Page 2 of Bitten By the Basilisk

Alice technically counted as one of them, but she had lived as a normie her entire life. Practically was one. Her human dad had met her mom while vacationing in Indigo Cove, and Mom had followed him back to Chicago, where they’d married and had a child—her.

Unfortunately, Dad had died young in a car accident. Mom had continued to raise her in Chicago, but she never truly recovered from losing the love of her life, not until she moved to Indigo Cove the year Alice started college, and took over the spa.

Although Alice missed seeing her mom, she had to admit that the move had revived Mom. During their weekly phone calls, she always sounded happy and hopeful—and full of juicy gossip.

Thanks to her talent with illusions, Mom had recently joined a stage production for the town’s upcoming Hallowe’en Week. Alice had agreed to come visit for the first time since her early teens and watch the opening performance.

The prospect of spending the next few days surrounded by supes should have been exciting, but the growing knot in her stomach said otherwise. Unlike her seatmate and the fairies two rows up, Alice was barely more than human, and she was about to be in the constant company of folks who could cast magic, shape-shift, breathe underwater, and even fly.

All Alice could boast was an underpaid job interpreting uninspired marketing briefs, an average apartment with a landlord that refused to fix her drippy kitchen sink, and the miserable ability to know instantly on every first date that they weren’t the One, not to mention see it whenever someone else—not her single ass—had met their true love.

Whoop-de-do.

Her phone buzzed in the pocket of her lined suede jacket, stymieing her sullen ruminations. I’ll be waiting inside the terminal! her mom had texted, along with at least a dozen emojis.

Alice smiled with amusement as she tapped out a reply.

See you in a few minutes!

Although the spa had plenty of support staff, she appreciated her mom coming to pick her up during normie business hours. She had considered booking a stay at Indigo Cove’s famous Driftwood Inn and getting there on her own, but the only rooms left were out of her price range, and Mom’s apartment on the top floor of the spa had a spare room.

When Alice looked up from her phone, the bus passed Indigo Cove’s neatly landscaped welcome sign, which marked not only the town limits but also the boundary of the magical wards that masked the town’s supernaturals from human visitors.

Normies and even most supernaturals could not perceive the wards’ magic any more than they could the fourth dimension, but Alice, with her ability, normally sensed the transition as a thickening of the air and a scent that reminded her of petrichor.

This visit, however, her mom had warned her that the wards were mysteriously down, so she felt nothing as the welcome sign disappeared behind them.

Less than a minute later, the bus entered the drive entrance of the town’s transit terminal—a quaint one-story building with neatly arranged signs and posters on its front windows. From there, arrivals could transfer to a local bus, a taxi, or the town’s historic streetcar, which Alice remembered riding the last time she’d visited at thirteen.

Though her jacket had a collar she could flip up, she pulled from her backpack the burgundy scarf she had recently finished making and draped it around her neck. Knitting was a newer hobby, being cheaper than painting supplies. She had only needed two skeins of a soft merino wool to finish the pattern.

“How long will you be staying?” her seatmate asked as they waited for the passengers ahead of them to step off the bus.

“Just a few days. If you give me a name, I’ll let my mom know to give you the family discount,” she offered, “a name” being more appropriate than “your name” in a place where such things had actual power.

She might be only a small step above a normie, but her mom had taught her the proper etiquette for interacting with unfamiliar supes.

“How gracious of you,” the woman acknowledged with a coy glint in her eyes. “You may call me Yōko.” She bowed her head as part of her introduction, which Alice returned.

“Pleasure to meet you. If you encounter any confusion, just mention the name Alice.”

“I shall,” Yōko said with a nod.

By the time Alice disembarked, her suitcase had already been unloaded from the bus’s luggage compartment and waited for her on the curb. As she pulled up the telescopic handle, a gust of wind nearly lifted her scarf from her neck, so she tossed one end over her shoulder and hurried into the terminal, her suitcase rolling alongside.

“Alice!” a familiar voice squeaked, to her mild chagrin. She spotted her mom weaving toward her through the other arrivals, waving and looking ecstatic, and couldn’t help smiling at how much livelier she had become since leaving Chicago.

“You’re finally here,” Mom gushed, her arms open for a hug. Though they were physically alike in most ways—wavy black hair, foxlike features inherited from their kitsune ancestor, and a willowy frame—Alice was much taller thanks to her dad’s genes, enough to tuck her mom’s head under her chin.

“Oh, your scarf is so soft,” Mom said, rubbing her cheek against it and making Alice giggle.

“Would you like me to make you one?”

Mom pulled back. “You made this?” She picked up the end hanging between them and examined the heart-shaped mock-cable pattern.

Normally, a scarf of this length and complexity would have taken Alice an hour a day over two or three weeks to complete, but once she’d begun knitting, a fugue state had taken over her, and when it ended eight hours later at about three a.m., she had a complete scarf. Work the next day had been a blur.

“The rows are so neat! I would love one like this.”