The next day I got home from work to an argument. My shift had ended slightly early, and I was glad when I approached the house and could hear raised voices from easily half a block away.

One of them was Kanesha’s. I quickened my pace. The other voice was a male voice, one I wasn’t familiar with.

I didn’t bother to disguise my approach, but I made note of the car that was parked outside. It was unfamiliar, but I stopped to write down the number before hurrying inside.

“No. You are coming with me.”

“Who says?” I called up the stairs. The man turned. He was dark, older, and…

…I could see it immediately. He was Kanesha’s father, whom I’d thought was gone from her life. Actually, I thought he was in jail.
“She’s my girl. She’s coming back with me, and no white chick is going to have anything to say about it.”

“You aren’t even supposed to be here.”

“I got out, didn’t I?”

He didn’t seem, to me, to be all that threatening. I couldn’t remember what he was in prison for.

“You may be out, but you don’t have custody.” Her voice was softer now. “Please. Leave. I will call the police.”

“The day a girl calls the police on her own father…” He tailed off, then glared at me. “You. Get out of my sight.”

I hit 911 on the phone in my pocket, left the line open. “This is my home and her home. You’re trespassing, sir. We aren’t supposed to even have men in here.”

“She’s coming with me. Get out of my way.” At that point, he grabbed Kanesha.

A moment later, he was flat on the ground. “You might have warned him first.”

She grinned. “I did.”

“I have a line open to 911.” I was going to be a frequent flyer again.

“Good. Maybe they can come collect the trash.” She smiled. “He was told he was never getting custody back, even if he did get out before I was eighteen.”

“What did he do, anyway?” I tugged out the phone. “Sorry. We have somebody here who shouldn’t be here. Trespassing. Assault.” I rattled off the address. Maybe he’d run before they got here, although he would find that hard right now.

Kanesha had one high heel on him in the classic wrestling defeat pose.

Lue was gone. I would never see her again. Kanesha thought I was crazy, but at least she thought I was a good kind of crazy. We sat on a bench by the reflecting pool, a week before Halloween. It was getting cool out, by DC standards. I thought it was quite pleasant, personally. A bit of a breeze was kicking up.

“I still…”

“I know. I’m nuts. It worked, but it could have got me killed. And then Thea would be mad.” My lips quirked.

“Just…you know. Don’t get cocky. You’re the good kind of crazy, but I don’t want to bury you.”

I looked out at the pool. “I’ll try and stay the good kind. It’s…well…not always that easy.”

“No, it isn’t. How tempted were you to kill them?”

“I was thinking gelding, actually.” I felt my lips quirk again. “Very tempted. I might have if I had thought I could get away with it.”

Knowing I couldn’t…

I continued, watching the clouds float through the water. “The cops want to recruit me now. I guess they figure anyone who’s as much of a trouble magnet as I am…”

“You could do worse.”

“Can’t afford college and without college I don’t think they’ll take me.”

“Actually, they will. Especially if you do the internship. But I think…you’d be a target in too many ways. I’d stick to modeling.”

I grinned at her. “Like that doesn’t make me conspicuous.”

“Yes, but in a way that will make most people assume that you’re weak, stupid and excessively feminine. On the other hand, the cops have, you know, perks.”

“Cops can get away with stuff. Especially in PG County.”

She laughed. “I can’t believe you made a PG County joke. Haven’t they behaved lately? I mean, since they shot the mayor’s dogs, I haven’t heard much.”

“They painted an ambulance pink,” I noted. “Admittedly that’s not quite on par with shooting the mayor’s dogs, but…”

“Still. They’ve been quiet lately. I don’t know that I’d want to live there, but…” Kanesha tailed off.

“What are you going to do after college, anyway?” I’d never asked her.

“Teach. Help other kids get out of the bad situations.”

I hesitated, then reached out and hugged her. “You’ll be fantastic.”

I can’t say I didn’t think about it, because I did. When I did, though, this time it was Loki’s disapproving face I saw.

He wouldn’t want me to be a cop. But I couldn’t keep getting into trouble like this. I resolved to try and avoid it until Christmas. At least Christmas. Hopefully my friends would too, because I knew how I was going to end up in trouble.

Because they were. But I decided to focus on something else. I managed to find Peter Bronson, who ran the gay-straight alliance, at lunch time the next day. Sat at the table next to him. “Uh…”

“If the question is can you talk, sure.” He was a slender boy of mixed race, with just a hint of the effeminate about him. I wouldn’t have called him girly or sissy, though.

“Yeah. I kinda need to talk. I’ve got a massive crush on another woman.”

“Which doesn’t always mean anything.”

I liked guys. Although Peter didn’t seem attractive at all. Maybe my subconscious knew he’d be more likely to go for Barry Clark. “Do people sometimes, uh, like both guys and girls?”

“People sometimes get confused,” he said, quietly. “As to what they like. Especially at our age. Not me. I knew I was gay when I was eight.”

I tried to imagine that level of surety about it. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to work things out, then.”

I’d wanted help, but he was just supporting my feelings and my confusion. Not in the good way.

“Whichever way you go, it’s fine. Just remember that. Don’t let society pressure you into pretending to be straight if you aren’t.”

My lips twitched. “I don’t let society pressure me.”

Or did I? I was doing a very feminine thing…but not entirely. There had been quite a few boys at the shoot too. Fashion needed boys and men almost as much as girls and women. But the emphasis on female clothing was definitely there.

“Good girl.”

I turned back to my lunch. I got the feeling he was hoping I’d turn out to be a lesbian, but that didn’t feel honest. I watched some of the other kids wander past, looking at both boys and girls.

Whichever way you go? I was supposed to make a choice, maybe, except that I’d seen Peter whup on somebody…literally…for saying it was a choice.

Except he seemed…oh, this was ridiculous. I wolfed down the rest of my food and fled the canteen faster than I probably should have right after eating.

It was all completely ridiculous. And I refused to make a choice.

The cops had a few questions for me. I handed the gun in – I had another, after all. It took some fast talking, though.

“Martial arts” wasn’t an explanation they wanted to hear, but they did at least believe me when I said he’d attacked me and gave a description. I wasn’t worried about him hurting the cops per se. Well, a little, but he wasn’t really competent enough to be a real danger to them.

No wonder Thea found him unattractive. Once I escaped, I headed right home and locked myself in my room for a while. I needed it, and one of the last of the cayenne brownies. They’d vanished remarkably quickly, and I was pretty sure people had been raiding. I didn’t mind so much, not the way I had when I didn’t have money to buy more mix.

I thought of attempting them from scratch, but I did enough food preparation as it was, for myself and other people. Gods did I want to quit that job.

And get out of high school. And…well, I wasn’t sure, then. How could I really make plans when I kept being pulled into fights, in this case other people’s fights?

I wanted to disappear, in that moment. I wanted the normal life I felt had been taken away from me. No. I reminded myself, firmly, that I had never had one, that I was not normal and never could be normal. That I was something else.

But I still wanted that normal life, I wanted what I saw other people around me having. Prue. Barry Clark. They would grow up, get married, have children…and I would, what?

Fight to save the world or to destroy it. I wasn’t even sure which. But I reminded myself that if I wanted anyone to have a normal life…and did I?

Yes. I was jealous, but that didn’t mean I wanted to burn the world. I knew where the thought of burning and fire came from.

Surtur and fire giants. He wanted to burn the world and Loki was tempted. Well, I had a thought on the latter. He liked me, maybe…

I was out the door before I finished the thought. Locking myself in my room might feel good for a while, but it was heading for boredom territory very quickly and I would not wallow.

No normal life, but I thought of Thea, and figured maybe I could try for a fun one.

“You okay, Jane?”

I turned towards Kanesha. “I had to beat up Thea’s wannabe ex again, that’s all. And the cops got involved.”

“Ugh. Well, they didn’t arrest you.”

“I’m more worried about them getting beaten up by him. But no, they believed me. I only roughed him up a little and took his gun.”

“Good work.”

“I had to turn it in, though. Probably for the best.” I flickered a grin at her.

Yeah, it probably was.

Our council of war was held at a picnic table in a park in the Maryland suburbs. Thea’s idea.

Around the table – myself, Thea, Kanesha, and Lugenia.

“Femme force,” Kanesha quipped.

“Yes. I’ve noticed how everyone remotely useful is female too,” I said, punching her arm.

“We need some guys around here.” Lugenia’s voice was really quiet.

“Why?” Thea asked, laughing. “Okay. So, Lugenia’s ex is causing trouble.”
“And what about your wannabe?”

“Him too, but I can deal with him. He’s just a loser. He doesn’t have friends with guns.”

She had a point. Odd how the mortal was more dangerous than the supernatural. Or maybe it happened that way. None of which I could voice.

“So, how do we get rid of the friends with guns? The cops aren’t much more than useless.” I glanced at Kanesha, who was often good for ideas on these things.

Kanesha hrmed. “The cops aren’t much more than useless, but it still might be worth getting them involved. At the very least they’ll get in the way and more in their way than ours.”

She had a point. I glanced at Thea, who nodded.

“Okay, Lugenia. You file a complaint. I’ll back you up on the smashed window. That’s not going to please certain people anyway.” Namely social services. Of course, it was insured.

“They might move me.”

“That might not be a bad thing.” Thea leaned on the table. “Look, this guy is serious. He might kill you. And if you defend yourself, you might end up in jail. Happens all the time. We need to put so much of a scare into him that he moves on.”

Or, I knew, Thea would take him out and make it look like an accident. Or I would. Shouldn’t be that hard. I couldn’t believe I was contemplating murder, but if the guy deserved it?

More like we couldn’t do this the right way, which would be to call him out and then kick his butt clear to Hel’s Realm. Which I meant quite literally. As duels were frowned upon, we’d have to be more subtle.

“I’ll defend myself. Better jail than dead,” Lugenia said, quietly. “And I know about jail. It scares me, but I still don’t want to die.”

I forced my dark thoughts out of the way. No. I wasn’t going to kill this guy in cold blood, no matter how much I wanted to. “Do you know how to use a gun?” I asked her.

“That would land me in jail for sure.”

“I meant his gun.” I smiled a little. If you had a gun it could always be taken away and used against you. If we did this right…

First step, quiz the rest of my housemates. I started with Lugenia, who I knew had been dating a Columbian boy until very recently. She seemed the most obvious candidate for having Hispanic gangsters blow out the kitchen window.

Finding her was the challenge. Kanesha headed to check the community center. I went out into Northwest after calling her phone.

Voice mail, and she’d never even updated the message from the default, which made it very likely she wasn’t even bothering to check it and never had. I was amazed it wasn’t full.

But I had some thoughts as to where to look. Loki, of course, had vanished. Taking with him more of the cayenne brownies than I had planned. So, I headed through northwest, looking at hairdressers.

Lugenia was very proud of her hair and I’d noticed her roots going through. She was going to have to get it relaxed again soon and that might be where she was. Kanesha thought she was silly spending all of her money on that.

I was kind of on Kanesha’s side. I wouldn’t spend that much on my hair. But…

…and I found her. She was sitting in the waiting area of one of the salons. I got stared at when I stepped inside – the salon specialized in the needs of black girls and I was pretty close to as white as you can get. “Lugenia.”

“What…what are you doing here?” The emphasis on the you was clear and understandable.

“We need to talk.” I dropped into the seat next to her. “About your ex.”

“What about him?”

“Bunch of guys threw a rock through the kitchen window and tried to shoot a friend of mine. I think they might have been friends of his.”

“Oh, hell. I didn’t take him seriously. Maybe I should call the cops.”

“Meaning he threatened something like this.”

“He threatened the usual if I can’t have you nobody can crap. That’s why we split. He was an asshole.”

Abusive, then. “The cops would give you a restraining order. He’d ignore it. I know somebody who can help with this.”

It made me a vigilante, but I didn’t care.

“Help how?”

“Scare him so much he won’t stop running until he hits the Beltway, if then.”

From the look on Lugenia’s face, the possibility definitely appealed to her.

And then the back kitchen window blew in. I grabbed Kanesha and pushed her under the table, trusting Laura to look after herself. Or at least to be able to take being hit by a few bits of glass.

The word I used wasn’t repeatable. “Tell me these are your enemies.”

Laura brushed glass dust out of her hair. “I…”

“So, they are yours.”

When I picked myself up, she was Loki again, and he had moved to one side of the window, peering out. “Not sure. Maybe they’re Kanesha’s.”

Kanesha, emerging from under the table, squeaked a bit.

“Or maybe they aren’t any of ours.” I made it to the other side of the window, and outside were a group of Latino gangsters. A large rock lay next to the table, no doubt the missile that had shattered the glass. “Unless somebody’s setting kids on you now.”

One of them finally moved, up to the window. He drew a gun.

“Oh, come on,” Loki said. “Guns. So trite.”

“This isn’t a laughing matter,” I said as the bullet flew into the room, narrowly missing Kanesha and burying itself in the fridge. Which started to leak coolant. Great.

“Sure it is.” And he tossed a knife which hit the kid in the hand. He dropped the gun.

I felt distinctly unprepared, but was ready to move. The kid backed off.

“Why did you come here?”

No answer. In lieu of one, a second kid tossed a knife at Loki. It grazed him in the arm, but he didn’t seem bothered. Kanesha was diving for the kitchen cabinet, a good source of weapons. I did note they must have climbed the fence to get into the yard.

I took the opportunity of the two front guys being momentarily without weapons to launch myself into the middle of them, throwing blows with hands and feet. The rest backed away.

“Whoever sent you to bug us, they aren’t paying you enough for this, right?”

Still no answer, although there was a string of rapid-fire Spanish. I caught the occasional word of it, and it implied we weren’t the droids they were looking for.

In fact, they turned and ran.

“Well, that was interesting.”

“They didn’t seem to be even looking for us.” Great. Now I’d have to find out what was going on with that. And I’d rather hunt monsters than men.

He didn’t mess with me on the way home anyway. And when I got home there was a note for me on the table. I wasn’t sure who put it there.

I tore it open. It was from Thea. So, she was back in town, and I’d just missed her. Now I had to warn her about her ‘friend.’ If he hadn’t attacked me, I’d have assumed he was an actual friend.

Idiot, I thought. The note just said that she was back and suggested meeting at a certain all age club. I didn’t respond, just checked the date on it. Tomorrow, when I didn’t have to work. She’d either remembered my schedule or called and checked.

Assuming it was actually Thea, but I put that paranoid thought out of my head. The meeting place she’d suggested was too public for somebody who just wanted to get to me to pick.

So, the next evening I put on more suitable clothes, such as I had, and headed for the club. I’d been there before. It wasn’t a bad place, although it always had that vague second class feeling to it. The feeling that everyone there was just killing time until they could go to the real clubs.

Which would be forever, I thought, wryly. More time than I remembered, a lifetime. And I probably wouldn’t still be here. One way or another.

She was leaning against the bar, sipping a Shirley Temple, as I approached. “Hey. No alcohol?”

“I always feel bad drinking around so many people who can’t.”

I laughed a bit. “That just makes you a decent person.” I glanced at the barkeep. “Get me a Shirley.”

They did sell alcohol if you had a card, but I also knew the barkeep here had some amazing virgin versions of, well, just about anything. Then I turned back to Thea. “Do you know a skinny guy, dark hair, blue eyes? Apparently you have a history.”

“Oh gods. Him.”

“I’ve been telling people he’s your annoying ex.”

“He’s…” Thea let out a breath. “He fancies himself as my annoying ex. Ex would mean there was ever a current. He’s way beneath me in just about every way.”

“Beneath you?” I flickered a grin. “You mean you only date guys who can kick your butt?”

“I only date guys who can keep up. He can’t.”

“He tried to snatch me to get you to talk to him. I roughed him up a bit.” Which probably made Thea’s point for her, but…well.

“I’ll deal with him.”

I kept my eyes open for the guy – and warned Kanesha – all week. I even saw him hanging around, but he didn’t come close to me again. Probably hoping that if he watched me for long enough, Thea would show up.

For all I knew he was a disgruntled ex. Thea didn’t strike me as the celibate type, despite the fact that some of the legends insisted that valkyries were virgins. But other stories contradicted that.

I was going to assume that everything was vague and not quite right until proven otherwise. That was the way to keep my sanity.

On Wednesday, he swung by the sub store while I was working. I was looking forward to, finally, the possibility of ditching that job. “Have you seen her?”

“Like I said. You made sure I won’t tell you. Either order a sub or get out.”

He ordered a sub and sat down in a corner, watching me with smoldering eyes. “Who’s that?” my coworker, Ben, asked.

“Friend’s disgruntled ex who thinks I’m going to tell him where she is.” The suspicion made a good cover story, accurate or otherwise.

“Ugh. Let me know if you want me to walk you home. He looks like the type of idiot to do something stupid.”

“I took up martial arts,” I told him with a smile. “But I’ll think about it.” I didn’t want to involve Ben, but his presence would probably dull this guy’s ardor.

Under the cover of cleaning the toaster oven, I watched him, and tried to focus on my other senses. As unreliable as they were, they might be able to tell me something about this guy.

I was right. He wasn’t human. Or not entirely, anyway. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t a disgruntled ex. Or an idiot. I’d already got the impression that supernaturals, even deities, could be just as stupid sometimes as the rest of us. I sure as heck could be, whatever I was.

He eventually got up and left and I relaxed a bit. “Hopefully he won’t wait for me outside.”

“So, what did happen to his ex anyway?”
“She skipped town. Possibly to get away from him, although she did say she’d be back.” She just hadn’t been clear as to when, and I wasn’t sure that when was going to amount to any time soon.

I was missing her a lot more than I thought I would, and if I had to beat up her enemies as well…

“Eh. He doesn’t seem quite skip town worthy.”

“He is,” I said. “Don’t mess with him, okay?”
“And you should?”

I grinned. “Martial arts, remember.”