The lamps scattered about Lumi’s office had been dimmed to their lowest setting as the evening approached midnight. She still had work to do but could not bear the glare any longer. Her assistant had assured her that he did not mind the darker working conditions, always so diligent in his research for her latest work. Her home was coated in a mana shield to protect from the noise pollution of the outside world, allowing for complete silence if she so wished. Often she was the irritant making the noise.

The room was piled high with books, trinkets, cursed and possessed items of varying strengths, and all kinds of half-finished projects. This caused a concoction of peculiar shadows in the lamp light. One shadow, however, made a sudden move, drawing Lumi’s eye.

Before she had time to fully rise from her seat at her oversized desk, a figure had stepped out of the shadows with a dagger pressed to her chest lightly.

“I apologise for the inconvenience,” Zenaida announced. “I am here to enact a collection.”

Zenaida. Lumi had not laid eyes on her ex-girlfriend since the night they added the ‘ex’. There was no physical change that she could see in the dim light of the room. Zenaida stood with immaculate posture, stretching every extra millimetre she could out of her small frame. Her brown eyes stirring a potion of cunning, defiance and a dash of sarcasm at all times. She had an acrobat’s body, toned in places that Lumi did not know could be exercised. Her dark clothing looked like it had been vacuum-sealed to her form. A second thin dagger was laid across her back and a pistol was strapped to her thigh.

She wanted to tell Zenaida how good she looked, that she had not changed an ounce in almost a year. Instead, she said, “I didn’t know you had moved into the tax business.”

“Your head is what I will be collecting.”

Lumi shooed her assistant from the room, his eyes were wide and his expression uncertain but he obeyed the hand gesture nonetheless.

“I didn’t think things ended this badly.” She thought back to their parting. There had been tears, certainly, but no death threats.

Zenaida pressed her dagger a little harder. “This is business, not personal,” she said.

Lumi dropped herself through the floor via a shallow portal and jumped back through into the physical world on the other side of the room, beside an antique crystal collection.

“What if I take it personally?” She asked, dusting the nearest rock with a pinch of her robes.

“Then you should have kept your nose out of my business.” Zenaida leapt forward and swung her dagger at her.

This time, Lumi had the time to throw up a blocking spell. “I didn’t choose to have a bounty put on my head.” The dagger clunked into the thin wall of glowing magic and Zenaida jumped back a step. Lumi knew she had jumped back of her own choice, because she had deliberately used a weak shield that wouldn’t knock her backwards on impact.

Zenaida’s hand flicked like the jaw of a viper, slinging her single fang at Lumi at breakneck speed. “You chose to piss off some important people,” she said. Lumi held back a snort, you could only consider The Guild ‘important people’ if you thought money bred importance. She did not need to ask if that was the organisation after her throat, they were the only enemies that Lumi had ever made. And that was only because The Guild had a strange hatred for those who opposed gate-keeping.

Lumi barely had the time to convert her shield into a mini portal, Zenaida knew she was the slow-and-steady kind of sorcerer. Powerful, but slow. The best spells and potions needed time to marinate. Her impromptu portal swallowed the dagger and plopped it onto Lumi’s desk, four feet behind Zenaida.

“I thought you admired the way I rebuke authority,” Lumi said with feigned hurt feelings.

Zenaida drew her pistol and fired three shots back to back. “I thought you were smart enough to play the game without deathly consequences.” Lumi’s portal swallowed all three and held them as she squashed the raw magical energy like playdough into a fist-sized ball. She flung it out, sending it bouncing around the room manically. Papers were sent flurrying through the air, vials were broken, and as Zenaida shifted from foot to foot to keep track of it, she did not have time to move her gun before it was knocked from her hand and swallowed by the ball of magical goop.

Zenaida surged forward before Lumi could lift a fresh shield. They were chest to chest, too close for Lumi to put a barrier between them now.

Lumi leant in, lowering her voice considerably.“You and I both know that The Guild don’t play fair. Are they really the kind of people you associate with now?”

It was a sad thought. She didn’t take Zenaida for the type to be swayed by The Guild’s elitist attitude towards the magical arts. Lumi believed, down to her soul, that magic was for anyone who had magical energy inside of them and a willingness to learn. Magic and money should not be entwined. Magic and bloodlines should not be considered within the same sphere. She understood the need for keeping magic under the radar of the general public, and how difficult that had become in the age of smart phones and unfortunately clear video recording. But that should not be reason to withhold the magical arts from those from more diverse backgrounds, or families without multiple homes with pools.

Zenaida whispered back, “work is work.”

“Are you struggling?”

The sudden blunt question rocked Zenaida back a step. She flushed, visibly uncomfortable heat running over her skin.

“I’m fine.”

Lumi followed, re-connecting their bodies. “So, you had a wide range of contracts available to you and you chose to take the one from the seedy, community-crushing-”

“In my line of work we don’t judge the morals of others,” Zenaida said, almost monotonously. Trying to keep her feelings out of her voice. Her training had provided her with a usually unbreakable mask, but Lumi got the impression that today she was struggling.

Lumi softened her own tone. “In your line of work you can take care of the kind of problems that plague the common people. I thought that was the kind of work you did take? Evil dictators and demon slavers and the like.”

“That work isn’t coming in as often any more, the morally healthy don’t have the funds.”

“I assume because they are being squeezed and beaten down by The Guild. So you are aiding in your own redundancy by helping them.”

Zenaida huffed, “can you keep yourself from lecturing me for even ten minutes?”

With every step back that Zenaida took, Lumi followed until she had the smaller woman caged in against one of the many ceiling-high bookcases.

“I want the best for you,” Lumi murmured.

“Why?” Zenaida snapped defiantly. “I am not your problem anym-”

Lumi’s lips crashed into Zenaida’s, silencing her and drinking in her taste simultaneously. Zenaida’s elegantly narrow fingers clawed into Lumi’s hair, evaporating any atom of space left between them. Lumi gripped her waist and lifted her slightly, just enough to allow the well-trained killer to entangle her legs around Lumi’s body. She pushed her hips forward, pressing Zenaida harder into the shelves and rolling against her. Their tongues danced and grappled with each other in equal measure.

With a weak moan, Zenaida broke the kiss, tilting her face away and panting into Lumi’s shoulder.

“You were never my problem,” Lumi managed to whisper between gasping breaths.

Zenaide turned her face back, locking eyes with Lumi. “What if I want to be?”

“Is that why you’re really here?” Lumi huffed out an exasperated breath, feeling even more clueless than she had when Zenaida had first revealed herself. “To make yourself my problem?”

“Do you really think I’d help the guild?”

“You didn’t take a contract from them?”

“I did, and I plan on collecting.” Zenaida stretched her spine against the book case and pressed their foreheads together with a wicked grin. “They’re awaiting confirmation of your death as we speak. I came here to spy on you, see if you had changed at all since the time when I knew you.”

Lumi frowned. “You still know me,” she said slowly. “I have not changed.”

“I realised that after only two days of watching you. That’s why first you’re going to fuck me, and then we’re going to fake your death.”

“I love a woman with a plan.”

“I love stealing from the rich and corrupt.”