The huma my domain shortly after that, with Felicity taking a brief moment to turn bae and wink.

  With the text message from Hayward grocery to fire them, they’d cmmed up and glowered at each other, and scowled at me, and had messaged each other to unicate something, befoing. Obviously a lot of trust lost.

  I let myself look as sad as I felt about it, a my gaze on the er of the table furthest from them.

  I’d said all I needed or could say. Any more would be pushing or manipution, and they clearly felt I’d done enough of that already. Or, at least, so I guessed.

  Ohey were gohis left me with the option to disincorporate and seep into my domain to rest and think.

  Felicity’s wink, the st facial expression I saw on Cassy that night, apanied by Felicity’s tinued smugness, left me to assume my former ersatz partner would be in tact with me. I figured that she would probably e in another host, extending a portion of herself like a pseudopod riding a human frame. If she could still do that while engaged in mutual vore with Cassy.

  I felt I should try to focus on Chord and how to pursue him, but Cassy’s dilemma gripped me.

  Now that I was no lorying to put out emotional fires, my own and my friends, I could finally grapple with how much it had taken me by surprise. All of it, but specifically this new possible property of human souls. o me, at least. The fact that it was o me was something I o face.

  It must have been a rare occurrence if it not only took me by surprise but also Felicity. The effect that Cassy had orands was subtle enough that I would have missed it if I wasn’t o the whole idea of the Strands in the first pce, and payira attention to them. But, still, let’s say there have been Supraliminals for as long as there have been humans at least, someone would have noticed, and one would think word would have gotten around.

  So, if yur, run of the mill liminal emanants weren’t aware of the Strands at all, and nobody told them about it, cases like Cassy would e back to them mostly through human myth, and humans haven’t been around for very long. I think I mostly ever spoke to liminals, when I even spoke to emanants in the past, so I wouldn’t have figured it out through them.

  Also, was this mini-universe inside a lucky soul thing fio humanity? Or have other animals exhibited it? Humans aren’t as special as they think. But, I’d have to experiment to be sure, go around and examis and lots of other creatures. And, the apparent rarity of the trait made me want to attribute it to humanity.

  Oher hand, my hyperfocus on humanity for the past couple of dozen million years robably als my perspective quite a lot.

  Anyractically speaking, its rarity and how it had e as a surprise to me was only relevant in terms of learning what I could do about it, and what it meant to Cassy. Felicity and I had both made guesses as to what was going to happen to her, but her of us really knew.

  And, also, Felicity could have been lying to me about anything.

  It occurred to me that no one had even bothered to ask how long Cassy and Felicity had. Felicity could probably have made a guess, being internally aware of how much free individual energy each of them had left, and how quickly it was being used up. But if any of us had asked her, there was no reason to trust her answer, unfortunately.

  That versation robably happening while they walked t’s truck, leavi of it.

  And ohey’d fused, how would that work? Would one of them e out on top, having ed the other? Would there be some sort of parity, carefully engineered so that they were equals? Did physics itself have a say iter? Would they bee full emanant, or would they bee the kind of being that Cassy had already been developing into? And what would that have been if Felicity hadn’t interrupted?

  And what would they be capable of?

  These were all questions I couldn’t answer, and the answers were necessary if I was going to even try to rely on Felicity to help me deal with Chord.

  They were answers I’d really like to have if Felicity was going to be iing with me at all, actually.

  Mostly, I just wao dht by Cassy.

  And then it hit me.

  The reason I was suddenly g more about Cassy now than I had before was because of her budding emanant nature.

  I cared about all my human friends, a lot more than most emanants usually do, I think. Probably the same way humans care about their shorter lived pets, like rats, is, or feeder fish won at the ty fair. I had valued their friendships beyond the emotions that they’d fed to me. I had felt like a person while iing with them, with a plexity of socialization I never got from other emanants. But I always knew humans were ephemeral and fleeting and, when it was best for the both of us, I was always ready to move on.

  However, this time, with Cassy, I had learhat she had had a ce at loy and a prolonged friendship with me, a deeper friendship, right in the same moment I learhat she would irrevocably bee somebody else. Probably subsumed by a monster eating monster who had upended my owend identity by maniputio doing things I’d sworn to myself not to do.

  Sure, I’d gone along a little too easily, and I was still making sense of that. But that didn’t absolve Felicity of having taken advantage of me like that.

  It dawned ohat I issed. Really, really pissed.

  A, for survival purposes, it seemed like I was going to have to take that anger and focus it on Chord.

  The problem with dealing with Chord was that in order to safely approach him and outmaneuver him, I o access Fate Vine’s memories about him. And whenever I did that, I felt like I was thinking more like Fate Vine and less like myself, like I had just before I regained trol of myself earlier that day.

  I didn’t want to do that.

  Maybe if I got a piece of paper and a pen, I could access a detail about Chord, jot it dowate on myself for a bit, and the the process until I had a diagram of him in front of me. And then I could read that as myself, as if Fate Vine had left me notes.

  Would that work?

  In order to do that, I felt I needed real pen and paper, not something maed in my domain. It o be something crete, not a part of my own psyche, otherwise it wouldn’t work.

  And I started to fret about where I would go to get that.

  Hayward Grocery, if they were open, had a tiny offid school supplies se, like most grocery stores. I could get it from there.

  Heck, I could get it from there even if they weren’t open. What scruples I’d had regarding that pce were now quite gone.

  But would Chord be monit the pce? It had been Fate Vine who’d gotten me fired and ed up my alterations to their work, but at Chord’s orders.

  Now that I had just very publicly devoured Fate Vine, would Chord watch my old haunts carefully, in case I returo them? I knew his own stronghold or ir was just outside of town, in an old horse ranch. So, he teo use agents to do his dirty work in town. What would I find in Hayward Grocery besides a pen and a notepad?

  I was afraid to use Fate Vine’s memories to even hazard a good guess.

  Which was when I felt a scratg on the edge of my domain.

  Another emanant had found me, or knew where I was, and wao meet with me.

  Felicity, I figured.

  They weren’t in my domain, and probably knew better than to enter, just poking a finger in or something like that, so I couldn’t immediately sense who they were or what they were like.

  I had to ma myself again and greet them. Which I did.

  It was a human host, just as Felicity would use. A pizza delivery driver of queer presentation holding a pizza in an insuted bag, branded with the busihey worked for, smiling with anticipation.

  The emotion I felt from them was monoati echo of that anticipation.

  But when I examihem with all of my senses, I only saw a small shadow in the monster realm, and nothing occupying the strands.

  I had no idea how Felicity would present herself now that she was locked in a merger with Cassy and taking advantage of Cassy’s little pocket universe. I didn’t know if I could reize her without closer iion.

  “Yes?” I said.

  The smile turned into a grin, and the other emanant decred, “Here to talk, of course!”

  The expressions aions seemed like Felicity’s. But I wasn’t so sure about that voice. It was deeper, and chest resonant, and Greg was the only host I’d heard her use with a simir timbre. The iions seemed off.

  I should have just turhem away right then. But I thought that if this was just a liminal emanant, which they’d have to be if they weren’t Felicity, I could take them, whatever they were. And they were a rider or parasite, like Felicity, so in my experiehat ruled out a number of dangerous possibilities.

  Just a bit more talking before I ihem in.

  “I’m sorry. I’m expeg someone, but yoing to have to verify your identity somehow,” I told them.

  “Oh, Sweetheart, we just talked. But now that the others are being tucked into bed, we get down to business,” and they winked.

  “OK, sure. e on in,” I muttered, stepping aside.

  I didn’t see it ing, because it was ahing that was outside my experience. I hadn’t realized an emanant could have this mix of traits. There really was no reason they couldn’t. I just never had even thought about it.

  But wheepped into my domain, I saw the telltale waves of influence rippling outward from their pale grey eyes, and realized it was already too te.

  “Uh, Felicity, I guess,” Greg addressed the monster in his friend, as they all walked toward where he’d left this truck. It would be several blocks, but it would still save Ayden and Cassy some walking to go there a a ride home rather than to just split off and go their separate ways. Greg looked over at her to see that he’d gottetention. “How long have you got, you know, before, uh, fusion?”

  He’d spoken specifically to Felicity because he wanted her, not Cassy, to see his expression. An expression not meant for a friend. But he also figured she’d more likely know.

  As she grimaced in a way not unlike Cassy often did, showing as much teeth as possible, Ayden picked up his pace to get up abreast and look across his chest at her to hear her out, too.

  “Maybe let me expin what’s happening,” the monster said, very clearly not in Cassy’s voice. “Because, I don’t think there’s any kind of a hard deadli’s a whole process.”

  “Go on,” Greg grumbled.

  “This is going to be review, but here it is, as pin as I make,” she sighed, hands in pockets, looking down at the pavement as they walked. “Cassy was already being an emanant, somehow…”

  Greg interrupted, “I don’t get that. How? What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know, exactly, OK? I’ve never seen this before, but it must not be the first time. There are myths, you knht? Like with vampires and wolves and ghosts and shit like that. Right?”

  “Go on.”

  Ayden was being very quiet and just listening.

  “Emanants aren’t born. We just spring ience when the forces are right. When there’s a vacuum in our ecosystem, it’s easier.” She looked around at the neighborhood, and all the houses with their porch lights on and blinds and shades pulled shut. “Gresham has been a wastend of emanants tely. At least, the oners, I guess. I always wondered why that was, but Synthia said it had something to do with too many Supraliminals present. And I guess I’m one of those, apparently. But that made a vacuum. And, Greg.”

  “What?”

  “Cassy wants to be an emanant. A monster, specifically. Very badly.” She looked at him. He hadn’t stopped looking at her. He wouldn’t let her out of his sight. She tinued, “It might be something to do with her hyperspaworld, or whatever we want to call it. And it might also have something to do with hoeople have been seeing actual moely. It just started in the past month for her, from what I tell.”

  “OK. I don’t get it, but OK. Go on.”

  “There are two rates of process that govern this, and a couple of points of urn,” she said. “One of the processes that dictate the rate of our intermingling is the rate at which she is turning into a monster eating mohat’s been slow, but is pig up. The other process is the rate at which she is attempting to e me, because I am choosing to match that to maintain a kind of parity. The more of an emanant she is, the rger a mouth she have, so to speak, and the more of me she e in a moment.”

  “Fuck,” Ayden muttered.

  “Yes, fuck,” Felicity said. “So, I’ve determihat we both gain each other’s memories as we e the other. That’s not a super on adaptation, but on enough. Synthia taught it to me. And I think Cassy developed it because of her burning desire to know everything about monsters of all kinds.”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of her special i,” Ayden firmed. “Especially monsters from other cultures.”

  Felicity nodded, “So that tells me something. The other two factors are how many memories she has, and how many memories I have. And it’s not a linear exge. Whes my memories, they bee hers and something that I the instead of her inal memories, and visa versa. Her memories will get transferred to me long before she processes all of mihough. And the longer we’re able to maintain this dahe more thh that will be. Keep going and there’ll be a feedback loop of sorts, with us duplig memories.”

  “Which means?” Greg asked.

  “Eventually, we’ll effectively be es or twins, but not ever pletely. Unless one of us fully eats the other, we’ll never have a full set of memories iher of us.”

  His gut grew cold and heavy. “You’re not going to do that, are you?”

  “Greg,” Felicity said. “By the meics of diffusion, most of her memories will be on my side of the equation long before she bees fully emanant.”

  He snarled and took an aggressive step toward her, a thied doing, but he couldn’t stop himself. “And when will that happen?”

  “Lohaher of us would like,” she smiled.

  theInmara