#drowningisinevitable

Sam considered sending the GUY WHO DOES THINGS another message, but he didn’t want to sound overbearing. His usual guy, who also does what he hoped were the very same things, a childhood friend and a hunter, was currently busy elsewhere. Probably screaming at his students again. Because of this, Sam had no choice but to look up the strange folks in his late father’s phonebook, which he knew did things for the bastard. Bad things. Good things. Things that everyone else should never know. This thing, the reason why he had to take the chance, was definitely not for public consumption. 

“She was privately consumed,” Sam grimaced, disgusted at the remains that he had uncovered in a secluded area near the beach. Judging from her top, which had the words NEW YORK UNIVERSITY in giant letters across it, she was not from around here. “Most of her anyway.” Half of the body was gone, ripped off from the bottom half while the rest of it seemed to suggest she was trying to drag herself away from the water. That, to Sam, seemed like the Universe telling him to call someone who knew better. Not the cops or animal control, at least not yet, but someone whose name was kept secret by his dad even in his own private list.

Sam looked at his phone again, reviewed his sent message just to see if he had missed any important information to lure the GUY WHO DOES THINGS to his scene of the most gruesome crime, but scowled when he realized he hadn’t. The Tourism Board Member had sent him the address and what seemed to be Jack Jackson’s password: Will Pay 4 Help. “If this guy doesn’t show up in the next thirty minutes, I’m burying you,” he whispered to the corpse. “You can blame him, ma’am. I’m just a random guy. I wouldn’t know how to go about investigating your fantastic remains. Just fantastic… I should be meeting beautiful girls in bikinis by now.”

The phone hadn’t been messaged in months. Mina didn’t know why she kept it, why she charged it. She’d gone over to her house while Bex was at class, planning on packing some things away before they started moving in. But instead she found her dad’s mobile, messages blinking as she picked it up. There was a message from a strange number asking for assistance with something. Urgently. She stuffed the device in her pocket and paced for a bit, thinking. 

Mina wasn’t good at the kind of assistance most people required of her father. The hunting kind of assistance. He’d mentioned to her, when he was first moving her in, that eventually he’d join her in White Crest. He had a few contacts in town, people who needed the work that weren’t a part of the life. She just hadn’t expected them to still be trying to get in touch with him almost a year and a half after he stopped answering his phone. Sighing, she checked the address and decided that she’d go and tell whoever Jack Jackson was that she was, in fact, not her father, and she could, in fact, not help him. Nor did she really have any desire to, not really. The people that contacted her dad, Mina was beginning to figure out, didn’t want to help anyone but themselves, and that made her feel something sinking and cold in her stomach.

Driving over to the scene, Mina got out of her car slowly and began walking to where she noticed a figure crouched over… something. “Ah, hey, hi. Listen, I think– Is this Jack Jackson? I think you tried to contact by dad, but he’s– Bloody hell that’s a fucking dead body.” To which Mina promptly turned around and placed her hands on her knees. It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen dead bodies before; on the contrary, she’d seen more than most people would in their lives before she was a teenager. But usually she was prepared for it. Mina wasn’t prepared for that.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Sam tried to hide the entire corpse with his own body, mostly the length of his arms, but failed because a human body is generally thicker than both his arms combined. “This is an active crime scene, ma’am,” he lied, which was what he was very good at. Not that he lies needlessly. Or on whims. No, he actually needs to lie to most people to protect them from themselves, their own curiosities and terrible judgments. When he finally laid eyes on the intruder, however, Sam could do nothing else but just stare at her for a good minute or two. “Are you single?”

“I mean, uhh, are you alone?” Sam started looking behind her, trying to see if there was someone else with her. It was already weird enough when a guy who has been crouching next to a dead body tries to keep you away from said body, already weird without that the shooing part, but Sam couldn’t have realized that it would be much worse when that same guy asks about your relationship status. That was probably why he’s been single for a really long while. That and his job always comes first, which was why he immediately transitioned from being a creep to a creepier creep. 

“No boyfriend around?” Sam didn’t even realize he had already put his hands on her shoulders, towering over her like a sketchy bad guy while also sounding like one. “Wait, how did you know that name? I mean, if you’re from town, of course you’d know that bastard’s name, but why did you say it?”

“So someone sent a message to a citizen about an active crime scene?” Mina asked almost immediately before she narrowed her eyes. She didn’t even notice him staring as she leaned around him to look at the body. It was only most of a body, really, the bottom half of it gone, ripped apart. Her mind was already going through the list of things that it might be, but, really, the options were pretty limitless. 

“I’m alone,” Mina said absentmindedly, as she continued to look the body over. She was immediately pulled back into her body, into paying attention as hands went to her shoulders and she immediately grabbed his hands and twisted, removing them from her and holding them tight enough that she could break bones if he made one wrong move. “No boyfriend, but I have a girlfriend, not that it should matter at all.” She clearly didn’t need a boyfriend to protect herself. Mina’s eyes scanned around the alley as if preparing for someone else to jump out at her. She wondered if she should run.

When she was certain there was no one else around, Mina looked at the man with narrowed eyes. “My father’s mobile was messaged multiple times to meet at this location. Something urgent. I merely came to respond and inform the sender that he’s no longer available to handle… whatever this is.”

In retrospect, maybe it was a bad idea for Sam to have put his hands on a young woman. Or a woman of any age. Or a person of any gender. Or a creature of any species. But was he going to say that out loud? Publicly admit to it? Apologize for his lack of decorum and respect for personal space? Hell no. Sam had the pride of a king, an emperor, a maharaja. He was a government official, mostly, after all. There was no way in hell he would ever lower himself to— “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow! Wait, wait, wait,” he pleaded like a little kid brought down to one knee by someone with more power and control in this situation. Everything just got out of hand. “Your dad owned that number?”

Dark brown eyes, somewhat apologetic and confused, fell on the face of the attractive young woman. Sam didn’t even hear that she was in a relationship. Or maybe he chose to ignore it. Either way, he was most focused on her in this present time, as if the past and the future would hold no bearing on their fates. It took him a while to realize how pathetic he must have been to her, easily taken down like that, but then he realized that there must have been a reason why her father was on his father’s contact list. Another hunter? Maybe it runs in the family. It sure seemed like it. “He was on my father’s secret phonebook thing. Jack Jackson. Does that ring any bells?”

“Jeez, you’re strong,” he grimaced in pain, though focusing on how impressive she was made it all worth it for Sam. “What is that? Yoga? How much do you lift? I can easily push 600 to 700 pounds on a prime workout day in a session.” He lied. Obviously. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Sam was not. Will never be.

“That is what I said, isn’t it?” Mina asked, her words short and clipped with her frustration. But she tried not to let that get the better of her, instead clenching her teeth before she let him go. Whoever this guy was, he most likely wasn’t a hunter; if he was, he was an incredibly whiny one. She stepped away, pinching her nose. “I don’t think the name Jack Jackson rings a bell, no, but there were a couple of contacts that I know my dad had here in town.” After they’d gotten of the plane and driven into town, her dad had mentioned that he’d inform her about his contacts when he moved back, but she was supposed to be forging her own path, and he had business to attend to elsewhere. 

“I’m not that strong, I simply know the proper ways to twist your arm to where you can’t use it,” Mina said matter-of-factly. She looked around the scene before her eyes went back to him, her eyebrow raised. “You’re lying.” Then she went back to what was in front of her, bending down to inspect what was left of the young woman. She felt a pang of sorrow. This girl had been someone’s family, and now she was gone, ripped apart. Mina tried to figure out what could have done something like this, but the options were limitless. “Were there any witnesses to this attack?” she asked. “Any idea what the cause was?”

“So where’s your dad? Out of town?” If anyone knew how to stop being an annoying prick, that wouldn’t be Sam. With a grimace, he worked out the kinks in his arm as soon as the very attractive young woman let it go, as if he was throwing something invisible to his side, twisting and rotating his shoulders as much as he could without hurting himself, all in all a random assortment of half-remembered arm exercises he once read online and never actually got to turning into a habit. “I’m Sam, by the way. Sam Jackson, of the White Crest Tourism Board.”

“Uh-huh,” he raised an eyebrow, watching her as she did her own survey of their immediate surroundings using only those gorgeous little eyes of hers. Dreamy little… Wait, she’s already with someone. Damn it, Sam. That’s just fucked up. Sam tried his best to shake all that love at first sight vibes off, chasing them away from his head, when she accused him outright of something so terrible, so horrible, he had to let out a loud gasp. “Lying? How dare you?!” His town was exaggerated, complete with terrible acting. “Well, I never… Literally. I’ve never been accused of lying.” That was a lie, a very obvious one at that.

“Honestly,” he began, unironically, as they began to focus on the mysterious remains before them. Or was that ironically? Sam wouldn’t be able to tell either. “I don’t know. Came across this body not too long ago. Haven’t heard from my contact in law enforcement about anything of the sort being reported, so if there was, they haven’t gone to the cops yet. Or with animal control. You’re not a cop, are you?” Too young to be a cop, he thought to himself incorrectly. And too prett— Goddamn it, Sam! She’s not single! He feigned a cough and continued. “Well, judging from the fact that half of the body’s gone, ripped off from the bottom half while the rest of her seemed to have tried to drag herself away from the water and failed… I think it could be…an alligator.”

“He’s dead. Has been for over a year,” Mina said, and it didn’t sting as much as it used to, though her voice was dulled around the edges. She wasn’t even paying attention to the man anymore, though she managed to introduce herself. “I’m Wilhelmina Fitzroy.” She paused, considering. “Just Mina is fine.” She raised an eyebrow at his tone. Mina was a terrible liar by nature, by being what she was, but this guy was bad at it in spite of being given the ability to do so just fine. “Okay,” she said, her tone clearly disbelieving. 

“It should likely be reported as an animal attack.” That was the common excuse, right? Mina felt a little sick, and she had to remember to distance herself from this, but it was hard. This could have been someone she knew. It could have been someone that she cared about. “No, I’m not a cop. I tutor people in mathematics,” she said. She looked up at him, an eyebrow raised. “An alligator wouldn’t survive the cold here, even if temperatures have been rather temperate. You might want to think of something else. Why are you involved in this? Why were you looking for my dad?”

“Huh,” Sam absent-mindedly, like always, opened his mouth again, his hands finding their way to his hips after displacing the sides of his hoodie from his black undershirt. “I guess he’s got that in common with my old man, though yours was probably a better dad if you came all the way to do just that.” If there was one thing that was at least consistent with the mundane, it was the fact that he would never miss an opportunity to shit on his deadbeat dad. “Wilhelmina… Yeah, Mina might be easier on the tongue.” Like you’re easier on the eyes, he thought to himself, grinning from ear to ear, before another part of him slapped the previous part on its nonexistent head. Jesus fucking Christ, Sam. She’s already with someone. 

“Yeah, likely,” Sam muttered again and folded his hands. “A math tutor who knows a lot about alligators? Sounds exactly like someone my dad would go to for help on these things—things that can’t be and shouldn’t be explained.” He extended a hand for her to shake, a wide but smarmy grin on his face. “Let’s just say, like my dad, unfortunately, I need help from someone more capable, and the hunter I usually go to for help isn’t around these days, so tag, you’re it.” On paper, it all sounded like a pretty cool prospect. In execution, however, Sam wasn’t that great when it came to selling people his side outside of his own field. This was way out of his field. “The White Crest Tourism Board will, of course, shoulder any expenses for this delicate investigation. That is, if it is an investigation. What do you say?”

Mina felt uncomfortable at Sam’s words. She knew what most people in her life thought about her dad, about the kind of person that he was. She wanted to believe he could have been better. She wanted to. But sometimes… it was harder than she wanted, when she thought about the way it was raised, how “tough love” didn’t really quite cover it. She’d been raised to hate herself. She still hadn’t really rectified that. “He was… I only really came to tell you that the person you were trying to reach can’t help you.” She sighed. But she was going to, wasn’t she? “The decreased syllables are helpful to some people.” They’d been helpful to her when she was little. Nothing taught a child to read like having a name that seemed to include most of the alphabet.

“I don’t know much about alligators at all, and neither did my dad. He also wasn’t a math tutor. I’m probably the first in the family.” Though, Mina knew nothing about her family. She didn’t know her father’s side, didn’t know the people that had made him into the hunter that he was, and she didn’t know her mum’s side, either. Not except for Teagan, and Teagan wasn’t a maths person. “I was raised as a hunter,” she said, looking at him. “I haven’t agreed to help with this. If someone else were to stumble across us right now, in daylight, you'd incriminate not only yourself but now another person, me.” She looked at the body. Straightforward and direct, Mina didn’t have time to tiptoe around any sort of secrecy laws. “What do you think did this, really? Is this something that’s happened before? Is this something that you think will happen again?”

But if they worked on this together and combined her cool hunter training with his random bullshit words, chances are they could solve this mystery in a day or two. The faster they, rather Sam could figure out if there was something else in the water, something dangerous, something like that swarm of jellyfish from Hanging Rock and the pretty attractive woman that almost murdered him where he stood. He probably deserved that, though. 

“Nah, I usually just show someone my ID and they’d run off,” Sam patted himself down, trying to find that ID but to no avail. Then he remembered he left it in his car. Fuck. “You could just knock them out, too. I’ve seen you guys do it. Well, one of you. One time, this random kid saw something he shouldn’t have seen, so our…consultant tried to kick him unconscious,” he paused only to take a quick breath. “But I was like, nah, dude, don’t worry about it. He’s just a kid. Who’d believe a snot-faced little turd? So I just bribed him with ice cream and some money. Kid never snitched on us.” Also never saw that kid again, though… He narrowed his eyes at a creeping thought but shrugged it off. Not his problem.

Speaking of things that could be his problem… “Could be something in the water? OF the water? Not sure if you hunters have a directory of spooky water monsters,” Sam feigned a cough, looking around them to make sure no one was snooping. Fortunately for them, mostly for him, the beach was on their side. “But whatever this is, it doesn’t look natural, if you catch my drift.” He had no drift. “What do you think we should do? Could call the M.E. or animal control, but I just wanted to make sure this wasn’t something that could jeopardize the beach thing, you know? And hurt people. Yeah, hurting people’s the number one danger here, also my priority as a Tourism Board Member.” It was not.

“Is there something special about an ID for the White Crest Tourism Board,” Mina murmured, searching around the scene for potential clues. She looked up, frowning. “I’m not just going to knock out an innocent, defenseless person without proper cause. Do you know what kinds of damage head injuries can do?” That would be foolish. “You… bribed a child with ice cream and money? What happened after? What did the child even see?” 

She listened carefully to Sam as he spoke, trying to figure out what she was dealing with. He said words like ‘spooky’ and seemed unsure of almost everything, and he tried to be discreet without actually being discreet. Mina sighed. “There’s an abundant list of water dwelling creatures that could have caused something like this, if that’s the route you would like to take.” Herself included, if she was cruel, bad, a monster. Mina tried so hard not to be a monster. She raised an eyebrow. “As it is, this looks like it could have been done by an animal. The lines are jagged enough, and whatever did this wasn’t man made. If it gets out, it’s going to become news, but unlikely for long. Murders never stay news around here.” 

Mina stood, wiping her hands on her jeans. She had no idea, really, what this man would do, but it wasn’t really her job to worry about that. Still. “You should do what’s right and inform the proper authorities to try and identify this person. Give the family peace. Give whoever is looking for them peace.” She swallowed tightly. This was and this wasn’t her life. She stood on a precipice, and she still didn’t know which way to fall. “It might be good to worry less about an event and worry more about the fact that this could occur to more people if something isn’t done. I would inform animal control. Or… any other hunters that you know, really.”

“Well, I mean, it’s a pretty nice ID,” Sam shrugged, not entirely sure what to say to impress the hunter. It was a stable job. It also had decent authority when it came to stuff, at least enough to shoo normal people away when he needed to. But hunters weren’t normal people. They probably didn’t even care about stability and authority. He imagined it would be hard to, considering their world operated outside of the norm, of the shit everyone else’s used to, known all their lives. “That’s fair. I mean, I’m not a doctor, but I do have an idea. Just thought that was an everyday option for you guys.”

“It was one of those unfortunate joggers who accidentally touched the roots of that giant tree. You know about that, right? Helped get rid of it myself.” He beamed with pride. Fact of the matter was, the kid reminded Sam of himself back then. Curious little snot-faced weirdo, more concerned with possibilities than reality itself. Might be because his own was very disappointing, not to mention painful, so the supernatural, the fantastical, was his escape. Both the ice cream and the money, what he called bribes, were actually just his way to ease the kid’s life and apologize for the disgusting mess he had to see. Sam didn’t especially like children, but he didn’t think they deserve to be traumatized by this town, by their own.

“So you’re not going to take care of it?” Sam heaved a sigh of disappointment. If it were any other person, it wouldn’t have made sense, asking someone else, someone you just met, to clean up after such a weird tragedy, especially a supernatural one, or so it seemed, even if they were a hunter. But Sam had unfortunately nurtured a habit of relying on Thomas whenever something like this popped up. Now that he wasn’t answering his calls, things would have to change. Sam never liked change. “Or at least recommend another one of you guys?”

“I didn’t even know there was a tourism board,” Mina said, blinking a little. She certainly didn’t understand what a tourism board would have to do with any sort of authority around town. As far as she was aware, tourism wasn’t even that big of a deal. People moved in, they typically died, and they were replaced. Or they were old families that had been living in town for generations. That was the way of White Crest, from what Mina could tell, but maybe she was wrong with that. She shook her head, frowning. “I don’t hurt innocent people,” she said.

“I’m aware of the tree, yes,” Mina said wryly, thinking about all of the trouble that it had caused. She didn’t mean to look a little disbelieving as Sam said that he helped. Stranger things had ended up being true. Perhaps he had helped get rid of the tree, though he couldn’t help get rid of a body on his own. “No, I’m not going to take care of it,” she said. “My suggestion is to inform local law enforcement. It looks enough like an animal attack that, unless you’ve put your hands all over the body, it could probably pass off as an animal attack.” Now, though, the problem was figuring out what the “animal” was. Would Mina help with that? She kept asking herself over and over again if she’d stay involved. “I’m not a hunter.” And the words were sour. Did she still believe that was a lie? “I don’t run with many other hunters. I can’t really help you on that front.” She sighed, though. “If you find out that something like this happened again, you may message this number.” She pulled out a piece of scrap paper and scribbled her number down. Mina frowned at him. “But only if it seems like this sort of situation is becoming out of control.”

For a moment, as Sam stood next to Mina admiring the view like a complete idiot and she blinked her truth at him, he felt his heart break into a million teeny tiny pieces while the sound of glass shattering can be heard in the background of his teeny tiny brain. Did that mean deep down he considered his heart to be made of fragile glass? Sam did not linger on that thought, choosing instead to salvage what remained of his pride with an obviously fake chuckle, something that Bully Maguire would really enjoy. “I mean, we have posters and an office, but sure, yeah,” Sam’s voice got even quieter as he spoke those words that made for very little defense.

“Okay,” Sam heaved a very audible sigh, clearly disappointed, as he looked around them to find something to cover the body with or at least put up a sign for anyone else not to touch it or even just get near it, which would probably not work, considering how many people tried to touch the damned tree when everyone said not to. “All right, I know people from animal control, so that’ll be easy enough.” He instinctively turned to her with a raised eyebrow when she explained she was not like her father. On one hand, Sam could find some sort of similarity in that. They were not their fathers. Except that on the other hand, it was very, very disappointing. He appreciated how she brightened up his day, though, even on the most basic of contexts, but he really needed another hunter to help him with this situation. God damn you, Thomas, wherever you are. 

“Raised as a hunter but not a hunter, huh? I get it. Good on you for choosing to pave your own path. Not many of us get to do that.” There was a tiny bit of sadness in his voice with that last statement but he chased it off with a feigned cough as he took the piece of paper she had handed him. “Is this your number?” Sam immediately grinned, as if on perpetually idiotic cue, when their eyes met, that frown and serious emphasis be damned. She’s so pretty… Fortunately for him, another voice chimed in, the better version of himself, an imagined alternate that never saw the light of day unless it was absolutely necessary. …and so not interested, Sam. Get over it. Another feigned cough, trying to be more serious and more professional and less like a very lonely little man, which he was, this time. “Thank you, Miss Fitzroy,” he looked away from her, feeling a little guilty at being so stupid. “This town appreciates all the help it can get.”

Emilio’s mother had always been well-connected. She’d inherited her father’s contacts when she’d taken his place as head of the family, and she’d used them well. Emilio remembered many hunts, in the years before the massacre in Etla, where they were joined by other hunters, other people like them. There was always a quiet thrill to it, a sort of excitement. Emilio thought it probably came from the simple knowledge that there were more people like him out there.

Maybe that was why, upon hearing that Eric Fitzroy was in White Crest, he didn’t hesitate to find an address. He’d only gone on a few hunts with Eric, back in the day, but the man left a lasting impression. He was good at what he did. And after everything that went down in Etla… It might be nice, feeling a little less alone here.

But the address wasn’t what he was expecting, and neither was the person who answered the door. She was familiar, but only vaguely. Only in a passing way that left him struggling to remember her name. “Oh. Uh… It was, uh, Wilhelmina, yeah?” His brow furrowed. “I was… I don’t know if you know who I am. I, uh… I know Eric?” He didn’t often feel uncertain, but right now? He was. Emilio could handle strangers and he could handle acquaintances, but someone who fell in that strange space between the two? That was a little more complicated.

Sometimes, Mina forgot that she had a house. Though, recently, she’d been wondering if she should just move back. Really, she was wondering if she should just move away, get out of this town and away from the pain that it caused. That would be the logical thing to do, right? That would be the best thing for herself and everyone around her.

Mina couldn’t make herself leave, not really, not completely. But she did go back to her house. She started going through some of the boxes in the extra room, the room that was supposed to be her dads, searching through the things that had been sent to her after his death. Weapons, mostly. That was all he had, weapons. She was a weapon, too, in his eyes. She pulled out a knife, the blade as long as her forearm, not quite as balanced as it should be. She’d see about fixing that. She was packing it back away when the doorbell rang, and Mina walked over, still sore from the healing she’d done recently but no longer limping or needing assistance.

The man at the door looked like someone that Mina should know, and, as he spoke, she figured out why. “Oh. Oh! Ah, hi, yes, I’m Wilhelmina. I mean, Mina’s fine. Just Mina’s fine,” she said, trying not to rush through her words. She didn’t mean to scrutinize him too closely, but he was familiar, she just didn’t know where. “I– You’re a slayer, right?” She knew that much, at least. “I don’t… I don’t know if you heard,” she said quietly. “He died last year.”

There was an old woman who’d lived in Etla, for a while, who’d always looked down on the way Emilio and his siblings were raised. What the Cortez family did was a sort of well-known secret around town, the kind of thing most people were vaguely aware of but didn’t talk about outright. It was a lot like White Crest, in that way — a whole slew of people pretending not to know what they knew. And Emilio’s family was smack in the middle of it. This woman had hated that. It was disgraceful, she’d said, to raise children in such violence. It was a terrible thing, a tragedy. Emilio had never understood the thought process. For hunters, that was how things were. You grew up fast, you died young. You weren’t a child. You didn’t get to be that.

Eric’s daughter had been young, on that hunt where Emilio had met her, but she hadn’t been a child any more than he had the first time he’d put a stake through a vampire’s heart, the first time he’d liberated a zombie from its head. She was a hunter like he was a hunter. He’d never questioned anything else.

Smiling faintly at the question, he nodded. “Yeah, I’m a slayer.” He wasn’t much of anything else anymore. Maybe he never really had been. “Mina. Right. I’m Emilio.” His expression fell, just a little, when she mentioned her father’s death. There was no shock in his expression, no surprise. A hunter’s death was never unexpected. And after everything Emilio had seen in Etla… it took a lot to phase him, these days. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, and he meant it. A hunter’s death was never unexpected, but it still hurt when you were left behind. He knew that better than most. “I just moved into town. Heard he was in the area, thought I might stop by. Thought it’d be nice.” The gesture felt strange now, awkward and unbalanced.

Sometimes, it was hard for Mina to place a hunter’s age. All of them had that world weariness that came from seeing so much of the awfulness that was in the world at a young age. Even Adam, who had been a year or two younger than her, had that look in his eyes. That I am too old no matter what age I am look. She wondered if she had that look, if it was because of the hunting or the everything else. She felt like this year had aged her. The last two years, really.

She should just tell him she was Fae, get that out of the way, watch whatever manner of emotions (hate, disgust, disdain) would flash over his face before he either left or tried to kill her. She didn’t know if he was the more pragmatic kind of hunter, the one that would see the benefit of having a hunter that might be the wrong species by could still hunt Fae, or if he’d try to kill her indiscriminately. But Mina was tired. She felt more tired than usual, despite the fact that she’d been healing herself as much as she possibly could. She didn’t want a fight. She didn’t even want the potential for a fight.

“Emilio, that’s right,” she said. “I remember you. I was shy, back then.” Mina was still shy and horribly awkward and never sure what to say to these things. “Thank you,” she said, not even caring about her words. Then she added, “That’s the life. He had a bet going that he’d make it to fifty, but…” She shrugged, trailing off. Maybe, if she covered it up with nonchalance, it’d stop hurting like an open wound. “That’s the life.” Sometimes, Mina didn’t know what hurt the most: her dad leaving, or the thought of what might have happened if he’d stayed. She opened the door a little wider. “Would you like to come in? I don’t really stay here too much. This is the first time I’ve been here in a month, so I apologize if it looks a little uninhabited. Would you like some tea? I should still have some in the cupboard.”

She looked different than she had back then, and Emilio wasn’t sure if that was just the time that had passed, or if there was more to it than that. Nothing aged a person like grief, he’d learned. Nothing shaped and changed you like loss, and mourning had its own special way of turning you from one thing into another. The last time he saw her, Mina had her father. The last time she saw him, Emilio had his family. They’d met before as different people, in a different world. If they felt like strangers now, it was because that was exactly what they were. It was because you could only lose so much of yourself before you turned into someone else entirely, before the person who came back wasn’t the same one who left. Nobody knew that better than hunters.

He smiled, polite and awkward as she repeated his name back to him, probably committing it to memory the same way he had hers. “You were still learning,” he offered. “Hard to have a conversation in the middle of all that.” His mother taught him, when he was a child and still picking up the basics of how to do what they did, that he ought to be as Mina was on that day — quiet and confined to the smallest space possible in order to avoid getting in the way. He’d figured all hunters were the same with that, figured it was one of those rules everyone abided from.

His smile faltered a little when she spoke again, and he nodded in a short, jerky motion. “That’s the life.” That was how it ended for every hunter, sooner or later. They died in a small town in Maine, or they were slaughtered with their entire family in Mexico. Their blood soaked the streets, and they spent their last moments wondering if everything they’d done had been enough, if anything ever could be. Emilio blinked to clear the flash of somewhere else from his vision, to ground himself in the here and now instead of the there and then. Shaking his head, he looked back to Mina, tuned back in to the conversation. “It, uh… Honestly, it looks more lived in than my apartment, and I’m there every day.” That was a sad thing to admit, but Mina probably understood it. He wondered if she’d been on a hunt the last month, if that was why she’d been away so long. “I’d actually like that. To come in. And have tea. I — I think it’s been a while, actually, since I’ve had tea with someone.” Since he’d spoken to someone with a pulse, really, since he’d been a person.

It was strange to be comforted by the presence of a practical stranger, but it was comforting. Mina spent her entire life around hunters; they either hated her, or they were willing enough to work with her despite the lack of humanity. Honestly, there were certain aspects of hunter relationships that she imagined wouldn’t change even if she had been born a hunter. There’d always be that distance, that “there might not be a next time to seeing you, so I can’t decide if getting close is worth the trouble.” There’d always be that way that you look at someone too young or too old and wonder when they’d have their last day.

“I mean, you’re right of course. Standing over spawn ashes isn’t really the most conductive grounds for a conversation,” she said, her smile slight but genuine. Another strange but comforting thing, talking about something that was familiar to her childhood. She didn’t talk about hunting much, anymore. Not with people who had lived through it. Adam was gone, and with Nell it wasn’t quite the same, and Mina had been around more supernaturals than humans, these days, anyway. It was hard to talk to someone about hunting when she looked at them and could pick out how many of their kind she’d helped lead to their doom.

They’d both suffered, it seemed. The look on his face let Mina know that Emilio, too, had felt loss. They’d all felt loss. That’s the life. She cleared her throat. “I’m worried that a family of brownies has taken up residence. That might have something to do with the lived-in quality of the place.” Not that brownies would ever really be particularly bothersome to her. They might ask for food, though, if there were any actually there. She let him inside, the living room and kitchen sort of sharing a space, the area so small that there wasn’t an actual dining room, just a bar with some stools. She went over to the stove and turned on the burner, filling up the kettle and putting it on before she started searching through the cabinets. “I can certainly make tea, though I’m afraid it’s all herbal. Caffeine tends to make me… jittery. I have chamomile, ginger, peppermint, and kuromame, though, if you’re interested.”

White Crest was the first time Emilio had really stopped moving since Etla. Before this, he’d stayed in a town only long enough to follow his next lead, a constant flurry of motion that he’d always hoped would lead to either vengeance or death, whichever one came first. He’d never had the time nor the motivation to stop and smell the roses, so to speak, never had time to pause and reconnect with old colleagues. There wasn’t much to reconnect with, anyway. Most of the people Emilio had worked with had died screaming in Etla, and the ones who hadn’t thought that his corpse was rotting in the streets with the rest of his family. And it was better that way. It really was. Emilio made a better ghost than he did a person, at this point.

That was why it was so unexpected, the strange comfort he felt in Mina’s presence. That tightness in his chest eased just a little, loosened by the familiarity of a person who knew him before he was a broken, haunted thing. “And yet, I’m pretty sure that’s the exact scenario I was in when my dad gave me the sex talk,” he joked, the tone light and so unfamiliar these days. It had been a while since he’d used his voice for anything other than demanding information. It felt strange, but it was a good kind of strange. It was decent.

It was also still blanketed in this heavy, invisible thing. It was something all hunters carried with them, something that was universal among them. They were haunted, every one of them. It didn’t matter if they were Mina’s age or if they made it to fifty the way her father had been sure he would. You couldn’t hunt undead things without inviting ghosts to follow you, couldn’t do it without eventually becoming a ghost yourself. That was the life. That was what they’d all been born into, what they’d all die for. “Ah, duende infestations will do that. I’ve got iron, if you need it. Salt.” All things that she would have, too, of course, but Emilio felt inclined to offer, felt obligated to try to help because she was the only thing in this town that was even passingly familiar and maybe that meant something. He followed her into the house, took a seat on one of the barstools and pretended it was only because he wanted to and not because his damn leg was killing him even now, even when all he’d done today was walk on it. “Whatever you’re having will be fine. I’m not picky.” It had been a while since he’d even been given options like this. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. “You on your own out here now?” She must have been using White Crest as a centerpoint for a while now, given the way the house looked. Abandoned for a month or so, but lived in before that. It was always up in the air, whether hunters had much of a relationship with the people of whatever town they’d decided to take up residence in. The Cortezes had, for all the good it had done any of them. They’d been friends with the people of Etla, and they’d all died anyway. Emilio was never sure if that made things better or worse, in the end.

This was sort of a walk along memory lane, and though Mina knew that so few of her memories were good, there were still those that she cherished. She managed a small chuckle as Emilio mentioned how he’d gotten the sex talk before she groaned. “Oh, no. Now that you brought it up, I think Dad’s advice of ‘Use protection’ came while he was taking down a gumberoo, and I didn’t even know what he met until he… explained.” It was probably because she’d had a boy in her room the night before. He’d never had too much to worry about; she only really knew hunters, and very few of them had wanted anything long term with the strange Fae girl that thought she was a warden. “Maybe that’s just how regular parents are, too. Giving sex talks at inopportune times.”

She hoped she wasn’t being awkward, Mina thought as she piddled around the kitchen, never sure what to do with her hands, her body unable to really stay still anymore. Too much energy with no way to work through it was driving her up the wall, most days, even if she tried not to let it affect her. It was clearly affecting her with how fidgety she was. “I keep quite a lot of iron on me, but I appreciate that. Comes with the territory.” The pseudo-warden territory, the line she’d been playing skipping rope with since she was old enough to hold a knife. None of it would ever go away, not the need to have some sort of weapon within her grasp at all times, not the hypervigilant awareness of her surroundings (she noticed his limp like it was a weakness to be exploited before she stamped those thoughts down and away), not the constant awareness of her own mortality. It was always there. It would never leave, not even if she wanted it to. She didn’t really know if she wanted it to, anymore. Mina felt purposeless. She didn’t know what to do.

The kettle started whistling just as Mina got down the bags of peppermint tea. It was cold out, anyway. Peppermint was always enjoyable when it was cold out. She poured them both a mug and handed Emilio’s to him. “I’m a bit indecisive, so I just… grabbed the first one. I have some honey, too, if you’d like.” She grabbed it as well and moved to lean against the bar. “I’ve stayed with some friends for about a year now after an injury. Werewolf attack,” she said. “I come back here every now and then to– I don’t know. Look through Dad’s things. Make sure the place hasn’t completely been overrun. We were supposed to be here to hunt; I’m sure you’ve noticed this is a great place for it.” She sighed, blowing on her tea to cool it off. “I ended up staying to get my master’s degree at the university, experience something bloody normal.” She shrugged. “Not really possible, though. What brought you here? Are you planning on sticking around?”

It might have been funny, in some other world. The two of them reminiscing about their fathers and their awkward timing, the way they’d been lectured the way normal children were lectured in the most abnormal ways imaginable. If their lives had been anything less than tragedies, there might have been some comedy here. Emilio thought it was funny all the same, but his sense of humor had never been on par with anyone else’s. That, too, was something that came with the territory. He suspected she might have similar struggles. “You think all hunters are like that when they’ve got kids?” It wasn’t something he’d ever have an answer to, he suspected. If children were ever in the cards for Emilio, the very concept had died in Etla with his family. Maybe, for Mina, it was still a possibility. It wasn’t the sort of thing he thought he’d ever ask one way or another. Not when things already felt off.

It wasn’t that they were awkward, per say, but… Emilio got the feeling that neither of them had been entirely socialized outside their immediate family units. Maybe he’d gotten lucky, in that regard. He’d had siblings around his age, and his sister, at least, had been good enough with people that she’d often brought home friends. Without that, he doubted he ever would have known anyone outside of people like Mina — hunter kids who were just as clueless as he was. “I figured,” he offered, because people like them were all the same. They carried as many weapons on them as was physically possible, never left home without some amount of certainty that they could kill anything they came across. Of course she had no shortage of iron. She probably had everything stashed in the corners of this house, from holy water to strobe lights. It was a hard thing to shake, no matter what you did with your life in the end. If you were raised a hunter, you’d always be one underneath. Emilio knew that.

He took the mug with a nod of thanks, wrapping his hands around it and letting the warmth rise up to meet him. “I like peppermint,” he offered, taking a sip. “Don’t need any honey. Thanks, though.” He stared down into the cup, nodding as she spoke. “It’s good you had people you could stay with.” Emilio wouldn’t have that, if something happened. It struck him that he might prefer it that way. “Does it… Make it easier? Coming back, looking through his things, having his place to take care of… Does that help?” He’d never gone back to Etla, after. He wasn’t sure there was anything to go back to. Most everyone in town had been killed, turned, or run off. If Emilio went back, odds were there’d be someone waiting there to finish him off. But… He still wondered. He still wondered if there was peace to be found that way, if there was peace to be found at all. “Seems to be no shortage of shit here, yeah. Good place to hunt.” Good place to die, too. “Don’t think normal’s ever in the cards for people like us.” It was a pipe dream. He figured she’d learned that the hard way. “I’m thinking about it. I’ve got nothing left for me in México, and White Crest is as good a place as any.”

Sometimes, Mina wondered if her dad should have had a child. She thought about that more, the longer she was in this town, with these people that she’d grown to love. She didn’t know if he should have had a child. Then again, she didn’t think he ever really saw her as much of a child. She loved him all the same, though. Most days, she could even convince herself that he loved her, too. “I’m sure they are,” she said, “along with all kinds of other hunter things. I was only recently informed that children should probably not wield knives.” Apparently, they’d cut themselves. Mina knew that, of course, but that was one of the best ways to learn how to use them. “There’s lots of hunter child rearing techniques that I think might be a little frowned upon by the general populace.”

Emilio, in Mina’s eyes, was at a strange age. He wasn’t one of her peers, just a little too old to have been someone that she would have considered a part of her age group growing up, but he wasn’t like her dad, either, approaching that age where most hunters thought that they were going to kick the bucket for good. Fifty had been her dad’s goal, had been the goal of most hunters she knew. Her dad had been pleased when he made it to forty, a werewolf head held aloft as he and several other rangers had finished up a hunt in Poland. He didn’t make it to fifty. So few made it to fifty. Mina wondered, with her extended lifetime, if she’d even make it to thirty. “If you need something, I’ve probably got it in the spare room,” she joked. “Dad was a collector.”

She went ahead and poured a generous amount of honey into her own cup, that ever-present craving for something sweet never really going away now that she’d actually started indulging it. There’d been very few sweet things growing up, only ever on a special occasion, a successful training session, a hunt not screwed up, maybe something around her birthday, something else during the changing of the seasons, or around the solstices and equinoxes. Now, she could have whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. Mina was never good at figuring out what she wanted. She bit back telling him not to thank you, trying not to out herself. “They were kind to me. I care about them a great deal.” She looked around. “There’s… a distance from him, here. He didn’t stay for long, just for a few days to help me set up before he flew back to London on a job. But his things are here, now that he’s gone. I have all of his journals, his files, some of the open bounties he was working on or planning to work on… I can’t tell if it makes it easier,” she said, quiet. “No shortage of anything. You can go out in the woods whenever you please, and there’ll always be something waiting for you.” She took a sip of her tea. “I’m beginning to see that, yes, but I have a lovely, useless master’s degree in mathematics, so I suppose there’s that.” She managed a smile, small and slight and not reaching her eyes. She’d never be able to give up the life, would she? “It’s a good enough place,” she agreed, curious but not prying. “Strange, too. Very strange.”

It had taken a very long time for Emilio to even recognize that there was anything strange about his upbringing at all. When something was all you knew, you never thought to question it. He figured it was the same for Mina, the same for most hunters’ kids. They thought the way they were raised was normal, was the way everyone was raised. It wasn’t until they met someone outside that circle that they began to realize they might be wrong. Emilio snorted at Mina’s statement, shaking his head. “Seems like a dumb rule. They’re safer with a knife than without one.” But he understood the reasoning behind it, too. Most people thought that children shouldn’t need a knife to be safe. They should be protected by default. And Emilio never had been. Mina never had been. There was some grief in that, he thought. Some tragedy.

But it was like she’s said before — that was the life. Hunters grew up quickly because their lives were meant to be short, violent things. At thirty-three, Emilio had already lived far longer than he’d expected to, longer than he should have. He wasn’t sure he’d make it to thirty-four, doubted he’d make it to thirty-five, knew he wouldn’t make it to forty. Few hunters did, and Emilio had no intention of being any kind of an exception. He wondered if Mina felt the same, or if she longed for more. He wondered if not wanting to make it to those milestones was a universal hunter thing, or if Emilio was simply a unique brand of fucked up. “My mom was the same,” he laughed, shaking his head. “She’d hide things under the couch cushions. You never know when you may be attacked. There was a stake in the back of the toilet, at our house.” And it hadn’t done her any good, in the end. She’d always assumed the attacks would be from an external source. She’d never expected a betrayal from her own brother.

People here were kind to Mina, and Emilio wondered why he found that so strange. He wondered if people might be kind to him, if he let them. He wondered why the idea made his stomach twist and his chest ache. People were kind to Mina, and she probably deserved that. He didn’t need to know her story to know she’d probably been through a lot, because that was how it went for people like them. That was the life. And after all that, she’d probably earned some kindness. She seemed kind, too. Emilio wondered how she’d managed that. “It’s good,” he said again, because he didn’t know what else there was to say. It was good, even if it felt impossible. He looked away again, nodding as she spoke of what she had left of her father. She didn’t know if it helped, and Emilio didn’t know if anything would. “You ever go on the hunts he was planning on?” Maybe that was how to reconnect with someone when they were gone — finishing what they couldn’t. Emilio supposed he’d tried it in his own way, in his quest to hunt down every last vampire who’d been there when his family died. It didn’t make him feel any less empty. He thought it would. “It’s easy to lose yourself in it here. Easy to find distractions.” That was what Emilio was after. He offered her a small smile as she continued, meeting her eye for a moment before looking away. She was trying to build something here. Something normal, something better. It was impressive, even if it was probably impossible. “I’m sure it’s not… totally useless. You could, uh… Be a teacher, maybe.” It was clear that he knew very little about what one did with a degree. “Anywhere we go would be strange, wouldn’t it? It’s not the place that makes it that way.” It was them. People like them. They were what was strange.

“I’ve always thought that teaching someone how to use a knife is far safer than them ending up with one on their own,” Mina said, her voice light, but both of them were tiptoeing around the truth; giving children knives wasn’t a normal thing to do. Being taught to fight from an early age wasn’t normal, and neither was constantly fighting for your life in general. Children were supposed to play together, not spar in some pantomime of life and death attacks. She’d been thirteen when she’d been training with a warden boy, the butt of her knife popping him in the mouth, causing him to bleed, when he’d spit iron rich blood in her face, causing her to lose the fight as she’d tried to keep it from burning her eyes. Children played. There was nothing playful about that. Youth is for stupid decisions, but Mina and Emilio had never been allowed to be young. Being young got you killed.

Mina wanted to get older. She wanted to have a life that wasn’t just expecting death around every corner. She wanted that. She craved it. She’d… never been good at handling what she wanted. “I’ve frustrated a lot of people with my need to put knives in easy to reach places. Honestly, though, if they didn’t want me to put something there, there wouldn’t be that space between the mattress and the bedframe.” And it made her feel safe, on the nights that she woke up panicked, to be able to reach down and grab something, panting, feeling desperate to protect her people. There was never a threat, but Mina was afraid, so afraid, that they one day she let her guard down would be the day that she ended up needing to protect. “The back of a toilet is a perfectly good place for a stake, though… you’d have to let the vampire into the bathroom, which just sounds rather awkward for everyone,” she murmured.

Emilio seemed lost in thought, and Mina let him stay there for a while, sipping her tea, savoring the warmth. And maybe she was getting a little lost, too. She did feel a little lost, even if it wasn’t something she’d ever admit. She didn’t know where to turn, what to do, how to live. She shrugged. “I’m– I’m not very good at any of it, the hunting. I was supposed to hunt Fae, but that was a mess, and I’ve been trained with beasts because that was a ranger, and we knew enough slayers that I can take down a spawn, but I– I’m just not very good at it.” Dad would call her weak. He had called her weak, many times. It was why she’d promised him that she’d kill a Fae in the first place. It was supposed to be an incentive. It hadn’t worked. And now he was dead. All of that knowledge, and Mina just– was weak, and now so many people told her that was okay. “You’re welcome to look at them, though. He was looking into some local bounties, here. Decent pay. I just go after the nonhumanoid species these days.” It was better that way, easier to see monsters in creatures that were one tracked in their desire to hunt, to eat, to kill with no talking back. She smiled, letting out a huff. “Only mostly useless, then. I don’t know. I might teach. It’d be… something.” Most career choices for hunters were just side gigs, really, something to do when you weren’t devoting your life to keeping humanity– people safe. Mina just wanted to keep her people safe. “No, it’s not the place. We kind of bring the strange with us. Or we’re just following it.”

“Right? That’s what I’ve always said!” Emilio laughed, and it was hollower than it should have been, emptier. The truth, of course, was that there was no humor in this. There was nothing funny about it, nothing joyful. It was a tragedy, in its way. They’d both missed out on childhood, like every hunter child did. They’d both had that taken from them and, worse still, it hadn’t mattered in the end. Emilio trained all his life, and Etla still fell. Mina trained all of hers, and her father was still dead. What was either of them to do with that? How were they to move forward, to go on? At least, for some hunters, that sacrificed childhood meant something. They got to save people. They got to turn the pain into something useful. Not Emilio. Not Mina, either, he suspected.

He wondered, then, if the fact that they’d both likely still die a hunter’s death was a cruelty or a kindness. For himself, he often thought the latter. He woke up wanting it, some mornings. But Mina? She seemed to have built something here. She had people who had helped her, after her attack. She had a support system who had presumably been present through the grief of her father’s death, too. And Emilio thought that she probably deserved better. And he knew that she probably wouldn’t get it. People so rarely got what they deserved. Hunters doubly so. “Better to hide a knife and not need it than need it and not hide it. Right?” He slept with one in the same place she described, with another on his bedside table, with a stake under his pillow on the nights when his mind was restless enough to make him think he needed it so close. “She figured it was a possibility, I guess. I wasn’t going to argue. Didn’t want the lecture.” There was fondness to the tone he used but, as with everything related to his family now, there was a grief underneath it.

Emilio nodded, still looking into his tea, at the table, at anything that gave him an excuse not to look her in the eye. He was bad at that now, at — at people. He was better at killing than he was at talking. “I used to think I was good at it. But…” Etla fell and he ran, and he couldn’t save anyone. He couldn’t save his mother, his father, his siblings, his nephew. He couldn’t even save himself, in the end. “But I’m not so sure, these days.” He was better at hunting than anything else, but maybe that said more about how bad he was at most things than how good he was at hunting. Maybe he was just a fuck up in every department. “They wouldn’t mean as much to me. I don’t think they’d help anything.” Eric had been Mina’s father, but to Emilio? He was a near stranger. The only reason he’d come here had been a desire for something familiar in a world where he had nothing left, but even that was gone. “Maybe you’d like it. The teaching. You like people, right?” It seemed like she did, but… Most people seemed social in comparison to Emilio. “Yeah,” he agreed with a sigh. “One or the other. Or both, maybe.” They made places strange, then trailed along behind that strangeness. Because where else could they fit in? Where else could they hope to belong?

Mina laughed along with him, but hers, like his, fell somewhat flat. These were jokes that weren’t funny, jokes that could only really be laughed at by people like them. Giving a child a knife wasn’t something to laugh about; it was something dangerous. Maybe that was the problem. Mina and Emilio had been raised with the knowledge that the world was very, very dangerous. However, instead of being shielded from that danger, they were taught to thrive on it, to make a life from it. It was what they knew. It was what they would always know.

“I’m a firm believer in being prepared for whatever might come,” she agreed, and it was relieving to talk to someone who understood. Not just allowed her to do something because they cared for her and like to see her at ease, but because they well and truly understood her. Perhaps she and Emilio both would be doing better if they didn’t understand each other. They might certainly be happier. They might have the people they’d lost. But… the world needed people like them to keep it safe. She believed that. Even if she’d grown to believe that there was more to life than her dad’s teachings, she still believed that she could believe that. “Sometimes, it’s much easier to just avoid the lecture,” she murmured, sipping her tea.

“Is anyone actually good at it?” Mina asked. She thought it was a reasonable question. No one could be that good at hunting if it just killed all of them in the end, or if it hurt them so badly that they couldn’t keep working. There was no being good, only good enough to live to the next time. She nodded as he turned down the bounties, and she couldn’t tell him that they didn’t mean much to her, either. She shrugged. “I’ve tutored for the last few years, and I’ve taught a few classes.” She frowned at her mug, thinking. She did like it, didn’t she? She was pretty sure she liked it. “I like helping people,” she said instead, a truth that she could actually, firmly grasp. She liked helping people in whatever way she could. She liked feeling useful. Mina wanted to be useful, she wanted to have a purpose, she wanted to prove that she was a person. “Both,” she said. “We’re strange to the people we meet in these places, the way they look at us. They probably see…” she tried to think of the right words, “... those people who prep for apocalypses.” Or soldiers, perhaps, with the dullness in their eyes. “But we also go towards the strange because, well…” that was the life. “Where else would we go?”

He’d heard once, from an older hunter over a drink he wasn’t old enough to partake in that burned going down his throat all the same, that either everything was funny or nothing was. That was how you survived in a world like this one, how you kept your head on straight. Either everything was a joke, or jokes didn’t exist. Either you let yourself laugh at shit that would rip your heart out otherwise, or you got rid of your heart altogether to keep it from being a problem. Emilio used to figure the former was the best policy, but after Etla… It was easier to not care about anything. It was easier if nothing touched you. You could still laugh, sometimes, could still pretend things were funny, but deep down, you knew the score. Emilio knew the score, and so did Mina. So did all of them.

So they did what she was saying now. They prepared for the worst and they expected the worst. They didn’t bother hoping for the best, because what was the point? What good would it do them? “Not like anyone can say it’s unrealistic,” he added, because sometimes your entire goddamn town got torn to bits and you were the only guy who walked away from it. Sometimes everybody was gone but you, and all you had to show for it was a limp and hands that never stopped shaking. “Some days, avoiding the lecture was my only goal.” And it was past tense, because everything was. Because that was the only place Emilio still existed in full.

He smiled, small and humorless. “Guess not.” Hunting wasn’t a thing you were good at, because that implied some semblance of a choice. That implied some concept of being able to hang it up when you realized you sucked at it. That wasn’t an option for them, for anyone like them. Hunters didn’t retire, just like hunters didn’t grow old. “Helping people,” he repeated, as if it was a foreign concept. His mother had dedicated her life to helping people. It was all she’d wanted for herself, for Emilio, for all of them. Emilio didn’t think she’d be proud of what he was doing with it now. What he did, it wasn’t about helping anyone. It wasn’t about making the world better. He knew what it was about. He knew there was no integrity in it. “I guess we are doomsday preppers, aren’t we?” He laughed again, just as hollow as before. “Doomsday preppers with noplace else to go. Just about sums it up.”

“Very little seems unrealistic to me, these days,” Mina said quietly. Happy endings in fairytales seemed unrealistic, truthfully. She was named after a man that collected fairytales, nonsense and dribble that her dad had found amusing. There was some truth in it, he’d claim, some lessons. And the fact of the matter was that there were rarely any happy endings. It was a bit too much for Mina to ask for a happy ending, she sometimes felt. At the very least, though, she wanted to ask for a peaceful one, when the time came. Maybe a quick one, if peaceful wasn’t an option. She wondered what Emilio wanted. She wondered if what they wanted even mattered. “Avoiding the lecture is a very good goal,” she agreed. A smart goal, a safe one. Because a lecture was never just words. There was always a hands-on element to it, one that typically didn’t stop until someone was bleeding. It was good for teaching her how to stay alive, though she’d had to learn how to actually live from other places. She wondered if Emilio’s life had been the same.

It was impossible to be good at something that seemed to always end in death. It was a never ending battle that one would always lose. One couldn’t be good at a game they’d always lose in the end. Emilio seemed to know that just as well as Mina did. She shrugged the gesture small. “Sometimes, it seems like what I was taught… wasn’t quite right. Not all of it. But if I can defend someone, protect them, help them, then that’s what I’ll do.” She didn’t know how else to live. She didn’t think she could stop, even if she wanted to. Sometimes, she wanted to. She wanted to be with the people she loved. Maybe, if they asked, she’d be able to give it up for a time, but Mina knew she’d always be called back to helping people. She couldn’t stop. She smiled back at him, nearly as hollow as his laugh. “I thought so. I think we’re designed to chase apocalypses.” Or maybe apocalypses chased them. She certainly felt like they were constantly on the brink of one, especially in this strange town. Mina finished her tea, looking down at the empty mug. She looked over at Emilio’s. “Would you like some more?”

“Nothing is impossible,” Emilio agreed, but some things were. There were things that could never be, things that were lost to them. Emilio would never hear his sister laugh. He’d never see his nephew on his first hunt. Mina would never speak to her father again. She’d never get out of this town alive. Neither of them would live to the end of any story worth telling. And that was okay, that was fine. Emilio had known that going in, and so had Mina. No hunter ever imagined growing old. No slayer was raised an optimist. They weren’t allowed to be. “It was,” he agreed, and the past tense felt like ash as it settled onto his tongue, tasted bitter and sucked the moisture from his mouth. He wouldn’t mind a lecture from his mother now, even if it came with unpleasantness.

The way their parents raised them was something he doubted any nonhunter would ever understand. To other people, it seemed like abuse. Like torture, maybe. Hunters weren’t children, no matter how young they were. They weren’t people. They were weapons or they were shields. Their bodies existed for other people, to stand between them and a world that normal humans weren’t meant to worry over. Emilio lived to bleed for humans, and they’d bleed him dry someday. He knew they would. “It’s worth it,” he told her with a shrug. “To me it is. I think — I think it’s worth it.” It had to be. Otherwise, what did he have? If what they did wasn’t worth doing, it would mean everything he’d lost had been for nothing. It would mean his mother, his father, his siblings, his nephew, his friends and neighbors, they’d all died pointlessly. And Emilio couldn’t stomach the thought of that. “Maybe because apocalypses would let us thrive, no?” Apocalypses would make sense to them. They’d be familiar. More familiar, Emilio suspected, than a cup of tea at a dining room table. He looked down at his glass, half empty and lukewarm. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, I think I’m all right.”

Neither of them seemed to believe that, but Mina thought it was okay. He could say the lie, and she could nod, agree with him without the words, and that made it less of a lie. She could work with it, at the very least, and it would be okay. It would be as okay as it could be. She swallowed and nodded her head. “It was.” There would be no more lectures now. She was at a point in her life that if most hunters found out what she was, then she’d be dead. There would be no lecture, only the disposal of a monster. She wondered if Emilio would be the kind to spare her before trying to put an iron blade through her. She never learned his family’s thoughts around other supernaturals. Some rangers, slayers, wardens tended to stick to their own lanes, but some, like her dad, liked to dabble in a little bit of everything. High risk, high reward. At least having her around helped him find Fae. Now, he didn’t really need her for anything.

It felt like they were two weapons sitting at the counter, not two people. And Mina had been trying so hard to see herself as a person. She remembered telling Bex, in what felt like ages ago, that she wasn’t a person, not really, and she’d learned that it wasn’t because she was Fae. It was because of how she was raised. “I think it’s worth it, too.” Otherwise, there was no real point to any of it. Mina wasn’t stupid. Her dad hadn’t died for any other cause than money, than personal gain. She still believed he could have changed if he had the chance. She clung to that. She had to. But Emilio, with the look in his eyes, the way that he sat, he needed it to be worth it for different reasons, not just for himself. Mina needed it to be worth it so that her life had purpose. Emilio needed it to be worth it so that someone else’s death did. “An apocalypse would be so much easier. Finally, all my reactions would make sense,” she tried to tease, but it wasn’t that funny. The hyper-vigilance, the overwhelming paranoia, the way that she’d look at people and know six different ways to kill them, all of that would have a purpose, a need. The desire to protect the people that she loved from what lurks in the dark would finally be legitimate. She nodded, and went to fix herself another cup, craving something warm. Somehow, though, tea didn’t seem like the cure.

There were no lectures left to be given now. There was no one left to give them, no one left to hear them. The thought was a familiar one, though more deja vu than memory because Emilio hadn’t had this specific thought before, but he’d had many like it. It was a part of loss, he thought, a part of grieving. You thought you were okay one moment, and then the next you found yourself struck once again by something the ghost that haunted your mind would never again do. No more lectures. No more burnt attempts at grilled cheese sandwiches smoldering on the island as his sister grimaced and searched for a way to blame someone else for the mess. No more temper tantrums from his nephew, who, like all children, had sometimes screamed without knowing why. No more conversations in which his brother would try, desperately, to steal Emilio over to his side of an argument as his other brother tried to sway him in the opposite directions. No more hunts for Mina to go on with her father. No more of their paths crossing in the field.

He wondered, absently, if this would be the last time they spoke, if this conversation was another graveyard he’d happened upon without meaning to. It could very well be the case. Emilio didn’t think his story would stretch much farther, and Mina’s might not, either. It was a race, in its own twisted way. The two of them were sat here at a table in an unlived in house, wondering which of them was going to die first. He glanced up as she spoke, relief an unexpected wave washing over him. If she thought it was worth it, too, then maybe that meant something. Maybe Emilio wasn’t fooling himself here. (Or maybe they both were.) “At least an apocalypse would make sense.” People like them, they were dialed up to eleven every moment of every day. They were livewires, always on. They weren’t built to drink tea around a table, weren’t made to live quiet lives in small towns. But Mina prepared another mug anyways. She got up, she busied herself in the kitchen. She pretended she was a person, and she was good at it. Better than he was. He watched, hands gripping the cold cup in front of him like a lifeline, like the only thing keeping him at the table. “I should go.” He didn’t know if he was talking to her or to himself. “I’m not — I’m not making anything better here. Am I?” Was he ever?

As Mina moved about the kitchen, going through the motions of making herself a cup of tea as easily as she went through the motions of cleaning off a gore-covered knife, she thought about how, maybe, both of them were the real ghosts, haunted by the people they’d been left behind by. At night, even when she didn’t want to, she’d see her dad, watch that werewolf stand over her as he tried to speak. She’d never know his last words. She’d never know if he could change. That was the hardest part. Mina wanted desperately to believe that the people around her were wrong, that her dad could have been a good man if he’d been taught differently, and she could cling to that because she’d never know any differently, but it nagged at her, ate away at her mind when she’d remember him alive and breathing and stern. She was the ghost, reliving old moment over and over again in her mind as if they’d change the longer she lingered on them. Her eyes went to Emilio. He was a ghost, too.

Mina didn’t want to be a ghost. She didn’t know how not to be. Maybe that was the problem. She kept trying to live her life, to be as normal as someone like her could be, and she kept getting knocked off course and left out to drown. Every time something went well, it inevitably seemed to go wrong. She should just learn to live with it, to deal with it, but sometimes she still allowed herself to want more. She allowed herself to want, period. She wasn’t taught to want. She tried to do it now, anyway, desperate in an attempt to figure out how to want things and have things and not be like this, but seeing Emilio made her wonder. She wasn’t a natural born warden, but she was a hunter all the same. This was her life. There was no escaping it. And she’d either live a few years more or die tomorrow. They both would. She leaned against the counter. “You’re not making things any worse,” she responded. In some ways, it was nice. Cathartic. Someone who understood, at least on some level, who didn’t immediately think the worse of how she was raised. Maybe Mina and Emilio were both wrong and fucked up beyond repair. Maybe they were as okay as they could possibly be. “You can stay, if you’d like, or you can go. But,” she paused, “if you’re stay in town for a bit, and you need some help, I mean, I’m not, you know, a slayer, but I’ve trained with plenty. I’ve never taken down a higher vampire, and certainly not an elder, but I’m not completely useless against spawn or more bestial undead.” She didn’t know why she was offering. That fear was still there, that a fellow hunter would turn on her if they knew what she was. But she wanted to offer. She wanted. And maybe that was enough.

He watched her move around the kitchen, watched her make tea, watched her breathe and exist in a way he thought would have been impossible for either of them had their families’ respective stories not already ended. This wasn’t the life of a hunter. His mother would have called it disgraceful, his uncle would have turned up his nose. But… Emilio got it. Emilio understood that sometimes, the best way to heal was to be. Mina had lost something when her father died, just like Emilio had lost something when he’d limped away from Etla as the only one left with a heartbeat, but she was still standing. She was still making tea. Maybe he’d needed a reminder that such a thing was possible.

She spoke and he nodded, still staring down at the cup in his hands, still watching his distorted reflection looking back at him in the dark liquid. He wasn’t making anything better by being here, but he wasn’t making anything worse, either. And maybe that was all he could hope for. Maybe it was the best any of them could do. “Might not be bad to have some help,” he replied. Most hunters, he knew, went at it alone but for most of his life? Emilio had had a support system behind him. He’d had his parents, his uncle, his cousins, his siblings. Taking on the world all by himself was a new development, one so soaked in grief that the loss was impossible to separate from the action. “I wouldn’t mind it. Teaming up sometime.” Emilio didn’t know if closure was in the cards for him, but… Maybe he could help Mina get some for herself. Maybe that would make it a little easier to breathe.

It was both a relief and an added weight to Mina when Emilio accepted her offer. On the one hand, she wanted to help. On the other, she kept putting herself back here, in this place, doing these things. Mina could try to claim that she wasn’t intentionally getting hurt, but it was starting to taste more and more like a lie in her mouth every time she agreed to do something dangerous. Still, she smiled, small and not quite touching her eyes. “Lovely. If I’m not decent help, I was at least trained to stay out of the way,” she said. Mina just wanted to help people. Maybe she could help Emilio. He was weighed down, even more than she was, a weight around him mentally that dragged him down more than just the things that dragged down regular hunters’ children. But Emilio was no child. He was a man who had lived long enough to know pain, true pain, real and awful pain. He wasn’t a child. Neither was she. Children died quickly in this world. But they’d made it this far. It seemed almost too hopeful to think that either of them would make it much longer, but, for the people she cared about, Mina wanted to. She did. She wanted to.

Her smile wasn’t genuine, but who was Emilio to call her on that? Who was he to point out that she was faking it when faking it was all he’d known how to do for years now? He offered her a small nod, faking a smile of his own. “I’m sure you’ll do all right.” She wouldn’t have lived this long if she had no skills to speak of, wouldn’t still be breathing if all she knew how to do was keep out of the way. Pushing his chair out from the table, Emilio cleared his throat as he stood. The mug of tea was still only half empty, but it was too cold to drink now. He’d never much cared for tea, anyway. It was only ever something warm to wrap his hands around, some illusion of comfort to be held. “The tea was good,” he said anyway, because it seemed wrong to say nothing. “But… I should be getting home. Who knows what trouble I may run into if I’m out after dark, no?” There was a faint smile on his face, a hint of humor to his tone that was uncharacteristic of him. “It was good seeing you, Mina. I’ll let you know, about the cases.” He was surprised to find he meant it. “Take care of yourself in the meantime, yeah?”

He was incredibly tired, but he hadn’t been able to get the thought out of his mind. Jared left the farm for the first time in a week only to find himself in the bushes outside the general store in town. It was ridiculous really,  but all 6 foot 1 of him was currently hunkered down as low as he could get without being completely flat out. He wasn’t very good at hiding like this, he wasn’t very good at ‘sneaky’ at all really. So it was no wonder when his protruding foot caught the attention of a passing person by tripping them up a little. In the nymphs panic about being potentially caught by his target he shushed the woman and waved a hand for her to get down as well. “Down, down!! I can’t get caught, come on help a guy out!” he pleaded in what he hoped wasn’t as pathetic a tone as he heard himself. “.......you didn’t happen to see the man in the long coat did you? I can’t see anything from in here…”

Walking was kind of awful, especially when Mina did it for too long. But it was nothing that she hadn’t felt before, and it was nothing that she couldn’t grow used to. She simply had to push through it. She was so busy putting one foot in front of the other that she didn’t even notice the large foot poking out front behind a bush. She tripped, her bad leg giving out a bit as she stumbled, trying to catch herself. She was so startled she didn’t realize that she was near another Fae until she was on hunched down next to the man, trying not to grimace against the pain. “I-- alright, alright!” She stuck her head out, trying to see if there was anyone around them that matched his description. “I didn’t see any sort of man, unfortunately, no.” She crouched back behind the the bush. “Is there a reason we’re-- you’re looking for a man in a long coat?”

Jared was usually very intune with others, if he’d been paying attention like usual he’d have noticed that the other was uncomfortable in her place beside him and apologize for causing any issues. But as it was, he was very intent on finding out anything he could about where the man in the coat had traded his goods. Eyes on the door to the store again he absently responded to the woman. “He’s trading illegally, and what he’s trading isn’t being treated right.” Jared felt the tingling in his fingertips then as he readjusted his position to poke his own head out the top of the bushes once again. It distracted him a little and he looked back at the woman curiously, finally giving her the attention he should. “....you’re uh…?”

“What is he trading?” Mina asked, now more than a bit interested in what was going on. She’d been languishing in the pool for far too long, unable to train or help anyone in anyway. She felt useless. But… if someone, some man in a trench coat, was doing things that he wasn’t supposed to be, well… perhaps she could help out. She looked at the store, then back at the man next to her. The Fae next to her. She swallowed a bit and smiled weakly. “Yes, and so are you?” She didn’t go into detail about what she was. They were both Fae, that was supposed to be all that mattered, right? She did have to fight against the unease. Fae weren’t wrong. She wasn’t wrong. She had to keep telling herself that. Her dad had just been confused. She was beginning to like Deirdre, and she thought of Felix fondly. This was fine. “I’m, ah, Mina. My name is Mina.”

“Animals.” was the simple answer. And it was what Jared decided to stick to, even if the other was fae as well that didn’t mean they shared the same outlook on his kids. His trust in his kind had been shattered recently and it was going to be hard to claw back. He did however nod back in agreement when asked if he was as well. No need to hide it, they could tell if he was one just as he could tell if she was. “Jared.” he introduced in return. “That guy has passed on a poorly treated animal to someone and I want to find out who and take it back…. It’s a little bit like dognapping but...for the best of the animal if that makes sense?” he left out the part where he could feel the anguish of the creature still so it must be semi close to their location. “Will you help me? I think that guy is getting really suspicious of me….but if I had a new face it might work out. Not asking you to do anything wild just help me keep an eye on him?” It was a lot to ask a stranger, but she hadn’t stood up and left so he had hopes that she was at least intrigued enough to help him watch for a while.

“Animals,” Mina repeated back slowly, before giving the man a nod. She could work with just the word animals. She’d helped her dad with jobs that had less information than that. She took in his name, but that was secondary to what was going on. So, what Jared was doing was illegal. But… what happened before also seemed illegal. Was this two wrongs making a right? She didn’t know Jared, and she had no naturally innate abilities to figure out whether or not he was truly honest in his intentions, but-- but he seemed earnest. He seemed to genuinely want to help this animal, and he also seemed to genuinely want her help. And Mina wanted nothing more than to be useful. She really wanted to be useful. “Okay, I’ll help you with this,” she said carefully. She lifted up her the leg of her pants, showing him the bandages wrapping her leg. “I won’t be able to do any sort of running or anything like that, but I can offer a fresh pair of eyes, and I can… handle my own should any sort of situation happen.” She hoped it didn’t come to that. She had no idea to hurt humans, even if they were bad. “I want to help you.”

The nymph smiled widely when she agreed to help him with this. It would be much easier to keep an eye on the man when one of them didn’t have to be hiding in bushes all the time. Jared was pretty noticeable because of his height, not to mention he was confident he’d been spotted at least in 3 different locations by the man only today, and that can’t be taken as anything but suspicious. “Thanks, no need to be doing any running or anything wild, we’re all stealth today I just want to know where he gets the animals, and maybe see the person he just left the dog with.” He tripped over the word dog noticeably but tried to play it off with a small fake coughing fit just after. He is pounding on his chest as if the coughing had been real only to stop abruptly and whisper frantically. “We gotta move he’s off into the next store!”

“No need to thank me, really,” Mina said, remembering Deirdre’s thoughts on thanks. She was trying to curb herself on saying that word, on owing people and having them owe her. And Jared seemed kind, and he seemed to care about the animals that they were trying to find. He didn’t need to owe her anything. “Are you alright?” she asked as he started coughing. She reached out, only to stop short instead of patting his back. He might not like to be touched. It was rude to just touch people without their permission. However, he straightened up relatively quickly, and she looked to see that a man matching Jared’s description was leaving a store. “Okay, okay, let’s follow him. And, ah, try not to look too suspicious? Casual. Let’s try to look casual.” Mina had been a part of enough stakeouts and tailing situations that she knew how to look casual in situations like this. They left the cover of the bushes and started following after the man in question, keeping a reasonable distance away from him.

Looking casual was easier said than done. Jared couldn’t seem to get his limbs to remember how he walked on a day to day basis, he was half creeping like a silent film villain and half taking long strides to keep up. He kept his head looking to the side, he was certainly not made for stealth like this. Not in the daylight and on the street at least. When the man in the coat turned to look back Jared fully ducked into a doorway. Despite his suspicious action he wasn’t seen and the man in the coat drew up alongside a car and leaned down to speak to the person inside. A wriggling blanket seen in the car trunk through the glass. “Look look, there’s the animal! I knew he hadn’t been paid yet, of course they’d linger around.” He hissed before looking at her worriedly. “Do you think we could….it’s a lot to ask but…. distract?”

Equal parts amused and bemused as she crept after the man with Jared, Mina followed after him as best as she could. He was much taller and nimble, despite his awkward gait, but she managed to keep up with him. As soon as the saw the man struggling with the animal, though, she was decided. She said she would help. This solidified it. The worried look on Jared’s face, the way that the poor creature had been put in the boot of a car. This wasn’t right. It wasn’t right at all. “We can definitely distract, of course we can. Just… how do you want to do this?” she asked. Her palms were sweating a bit, scales breaking out on the backs of her hands. She rubbed at them. “I could throw something, or we could try and talk to him.” Potentially promise bind him into giving them the animal back, though she had no idea how that would go. It could go very, very well, like when she’d managed to promise bind a man all those months ago in the Stacked Deck. Or it could go, for lack of a better phrase, piss poor. Mina didn’t have the best track record with promises.

“I don’t think this guy is very dangerous, just really shifty you know? Deals in things he shouldn’t. He’s seen me before being…..admittedly equally as shifty while I was following him but he doesn’t know you at all, he looked back at you and didn’t say a word do you think...you could ask them for directions? I could pop the trunk and have the critter in my arms in no time. Of course you don’t have to if you feel weird, I do know it’s a lot to ask of someone I just met.” Jared tried to explain his plan but felt rather guilty. He'd understand if she didn’t want to do it, but it was all that came to mind. He was actively horrible at being a fae, and as such he hadn’t even considered attempting to promise bind anyone. He always seemed to resort to human movie tactics, and they surprisingly worked a lot of the time. He figured this was likely because no one expected anyone to employ them in real life.

“Shifty, right, got it.” Mina could handle shifty. Truthfully, a lot of humans, people in generally, really, in this town were quite shifty. She herself was occasionally shifty, had done plenty of shifty, even harmful, things in her life. She couldn’t fault Jared for being shifty, not really. “I can distract them, yes, just… I need a moment. But I’ll walk over and, ah, start talking. I’m pretty good at rambling, so… You should have plenty of time.” Mina was a very good distraction, and she could do this. She gave Jared a nod and then limped, a bit over exaggeratingly, over to the two men talking. They stopped when she arrived, frowning and staring at her, and she gave them a nervous smile. No acting was needed for that. “Hi! I’m so sorry to bother you, but I’m just-- I hurt myself a bit ago, and it’s still kind of sore and-- I’m really lost--” The first small lie made her immediatly start to feel sick, but she pushed through it, “Do you think you could point me in the direction of a gas station, maybe? Again, I’m so sorry, I’m really sorry. I’m usually not so scatterbrained! But I’ve got all these test coming up, and I don’t feel great, and, wow, is it kind of hot out here? Weird for December, huh?” She fanned herself, the two men appearing increasingly concerned with every word that came out of her mouth and, oh, there it was. Her nose started bleeding. They rushed over to her as she squeezed her nose, trying to stem the bleeding. She hoped this bought Jared enough time.

He watched her go with trepidation, Jared didn’t want to put someone in harm's way with this issue but he was pleased that he was allowed to be right about some strangers, not everyone was so bad. She was kind to be helping with such little information. Mina started to rumble and Jared stifled an encouraging grin so as not to distract her. With both mens eyes on her he crept up behind the car. With as little sound as he could he reached up to press the button on the trunk. Hand on the lid he eased it open, glancing through the back window as he stood up to check on his accomplice. He was shocked to see blood and instantly got a move on. He took off his coat and bundled it over the top of the creature in the back, discarding the blanket over the top of a toolbox in the hopes that it would fair as a decoy. Standing up straighter he tucked the moving bundle under one arm and tried his best to cover the noises with a cough, coming around the car to put a tentative hand on Minas shoulder. “Hey, I’ll give you a ride home okay?” he offered kindly. Looking up at the suspicious dealer, and the curious buyer in turn and then hoping Mina would catch on. “Been looking for you for ages you know? Here.” he handed her a handkerchief with his free hand for her nose and tucked the creature behind her back with the other as he stuck close. Managing only bearly to hold the creature with one hand as he pretended to put a comforting hand on her back. 

“Oh!” Mina startled as Jared came up behind her, so busy with her ramblings that she hadn’t even noticed him. She took the handkerchief appreciatively and used it to stem the bit of blood coming out of her nose. “Goodness, there you are. I was just telling these gentlemen that I was lost. I’m so glad you’re here. She looked at the men, hoping that they were too confused by her and this entire situation to attempt to try and talk to them much more as she walked away with Jared, using her body to shield the little bundle he was carrying with them. “Don’t look back at them,” she murmured. “I’m going to laugh like you said something extraordinarily funny,” and she did, though it was in part because of all the nerves. “And we’re just going to keep walking until we’re far enough away.” And they did, though her ankle was killing her. Mina had walked through far, far worse conditions. This was nothing. She was just glad to help Jared, as she looked curiously at the squirming thing that he was holding. “You were able to get the animal, I see.”

Jared was incredibly anxious as they made their way down the street, he couldn’t even manage to play along very convincingly as she laughed at nothing. His own returning laugh was so strained he felt it must have gained them unwanted attention, which just served to make him more antsy as they moved. They walked and walked, Jared could have sworn he heard the car engine turn on as well but he did as he was told and didn’t even attempt to glance behind them until they were around a corner and out of sight. Flattening his back against the wall he clutched the bundle to his chest and sighed in relief. He could feel the creature in his arms, sedated but alive. “We did, crap we totally pulled it off.” He shifted the blankets in his arms a little and a small patch of frizzy fur was exposed before a small nose poked out of the fabric. “And she’s gorgeous, a little battered but she’ll heal.” He beamed at Mina then. “You did me a huge favor just then.” the idea of being in debt to her was heavy on his mind so he offered instead. “I’ll have to get you some coffee or flowers in return, sound good?”

“We did, well, you did! I just helped!” Mina smiled at the other fae. This was nice. This was pleasant. He wasn’t a monster, she wasn’t a monster. There were just two people, helping a small animal. “Oh, no, it wasn’t a favor. I just helped to help. You don’t owe me for this, I assure you.” She’d done this because she wanted to, not because she ever thought this would end with her gaining something. Mina didn’t like when people owed her; it made her feel strange. Instead, she got a closer look at the creature in Jared’s arms, only to leap back, stumbling a bit. “Oh my,” she said, eyes wide. She looked up at him, perplexed. “That’s-- You--” He had a monster. He was holding a monster, and he wasn’t trying to kill it, and what was she supposed to do with this information? “What?”

There was a wash of relief when she released him from the sense of owing her a favor of some kind. It was nice to think that not all fae tried their hardest to trap others in their words. He tried so hard not to himself after all, he’d thought maybe it was a leftover trait from growing up in a human household. Her reaction as the pup snuffled her way out of the blanket blearily caused Jared to recoil from MIna, just as she had from him and the bundle. He rushed, he wanted this kind fae to understand. “I’m a nymph. Vicious creatures...she’s like a part of me, I couldn’t just leave her to be mistreated… you can understand that right?” He looked at her pleadingly, if this went poorly she might just turn the corner and flag down the car setting out to drive away. “She doesn’t deserve to be mistreated.”

Swallowing tightly, Mina looked at the Fae in front of her with new eyes. A nymph of vicious creatures. A nymph of beast. But the creature in his arms didn’t look particularly vicious. It was small and gentle-looking, and Mina felt a bit sick that her first thought upon seeing it had been that it should be hurt. But a beast was a beast. Except when it wasn’t. If the two of them, she and this kind fae who had been nothing but polite and only wanted to help small creatures, could be considered as something more than monsters, if she could be friends with zombies and werewolves, then could a beast like the one before her be something that didn’t need to be put down? Dogs only needed to be put down when they were rabid, when they were a danger. This creature didn’t look like a danger. Not presently, at least. “I understand,” she said, truth in her words even if her voice was slightly strangled. “You-- it-- She doesn’t deserve to be mistreated. No matter what she is.” Mina felt somewhat faint. The longer she was in this town, the more everything that she’d once understood to be truth seemed to be twisting and turning itself into something she could no longer properly recognize. “I understand.”

The hint of a smile returned to Jared's face as he seemed to have encouraged the other fae to really think about the situation. She was quiet for a moment and then she spoke in confirmation of what he’d said. It felt wonderful to have changed her mind in this moment, even if it was ONLY this moment, he’d take it. The car drove past the corner of the street they were standing in and Jared covered over the blanket in his arms with his coat, hoisting the small creature closer to him as she began to wake up properly. “I really appreciate all your help, she’s going to get the care she needs because of you. It’s a kind thing you’ve done for us.” Looking up and down the street Jared stepped away from the wall he’d been leaning on and one handedly dug around in his pocket for his phone. “Can I give you my number, if you ever run into anything you need help with creature wise I can take a look for you or something. But I really have to get her out of the sunlight, people might talk if they see her you know.”