That conversation got intense fast. When Cassy started talking about how Felicity had thought of me, she started acting more and more like Felicity, and it reminded me of what happened when I delved into Fate Vine’s memories. The rules for how to react to her and reassure her changed.

  But we got through it and, for expediency, I’m not going to provide a transcript here. The important part is that it felt like we ended on an agreement to continue our retionship as Cassy and Synthia, and not entertain Felicity’s desires much at all.

  Cassy felt what was happening and didn’t like it, and wanted to be herself. So pushing those feelings aside and ignoring them seemed like the best way to do that. Even if it would be hard.

  She didn’t exactly hate Felicity, she’d said. But she was clearly very uncomfortable with becoming like her.

  I was also reassured that her apparent urges to be eaten or wrapped up in a situation of mutual parasitism were purely Felicity’s feelings for me specifically. And they were a result of a desire for safety from Chord. That seemed to mean that she wasn’t going to be inadvertently sacrificing herself to Chord or one of his minions anytime soon.

  By the end of the conversation, I also had a list of adaptations I wanted to try to teach Cassy before we went back to Gresham. But we both needed rest badly, so we texted the boys to let them know we were well and what we were pnning on doing.

  And Greg insisted on coming back down to Salem for the training sessions. Ayden just happened to come with him.

  “So, mitosis,” I said.

  “Oh, I do that every day,” Greg interjected.

  Ayden nudged him and said, “Me too!”

  “And, I mean, so do I. Still. I think,” Cassy added, holding up her hand and turning it over to look at both sides of it.

  Milk remained silent, a sptter of thermal paste on the pavement of the empty storeroom we were in.

  I’d chosen to not try to teach Cassy any monster tricks while in my domain, because she needed to be in full control of herself and her surroundings to have the best chances of learning anything useful. But we still needed privacy. So, we were still in our abandoned storefront, just further back in the building.

  “Monster mitosis,” I amended.

  “Sure, leave us humans out of it,” Ayden quipped, grinning.

  Greg swayed and grunted, “I just want to see as much of this with my own eyes so that I can recognize it when I need to for, well, the rest of my life.”

  “Not a bad idea,” I said, nodding. “But hopefully not necessary.”

  “Feels necessary now,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. Then I turned specifically to Cassy, “I’m going to say this to you in English first, and then communicate the idea in monster speak, which only you, I, and Milk can hear. But it’ll give you a better sense of what you need to do.”

  “Got it,” she nodded.

  “Now, you won’t be able to just do this unless it’s already your own adaptation or trait. Most emanants can’t, or don’t even know it’s possible. And there’s an awful political reason behind it, but I’d like to try and teach you anyway, OK?” I expined. “I think it’ll be useful to you.”

  “Mmm,” she nodded again, staring at a spot on the floor.

  “What you do, if you can do it, is extend a part of yourself – not your physical body, but your monstrous self – into monster space, like a pseudopod. Then you fill it full of memories that you select for its purposes, usually copying those memories to keep them for yourself as well. Usually. And then you pinch it off,” I told her. “This will make more sense when I send you the pure thoughts for it. But I think it might be a way for you to bring Felicity back if you want to, and maybe even get rid of her memories by budding them into a new emanant. But, if it’s not your adaptation yet, you won’t be able to pinch it off. Or you won’t be able to partition your memories like that. The pseudopod thing is so elementary, I can’t imagine an emanant who can’t do it.” I then sent her the expnation via monster speak, and added, “Tell me what it is you have trouble with. And if you manage to do it, you can eat and reabsorb the emanant you’ve created, if you don’t want a child right now.”

  “Okay…” she said, long and drawn out in an expression of skepticism.

  Then we watched as she extended her arms at a forty five degree angle downward, fingers spyed, like someone trying to levitate a carpet with only her mind. And then she squinted her eyes and strained.

  I could tell by her curiosity and fascination being interrupted by frustration that it didn’t work for her.

  She looked at me and spoke in English, “I can’t mess with my memories like that. They all feel like a part of me. And I didn’t want to pinch off a mindless blob.”

  “Pinch off,” Ayden mouthed silently.

  Greg scowled at him and said, “Stop it.”

  “Hm, OK,” I replied. “To give yourself that adaptation, it’s going to help if you can examine yourself and successfully alter yourself. And to do that, It’s going to be useful to visualize just what that’s like. So, um, I’m going to share with you what that’s been like for me, and hopefully that will be close enough to what you should experience.”

  Cassy turned to me, trying to keep an open and enthusiastic face, but kind of failing, and said, “Okidoke. Sounds good to me!”

  So then I sent her those memories as filtered by monster speak, and added verbally, “Felicity also was able to alter herself, to some degree at least, so her memories of that should help you, too.”

  But she held up a hand while I was saying that and appeared to concentrate on that visualization, eyes closed again.

  Then she shook her head and said, “This is confusing.”

  “Take your time,” I told her. “I don’t expect you to figure it out right away. Even if it takes you years, just do what you can to be more aware of yourself and ask questions as they occur to you.”

  “No, I mean…” She scowled, spping her thighs with her hands. “My, um – Felicity’s memories of doing this are weird. When she followed your instructions and did what you told her to do to take on a new adaptation, she succeeded. She remembered feeling like she succeeded. But then, the adaptation was one she’d had all along. Like, she didn’t have to change herself at all. And that’s not helping me figure this out. It’s making it harder.”

  “What?” I’d heard her well enough, and understood what she said, so I was directing that question more at Milk, who I looked down at. “Milk? Does that make sense to you?”

  “Something Chord did,” it said.

  “Yeah, but do you think it was Chord predicting adaptations I’d try to teach her, or doing something really weird with her mind? I’m not sure either makes any sense.”

  “It could be a side effect,” Milk suggested. “When it changes an emanant, it alters their memories. Maybe that makes them suggestible to other changes.”

  Cassy nodded, looking back and forth between the two of us, “It’s like when Chord swallowed Felicity and changed her, but she couldn’t remember the changes. Everything seemed like it had always been that way.”

  “Right, you told us that,” I agreed. “Shit. That’s scary.”

  “Synthia?” Cassy addressed me.

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t think I can change my adaptations yet,” she said. “It feels like trying to change my physical body. I mean, I only tried a little, but it hurt.”

  “Oh, damn.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s never hurt me, so maybe that pain’s telling you something,” I expined. “I guess we put off these lessons for a while. Let me know if anything changes for you, though.”

  We all stood there staring at the ground for a few seconds. Some of us were probably expecting me to say something more.

  When I figured out what I wanted to do next, I look up at Cassy to speak to her, but I was interrupted.

  “Teratodivergence,” Ayden said, cheerfully, proud he’d invented a new word.

  “What?” I asked him.

  “Teratodivergence! It’s like neurodivergence, but for monsters,” he chirped. “Like, you’re all made differently, and it’s diversity, and cool. Though, I guess it makes for some disabilities, too. But you’re just like humans that way, then.”

  “I like it,” I told him. “A good expnation.” Then I cpped my hands and decred, “Time to review our pns and scout Gresham, then! Let’s find out just what Chord is doing.”

  “You should have been our union boss,” Greg muttered.

  When Cassy had reported that she could not learn new adaptations, I should have guessed that that meant she hadn’t gained Felicity’s adaptations by eating her. I mean, that’s the default way of things anyway. I’d just fallen prey to what is typically a common human mistake, forgetting that other people aren’t like you.

  This meant that we couldn’t easily scout Gresham before returning there, because Cassy couldn’t do the jumping into another host’s mind thing that Felicity had been able to do. And then, missing that option, I realized just how powerful it had been.

  I realized then just how much of Gresham’s business Felicity had been capable of keeping tabs on, both human and emanant. She’d been an invaluable resource for Chord.

  But had he made her that way? Or had he found her that way and changed something else?

  If he didn’t tell the truth when we asked, or if I didn’t just outright eat him and take his memories, we’d likely never know.

  So, we were forced to change gears yet again.

  I let Milk lead for part of it, because it seemed particurly adept at examining other emanants and guiding them on how to use their own abilities better. And so we helped Cassy figure out just what she was and what she could do.

  In short, she was a frightening ambush predator, capable of disguising herself as a human almost perfectly. Especially to anyone who had no clue something like her could exist, or what signs to look for. Her senses were extraordinarily acute, better even than Felicity’s had been. And she ate by sucking other monsters into her gullet. Less like a grouper or stonefish that open their mouths so fast that the current draws their prey in, and more like a temporary little bck hole that just constantly pulled anything within range into her.

  She demonstrated on a smaller, presumably simpler emanant, and it was terrifying to watch.

  Especially since she was able to get within inches of the poor thing before consuming it, and it had no idea.

  She did not look or feel very proud of the act, though. Hesitant to show off, and then disturbed by the sensations of it. Disturbed, in fact, by what should have felt good to her.

  She did nod her head, though, and confirm that what she’d eaten was little more than a hamster in complexity and age. Because, of course, she also absorbed its memories, as mentioned before by Felicity. And she couldn’t turn that off as an adaptation, which meant that she needed to be careful about what she ate.

  Fortunately, according to Milk, her human body could keep her emanant nature functional and intact until it died, just by eating the kinds of foods she was already used to eating. And, the massive stores of energy she’d gotten from Felicity would sustain her for a long time anyway.

  In some ways, she made a better scout than Felicity. While she couldn’t hide who she was as a human very well, no more so than any other human, if Chord and his people weren’t aware that she was an emanant she could probably get up pretty close to them and watch what they were doing.

  There’d be no going to his estate to check up on him, though. Not by her. That was too risky. But Greg could drive her past key locations to see what kind of emanant activity was going on there, and she could report to me as they did it.

  Good enough.

  theInmara