Parting the Veil

VP and BP Standings
Claire - 135 VP - 10100 BP - 2 Achievs
Erin - 134 VP - 8100 BP - 3 Achievs
Sam - 119 VP - 5900 BP - 3 Achievs
Emi - 113 VP - 11250 BP - 3 Achievs
Chloe - 106 VP - 8650 BP - 2 Achievs
Liesa - 104 VP - 4400 BP - 3 Achievs
Norah - 103 VP - 0 BP - 3 Achievs
Myra - 97 VP - 5000 BP - 3 Achievs
Marissa - 90 VP - 7000 BP - 3 Achievs
Emily - 81 VP - 8600 BP - 3 Achievs (2 used)
Dawn - 78 VP - 9000 BP - 3 Achievs
Riley - 77 VP - 8800 BP - 3 Achievs
Laura - 7950 BP - 2 Achievs

Andy woke to the smallest possible difference between night and morning: a gray so faint it could have been a trick of his eyelids, except that the Suite’s blackout shades always left a thin crescent of window above their reach. Norah’s bare shoulder rested against his, the weight of the covers more theoretical than real, the scent of sex and distant smoke and a trace of whatever floral detergent the Suite used for bedding. He lay there, not moving, because if he did Norah might wake up, and Andy was not done with the silence yet.

He looked sideways. Norah slept as she did everything else: stubbornly, with her face turned away and her fists curled tight at her chest. On the nightstand was the Istanbul shot glass, bright gold letters stark in the half-light. He hadn’t moved it. Neither had she. It sat there now, perfectly upright, a totem and a trophy and a memory in the shape of a drinking vessel.

Andy had not, if asked, expected this to happen. If someone had polled him the night of his arrival at The HH, or at the end of the first challenge, and asked if he would fall in love with Norah Rahman, his answer would have been a polite but certain “no.” He liked her, respected her, even admired her, but he had known her type for years—ambitious, precise, always ten seconds ahead of the conversation and never more vulnerable than she had to be. He’d worked with a dozen Norahs, some of them better at hiding it than others, but none of them ever really letting someone inside. He’d thought she was a closed system. He’d thought he was, too.

But here she was, asleep and soft and closer to him than he had ever thought she could be, and the room held the residue of what they had made together. Andy could see the line, looking back, even if it had seemed random at the time: the boardroom showdown, the First Challenge when she had stood before him in nothing but bodypaint and a hidden yearning to be seen as more than a business professional. Their second date night, when she had, for the first time, given up trying to win in order to comfort him after a hard conversation with Chloe. The day before the Second Challenge, when she had admitted she had found something with him and the others she did not wish to lose. Her eyes, when he had given her the scarf. And how she protected Dawn in the Second Challenge, even if it meant her own elimination. The wild rush of the Third Challenge. The time they had spent at the Pixel Palace, when he had won Fortune for her, and how happy and bright her eyes had been. In the Fourth Challenge, how she stood up for Sam, for Laura, for Erin, for Claire. Painting on the terrace. The Hearth of Gathering.

He remembered last night, the glass of wine and the taste of sumac on her lips, the way her whole body had gone still when he said he loved her. He remembered her smile in the hammam, and the sound she made when he touched her, and the way she had crawled to the bed without a single ounce of shame. He remembered the bridge, the shot glass appearing in his palm, and her eyes when he handed it to her.

He stared at the ceiling, feeling the weight of all of it, and wondered if there was a name for the sensation of being completely wrong in the best possible way.

He wanted to memorize this, too: Norah’s body angled against his, the impossible quiet of the Suite at dawn, the fact that—despite everything, despite the game and the rules and the transformations and the absolute fucking weirdness of the past two and a half months—he felt more at ease than he had in years. The morning had not yet claimed the world; it hovered, a bubble between what had happened and what was about to.

Andy was about to let himself drift back to sleep when the shot glass pulled his attention. Not physically—there was no movement—but in the way that sometimes happens with objects when you’re sleep-deprived or slightly hungover or just very alive to the meaning of things. It seemed to radiate a question.

He reached for it. His hand hovered over the glass for a second, but he didn’t pick it up. He just let his palm rest on the table, the rim pressing against the edge of his hand.

The pattern was impossible to ignore now. The day at the bazaar: he had wanted the amber scarf for Norah, and suddenly the lira in his pocket was exact, and there was a credit card with his name embossed in gold, when he’d never seen one like that before. The portal on the morning of the Warrenville trip: he had told Laura he wished his parents could see her alive, and a swirling portal had made it happen, the desire lifted from his mind and rendered in real space. The terrace for Claire’s date: she had been talking about missing her prom, and the lights had risen and the music had started with the precision of a Broadway cue. Dawn’s abuela, materializing on the terrace the night he had wished for it—he remembered wanting to know the women who had given Dawn to the world, and the visitation had appeared, unforced. And then the shot glass, cold in his hand when all he had done was want Norah to have a piece of the city.

He looked down at his right hand, fingers splayed. It was not magical or even especially remarkable—an engineer’s hand, good with a keyboard but not much else, scar on the middle finger from a kitchen knife. He set it palm-up on the sheet, just below where Norah’s shoulder rose above the covers.

He wondered, briefly, what would happen if he wished for something right now.

He closed his eyes and pictured it: a rose, not for himself, but for her. He tried to focus on the feel of it, the weight, the way the petals would be damp and almost sticky if the bloom was fresh. He imagined wanting it so badly that the world would have no choice but to give it to him.

Nothing happened. There was no shimmer, no heat, not even the sense of a power humming under the skin.

He tried again, this time thinking not about the wanting, but about the looking. He let himself look at Norah—her skin, the line of her collarbone, the pale scatter of freckles at her neck—and let the wanting fall away. He just looked at her, because he wanted to remember this version of her, the one that was only for him.

There was a warmth, then, or a pressure, faint but real, as if a small animal had settled into the hollow of his palm. He opened his eyes. His hand was empty, but he closed his fingers around the feeling anyway, as if holding it tight could make it last longer.

He didn’t know what it meant, not yet. He didn’t know if it was Arabella, or the Hotel, or something inside himself that was shifting, cell by cell. He didn’t know if the power was his, or if the world was just getting more responsive, or if the line between the two had become so thin it didn’t matter anymore.

He stared at the ceiling until his eyes blurred, and decided that it didn’t matter, not right now. There would be time for questions later. Today was for Norah, and for the women in the Hollow Garden, and for Myra and Marie, and for the strange, fragile hope that maybe all of them could survive what came next.

He set his hand down on the bed, let the warmth fade, and looked again at the shot glass. In the new light, the gold letters shimmered, and the glass seemed just a little fuller than before.

Beside him, Norah stirred, her breath catching on the edge of a dream before she blinked awake.

---

For a long minute after Norah woke, she didn’t move. She just let her eyes focus on the ceiling, her breathing slow and measured. Andy stayed where he was, letting her have the quiet.

Eventually, she rolled toward him. “How long have you been awake?” she asked, voice hoarse with sleep.

Andy said, “A while. You looked like you needed the rest.”

She closed her eyes and made a noncommittal sound, somewhere between agreement and protest. When she opened them again, she was staring at his face with an intensity that made him want to check if he had a bug in his teeth.

“I’m not dreaming, right?” she said. “We really walked the streets of Istanbul last night.”

“We did,” Andy said, which seemed to be the right answer. Norah’s shoulders loosened a little.

They lay there, neither in a rush to get up, the kind of silence that only exists between people who are not yet used to sharing mornings. Andy watched her blink, watched the gears turn behind her eyes, and thought about all the times he’d imagined waking up next to someone and not dreading the moment.

After a while, he said, “Do you want to have a word for this?” He let the question hang, unshaped by any need for an immediate answer. “For what we are.”

Norah’s mouth twitched. “You mean like labels?”

“Yeah.”

She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she turned her head to the side, looking at the window, and let the light hit her face. “I always thought words were a trap. Like, once you called something by name, it could disappoint you. Or you’d have to measure up to it, or risk losing it. My mother hated labels. She said it’s because she didn’t want to be trapped, but I think she just didn’t want to admit she wanted anything.”

Andy waited, letting her finish.

Norah looked back at him. “I spent most of my life treating my own wants as liabilities,” she said. “Yesterday, I stopped. I think I like how that felt.” She paused, the words building. “So yeah. I want a word. I want to be your girlfriend.” She added, quick and fierce, “Not wife. Not yet. But I want to walk toward it, if you’ll walk with me.”

He felt something settle, heavy and right, in the center of his chest. “Girlfriend works,” he said. “So does the direction.”

She smiled. Then she glanced past him, at the nightstand, at the scarf draped over it, and at the shot glass. She pushed herself up to a sitting position, the covers falling away. She was naked, but didn’t bother to hide it. She swung her legs over the edge, found her dress crumpled on the floor, and slid it over her body. Then she looked at her stilettos, sitting side by side beneath the nightstand. She reached for them, then stopped, hand hovering.

Andy said nothing.

Norah held her breath for a few seconds, then pulled her hand back. “Not today,” she muttered. She looked down at her bare feet, flexed her toes experimentally, and then turned to Andy. “You mind if I leave them here?”

“Of course not.”

She smiled, the lines around her eyes softer than he’d ever seen. She got off the bed, then—without the heels—dropped down to her hands and knees and crawled to the door. It was sexy, not undignified, just honest: a woman adapting to the laws of her own body and the reality of her day.

Andy followed, pulling on his own clothes. He padded after her into the main room, where Laura sat at the kitchen table, both bodies sitting on stools and sipping from mugs of something that smelled like black tea and orange peel. She looked up as they entered, and her two sets of eyes widened a fraction at the sight of Norah crawling, but she didn’t comment. Instead, she set down her mug and offered a nod.

Norah made it to a chair, then used the edge to haul herself upright, tucking her knees together before sitting. “Morning,” she said.

Laura looked at her in stereo, then at Andy, then at the stilettos missing from Norah’s feet. “I assume that was a transformation?” she asked, voice gentle but direct.

Norah shrugged, as if it was the most unremarkable thing in the world. “If I’m not in heels, I can’t walk. Crawling or being carried, that’s it. It’s annoying, but manageable.”

Laura watched her for a second longer, then nodded. “I like the scarf,” she said.

Norah grinned, reached up to touch it, and Andy caught the faintest edge of pride in the gesture.

Andy poured himself tea, added a little honey, and slid a cup to Norah. “There’s sumac on the counter,” he said, “if you want to try it on eggs or something.”

Norah’s eyes lit up, and she reached for the bag, opening it and inhaling the scent with a visible shudder of pleasure. “This is the good stuff,” she said. “I could tell just by the color, when I haggled with the merchant.”

Andy sat, Laura’s bodies to his left, Norah to his right. For a few minutes, they ate and drank in a kind of slow-motion truce, none of the usual competitive energy or sarcasm that sometimes hovered over group breakfast.

Eventually, Andy asked, “How did the talk with Myra go yesterday?”

Laura set down her mug, her hands curling around the heat. “She’s ready,” Laura said, both bodies’ voices perfectly in sync. “She wants to go down to the Garden today.”

Andy nodded. He didn’t press for more; Laura had made the answer as brief and nonnegotiable as possible. He could feel Norah pick up on that, too, because she shot Laura a look, then pivoted the conversation elsewhere.

When breakfast was over, Norah stood—using the table for leverage, the muscle memory of the last twenty-four hours not quite lost—and turned to Andy. She hugged him, both arms around his waist, her face pressed briefly to his chest. Then, in front of Laura, she kissed him, soft and slow, the kind of kiss that said “I want you to remember this even if you forget everything else.”

Then she turned, picked up the sumac bag, and—after a moment’s thought—dropped down to all fours again and crawled toward the Suite’s bedroom door. At the threshold, she paused, looked back, and grinned.

Laura called out, “You don’t need to crawl unless you want to.”

Norah shot back, “I like knowing I can do it. On my own terms.”

She crawled inside the bedroom, and emerged a few moments later, walking on her stiletto heels. She gave Andy a wink.

Andy watched her go, the dress riding up her thighs, the scarf bright at her throat, and thought, again, about all the ways he had underestimated her.

He glanced at Laura, who met his eyes and smiled, a flash of shared understanding. Then she went back to her tea, and Andy poured himself another cup, already planning how to get through the rest of the morning without screwing anything up.

It was a good day to be awake.

---

Andy poured another cup of tea, aware of Laura watching him as if she was calculating how long it would take for him to say the thing he was supposed to say.

He said, “I asked Erin, Claire, and Chloe to come with me this morning. Down to the Hollow Garden, for their check-up with Dinah.”

Laura’s eyebrows went up, twin flickers of both approval and mischief. “All three of them? At once?”

He shrugged. “Dinah said it would be efficient. And it might be less weird for Chloe if she’s with friends.”

Laura smiled, sipping from her mugs. “That’s a lot of people in one elevator. You sure it won’t get crowded?”

Andy smiled back. “That’s a Dinah problem.”

Laura made a low sound—amusement with an edge. “Will Claire and Erin be okay with Chloe coming?”

He was prepared for this. “I told them yesterday. Er, accidentally. They took it pretty well. Erin actually offered to go talk with Chloe in advance, make sure there were no hard feelings.”

Laura put her mug down, both bodies braced on the edge of the table, and tilted her heads. “You’re not exactly the best at keeping this particular secret, are you?”

Andy tried, and failed, to look indignant. “I only told you. And them. And… okay, yes, I’m bad at it. I thought everyone was already talking about it, honestly.”

Laura grinned, eyes sharp. “You told me on our date night. You told Erin and Claire yesterday. Are you going to just announce it at breakfast next time, or hire a skywriter?”

He let out a soft laugh. “I’ll put it in the Weekly Update next time.”

She looked at him for a beat, then softened. “You’re a good partner,” she said. “Even if you can’t keep a secret.”

He absorbed the compliment, unsure what to do with it. “Thank you.”

Laura watched him a little longer, then checked the clock. “So. They come down early, you stay with them for the check-up, and then Myra and I meet you later?”

“That’s a good plan. Dinah wants to get the three of them in and out before the Garden gets busy. Then I can stay and wait for you and Myra. We’ll do the transition there, if that’s okay with you.”

Laura nodded, the movement precise and untroubled. “I’m fine with it. Today is for Myra.”

He didn’t press right away. Then, he asked: “How did it go? Yesterday, when you told her.”

Laura was quiet for a moment, both sets of hands wrapped around her mugs. “She already knew something was wrong. She’d been sitting with it for a while, I think. When I told her about Marie—that she was down there, that she wanted to meet her—Myra just went very still.” Laura paused. “Not angry. Just… still.”

“Did she cry?”

“Eventually.” Laura’s voice was even, but her eyes were somewhere else. “She asked me why Marie gave her up. I told her what I knew. That Marie was ashamed—not of Myra, but of herself. That she’d been carrying it a long time.” She set down one of her mugs. “Myra said, ‘Does she think I hate her?’ I told her she does. She said, ‘I don’t. I just want to see her again.’”

Andy was quiet.

“She also asked about us,” Laura said. “The half-sisters, cousins, all of it. She laughed, actually. One short laugh, like it was the only reasonable response.”

He nodded. “And now she’s ready.”

“She’s ready,” Laura said. “She’s scared, but she’s ready.”

The silence was companionable. He felt like he should offer something more—an affirmation, a joke, a plan for lunch—but the moment didn’t want it.

The doorbell rang.

Andy got up. “That’s them.”

Laura smiled, not quite smug, and went back to her tea.

---

The elevator ride was, at Chloe’s suggestion, a contest to see who could fit the most “morning” into her voice. Chloe led with a cheery, “Good morning, Andy!” that could have doubled as a weather report. Claire’s attempt was punny: she wrote out gud mrrrning on her notepad and held it up with both hands, which made Chloe giggle and Andy smile despite himself. Erin, whose mood oscillated between hyperfocused and “I’m here only for the mission,” just gave Andy a half-nod and said, “Let’s get this done.”

It worked: the air was light, and the shared goal—“get checked, get out, get on with the day”—hovered over the four of them like an umbrella against awkwardness.

In the elevator, Andy stood at the controls and waited for the floor indicator to cycle. He glanced at Chloe. “You’re sure you’re okay with this?”

She nodded, too fast. “I’m used to weird medical stuff. Besides, Erin said she’d glare at anyone who made me feel bad.” She grinned at Erin, who did not deny it.

Claire, as ever, wrote and held up: If anyone is mean to you, I’ll eat them. There was a crude but surprisingly accurate drawing of a cat about to devour a nurse.

Chloe giggled again. “You really are the best,” she said.

“She’s getting scarier,” Erin commented, deadpan.

The elevator doors opened onto the Hollow Garden, and all three stopped at once.

It wasn’t just that the room was big, or that it looked like the inside of a greenhouse built by aliens; it was the wall of warmth and scent and noise that hit them all at the same time. The world was green and gold, alive with bird sounds and the rustle of leaves, the ceiling so far up that light seemed to come from the sky itself. Every plant was thriving, climbing, flowering, fruiting, alive to a degree that made even Andy’s memory of the place seem flat.

Erin was the first to recover. She took two steps forward, then stopped, her head tilting as if she were listening. The color in her skin deepened with every pace—not just the mint-green undertone Andy had grown used to, but something richer, more saturated, like chlorophyll responding to light. Her breath caught. She reached out, half in awe, to touch a vine curling around a handrail, and the vine curled back, lazy and unhurried, wrapping once around her wrist like a cat settling into a lap.

Erin didn’t flinch. She looked down at it with an expression Andy couldn’t quite name—recognition, maybe, or the particular softness of being known.

“They’re not just alive,” she said, quietly, more to herself than to any of them. “They’re…” She trailed off, then tried again. “Affectionate. Like they’re glad we’re here. Like they’ve been waiting.” She turned to look at the rest of the garden, and something moved across her face—a flicker of something tender and almost sad. “They want to hold everyone. All of us. The whole room.” She shook her head. “It’s a lot to feel at once.”

Nearby, a broad-leafed plant Andy didn’t recognize swiveled on its stem toward Erin’s shoulder, and a small cluster of pale buds along its stalk opened, one after another, in the span of a few seconds. Another vine, unprompted, brushed the back of her hand. She let it, and smiled. “They’re showing off,” Erin said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Perhaps it was, now, for her.

Andy watched a cluster of small white blooms near her shoulder open, one by one, turning toward her the way flowers turned toward light. He didn’t say anything, but he filed it away.

Claire’s slitted pupils had gone wide, and she was spinning in a slow circle, trying to take in everything at once. Chloe hadn’t moved at all, slack-jawed, one hand pressed to her sternum as if to keep something in.

“It’s magic,” Chloe whispered.

Andy didn’t wonder whether she meant it literally. He was fairly sure she did.

“You made good time,” Dinah called from the clinic entrance. She wore navy scrubs that somehow managed to look tailored, her hair still perfectly in place despite the humidity.

“Come in, all of you,” Dinah said. “We have a schedule.”

They filed into the waiting area. Dinah handed each woman a clipboard and set about collecting the same three questions: sleep, appetite, any symptoms. The answers were all, “perfect, great, nothing, better than normal,” which did not seem to surprise Dinah.

When she turned to Andy, she said, “I’m most interested in how the transformations are interacting with the pregnancies. Particularly for Erin and Claire. The plant physiology and the feline DNA, respectively. Each season’s transformations work differently, even if their outward appearance is the same.”

Erin’s face went a little pine green, but she straightened. “I’m happy to be your test subject,” she said, and Claire nodded along, eyes bright.

Chloe raised a hand. “Am I just normal, or…?”

Dinah gave her a look, equal parts kind and dry. “You’re never just normal, Chloe. But you are the control group. Congratulations.”

Chloe beamed.

Dinah checked her tablet, then said, “Follow me.” She led them to a changing area with three private stalls. “Please undress completely and put on the gowns, if you can. Andy, I’ll call you in if any of them want you present.”

He stood in the hall, alone. Behind the door, there was a flurry of motion: the shuffling of fabric, the muted laughter as Chloe realized the gowns didn’t fit over her chest anymore, the sound of Erin’s voice, steady and reassuring, as she helped the others adjust the straps.

Andy waited. The Garden, just visible through the frosted glass, was loud with life. He closed his eyes and tried to picture the day ahead: Myra, Marie, the heaviness of what they were about to do. For a moment, he let himself just exist, the sunlight and the green and the good company of the women he had chosen, and who, for some reason, had chosen him back.

When he opened his eyes, the light was the same, but everything felt a little sharper.

He waited for Dinah to call him in.

---

Dinah called Andy in with a single, dry, “You can come now.” She was standing behind her desk, hands braced on the lacquered wood, a look on her face that could have passed for either “about to break bad news” or “about to deliver the punchline.”

The three women were seated in a line, Claire and Chloe in identical blue hospital gowns that left too much of their thighs exposed. Erin, hands folded on her lap, still completely nude, looked ready for a disciplinary hearing. Chloe was buzzing with anticipation, her leg swinging so fast it made the chair vibrate. Claire, at the end, was entirely still, a notepad balanced on her knee and a whiteboard marker at the ready.

Andy took the extra chair and sat, waiting for Dinah to begin.

“First,” Dinah said, voice brisk, “all three pregnancies are perfectly healthy. No complications. No deficiencies. The Hotel would permit nothing less, but it’s nice to see the data confirm it.” She clicked her tablet. “Blood pressure: ideal. Heart rates: perfect. Hormonal profile: so good I’m considering bottling it.”

She let that settle, then moved on. “Second, the fetal scans.” She turned the screen around. “Chloe, one. Claire, one.” She paused, then looked at Erin. “Erin, two.”

Erin blinked. “Sorry?”

“Two,” Dinah said, with the calm of someone who had delivered this news before.

A beat passed. Nobody moved. Erin sighed. “Arabella was right. Of course I get to carry twins.”

Dinah set the tablet down. “Do you want to know the genders?”

Andy looked at Claire, who looked at Chloe, who looked at Erin, who was still processing the number two. One by one, they turned back to Dinah. The nods came slowly, a little unevenly, like people agreeing to something they hadn’t quite decided yet.

Dinah looked at Claire first. “Claire. You’re having a girl. Fully healthy. Arabella tells me that unless Andy wishes otherwise, she won’t have tails, cat ears, slitted pupils, or any other such feline traits.”

Claire went very still. Then her face went red, all at once, the way it did when she was trying not to cry. She pulled her notepad close to her chest and looked down at it for a moment, not writing anything.

“Chloe,” Dinah continued, with a smile, “you’re carrying a boy.”

Chloe blinked. “A boy?”

Dinah nodded. “A very active one, judging from the scan, even though it’s very early.”

Chloe teared up instantly, then covered her mouth, embarrassed. “That’s… I never thought…”

Dinah gave her a second, then turned to Erin. “Erin. You’re carrying twins.”

Erin glared. “No shit.”

“One boy, one girl. Fraternal. Both developing perfectly. Their sizes are slightly different, which is common in twins, but nothing to worry about.”

Erin was speechless. For a second, nobody said anything. Dinah broke the silence. “I know you have questions, so let’s go one at a time.” She pointed at Claire, who held up her notepad: Duration? And risk of preterm?

Dinah nodded, “You are a catgirl now. Your gestation is trending toward six months, not nine. The Hotel has stabilized the hybrid physiology for optimal fetal growth. You may go a little early, but the risk is negligible.”

Claire nodded.

Dinah moved to Chloe, who was still working on the “I have a boy inside me” reality. “You’re looking at a normal nine months,” Dinah said. “Barring any curveballs. Your overall health is exceptional, and the baby’s is, too.”

Chloe nodded, still in shock.

“Erin,” Dinah said, “with twins, there’s always the possibility of an early delivery. But…” She looked at her screen, then at Erin, “You’re not really human anymore, so you get to have your own timeline.”

Erin, finding her voice, asked, “What does that mean?”

Dinah took a breath, straight-faced. “Given the plant-based structure of your new biology, the Hotel expects your pregnancy to last twenty-four months, give or take.”

There was a moment of pure, crystalline silence.

Then Erin said, “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

Claire and Chloe both burst out laughing, unable to hold it in.

Andy watched Erin, who looked like she was about to commit a murder, and then at Dinah, who was so stone-faced it was an art form.

Dinah let the silence ride for another beat, then chuckled and said, “I’m just messing with you. Four to five months, tops.”

Chloe had to wipe tears from her eyes. Claire wrote OMG in huge letters and held it up. Erin glared at Dinah, then at Andy, who did his best to look sympathetic.

Dinah shrugged, “Sorry, I don’t get to announce very many of these, I may be a bit rusty on the protocol. But you should see your faces! Look, the real news is: everyone’s healthy, everyone’s on track, and you’re all going to be fine. The worst symptom you might get is seasonal pollen or hay fever, but I doubt it.”

The room went quiet again, this time with relief.

Chloe said, “Thank you,” then hugged Claire, who smiled shyly and hugged her back. Erin sat rigid for a second, then softened. “I’m not mad,” she said, “I just can’t believe I got played by my own OB/GYN.”

For a while after, Dinah let them sit in it: the facts, the futures, the uncomfortable arithmetic of the next few months. She retreated to her office and left Andy, Erin, Chloe, and Claire alone in the exam room with its awkward chairs and the afterimage of two girls howling with laughter at their friend’s expense. Erin had thrown her head back, fully green now even on her neck, and didn’t bother to hide the way her nipples jutted at the thin gown. Chloe giggled until she snorted, then clamped both hands over her mouth, and Claire’s blue eyes danced above her notepad, which she used to keep score like a sports commentator.

Andy expected the mood to dip once the joke was over. It didn’t. If anything, the energy stayed buoyed, as if the revelation of twins had been a team achievement. He was conscious, for the first time, that all three women were… radiant. Not in the magazine-ad sense, but literally so: even under the fluorescents, Chloe’s skin glowed with life; Erin’s flesh hummed with a kind of botanical confidence; Claire, even sitting still, seemed more sharply drawn than usual, her lines and edges hyper-real.

Erin was first to break the post-laughter silence. “Can you even imagine it?” she said, voice softer now, more for herself than for the room. “Two babies. Not just one, but two. I can barely keep a cactus alive.”

“Cactuses don’t cry or need diapers,” Chloe said, then grinned. “Well, some of them do, but only if you overwater.”

Claire drew a little cactus on her notepad, then a larger one next to it, and put a heart between them.

Erin peered over. “That’s not what my boobs look like.”

Andy coughed, and Chloe lost it again.

After a few minutes, Dinah returned. She was carrying three small, matte-black folders, the kind doctors used for delivering news in prestige dramas. She handed them to Erin, Claire and Chloe with an air of “I have more work to do, but you matter.”

“Your full scan data, prenatal bloodwork, and a letter for your providers,” Dinah said, her voice all business. “If you return to the real world before the next appointment, you can give that to your actual doctor, and they’ll know everything they need. They’ll even get a crash course in catgirl and alraune biology, courtesy of Arabella. If not, I’ll see you in a month.” She looked at all three women in turn. “Questions?”

Chloe shook her head. “Thank you,” she said, earnest. “Really.”

Dinah nodded. She lingered at the door, watching them, then fixed Andy with her best “you are responsible now” glare. “You’re the glue here,” she said. “Don’t let it come undone.”

He nodded. “I won’t.”

She nodded, satisfied, and left them to it.

---

The walk through the Hollow Garden was different this time. No one was in a hurry. The air was thick and ripe, the light liquid gold, and even the bird sounds seemed slowed down, as if the whole ecosystem was trying to lull them into staying. Andy led the way, but he walked slow, letting the women set the pace.

Chloe was the first to break the silence. She walked with her arms out, letting her fingertips brush every leaf and vine along the path. “Is it weird that I feel… I don’t know… special?” she said. “Like, this whole time I kept thinking this could never happen to me, and now I’m—” She blinked, then laughed at herself. “Now I’m a mom. Or I’m going to be. It doesn’t feel real, but I like it.”

Claire nodded, writing: It’s real.

Erin read the note over Chloe’s shoulder, then put her arm around both women at once. “I always thought pregnancy was supposed to be hard, but I feel better than I have in years. Like I’m not just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Andy smiled, and Erin caught it. “Don’t you start,” she said. “You have a different kind of shoe.”

“I do?”

“Yeah. You’re the only person on the planet who could make this not terrifying for us,” Erin said, then blushed, as if the words had come out by mistake.

Chloe touched her belly, almost shy. “I agree,” she said, quieter. “I wouldn’t want to do this with anyone else.”

Claire, not to be outdone, drew three little stick figures, each with a heart above her head, and handed the notepad to Andy. He looked at it and felt, for a second, like he might cry, but then Chloe pointed out that the middle stick figure had enormous boobs and he laughed instead.

When they reached the elevator, Erin turned to Andy. “Are you coming up?”

He shook his head. “I’m going to wait for Myra and Laura. They have… something.”

The three women exchanged glances, and Andy could see a hundred small things pass between them—solidarity, nerves, hope, the weird certainty that comes with being seen by people who share your experience. They thanked him, then stepped into the elevator. Chloe gave a little wave; Claire winked; Erin blew him a quick, embarrassed kiss.

The doors closed.

---

Andy sat on the bench by the elevator and let the Garden overwhelm him. There was too much life, too much growth, for a person to take in. For a while he just sat with it, feeling the difference between before and now, the way his world had grown to include futures he’d never imagined. He tried to picture himself with four children, then six, then ten, and was less scared of it than he thought he’d be.

He sat with the afterimage of the women in his mind for a long time. He’d watched them step into the elevator, all three turning in unison, each offering a private goodbye. Chloe’s was a wave, earnest and a little teary, but unmistakably happy. Claire’s was a wink, her cat pupil dilating in the strange light, the notebook pressed to her chest. Erin’s was a look he’d never seen from her before—something like pride, or peace, or maybe the shellshock of a person who’d just accepted the next twenty years of her life in a single sentence. Then the doors had closed, and Andy had been left alone with the sound of his own blood in his ears.

He let the weight of the Garden settle over him. Sunlight broke in moving ribbons through the canopy, painting his hands and forearms with warm and cold, shifting with the slow change of clouds overhead. For a while, Andy tried to tally it all: the impossibility of the pregnancies, the very specific futures implied by “one girl, one boy, and twins;” the way Erin’s skin had gone dark with chlorophyll even as her eyes filled with something soft and watery; Chloe’s visible delight; Claire’s silent, private awe. The sense that the world, having spent a decade narrowing itself down to a single, sharp point, had suddenly exploded outward again.

He wondered if the future would always feel like this: partly won, partly borrowed, never entirely his. The women deserved so much more than what The HH could give them, and more than what he could give, too. But he wanted to try. The wanting, he realized, was the thing that made it real.

He let himself imagine four children—not a hypothetical, not “someday,” but real, here, loud, alive, and unique. He pictured Erin with a little girl that would one day outpace her on a climbing wall, and a boy with green-streaked hair and a lopsided smile; Chloe, reading stories to a toddler whose only rebellion was refusing to sleep at naptime; Claire, holding a daughter who looked up at her like she held the only light in the room. He could see all of it, and none of it at the same time. It was terrifying, and it was the only thing he wanted.

He was still lost in that reverie when a shadow fell over the bench. Arabella stood there, hands clasped, gaze downturned in a show of humility that didn’t quite fit her. She wore a dress the color of ocean dusk, and her hair was drawn back in a long tail, as if she’d dressed for a funeral and a coronation at the same time.

Andy looked up, and Arabella sat down next to him, leaving exactly a hand’s width of space between them. For a second, neither spoke.

“It’s a lot, isn’t it?” she said.

Andy nodded, unable to keep the smile from his lips. “It’s the right amount of a lot.”

She folded her hands in her lap, twisting her ring with a thumb. “I wanted to say that I saw what happened on the bridge. With the shot glass.”

He went still. “Did you…?”

She shook her head. “No. That was you, Andy. The power is yours, now.”

He considered this. “So you’re saying I can… wish things into being? Just by wanting them hard enough?”

Arabella’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “Not exactly. But almost.” She watched his face. “Laura and Myra are almost here. I will seek you later, when you have a moment, and we will talk in private.”

He let that sit. “Do you think it’s dangerous?”

Arabella smiled, very small. “Dangerous? Yes, maybe. But also necessary. If you weren’t willing to be dangerous for them, you wouldn’t be here.”

He felt something shift inside him. Not pride, exactly, but something that ran in the same channel. He looked up. The doors were opening, and he could see Laura’s silhouette—two of her, moving in perfect step—followed by Myra, who paused for a second in the threshold before stepping forward. Her twin tails flicked in opposite directions, like antennae reading the world for news.

Arabella stood. She waited for Andy to rise, then, when he didn’t, she offered a hand. He took it, the skin cool and almost trembling. She squeezed his fingers, a brief and honest pressure.

“Remember,” she said, “I’ll find you.”

He nodded, then let her hand go. “Thank you,” he said.

She inclined her head, formal and sincere, then moved away, her dress trailing like a shadow.

Andy watched her go. Then he looked at the women coming toward him. Laura’s face was set, determined but not hard. Myra walked with careful precision, every step an act of will. As they drew closer, Andy felt the future rushing toward him—unmanageable, uncharted, not just his anymore.

He went to meet them.