name of the band is ironic.

  Maybe I should start again.

  Holly Hallow is the lead singer of a band called Fake Geek Girl. You might have heard of them - at the very least, you’ve probably seen the vid of “Witches Roll Dice, Bitches,” which went viral last summer, and there are quotes from their classic song “Someone Is Wrong On the Internet” all over Tumblr and Mirrorweb.

  If you go to Belladonna University, there’s no question that you’ve heard of the band. They play every Friday night down at Medea’s Cauldron, and whether you’re in the College of the Real or the College of the Unreal, you’ve seen my sister screaming out at you from one of the flyers posted around campus.

  I couldn’t do that. Holly’s been singing in public since we turned four, when no one got to the ‘Happy Birthday’ song early enough in the party for her liking and she turned it into a 30 minute solo. I hate attention. I hate people looking at me. If I had my own way I would slide through life, three steps behind Holly, deep and safe in her shadow. It’s comfortable there. I have snacks, and a reading list.

  Before you ask (and everyone always asks, once they figure it out), I really don’t mind that everything important in my life has been turned into one of Holly’s geektastic songs. I don’t mind that whenever she hangs out with me and my friends, it’s to catch up on the memes and games and trending topics and everything we care about, so she can pour it into lyrics.

  Her drummer is one of my best friends in the world. Sage was my first boyfriend, and the reason we broke up is Fake Geek Girl’s third most popular song of all time. If I wasn’t okay with all this, I would have moved to Bolivia by now. Or Mars.

  No, the part that bothers me is that it’s really hard to be a dedicated wallflower when your IDENTICAL TWIN SISTER is a campus celebrity. An openly bisexual, super confident campus celebrity, whose public persona screams ‘approach me, buy me drinks, hey let’s flirt a little.’

  Conversations like the one that happened today in the Desiree O’Dowd Unreal Library are pretty much a daily occurrence for me.

  * * *

  PRETTY BOY WITH PHOENIX TATTOO: Hey, Last Straight Girl in the City.

  HEBE (sighing loudly): I’m not her.

  PHOENIX BOY: Okay…

  HEBE: You saw the band, right?

  PHOENIX BOY: Yeah, last Friday night at the Cauldron. You were brilliant, I really liked…

  HEBE: Still not her. Holly Hallow is my twin sister. I’m Hebe.

  PHOENIX BOY: You’re not the Fake Geek Girl singer.

  HEBE: No, I just look like her.

  PHOENIX BOY: Is this a thing you say to avoid groupies?

  HEBE (cracks up laughing because I do still have a sense of humour about this): Bonus points for use of the word ‘groupies’ to describe yourself.

  PHOENIX BOY: Hey, I call it like I see it.

  HEBE (s
hows him wallpaper of my phone, which is a pic of me and Holly together, for the specific purpose of proving to people I am not lying about having an identical twin sister): There we go.

  PHOENIX BOY: Whoa. Twins. Can you sing too?

  HEBE: Nope.

  PHOENIX BOY (truth dawning on him): You’re the sister. Like, the sister from Time Agents Stole My Sister and Big Gay Break Up Song?

  HEBE: Wow, you really stayed for the whole set list.

  PHOENIX BOY: It’s a great band.

  HEBE: Yes, it is. I’m very proud of her. You can go now.

  PHOENIX BOY: You’re like her muse. You’re the first muse I’ve ever met.

  HEBE: Literally no one has ever said that to me ever.

  PHOENIX BOY: Is that a lie?

  HEBE: No, it’s sarcasm. Please stop now.

  * * *

  I related this conversation word for word to Sage and Mei over takeaway noodles in Sage’s kitchen that night. I wasn’t entirely sure they were listening. Mei always has at least one laptop and two mirrors open, and Sage had three Theoretical Sorcery textbooks spread across the kitchen counter, trying to make sticky notes attach to the pages.

  Real books hate contact with the Unreal, so he was on to a losing streak with the sticky notes, but Sage isn’t brilliant at listening to advice until he’s tried and failed every single option for himself. Which actually explains our entire high school relationship, but there you go.

  The point is, neither of them were properly listening, which was good because it allowed me to rant without consequence. Or so I thought.

  “I think you should have given him a break,” said Mei, still typing as she talked.

  “You’re not mirroring this conversation, are you?” I asked suspiciously. Never trust a woman who is an expert in both Real and Unreal social media — and believes that privacy is an outdated concept.

  “Of course not.” She looked up at me, and I saw dialogue reflected in her glasses. Mei is a Big Name Fan in about three different media fandoms, and has several major fic deadlines going at any one time. When she stops multitasking, that’s when you’ve got to worry. “Sounds like he was flirting with you.”

  “No,” I said patiently. “He was flirting with Holly. Everyone flirts with Holly. Holly is so amazing at being flirted with, she doesn’t even have to be in the same room at the time.”

  I felt the soft buzz of magic from the other side of the room as Sage coated the sticky notes in a Real aura. It flicked off, plastering itself to his shirt. Magical clothes developing independent personalities, that was totally what they needed in this flat.

  “Mei’s right,” said Sage. “He stayed to talk after he found out who you are. The trouble with you, Hebes, is you’re so used to thinking of Holly as the cool one, you don’t even notice when people are into you.”

  “I had to sneak up on you to become your friend,” Mei said with a solemn nod. “I stalked you online for a year before you accepted that we were always going to eat lunch together until time stops and the world ends.”

  I nudged her with my foot. “You’re adorable.”

  “See what you nearly missed out on?” She indicated her Athena Owl t-shirt and sparkly purple sneakers. “By a narrow margin.”

  They both had a point, but that didn’t mean they were right in this specific instance. “I think perhaps I failed to describe quite how outrageously attractive this boy was.”

  “No, that came across,” said Mei with an impish smile.

  “He was like — magical royalty. Posh foreign accent. There may have been a silk shirt and a phoenix tattoo. Antique sigils on a pendant. And — you know.” I shifted uncomfortably. “Muscles.”

  The boys who are interested in me once they get to know me are not boys who look like that.

  Sage rolled his eyes at me. “He’s a fan of the band, Hebes. That means he’s into your brain.”

  “I’m not in the band,” I said sulkily.

  “Half our songs are about you, dimwit. You basically ARE the band.”

  It was an odd thought, and one I hadn’t entertained before. But before I could question him further, he added one spell too many to the precarious sticky notes disaster, and they exploded in his hands.

  Magical confetti rained down on us from above, and in our attempts to protect all of the electronic devices in the flat, the conversation was forgotten.

  WEDNESDAY

  “So you must be Holly.”

  I can see how he made that leap. When I work in the Desiree O’Dowd I dress in full librarian chic — all cardigans and retro A-line skirts. I even put my hair up in a bun because come on, how could I not? Working in a library. Living the dream.

  On the other hand, when I work at the student advice centre, I dress in whatever I’ve picked off my floor that morning, and they’re lucky if I remember to turn the t-shirt the right way out. Add to this I had a pink wash in my light-brown hair (I lost a bet with my sister, who wanted me to try it out to see if she could risk the look for Friday night) and sure, I can buy that he thought I was the other twin this time around.

  But that didn’t stop me saying “Still Hebe,” in a put-upon sigh, because the only fun thing about being a twin is making people feel guilty about getting it wrong.

  It was him again. The pretty boy with the phoenix tattoo that wrapped around the side of his neck and occasionally blew realistic-looking flames across his medium-brown skin. To his credit, he looked crestfallen at his mistake. I’m guessing he wasn’t used to anyone telling him he was wrong.

  “Shit. I’m sorry I — really? You work here too?”

  “Part-time jobs are precarious things,” I told him gravely. “So many students fighting over minimum wage shifts — it’s a jungle out there. I juggle multiple jobs to cover rent and food and books.”

  I had been right about him being Real Royalty — instead of the ‘I know your pain’ grimace of a fellow working student, he had a baffled ‘wait there are students whose parents don’t cover all their living costs?’ twitch across three quarters of his beautiful face.

  I was pretty sure his jacket cost more than my monthly rent.

  “Right,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Can we start again?”

  “Any time you’re ready,” I said sweetly.

  Okay, I’ll admit that I sometimes enjoy the phenomenon that I refer to as the Hollyfluster. Yes, it’s annoying to be constantly hit on by people who think my sister is super cool. But once they have opened a conversation with that, I feel no remorse at all about being sarcastic at them.

  Normally I’d be nervous and fumbling around a pretty, privileged Real boy (not that one would bother to talk to me without the Holly factor) but right now I was having fun.

  Then I felt bad almost straight away, because Phoenix Boy was looking shifty and uncomfortable, and oh crap, he had a genuine problem he had come here to fix, and here was me teasing him because he couldn’t tell the difference between twin sisters.

  “Starting again,” I said, more gently than before. “What do you need?”

  “I need to know the process for switching my degree from Real to Unreal,” he blurted out.

  I lost all ability to be neutrally helpful, and just stared at him. “Seriously?”

  “Do I not look serious? I’m uh, asking for a friend,” he added, with a practiced tilt of his head that didn’t fool me at all.

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “Well, the process is pretty simple. I can print you out the form here, or you can download it off the website. You need to see a course advisor and get signatures of the Dean from each college. I mean, your friend — I can make an appointment for them with Sarah, she’s the course advisor on duty over the summer. Or they can email her directly.” I handed him Sarah’s business card, because I wasn’t sure he was going to give up the ‘it’s for a friend’ story any time soon.”

  Phoenix Boy looked at the card, and not at me. When he finally turned his dark brown eyes up to fix on my face, my stomach almost entirely me
lted out of my body. Yes, he was that pretty, shut up.

  “But?” he invited.

  “But nothing. Straightforward. Forms. Appointments. Signatures.”

  “But,” he said, more forcefully than before.

  “It’s not common, that’s all. But I’ve only been working here a year…”

  I’d never heard of a single transfer between Real and Unreal. A couple, yes, going the other way — because studying magic and its related disciplines was always a safe job-friendly choice and the romance of specialising in magic-free arts or politics or literature often wore off once the careers fair destroyed everyone’s hopes and dreams.

  But who would give up studying magic once it had its hooks into you? And why would a boy who looked like an illustrated chapter in the history of pampered legacy kids make that choice?

  Maybe it really was advice for a friend.

  “We also have counsellors,” I found myself blurting out. “General feelings counsellors. If that’s something you think would be useful.”