While he watched Greg posture uncharacteristically to threaten Felicity, Ayden tried to make sense of what he was hearing.

  Greg was usually such a big Teddy bear who was overly scious of the power of his size. And seeing him hulk his shoulders and stomp at her while wearing that expensive pink strawberry robe was startling. Especially si was also Cassy he was lunging at.

  But, what Felicity was saying was scary.

  It sounded like they really were going to lose Cassy pletely, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. And Cassy wa?

  It was hard enough to think of Felicity as Felicity instead of just Cassy pying pretend, too. But he’d mostly gottehat after everything he’d seen just a few ho. Sitting in Synthia’s shed with the replica of their booth at Shady’s was surreal enough on its own, but the storm had beey definitive evidehat monsters or spirits or whatever they were were really real.

  Now that he’d e to accept that there was indeed a monster inside Cassy’s head, all he wao do was leap ihere and strangle Felicity. Except that there was no way for him to do that.

  And every word she spoke in her distinctive way of talking just reighat frustrated need.

  But then Greg asked her a simple question, and she didn’t give a straight answer. She infodumped for a blod a half to avoid it.

  And Ayden loved a good infodump as much as the guy, but not this one.

  It was so infuriating.

  And something else that was distrag was that every time they came to a street er, Felicity made Cassy walk way around the storm drains. She refused to e within three yards of them, if even that.

  He knew why she was doing it. Synthia had instructed them all to do it already. Croc-face was still a problem.

  But it was a reminder of the way the world supposedly really was, full of monsters. And it made him unreasonably angry.

  He couldn’t think straight, let alo together coherent words.

  Greg, fortunately, was on the ball.

  “You keep talking like memories are all that make up what a person is,” Greg rumbled at Felicity.

  “That’s more or less true, isn’t it?” Felicity asked him. “All of your personality traits, everything that makes you you is based on memories. And, well, of course, for you humans it’s also how your body reacts to those memories. And we’re in Cassy’s body. For me, though, I’m just memories that cause energy and spacetime to figure itself and behave iain ways, so...”

  “Yeah? So why don’t you just let Cassy e you entirely, take all of your memories?” Greg asked back. “You’d still be you, wouldn’t you? And that could happen before Cassy bees fully emanant. At an expoial rate, too, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Felicity opened Cassy’s mouth to say something in response, but apparently couldn’t talk.

  As my iarted to seize trol of my domain, I had a thought in a moment of pure crity. The kind of crity you get when you’re in mortal danger.

  It wasn’t a thought that would save me, because I didn’t know if this monster ed memories or not.

  But, if I had been Fate Vine for a while when it had been the most coherent self schema in my system, a plete set anized memories, but had beyself and subsumed it when my own memories coalesced – because I was bigger and older than it – what would happen to a smaller mohat tried to eat me who also absorbed memories?

  Would it bee?

  And then I saw my way out. It retty simple.

  I’d already done something like it before.

  I turned my domain bato me.

  It was already a part of me, of course, by definition, being a domain. But by reabs it into my being, I effectively put the carpedominator’s jaws around me, accelerating its ption of me, so that it had me right where I wa.

  The surprise that radiated off of it told me that no one had dohat before. But it wasn’t scared so much as pleased. It didn’t know what was i. It hadn’t been told. It’s possible that wasn’t intelligehat the enemy had.

  Its jaws, in this case, were not physical. They were, like with Felicity, metaphysical. So it’s kind of hard to describe what this looked like from monstrous perspectives. The nguage just isn’t there. To human eyes, it made its host raise an eyebrow as it looked at me.

  And then they dropped the pizza as their whole body jerked upward, when I sunk my own proboscis into them from the inside.

  And the other monster was gone in seds.

  The pizza delivery person bli me and looked around in fusion. Then noticed the dropped pie, which had flipped over and op down, still in its box and sleeve, and groaned.

  “I think you got the wrong address,” I told them. “But I’ll take it as is, if you ’t deliver it now.”

  I had no use for the pizza, other than to give it to someone who was hungry, but I also figured an odd offer like that would help focus their mind. Things like that sometimes work pretty well.

  “Yeah, uh… damn,” they said. “I think I better get it to the er and ask them, first, though.”

  “No worries,” I replied cheerfully. “I uand the fusion anyway, and sorry for bumping you. I don’t normally get visitors and I’m pretty sleepy this time of night.”

  “Yeah, we close in, like fifteen. It’s super te. I gotta go.”

  “Take care!” I waved, and then watched as they picked up their pizza, righted it, and started stumbling back out of my lot in fusion.

  What a merary busio be running after a night like that. I imagihey were not one of the downtowablishments, and had been outside the zone of me. Probably got really busy with people who were too frazzled to cook. Actually doing a det service, really. A needed one.

  OK, so. Maybe I was being too geh myself when approag Fate Vine’s memories.

  But now I had the memories of a smaller emanant I could py with first, to see what happened. And so I did that, and I learhings.

  In the end, I was kind of disappoihat it was so easy. I felt robbed of the opportunity to grill a flunky like Sam Spade verbally sparring with Joel Cairo with just one guweewo of them. But it was a fleeting disappoi borne purely of my love of movies.

  The ck of hassle was more important.

  Later, near dawn, after a few hours of really expl what I now knew, I set out to front Chord.

  I was never going to wait for Felicity. She’d betrayed me.

  It had been hard to just drop Cassy and Felicity off at Cassy’s pce. But Greg and Ayden had dohat first, so that they could both at least watch her get into her door safely and know that she’d dohat much.

  There wasn’t anythiher of them could do. They were both just human beings. All they were capable of doing was aowledge that the merger of Cassy and Felicity would be more plete the ime they saw her.

  For Felicity’s part, she hadn’t agreed to foll’s suggestion. And, Greg really hadn’t expected her to. But she hadn’t said she wouldher. She’d given him a look as if to say that she had her doubts but she’d think about it. And also like she trusted him less. But she didn’t say anything more.

  And then it had been Cassy for the rest of the trip.

  Cassy was mostly silent, but kept apologizing in a small voice, and saying things to the effect that she didn’t know how to stop it all even if she wao.

  At one point, just before her block, she’d even said, “I’d stop it if I could. I don’t want to stop being your friend.”

  Greg hadn’t known what to say to that except to nod.

  Ayden apparently felt fortable enough to put his hand on her hand and squeeze it briefly, gng at her. Ayden was in the middle of the cab for that part of the ride.

  Greg’s truck was the kind to have a bench seat, and no ste in the back of the cab. He was the biggest of the three of them, with Cassy being the sed rgest. The other two were small enough to keep it from being too tight a fit, though. He’d had elbow room to shift and everything.

  So, when Cassy had finally made it home, Adyen had scooted over, and it felt like there was a gulf between them.

  And the two of them had felt like they should say things to each other, but apparently couldn’t formute the words beyond, “I’ll message you after I get some sleep,” and, “Good luck with job hunting,” and, “Fuck. Yeah. Thanks.”

  And then it had occurred t that Cassy had seemed much less emotionally impacted by their current firings. And if she was being a monster, maybe that made sense in a horrible way.

  At least, she was certainly preoccupied with something bigger than the need for an ine. But also, maybe she wouldn’t need oerward?

  Who knew how that worked.

  Eventually, he was in his truck alone and pulling into his driveway, uain about how he’d gotten there. He’d zoned out during the drive so much that he no longer recalled having driven it. And that spooked him so bad he had trouble getting to sleep.

  As if that was the only thing keeping him up.

  He decided to rewatch Steven Universe while eating aire box of sugar cereal with marshmallows that he kept for just such a purpose.

  It was not a bad choice.

  The first thing Ayden did whe home was text his boyfriend, without looking at any of the messages, to let him know he was alive and home. It was tricky, because those messages were right there in the chat log for him to read, but he’d long since learned how to keep his eyes from really looking at or reading things he couldn’t face.

  He knew what it all said, anyway. Charlie would have been worried about him, and there were various heart emojis involved that he couldn’t pletely ignore.

  There were phone calls as from his parents as well, and an aunt, but he just put his phht bato his pocket, crept through his house to the bathroom, walked over to the toilet, and then threw up.

  He felt a little better after that, but really began to shake.

  He thought about filg just a little bit of his roommate’s absinthe. A generous shot should do it.

  They’d uand.

  It was weird how quiet the house was, though.

  He’d expected Charlie to jump up out of bed and e give him a big hug whe in the door, or at least to hear a housemate watg something in their room. It was house-courtesy to use headphones, but Mark’s leaky headphones often sounded like tinny puter speakers from down here i.

  The acoustics of the pce were weird like that. Certais seemed to amplify the quietest sounds.

  But all he could hear were his own movements as he opehe liquor cupboard and pulled out the absinthe and a shot gss, pg them so carefully on the ter before w to uhe bottle.

  At this time of night, the house was illuminated by an array of nightlights that were overwhelmed by the glow of the nearly full moon as it shown in through the windows.

  It was a huge old house, such that they had five people living in it, and each person had their own room. The walls were white pster with dark wood trim, and aside from the kit the floors were made with wide, thick boards that were bare and starting to splihey had various mismatg thrs over the worst spots.

  The kit’s floor was covered in heavy duty checkered lihat must have been older than Ayden.

  He looked around as he sipped his shot, and saw a tle spider in the upper er of the room furthest from him.

  F himself to pretend that the spider was some sort of guardian spirit keeping an eye on him and sg the monsters away, he lifted his gss and it.

  Which was right when there came a thump from upstairs.

  Shit!

  He’d almost choked on the liquor!

  Oh fuck, he hoped that had been Charlie just getting up.

  theInmara