Page 6 of Fang Fatale

Dandy insists I stop being, in her words, "so stuck in survival mode that you miss your whole cute little story arc."

I peer through the peephole—which is actually the bottom of a glass Pepsi bottle Dandy embedded in the front door—and find a mop of pink curls waiting on the other side.

Dandy.

Her eyes are the color of antifreeze, and her entire body language suggests an unattended helium balloon.

"Locked?" she shouts through the door.

I fumble the deadbolt open.

"I brought donuts," she announces, sweeping inside. "And also a violin case full of anti-scrying salt. The donuts are the priority, but I feel like the two complement each other."

Whenever Dandy arrives, she brings a cloud of glamour with her. It settles over the room so thoroughly that all my anxieties about being found temporarily go dormant, replaced instead with questions like how she got here so quickly and why she smells faintly of marshmallows.

She kicks off her shoes, skips over the maze of unpacked boxes, and performs a delighted pirouette.

"It's so cute in here."

This is categorically false.

Ninety percent of the Button Cottage consists of one room. The remaining ten percent is the bathroom and a deeply suspicious crawlspace above the kitchen that I haven't dared investigate. There's exposed brick, a claw-foot tub, a fireplace blackened by generations of questionable magical experiments, and a bed I liberated from a barn with the owner's enthusiastic permission.

Thank you, Farmer Lovegood.

"You are flourishing," Dandy declares, surveying my decorating attempts.

Botanical prints, all thrifted.

Six succulents, all probably doomed.

A string of velvet pumpkins draped over the window.

"If this place had a Pinterest username," she says, "it would be BlessedHarvests—but, like, ironically." She tilts her head. "Are those curtains made out of pages from The Economist?"

"It was that or Interior Design for Dummies. I wanted to project detached sophistication."

"The hands of capitalism are definitely reaching down and tickling your windowsill."

She nods approvingly.

"Do you want to see what I brought?"

She's already opening the violin case before I answer.

"Is it a real violin," I ask, "or a weaponized violin?"

"Yes."

She triumphantly produces three tiny labeled vials tied together with garden twine.

"For you, madam. Salt harvested from the low marshes at moonrise. Enough to keep your location hidden from every ordinary human tracker."

She pauses thoughtfully.

"Unless someone is extremely determined. In which case, you'll hear them before they arrive because their shoes will fill with metaphorical fire ants."

"Is that the technical term?"