Crazy Awakening: My luck can copy Talents.

Rhea Alastor.

I already knew that, Adrián thought with the last clarity he had left. I knew your name. I don’t know how. But I knew it.

Rhea looked at him.

Rhea looked at him the way one looks at a piece in a museum. With complete attention. With evaluation. With a note of professional surprise behind her eyes.

"Hmm," she said, tilting her head. "I wasn’t expecting to find this."

She held his chin with two gloved fingers—black leather glove, scent of wine and something darkly floral—and moved his face slightly to examine him better.

"Symmetric," she murmured. "Decent bone structure. Interesting eyes, though they’re a little..." she looked closer. "Dying. Yes. Definitely dying."

Adrián wanted to make a joke. He couldn’t.

Rhea turned her head toward the air above him. Narrowed her eyes. Reached out her free hand and passed her fingers through the air a few centimeters above Adrián’s forehead, as if caressing something invisible.

Her expression changed.

Very slightly. But it changed.

"Ah," she said quietly. "Ah, ah, ah. Well, well."

She was silent for a moment, feeling whatever she was feeling. Adrián couldn’t see it. But he could feel it too, now that she was touching him—a faint vibration somewhere deep in his chest, as if something inside him was responding to Rhea’s presence.

"Baby," she said, looking at him again, her tone suddenly warmer, almost amused. "Do you know what you are?"

Adrián didn’t respond. He couldn’t.

"No, of course not. No one told you. And you were about to die without knowing. What a shame. What a waste. What luck for me."

She adjusted her knees to get more comfortable on the ground. Pulled a white cloth handkerchief from inside her sleeve and gently wiped the corner of his mouth, cleaning away the blood.

"Listen to me, human. I know you probably can’t process much anymore, but I need you to make an effort. I’ll be brief."

Adrián focused his vision. With difficulty. But he focused.

"I can save you," said Rhea. "I can give you back everything you’re about to lose, and more. But not for free. In exchange, you’re going to belong to me. Not as a slave—before your brain gets dramatic. As a familiar. Subordinate. You’ll serve me, you’ll obey me, and you’ll do what I say when I say it. In exchange, you’ll get power. The kind of power most humans don’t even know exists. And a long life. Very long."

She leaned in closer. Adrián could smell the wine on her breath. And something else, something ancient, like incense burned in a church a long time ago.

"Do you accept?"

Adrián opened his mouth. Coughed up blood.

Rhea sighed and wiped the corner of his mouth again with the handkerchief, with a delicacy almost maternal that didn’t fit with anything else happening.

"Blink once for yes. Twice for no. And choose quickly, sweetheart—I’ve got a dinner reservation at eleven."

A dinner reservation.

I’m dying and she has a dinner reservation.

Adrián laughed internally. Or tried to. It came out more like a chest spasm.

And then he thought, with the last clarity he had left:

If I accept, I stay alive. If I stay alive, I can keep looking for Elena.

The blonde woman. The blonde with yellow eyes. Whatever she is.

I’m going to find them.

All of them.

Starting with Sariel.

He blinked.

Once.

Rhea smiled. And this time the smile did reach her golden eyes, and Adrián thought, with what little consciousness he had left, that it was a dangerous smile. The smile of someone who’d just won a bet she’d been losing for a long time.

"Excellent choice."

She straightened up. From inside her dress sleeve she pulled out something small, flat, the size of a playing card.

A tarot card.

The back was black with a gold pattern of intertwined serpents. She turned it over with two fingers, almost dismissively.

Adrián managed to see the image before the darkness swallowed him completely.

A young man, walking cheerfully toward the edge of a cliff, with a small white dog jumping at his side. In one hand he carried a rose. In the other, a staff with a satchel hanging from it. He wasn’t looking at the abyss. He was looking up, at the sky, smiling like an idiot.

And at the bottom of the card, in elegant black letters:

0 — THE FOOL.

Rhea held the card over Adrián’s chest. Looked at it. Then looked at the air above the boy’s head, where she’d sensed the residue of the mask.

"Oh, this is delicious," she murmured. "The others are going to be so jealous."

She clicked her tongue, like she’d just remembered something unpleasant.

"Though technically this was the only one I had left. So it’s not like I had options. But still. The others are going to be jealous."

She smiled again.

"Welcome to the family, human. Sorry you got stuck with the worst one."

The card fell.

And Adrián ceased to exist.

Or so he thought.

---

(Consciousness comes and goes in pieces. Adrián doesn’t remember this afterward.)

(He does remember, yes, scattered sensations.)

(He remembers something entering him. Not the card—something behind the card. An energy. A signature. A contract being written onto his soul without his permission but with his consent. An ancient tongue purring in his ear: you bind, you bind, you bind.)

(He remembers Rhea lifting him. She’s much stronger than her size suggests. She carries him in her arms like he weighs nothing. He remembers resting his head against her collarbone and feeling the beat of a heart that beats too slowly to be human.)

(He remembers hearing Rhea’s voice through her chest, speaking on the phone to someone.)

—...yes, I already have him. No, it wasn’t an emergency. Yes, we’re going to have to postpone dinner. Prepare the reincarnated quarters. And call Ishtar. She knows him. She’ll be useful. Oh, and darling, listen carefully: no one outside the house finds out about this. No one. This boy is more than you think.

(He remembers darkness.)

(He remembers a very warm light.)

(He remembers silk sheets.)

(And then, much later, a weight on his chest, and the scent of red wine, and slow breathing ten centimeters from his face.)

---

The first thing he felt when he fully woke up was the weight.

Something heavy, warm, stretched across his chest, rising and falling with slow, steady breathing.

The second thing was the smell. Red wine. Something floral, dark. Expensive perfume.

The third thing was the hand—a hand, specifically—that was resting very close to a place where absolutely no stranger’s hand had any business being, especially considering the last time he’d been conscious, he’d been dying in an alleyway.

Adrián opened his eyes.

The ceiling was high. Very high. With dark wooden beams and a crystal chandelier hanging in the center that probably cost more than the entire apartment he’d rented.

He lowered his gaze, slowly.

Wine-red hair, spread across his chest.

A woman, asleep, half-draped on top of him.

And—this was important—he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

And—this was even more important—he wasn’t wearing pants either.

Adrián went very, very still.

His brain processed the information in the following order:

One: I’m alive.

Two: why am I alive?

Three: WHERE ARE MY CLOTHES?

Four: ...she doesn’t have much on either.

Five: shut up, Adrián. Shut up shut up shut up.

Six: wait. The wound. What about the wound?

He brought his free hand to the right side of his chest, carefully.

Nothing.

Smooth skin. No scar. No pain. No hole. Just a faint pink line, the width of a finger, already fading as he watched.

Okay. I’m definitely not human anymore.

Or at least, I’m not just human.

Very slowly, with the care of someone defusing a bomb, he tried to shift away from Rhea.

The woman murmured something in her sleep, moved, and threw a leg over him.

A long leg. With nothing on it but a thin black stocking.

Adrián stopped breathing for approximately four seconds.

Then, in the absolute silence of the room, a cheerful, high-pitched voice cut through the air from somewhere near the door:

"Sisterrrrr! Your new package woke up! Can I come in? Can I come in? I’m coming in!"

Adrián recognized the voice.

No.

No, no, no, please.

Anyone but that voice. Anyone.

The door burst open.

In the doorway, red pigtails slightly mussed, a lollipop in her mouth, pajama shorts and a t-shirt with a print of a little devil cat, and a steaming cup of coffee in her hand, stood Ishtar Blackwood.

Except she wasn’t Blackwood.

Ishtar took in the scene. Adrián in bed, semi-naked. Rhea on top of him, semi-naked. Rhea still asleep, snoring very softly.

Ishtar’s golden eyes widened with excessive delight.

"OH BY ALL THE DEMONS," she said, and took a long sip of her coffee while processing the information. "Vega."

"...Ishtar."

"Vega. Vega, Vega, Vega."

"Ishtar, this isn’t what it looks like."

"It’s exactly what it looks like."

"No, listen—"

"Rhea Alastor. My older sister. The one who raised me. The one who taught me to read. The one who yelled at me when I bit our first instructor. She’s naked on top of you."

Adrián felt the world stop.

Wait.

Wait wait wait wait.

Sister? Rhea Alastor is Ishtar Blackwood’s sister?

Ishtar noticed the delay on his face. Took another sip of coffee. Smiled slowly, around the lollipop, her slightly too-long fangs glinting under the room’s light.

"Ah," she said. "Right. I forgot to mention the surname detail when we met. Blackwood was fake. It’s Alastor. Ishtar Alastor. Bro-in-law."

"..."

"Welcome to the family, Vega."

She took another sip of coffee.

And in the bed, Rhea Alastor opened her molten gold eyes, looked at Adrián ten centimeters away, and without pulling back or showing surprise, said in her sleep-roughened voice:

"Ishtar, close the fucking door."

"NO," Ishtar responded. "I WANT TO SEE THIS."

Adrián Vega, recently deceased human, newly born demon, possessor of the Thief’s Mask and the most despised card in the deck, decided in that exact moment that dying in that alleyway would have been much, much simpler.

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