Eventually, I had the sense that the bird had left to find easier prey. I tossed the empty froyo carton in the trash from, perhaps, a further distance than would have been wise. Keep a low profile, I told myself. Keep a low profile.

Out into the street as the air began to cool a little. A little. Or maybe most of it was the froyo. It was certainly the weather for it; over a hundred degrees and sullen, the air heavy and full of moisture, the sun veiled. I wasn’t quite used to it. Wherever I was from was cooler than this.

I had a dim memory, for a moment, just a flicker of snowcapped mountains and quiet, rolling meadows. Norway? Sweden? Colorado? I had no idea. Another planet as I’d wondered earlier?

There was somebody following me. A thin figure, birdlike, and I turned. I’d been joking, but it was definitely the same being.

“You.”

“Interesting,” it…he…said, drawing the i out into several syllables. “Parts of you don’t match.”

“Is that why you tried to eat me?”

A sardonic smile that reminded me of Mr. Otter, except I didn’t feel as safe with this…being. “I wasn’t trying to eat you. Or you’d be dead.”

The threat was delivered so deadpan it made me shiver. There was no emotion to it. His eyes showed cold fascination. I realized after a moment there was no difference of color between iris and pupil.

A fairy, Thea had called it, but I wondered if it wasn’t more like a devil. Even the male gender did not want to settle in my mind. “Then what do you want?”

“A truce. Leave me alone.”

So, he felt threatened by me. Straggly dark hair. He looked like a starving Goth poet, I decided. “Why should I?”

“You ran fast enough.”

I lifted a shoulder and tried to channel Thea. “Broad daylight? Come on. I’m just waiting until I can find you without witnesses.”

“There are always witnesses.” One bony shoulder lifted, a suggestion of wings. “The humans are everywhere.”

Part of me wanted to retort that I was human, except that right now I wasn’t sure I actually was. “Point. Maybe we should take it outside.” I wasn’t nearly as confident as I sounded. I really, really wanted a sword right now.

Or a source of fire, some instinct suddenly rising up within me. Birds have feathers. Feathers burn. But he was not just a bird. He was something else, something of water.

“Maybe we should. You’re going to keep getting in my way and I want dinner.” He smiled, showing sharp, pointed teeth, more like a cat’s than a human’s.

“Not on my watch.”

I ventured out about 15 minutes later, followed by the sales assistant’s glare. He clearly didn’t want to have anything to do with me.

I couldn’t blame him, really. It wasn’t like I’d had any intention of actually buying anything. But the bird was still there. It didn’t actually stoop on me right away, though. It swooped above me so close I felt the beating of its wings as wind, heard a cry that struck to my soul.

No words in that cry. Just an attempt to instill panicking fear. It didn’t want to take me on in a fair fight and I felt heartened by that, even as I wished I had a sword. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really carry one.

What was that old TV show where the characters could hide swords in any outfit? I didn’t have that ability.

So, I ducked into a different store. This one sold customized frozen yoghurt. You took your cup, added scoops of whatever flavors you wanted, your own toppings. I started to put a cup together, all the while thinking what kind of weapon I could use against that thing.

I could tell it’s fear cry hadn’t had the desired effect on me. It hadn’t quite worked. That made me feel a little bit…better about my self. I was strong enough. I was strong enough to beat it.

I just didn’t have any way to do so. I couldn’t grab a flying thing and bring it down by mere strength. Bullets wouldn’t work even if I wouldn’t get arrested for shooting at it. I began to understand Thea’s frustration with what she called “civilization” in a darkly sardonic way, meant as no compliment.

She didn’t like the rule of law…or at least not the rule of law as it was. There was something about her that wasn’t…

…maybe she was an alien. Maybe I was, like Skye in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Alien. Dropped out of the sky with my memory wiped. Except for all the people trying to kill me. And now this bird.

I finished putting together my froyo cone, paid for it by weight, and then sat at one of the two plastic tables inside, looking out the window.

Maybe it would shapeshift into a human and come in here.

The hair on the back of my neck prickled at the thought. I glanced at the door, but the only person coming in was an overweight, middle-aged woman, dragging a couple of squalling brats with her. I wasn’t one to be bothered by small children, but these two were definitely not happy.

Hopefully the froyo would silence them. That was clearly their mother’s plan. But I knew she wasn’t a monster in disguise.
The kids might be monsters, but they weren’t particularly disguised.

This time, I saw it. This time, it was a dark shadow across the sun. It wasn’t as huge as I had first thought.

It was closer to the size of a man than a roc, flying low above the city, and it was as if the bright and lightness was drawn out of the world in its wake.

A kind of fairy, Thea had said. And I knew it wasn’t literally pulling away light. It was pulling away…happiness, maybe? Although it wouldn’t find much of that here, not in this city where people tended to hurry through their lives, grey clad, heads down. I might not remember anywhere else, but I’d talked to people. Seen pictures.

There was not much happiness to be found here. Only insane levels of stress and misery, and in some ways I was insulated from it being poor.

I just had school stress and poor people stress. So, maybe it was feeding off of that, but it wasn’t a good thing. I knew that.

I saw it.

And it saw me. Its head turned as it flew, then it swung through a turn, dipping its left wing to turn towards me, riding the air easily. I used a word that would have got me thrown out of any classroom.

It was coming for me, and nobody else could see it, and I decided the best thing to do was be somewhere else. I ducked into the nearest shop. I was pretty sure I couldn’t shoot it. It wasn’t real enough for that, or it was too real.

Why hadn’t I been able to see it before? I decided I couldn’t afford to care about that. I could see it now and that meant it knew what I was, or who, or whatever was going on with that.

Whatever was going on with that I didn’t like. If I found out who I was, would the world end? Thea thought I couldn’t take it. The cultists thought the world would end.

Otter just liked keeping secrets. I sensed or knew that about him. Breathing hard, I glanced around at the store.

It wasn’t one I had any business being in. Menswear. I took a deep breath. If I stepped outside, would it get me? It wasn’t raining, so I couldn’t use that excuse, but the sales assistant was already glaring at me.

I pretended to be looking at ties. Maybe I could say it was a gift for my dad or an older brother. A man who needed a tie. I couldn’t afford to actually buy one, but I could pretend to look. It gave me enough time to get my presence of mind together. There wasn’t a back door I could exit through.

A fairy was probably smart enough to know I’d have to come out sooner or later. I couldn’t shoot it. I tugged out my cell phone, sent Thea a text. “Bird thing has me cornered.”

Then I went back to looking at ties. I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to overstay my welcome. I could hear huffing noises from the direction of the sales assistant. He probably just saw a grubby girl.

And Thea did not respond.

“You want to help? Thea told me…”

“That I want to recruit you to my agenda. That I am not to be trusted. That’s fine. Most days, I don’t trust me.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “I’m not sure I trust me either. I don’t know me as well as I’d like.”

“And you’re worried you’ll end up like her.”

“Honestly? The idea has its appeal.” I sensed a shadow. The bird was around again, but this time I intentionally chose to ignore it. “She’s strong, tough, a good fighter, but…I don’t want to be exactly like her.”

“Good. She’s also straight-laced and boring.”

“She goes to BDSM clubs!”

“No, she’s being paid as a model. It’s different.”

It was. But she had known her way around Pan’s. Or maybe that was why…maybe it was all part and parcel of the same thing. “I suppose it is.”

“She follows the rules, even when they get in the way.”

“Not all of them. She kills people.” Which was generally against the law. I glanced around before saying it, making sure nobody was close enough to overhear. After, I admit I found my turkey club interesting. He was right about the turkey. It was particularly juicy and delicious. Good bread, too. I definitely needed to remember this place.

“Oh, that’s not the rules she lives by. Killing people is fine, as long as there’s a good reason for it. Did they start the fight?”

I nodded.

“But there are many things she won’t do. You might find that gets in the way. When it does? Come to me.”

I nodded. “So, you’re offering to be…what? Sneaky? You still can’t have the horn.”

“Oh, you will hand it over eventually. But sneaky is what I do. You have to admit…”

I tried to envision Thea being sneaky. I failed utterly. In fact, the image was rather humorous. “She does seem to be rather the walk right in guns blazing type.”

And I felt that I was much the same way. The temptation to take him up on his offer was growing. “She also said you would never intentionally hurt me.”

The sardonic smirk faded. “Intentionally.”

So, that feeling I had might be accurate. That he had somehow hurt me. That he had not meant to. Which meant he cared about me, because those are the very people you unintentionally hurt.

The people you most care about.

I still wanted to go…well. Not home. I didn’t have a home. I’d accepted that a while ago, or thought I had, but being homeless did not mean not having a roof over your head.

It meant not having anywhere to belong. So, in some ways, I had more of a home with Thea than in the group home. She wanted me to belong to her, but it was…she wanted something of me I wasn’t sure I could give. She wanted, maybe, a smaller, younger version of herself.

Mr. Otter? I definitely didn’t think I could give what he wanted of me. To start with, that would mean knowing what it was. And I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know.

Despite that, I took the metro out to Ballston, alone, without any real second thoughts. There was one thing I was sure of. Nobody would attack me while I was with him. I wasn’t sure what he’d do to them. Just this vague sensation that it would be worse than anything Thea did.

She would just kill you. Otter gave the impression that he played with his food. But I believed Thea when she assured me he would never intentionally hurt me.

Unintentionally? That was the feeling in the back of my mind, perhaps the hint of a returning memory. That he had somehow hurt me. That he had not intended to do so. Almost the feeling that he was…not capable of not hurting people.

Despite that, I hopped off the Metro. He’d asked to meet at a deli type place. I didn’t know anything about it, but I did trust him on one thing. He really didn’t strike me as the type of person to go somewhere bad for lunch.

So, I walked through Ballston, following the GPS on my phone. I really didn’t know this part of town. Old Town was easy – almost everything was on King Street. Ballston, unless you were going to the big mall, was a maze.

The man himself was a signpost, though, when I reached the place. He’d already staked out an outdoor table, sitting relaxed by it.

“Order whatever you want. It’s on me,” he offered, rather less smarmy than usual.

I managed a slight smile. “Any…recommendations?”

“Anything with turkey in it.” I took that at hand as I went inside to order. Once I had, he vanished to get his own, not wanting to leave the table unattended. I couldn’t blame him. It was busy. Not insanely so, but busy enough that if we’d both ordered food at once we could well have ended up with nowhere to eat it. The outdoor tables had glass tops and wrought iron stands, wrought iron chairs with cushions. Comfortable enough to eat at, not so comfortable as to encourage loitering.

I made a mental note to try and remember this place if the food was any good. It wasn’t that expensive, either, not by DC standards. I bought a turkey club, trusting his recommendation.

He was right. About the turkey. “So…” And then I cut right to the chase. “What do you want?”

He lifted and spread his hands – slender, almost feminine fingers. “To help.”

“You’ve picked up too many civilized sensibilities,” Thea informed me as we headed back to the safehouse.

“Because I didn’t kill him? He’s misguided, not evil. He doesn’t even hate me. Why kill him?”

“It’s the only way to be sure you’re rid of an enemy.”

I didn’t ask her about the others. I didn’t ask her how many she had killed – knowing it was likely to be more than one, less than all of them. But I didn’t think I could ever become…easy about it the way she was. Or maybe the way I had been before. “I’m not…whoever I was before.”

“Oh, you are. People just change and drift and sometimes drift back. You don’t even have to have memory problems for that.”

I knew she was right. I had changed and would change. “I want to protect people, not hurt them. I want these people to stop going after me and I would rather not have to kill all of them to do it.”

“I’d rather not have to kill all of them, either. But I don’t want you getting hurt.” We’d reached the door. “…because of your sensibilities. Next time, shoot the guy.”

So, that was her concern. “I’m better hand to hand and you know it.”

“At that range?”

She had a point. I let out my breath, which blew hair away from my face, although the wind put it back there a moment later. Irritated, I brushed it away as we went inside.

To discover we had been compromised. There was a note on the table. It was addressed to me. I started to go over.

“Gloves,” Thea cautioned.

“Worried about contact poisons? Maybe a face mask too, just to be safe.” We had those lying about. But there was no white powder in there that might have been anthrax or cocaine.

Just a note, written in an elegant yet masculine hand. “Mr. Otter.”

“Might have known. What does he want?”

“Believe it or not, lunch.” Did I say yes or no? He was probably going to try and convince me to give him the horn again. Or something. “I don’t think he means any harm.”

“I am pretty sure he would never hurt you,” Thea said quietly. “Intentionally, anyway.”

“Maybe he already has.” I wasn’t even sure why I said that.

“Intentionally,” she repeated, heading for the fridge to raid snack food. I stared at the note. He wanted lunch. He named the place – not one I’d been too before, out along the orange line.

I somehow felt it would cause far more trouble to refuse than to accept.

Save the world or destroy it. But right now, I was worried about something far more mundane – my own survival. I was crouched behind a dumpster, both hands on the gun. And a bullet had just whizzed past me.

It was, of course, the cultists again. I suppose I should have been grateful for the respite I’d had from them. Instead, I was pissed. I was trying to sustain the moral high ground and not actually kill any of them.

That was proving to be extremely hard. I knew I’d hit one of them and I wasn’t sure how bad it was.

A second bullet, and I snapped a shot off in return. Thea was circling somewhere to try and get behind them. I was wishing we had certain less legal non-lethals. Tear gas grenades would be completely awesome right now.

I wasn’t sure how to get any of them, though. My breathing slowed a little as the firing stopped. They were probably just reloading, but then one of them jumped onto the dumpster.

I didn’t shoot. At that range I would hit him easily, but that wasn’t my goal. Instead, I reached up and grabbed his legs, unbalancing him so he fell on my side of it, my knee went into his groin.

He oofed and went down. Still no shots from his buddies. Thea had put the fear of the gods (I was sure plural) into them.

“I’m really getting quite tired of you guys. Why don’t you go home and watch the game?”

“It’s not football season.”

That he had the presence of mind to zing me caused both of my eyebrows to elevate a little. He wasn’t bad looking, either.

He was also trying to kill me. As he tried to get up I pushed him back down with my foot. “You’re not going anywhere right now.”

“What are you going to do? Kill me? Call the cops?”

What could we say to the cops? Not much…although the fact that I hadn’t killed him worked in my favor.

“Send you home.” I shifted position, dropping next to him quickly, exchanging a hand for the foot as I relieved him of his gun. And three knives. And a set of handcuffs, of all things. “These for your girlfriend?”

He swore at me.

“You’re here to kill me, why the restraints?”

“Don’t want to kill…anyone else.”

He meant Thea. “That’s a point in your favor. Now, go home.”

I kept the knives. And the handcuffs.

I told Thea about the guy later that night. She only nodded with pursed lips and went back to cleaning her guns.

I figured it was a good opportunity to check mine and make sure it was loaded. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with it. There wasn’t the rightness that flowed through me when I picked up a sword. Guns I had to think about.

I put the thought to one side. “I really wish the one thing I was good at wasn’t hurting people.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.” I turned towards her. “I almost got Barry killed. I might get Kanesha killed. And I seriously considered putting a bullet in that guy today and I’m not sure I’d have regretted it. What am I?”

“The fact that you didn’t says a lot. You’ve got control over yourself and your own tendencies…but you come from…” Her lips quirk. “Aggressive stock.”

I scowled at her. “Whoever my parents were, I don’t have to be like them.”

“Good.” She turned back to her gun.

I was starting to want out in much more serious terms, but I suspected I was going to have to hurt a lot more people before they backed down. And wasn’t that proving them right about me? Wouldn’t they be more likely to think I was the anti-Christ if I was beating them up? I thought working with the guy who was trying to get a leash on them might be more effective.

Which was part of why I hadn’t shot him. That and I really didn’t want to turn into that. I’d fight if I had to. I’d kill if I had to. But I wasn’t going to be a murderer. That firm thought in my mind, I finished cleaning the gun and wandered into the other room, such as it was. I sure as heck couldn’t give this address for school. Dropping out seemed inevitable at this point.

Unless I could find some way to rapidly catch up, but that would be suspicious. Just enough to make people realize I was smart. Or I could get my GED later.

Pheh. Maybe I didn’t need one. If I was supposed to either save the world or destroy it.

The sense of a monstrous presence was abruptly stronger. That thing was searching. It might even be searching for me. And this time it wasn’t sleeping through the night.

This time it was on the wing and on the hunt.

I thought I’d deflected Kanesha. I’d forgotten she could be as tenacious as a pit bull at times, but at that point I thought I’d convinced her to go home, forget it was going on, and worry about her studies. Unlike me, she had a good chance of graduating, although not much of one of going to college. If she’d had rich parents, she could have done it.

Thea and I practiced swordplay, then I told her I was going out for a walk. I couldn’t spend the entire summer indoors, even if it was insanely hot. I simply couldn’t. And she trusted me to look after myself. I now understood that the reason we were living in a hideout was in case anyone followed me home. It was to protect Kanesha and Pauline and the others.

Protect them from my enemies. When footsteps approached behind me I tensed. It didn’t help that I could still feel that avian presence.

“Hello.”

It wasn’t Mr. Otter, who I had been half expecting. It was a suave man with an English accent and a cane. “Go away.”

“Not just yet. I came to apologize.”

“For?”

“For a small part I played in…setting off the people who want you dead.”

I scowled. “Can you convince them I’m not what they think?”

“I’m trying, but I can’t promise.” He tapped his cane on the ground. “They genuinely think you’re going to do something to trigger the end of the world.”

“And you know better?”

“I don’t know.” He turned to face me. “I’ve studied the situation and I don’t know whether you’re going to destroy the world, save it, or neither. To me, that’s not enough to warrant going after a kid.”

I scowled even more, but he had a point. “Well, can you try and get a leash on your people.”

“I told you. I’m trying. They’re not my people, though. They’re going off of my work…but I don’t own them, employ them, or particularly know them as people.”

In, out. Part of me wanted to plug him, but if he was telling the truth he was trying to help. If he wasn’t, then I’d never get information out of him if he was dead.

That scared me, too. Why was I even considering it as a tactical option? I knew the answer. Because I was pissed.

Meeting with Kanesha was risky. I mitigated it by hauling her far from our usual haunts and to a Mexican place way out in the burbs. On Thea’s money. She seemed to have a solid supply of it, at least. I didn’t get the impression she was rich, but I did get the impression she was comfortable.

I didn’t ask where it came from. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she wasn’t involved in some variant on the oldest profession, about which I completely did not want to know. Fetish modeling, maybe.

So, I didn’t ask. “So…what’s really going on?” Kanesha asked, finally.

“I can’t tell you. As in, I really can’t. It’s not that I don’t trust you…but I thought we were going to talk about your problems.”

She let out a breath. “No. I wanted to talk to you about yours.” Her lips quirked. “I lied, and I’m sorry, but this sudden disappearance, this weird woman you’re hanging out with and there’s now been two sets of people asking after you. The smarmy guy and…” A pause. “One of them had a gun.”

“That’s why you need to go home now. You never saw me.” I knew I couldn’t go back, but I also…no, what was the point in going back to school? I was never going to graduate, never going to be ordinary. “Look. It’s something to do with my real parents. They think they can get information out of me that I can’t remember – it’s a mess.”

The lie came easier than I liked.

“And your cousin?”

“She’s a friend. But I still don’t know anything.” It was true on that front. I was pretty sure she was a family friend. Or a distant cousin. And I still didn’t know anything.

“I think that smarmy guy is related, too. No offense.”

I laughed. “I’ve wondered the same thing.”

“He was trying his best not to look at my breasts. I think he only cared because he didn’t want to get into trouble.”

Reaching for a bite of taco, I eyed her. “You’re probably right.” And he hadn’t looked at mine which, likely, proved that we were related. What other reason would there be? I knew the pattern Kanesha talked about. Guys who thought we were attractive but couldn’t admit it and would try to fight what was natural male behavior.

I’d even once seen it from a woman. But that wasn’t that surprising, I supposed. Thea hadn’t looked at me like that.

Thea was straight. Obviously. “Just don’t trust him. You’re right about him being smarmy.”

“He has one heck of a voice, though.”

“He has. Kanesha…this isn’t about you. I need to know you aren’t going to be involved. I have to deal with this…and Thea’s a pro.”

She shuddered. “I don’t like that idea.”

Thinking about it, neither did I.