“And?”
“Ponies don’t do dishes.”
“Demons posing as unicorns posing as ponies do. Unless they have something else they can use as payment.”
“Oh! I have this cursed—”
“A form of payment within Ordinary’s rules and laws for supernaturals, mortals, gods, and others.”
Her pony lower lip wobbled. “You’re mean.”
“This? This is me being lenient. You know the ways of mortals, Xtelle. You know the ways of the mortal world. You might be able to meddle and cheat and steal out there.” I pointed north. “But inside Ordinary you must follow the law. Stealing gets you jail time.”
She paused, and I wondered if she was weighing the merits of being locked up for a few months against doing dishes.
“You’d lock up a pony?”
Ah. She thought that form was going to get her out of all sorts of human things. Wrong. Clever. But wrong.
“I would.”
“In a…barn?”
“In a jail. You don’t think the holding cells are the only place we put criminals?”
She drew back in horror, her whole body sinking back into the seat, as that realization hit her. “You have…a magic jail?”
“Something like that.”
“Why haven’t I ever heard of it?”
“You’ve been in Ordinary for all of three minutes. Frankly, I think you just set a record for how quickly I’ve threatened to throw someone into it.”
“Perhaps I’d be treated better there,” she huffed.
“Yeah, no.” I put the Jeep in reverse, drove out of the parking lot, and onto Hwy 101, the main drag through town. “Start thinking about how you’re going to apologize for those chocolates, and how you’re going to pay Stina back for them.”
“Ponies don’t have money!”
“Looks like you’ve got a dilemma on your hooves. Better figure it out in the next couple minutes. We’re almost there.”
She scowled and stared out the window, muttering under her breath quietly enough I couldn’t catch anything except the expletives.
I ignored her and rolled right up to the red and white-striped Sweet Reflections, parking a short distance from the door.
“If there are customers in there, you’ll remain outside the building. Quiet as a pony. A real pony. We’ll go around back. Stina is local and a gorgon. You can talk to her because she knows about the supernaturals. You are not to speak unless it’s just Stina and me there. Got it?”
She crinkled up one eye ridge, stared straight at me, and pawed the back of my seat once.
Dear gods, save me from sarcastic unicorn pony demons.
“That’s a yes?”
She waited, then pawed the back of my chair again.
“Good pony.”
And oh, the look she gave me. I ducked out of the car before she could aim a kick at my head. I strolled around to the back of the Jeep, opened the tailgate, and pushed a cardboard box covered with a moving blanket to one side, looking for the length of rope I kept there.
