“I exist,” I texted Cassy, Greg, and Ayden over our old group chat. “Can you all come to Salem to meet me here? I want to see you all. But I need to talk to Cassy where it’s safe, especially.”

  I realized that I liked using full words in text messages so that they couldn’t be misread. And that Ayden’s most brief and careless messages really annoyed me. I smirked while typing that in. They’d know it was me.

  “ths bus ,” Ayden replied fairly quickly. “dn’t hv.”

  Cassy sent a photo of Felicity’s eye glyph and a text that said, “Ask consent for me first.”

  “Guys, I’ll DRIVE,” Greg finally responded.

  “ok gas ,” Ayden amended.

  “Meet where?” Cassy asked.

  So, I sent them the address of the empty storefront I was using to hold my current domain. Then a selfie with me standing in front of it.

  “Enthalpiphage,” Milk muttered from near my feet.

  I looked down and asked, “What was that?”

  “You understand electromagnetic patterns too well to not be an enthalpiphage,” it said.

  “OK, sure.”

  Being able to manipute them and being able to understand or expin how I maniputed them were two entirely different things. But, maybe having the comprehensive and detailed concepts of how a smart phone worked wasn’t the essence of being an enthalpiphage. It’s just that I’d come into being in order to prey on life. And I could describe life and what made it work. I’d always thought of myself as an affectivore, and I doubted that would change, no matter how much Milk prodded me about it.

  My phone buzzed with another message and I looked.

  “Tonight?” Greg had asked.

  “Soon,” I replied. “When it is convenient for you, but soon.” I had a cautious thought. “In fact. Do not tell me when over this channel. Just surprise me with your exact timing. I’ll be here. But soon.”

  “Gotcha. See ya then.”

  “They’re on their way,” I told Milk.

  “With Cassy?” it asked.

  I tilted my head while looking down at it, “Can’t you read the cell signals yourself?”

  “I need your phone’s identification patterns,” it replied.

  I shook my phone over it, “You can’t just figure that out by looking at it while I use it?”

  “That would be rude.”

  I could feel it was being genuine, since I’d chosen to restore my ability to feed off the emotions of other emanants. I’d decided that that would be most useful when facing Chord. But the sense that accompanied that feeding reassured me right then. I felt just a little bit more safe around Milk every time it talked.

  “Yes, with Cassy,” I told it. “She’s definitely coming, I’m sure.”

  “Good.”

  It radiated happiness. Not anticipation. Not hunger. Not smugness or any other worrisome emotion. Just a calm contentedness verging on pleasure.

  What a guileless puppydog of an Overlord it seemed to be.

  “Why didn’t you give me your memories so that I could know you?” I asked, turning to go back inside.

  “Then you wouldn’t have been you,” it replied, following me and telling the truth.

  “Can you change your shape?” I asked with friendly curiosity, trying to satisfy a harmless suspicion.

  “I am currently changing my shape,” it said, unduting through the opened door of the shop.

  The ride to Salem at that time of the night took just under an hour, even with Greg’s careful driving.

  It was a lot of time to think while Greg and Ayden talked nitty gritty trans stuff.

  Cassy had taken the seat to the furthest right, so the other two wouldn’t have to talk past her, and that allowed her to rest her head against the window and feel the vibrations of the truck and road through her skull. And also to rest her neck a little while she searched her feelings about certain things.

  Normally, she’d love to listen to what it took to legally, medically, and socially py with gender and gender expression in the modern age, but some of what they had to talk about was dredging up worries about the very imminent future that were, she realized, very human worries. And for her own mental health, her reflex was to dissociate in the face of that.

  So, she thought about a pleasant emotion she’d had over the past couple of years that also seemed stronger now.

  The urge to be near and around Synthia.

  Like, the inability to find her for the past week and a half had been way more distressing than she’d realized. The relief of getting a message from her now functional again cell phone was enormous. Stronger, even, then the st time she’d disappeared.

  Cassy had been much more distraught this time, and realized that the feelings around that weren’t just her own.

  Or rather, they were her feelings now, and no one else’s, but they didn’t come just from who she’d been before. Felicity had had very monstrous feelings for Synthia, that she’d been going to great pains to hide from Synthia, and everyone else, this whole time.

  And they were strange to Cassy, because they weren’t like her autistic human feelings that she couldn’t really identify either. They were both hard for her to name, but definitely distinctly different.

  For instance, before Felicity, she’d been thinking of her feelings as a special interest in another person. Which sort of had happened on rare occasion in her life. She’d find someone that she really clicked with, and then she’d love and admire and become as deeply interested in that person as she was in folklore and monsters. And, of course, learning that Synthia was an actual, real life, supernatural monster had intensified those feelings unbearably, and only dissociation had helped her manage it.

  But on the other hand, she realized that those feelings didn’t feel any different in quality to when she had a crush on someone. Just the specific thoughts were different. She thought.

  She hadn’t wanted to have sex with Synthia. They were coworkers, and that would have been awkward and weird. But, if Synthia had brought the subject up, maybe then she would have? But she would have dismissed it quickly. But, then, once they weren’t coworkers, she might have felt that way, except she’d known Synthia was a monster then, and that had complicated things.

  Especially once she’d learned their actual age gap. Holy shit.

  And also, really, that whole discovery phase had been really scary, and she’d been startled and distracted by every new revetion, and just barely holding herself together.

  But then Felicity had happened.

  And now there was a whole new yer of complexity to those feelings. They felt different. They sat differently in her body and created different sensations. And they prompted other thoughts as well. Scary and weird thoughts.

  Like fond memories of being inside Synthia and feeling safe, accompanied by confusion, conflict, and self recrimination. And the desperately important need to hide those feelings from her monstrous host.

  And, also, she recalled the bizarre and disturbing pleasure of eating and being eaten at the same time in equilibrium. Which had been something Felicity had also felt when she’d been using Cassy as a host, too.

  Now Cassy remembered those feelings and yearned for them as if they were her own.

  So, what she was now asking herself and trying to figure out was how she was going to talk to Synthia about this, and whether or not she even should.

  In an odd way, she’d narrowed their age gap. But, a few million years of remembered experience verses four-hundred and some million years was, well. It was big and significant, still.

  But then, that was also something only humans really worried about? And monster retionships, such as they were, weren’t built on the idea of being equals anyway? And now she couldn’t figure out if that was good or bad.

  She couldn’t figure out what she wanted or needed in that regard.

  But, in any case, it wasn’t like any human beings besides Greg or Ayden would judge her for it, if she got monster-romantic with Synthia, if it could even be described in those terms. But, Greg and Ayden just might, and she didn’t want to alienate or horrify them. And really, the whole point of being aware of age gaps was for your own personal safety.

  People talked about it like it was for avoiding pedophilia and child abuse specifically. And that was what made it truly taboo, really. But, with two consenting adults, it was still a personal concern. Something to be cautious about.

  It was good to be aware of what the power differential was, and definitely Synthia and Felicity had been constantly negotiating that since they’d met.

  And, at first, Felicity had been directed by Chord to do that in order to maneuver Synthia into his gullet. Which had not quite worked out as pnned.

  Of course, sending Sewer Teeth into their first setup had been a strange and unexpected maneuver on Chord’s part. So maybe Felicity hadn’t been fully party to what Chord had really wanted to do.

  Had that been a deliberate ploy on Chord’s part to prune Felicity’s memories at just the right moment? She no longer had those memories, so now she didn’t know.

  She couldn’t even figure out how she’d felt about Synthia when they’d first met in the grocery store. There might have been more complexities there that were just gone now.

  In any case, free of Chord’s threats and immediate influences, she could now speak openly to Synthia about these things, and maybe they could both learn some things. And maybe, finally, she could turn the tables on Chord.

  Or.

  Rather.

  Since she was Cassy, and not Felicity, now that she was fully half monster she could truly be friends with Synthia.

  Oof.

  My phone buzzed with a message from Ayden, an entire full word, “Here!”

  Making my way to the front door, which was easy enough to lock and unlock from the inside without a key, I opened it in time to hear Cassy saying something to the other two.

  “It definitely feels weird to learn that I was already becoming a monster when I’d wanted to be one my whole life, I mean,” she was expining. “But a special one, with some kind of multidimensional properties that I don’t even understand? Yeah, it does feel like main character syndrome, right? I feel embarrassed about it!”

  Ayden seemed to be fully engaged, with a furrowed brow and fshing teeth as he tried to figure out how to respond.

  Greg just looked like he wanted to extricate himself from an unexpected bear trap.

  Greg pointed with his thumb over his shoulder at the other two and said to me, “And I’m the one who half believes this shit. They’re supposed to be the skeptics!”

  Cassy looked at me and blinked. “Oh, damn,” she said. “You really biffed it, didn’t you?”

  Her voice and mannerisms were nearly a perfect mix of herself and Felicity in a way that really startled me.

  I immediately examined her with my full suite of senses recommended and taught to me by Milk.

  There was no Felicity there at all.

  “You’re going to have to tell me what happened to you, too,” I said.

  “Definitely,” she replied.

  “Come on in, everyone. I’ve got some actual food in there, if you need it, too,” I gestured back into the shop with my head. “We should discuss the rest of this away from prying and spyful ears.”

  “Felicity said to tell you she was sorry,” Cassy whispered as she passed me. “I’ll tell you all about why.”

  Oh, yeah. There were a bunch of past group text messages I hadn’t read yet. I wondered if there was something about that in there.

  theInmara