Chapter 1: A Little Night Music

            Late-night walks weren’t the worst way to make a living.

Especially when the weather was this good. Clear skies, a cool breeze, and enough moonlight for Jess to see the road stretched out in front of her. She still had a ways to go before she could call it a night, and the streetlights had disappeared some time ago.

Her music, though, never failed her. Jess piped a steady stream of her favorite tunes as she walked, simplifying them enough she could play them in her sleep. A few doors from nearby houses shut as she went by, curtains quickly closing, but Jess didn’t take it as a commentary on her music.

Almost no one liked watching hundreds of rats walk down their street.

With each step, the number kept climbing. Rats trickled out of every house and outbuilding she passed by, emerging from cracks and knotholes to join the ever-increasing rat army behind her. She called them with her music, with the thread of power she wove through every note, and they wanted to follow more than they wanted air. It wasn’t useful for a lot, but it was an easy way to clear them out of a town.

Some people become witches or sorceresses. Other people had magic that was only good for pest control.

The little boy standing by the side of the road didn’t seem to care, though. All his attention was on the rats, watching them with the kind of rapt fascination she hardly ever saw from anyone over the age of 12. She took one hand off the pipe long enough to wave at him, the song briefly turning into random notes as her concentration slipped. The kid didn’t notice, waving delightedly back at her.

Unfortunately, the moment was short lived. The boy’s mother burst out of one of the nearby houses, hurrying over and snatching him up. She capped the whole thing off by giving Jess her fiercest glare, clearly hoping she could wither her on the spot.

It was hardly the worst look Jess had ever received, and so she responded with the most dramatic wink she could manage. The woman huffed, clearly displeased by the response, but rather than trying to do anything about it she simply turned around and hauled the child back into the house.

The rest of the walk was quiet, ending in an empty field with a flaming trench along the far end. This was her least favorite part of the routine, walking over the magically fire-protected bridge while the rats fell into the flames. She always made sure to do this part as quickly as possible, sweeping the rats off the side of the bridge with her foot. She tried to do it without looking down at all, though she never quite managed it.

The town council representative standing at the end of the trench didn’t seem at all bothered. He watched the entire process without saying a word, and even when the last rat was gone it was Jess who spoke first. “I assume you have my fee?”

The man’s expression instantly turned skeptical. “You sure you got all of them?”

Jess’s hands tightened around her pipe as she tried to hold her temper back. It was hardly an uncommon response – she was young, a woman, and had powers almost no one really understood. Even worse, she was a little too different-looking to really blend in to the local population. Her olive brown skin was close enough to a farmer’s tan for people not to question it, but her hair was just a little too black and a little too straight to really pass.

Jess did what she could to adapt. She kept her hair short, always lied about her age, and learned how to use the knife she kept in her boot. When it came to business negotiations, however, biting her tongue usually got a better result than the knife.

Not that she was always entirely successful at that. “If there’s a rat left in the entire town, I can promise you they’re completely deaf.” She did manage to keep her tone professional, promising herself she could imagine punching him later. “Now I believe you have the rest of my money?”

Reluctantly, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a decently full envelope. “Always found pipers kind of creepy, myself,” he muttered, holding it out to her. “Not right, what you can do.”

Punching wasn’t enough. She’d let herself imagine stabbing him later.

For now, Jess snatched the envelope out of his hand and counted the money with one quick swipe. Then she gave him her brightest, most artificial smile. “If I find any more rats, I’ll make sure to send them your way.”

The man stalked off at that, disappearing into the darkness. Jess watched him go, long enough to make sure he wasn’t coming back with a bunch of angry friends, then sighed. “I probably shouldn’t have done that.”

Neither the night sky or the empty field had any response. Jess waited a few beats in the silence, broken only by the crackling of the slowly dying flames. Standing there in the slowly flickering light, it was easy to imagine she was the only person left in the entire world.

She probably was alone. There were so many other things he could be doing.

Still, she cleared her throat. “It’s okay to agree with me, you know. I don’t mind hearing when I’ve done something dumb.”

Barely a breath later, the emptiness in front of her was replaced by a young man. He had a soft, dark cloud of tightly curled hair, warm brown skin burnished by the firelight, and the kindest eyes Jess had ever seen. She’d been traveling with him for almost a year now, and she still wasn’t tired of looking at him.

“Sorry.” Thomas Abernathy, official Rat and Mouse Reaper, pushed his glasses back up his nose. He looked genuinely apologetic, which was both completely ridiculous and made her chest ache in the worst way. “I didn’t want to interrupt you with a response if you were just sort of brooding at the universe.”

I always want you to interrupt me. Instead of saying that out loud, she busied herself with putting both her pipe and the money away in her case. “I do like a good round of artistic brooding.” Her mom’s quote slipped out without her realizing she was going to say it, and the brief stab of pain was its own distraction. “Right now, though, my question was completely serious. How stupid was I?”

To her surprise, Thomas scowled. “You were just fine. He deserved worse.” His jaw tightened, every part of him radiating fierce protectiveness. If he’d said something about sirens, I might have punched him myself.”

Jess’s chest tightened. “Look at me, tempting you to crime.” She’d meant the words to be a joke, but there was something unsteady in her throat. “You know you don’t have to wait for me, right? I’m sure it would be less boring, and then you wouldn’t have to overhear so many jerks.”

Thomas’s protective anger instantly disappeared, replaced by a sudden uncertainty she wanted to kick herself for activating. If she was going to finally punch someone the way they deserved, it would be the staff of the Dr. Abernathy Home for Abandoned Children.

“I don’t have to wait here if you don’t want me to.” He took a step back. “You don’t actually need me to keep track of how many rats and mice you’ve collected, and if you wanted you could just mirror call me when you were ready for me to—”

“Hey.” Jess caught the lanyard he always wore around his neck when he was on the job, tugging on it gently. “I don’t want you to stop doing anything. I was just trying to save you a little boredom.”

He smiled at that, whole face lighting up, and it took real, concerted effort not to reach up and smooth her fingers along his cheek. “Being bored just means more time to read.” Then his expression softened. “Besides, I like watching you work.”

Anyone with sense would have kissed him for that. Jess had plenty of sense, but she also had warning bells clanging in the back of her head telling her to stay away from Thomas for his own good. She wasn’t going to do that – she refused to let herself say she couldn’t – but she needed to keep herself from making it any worse.

Taking a deep breath, Jess made herself let go of him. “Right now, though, I’m the one who’s keeping you from working.” She tightened the strap on her pipe case to make sure she had something to do with her hands. “Why don’t we—”

The rest of her cover attempt was interrupted by the sound of her pocket magic mirror chiming that she had a new message. Grateful for the distraction, she pulled it out and swiped her finger across the glass. Real magic mirrors were alive, as full of free will and personality as any person, but they were also incredibly expensive and only worked for the people they wanted to. These mirrors were just empty vessels operated by complicated spells, hooked into the local ley lines in order to send and receive their magic.

Thomas watched her, hesitating as he reached for the I.D. hanging around his neck. “You want to skip following me around tonight, so you can focus on the message?”

He always asked her that, in one form or another, even though she’d never once taken him up on the offer. It would have been safer, but there was a lot she’d do to keep that look off his face. “Not a chance. I’d hate to miss hearing you explain something.”

His expression relaxed, but now he looked at her like she’d just made a particularly dumb joke. “Ha ha. You’re hilarious.”

“While that’s definitely true, right now I’m being completely serious.” Opening the message with one hand, she tried to ignore the familiar tingle as she laid the other hand on his shoulder. There was an entirely practical reason for it – if she let go of him, she’d immediately get dumped back into the regular world and Thomas would end up invisible again.

Besides, it wasn’t like she was putting her hand anywhere near his bare skin. That would just be stupid. “If you ever want to quit being a Reaper I’m sure someone would hire you as a tour guide.”

Thomas made a rueful noise. “Only someone who was really interested in hearing an itemized history of the local plant life.” He finally slapped his hand against the I.D., making both the darkness and fire disappear in a rush of gray. The only spots of color left in the world were her, Thomas, and the cool blue light of the rats’ discarded life energy floating in small clouds above the flames.

According to Thomas, everyone’s life energy stuck around after they died. It normally faded away after a few days, and without the extra boost of the cloak only witches and sorcerers could see it. That meant the less scrupulous ones could absorb the energy as an extra power boost, which tended to be bad news for everyone else.

That was where Reapers came in.

Thomas curled his hand, murmuring a word Jess could never quite catch. An instant later, a glowing, translucent scythe made of energy appeared in his empty grip. Thomas had explained once that both the scythe and cloak spells were stored in the I.D., along with a whole host of theories about how they might have been made. He liked explaining things, and she liked listening to him explain them.

Sometimes, she even gave him prompts just to keep him talking. “You know, it’s really not fair that you have to wait until they’re already dead,” Jess tried, watch him carefully swing the tip of his scythe through each one of those small clouds of blue light. The light flared and disappeared, going someplace even Thomas hadn’t dared to speculate about. “Especially with those quotas you have to make every month.”

Thomas shook his head as he worked. “If I kill them, the scythe spell somehow knows and won’t let me Reap them.”

When further explanation didn’t come, Jess frowned. “How does that work, exactly?” she prompted.

This time, it was his turn to sigh. “Honestly, I have no idea. It’s probably a combination of several spells, but I’ve asked various supervisors and none of them seemed to even know what I was talking about.” He made a frustrated noise. “Not that that’s anything new, really.”

Jess would punch Thomas’s bosses, but she didn’t want to make his life any harder. “You could probably figure it out,” she prodded gently. “Take it apart yourself, see how it worked.”

Now his expression turned wistful. “That would be nice.” Then he shook his head, firmly enough like he was chasing the thought away. “There’s no point, though. Right now, we should be more worried about your work.” He inclined his head toward the mirror. “Which you just got a message about.”

Letting herself be deflected, she activated the mirror message. The smoke swirling on the other side of the glass cleared, revealing an exhausted middle-aged man with a decent suit and the lingering trace of a farmer’s tan. “Miss Tremeau, my name is Arthur Perkins. I’m the mayor of Kensford, a bustling, prosperous town boasting—” He stopped, closing his eyes like something pained him. “But you don’t care about that.”

“Your clients don’t usually sound this stressed, do they?” Thomas asked absently, still focused on his own work.

Jess paused the message. “Sometimes. If his constituents are complaining, or the last piper couldn’t do the job, he’s getting a lot of extra pressure.”

Thomas considered this a moment, then nodded. “That makes sense. The witches from the mirror group mention that sometimes with clients.”

Jess smiled a little. “Are they still trying to get you named an honorary witch so they can make you a member?”

Thomas’s sigh was both affectionate and long-suffering as he pushed his glasses back up his nose. “They’re just trying to be nice. There’s nothing special about the fact that I read a lot.”

There was no way to answer that wouldn’t completely betray her, so she just squeezed his shoulder and restarted the message. On the other side of the mirror, Mayor Perkins cleared his throat. “We’ve talked to the leaders of some of the other cities and towns you’ve done jobs for, and they all say you’re the most thorough piper they’ve ever worked with.”

Jess had just long enough to feel a glow of pride before he ruined it by continuing. “We had to research a little more extensively than usual since we heard your name in an odd way. We put up our usual posting for a piper, and a man named Crispin St. Clair responded. His—”

Alarm spiking, she shut off the mirror message again. Thomas stopped, looking back over his shoulder. “Did he just say—”

“Unfortunately, he did.” Jess hesitated, sure she should delete the message. “We both know this is a bad idea, right? The last time I took a job over from him, he almost got us both arrested.”

Thomas’s expression gentled. “And after everyone figured out you were right, he was the one who got arrested.”

Jess’s jaw tightened at the memory. She was a far better piper, but Crispin had proven to have an unexpected talent for smear campaigns. “I’m sure he tried to smear me here, too.”

“And they want to hire you anyway.” Thomas smiled. “You should definitely finish the message.”

Taking a deep breath, she restarted it. “—reputation is unfortunate enough that nearby towns had already warned us against him, but we were desperate.” The mayor grimaced. “Unfortunately, he couldn’t even call a single rat. When confronted him about his failure, he insisted you were somehow to blame. We began researching you, and after hearing the reports it’s clear we desperately need your help.”

She stopped the message completely, far more tempted than she knew she should be. “At least it sounds like it won’t be boring.”

“You don’t have to talk me into it,” he laughed.  “Let me finish up here. Then we’ll get a few hours of sleep and set out for Kensford in the morning.”

Jess grinned. “I’m sure the rats will be excited to see us.” Sending a quick return message, she slipped the magic mirror into her pocket and went back to watching Thomas work.

If she heard warning bells, she carefully didn’t admit it to herself.

#

They made it to Kensford by the following afternoon. Rather than going straight to town hall, they took a detour through the market to restock their provisions and get a better sense of the rat situation. If the mayor had been desperate before Crispin screwed things up, there might be additional complications. If so, Jess needed to find out what they were.

Part of that was keeping an ear open for gossip.

“These rats are a menace! They’ll steal food off a table just like a cat!”

“There was one sleeping in my daughter’s bed last night!”

“I mirror called my sister in Hammelin to see if my family can stay with hers, but I haven’t been able to get a hold of her. I’m getting desperate.”

At one point, Thomas leaned in close. “If the rats are really as bad as people say, why aren’t they running wild through this place? They always go for the food, and this place has to be at least as exciting as the local grain stores. But we’ve been here almost an hour, and I haven’t seen a single rat. I haven’t even heard a shriek.”

Jess had noticed the same thing. “I would say the rats are too full to eat anything, but the food is all still out in the open. If they’d spent the last few days fighting off rats, they’d have at least a few protective measures in place.” She poked her head underneath the edge of one of the stalls, lifting the display cloth, but no rat ran out with a stolen prize.

Thomas frowned. “There’s no such thing as a polite rat.”

“No, there isn’t.” Jess straightened. “And from the way people are talking…”

The words trailed off as a rat emerged from under a nearby stall, walking casually as if it had all the time in the world. The few people that were nearby shrieked and ran, making the rat jump and run around in circles. When someone went at it with a broom, the rat started squeaking wildly and backed itself into a corner. Still, it didn’t run for real cover until another rat darted out and chased it into a protected area.

Thomas’s brow furrowed, still staring in the direction the rats had gone. “That’s not how normal rats behave.”

“No, but it would explain why people are freaking out even though there aren’t that many rats.” Relief loosened a knot she hadn’t even known was in her chest. “A bunch of rats accidentally eat some magical grain or something and start acting funny. People get spooked enough to complain to the mayor, and suddenly the entire town has a rat problem.”

Thomas’s expression relaxed a little, but not enough. “I guess that could work. It would have to be a traveling shipment of grain, though – there’s nothing in this area that would qualify.”

“That makes sense.” She nudged his arm, not liking how worried he still looked. “What this really means, though, is there’s a chance I might get done early tonight. Which means you’ll get done early tonight.”

The idea made his eyes light up again. She firmly ignored how unfairly attractive it made him look. “Which means we might both get some actual sleep.”

Cheered by the thought, they headed to town hall and wrapped up negotiations with the mayor without too much trouble. Jess agreed to do the walk that night, offered a brief demonstration to prove that she actually had the skills she claimed, and walked away with the first half of a healthy fee.

That night, Thomas headed to his usual position by the trench as Jess started her walk. A surprisingly large crowd had gathered – the rats really had made people nervous – and Jess made sure to put on an extra touch of showmanship. Even though she was nowhere near a center ring, she’d never forgotten her mother’s lessons about putting on a show.

Then she raised her pipe to her lips and started playing. A few steps later, she closed her eyes and reached deep inside her chest. That was where the magic waited, and just like always it came easily to her call.

Except there weren’t enough rats following her. She could only hear a few sets of little feet trailing along behind her, even though she’d gone almost a block. Even if Kensford was exaggerating their rat problem, she normally would have called out at least 10 or 15 by this point.

She thought about the rat they’d seen at the market, how oddly it had behaved compared to every other rat she’d seen. Thomas would probably say it was why she was having so much trouble calling them now, maybe even suggest stopping the walk until she could talk to the mayor.

If she was right, though, the weird behavior was the entire reason the mayor and council had called her here in the first place. They certainly wouldn’t see it as a good enough reason for her not to do her job, which meant she’d be fired.

Just like Crispin.

Appalled by the thought, she reached back down for more magic. She had to dig deeper than usual, but when she made the connection it was like a dam bursting. The power rushed through her, pouring into the song so suddenly she stumbled a little.

It only took a few more steps before the rats started coming. She could hear their tiny claws on the cobblestones, flooding into the street the same way her power had into the song. She didn’t turn around, but she’d been doing this long enough she couldn’t stop her brain from estimating the number from the sounds. One hundred… five hundred… eight hundred… A river of rats, when she was used to a steady trickle.

It was fine, though. Jess told herself that she’d just used too much power, pouring it into the song too fast. It didn’t mean anything was wrong.

But they kept coming. More and more rats found her with every step, the sound of them loud enough now to be heard over the music. The townspeople were growing increasingly unnerved, and it was getting harder and harder to pretend she wasn’t feeling the same way.

As the audience thinned, the number of rats started to slow down as well. She could see the trench fire glowing in the distance, holding onto the image as she made it to the empty field. The rats were still following behind her like an obedient little army, and she just had to cross one last little stretch of dirt. Then she could get the rest of her money, and she and Thomas could—

The thought cut off as Thomas suddenly appeared in the middle of the field, hurrying toward her at a dead run.