Then, Synthia turo Cassy, and said, “I know it’s getting te for all of us, but Felicity, I think the three of us really o talk to Cassy before her shift starts.”

  “Sure thing, Boss,” Cassy said in Felicity’s voice, giving a coquettish smile.

  Synthia scowled.

  Then Cassy’s head dropped briefly, and she shook for a moment before taking in a breath and looking around. It was such a stereotyped movement that Ayden couldn’t help but feel like it was being faked. But, now he was starting to wonder by whom. Felicity or Cassy?

  All of this was so out of character for Cassy, except that he knew she’d had the practice with ag through her LARPing and the SCA. However, she never hammed it up like this around him except as part of retelling stories about old games she’d loved. She had always been so ho, straight forward, and down to earth otherwise. And very business-like, professional. Whenever she teased someone, she’d retract it or expin it almost immediately.

  He knew she daydreamt and occasionally wrote about being a werewolf, too. But she usually kept that to herself, except duri to heart versations after work. Again, all very ear but also aowledging it wasn’t possible, just a fantasy.

  Could being at the ter of the storm of nightmares have unmasked something in her?

  But, then, Greg seemed to be taking this seriously, and said he’d experienced Felicity possessing him ooo.

  And Synthia was treating Felicity and Cassy like two different people in one body, like it was nothing.

  Which wasn’t really an endorsement of even his own sanity, whehought about it.

  He remembered reading about something called a ‘reality check’ on one of his social media feeds, but he couldn’t remember how it worked. He felt like he needed one.

  “What do we o talk about?” Cassy asked.

  Synthia looked at her fad gave her an expression that looked like an attempt at sympathy, “I wao give you more of a ce to speak for yourself.”

  “Oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense,” Cassy looked around at all of them. “But I don’t know what to say.”

  Ayden jumped into the moment to speak, because he wanted a versatioween humans, and he decided to treat it like everything he’d heard was true, “How do you feel?” Then he shook his head immediately. “I mean. How does it feel? What’s happening to you?”

  Synthia looked at Cassy and him, apparently facilitating the discussion.

  So, Cassy looked at him. “It’s like a migraihat’s quickly fading away. It was really bad earlier. But, as it goes, I feel better aer, really. But even though I heard what Felicity said, I don’t actually know what’s going on, though.”

  “Something fucked,” Greg grumbled.

  Ayden looked at him and admonished, “Let’s let her tell us what her experiences are. Maybe not frame them for her.”

  Greg scowled and opened his mouth, but Synthia held up a hand, palm fag the table, and spoke to Cassy.

  “What’s happeniween you and Felicity has probably happened before, but I’ve never heard of it, and I don’t have a clue how it’s happening,” she said. “But from what she said, and what you said earlier, you’re being something new, half human and half emanant. Right?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Cassy nodded. “I kind of really like the idea, holy. I feel better about it every sed.”

  “I think it might have been happening without Felicity, anyway,” Synthia said. “There’s something about you that is not typical of other humans. I mean, besides your neurodivergence.” She looked at Ayden and then at Greg. “her of you exhibit it.”

  Ayde distinctly relieved, but still very worried for Cassy.

  “What do you mean?” Cassy asked.

  “It’s like Felicity told all of us,” Synthia expined. “It expins the evidence I’ve seen. It’s like you have a little mini-universe inside your psyche, and as part of that, you’ve been developing an emanant presehin that space, lio you, a part of you. It’s why it hurt when Felicity tried to use you as a host.”

  “Oh.”

  “How did yraiart?” Synthia asked her. “Was it like a searing pain right through your eyes and into what you feel like is your soul?”

  Ayden watched Cassy’s sparkling eyes widen, pupils diting, and her mouth start to drop sck. Then she said, “Yeah…”

  Synthia nodded, “Felicity did that to me too. That’s what it feels like wheacks you. She says it’s not voluntary when she jumps to a monster as a host.”

  Cassy’s expression flickered to one of more fidend she began to nod.

  “Fuck off, Felicity,” Synthia growled.

  “Sorry,” Felicity said, and then appeared to let go again.

  Cassy shook her head quickly, eyes closed.

  “Cassy, I’m going to hand the floor back to your friends, but I want to impress upon you something,” Synthia said. “Right now, you’re merging with Felicity. I don’t know how to stop that. You’re not going to be you anymore. You’re not dying. You won’t cease existing without someoroying you. But you will also be Felicity. And she is much, much older than you, and much bigger, and much more plicated. I don’t want to scare you, I’m really just making an educated guess here, but it is not a bahing. You will almost certainly be more her than you will be yourself.”

  And then Synthia looked meaningfully at Greg, and then at him, Ayden. Her eyes held a grave depth, and her mouth was set in a grim line as if it itself was the horizoween the mortal Earth and the immortal os.

  His heart felt like it wao colpse in on itself and spin, a new pulsar of arm and sorrow.

  In that moment, he did not doubt in any miniscule way that if she were to tell him that ankylosaurus had actually been a vibrant opalest blue she’d have been veying a hard, immutable fact. Despite all modern evideo the trary.

  Ayden g Cassy, who had a sort of scared and pleading look in her eye. So he asked, “Do you feel that happening?”

  She shrugged, and worked her lips, looking down at the table. “No? Not yet? I think. Um. When Synthia says certain things, I do get fshes of knowledge that make it sound like she’s right, though. Like I’ve heard it before, or have personal experience.” She looked at Synthia, “Is that Felicity?”

  Synthia just nodded.

  “Oh.”

  Ayden caught a glimpse of movement in the er of his eye fr’s dire, and looked to see his friend scowling auring.

  “So, you ’t actually protect us,” Greg said. Turning his palm toward Cassy, he snarled, “You couldn’t protect her.”

  “Hey,” Cassy intervened weakly.

  Synthia furrowed her brow and turned her head away to look down, sort of a troubled but submissive expression, and said, “It’s a matter of degrees, Greg. There are absolutely some things I ot protect you against. Yes. Definitely. Anybody you otherwise is scamming you. I was merely being ho with you about my iions.” Then she looked at him out of the er of her eyes and slowly turned her face toward him, speaking further, “But I will not give you my prote without your sent. It is up to you.”

  Surprising Ayden, Greg held up his hands and said, “I think, maybe, I sent.”

  “Thank you,” Synthia told him. And then turned her gaze to Ayden.

  He didn’t feel like he could say ‘no’. Which meant, as far as he was ed, that he was being coerced and that his se nothing. So, he froze, and didn’t allow himself to say anything, staring bato Synthia’s eyes.

  He felt himself tremble.

  Synthia sighed, closed her eyes, and turned her face down toward the table. “I’m sorry. I’m… I am also not myself anymore. I feel like I’m fetting how to talk to you. All of you. I’m afraid of what that means.”

  Nobody seemed to know how to respond to that, least of all Ayden. For the first time since he’d met her, he realized that he was truly afraid of her. He thought he had felt fear before, when he’d seeransform her hand to look like that of something else, but he knew now that that hadn’t really been fear. This was fear.

  He really o go to bed soon, so that he’d have enough sleep for his shift. But after today, even without this strange versation in this impossible pce, after the events earlier, he didn’t know how he’d be able t himself to clo, let alone endure a whole work day.

  Talking to coworkers and ers about the storm would help. And he yearned for that. But, before even that, he felt like he needed a week to sleep and recover. Defio cuddle with his boyfriend, who had to be w where he was and scared shitless, holy shit how did he agree to e here and have this talk?

  Like, he’d texted, with a vague expnation about looking after Cassy with Greg, but.

  He pulled out his phone and looked at it.

  There were a small handful of messages from various people he knew, as well as his beau.

  He sighed, feeling uo answer any of them.

  After Ayden checked his phone, both Greg and Cassy checked theirs too. Like an unscious reflex. None of them did more than g them and frown rimace.

  I couldn’t feel their feelings anymore, by my own choice. I could only guess. And I felt like I’d already messed things up irrevocably, based on past experiences. It was an intractable situation, and I decided I should just extract myself from it as best I could.

  “I should let you get back to your lives,” I said. “I don’t want to involve you in what I’m going to try to do. You have my number. You stay in touch if you like. I will get your messages. And I’ll keep emanant business out of your lives as much as I . If you need help with anything, tact me. But I’ll uand if you don’t.”

  “What about Felicity?” Cassy asked.

  “I’m speaking to her as well, actually,” I told her. “She’ll have to iate the details with you. And, if she’s not listening now, you should let her know that I expect her to. If she absolutely wants to get involved with taking down Chord, I wao do it without endangering you. And I’m pretty sure she do that. I know her glyph, after all.”

  Cassy nodded. I retty sure it was Cassy that oo.

  I could feel Felicity’s emotions, of course.

  And she really couldn’t hide them from me as well as when we were linked, because the e was different, more predatory on my part. I think. If that makes any sense. Maybe she was just choosing not to.

  She was so unbearably smug. Not a hint of triteness. But no apparent maliciousness, either. Emanaions are so one dimensional and tasteless. She was clearly focused on her discovery, and l it over her whole situation. Cassy was the perfect hiding pce for her, for now.

  I had to sider that I was also going through something simir to her and Cassy, if I was being ho with myself. I’d eaten Fate Vine and acquired its memories and energy, some of which I had iently shared with Felicity when we were all iwined. In fact, our separation couldn’t have been perfect, either, and we probably had a bit of each other in ourselves. I was so much older thaher of them that my sense of self won out within myself, but I was irrevocably altered by their inclusion within my system.

  I couldn’t yet identify the differences, but I wasn’t just me anymore. If I wao, though, I thought I could have put myself into Fate Vine’s frame of mind and vinced myself that I was it. And with my shapeshifting abilities, I could fully imitate it.

  I had no illusions that that would fool Chord, though.

  More, I was afraid of how that merger of our beings would affect my decisions.

  It might have already affected all of my retionships ever so subtly. My ret adaptations obviously already had.

  I was on the brink of drifting away from my ret life, this temporary existence I’d created with these three humans and their pce of work. But I’d also taken a huge step away from what I’d always been, a simple affectivore enjoying the pany of life. My future seemed chaotid dark and painful in ways I’d never experienced before.

  And the world around me was revealing things I must have been ign until now, including the revetion that my vocabury for what I was was not universal. Fate Vine didn’t use nguage at all, but its memory held the nguage Chord and his subordinates used. And it was not the same as mine. And, of course, Felicity had disagreed with me oics.

  Did I realize that before? I wasn’t sure.

  That itself bothered me.

  I knew I was missing memories. Probably a tiny portion of who I was, but I had no idea whies.

  I looked at my own pho was only a quarter to midnight. I remembered Cassy saying, when we were walking here, that her new shift started at 1:00 pm. She wouldn’t be able to go home first. Not enough time. But she could get to work early if she went straight there.

  Of course, Greg had skipped his shift entirely, and we had no clue if Hayward was even open after today’s events. We hadn’t checked.

  I felt responsible for these people and their lives.

  I knew I could proted respect them best by being their remote patron, if I could at least keep focused in the moment strong enough to keep track of them. Extract myself from their daily lives, but shelter them all the same.

  But, I found myself extremely relut to leave them. I wao stay friends so badly, even though I khat my idea of friendship could not be anything close to the same as theirs.

  I didn’t yet uand why.

  “I won’t make you leave,” I said. “I don’t need you to. But, thank you for being my friends, and if you o go, I wish you a goodnight. Otherwise… If you have more questions?” I folded my hands and raised my eyebrow, looking at each of them.

  Greg was already moving to get up, and Ayden was hesitating over his decision to do so. Cassy put her hand ft oable and leaned forward as if to say something.

  And then all three of their phoher buzzed or chimed.

  They looked at each other.

  “I didn’t send that,” I told them.

  “Yeah,” Greg said, pulling his pho to look at it again.

  The others followed suit.

  “Shit,” Cassy said.

  Ayden’s shoulders slumped and all the tensio out of his face. He looked like he’d been gutted.

  “Fuckers fired us over text!” Greg shouted.

  theInmara