rolling thunder, chasing the wind

She remembered where she had buried it: the clearing northwest of the cabin, a mile away, birches watching from all sides. The casket was built to last a century, and Regan had never expected she’d be interring it only a year after lowering it into the ground. It would probably be best if it stayed buried. But while Jade was slaying tonight, Regan was out, too, shovel spade sinking into wet earth. She needed it. Or, she might. She needed it because she might need it.

The hole would need to be deep—her muscles remembered the labor it had taken to dig the first time. The casket had to fit, and she had wanted it immune to weather, out of reach from animal claws. Five feet, and right now she was only a foot in, if that. Regan took a break, leaning against the shovel, tasting the metallic dirt and sweat on her lips. She’d turned up a few bones so far and pocketed them (precious vole vertebrae among the prizes), but all she could think about was what waited for her beneath her feet.

“Jesus, I was right, you are digging up a body. Sick freak. Just how many have you made?” 

Regan went stiff. For a second, it had sounded like she wasn’t alone out here at night. That would have been preferable to who she kept hearing. She turned to her side, like she could turn away from the Voice, but it didn’t care what direction she was facing. She always faced it and never faced it. Regan muttered, “It isn’t a body. Maybe a body of work, but it’s—whist, why am I bothering?” Back to work. She lifted the shovel again, and she doubted the cracking twigs and brushing leaves behind her now came from anything with flesh.

—

Every few feet or so, Zack told himself he should turn back. He knew better than to wander around anywhere in Wicked’s Rest at night. Especially one of the spooky woods. Especially when he didn’t really know the area that well and could very possibly be lost. Not that he knew where he was going, actually, but he would have liked to have a better grasp on where he had come from and how to get back that way when the time came. This whole night was shaping up to be a mistake.

But he had been in the Bizarre (keeping to himself, this time! He was capable of learning a lesson) and had overheard someone mention a strange magical presence in these woods. Now that he was here, though, it occurred to him that he didn’t know the person who had mentioned that. Maybe they had been lying, or wrong, or maybe they had been talking about a really, really terrible and dangerous magical presence and now Zack was out here all alone to investigate and–

Or was he?

He heard the soft susurration of earth shifting, and maybe a voice underneath it all. He couldn’t be sure. But as he moved further into the woods, he found that he was not, in fact, alone. There was someone digging, a blonde woman who seemed very intent on her task. Which was digging a hole. In the middle of the woods, after dark. That was probably fine, right?

“Um,” Zack began, already regretting speaking up and also every other life decision that had brought him to this point. “Sorry to bother you. Are you okay?”

—

“Then why do you bother me?” Regan wiped her arm against her forehead. She actually looked at the man now, could still see him fairly well even as the sun was sinking. Early thirties, fit build, brows furrowed together. He did not look like a hiker, or at least not one in ‘uniform’. Out for a walk, then? Her muscles tensed, and she took a step away from the hole, gripping the shovel hard with both hands. His concern was incongruous with his presence here, Regan thought. “And why would I not be okay?” Awfully broad question; it could be applied to almost anything and not bite like a lie. Her stomach clamped, though, so perhaps the inverse was true; either everything was okay, or nothing was.

Wait. Was he— “Are you lost?” She asked him, then winced at the concern that affected her voice. Her historical answer to showing concern was still under four feet of dirt. “People do not usually come out this way. And it’s getting dark out.”

“Oh this is funny as hell,” the Voice said, and Regan could hear the sneer. “He’s onto you, ya weirdo. Hightailing it to the police now, I bet. Look at you! Crazy albino chick in the woods digging up corpses! Or maybe he thinks you’re burying one. You really gonna just let him—”

Regan walked closer to the man, her grip on the shovel so firm she might bruise. The sweat trickling down her neck now had little to do with physical exertion. “It isn’t a body!”

—

Zack held up his hands, hoping to convey how very much of a threat he was not. “Well, you’re just…digging a hole?” He stumbled over a few more words but found himself at a loss at how to explain, exactly, why that had him concerned for her. Mostly it just made him concerned in general. Digging a hole in the middle of the woods, in this weather, wasn’t exactly normal behavior. Something had to have gone wrong, for someone to be doing that, Zack figured. He just wasn’t sure whether it was this woman or someone else who was having the bad day.

When she turned the questions on him, Zack had to admit that he was, in fact, lost. “Oh. A little.” It was hard to be lost when he wasn’t entirely sure about his destination in the first place, but he also didn’t know how to get back out of the woods, so that probably qualified as lost. “I was hoping to just keep walking and eventually find my way back out of the woods.” A solid plan, as far as he was concerned, though not one based on any kind of experience or knowledge.

Again, he raised his hands in what he hoped was a conceding gesture. “No, of course not! Why would it be a body?” Of course, he had thought it was a body. Or had at least considered the possibility. And despite her insistence that it wasn’t a body, Zack was maybe more convinced that it might be one. “You didn’t actually answer my question, though. Are you all right? Do you need…help with anything?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to help her with anything, but it seemed wrong not to offer.

—

“I am digging something up,” Regan said. “Why would I be digging a hole without purpose? Either I am interring something or burying something; right now, it happens to be the former.” Maybe this man liked to wander out and dig senseless holes, though. She hadn’t meant to insult his “hobbies”. She understood now how important those were to humans. “I am sure your holes are worthy of inspection. You may tell me about them.” There. She had shown interest in his holes.

What about this situation would cause him to doubt her wellbeing? “I,” Regan said, jabbing the shovel back into the earth with a splitting crunch, “am perfectly fine. Exceptional, really. Just grand.”

“You make this weird face whenever you lie, like you’ve got a chestburster ready to pop. Same face you made talking to customers.”

“I’m not lying,” Regan hissed over her shoulder. Then she realized her error; the Voice was coming from behind her right now. Different from the actual, physical man in front of her who she should have been speaking to. She was quick to turn, to focus on him again. 

He might not have been asking if she needed help digging, but it was the only task before her, and help, in some form, had been offered. “Here.” She pointed the shovel toward him in response, spade first, for him to take. She had only brought one shovel out today, but that did not mean she didn’t have a second one. “That plan will result in you becoming more lost. I can walk you back into town once I have what I need. I know the way.” The woods weren’t nearly as changed as she was.

Regan walked around the tree and picked up the old, discarded shovel. Still there. She had been surprised to find it when she’d stepped past it earlier. It was the same one she’d used over a year ago to dig the hole in the first place. The handle was moist. Moss grew along its length. The steel was red with rust. The last time Regan had picked it up, things had been different, hadn’t they? 

Partially concealed by a thick tree trunk, Regan took the opportunity to scan around. The Voice went silent again. Her conscience was distracted—good. She rejoined the man and sliced the dirt with her new-old shovel. “The casket is about four feet deep,” she told him, because she found it reassuring. “I will give you something from inside of it.”

—

Zack didn’t know what “interring” meant, but he could use context clues to determine it was something like the opposite of “burying something.” So the stranger must be digging something up, in that case. Which was better, he supposed? At least when compared to the scenario of burying the body of someone she had just brutally murdered. And…was she hitting on him with all the talk of his holes? Zack didn’t think so. He might not be the brightest, but he was usually fairly perceptive when it came to people’s interest in him. “Oh. Uh. No, that’s okay. I’ll keep my…holes to myself.” Even if she was trying to hit on him, demurring felt like the safest option.

And if she was exceptional and grand than she was doing better than Zack was, and it might be best for him to just…leave her alone. Especially if she was reacting to something he couldn’t hear or see that was apparently calling her a liar. 

Before he was able to make the smart decision, though, there was a shovel being shoved at him and he took it instinctively. “Oh! Uh, yeah. Okay. That seems like a fair trade.” She would help him get out of the woods alive (although she didn’t specify alive, did she?) and he just had to do some manual labor. And if he helped her, then maybe he would be on her good side and she would decide not to kill him.

Without too much difficulty, Zack began digging. The ground was firm from the cold weather, but the shovel the woman had given him was good quality. And while working out, for Zack, wasn’t primarily about getting strong, it did have that by-product. He was only a few spadefuls through the earth when Regan offered to sweeten the deal. But all Zack heard was casket. “Oh, I don’t need anything. I mean, you’re already gonna help me get back to town. That’s enough of a reward.” He really didn’t want to get handed a rotting hand or something.

“This…whatever we’re digging up. The casket. It’s yours, right? I mean. We’re not grave-robbing are we?” Not that he was sure it would be much of a comfort to know that the woman owned a casket and its contents. 

–

“I do try to be fair,” Regan agreed, eyeing his handling of the shovel—firm. Ready. Good. “My compromise skills are exceptional. For example, I believe we should also exchange names, shouldn’t we? I am Regan.” Oh, she was certainly going to tell Jade about this—one of her finest, most lubricated social convergences outside of the morgue or a courtroom. Although, maybe she would exclude the circumstances. Jade didn’t need to know Regan was hauling this particular casket out of the ground. It wasn’t like Jade detailed every bruise and scrape Regan tended to with lips and bandage.

“Why would I be digging up someone else’s casket in the woods?” What an odd question. She drove the shovel down further. “I have only done that in cemeteries.” And rarely. But sometimes cases are reopened. This was the case of Regan Kavanagh. “No,” she said, splitting the soil, harder, again and again, “it’s mine. I needed somewhere to place some of my possessions.” In hindsight, a safety deposit box might have been a more elegant solution, but, “I never could resist a nice burial.”

They were about halfway down. 

“You know why he’s asking, don’t you?” Regan’s hands froze. The shovel mid-dig. “He thinks you’re going to smack him over the head with that thing. Aw, hey now, Linda Blair—what’s wrong? Now you got cold feet? You were fine when it was me.” Regan’s mouth fell open, but she knew she couldn’t openly respond to that. “Here, I’ll give you a hand.” The shovel was yanked from her grip, her fingers still grasping for it. She stumbled forward but caught herself. She was fine. Unhurt.  

The shovel shot spade-first through the air and its sharp, rusty edge would slice right through Zack’s flesh. 

—

There was definitely something strange about the woman, but that was to be expected in Wicked’s Rest. It was considered strange if someone wasn’t a little strange. “Yeah, exchanging names seems like the right thing to do.” Zack briefly remembered the conversation he had had with Rosemary at the Bizarre about giving a fake name, in case you were talking to fae. But he couldn’t remember the finer points, and anyway he knew that he wouldn’t remember whatever fake name he offered. So in the end he just said, “I’m Zack! It’s nice to meet you, Regan.” It wasn’t. That was a lie. Maybe it would have been nice if they weren’t in the middle of the woods, at dark, digging up what apparently was a casket filled with who knows what.

But at least the casket did belong to Regan. That was a relief (?). “Well, if you were a grave-robber, for example. Then you’d be digging up other people’s caskets.” Which. Was apparently a thing that Regan did do, in cemeteries. Okay! Good to know. Maybe Zack could just…hurry this along so he wasn’t caught digging up a grave with a grave-robber, even if in this particular instance they were not grave-robbing. “Well, sure. That makes sense. It must be really secure, right?” Zack didn’t have very many valuable possessions, but he still didn’t think he would resort to burial if he did. Maybe he was just in the wrong tax bracket to know about those things. Maybe all rich people with lots of expensive things buried them in caskets in the middle of the woods.

The work wasn’t too hard. Actually, it was almost nice – repetitive and satisfying. He could get into a good little groove of shoveling the dirt and tossing it over the edge. Maybe he had missed his calling, maybe he should look into groundskeeping as a career. Of course, as soon as Zack had that thought, he misjudged the depth of where he next aimed the spade of his shovel and ended up slipping forward. He had been leaning enough of his weight into the work that he completely lost his balance, tipping into the hole and getting a face full of cold dirt for his trouble. 

There was a clatter nearby that Zack interpreted as Regan trying to help him up. “I’m okay!” he reassured her. Getting back to his feet, he pawed the clods of mud from his face and neck, and down the front of his shirt. “Sorry. I didn’t hit you on my way down, did I?”

—

Zack went down. Something sharp and loud flew from Regan’s mouth, and for a second, she thought it was the sound of the shovel blade whistling through dense tissue. But there was no blood. And the shovel thunked, hitting a tree trunk behind Zack. He had fallen. Tripped, or something. Regan stood there with her jaw hanging wide and her empty hands trembling. 

The Voice filled her ears. “Damn. Maybe my aim would be better if you hadn’t blown my hands off. But sure, yeah, stay just like that. Not like he’s waiting for you to answer him or anything.” He cackled like an aggressive turkey.

Right. Zack. Question. “Stop it. I mean, no. You didn’t…” What had Zack asked? “...do that?” Her eyes widened, the sequence of events hitting her. “Hold on, are you alright? When you fell, did you—I, um, slipped, too. I didn’t see. I am a doctor! If you… yes.” Her stomach clenched against the ache. For better or worse, Zack seemed entirely devoted to digging. They were making good progress. And now Regan had to reclaim her shovel which had inexplicably launched out of her hands and almost killed him.

“Think he can hear me, too? Probably not. You’re the only one who reacts. Lucky you.” 

Regan turned her head—the direction of the voice seemed to be moving. She tracked it. And there, next to Zack, written in the dirt from nothing: DIE.

Regan darted closer, standing over the writing, her thrown shovel conveniently in reach. She grabbed for it and hastily dragged the spade over the message. Nullified it. “I have a better angle over here,” she explained, “for digging, of course.” Her stomach almost bowled her over again. Another DIE popped up next to Zack, chicken scratch on the ground. And another. Another. It surrounded them both.

DIE. DIE. DIE.

—

Zack was relieved to hear he hadn’t taken Regan down with him in his fall. He wasn’t often clumsy, but he did find himself in situations that amped up his clumsiness often enough. Like, for example, digging up a casket in the middle of the night. And then there was that one time that he couldn’t get into Sly’s Slice because he tripped every time he got anywhere near the entrance… He didn’t think this was related, though. He had just positioned himself wrong in relation to the shovel. 

But even if he hadn’t taken Regan with him, she had apparently slipped too. “Oh! Well, are you okay, then?” She looked okay. Certainly cleaner than Zack was, with mud all down his front. She must have caught herself before hitting the dirt. “I didn’t get hurt, really,” he reassured her. “Just dirty. “Nothing that needs a doctor.” He offered her a smile then, adding, “That’s awesome, though! That you’re a doctor. I have a friend in nursing school. What kind of doctor are you?” He was pretty sure there were different kinds, and he was also pretty sure it wasn’t rude to ask what kind someone was. At least, he hoped that was the case.

“Sure, whatever’s easier,” Zack said as Regan moved around in the hole. He got his shovel back in his hands and went to dig, but something in the ground caught his attention first. He squinted in the dim lighting at what looked like words etched in the dirt. “D… L…. F?” he read outloud, uncertain. “Does that stand for something?” The closest thing he knew was DILF, of course, which was flattering but not entirely accurate. “Are you sure this isn’t someone’s grave? Like maybe those are their initials, D.L.F?” Maybe he had the letters wrong – it could be an O instead of a D, OLF? Or was that an E? “Ole?”

— 

“DILF!” Regan said too loudly, “DILF, it says DILF. Do you know about the DILFs?” It was one of many acronyms to which Jade had introduced her. She preferred medical ones. But here she had grasped for the closest option and, unfortunately, in her hand was DILF. She pretended to be interested in the writing Zack was studying. “Why should it be someone’s initials when it is not someone’s grave? I have already said no one is buried h—” Her stomach bent. Oh, for péisteanna sake. Figurative language was the worst. “No body is buried here.”

Jade would have encouraged her, told her she was doing so well with this interaction and the forced lies of omission. Unfortunately, her current company was, instead, the subconsciously created voice of a man she murdered and Zack, who was too fragile in the way all living things were. (Zack was actually real, though, yes?) And this lie of omission included Jade, at least for now. Regan held a hand to her stomach for a moment then resumed her digging. Any minute the spade would hit something hard.

“What’s wrong, Corpse Bride? Tummyache? I’m beginning to think you can’t lie. Not on purpose. Maybe when you realize every word out of your mouth is a lie, you’ll shut the fuck up for good.” The Voice drew closer. Regan’s shoulder broke out in gooseflesh. If she used her death sight there, would she actually see him? She wasn’t risking that right now. The Voice rubbed against her skin. “So where was the lie?” Then in her ear. Regan pushed her head further away. She could smell pickles. “Who’d you bury? Not a body. Is this where you keep all your souvenirs from past kills? I watched a true crime doc once, and the killer—hey, wait a fucking minute, did you steal something from me?”

The handle of her shovel was growing warm and soggy from her hands. Most things she touched did not become soggy; scars did not sweat. Even fewer grew warm. It was a good thing Regan never got stressed. “Leave. Me. Alone! Leave both of us! I do not have time for this. I will never have time for this. I am a very busy and successful person. Leave. Be gone!” Back to whatever part of her cranium he’d been born from. She was not stressed.

Except, well, she’d just spoken words very much outside of that cranium. ”I was talking to a bird,” Regan told Zack (thoughtful in his continued digging). “An owl. They are nocturnal. These woods are overrun with them, actually, all of the owls. There are too many. So sometimes you must… make them leave.” Her stomach lining was tearing like wet paper, leaking sharp acid into her abdominal cavity. 

“Owls? How is that the best you can do? Hope your stomach explodes, by the way. Mine did. Never boring.”

Regan spoke too loud, trying to drown out what were surely her thoughts. “Oh! I did not mean that I am a DILF. A DILF doctor. To your question!” She didn’t hear the Voice in the silence between her sentences. It shut up. So she lowered her voice before Zack’s ears bled. “I am a forensic pathologist. So, you see, I can discern the dead from the DILFs. It is my calling. Tell me about this nurse you know.”

—

DILF! That made sense, at least more sense than OLE. Zack nodded, happy at least that he wouldn’t have to explain what a DILF was to this strange woman. Well, Regan was strange but he found himself enjoying her more and more as time went on. Anyone who knew about DILFs couldn’t be all bad, could they? “Oh yes. I am very familiar with the DILFs. And always hoping to get more familiar, if I’m honest…” Unbidden, Joel came to Zack’s mind. Talk about DILF, even if the D didn’t exactly apply there. It was more a state of being, anyway. Maybe their situation was…strange, to say the least, but that didn’t mean Zack couldn’t still get to know his digging partner. “Do you have a DILF of your own?”

Zack jumped at the sudden exclamation from Regan, whipping his head around. Was there someone there? He hadn’t heard anyone, or seen anything, but he had been pretty focused on the digging. And thinking about Joel, too, if he was honest. When Regan explained that it was a bird, Zack was doubtful only from her tone. It sounded as if she was making up the story on the spot… But then, what other explanation was there? “Oh, I didn’t know that.” He tipped his head up, trying to spot any of the apparently multitude of owls. “I don’t come out to the woods, often. I live on the other side of town and have been hanging out in Netherville more recently. Have you been there? The underground city?” Maybe he could even get some information on his own pet project from Regan. She seemed like the type to know about the weird things of Wicked’s Rest.

A forensic pathologist! Zack felt something calming flood his system. That was why she had dug things up in graveyards before. For work, to investigate. That made a lot more sense. “Well, maybe you can be a DILF, but a Doctor I’d Like to Fuck.” Almost immediately he flushed. “I mean, not that I want to fuck you. I mean, you’re really attractive but I didn’t mean that…” He cleared his throat and hoped that Regan knew what he meant. And if not, they could just change the subject. “Wynne! They were my roommate when I first came to Wicked’s Rest a couple years ago. I had to leave, then, but now I’m back. They’re the best. When they told me they were studying to be a nurse, it made total sense. They’re very caring and really smart. I know they’ll make a great nurse.” In thinking about Wynne, Zack’s brief embarrassment had all but melted away, replaced by a deep, swelling pride for his friend.

—

That was new information to file away: Zack was an aspiring expert on DILFs. Regan preferred to study this cultural phenomena from a distance. “I do not have a DILF. I have a JILF.” That awful, honking cackle filled her ears and she clenched the shovel against it. She stabbed the soil and flung some more dirt aside. Almost there. “I wish you success in your search.”

“The owls are not widely known about,” Regan said, and then she was eternally grateful for the pivot in subject, because her stomach was chewed up enough already. Regan hated it down there, in Netherville. It amplified every sound from her mouth, turned it into even more of a weapon. Fortunately, Dr. Rickers didn’t mind going out to those death scenes; he had grandchildren in the neighborhood. Regan had foisted all but a few scenes onto him. “I try to avoid going down there. Dark, enclosed spaces can be pleasant enough, but I dislike caves. And all that fungus cannot be healthy for the lungs. People were so quick to move down there without even a passing concern about long-term complications… a study really should have been done.” The topic was getting away from her, and she knew it. “What is it that occupies you down there?”

She raised a brow at the doctor DILF comment. “I can be that. I am also a—” Jade hated this. “In some circles, I have been known as a fashion daddy.” She glanced down at her dirtied sweater and uninspired slacks; she could appreciate the irony and, at this point, it was primarily another title she could wield against Siobhan (who was not known as a fashion daddy, the hag). 

“Are you kidding me?” The Voice was almost a screech. Regan tried not to flinch against it. (Not particularly loud, really, anyway.)

Meanwhile, Zack seemed nervous about his words, pausing over his shovel and hiding his face in the nighttime shadows. “I understood what you were saying. You’re attracted to my obvious experience and competence, but one or both of us are too gay, and though you would be receptive to a double DILF, my singular, doctor-variety DILF is not satisfactory.”

Wynne. It should have been a moment of connection, learning that someone passing through your life happens to have a relationship with someone much closer to you. To an extent, it was; it humanized Zack in a way Regan found disquieting, in a way she preferred to reserve for the dead and select, living few. But it was also tinged, infected. What information did Zack and Wynne know, would they exchange it, was she forgetting something, would they judge, would it strip something away from Regan, did she have to trust? And what did it say about her that her first instinct was triage, not community? “I know Wynne. They are like no one else I have met, and they are going to make a fantastic nurse someday. One of the best.” Nurses held the compassion doctors failed to deliver on. It flowed freely from Wynne; Regan could still feel it on her skin sometimes when she thought of the lakes—Moosehead and Saol Eile both. “If you and Wynne are close, then I suppose you arrive to me validated, in a sense.”

Her shovel hit something hard, and Regan heard the dull, hollow thud of metal against tough casket wood. Mahogany. “The casket,” she said, turning to Zack. The dirt was piled high around them now. “Step over to this half. We only need to unlatch the bottom, and I should be able to get everything out.” She dug off some of the last of the thin layer of dirt, revealing the wood underneath.

But then her shovel fought her, an icy grip tightening on the blade. Regan gripped the handle harder, and the blade whirled around, once again threatening to slice through Zack. She fell back with it, head hitting the wall of moist dirt. It burned her eyes. The metal end of the shovel just missed Zack.

“How is it fair?” From honk to roaring howl. “I was a good person! Sure I wasn’t perfect, but no one is, and I was better than most! And then you—you freakish manipulative little bitch—decide to kill me and now you’re standing here claiming to be a fashion daddy and a JILF—whatever the fuck that is—and I’m fucking dead!”

Regan froze. This specificity and intensity was rare for the Voice. Or she had been able to muffle it out better before. Now it rang loud and clear and pubic, and she dropped her shovel because the dirt under her fingernails might have been blood.

“No!” he wailed, “this is your grave!”

And the Voice slammed into Zack.

—

Zack was having trouble parsing just what a JILF might be – Jewish person I’d like to fuck? Jester? Journalist, maybe? But he thought it might be rude to ask and instead settled for just congratulating Regan for her partner, whatever J-noun they might be, and for being a fashion daddy herself. Which, Zack wasn’t here to police how anyone self-identified, but he wasn’t really getting fashion from her… But maybe that was just because she didn’t wear her best outfits when digging up caskets in the woods in the middle of the night. That seemed sensible, even if burying things in a casket in the woods didn’t.

When she mentioned a study being done about the underground city, he wondered if Regan and Henri might be friends. They should be, if not, he thought. They could work together to conduct a study about the tunnels and their effects and all the science of Netherville. However, he stayed quiet about his interest in the area once Regan voiced her ambivalence about it. He didn’t need another lecture on why he should keep away and it was clear he wasn’t going to gain any insight about the strange phenomena from her. When the topic changed to Wynne, though, Zack lit up.

“They’re the absolute best!” he agreed enthusiastically, happy to have met someone who felt the same way about his friend. A small bead of warmth burrowed inside him as he thought about Wynne, about other people liking them and seeing them for the ray of positivity and goodness they were. “We are! Or, at least, we were close. I moved away, for some time, and so we drifted but we’re getting back into the swing of things.” Zack hoped, at least, that their friendship could be mounted back to what it had once been.

Regan directed where he should step and he carefully followed her instructions even as a wave of fear rose in his chest. She had promised that there wasn’t a person buried in the casket but Zack still imagined coming face-to-foot with a half-rotten corpse when they opened the thing. “What did you say you’re storing down here?” He looked up after posing that question, luckily, and saw the flash of the shovel’s spade coming right for his head. Dodging it just in time, he threw himself back against the corner of the hole they had dug, once again skimming through the dirt. “Hey, are you–” Before Zack could finish checking in on Regan, something terrible and cold hit him with the concussive force of a freight train moving through him. It sucked the breath from his lungs and, very suddenly, everything was cold and black.

When he rose, there was an eerie grin on his face, eyes unblinking and set on Regan. The happy-go-lucky expression that had largely dominated his face for their time together had shifted to something sharper, something colder. “Hello there, Tim Burton Barbie. Long time, no see. At least, in the flesh. And what flesh I have!” Here, one of Zack’s hands raised before his eyes, as if he were entranced by the musculature of his own arm.

And then, he lurched forward at Regan. His movements were jerky and uncoordinated, as if relearning how to have a body, so he didn’t so much attack her as he did just fall over her. His hands wheeled, attempting to land a blow as he battled against their cramped quarters and the dirt that was sliding in over them from the dug-out sides.

—

Regan smelled pickles. Cold, briny pickles leaking from Zack’s pores like he was a broken jar, smashed open when he’d shot backwards. “Zack!” He had fallen, badly. That was all. But Regan’s lungs tightened, braced, because she knew exactly who usually spewed that stench. Pickles always came with derision. How was the storage room? How many pennies did that ring cost? You didn’t want that bone, did you? 

But Richard Pubik was not here. “Zack. Hey, are you…” Regan stood by him and tried to catch his eyes, but they were swimming with disorientation. Syncope? Shock? Zack was hunched, head down, hand against the cool dirt, spine shuddering with each breath. And then he went still. Regan reached for his shoulder; the medical nature of what was happening bypassed the spasm in her lungs. “Zack, I want you to stay down. I believe you have overexerted yourself. You are likely dehydrated. I should have offered you water.” She touched the sleeve of his shirt, just her fingertips.

He looked at her. Into her, puncturing body and glamour. His pupils went feverish and pinpricked, his face strange. The expression stretched beneath Zack’s skin did not belong to Zack. His voice even less. Regan pulled her hand away. “I don’t understand. Tim… who?” And why did it sound like he was calling her a name, spitting it with venom? 

This was not right. The dirt looming over them on all sides was ready to collapse with her lungs. Her vertebrae were practically jabbing through her flesh. “Zack…?” Regan tried again; she didn’t want to reach out a second time. “Zack?” But Zack didn’t respond because Zack was not there. Which—no, now wasn’t the time to consider the DSM. Not-Zack flexed his hands in front of his face like they were novel appendages, and the truth burned through Regan’s bowels. Because she knew—somewhere buried in her hindbrain, she knew. 

Zack’s weight smacked down on her, and the scream surged up her throat. Regan bit down hard, clamping it in. She hit the casket sideways, hip no doubt bruising. The shovel dropped next to her with a clang on the wood. Her teeth rattled in their sockets. She couldn’t scream. Would not blow another life to pieces. Her voice was tight and half-swallowed and she crawled to her knees, which bumped against the hard mahogany. “Get off—what are you doing? Away! Now!” He grabbed for her wrist, but he was unsteady, almost inebriated in his movement. His hand closed on nothing. Regan scrambled for her shovel, clammy handle back in her fingers, and thrusted it between the two of them.

She didn’t have to be a banshee to understand that Zack’s body, if not Zack, was trying to kill her.

An animal, she could destroy. Slam her hands down on its flank and scream it to bloody slush. A vampire, she’d do whatever was necessary to keep it away from Jade’s throat. Drive a wooden stake through the intercostals, between the second and fifth rib. A human—she’d already killed one human and could hardly live with it. She wasn’t going to put Zack at risk. She had done enough of that already. Regan squirmed further back on the casket, Zack’s steps jerky and wrong as he encroached in the small space. Do no harm do no harm. Regan had been about to kick him backward but her leg froze, breath stalled. Do no harm. This was going to be the death of her. And maybe that was ri—

He was nearing again, hands tearing through the shrinking space between them as he penned her into the grave’s shadows. Pickles smogged over her face. She couldn’t stop her voice from piercing. “W—wake up! You are not yourself. You’re acting like—like Richard Pubik. Who I doubt you even knew.” Her teeth hurt and her lips were numb. “Just like him…” Maybe she was approaching this incorrectly. “But you can’t be. So I don’t—we can discuss this. If you sit down on that side. I will sit here. And will discuss—get away now, Zack. I don’t know if I can keep—” Her throat burned. Probably still not the correct approach. Because Zack’s body didn’t stop. Regan tried to push him away with the length of the shovel, wood vibrating in her hands. She again swallowed that pressure back before it exploded out of her. “I really—I don’t want to hurt you.” 

She didn’t think she could.

—

Zack’s mouth twisted into a cruel smirk, taunting Regan as she stammered and struggled to get away. “God, you’re like an alien.” Regan may not know Zack well, but the tessellation of his features looked wrong on his face, almost inhumanly so. Even the diction, the way the teeth bit down over syllables, were ill-fitting for the man. “I’m not acting like him, Princess. I am him. This is Richard Pubik, coming at you live.” 

But it wasn’t live, thankfully. Zack was alive and Richard Pubik was not. Pubik was also not very strong, not when Zack was clawing to get back to the surface of his own consciousness. Because he knew that his powers were dangerous, and he knew it down into his bones, sunk deep in the marrow. He wouldn’t hurt anyone, wouldn’t allow that, and so he would fight tooth and nail to control those abilities. Which meant keeping a hold on his body. 

Just as he had taken Zack’s body, Pubik left it with a gasp – a sound like a drain emptying rapidly and then Zack was blinking back to reality. The situation came back to him in strobes: he was crouched over Regan, terribly, had been clawing at her, her face looked terrified. His first thought was She must be so scared. He had done that, made her scared. Of course he had: he was a big guy and they were alone in the middle of the woods. He could have done anything to her. “I’m sorry!” Zack pushed himself back, stumbling in his haste and winding up collapsed at the other end of the grave he and Regan had dug together. “God, I’m so sorry. I don’t really know what happened.” 

Flashes that didn’t make sense but most of it with a dim veil cast over it. He just knew that he hadn’t been himself for a moment (longer? How long had it been?) and that he had tried to attack Regan in that moment. Had terrorized her, at least. Zack had heard those final words, just as he had come to, from Regan. I don’t want to hurt you. “I didn’t hurt you, did I? I didn’t mean to, really…” One of his hand floated up to claw through his short hair, now clammy with sweat in the cold night. He dug his heels into the dirt and shoved himself even further back, to give Regan more space. Anything he could to make her feel safer.

“Are you okay?”

—

It was Pubik. His voice, his words, his mockeries. How many times had he compared her to an alien? Regan had to look up some of his references (tommyknocker? xenomorph?) but they all amounted to the same thing. She should have flushed with danger, the smell of pickles prickling, but it was self-consciousness that filled her too. Was she holding herself in a human way? Regan didn’t dare remove her eyes from not-Zack’s face, but she tensed and tested each uncompliant muscle. She couldn’t crawl back. She tried to twist her body away from him, but his grin loomed over her. Her lip quavered; she couldn’t force her face into something defiant. Stupid. Pathetic. “That’s impossible...” Jade would have disagreed. “You were—I held your intestines. Your last meal was spattered across my knees. Strips of your skin fell into my drain when I—”

Her breathing raced ahead of her ability to form words. They came strangled. She was losing control of her voice, which—that was how this happened in the first place. “I tried—they didn’t believe me—I tried to turn myself—please—” It came out wetter than the soil that should have filled her mouth. Regan tried to bite back some of that seeping. It was coming from too many orifices, and Jade wasn’t there to—what would her grandmother have thought? She was lying here with a human ready to strangle her on top of a casket. A casket full of legacy. Leanbh leanbh leanbh. 

She couldn’t make anything right if she died here. And the scream behind her sternum was for all that wetness, not her life. She wouldn’t die here. And neither would Zack. More importantly neither would Zack.

Regan’s hands slid along the side of the casket. There should have been a latch there. Somewh—there. Her fingers found it and fumbled. No good. She was crouched on the panel that needed to be flung open. Regan took a deep breath and pushed back against the wall of dirt, her heels finding purchase, feet off the casket. It freed the panel. With a burst of dirt and dust, Regan flung it open. There, swaddled in silk cushioning, were eight buried years of her life. Everything she’d been digging toward when she would have preferred to pile more dirt on it. The journals and books were most important. But they were not what Regan lunged for.

In half a second, Regan had a dagger between herself and not-Zack. Lethally sharp, her palms would agree. It was partially wrapped in cloth, and she unrolled it with an unsteady hand, her eyes never leaving the cruelty of his face.

And then Zack was scrambling back like an animal in a trap, limbs flailing. Regan jolted back and to her clumsy feet at the same time before realizing he was moving away, not closer. And there was something—the grin was gone. In its place was an open, gasping mouth. He was apologizing. He had no idea what happened. Regan believed him, cause aside.

“Are you okay?”

Regan spat a mouthful of metallic dirt onto the wood at her feet. She could still taste it. The voice was different again, more voice than Voice, but Pubik had lied to her more times than she could count. It was how she ended up locked in the storage room and completing tasks that did not need completing and, on one occasion, nearly got electrocuted. But Zack looked afraid, his eyes shiny and wide, and the only thing she’d never seen Pubik fake was emotion. She thought better of taking a step closer. “I should be asking you that. I…” she brushed dirt off her shirt, which was senseless; it was covered. “You almost—he almost—” 

She would not have harmed Zack’s body, and she knew it.

“It wasn’t you…” The knife shook in her hands, and she half-expected to hear mockery in her ears, or maybe over her shoulder. Nothing came. That also made sense; the Voice seemed to enjoy blowing things up and then leaving her covered in shrapnel. It wasn’t Pubik’s voice she heard. Steady your leanbh hands—even your father offered more than a trembling scream. Her fingers cramped around the hilt, though she lowered it. Zack probably wasn’t the threat here, but that didn’t change what needed to happen. “You should leave. Now.” Birds scattered at the last word, cawing at her pitch. “You should leave.”

—

Indecision twisted in Zack’s gut – but at least it wasn’t a knife. The knife that Regan now held. He didn’t blame her for brandishing a weapon on him, not when he couldn’t even remember what he had done to her, said her. He just didn’t know where it had come from. Regan lowered the knife, hands shaking, but that didn’t change the fact that she was armed and afraid he was vulnerable. He could probably overpower her, if need be, but they were in a small space, slick with mud, and Zack was just as shaken as she was. It wasn’t worth it, to risk it.

Still, though, he hesitated to leave her alone. Call him a chauvinist or misogynist, but Regan was a woman, alone, in the woods in the middle of the night. And she had gone through some terror (he had put her through some terror). He shouldn’t leave her alone here. He should make her put down the knife and then help her out of this pit and make sure she got home safely. Grave dirt fell into his eyes from his hair and the rustle of bird feathers above him only solidified how bad this situation actually was. Zack was not a hero, he never had been. He had run from the house fire he started and he had run from Wicked’s Rest a few years back and, as moonlight glinted off the edge of Regan’s blade, he knew he was going to run then.

When Kelly had appeared injured directly before magic had come back online, Zack had to admit that it pinged at his antennae. Not that there was anything bad or malicious about Kelly, but just that he maybe wasn’t a totally normal human with no concept of the magic and mayhem that was contained in Wicked’s Rest. (Actually, if he had been involved in whatever brought magic back, Zack supposed that made them unwitting allies, really.) Which had brought him to that conversation he had had so long ago with Emilio. His friend was right, Zack could admit as much, that he didn’t really know anything about Kelly.

But he did trust the other man. How could he not? After he had rescued Zack, and offered him a place in his own home to stay, after he had seen how Kelly was with Flip, with Giselle and Lia before– Well. Whatever the man might be, even if it was just a human who knew about the supernatural, Zack was confident that he was still a good man. And he wasn’t angry that Kelly hadn’t shared any further information with him. After all, Zack hadn’t told Kelly anything about his efforts to fix magic, or why magic mattered to him, even.

(Part of him thought Kelly would be cool with it. Another part of him recognized that a pyromancer might be the natural enemy of a firefighter.)

Despite all that mental work that Zack had done, Emilio was apparently still inordinately suspicious of the man who had offered Zack his poolhouse. At least, that’s what Zack assumed was the cause when he found the private investigator lurking just on the edge of Kelly’s landscaped hedges. 

He had been trying to stay out of the way, while also making himself available should Kelly need help while laid up. The other man had assured him he didn’t need anything, though, so Zack was doing more of the “stay out of the way” and heading for a coffee shop. Which is where he found Emilio. “Dude!” His eyes darted around to ensure they were alone. Even when he saw they were, Zack still spoke in an undertone. “What the fuck are you doing here? You can’t just, like…trespass. Are you looking for me?”

—

He got restless, sometimes. He wasn’t really sure what caused it, wasn’t sure the reason behind the fact that his fingers twitched and his eyes darted back and forth in search of some threat he couldn’t see. It had gotten worse as of late, become the sort of thing that was utterly impossible for Emilio to ignore no matter how much he wanted to. He got restless, sometimes, and lately sometimes had become more like all of the time. 

He didn’t distrust Kelly, though he had when Zack had first admitted to living with some random stranger who’d helped him out after his apartment caught fire. Knowing what he knew now — that Zack was living with a hunter, that the hunter was one Emilio generally thought was all right — should have comforted him a little. But… there were still questions swirling somewhere in the back of his mind. Questions like… how much had either of the men thought this through? How well protected was Zack, living with someone who might have a list of enemies as long as Emilio’s arm? Now that magic was back, how well protected was Kelly, if Zack’s control was still as slippery as it had been before? 

It wasn’t entirely a conscious thing, going to the house. It wasn’t really something he’d planned in advance, wasn’t something he put a lot of thought into. He was in the neighborhood, so to speak. He hadn’t even intentionally moved into Kelly’s yard to poke around, it just… happened. That kind of thing was more common these days, his body moving before his mind caught up with what it was doing. One moment he was in the street, walking towards home, and the next he was in Kelly’s yard, poking around the perimeter of the pool house. Paranoia was funny like that; it steered the ship without him even realizing.

Zack’s voice pulled him from his thoughts, and Emilio blinked a little, turning towards the sound. “I don’t know what this word means. Trespass,” he said, drawing out the syllables as though they were unfamiliar to him. It was a lie, of course. He knew what trespassing was; he knew he was doing it. But he’d learned that you could get away with things sometimes if you pretended not to understand them. The language barrier that often left him confused could be used to his advantage occasionally, and he wouldn’t hesitate to jump at the chance to make it so, even if it was only getting him out of being scolded. “I’m not looking for you. I’m just looking. There’s a gap between the bushes and the windows, you know.” He nodded to it. “Someone could get in.”

—

Zack’s brow furrowed as he tried to determine whether Emilio was telling the truth. He didn’t want to offend his friend (Is that what he was? Could he still call them friends?) on the basis of his language skills. But he was also pretty sure that a private investigator would have learned the word trespass. Zack didn’t believe the other blatant lie, that Emilio was “just looking,” either. Of course Emilio had come here to try and dig up some dirt on Kelly. “Don’t do that, man. I’m not an idiot. I know you know what ‘trespass’ means, and I know you know that you’re doing it right now.” Even on the off-chance that Emilio didn’t know the word, he definitely knew he wasn’t allowed to hide in people’s bushes. 

The gap that Emilio pointed out didn’t look all that dangerous to Zack, but he still made a mental note of it. If it were really a problem, Kelly would take care of it. The guy definitely had some kind of security system on his property, even though Zack wasn’t aware of the finer points. He just hoped there weren’t any cameras, and if there were, he hoped they weren’t pointed at his corner. “I told you, you don’t need to worry about Kelly, or the house. Especially not with magic back online.” Zack could once again perform spells and protect himself. Sure, he wasn’t the most skilled spellcaster yet, but he was learning! And improving. And he didn’t actually believe that Kelly was a real threat.

This was all discounting the fact that Emilio had been avoiding Zack since he came back to Maine – one of the only conversations they had had was Emilio giving him shit for moving into the poolhouse. When Zack tried to express a similar kind of concern for Emilio sleeping with the worst people he could find, the other man hadn’t just told him he didn’t need to worry, he told Zack to fuck off in no uncertain terms.

“Look, I don’t get why you even care. You’ve basically been avoiding me since I came back. Which, whatever. You don’t have to be my friend. But you don’t get to do that and then…try and spy on the property I’m living on.” The more he spoke, the more righteous and angry he felt. “There’s a kid here, man. He’ll get scared if he sees some random man in the backyard. And if Kelly sees you, he’ll call the cops.”

—

The usual out didn’t work on Zack, probably because he knew Emilio decently well. He, at the very least, knew Emilio well enough to know that this was far from the first time he’d been accused of trespassing in English. Emilio only shrugged, unapologetic even though he knew he’d been caught. If pressed, he wasn’t even sure he’d be able to tell Zack why he was trespassing. He knew Kelly was no threat to his friend (was Zack still his friend?), knew he didn’t really need to worry. And yet, the worry gnawed at him. It sunk its teeth deep into his chest, chewed at the meat of him. He wanted to take action, even if he didn’t know what action he wanted to take. He wanted to defend, even if there was nothing that needed defending. He wanted a purpose, but he’d lost it a long time ago.

“Magic is back online, but would you really use it to defend yourself?” He’d seen Zack set fire to vampires who’d posed a threat to himself and his friends, but he couldn’t fathom the man using the same abilities against someone he liked who betrayed him. He wasn’t even sure he could say with confidence that Zack would have used his abilities the same had it only been him threatened by those vampires, or if he’d been more in control of what he was doing. Zack, Emilio thought, wasn’t the kind of person who wanted to hurt anyone. He was a good person, and good people suffered in this town. Emilio had seen it.

He all but flinched when Zack said he didn’t know why Emilio would care about this, hand faltering where he was inspecting the leaves of the bush by the window. He had been avoiding Zack, sure, but only because he had been avoiding everyone. It had only gotten worse since his last encounter with Eve; he barely let anyone come over at all now, barely accepted visits from even the people he wanted to see. It was better this way, of course. It was better if Zack thought Emilio didn’t see him as a friend; it meant he’d steer clear, which meant he’d be safer.

That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt just a little.

“I know there’s a baby here,” he snapped, the words coming out far harsher than he meant for them to. His eyes darted to the main house, mind conjuring up a living room that didn’t belong between those four walls. “There’s too much space between the bush and the window,” he said again. “Someone could get in. That’s bad for the baby, too.” He looked back to Zack, scoffing a little. “He’s not going to call the cops. Just — I need to look around.”

—

Would he? It was a matter of fact that Zack hadn’t learned any offensive magic. He was sure it existed – after all, his early, accidental uses of his fire magic had been destructive. Surely there was magic that could mimic bullets, or sickness. Even the simple levitation that he had mastered with Rosemary could be used to toss a body around… He would ask the necromancer about it. Even if he knew it was something he never wanted to wield, it couldn’t hurt to be educated. Especially if he ever had to defend himself against such an attack. “I would use it to protect myself,” he clarified, feeling like an asshole for the distinction. But it was a real one. A spell, or enchanted item, to keep himself and Kelly and Flip safe, that felt more in the realm of Zack’s wheelhouse.

But speaking of defensive, Zack suddenly got it. Unwarranted, as Emilio hadn’t questioned his magical prowess but he still felt the need to tell him, “I’ve been getting a lot better with it. Magic. A friend who really knows her stuff has been helping me. There was a whole world that I didn’t know before, but I’m learning.” If his first foray in Maine had been defined by learning and coming to terms with what he was, this second was all about coming fully into his own as a spellcaster. Learning the things he didn’t even know existed for him not to know. At any rate, he was confident enough in his abilities that he thought he could handle a protection charm around the house, or at least the doors and windows, something he could handle.

Emilio’s retort had Zack reeling back, both hurt and confused. “How do you know that?” Maybe this wasn’t the first time he had come to observe around Kelly’s house. Maybe he had seen one of them leaving or returning with Flip in tow. …Or maybe Zack had mentioned it in one of their conversations online. That was more likely. Incredibly likely, actually, and something he should work on. It was probably fine, but there was a chance Kelly didn’t want every random person Zack conversed with to know that he had a toddler around. 

Again, Zack tried to appraise the area that Emilio had drawn attention to, tried to see the issue that he saw. Staying with Kelly was the first time he was living in a proper house with land and bushes, since he left home in Virginia – and he had only been a stupid teenager then. He wouldn’t know what he was looking for, if it were really there. “Okay. I’ll let Kelly know. He’ll take care of it.” That much was true. One of the first things Zack had learned about his landlord roommate friend was that he would do anything to keep Flip happy and safe. If that meant digging up and replanting a bush? No problem.

“He absolutely will. He doesn’t mess around about safety. And what do you even mean you need to look around? Why? I just told you, I’m fine on my own. Between Kelly and me, we can keep this place protected.” Zack did doubt that Kelly was an entirely unwitting human (not that he was going to tell Emilio that), but even if he were, Zack knew enough to know what to be on the look out for.

“We don’t need your help. We don’t need you.” It felt too harsh when the words were gathering on his tongue, and it felt too harsh once they had landed between them, but Zack couldn’t stop himself. Emilio had apparently hurt him enough to warrant him lashing out. 

— 

Emilio shot Zack a dubious look, uncertain as to whether or not he believed Zack. The spellcaster was capable enough — Emilio had seen that when the guy had been burning up vampires, even if he himself had been half-panicked at the time — but he was soft. He was the kind of person who didn’t like hurting people, the kind of person who looked at the world and mapped out a path where he could do the least amount of damage possible. There might have been a time, back in his youth, when Emilio would have considered this a bad thing. When he was still trying to impress his mother at every turn, when her approval had meant so much more to him than his own life, soft was the worst thing a person could be. The word had been hurled at him like a sharpened knife, had dug into his skin. Even now, he’d flinch if someone threw it in his direction. But… he didn’t think it was such a bad thing when it was about Zack. Like with most things, Emilio was more than capable of seeing the term as something decent so long as it was about someone else. 

In this case, though, it meant that Zack needed someone who would do the dirty work. If he couldn’t use magic to defend — or protect, as he said — himself without feeling badly about it later, Emilio would make sure he didn’t have to. He would make sure the windows were secure, make sure the locks held up under scrutiny, make sure Zack wasn’t put in the position where he needed to do something that would haunt him. Make sure Kelly didn’t have to, either, make sure Flip got to grow up. And give himself something to do, too. Emilio was at his most content when he was of use to someone. He thought he could be of use here, even if his help wasn’t necessarily wanted. 

“I know you’re learning,” he said, softening just a little. “That’s not — I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, a little frustrated. He rubbed at the back of his neck, failing (as he frequently tended to do) to find the right words to communicate what he really meant. Zack was physically capable, sure. He had magic, and he was learning how to use it properly. But he shouldn’t have to use it in ways that would haunt him later. Emilio didn’t want him to look as he’d looked in that barn — haunted and terrified. If he were better at any of this, better at being a person, he’d have found a way to say that. As it was, he just stood awkwardly, balancing his weight on his good leg and not meeting the spellcaster’s eyes.

He shifted a little when Zack questioned how he knew that a kid lived here, uncertain whether or not he should admit his own connection to Kelly. Deciding it was better not to muddy the waters, he replied, “You told me,” which he thought was true, even if it wasn’t the whole truth. He was pretty sure he remembered Zack mentioning that the person he was living with had a child, though at the time Emilio hadn’t known Kelly well enough for that to be a thing that soothed him. (Bad people could have children, too, could love them. Emilio figured he was proof enough of that.) 

Of course, now that he knew Kelly, he was a little satiated by the idea of the ranger being informed of the issue with the bushes. Kelly could more than take care of himself, and could probably take care of Zack, too. But Emilio had been a capable hunter, too. So had Rosa, and Edgar, and their mother. And they all died, anyway. Flora and Jaime both died anyway, and Juliana. Being capable didn’t mean you were impervious to attack. It didn’t mean you were invincible, didn’t mean no one could come into your house and slaughter your children in the living room. Anxiety crawled beneath his skin like ants, whispering with the utmost certainty that if he did not ensure the perimeter was safe, something terrible would breach it. 

“I just… need to look around,” he mumbled, well aware that repeating the same thing offered no real explanation. But what explanation could he give? He couldn’t explain to Zack the way his palms itched with something he couldn’t name, couldn’t put to words the quiet desire to ensure that nothing could go wrong. He couldn’t even explain it to himself, and there was so much about Emilio that Zack still didn’t know. He knew nothing of Flora, whose father hadn’t ‘messed around on safety’ either, but who had still died on the floor of her own home, just a room away from the one she’d been born in. Zack didn’t know of Emilio’s own death, either, didn’t know that the moment he’d started feeling safe again, the world had reminded him that he wasn’t. 

Zack’s voice pulled Emilio from his thoughts, and he found himself flinching at the harshness of the words. We don’t need you. For a moment, Emilio stood stock-still, taut as a rubber band about to snap. He held his breath, waited for his lungs to burn even though he knew they wouldn’t. Then, his finger twitched, and his eyes darted down as if a spell had been broken. “I need to check the other window,” he said abruptly, moving past Zack as if he’d said nothing at all.

—

Emilio hadn’t meant it like that, as a slight against his own magic ability. But Zack had taken it like that. He knew that was his own stuff crowded in on what Emilio had actually said. It wasn’t fair to leap to being defensive quite so quickly as Zack had. Clearly he hadn’t yet worked through the years he spent not understanding what was happening to him, inside him. There were still the scars, somewhere, of what had happened the last time in Wicked’s Rest when he would wake up from nightmares with smoke already rising.

“Well. I am. I’m learning and I’m getting pretty good at it.” He didn’t offer the information that Rosemary had even started asking for his help for certain spells and things. Only because, really, her specialty was so niche that sometimes the more basic magic tripped her up when she was used to bringing people back from the dead and all that. But it was still a mark toward how much Zack had improved. What he was able to do. He could help those around him, his magic could be something more than just a liability. “So I could protect us all with it, if it came to that.” (Could you? something inside Zack whispered. Would he ever be able to trust himself and his magic enough to be able to try? What if he was overconfident and wrong? What if he hurt Kelly, or Flip?)

Zack had mentioned Flip to Emilio, which he was regretting. Not because of Emilio, not really, but more the general fear of being too free with information about someone else. He trusted Emilio but that wouldn’t mean anything to Kelly, he didn’t think. If there was one thing Kelly took deadly seriously it was Flip’s safety. Something like guilt pooled through Zack’s veins and he resolved to be much more careful about how he spoke about Kelly and Flip. 

“Tell me why,” Zack demanded when Emilio wouldn’t offer any further explanation. An edge of anxiety worked its way into Zack’s chest as he worried about what the other man might know. Why was he suddenly preoccupied with the safety of this house – this house that was secluded and secured and had two grown adult men living on the premises. Why wasn’t that enough for Emilio? Did he know about some danger, some possible threat, that Zack didn’t know about? “Is something going on? Or is something going to happen?” 

His mind went to those surges that had ravaged the town a few months back. Hours at a time of magic blanking out and fae, shifters, and undead running rampant. Kelly had only been in town for one of those, Zack thought, and while it was the worst one (twenty-four full hours of whatever the hell had happened, happening) there hadn’t been another since. And they fixed magic. They fixed it all, all their friends and everyone in town was supposed to be safe now. But Emilio was here, checking windows, so maybe there was something else looming around the corner.

“You have to tell me,” he pressed, getting in Emilio’s path to block him again. “If something is going to happen, you have to tell me.”

—

He’d never been very good at explaining himself. Even in Spanish, he struggled to find the right words to communicate the things that went on inside his head. It was as if the proper terms were things no one had ever thought to invent, as if whatever was wrong with Emilio was so wholly unique that whoever came up with language hadn’t thought it necessary to set aside things to describe what caught him by the throat and hung him out to dry on a daily basis. He couldn’t tell Zack what he meant; he couldn’t even explain it to himself, couldn’t even phrase it as something that made sense to him, and he was the one who felt it. Language failed him, because it always did. The failure set off a chain reaction, because it always did. He said the wrong thing, Zack took it the wrong way, and the sound of the dominoes falling against one another was so loud that it was hard to make out anything else.

Frustration built in his gut, clawing its way to the empty spot in his chest as if it meant to replace the heart he’d lost. “Could is not the same as would,” he said. “And I want — I don’t want you to have to — It isn’t…” He trailed off, grunting out some of that quiet frustration. He didn’t want Zack to have to hurt anyone. He didn’t want Zack to look down at his hands and see them stained with red. He didn’t want Kelly to know what it was to see your kid crumpled against the wall of the living room, didn’t want Flip to experience the horror of seeing what someone who loved you might do to keep you safe. But he couldn’t put any of that to words, and he wouldn’t have even if he could. He didn’t know if his knowing Kelly was meant to be a secret, didn’t know if Kelly wanted Zack to be aware of it or not. He definitely didn’t want to say anything that might allow the spellcaster to gather that Kelly was a ranger, though he knew Zack could be trusted with the information if Kelly chose to share it. But it ought to be Kelly’s choice. Absently, Emilio rubbed at his chest. He knew all too well what it was to have that particular choice — the one you got to make about who knew what you were — taken away.

Of course, Zack would not accept the half truths that were the only thing Emilio knew how to offer. He demanded more of an explanation, blocked Emilio’s path in a way that would have made his heart stutter and pound if he’d still had one, if it still beat at all. He felt something cold at the back of his neck, some primal dread. His mind screamed about danger that didn’t exist, warned him of threats that were not there. He grit his teeth against it, tried to push it away. But Zack asked again, demanded again, and the dread grew teeth that sunk into his spine.

“Something always happens!” He snapped, louder than he meant to be. “There is always something going on! You are sitting in your house, or in someone else’s house, and you think things are fine, and then it’s — It isn’t safe. Maybe things are fixed right now, in the town, but this means nothing. It means nothing, Zack. Even when things are good, something can happen. There is too much room between the bush and the window and someone could get in, and — and then what? You kill them? What’s that do to you? Or — or they come in, and you’re in the other room grabbing something, and the kid — There’s a kid here. And someone could get in, and get to her in the fucking living room, and…” He trailed off, reaching up to push his hair back in quiet frustration. If he noticed his slip-up — her instead of him, the wrong kid stuck forever in the forefront of his mind — he made no indication of it. Instead, he put a careful hand on Zack’s shoulder, moving him gently out of his path. “I need to check the other window,” he repeated again, a hint of urgency in his tone. “The door, maybe. The roof. The main house, too.”

—

“What’s that supposed to mean?” That Zack wouldn’t use his powers to protect himself, and Kelly and Flip. Why wouldn’t he? Where did Emilio even get off making those kinds of assumptions about him? He had only seen him use his magic once, in that awful firestorm at the barn. He had no idea all that Zack had been doing since coming back to Wicked’s Rest, and before that even. That was the whole point of Zack’s objection, wasn’t it? Emilio didn’t have any claim to who Zack was or where he lived or how he did or didn’t protect himself. He had lost that right in the moment he shoved him away in that dive bar. “You don’t even know what I’m capable of doing. You don’t know.” 

He could weave a protection spell around this house. Zack was sure of it. It would take some more studying, some practice, help from Rosemary, sure. But he was confident that he could get there. And there was no reason why he wouldn’t, if he could. He wanted to protect himself, and Kelly and Flip. He wanted, desperately, for his magic to be something good. To be something other than that destructive force it had always been, swirling in his chest, since he was a teenager. Emilio didn’t want him to have to defend himself but he didn’t understand that it wasn’t a burden to be able to do so. 

Emilio had always been able to protect himself. He wouldn’t understand.

The outburst was unexpected, though maybe it shouldn’t have been. He had been prone to anger with Zack since his return. Why would this encounter be any different? “That’s why I want to get a protection spell, okay? Because then I don’t have to worry about accounting for every possible thing that could happen. It’ll just…protect all of us inside.” Then it wouldn’t matter how far the bushes were from the windows or whether a stray vampire came looking for blood. His magic would keep them safe. 

But, as Emilio went on, Zack realized this wasn’t exactly about the layout of the landscaping. “Him,” he corrected, gently. This wasn’t about Zack, then. It wasn’t about Zack or Kelly or Flip or the shifts in magic or maybe anything that made Wicked’s Rest its own special kind of danger. This wasn’t about Zack’s ability to protect himself, but rather Emilio’s frantic need to protect everyone around him lest something happened and it would be his fault. He still held a deep well of guilt for all that had happened in that barn, for the fact that he hadn’t saved them all sooner. 

“Okay,” Zack soothed, letting Emilio move him. “Okay. We can check the windows and the doors. I don’t know if we can get on the roof but. Whatever we can reach, we can check. Okay?” If that’s what would calm his friend, make him feel better, then okay. Zack would help him through the inspection.

—

“You don’t want to hurt anyone,” Emilio replied, and he thought it was true. Zack was capable of hurting people, sure. Emilio had seen it, had watched fire eat through dead flesh and turn vampires into ash in the barn, had smelled the smoke that rose up after. Zack was plenty capable, but there was a difference, wasn’t there? There was a line between what a person was capable of doing and what they could live with after. Zack left town just after Emilio pulled him out of that basement, the smell of smoke and burnt flesh wafting behind him as he did so. Something like that left a mark on you, beat into you until it reshaped who and what you were. Zack could take care of himself. That didn’t mean he should have had to, didn’t mean he should have been expected to. 

It was what Emilio was for, wasn’t it? His uncle told him once that hunters were a line of defense not just to protect humans from harm, but to prevent them from having to do things that they may not have been able to live with. To a slayer, it was obvious that something dead and walking needed to be put down like a rabid dog. But to a human who had not been raised the same way? The monster with the still heart and gnashing teeth was their mother, their brother, their friend. Killing a thing that wore the face of someone you’d once loved could ruin a person; killing something that your brain insisted must have been human even when you knew they weren’t could do just the same. It was a hunter’s job, in part, to make sure it never came to that, to bear the weight so that they didn’t have to. And Emilio wasn’t a hunter anymore, but couldn’t he be good for that, still? Couldn’t he be good for something? 

Maybe not. Zack was offended, or upset, or… something. It was hard, sometimes, for Emilio to parse out what emotion came with a certain tone of voice, hard for him to figure out the real meaning behind the words. He’d snapped at Zack, and it didn’t matter much that he hadn’t meant to do it, didn’t matter much that his intention hadn’t been to raise his voice. At the end of the day, what you did was always going to mean more than what you meant to do, and Emilio had snapped and raised his voice. He let out a brittle laugh, as close to breaking as Emilio himself. “And if magic fails again?” He questioned, gesturing to the bush as though it said all that needed saying. He knew it was stupid. He knew there was no real logic behind it, knew that he was being… something. He didn’t have a word for it. He didn’t have a word for most things, these days.

Something in Zack’s face softened, and Emilio didn’t quite know why until he spoke. Him. Right. Flip. Kelly’s kid, not Emilio’s. Flip, not Flora. Emilio shoved his hands into his pocket to hide the fact that they were trembling, let his left thumb find the wedding band that made his whole arm feel heavy these days the same way a parent might let their child cling to their pantleg in a situation that was unfamiliar. “Him,” he agreed quietly. Zack didn’t know, of course. Emilio didn’t speak about it often, so how could he? You could hardly expect someone to know something they’d never heard aloud, and he’d never hold it against Zack. Even so, Zack was gentle. Even so, he changed his tune. Something in Emilio’s chest ached; he tried to ignore it.

“Okay,” he breathed, letting go of a breath he’d been holding without realizing it. “We need… The windows. We need to check all the windows. And the locks on the doors. The main house, too. And — the balcony. They could get in through the balcony, you know. Some of them — they can fly, or they have things that can fly, so you can’t — even high up.” Vampires couldn’t get in without an invite, but they were sneaky little shits. Emilio knew that. It hurt, how well Emilio knew that. “Can you — which window is for your bedroom? We need to check that one.”

—

When he first returned to town, Emilio was one of the first people Zack had sought out. He was easy to find, still in the same office/apartment in Worm Row, in the building where he himself had once lived. What had struck Zack most about that encounter had been how much worse Emilio looked than he remembered. Worse in physical state, worse emotionally, drained in a way that Zack couldn’t put into words. All his friends, so far, had gotten a portrait done but he hadn’t even been able to start on one for Emilio. 

Not because his friend didn’t deserve it, not even just because he looked bad. But because it would mean looking directly into that hurt and doing nothing for it. Which was as good as causing more hurt, wasn’t it? Emilio was right, after all: Zack didn’t want to hurt anyone. He had tried to help as much as he could. Even when all he got in return was a turned back, a cold shoulder, worse. 

But here, with this, seemed like something else Zack could do to help.

“Okay.” Emilio seemed to be calmed by the list, which helped calm Zack down some. “Windows, doors, balcony, got it. What are we looking for exactly? Distance of the bushes and stuff, I guess, for one. Right?” He wanted to keep Emilio calm, because whatever had moved through his friend before, whoever he had been thinking of when he said her, obviously hurt. And he didn’t want Emilio to hurt. Not even if he was mad about the avoiding and the fighting and the showing up unannounced. No matter what came to pass between them, or didn’t come to pass, he didn’t want Emilio to hurt. “Checking the locks on the door. There’s salt inside, would that help?” He remembered, vaguely, that Emilio had said something about a salt circle. It had seemed more trouble than it was worth, but if it could give them something to do, something tangible they could create so Emilio could see that he had done something…

“Oh, I’m–” Zack swung around, back to the main house and pointed out the poolhouse. “I’m in the poolhouse over there.” Only a dozen or so yards set back from the main house, enough to give him privacy without actually feeling like a separate property. “But let’s get the big house squared away first. That’s where Flip is, that’s the most important.” 

—

“Locks,” he mumbled, fingers twitching absently as if looking for the hilt of a knife to wrap themselves around. “The kind that are harder to pick. And… we should check the panes, make sure they’re not weak around the edges.” Of course, none of this had been done at Emilio’s apartment. The lock on his door had been broken for years now, swinging back open just a little any time you shut it too hard. His windows were cracked, small lines that had been hard to see at first but had grown over time. The latch on the one by the fire escape was broken, too. If anyone were to try to break into Emilio’s apartment, they’d find it easy to do so. 

But there was nothing in Emilio’s apartment worth protecting.

His apartment was not like this house, which was full of life. There were no children there, no well-intentioned people who didn’t want to hurt anyone, no beating hearts. To put effort into protecting Emilio’s apartment in this way would be like putting a bank vault around a mausoleum. It was far too much effort to expend to protect a corpse. 

(He thought of Eve leaving him in that alley, of Ishan scoffing at the fact that he was still upset by talons pulling his heart from his chest, of the siren that pushed him into a pit full of bodies over and over and over again just to break up the monotony of her day. People might frown at the idea of desecrating a corpse, but no one in their right mind would be as horrified by that as they would be by someone hurting a living person in the same way. Had his heart still beat, Eve leaving him in that alley would have been a terrible thing. Ishan ripping into his chest would have been murder. The siren pushing him in that pit would have been horrifying to anyone who heard about it. But what would anyone care about doing those things to someone when the life had already left them? He was dead. He was dead already. It didn’t matter if his lock was broken.) 

He looked back to Zack at the mention of salt, nodding quickly. “Yeah,” he breathed, quiet relief clinging desperately to his tone. “Yeah. We should put some around the beds. Salt the doors and windows, too. Especially the bedrooms. Especially anywhere anyone might sleep.” He’d like to think no mare would target a toddler, but he’d seen supernaturals target young hunters enough times to know it certainly happened. His own daughter had been just a few years older than Flip was now, and it had mattered nothing to the vampires that killed her. Flora was a hunter; Flip was one, too. That was what people saw first, sometimes. “Big house first,” he agreed. “But we need to do yours, too. It’s probably less secure.” Kelly was a hunter, which meant he had security in mind in some areas, but how much did he think about his pool house? Before Zack had moved in, Emilio would wager that no one had exactly been sleeping in it. Better to make sure nothing was missed.

For a moment, Emilio faltered. He brought a hand up to push his hair away from his face, let out a shaky sigh. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry. I know I’m — You think I’m acting crazy. Probably am. I just…” He trailed off, fingers twitching at his side once again. “There’s a kid. Second set of eyes can’t hurt. Or… third set, I guess.” Kelly had likely secured his house already; Zack had probably at least done a brief follow up of it. But there was that nagging feeling, that uncomfortable question: what if they’d missed something? There had been two grown hunters living in Emilio’s house in Mexico, four more who were in and out of it frequently. It hadn’t mattered, in the end. However good Kelly’s security was, it could still be better. It still needed to be better.

—

Zack kept up his attentive nod, even though he was sure he would have no idea how to tell whether the locks on the house were the safer ones, according to Emilio. Let alone if the windows were secure. But Emilio would, obviously. Zack could just be there, by his side, to ferry Emilio through this misdirected panic. If they ended up making Kelly’s home a little safer, great. If they discovered that it was more or less impenetrable already, even better. Misdirected though it clearly was, Zack did appreciate the effort to keep them all safe. 

Hell if Zack knew how he was going to get salt circles around Flip’s crib and Kelly’s bed without anyone noticing, but they could cross that bridge when they came to it. Maybe he could somehow convince Kelly that it was some kind of family tradition that he was superstitious about. That would be sure to get a raised eyebrow but maybe not a second look. “Right,” he agreed as Emilio explained further. “For ghosts, and mares.” He remembered, now, the explanation that had been given. He should definitely get a salt circle around his own bed, if nowhere else. Just to be sure that ghost that had hopped into him for a little bit couldn’t make a reappearance. 

“I don’t think you’re crazy.” Maybe a little paranoid. But in a town like Wicked’s Rest, could extra security really do any harm? “I just didn’t understand. And you’re right. There’s a kid. We should do everything we can to make sure Flip stays safe.” As much as he had pleaded his case to Emilio, that wasn’t actually something Zack could confidently do with his magic. Carefully, telegraphing the movement so Emilio wouldn’t be caught off-guard, he laid his hand to his shoulder. “Come on. You can show me what to look for.”

—

Zack remembered, about the ghosts and the mares and Emilio nodded with something almost like desperation. Knowing what went bump in the night would not save him any more than it had saved Flora. Hell, Juliana had been an accomplished hunter in her own right, capable of taking down beasts far more imposing than the vampires who had overwhelmed and killed her in the living room of her own goddamn home, and she had not been spared, either. But knowing meant Zack could protect himself, at least a little. Living with Kelly meant he’d have a little extra protection, a ranger watching his back whether he knew it or not. And to Emilio, that offered some reassurance. To Emilio, that was better than nothing.

Then, Zack said I don’t think you’re crazy, and the relief deepened even as some part of Emilio wanted to laugh with the ridiculousness of the statement. Zack didn’t think he was crazy, even though Emilio was pretty sure he was. Something inside of him had snapped a long time ago, then shattered into a fine powder that could never dream of being pieced back together again, then had its pieces scattered to the winds. There was something deeply broken inside of him, and he knew it. 

But he still had to check the locks.

He still had to make sure the bushes were close enough to the windows to avoid leaving any gaps. He still had to check the roof for entry points, check the windows for weaknesses. There was a kid, and it wasn’t his, because his kid was dead. There was a kid with a hunter for a father, and Emilio could not repair the thing that had broken inside of him but maybe he could keep the same thing from breaking inside of Kelly, or Zack. Maybe that was the best he could really hope for.

“Yeah,” he breathed, the exhale quietly unnecessary as it left his dead lungs. “Yeah. I’ll show you what to look for.”