My back did not enjoy my night’s rest at all, but I’ve been on worse sofas. My best friend from home, Nick’s, for example, was a scratchy blue monstrosity he found on a curb somewhere when he first got out of college. He loved the damn thing, said it reminded him of his grandma’s, but then he didn’t have to sleep on it.

  In short, I feel like shit, physically and mentally. I don’t know what I might’ve had with Melanie. She was awesome. Kind and generous. A beauty with an innocent face but with a dimple that was somehow just a little bit wicked. There’s no telling what would’ve happened if I’d stayed with her. That kiss had been real nice. Her lips had been so soft, and mine felt like they were vibrating. If there hadn’t been a promise made there exactly, then there’d been an openness. The tremendous pull of that, I think, was what frightened me away. No point in kidding myself. I’d been scared.

  Cal’s right. Maybe if I’d hung around, she and the Becks would be alive. Maybe we’d all be dead. Maybe I’d have a girlfriend. There’s a pain in my stomach and a tightness in my chest that I know too well. Fucking grief. I’m sick of it. I’ve been mourning the loss of my original world — my parents, friends, my job. The sense of normalcy and familiarity. The feeling like I had my place. What was I even doing helping the FBI? I’m no superhero out of the comics, but what am I supposed to do? Nothing?

  I could do that. Sit around getting fat, playing video games, letting my investments make me a living, keep moving my home just enough to keep the bad aethings from building up and dropping an airplane on me or something. Then I’d brood, get depressed, and die. Man, if I become suicidal, and I think I would, all I have to do is go somewhere and Pull my luck like I did to roast that dragon-thing last year. I probably wouldn’t have to do even that much. All I have to do is stay in one place, maybe out in the desert, and wait.

  I don’t want to do that. There’s no guarantee that staying safe, locked away at home, is any better or riskier or more dangerous than going out there and trying. If I ever do see the math on that proving otherwise, then that’s a different matter. In the meantime, I can do things. Doing them makes me feel good, so I’m going to find out what happened last night, and stop whoever did it. Hopefully without killing them all, everywhere.

  Jesus.

  “Do you always leave the cereal box open when you’re done?” says Cal. She’s in the kitchen in an orange tank top and plaid sweatpants, frowning at a colorful box of cereal she’s holding I don’t recognize.

  “What?”

  “How’d you sleep?” Sighing, she rolls up the bag, tucks it in, shuts it, and puts it in the cupboard.

  I didn’t eat anything unless I did it in my sleep, which I’ve never done and don’t expect I’ve started. Maybe she had some and forgot. Whatever. “Um, okay. I doubt I moved again once I laid down.”

  She grunts and opens the fridge.

  There’s a knock at the door, and Cal snorts in amusement once she peeps through the peephole.

  It’s Monica. She’s got donuts. She’s also holding a drink carrier with four capped cups. Her eyebrows waggle at me over her mirrored glasses, and her curls bounce as she hurries over to put everything on the coffee table, using the carrier to shove my knives aside.

  Cal and I both wince at the sound of metal sliding across the wood.

  “How’d you get in?” I sit up and yawn.

  “Oh, I live upstairs,” says Monica.

  Cal grimaces as she opens the box of pastries to look them over. “It wasn’t my idea.”

  “This place is huge. Two thousand square feet. Yeah, the kitchen sucks but it’s in good repair, and she was so happy with it, that when I heard there was another vacancy, I had to check it out. Mine is smaller. Top floor. But it’s also very nice.”

  “The kitchen sucks?” I took a cream stick and contemplated the drinks in the carrier.

  “It’s galley style.” Cal bites into an apple fritter. “Long and thin,” she says around a mouthful. “Lots of storage, though. Needs updated appliances.”

  The small talk about their apartments is so normal that I can practically feel the ground sliding back underneath my feet. I belong here, with them. They’re letting me know that, but if I think about it too hard about it right now, I’ll get emotional.

  I decide to see if I can’t stir a pot. “Don’t you need a break from each other sometimes?”

  Monica shrugs.

  Cal smiles. “It’s not like she sleeps here.”

  “It’s not for lack of trying.” Monica bats her eyes.

  “You couldn’t afford me.”

  I better not think about that too much, either.

  “We do try to limit shop talk while hanging out at home,” Monica says. “But it’s just too damn convenient to pass up, and the rent’s not too bad at all.”

  The buzzer sounds, letting us know there’s someone at the front door.

  Cal sighs as she gets up. “I told her to come to the back.”

  “You know Myra,” sighs Monica. “She only hears what she wants to hear.”

  “Myra?” Why is Myra here?

  But it’s Myra’s husband, Alex, whose voice comes through on the intercom. “We’ve got it. Come on down.”

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  “Got what?”

  Monica shocks me by peeling off her glasses and winking. “You’ll see.”

  For a moment, once they get me outside, I think I’m looking at my motorhome eclipsing the visitor’s parking area, like it hadn’t burned up last night, but Myra’s hanging out of the driver’s side window, dangling some keys at me, and I realize that this is a new one.

  “You got me another one already?”

  “Had it prepared in advance. Just in case.” Myra gives a confident toss of her head. “You never know with you. Comes with all the same upgrades too. Take it easy with this one, okay? The next spare won’t be ready for another week.”

  Alex slaps me on the back as I take the keys from her, and he helps his wife out of the car. “It’s already stocked up with groceries and some clothes. Sharing your online shopping accounts with us was a really good idea. You’ve got enough not to do laundry for… well, what would take most people two weeks. We mostly just reordered stuff you bought before. There’s even a new fancy skateboard.”

  I’m staring at the keys, shaking, vibrating. If I move, I’ll break.

  A warm hand folds over my shoulder. Cal. “Why don’t you go in and look?”

  I nod and open the door. Unable to speak, I clamber inside. A brief glance around confirms that it’s all the same. No doubt I’ll have to rearrange things. It’s not like the Wests know where I like everything, but still. I need to sit down.

  I’m there in the booth a long time before I can get up and wash my face and go back outside.

  Cal, Monica, Myra, and Alex are all in a huddle, talking in a low murmur. They look up when I open the door and hop out. Alex pulls Myra along to gather me into a hug.

  “I’m sorry about everything last night. We’ve all gotten to know Melanie. She was very special,” says Alex.

  I can only nod.

  Myra says, “We’ve got everybody else at the shelter with the FBI while we try to find a more secure spot. Oh, and I’ve had some ideas about those scholarships.”

  The hug ends. Myra’s not all that touchy-feely. “We can do better than tuition. I was thinking it’s normal for a kid to kind of implode for at least one semester. I know I did, so it’s a good idea to build that in. They get a warning to improve along with an offer of help, free of cost. We handle books and materials. Housing too. I want to provide assistance for job placement, interviewing, resumes, the works. Anybody you give one of these to is going to have one hell of a head start.” She shrugs.

  Alex is freaking glowing, watching his wife.

  I grin. “Anything else you got going on?”

  “Well, we worked a deal with the pet shop. Yeah, they’re insured, but we wanted to guarantee the owners were happy with us, so we’re now partial investors. I looked into them, and they seem fine. No puppy mills or anything. They sell mostly high-end stuff to high-end people. Those marmosets, for example, are pretty exclusive.”

  “Yeah, Jimmy was telling me.”

  “That kid from last night?”

  I nod.

  “James Monroe and Grant Ellison. We’re hiring them to work in the new shelter, right? One’s a cook?”

  “Grant’s a trained chef.”

  Myra bobs her head, deep in thought. She does that. “Of course he is.”

  Alex says, “We want to set up a foundation to run all this stuff, but Myra and I need help. How about we go halfsies with you? Deal?”

  “Sure.”

  “Hmm? What?” Myra looks at her husband and then at me. “Oh! Yes. Halfsies. Where to put the shelter though? That’s the question. Hey, FBI, do we know how they found us?”

  Cal frowns. She and Monica have to walk over closer anyway to get out of the way of a car pulling in.

  “No,” says Cal. “But, if it’s the Betans, like we think—.”

  The car stopped with a whine of its brakes. It’s a silver sedan. The passenger’s side window is down and Adam, the man with the bushy beard who cursed me the second time, leans over to say, “It was the Betans.”

  ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

  Myra and Alex excuse themselves after much hugging, and then the rest of us all sit around the table in my motorhome. Me and Cal are on one side, Monica and Adam on the other. Adam’s gnawing on his lower lip, staring off into space.

  We know he’s going to drop some serious stuff on us, but it doesn’t look much like he wants to, or where to start. His expressive eyes, quick, nervous smile, and bushy black hair might get him a job in Hollywood as a comic actor, but there are signs of strain. Crow’s feet by the eyes that I don’t remember being there before, a tension in the shoulders, and a hesitancy in his gestures create a looming, confessional atmosphere.

  I’m not ready for any of this, but when has that mattered, right? I’ve got a new home and Melanie’s dead. If Adam can lead us to the people who killed her, I want to find them. I don’t like how that makes me feel.

  “You know I know too many runes, right?” Adam says to Cal, who nods. “You probably also know that practitioners spy on each other—.”

  “How do you know it was the Betans?” Monica’s got her glasses back on. She’s leaning into the table, patience already fraying.

  Adam holds up his hands, begging indulgence. “I’ve got to put this in perspective. You’ve got no reason to trust me, and I need you to do that. To get it, I’m going to have to give you the context for all this. Things I know that few others do, how I know them, why I know them, and what I’ve been trying to do something about it.”

  “Things like murder,” says Monica.

  “Yeah, I killed Lansky. She was a human trafficker working for what people are calling the Iotans.”

  “The Exploders,” I say.

  Adam nods. “Plus, she’d just hit Ben here with the malocchio.” He waves a hand, dismissing Lansky’s memory like an unpleasant odor. “You’d have done the same, catching her in the act like that. I was tracking her down, and Ben beat me to it. Someone in the area was gathering people like candy from a pi?ata, and it seemed to me things were shaping up for a mass sacrifice to juice up one hell of a spell. I wasn’t having any luck finding out who was collecting them, but Lansky was delivering, along with the Wild Specters.”

  “So, you’re a practitioner vigilante of some kind?” Monica snorts.

  Adam shrugs. “That’s the least of what I am. Should I explain or not?”

  Monica has the mysterious ability to let people know she’s rolling her eyes even while they’re hidden behind her glasses. Something about how she tilts her head back and wobbles it, maybe.

  “I was recruited into the Thetans years ago.” Adam turns to me. “They’re like magical biologists, kinda. Mom had bad arthritis. Crippling, really, and after I learned some entry-level runes from a friend, I tattooed them on her hands. She was playing the piano again the next day. I started going around to nursing homes, helping out for a modest fee, you know? Making a living that way until a nurse on staff referred me to this doctor. It turns out that tattooing runes is terrifically difficult to do and Thetans are crazy for it. He brought me into the cult proper, and for a while, everything was cool. I worked on athletes and movie stars. Lots of stuntmen.”

  He waggles a finger at Cal and Monica. “The FBI knows there are different ranks in each organization?”

  Cal nods.

  “Do they know each organization organizes different, but mostly the same?”

  Cal frowns. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, there’s the entry-level guys, the largest group, who know a few more runes than your average minor practitioner, then there’s the level above that. Those are mostly soldiers and middle-management types. Then comes the top tier, right? Now, each organization breaks it up different. Epsilons, for example, need lots of raiders, so they’ve got a two-tiered entry level, and a two-tiered middle level, the first for heavy infantry, the second for their field commanders. Alphas have eight ranks. Betans have twelve. Most of the others have three to six separate ones, but it’s all still three main levels for everybody. The Iotans? No idea. Nobody knows much at all about them and —.”

  Monica slams a hand down on the tabletop. “What do you Thetans want?”

  “Huh?”

  “With us? With the FBI?”

  “The Thetans don’t want a thing from you.” Adam sighs. “And I’m not really one of them. Not anymore. I’m here for myself, and I don’t want the whole FBI. I want Ben.”