Tilly felt her belly tighten pleasantly as her brain felt a spark.
"That was a really weird way to say that, but," Eloise nodded, a look of working out a puzzle, "yeah. Yeah, I think that's what that means.""Well shoot you don't need dark magic then," she said.
"Why not? Wouldn't it be better to fight evil with evil?"
Cassidy's head fell forward a little as her eyebrows shot up and she made a high-pitched sound somewhere between a laugh and a soft scream of disbelief. "The fuck? You think evil is stronger than good? Damn, did you have either a complete princess, privileged childhood, or a complete narcissist as a parent?"
"Narcissist sister," Tilly reminded her. "Possibly mother too."
"Right. Sorry. That's rough."
The unexpected softness from the woman made Eloise make anAre you seriouslook before she reminded her, "You'rea narcissist."
Cassidy rolled her eyes. "Yeah, that's easy to forget when you don't believe you are one."
"You don't believe you are one?" Tilly's disbelief filled her voice.
"Hello, narcissist. I'm the best, everyone else is merely here for my story."
"Yikes."
Eloise made a face.
"But seriously," Cassidy went on. "You can't possibly believe evil is more powerful. Good builds things, grows things. Itmakes things more palatable and in some cases even beautiful. Good brings together. Good creates. Evil," she waved her hand through the air with a shrug, "destroys. It mutates and twists things. It divides and it disables. Those seem powerful, sure until you realize that evil can only exist and survive because of the good to destroy. Without some good thrown into the measure, evil would destroy, mutate, divide, and disable itself until there is nothing left."
Tilly sat back with an open mouth and Eloise said, "Damn. That was poetic, evil Cassidy. So we fight them with what we've got."
A snort from Cassidy. "I wouldn't hex their hair colors. If you think that's a realgotcha" she made finger guns, "then you're so good that I'd put in the application for you to be sainted." She added, "Or to work at Hallmark."
They gave her a look and she sighed. "Listen, it pains me to say it, but you are more powerful together with pure magic that chooses you, than they are with their twisted and coerced magic. They're using dark magic because they know the trump card that you have."
"But how do we use that against them and win?"
Tilly's question was the same one rolling through Eloise's mind.
"Girl, I don't know. That's your job to figure out. I," she pointed to herself, "chose the dark side. That magic isn't my specialty. You," she gestured between the two women across from her, "are good. Or whatever. Our greatest trick is to try and make you good people believe that bad is more powerful. So, I've just lifted the curtain on the biggest lesson you can learn. I think I deserve a bunch of peaches and so many magazines for this."
"Mhmm. Alright, well thank you." They stood and a guard stepped forward to escort Cassidy out of the meeting room.
She turned her head to look at them behind her and said, "You better follow through on our deal."
"Peaches and our delightful company?"
"Delightful is an embellishment."
Eloise smiled big. "Sure."
"You think we're cool," Tilly sing-songed causing Cassidy to roll her eyes.
"See you around, C-money." Eloise gave her the peace sign and they left as Cassidy asked them if they would follow through, to which Eloise just called over her shoulder, "Guess you'll have to wait and see."
31. Lovely Little Threats
Jessica had her head up, thanked the officer who handed her her purse, and signed something. Bess and Ursula watched through the glass partition as Chief Landry ran them through what happened and how they responded to the ludicrous acts of unmarked security physically removing their friend from a town hall.
"It was dystopian," Bess raged, her teen angst put to good use.
Landry nodded, his steadiness and calm disposition not shaken as he agreed with her.
