When I saw that they were sitting down at the MAX station, I decided to help their ces of catg a train by removing myself from the municipal view. I did this by pulling most of myself bato the Strands until I was only a thin stream of sky caviar the volume of a human. And then I winded and wove my may to the ptform they were seated on and restituted my old form of Synthia, as I’d been just before the attack.

  I set down a few paces away from them, within sight but in their peripheral vision, so I could then step over into a better ao wave and say, “Hi.”

  I hoped the distance was obviously non-threatening, and I did not step toward them.

  They were startled in three different ways anyway. And I saw the most fear in Greg’s eyes.

  Cassy, mouth rexed but closed, lifted her head and looked right into my face, eyes wide. It was not one of her usual expressions and I didn’t know what it meant. It reminded me of someone else.

  After a moment of terror, Ayden ched his eyes shut a out an explosive sigh, then looked and said, “Hey, Synthia. That was all you, wasn’t it?”

  “No,” Cassy told him, without breaking eye tact with me nor even twitg her head, “that was not just her.”

  I didn’t ge my expressioher. I didn’t want to give away that I was starting to suspeething, even if I wasn’t certain who I’d be giving it away to. But knowing there was no one else to hear our versation, I spoke up befreg added anything, loudly and clearly, “It was a big fight. I’m not sure I’d even say I survived, but I’m back. And I’m sorry for any terror I’ve caused. I just want you to know that.”

  I turo start walking away.

  “Synthia –” Greg started to say, but Cassy interrupted him.

  “Don’t leave,” she raised her voice to catch me. “We o talk.”

  I reized those iions perfectly. And when I turned back, both Greg and Ayden were looking at her with curiosity, arm, and fusion.

  She extracted herself from Cassy’s friends and stood up more firmly than she’d been walking just moments before, to take a few steps toward me and boldly face me in the light of the ptform. “You’ve got the names and locations of our adversaries, and I’ve just learned something you really should know.”

  “Felicity,” I said.

  She lifted her hands to gesture down at her middle, and grinned, “In a flesh.”

  Greg and Ayden scooted away from her, jaws sck, pupils dited.

  “Not your own,” I pointed out.

  “Never my own.”

  “Right,” I aowledge, taking a step toward her myself. “How’s Cassy?”

  Felicity shoved her hands into the pockets of Cassy's quilted coat, and said, “Different. But well, I think.” She tilted her head. “No. I know. I couldn’t hurt her if I even tried, not without your ability to adapt. But, uh, we’re now linked even more tightly than I was with you, I think. It’s weird.”

  “I ’t even see you in there,” I said, rexing my stanot sure whether to believe her at all.

  “rick, huh?” The way she moved her lips and smiled, I could easily imagine Cassy’s lips covered with Amber’s lipstick, but they weren’t. “Let’s go somewhere where I tell you all about it.”

  “Greg o go to work,” I pointed out, realizing that he was in underwear, sandals, and the fuzziest, plushest baby pink maxi length robe I’ve ever seen. It had embroidered strawberries here and there on it, and must have been pricey.

  Felicity shrugged, “He do that.”

  “Fuck work,” Greg said. “If they expect me to show up tonight, they’re assholes. I’m not leaving Cassy with you monsters.”

  Felicity tur and in Cassy’s voice said, “It’s OK, Greg. I’m – oh my god, I’ve heard this so many times in movies, holy shit, but I’m fine, Greg. I don’t know what’s going o, but we’re cooperating, and it’s really cool!”

  “Yeah, I’ve had her do that to me, too,” Greg stood up. “Didn’t feel fio me, though.”

  Ayden followed Greg’s stance, but stood behind him and asked, “What’s going on?”

  “Felicity hid in my head to get away from, well, something nasty,” Cassy said. “And now I think I’m half monster.”

  Felicity immediately rexed her stand rolled her head and eyes like a teenager and said, “Bit more than that, Sweetie.”

  Cassy sighed audibly, hunched her shoulders and looked down at the ground, “Don’t call me that. Cass is fine, if you don’t like my full name.”

  Then Felicity looked back at me over her shoulder with glinting eyes and said, “Cass and I have a lot to tell you. Seriously. You won’t regret it.”

  “I’m already game,” I replied. “You don’t have to vince me of anything if we’re just talking. I like talking.”

  “The’s go.”

  “The Raun?” Ayden suggested.

  “Hey, yeah. Let’s mohat pce up,” Felicity grinned.

  The MAX wasn’t running out to Gresham anymore that night, thanks to me and my cloud of nightmares. And the city was a ridiess of traumatized people trying to untahemselves from each other and go home to shake, shiver, and take things to feel better.

  So, instead of the Ran, we ended up walking bay domain, which I made up to look like our ary booth at Shady’s, but in a kind of a tle shed with a dry bar. There was no actual alcohol there, though, just eic stuff that looked like it.

  I told the humans not to drink it.

  If someone was still running a liquor store in tht now, they were probably sed with ers. Same with the dispensaries.

  “I’ve got a couple of edibles, if anyone needs it,” Ayden said. “They’re gummies, so lit ooo.”

  “Not for me,” Cassy said immediately. “Thank you.”

  “Thanks, I’m good,” Greg added. “I’m scared as shit, and I like it that way right now.”

  Ayden nodded and said, “Me too.” He put the edibles ba his pocket.

  I had the door to the shed open, aured with my head, “e on in and sit down. We’ll all be safer in there. It’s my home.”

  “Yeah, not me necessarily,” Felicity said, smirking with Cassy’s face. “But I’ll go in anyway. Trust, right?”

  “Sure,” I told her with hooded eyes.

  I had no iion of fug with her if she didn’t fuck with me, though. And even then, I retty sure I had the decisive upper hand with her, now, and could just let her thrash against me without responding muymore. Unless she wao bey parasite again, which I doubted.

  She just grinned and stepped inside, followed shortly by the others, and then me.

  “I really miss your old bullshit, Synthia,” Greg said as he sat down, looking around. “But this is fug weird. I feel like I’m stepping into someone else’s dream.”

  “That’s basically what it is,” Felicity told him. She jerked her head my way. “Her dream.”

  “It’s like my headspace maed in the physical world,” I expined. “Except I have no actual head like you do.”

  “Weird as fuck,” Greg muttered.

  “Hey, I absolutely love your robe,” Ayden spoke up, talking t, probably trying to focus on something tangible and mundane. “Where’d you get it?”

  “Kinda eggy,” Cassy teased him.

  “Suys, I love my robe, but we’re not going to talk about it right now,” Greg responded, shaking his head. “And I’ll expin my gender shit some other time, when we’re not about to grill a couple of eldritch monstrosities about what they just did to the city.”

  Synthia looked over at him in peared to be a kindly way, and said, “We’re actually going to be grilling each other, ideally.” She put a hand oable in his dire. “But, I’ll answer any of your questions, too. And I’ll be speaking with your elucidation in mind, as well.” Theuro Ayden, “If you want to know anything about dinosaurs, ever, just ask. I will not joke with you about them. I’ll tell you what I remember. But, not tonight, OK?”

  Ayden blinked repeatedly, “Why are you even saying that right now?”

  “Because I want to talk to you about dinosaurs,” she replied. “As a friend and fellow enthusiast.”

  “OK.” He folded his arms.

  And theuro Cassy and obviously spoke to Felicity, “What’s the thing you o tell us?”

  Besides looking out for Cassy, Greg didn’t even know why he was there. He couldn’t figure out how he’d pushed his body to go along with this. He didn’t know how he let his body drag him here. The whole thi like a DEF 1 situation, and his adrenal gnd was telling him the literal Bomb was going to drop any sed.

  But somehow he was also dead calm aremely lucid. He hadn’t lied when he said it felt like he’d stepped into someone else’s dream. But, also, everything was just too real. He felt his immi mortality with every molecule of his body. Were any sliver or pin to pierce his skin right now, he k would irrevocably alter his form even just a tiny amount, and that felt moal.

  A, every time Synthia spoke, he felt just a little more calm and a little more safe. It was like she had the ability, despite absolutely everything she’d been saying and doing, to bee the most human person in the room.

  She could be covered ihers and spines, with raptor talons ah like a weasel’s, with glowing red eyes, and if she spoke he’d want to believe what she was saying.

  So, whearted talking about the hidden monstrous ndscape of the city he lived in, and describing how she and Felicity could work to ge it, he had to remind himself that it wasn’t a normal versation.

  It wasn’t even that she had some kind of magical influence over him, he thought. She just had a manner and demeanor that came across as a ed older sister who was taking charge because no one else was trustworthy enough to do so.

  It was weird, because he’d even heard that in that thunderous “No!” she’d shouted across the ty earlier.

  It didn’t fit, but it felt familiar and calmed him down anyway.

  But what Felicity said upended all of that.

  “I don’t kly how or why,“ Felicity looked around at all of them cautiously, “but it’s like she’s got her own domain in here, and it has its own Sourd Strands as well, perpendicur to the rest of the universe. Which means I hide entirely within her psyche without beiable by anyone else. But, there’s a hitch.”

  “What hitch?” Synthia gru her.

  “It’s like she is half emanant,” Felicity responded. “Part of her is not life, and it keeps slowly growing, and it’s an indelible part of her. I don’t know what it was feeding on before, but it’s now feeding o started doing that as soon as I entered her system, and in order to survive I had to start feeding on it, to create a loop. And we’re sort of being each other, just like you and I were doing to each other during the fight, before we broke it off. Only, I don’t think Cassy learn how to break it off before it’s too te.”

  “Too te?”

  “Final fusion, basically,” Felicity shrugged and smiled. “At least that’s sychologists call it for DID and such. But we’re both actually looking forward to it. It’ll be iing.”

  That got everyone arguing, and loudly. Synthia, Ayden, and Greg, of course, all wao hear from Cassy herself, but they were divided on how to think about this supposed revetion. And Felicity just wasn’t giving up the fro. She sat back with Cassy’s arms folded a shaking her head.

  Eventually, she just said quietly, “I want to know what you know, , Synthia. Then Cassy talk.”

  For expediency, Synthia relented, and motio and Ayden to quiet down and listen.

  “So, Felicity, you and I are what other local emanants call ‘Overlords’,” she started expining. “Now, I really hate that term. I’m not a lord, and when I’m not a big cloud of eyes I’m not over anything in particur. I like my term, ‘Supraliminals’. But whatever, the other two guys in town fit the bill of Overlord pretty damn perfectly. They have the attitude.”

  Felicity nodded. “Yeah. I’ve beeing that impression since I moved here.”

  Synthia leaned back, drawing her hand back across the table with her. “I’m also learning that my nguage isn’t universal. Other emanants have their own terms for everything.”

  “Yup.”

  “Anyway,” she thumped her table with her fist. “So, there’s the one I call ‘Croc-face’, which we’ve all seen. That’s the little guy. Like a Samurai or Knight, who does the other one’s bidding for some reason. The remaining big guy calls it Sewer Teeth, which, sure. Sewer Teeth or Croc-face, it’s obviously not asserting its owy much. I’m stig with Croc-face.”

  She did sound like a bigger sister who was trying to imitate some macho rebel leader or lone merary bee gang boss, too, though. A hint of gruff leading man as portrayed by a voice that never kneuberty with testostero was ingruously cute.

  He kind of wished he was her, holy. But that wasn’t why he was here.

  “And the remaining big guy?’ Felicity prompted, pg one fist oable too.

  “I mean, I know you know his name,” Synthia said, mysteriously. “But for everyone else here, and to verify my knowledge, he goes by Chord, as in a musical Chord. But I think it might be a bit of a pun, too, because his favorite shape is a giant snake.”

  “Yup,” Felicity firmed. She tur and Ayden and expined, “We have all sorts of naming ventions. Some of us just go with names we’re giveher by humans or other monsters. Others choose their names. Ahers go by no name and don’t give a shit what anybody calls them. I’ve always been called some form of Happiness. It’s part of what I am. Anyway, the thing that Synthia just fought and ate, was called…” then she looked at Synthia.

  “Fate Vine,” Synthia said, with a perfectly straight face.

  “Like a B-list super vilin,” Ayden blurted.

  “Yep.”

  “Anyway,” said Felicity, tapping the table with Cassy’s fingernails in a quick rhythm. “I get the impression that you have some kind of a pn on how to deal with Chord and Croc-face?”

  “I do,” Synthia said, turning even mrim. “And it’s likely to be even more disruptive than taking out Fate Vine.”

  Felicity asked, “You really wanna do it, then?”

  Greg was fused by the way the two of them were talking now. There’d been an adversarial vibe betweewo of them, and things that Synthia had said seemed to indicate she was acg Felicity of betrayal. A, now they were sounding almost chummy, and Synthia kept talking.

  “I know Chord is going to figure out a way to e after me , and even though I’m pretty sure I’m bigger than him, he’s much, much more experie assassination and all out brawling,” Synthia said. “So, it’s going to be messy and undesirable whether I fight back or not.”

  Felicity opened Cassy’s mouth to say something more, but Ayden leaned forward and spoke up firmly.

  “What about us?” he asked. “I’ve never seen anything like that storm before, and everyone in town saw it. How is the woing to react to this fight? What does it mean for us?”

  Felicity looked over at Ayden’s fidgeting hands, while Synthia speared him in the forehead with her gaze, taking on the demeanor of an experienced supervisor.

  “Humanity will gh another period of realizing that monsters are very real,” she said, voice ft and firm, but not callous nor ung. “There will be monster hunts, and some of us who are engaged in maniputing human affairs may be identified and rooted out. Others will rear their heads aroy any who oppose them. There’ll be an upheaval in emanant poputions as we realize we take the time to reshuffle the order of our existences, and openly deal with those who irritate us. Infighting. And, probably, new religions and spiritualities will crop up, and old ones will be revised. As has always happened before. But, before I know it, because time pass so quickly for me, it will all beyth again. And for you, it might be kind of fun, holy.”

  “Fun?”

  Greg was gd Ayden eaking up, even if in monosylbles. More and more, he found himself speechless.

  “People eaters are very rare iy,” Synthia told Ayden. “And any that e within a few blocks of you will get my undivided and swift attention. So, everything else will be a nice ge from the banal exploitive hell you’ve been struggling with up until now.”

  “What?”

  “Ayden. You have a Precambrian horror that favors you, knows how people work, and who would love to infodump with you about extinimals. Just roll with it, OK?”

  theInmara