I wake up to my alarm screaming at me and nearly fall out of bed trying to turn it off. My eyes refuse to open and my head is pounding. I shouldn't have drank so much last night. When my eyes continue to be stubborn I instead feel my way blindly to my closet and switch on the light.

"Arrrrgh," I groan as the bright bulbs find the tiny slit in my eyes and blind me. I rub at them.

I pull on leggings and a sports bra, hoping they match, then look in the mirror. My dark brown, bloodshot eyes stare back at me. I swipe at my under eye, trying to remove the black smudges of yesterday's mascara.

Then I make my way to the kitchen. I chug back as much water as I can handle and eat the last few scoops of yoghurt straight from the container. It's strawberry and I hope the sugar will help. It doesn't.

My eyes are open now and I use them to locate my purse. Drunk Lexi must have been looking for something last night since the contents are all over the place. I scowl. Drunk Lexi can be such a pain in my ass sometimes. I find my wallet, phone, and keys. The phone is dead so I grab a charger on my way out and hope I run into a plug at some point on today's journey. I pull my long hair into a braid, praying that will keep it out of my face and knowing it won't. My curls have a mind of their own and not even me, strong willed as I am, can tame them.

Finally, with everything I need back in my purse I throw my shoes on and head out the door. I'm about to close it when a yowl stops me dead in my tracks.

"Can't forget about you," I tell Snot as I head to the pantry and pull out a can of wet food.

She rubs against my leg and purs, content that I'm not going to let her starve today. Tuna Feast plops into her bowl with a wet squelch and I set it down on the floor for her. She attacks it like she hasn't eaten in days. I give her a small pat on the rump before racing out the door.

The fitness studio is only a block away but somehow I'm still late and have to take a spot at the back of the class. Not ideal but I can make it work. The music is blaring and the instructor is yelling instructions. I can barely hear her but it doesn't matter. I come here often enough that I can intuit the moves now. I dance. As I dance my hangover melts away and I begin to feel refreshed. I've been to a dozen dance studios but this one is by far my favourite. Not because the facilities are nice (they aren't) or because the instructors are good (they're okay, I guess). It's the high number of Flooded that come here.

There are a few Flood houses nearby. I know for sure there's one imp, one fae, and one selkie house close. Plus we're deep in vampire territory here too.

The class comes to an end and I suck up the last tendrils of magic that leak from the people in the room. Exercise classes aren't the best way for me to get a meal but they sure are the most readily available.

A few girls from the class recognize me and look like they're going to come over and say hi so I slip out. I never get to know my food. Never hang out with them, never interact more than what's polite, never even give my real name. I'm signed up here as Sophie, even have a fake email to match.

I head over to the open air market to grab a real breakfast and some supplies that I need for work. The market is the best place to find both. It's at the centre of the city and is only a brisk thirty minute walk from my apartment. Now that my hangover is gone I gladly head over in search of food, enjoying the fresh air and warm summer sun.

On the outskirts of the market I pop into a little cafe that looks like it might have been an alley that they shoved a building into. I pay for a pastry and two drinks and polish off the food while the drinks are being made. The barista hands me the two takeout cups. One is a regular coffee with cream and sugar and the other is a matcha latte.

Five minutes later and I'm ducking under the awning of my favourite stall.

"Hey Li," I greet the elderly asian man that runs it.

I grin and hand him one of the cups, the latte, and start to browse. Out of the corner of my eye I see his mouth twitch into a smile. He knows that if I brought him a drink it must mean I'm buttering him up so he'll give me a good price on the big purchase I'm about to make. He knows me so well.

He's gotten a new shipment of semi precious stones and I try not to look too eager as I begin picking them up and placing them in a waiting velvet lined tray. I pick out a good mix of about twenty stones. It's mostly jade, amber, rose quartz, agate, and pearls but I add a few others too just to be safe. Li eyes his sale hungrily.

"Lay it on me, Li. How much?"

He takes the tray out of my hand and turns each stone over to examine both sides for imperfections. Then he sets the tray down between us and meets my eyes.

"Seven golds."

I almost choke on a sip of my coffee. Ouch. inflation is a bitch. I know better than to argue with Li, though. He has me by the balls and he knows it. He's the only reliable gem merchant in the city and I need him more than he needs me since everyone wants gemstones these days.

He's actually doing me a solid. The price of each gemstone alone is about one silver which, two silvers to a gold, means he should be charging me ten. I pull out my purse.

"I'll do it for six if you take this one and make me a charm against thieves." He says, holding up a cube of pyrite.

"Deal!"

It's a bad trade. I would charge five golds for a charm like that. More because pyrite is such a magic sink and it takes so much out of me to make them. But I want to be on his good side so I'm willing to put in a little extra work.

He wraps up the gems, including the pyrite, and places them in a velvet pouch to protect them. I hand over the six gold bars. Bars is a bit of a misnomer, they're actually wafer thin sheets of beaten metal charmed with about twenty counterfeit spells apiece.

Gemstones tucked securely into my purse I continued onto my next stop.

Unlike Li's Gems, The Knittery is inside an actual building. It's actually in a prime location which might be surprising for any other hobby based store but not this one.

I burst through the door, startling an older lady who's looking at yarn.

"Martha!" I call.

There's some shuffling sounds from deeper in the shop and I brace for impact. Martha comes exploding out of the shelves like a Tasmanian devil. She's a blur of bright fabric and curly red hair as she all but tackles me with a hug.

"Lexi, holy crap! I wasn't expecting you today. Come, come, let me get you a cup of tea."

I take note of the new rugs that cover most of the floors. They muffle the sound of Martha's hooves as she returns.

"Did something happen?"

Her smile falls ever so slightly. Another person might not have noticed but I can feel how the sadness makes her magic leak.

"The Arc is doing random testing again."

I flinch as I take the tea. "Shit. When did that start?"

"A week ago, best I can tell," she sighs, blowing on the cup in her hands, "I heard some rumours about it but didn't pay any mind. Then they came through here. Noticed the horns right away, of course, and had me step out of the shop to test in front of everyone. I came in just under the legal limit. Lucky for me I had just used my Singher or I would have been spending the night in the asylum."

The Arc, the political party that had risen from the ashes of the Flood to take control of the country, had run on a platform of order, peace, and prosperity for humans and flooded alike. A big part of that order turned out to be testing citizens and detaining anyone who had unsafe levels of magic. Offenders would be locked away overnight and drained using an industrial strength Singher to bring them back down to a safe level.

That was all good in theory but in reality it put a lot of power in the hands of guards who liked to harass and bully the weak. It didn't even matter if you were flooded or not. They just liked to watch you squirm. They'd faced a lot of backlash and the Arc had promised to halt the program until stricter guidelines could be put into place. Apparently that time had come.

"So you're just going to hide that you're a satyr, Mar?" I ask, searching her face.

Martha shakes her head. "Just until I can get a read on the new guards they've placed in the market. All it would take is one baby guard on a power trip and suddenly I've got a record."

The Arc kept track of all the high rollers. If you got booked more than a handful of times they made you get a licence and participate in routine magic syphoning. I'd been booked a couple of months back and Martha had been the one waiting for me when I'd gotten out the next morning. That was why she was my best friend and the only one who knew my real name.

"What about you," Martha asks, changing the subject. "What's new with you? I see you're putting on muscle. Those workout classes are doing wonders."

I laugh and flex my biceps, giving her a taste of the gun show. Working out three, sometimes five times a week definitely had its advantages.

"Same old, same old. Work has been so busy lately. The orders just keep rolling in. Speaking of which, I'm in desperate need of supplies."

"Say no more," Martha says, "Now, what are we working with?"

Martha beckons for me to show her my loot and I spill it across her counter. She helps me pick out everything I'll need to turn them into wearable charms. Strips of leather, sting, and chains as well as a new pair of jewellery pliers to replace the ones I broke. She packs it up and hands me the bag.

"And your order came in. It's in the bag."

I grin. "You know you're my favourite person in the whole world, right?"

I hand over ten gold bars.

I give her a kiss on the cheek and begin the walk back to my place. The area that I live in is all converted warehouses with exposed concrete and high ceilings. I got a steal on my place when I first moved in because the area was so up and coming and no one had wanted to live there. These days a unit in my building that's half the size of my place easily goes for double my rent.

My apartment is in Leechside, the not so nice name for the section of the city owned by the vampires. The number of Arc guards drops noticeably as I pass the boundary road since Elena Leonovski, the vampire queen, doesn't like them in her part of the city. She has her own forces and her own rules that she lives by. It makes no difference to me who keeps the crime down in my part of the city as long as it stays down.

I stop at a mongolian takeout place on my way home and grab a veggie rice bowl with extra veg. Their stuff is to die for and everyone knows it so the lineup is out the door but I had the foresight to call ahead so I skip the line, pay for my food, and leave. The smell wafting from the takeout container has my mouth salivating the rest of the way home.

As soon as I'm through the door I kick off my shoes, grab a fork, and sink into my couch to enjoy my bounty. I have to force myself to savour the food and not just scarf it down. It tastes like heaven. I flick on the TV and catch the end of a news report about magic limit enforcement. Apparently they're cracking down now that summer is coming.

When my food is finished and my container is in the trash I take my stones and crafting supplies into my den to work. The room is small but I've painted it white and put up some mirrors to make it look bigger. There's a big table pushed up against the window and an ergonomic chair that I got second hand. I also have a few plants scattered around so the place doesn't feel so sterile and they're thriving thanks to the abundant light, a good watering schedule, and the high levels of ambient magic from my work.

I settle into my chair and begin. I have half a dozen custom orders to finish plus I want to get done another half dozen and upload them to my website. Before I do any of that, though, I make the charm against theft for Li since I don't think I have enough magic reserves to get it all done and I want his to be strong.

I cover the pyrite with my hands and concentrate. It took me a long time to master sucking magic out of people and an even longer time to figure out how to push it back out. Surprisingly, taking is a lot easier than giving. Magic loves me, it wants to come to me. I can feel it bend towards me when I walk by. Even the magic in the walls, the kind that has replaced electricity for all our power needs, reached towards me. Once it's in me, though, it doesn't want to leave. I have to coax it, beg it, bribe it. You'll have a better life here. You'll serve a good purpose. The pyrite is warm and cozy and safe. If you stay in me you'll be consumed in a day but if you go here you'll last a lifetime.

Magic doesn't actually live a life, nor does it see or feel. It does, however, have a sort of consciousness that I can feel when I work.

I convince enough of the magic to leave me that I fill the pyrite and get to work weaving the spells. This is the most important part. It's also the hardest part. Magic is a lot like string. If you leave it in a pile it doesn't really do much, just sits there gathering dust. If you want it to be useful you have to line it up and move it around until it takes on a shape that is useful to you.

It took a lot of trial and error and some very sketchy sites for me to figure it all out but I've mastered several enchantments, mostly for protection. They're garden witch variety spells for the most part, things that anyone can do. And there are a lot of people who do. I'm far from the only person who sells charms like these but I'm one of the only ones who can push power into the gemstones to give them that extra kick. It's earned me a reputation as a reliable seller and it means I'm always short on inventory.

I lay out the materials I got from Martha. She included a few extras while I wasn't looking and I find a beautiful length of gold wire that I wrap the pyrite in. I criss-cross the wire around the rock, making a tight frame that I can then secure to a length of ribbon. When I'm done Li has a stylish protection amulet that he can hang anywhere in his shop.

I underestimated the amount of magic the pyrite could hold and now I'm only left with enough reserves to finish two more amulets. I sigh. I'll have to feed again tomorrow if I want to do the rest.

I snap a few pictures of the completed charms and upload them to my website. It's a darknet site with no ties to me or my IP address. I learned that the hard way. When someone buys something it reroutes through at least ten different servers before it gets to me. It's a good business though and I make enough to live a modestly comfortable life. The hardest part was figuring out how to launder the money but, with some creative thinking and a few not quite legal manoeuvres, I figured it out.

I lock my inventory away in a safe under my desk. As I stand back up I stretch out the muscles that knotted while I worked. I should really stop slouching. Maybe I need a better ergonomic chair. I yawn and make my way to bed. I've spent most of the afternoon and evening weaving the spells and I'm exhausted.

I shoot off a quick text to Martha and the reply comes quickly. I sleepily grin down at my phone. I can always count on Martha to go clubbing with me.