With her coffee in hand, Cassy scooted over to the chair nearest the window, to give her old chair to Susan, for when she was done in the kitchen. This put her opposite of Greg and pced Ayden directly between herself and the direction of the front door.

  Derrick, her other housemate, was probably at work.

  As she looked around, she watched another physics eater fly in through a window pane and settle into the TV. It was like a butterfly made of golden ripples in space that nobody else could see.

  Counting herself, or Felicity, there had been five Overlords in Gresham, and their presence had driven away most of the smaller emanants. If the smaller ones were coming back now, and in particur this house, that meant there was at most one obvious Overlord in town. If that. It should be too soon for the little ones to figure that they were safe. Especially with how big Synthia had grown. Her presence alone should be making them nervous.

  But she hadn’t answered any of Felicity’s texts or calls.

  Something worrisome was going on.

  But she felt like she couldn’t tell anyone about it.

  Those who would understand it were part of it and could see it. And to everyone else, it would sound like hallucinations and delusions. Or make-believe at best.

  Greg and Ayden, at least, were pying along.

  But when she’d told Susan that monsters were real, Sue had replied with, “Oh, is that all. I’m fine with that.” And then, with an amused smile, she’d gone back into the kitchen to finish preparing drinks.

  The thing was, these emanant affairs really shouldn’t have all that much impact on the humans in her life, if everyone acted like they typically did. Sure, Chord was doing some things that were interfering with people’s lives, but –

  Did she just think of the other people in this house as ‘the humans’?

  Greg moved his hand closer to hers, but didn’t reach out to touch her, respecting her boundaries, and asked, “Is there anything you need us to do? That we can do?”

  She gnced at Ayden then said to Greg, “Just be here with me for a bit, I think. I need sleep, but I’m kind of afraid of it. And my brain is telling me I should be with you guys right now, but at work. This is like a good compromise for that.”

  “Yeah,” Greg said. “No problem.”

  “So, it’s real,” Ayden said.

  “It’s real to me, now,” Cassy told him. “I can see and feel things I couldn’t before. It’s like Felicity gave me some of her abilities or something.”

  “Shit,” Ayden breathed.

  “Is there anything you can demonstrate?” Greg asked.

  Cassy considered him and how much she knew him, and the possibilities that came to her mind, and then decided to say, “Maybe. But I don’t think they are pleasant things. And nothing like Synthia’s shapeshifting.” She pulled her purse up from where it was hanging on her chair, and searched in it for a pen and an old receipt. Then, as she continued to speak, she used them to draw a monster’s eye glyph, the one that Felicity had used. “I think this is mine now, though.” She pushed it toward her friends, rotating it so they could see it right side up.

  It was like a simple cat’s eye, with a slitted pupil, but with pointy teeth like in a mouth drawn on either side of the iris. And two three fingered arms reaching up from it. It might look cute and appropriate repcing the head of a stick figure, but that’s not how it was done.

  Though, maybe she could make it her own by doing that.

  “What’s that?” Greg asked.

  She answered him, “It’s how Felicity got around. If she possessed you at any point, you likely saw it as graffiti somewhere in town within a day of that happening.”

  “Oh, that’s why it looks familiar.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So,” Greg pulled his hand back and looked back up at her. “Are you saying you could possess either of us?”

  Cassy carefully crafted one of her signature grimaces, “Yeah. I think I might. But I won’t do it without your consent. That’s important to me.”

  “Fucking weird,” he muttered.

  “No shit,” Ayden agreed.

  “What’s this?” Susan asked, bringing Ayden his coffee.

  Cassy looked up at her and expined, “I could demonstrate to you that monsters are real, but it would be scary, and I’d have to expin it first and get your consent, because it’s a big viotion otherwise.”

  Susan looked more than a little weirded out, “What does that mean?”

  Cassy scrunched up her chin while she had second thoughts, “Maybe let’s not do that anyway. Just listen in and believe what you want. It’s fine.”

  “OK?”

  And then she had a thought. “Hold on,” she said, getting up. “You know how the TV keeps glitching weirdly. Turning off when we’re watching it, or occasionally changing channels, or even doing that vertical hold problem it shouldn’t even be capable of as a digital thing?”

  “Yeah?”

  She went over to where the remote was on the upturned crates that served as the coffee table, and picked it up and turned the TV on.

  Sure enough, the image immediately started flicking up and up and up and up.

  “Yeah, that,” Cassy said. “I know what’s causing that, now. And I think I can stop it.”

  “Oh? How?”

  She considered her two options. She could tell the little enthalpiphage in there to go out and warn all the others to stay away, but then she risked making her own presence known to whoever else was in Gresham. Or, she could do what she had the natural urge to do.

  The tter was the safer thing. And, she knew she’d gain the memories of the little emanant, so it wouldn’t exactly be like killing it. And emanants weren’t life, exactly.

  But it felt like there were two parts of herself straining in disagreement over the act.

  She did know that if she were to do this, she couldn’t hesitate, or it’d get away.

  “I guess this is what I wanted,” she told herself, and gave in to Felicity’s reflexes, but used her own adaptations.

  She stepped around the coffee table and took three quick steps across the living area to the TV and knelt before it in a smooth, swift movement. Opening her mouth and bringing her face down to right about where the TV’s logo was, she breathed in quickly and with more strength than she remembered being capable of. Only, she didn’t breathe in with her lungs. She didn’t move air, she moved ectopsm, or energy, or whatever anyone wanted to call the substance of an emanant.

  And the little enthalpiphage screamed with static and sparked as it was ripped from the TV and swirled into her mouth.

  The screen stopped flickering immediately.

  Standing up and turning back to Susan, she shrugged and smiled, “I think that should st for a bit. The other little gremlins in the room should know to avoid the TV now.” And then she gred at each of the other emanants she could see, pointing at the TV and shaking her head sternly at them.

  One or two of them appeared to flinch.

  “That was creepy,” Susan said, and then went back into the kitchen again.

  Cassy returned to her seat at the table and said to Greg and Ayden, “I don’t actually know how to feel about being able to do that. It’s kind of like swallowing a baby chick whole.” She briefly pulled her lower lip back, fshing teeth, and asked, “What did that look like to you two?”

  “Well, uh, you just kind of made a breathing motion at the TV and it stopped being weird,” Ayden told her.

  “Mm,” Cassy replied, nodding. She could already feel the energy of the little thing seeping into her being, accompanied by visions from its previous existence. It hadn’t been very old. Comparing it to a chick was about right.

  Cassy wasn’t a vegan or anything like that. But, she’d considered it. Eating other living beings seemed kind of wrong to her. Just, she felt the same about pnts and mushrooms as she did about animals, so she hadn’t actually changed her diet. But eating something while it was still… alive?

  Emanants didn’t think of themselves as alive, apparently. Or, at least, Felicity hadn’t. Life was life. Emanants were emanations. Conscious manifestations of the universe’s other energies and structures. Like life, but different. Kind of like how fungi were like animals but different.

  And now, she, Cassiopeia Samaras, straddled that divide, and would probably do so until her body died.

  She felt weird.

  “Are you sure you’re still you?” Greg asked. “You’re acting a bit different. Kind of like Felicity.”

  She gnced at him, “Yeah, that makes sense. No, I don’t know. I’m… I feel like me. I feel like, if I had a soul, I still have the same one. Just, her memories and ways of thinking are inseparable from mine now, you know? I wonder if I’ll always feel like this. Or if it’s just what happens right after you eat someone else.”

  Both of her friends looked very uncomfortable with that revetion.

  And Susan came back from the kitchen, carrying Greg’s coffee in one hand and her own tea in another, “I could kind of hear you from the kitchen, but I’m not sure if I was getting it right. What am I missing?”

  “OK, Susan. Sit. Listen,” Cassy turned to her.

  “Sitting.” Susan grabbed the empty chair but moved it to the end of the table, so she was facing Cassy while sitting in it, and as far away from her as she could. Cassy didn’t bme her.

  “We’re all queer here, right?” Cassy asked.

  “Kind of,” Greg said. “I mean, I guess.”

  Ayden, suddenly distracted by this admission from Greg, and probably remembering an odd statement from him st night, turned and asked, “You’re trans?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m definitely ace,” Greg scowled at him.

  “Oh, well, then you’re definitely queer, too, Greg! No wonder you’re part of our group,” Ayden ughed.

  “What I’m saying,” Cassy interrupted him, “is that we all believe in and accept some pretty weird shit that most other people don’t, right?”

  There were nods.

  “Well, I’m Universalist Unitarian,” Susan said, holding her tea with both hands. “So, I like to say I think everyone believes weird things, and that’s beautiful.”

  “Right,” she pointed. “Hold onto that. Remind yourself of that. Because I’m going to get especially weird here. You remember Synthia, Susan? My old coworker who I really liked a lot?”

  “Yeah, she’s your BFF or something.”

  “She’s not human,” Cassy said. “She’s not even a living being. She’s closer to a ghost, a spirit. And that storm yesterday afternoon? That was literally her. Like physically, materially her. It was, in fact, billions and billions of tiny little insect eyes. Which, um, had been a choice.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “Exactly,” Ayden said.

  “You believe this, too?” Susan asked him.

  Both he and Greg nodded, then he said, gesturing at Cassy, “It gets worse.”

  Cassy realized that in the grand scheme of things it didn’t matter if Susan believed her or not, nor whether they remained friends after this, and she felt free to say all sorts of things, especially the truth.

  She opened her mouth to press further into an expnation for it all, but something else really big and more important occurred to her, dredged up with her recollection of Synthia, and she looked at Ayden and Greg with wide eyes. “Holy crap, guys. Synthia. Felicity wanted to apologize to her because she lied. She lied a whole bunch to Synthia, and I kinda think we need to find her!”

  “I believe it, but lied about what?” Greg asked.

  “She helped Chord set up a trap for her, and Synthia may have just fallen into it,” she said. “She lied about nearly everything to her.”

  “This really does sound like one of your LARPs,” Susan muttered, taking a sip from her tea.

  “I’m sure it does,” Cassy said, gring at her. “And it’s OK if you think that, really. Just let me know when the TV is acting up again.”

  “Cassy,” Ayden said. “Greg and I have been talking about this. Do we really want to help Synthia? She’s kinda fucking scary.”

  “Yes,” Cassy said, staring at him and nodding solemnly. Then she gnced at Greg. “Synthia is a pussy cat. She’s a doll. She’s the best ally we could have. She’s a bleeding heart and genuinely loves us. Or, at least, that’s what Felicity remembered.”

  They all looked at her, waiting for her to eborate.

  She put her hand down on the table and flexed her fingers like cws and pulled her nails across the rough grain of it. “But Chord? Chord is bad news for even you. He’s been meddling in human affairs, and he’s kind of like a Nazi. If Synthia is still alive, she can fight him and stop him. She just needs to know how.”

  “Hold up,” Greg said. “Expin that. What do you mean ‘kind of like a Nazi’?”

  “He is using his ability to alter other emanants against their will to create networks of power, and he wants to control as much of the world as possible,” she expined. “Emanants don’t reproduce like life does, so he’s doing the next closest thing, all for personal gain, to exist as long as he can. But he’s also pying a dangerous game with humanity, to try to use them – uh, us – as a weapon against his enemies. And it’s not like he’s taken over the U.S. government yet. Just, he’s here and he’s fucking things up for the rest of us.”

  “How do you know all this?” Ayden asked.

  “He had his cws in Felicity before she sacrificed herself to me,” Cassy told him. “I think that’s why she did it, too. She was one of his agents, but didn't want to be, anymore.”

  theInmara