Zero-sum game

What happened, to Finley, was a blur. Jen was shrieking for people to call the police. His sister lay, twitching, foaming at the mouth with bright, dilated eyes the color of his own staring up at nothing. Next, he heard Tim on the phone with emergency services. The crowd pressed forward, then was pushed back by the combined efforts of Alex and Tim. Tino watched with wide eyes. Loanna just cried. Why? Finley had to wonder.

Finley stood there and pocketed the pistol numbly. In his ears was a horrendous ringing white noise just on the edge of hearing. It was so loud it nearly drowned out all the other noises around him. Isn't somebody going to do something about that? 

Jeri was convulsing on the floor. Jen was shrieking for someone to help. It was his fault, Fin was at least sure of that. What was in that dart? He had to wonder. It could have been anything. She could've easily lied, and he wouldn't have put it past her. But why?

"Check her pulse," Alex commanded of Jen, who was still fretting and fluttering at RJ's side in his leather frills. He could hear Tino's confusion, Jen's fright, Loanna's despair, Tim's alarm, Alex' calm, and above it all Aidan's disappointment. He tried to block it out, and nearly succeeded.

Jen placed trembling fingers to the hollow in the side of Jeri's neck, where her neck met her jawline, and took deep breaths. "It's racing," he reported in a tremulous voice.

"As long as it doesn't stop," Alex said.

Finley buried his face in his hands for a moment - that was all he needed really, a moment to calm down and re-order his thinking - but the moment came and passed, and when it went, it took the time with it. Before he realized it, the EMT's were barging through the door with a gurney, and everyone was giving them a wide berth.

Someone was asking him questions that he didn't have the wherewithal to answer. Aidan's hand sought out his own, and gave it a reassuring, reality-re-aligning squeeze. Abruptly, Finley's attention became arrested on the now. He put the sight of Jeri convulsing on the floor out of his mind and focused on the technician in front of him. Behind the male EMT facing and addressing him, they were measuring her cardiac rate and pulling the small dart out of her shoulder where Finley had hit her. Fin fingered the tranq gun in his pocket again. Why?

"I'm sorry, what—" he blurted.

Aidan answered for the EMT: "What did she take, Finley?" He asked, ever so patiently. "They need to know."

Fin nodded, because of course, of course they would need to know. "Some alcohol," he reported, "a little cocaine and . . . I think ketamine? It might have been something else," he added, less sure of himself than he had been a few minutes earlier. Cocaine had given him a boost, and now he had started to come crashing down.

"Uppers, and downers?" The dark-faced EMT reported. Finley could hear his unspoken question: Are you a fucking idiot?

"I'm not a—yes, and I didn't give them to her, alright?" Fin instinctively defended. "She gave them to herself." Aside from the dose that I hit her with, anyway, he silently added.

"I didn't say anything sir," the emergency medical technician said diplomatically. Behind him, they were loading Jeri up on the portable gurney and busily shuffling her out of the door. Tim, another EMT, and Alex were keeping the party-goers at bay. "We've got room for one more to travel to the hospital with her," he added, looking to Finley pointedly.

"I'll do it," Alex volunteered, stepping forward. "Unless, Finley . . .?"

Fin turned to Aidan and let go of his hand. "Actually, Aidan, can you go to the hospital with her while we . . . Deal with the party?" He implored.

"What hospital are you headed to?" Alex had the good sense to ask.

"Saint Mary's," the EMT reported.

"Alright," Aidan agreed easily enough, "but you owe me an explanation later at least."

"Okay," Fin promised.

"We'll meet you there," Tim reassured Aidan as Aidan clambered into the ambulance and the doors shut behind him.

The numb feeling didn't fade when the ambulance left with his half-dead sister. If anything, it exacerbated as he stared around the room at all the milling and nervous people. He let down his guard for a moment and was treated to a wash of frantic, anxious concerns and morbid intrigue, replete with some naturally lewd speculations. The lingering effects of the cocaine helped him flip the switch back off in his head quite easily, like a muscle that had just gotten a jolt of energy. It was definitely not one of the finer nights of his life, all things considered, but he couldn't deny how good it felt to not be constantly bombarded with useless information from the surface thoughts of everyone around him.

A selfish part of him wished they'd saved a little bit of the cocaine so he could have a boost, since he knew he'd likely need one for the level of crowd control he was going to attempt to do.

Then, Alex approached him. "You have some explaining to do," he said gravely.

"After we get these people to leave and convince at least half of them that this was just a prank," Fin offered, "and then yes, I'll explain everything to you in as morbid of detail as you require."

Alex caught Tim's eye from across the room and made a jerking motion with his head. Tim let go of Pamela's shoulders and immediately crossed the room to join their quiet conversation. "What's the plan here?"

"We convince them to leave, tell them it is a prank, but that she actually did overdose by accident," Alex summarized, and looked to Finley for confirmation. Fin nodded.

"One of you talk to them, and I'll do the rest," Fin promised.

"Do what?" Alex wondered, disturbed.

"I'll do it," Tim volunteered. "Hey! Hey everyone! Listen up! Alright, this is my house, so listen. Whatever you think you saw today - you didn't see. We—"

Finley didn't hear the rest. From what he could tell, there were at least seven of the people in front of him that weren't buying into it. Two were angry, the rest were frightened. One of the two had thoughts that rang out with the kind of clear certainty accompanied by those who possess the fundamental, crowd-moving quality of charisma. He was the lodestone, the key to this group. Every faction, no matter how big or small, had at least one. The angry one's eyes were narrowed; his name was James, he hated being called Jim and RJ called him Jim all the time, he had a Master's is music production and was certainly not an idiot and didn't care for being taken for one. James didn't notice Finley staring at him, though - and thought nothing of their momentary shared eye contact. With the added focus of the lingering effects of the cocaine, for Fin it was an easy matter to slip in past the man's surface thoughts and search his recent memories.

James suddenly found himself reminded of it and was made aware of the fact that his memory of it wasn't completely clear. There was a seed of doubt in him, something he'd dismissed earlier when he decided his certainty of what he'd seen; Fin retraced the thought and brought it back to the surface from the suffocating dismissal it had lay languishing under, where it could divert James' thoughts.

Rinse, repeat.

James was hyper-focused on this moment: the moment he'd seen Jeri from across the room, floating, and screaming. Howling. The sound was maddening, and it was still ringing in his ears. It's as if the memory simply wouldn't stop, and within like a hidden cobra leapt out the notion that he wasn't sure what he'd seen, because it conflicted with everything else in his life that he'd thought he'd known. It was only the latest event in a series of incidents regarding his memories of RJ, after all. She'd told James about his future once, about how he would die, and he didn't believe her. Fin gently fostered that doubt, and suddenly, James felt he couldn't hold it in anymore. He interrupted Tim. "Well, what do you think we saw, then? Explain that. What the hell did we just see?"

"That is what he is explaining," Alex said with an edge of exasperation. "You know she does things like this - worse things, even - I mean, she'd fake her own death if she thought it would make people cry, just so she could jump out of her coffin at her own fucking funeral and laugh. We're telling you, she thought it would be a joke. Only, she took it too far this time, and the, well, you saw what happened."

It was a weak excuse and all three of them knew it. So did Jen Sugiyama, who was staring at the three of them pointedly next to Loanna, who had only recently stopped crying. It hurt Finley to look at her and threatened to make him sympathy cry, so he'd been avoiding it. It struck him that this situation in the band was going to erupt sooner or later, but hopefully later.

Finley took the pressure off of James' mind and focused on a few of the others, getting a feel for the room. There was hissing stream of consciousness: IknowwhatIsawIdon'tknowwherearetheyfuckthisshitgodwhatishappeningIjustwanttogohomewhatkindoffuckedupprankthisisjustlikeherwhy. It was easier than it should have been, like testing water before going in for a swim. He couldn't affect the current, but he could make splashes here and there and hopefully stay afloat. It was easier to focus on individuals than a crowd, which would ordinarily likely have given him another nosebleed.

"A prank," James numbly repeated, as his seed of doubt had grown and was beginning to bloom. It was a more amenable alternative than the other reality, which constituted of impossible and contradictory things. Other memories floated to the surface of James' mind, of times RJ had told him things, - sometimes, her predictions came true. He didn't know quite what to believe anymore.

"A bad one," Tim qualified. "But, uh, the hospital showing up, that was real. Just, try not to go and spread it around? I know TMZ will get its hands on the story eventually, but for our sake, keep it on the DL."

". . . Sure, alright man," James nodded distractedly, and turned to leave. He wanted to forget everything he'd seen tonight and get drunk at home. Anything, to put the memory of RJ floating and screaming to rest. Others had started to follow suit, as they subconsciously obeyed the strongest personality of their number. It was the easiest way to trick them into leaving, with the least mental manipulation required. True, some of them might go and tell others what they'd seen, but who would believe them? It was Rose of Jericho they were talking about, after all. For once, her notoriety and infamy worked in their favors.

Finley sighed in relief and sat down on the stairs and held his head for a few moments as it throbbed from the exertion. 'Reading' thoughts was so instinctive that it was nearly subconscious for Finley; he had to actively restrain himself from it. Altering thoughts, however - changing them - was another matter entirely, and did not come as easily to him. It was different for every person, but even still he felt it was easier than it should have been to change someone's individual cognitive processes. Sometimes all it took was saying the right thing or remembering the right detail. Sometimes all it took was making a quiet, small feeling into something just a little larger and louder.

As always since it had happened, just as whenever he found himself Jedi Mind-Tricking his way out of a parking ticket or purposefully manipulating waitstaff, he was reminded of Anton. He'd taken the memory of Amanda's violation and used it like a weapon, slicing through Anton's consciousness, forcing Anton to re-live the moment from his victim's helpless perspective. It was the only justice he had to offer, and it had broken Anton's mind quite literally, triggering a cranial hemorrhage later in the hospital. Fin had said nothing when RJ had confessed to the crime of aggravated assault against Anton, and eventually in court pled guilty to manslaughter; she'd been there at his side, after all, laughing with a bloodied baseball bat. She was just as culpable in Anton's death as he was.

"Hey Fin," Tim's voice cut through his brooding, causing him to snap his head up and meet Tim's gaze. "We need to get to the hospital."

"Alright," Fin agreed.

"And I need an explanation," Alex threatened.

"Lo?" Jen touched the singer's arm. "Are you ready to go?"

"There's room in the Hummer for all of us," Tim offered.

Loanna wiped at her eyes, and nodded, grabbing Jen's offered arm. "Let's go. I want to see her."

As soon as Tim started the car, Alexei bombarded Finley with questions. Finley settled into the passenger's seat and Alex took off his seatbelt to lean forward to face him as Tim pulled out of his garage and into the driveway. "What the hell happened?" Alex demanded to know.

Fin sighed and braced himself for the interrogation. "She said it was ketamine, but I'm starting to think it might have been heroin," he answered uneasily. "She handed me a tranquilizer gun and told me to dart her if she started floating and talking nonsense. I didn't think she was being serious until, well. You saw."

There were a couple of definitely Russian curses that followed this, along with some scoffing from Jen's corner in the back.

"Jeri's my best friend," Tim spoke up, meeting Finley's eyes for a moment as he flipped the turn signal and pulled out onto Vista Drive. "I've known her since we were kids. I've seen her do some strange things. I know what happened wasn't fake, but I'll tell people it was if that's what you want. But we all have to agree on a story if that's what we want to happen."

Loanna in the back studied her sandals and nodded, along with Jen beside her. Alex fixed his glare on Finley, but also nodded and Fin sighed in relief.

"Thanks," Finley offered. "The last thing she needs right now is more media attention."

"Oh, she's gonna get it," Alex said, "whether she wants it or not. The only question is how we should deal with it."

"I feel like we should talk to legal about this," Jen offered. "Maybe tomorrow morning than can help us come up with a proper statement?"

"For now, we'll stick to the story we offered everyone," Alex declared, and that was the end of it. He turned to Finley. "But you, you need to tell me where you got that tranquilizer gun and why the hell you thought shooting it at your fucking sister would be a good fucking idea."

"I didn't," Fin defended. "I thought it was a terrible idea, until it seemed like it was the only thing to do. She started floating and screaming. You saw it. I didn't know what else to do, so I did what she told me to do. I wish I hadn't," he admitted carefully, "but what's done is done."

"And you're just fine with the fact that you almost killed her?" Alex snapped.

Fin turned back to glare at him. "She cornered me," he said. "I didn't really have a choice. And if you're honestly mad at her because she broke her sobriety and you think I'm some kind of bad influence, let me remind you we all did mushrooms a few hours ago together."

"Psychedelics are non-addictive," Tim shot in defensively. He sighed, and Fin took a dip into his head for a split second which revealed a wealth of conflicting emotions. "Look, I never used to believe the shit she said until last year when she went to prison. She said she was going to go. I was like, 'why do you want to be arrested?' She said it wasn't ever about what she wanted. I don't know what happened that day, but it made me re-evaluate everything I heard her say before. I still wasn't sure she didn't just plan the whole thing out to make me believe it . . . But right before the séance, she told me not to be afraid and asked me to pull a book at random off my shelf. I did, and I opened it up, and the first thing I laid eyes on was a piece of text she'd highlighted the last time she was at my house that said, '—but there wasn't time to tell.' So, tell me, Fin, how exactly am I not supposed to be afraid now?"

"I don't know," Fin honestly told him. "Just try not to let it get to you? I just ignore the things she says and try my best to live my life. That's really all you can do."

"Great advice," Jen piped up from the back seat with the utmost sarcasm. Finley didn't have a retort. "Did anyone hear anything she was babbling about when she was, uh, floating?"

Everyone shook their heads. Finley wanted to say something, but he wasn't sure how much he should say - and part of him was afraid that if he said anything, then Ramiel was going to pop up again with more portents.

"It sounded like gibberish to me," Alex said.

"She-she kept repeating something," Loanna spoke up quietly, drawing everyone's eye. She nearly flinched under the sudden scrutiny. "I'm not sure what it was exactly, but she kept saying the same thing over and over again. It was too hard to hear exactly what."

Finley hadn't heard anything over Aidan or the roaring of his own blood in his ears. He suspected Aidan had heard it, though, and had probably taken notes on the entire event.

"We're here," Tim reported and pulled into the parking lot of St. Mary's hospital.

Jen and Loanna were perhaps the most recognizable of the band mates, so the rest of them took to standing in an informal semi-circle around them to keep prying eyes away while they waited on word from RJ. Jen kept his glasses on, and Loanna milled about nervously, fiddling with a pair of spare sunglasses Jen had given her. It took nearly an hour of waiting in tense silence while they wandered, occasionally raiding the vending machines, before word got to them of Jeri's stable condition. Aidan found them in the lobby and delivered a positive report, and then pulled Finley aside for a private word.

"If you're just going to chew me out for shooting her full of drugs, Alex already beat you to it," Finley informed Aidan.

"No, I'm sure they lectured you plenty in the car ride over for that," Aidan assured him.

"I know it was a bad idea," Finley found himself admitting anyway, "but the entire séance was a bad idea in the first place."

"Both of those were her idea," Aidan reminded him. He sighed, pulled off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Well, at least we know Ramiel was telling something like the truth. Since I definitely heard 'Moloch' somewhere in the middle of her insane gibberish," he offered. It was no consolation.

"Is she conscious?" Finley asked.

"Yeah, though they're not quite letting her have visitors yet—"

"Finley Ravara?" A voice spoke up from nearby, looking around the room for him. It was a Caucasian nurse of his height with red hair bound up in a severe ponytail, in scrubs and tennis shoes with a name-tag that said Butcher, holding a clipboard before her. He got her attention, and she crossed the room to engage him with a heaviness to her steps that belied her temperament.

"Your sister is awake and doing very well," the nurse immediately reassured him. "She's been asking to see you. We've moved her up to her own room for observation overnight. Follow me."

"Is it alright if we all come? The others - her friends - they're all really worried," he asked, and mentally prepared to Jedi Mind-trick her if necessary.

Nurse Butcher looked at the small crowd of band-mates. She nodded, and thankfully not a single alarm bell went off in her head - either she wasn't a fan of their music, hadn't been informed of RJ's celebrity, or was simply a stone-cold professional. Either way, she didn't bat an eye and led the way to the elevators.

"She's on the third floor, in room 309," Nurse Butcher told them.

"Has she said anything?" Loanna wondered nervously.

"No," the nurse told her, "not exactly. She was quite chatty when she woke, but she doesn't seem to remember how she got to the hospital or why she's there. Seemed pretty surprised when we told her what was in her system," Nurse Butcher noted with a tint of black humor in her voice.

"Selective amnesia," Alex decided. "Alright, we can work with that."

"Are you her friends, or . . .?" The nurse trailed off curiously.

"Band-mates," Tino spoke up for the first time since the incident, eyes shining bright. "But yeah, we're all friends too."

"Oh, you're in a band?"

Finley tuned it out while Tino chatted up the nurse and focused on putting one foot in front of the other all the way to room 309.

His sister was seated upright in her adjustable hospital bed. She had been staring out the window in boredom before the commotion at the door drew her attention, and she lit up. "Hey guys!" She greeted, dark circles under her eyes but eerily cheery in spite. "How long were you all waiting in the lobby?"

"About an hour or two," Tim answered and crossed the room. He pulled up the only chair in the room at sat it next to her and grabbed RJ's hand. It was covered in wires and tubes from her IV drip. He gave it a gentle squeeze and smiled.

"How are you feeling?" Loanna wondered with wide eyes.

"Like shit!" Jeri chirped. "Then again I almost died!" Loanna sniffled, and Jeri seemed to recognize her error instantly. "Not that I did die, just that I came close! Oh, come on—don't—don't cry. Please."

"I'm not—I'm sorry—I'm—" Lo sniffled again and wiped at her eyes angrily.

"Crying is always allowed," Aidan offered gently and put a hand on her shoulder. She turned and buried her face into Jen's shoulder, who glared over the top of her head at Jeri.

"Come on, don't look at me like that," Jeri complained, making steady eye contact with Sugiyama. For once, he said nothing, and merely hugged Loanna who pulled away after a few seconds and wiped at her face one last time.

"Classic Jeri," Tino noted with a bitter smile. RJ scoffed.

Fin approached the other side of the bed and grabbed her other hand without her permission and assessed her mental state for a quick moment. She pulled her hand away when she realized what he was doing and glared at him but said nothing. The momentary contact revealed nothing other than the truth of her convenient amnesia; she genuinely had no memory of winding up in the hospital, or even the séance. "So, you really don't remember shit, huh?" He surmised.

"Not really," Jeri answered. "I mean, I remember waking up here. And the party. Everything else is just . . . garble. I remember the hell out of that handsome EMT though."

"So, are they releasing you or what? We gotta get you out of here before TMZ gets a hold of that video," Tim shot in, keeping his priorities aligned.

"What video?" Jeri wondered suspiciously.

"The video of the séance," Alex answered for her. "Some idiot was taking a video while you were, er, maybe it's best you don't remember, yeah?"

"Remember what?" She seemed extra suspicious now.

"You were, uh, floating. And saying a lot of gibberish," Fin told her.

". . . Oh."

It was such a small utterance to carry such a heavy meaning. RJ was relatively quiet after that, answering questions that were directed at her with as few words as possible, and professed exhaustion. Nurse Butcher kicked everyone else out of the room soon but allowed Finley to stay thanks to some minor mental manipulation. He wasn't about to leave his sister untended with only the hospital staff, where anyone could walk in and try to kidnap her again or worse.

Jen said nothing the entire time, which was worrisome; out of respect for the man and for his sister, he refrained from diving into Jen Sugiyama's head, but he didn't need to be a mind-reader to understand that he was due to explode any time now. Seeing Loanna cry again had only cemented Jen's resentment of Jeri for this entire episode.

Another nurse came by with dinner for Jeri, alongside a small bowl of jello that Fin helped himself to. He settled into the chair next to RJ's bed while she started to doze off, and soon found himself asleep, too.

When he dreamed, he descended into a memory of his childhood. All three Ravara siblings had gathered in the upstairs bathroom of their childhood home, centered around a tear-streaked Jeri who was baring forth her leg that had an ugly wound as Sal was dressing it. He couldn't remember how she'd gotten it, only that - after a great deal of yelling and screaming from Dana and Patrick - she had limped upstairs crying for her brother and Sal had taken her and Finley into the bathroom to clean it.

"It's a bad second degree burn. It'll scar, but it'll heal as long as we're careful. It looks worse than it really is. When I'm not around, you'll need to check it every day for a few weeks, and put this special ointment on it, and put clean bandages on it. You won't run out, 'cause there's a bunch in this kit. I'll show you what you need to do, okay?"

Jeri sniffled and nodded. Without looking, Salvador said to Finley, "school's in session, nerd, you might need this one day." It was how they both learned how to dress burn wounds. Jeri had always patched up Finley's scrapes and bruises. It was never Dana, or Patrick, or Sal who helped him with his 'battle' wounds. Finley realized, as he watched Sal carefully dress his sister's leg, that this was where she learned how to do what she did. This was why she knew how to dress his hurts. She'd learned because Sal was the one who patched up her. It only made sense, as RJ had always spent most of her time looking out for Finley; he'd never thought to question who might have been looking out for her. It made him mad, and sad, and frustrated, and a whole bunch of other things that overwhelmed him at the time, that he either couldn't or didn't want to process.

As Sal finished up, Finley stood guard at the door, listening to the sounds downstairs. Jeri's pained tears stopped before the yelling did, and they all sat down in that bathroom in silence for a while. After several uncomfortable seconds, Jeri poked Sal in the ribs and asked him where his 'war-wound' was. Sal pulled back one of his sleeves, and something quiet passed between his two older siblings that he felt went over his head. His dreaming self didn't get it, until he caught a glimpse of a shiny, uneven white scar on Sal's forearm as his older brother pulled down his sleeve. When he saw it, a cold sliver of fear stuck in Finley's heart, nestling in deep inside with a slender sliver of shame.

"Always wondered why you wore long sleeves all the time," Jeri remarked in a casual, uncaring voice that was at odds with her red and puffy eyes. "Guess I can't wear shorts no more."

Finley stared at the dirty tiles on the floor while she and Sal snickered like hyenas.

He awoke to Jeri poking him in the side insistently. He rubbed at his eyes and groaned. "Ugh, what?" He said crabbily.

"Look," Jeri indicated toward the television mounted on the wall, where a blurry video that he vaguely recognized was playing on repeat. It took him a while to piece together what he was seeing - the footage from the cellphone video that one guest had taken, now released to TMZ and was being looped. Over and over, he saw Jeri float, scream, and fall. Finally, the screen cut away to a few paparazzi debating the footage that they were witnessing, trying to piece together what it could mean. The general consensus that emerged was that this was a comeback for the band, a planned reunion and advertisement for whatever their upcoming album was. It was agreed that Jeri was by far the most controversial member of the group, so it made sense for the feature to focus on her rather than the other band members that were there. Thankfully the video was mostly filmed in the dark of the room, so there was only a faint light to reveal what was going on - and the footage was so grainy that Finley couldn't see himself in it at all, let alone the darting. TMZ eventually started showing old archival footage of the band and of RJ herself in other incidents - one where she'd punched a reporter while drunk, and this seemed to distract everyone from the video of the séance.

"That didn't take long," Fin commented lightly. "At least you can't really tell what's going on in it," he noted.

"So, what went on, anyway? I barely remember," Jeri wondered, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

Fin thought of the best way to summarize it to her benefit. "You handed me a tranquilizer gun," he said. "Do you remember that part?"

"Nope," she said happily, "but it sounds like something I'd do. I do remember packing it in your bag, though. Just having trouble remembering anything past that last line of coke I snorted."

"Yeah, we did some coke, and then that's when you handed me the gun and told me to dart you if you started floating," he told her. "So, I did. Only you didn't tell me what was in the dart."

"Heroin, probably," she guessed accurately. "At least that's what they told me was in my bloodstream."

" . . . After I darted you, you started convulsing, so Tim called the police and we had to convince everyone it was a prank gone wrong."

"So, the floating," she said, stuck on this. "Did I . . . What did I say?"

"Aidan would know," Fin said. "I couldn't hear clearly, all I really remember is you screaming, being in pain, and then Aidan yelling at me to do something. Where did you even get it?"

"Get what?"

"All the drugs."

She said dismissively, "When we were at the beach earlier, I ran into a guy. It's not important."

He narrowed his eyes at her but didn't press the issue and made a mental note to keep an eye on her and not leave her unsupervised while they were still traveling together. Just how exactly she'd managed to sneak the drugs past Alex and Tim while they were out so briefly was a mystery, and it would remain so; they'd been gone barely an hour, but he knew from experience that his sister had her ways.

"Why did you do this?" He had to ask. "Why do this when you supposedly knew what was going to happen?"

"I didn't know!" She snapped and turned off the TV. "Why does everyone think I know everything? I thought it had as good a chance of any as actually working! I thought Mom, of all people, would want revenge on the people who killed her and might know something about them that could help us. I don't want to die, and I don't hear anyone else coming up with better ideas. Also fuck that teleporting guy."

"Yeah, fuck him," Finley agreed easily enough, "but seriously, why did you think this was a good idea? What even happened? I'm not sure I understand what happened."

"Like I do?" She scoffed. "Why, what did you see happen?"

"After the lights went out, I broke a chair with my ass by tripping over it and the next thing I knew Aidan pointed to you and you were floating, and then I remembered what you said about that."

"Did you pick up anything from my head?" She wondered, morbidly curious.

Finley shook his head. "Not really, just images, a door being shut . . . And this sound that I'd heard before, from you."

Jeri perked up. "A sound?"

"Like the hitting of a hatchet on a hard block of ham," he explained as accurately as he could. He vividly remembered the visceral sound and would never forget it for as long as he lived.

She winced. "I . . . I think I know what that is. Let's just forget about it for now, yeah?" She suggested, half-pleading.

"If you want," he conceded. "I think Aidan's mad at me," he offered a subject change.

She leapt on it. "What for? You did nothing wrong. You did exactly what I told you to do."

Fin nodded. "Yeah, that's probably why he's mad at me."

She rolled her eyes into her skull briefly. "Well, that's dumb. Tell him he's being dumb. Tell him I told you to tell him that he's being dumb, see what he says. Maybe he'll try and psychoanalyze you again. That might be fun for me to watch."

"Just wait until he does it to you," Fin jokingly threatened.

A nurse and doctor dropped by not long after to inform Jeri that they wanted to keep her another day for observation, but that it was unenforceable. Jeri insisted upon leaving as soon as possible, and after debate she was given her clothes back and allowed to sign the release forms. While she did so, Finley stepped outside for a smoke and called Tim, who rushed over. By the time Jeri was finished with the paperwork and was outside smoking with Finley, Tim was there, with Aidan in the passenger seat.

The drummer greeted Jeri with a warm hug, despite the complicated feelings Finley could tell he was nursing. "You ready to face Magpie today?" Tim asked her, looking genuinely concerned. Fin's heart went out to him. He was a better friend that she deserved. "We can put it off another day."

"Nah, better face the music now," Jeri answered dismissively. "Can I shower at your place first, though?"

"Sure."

Aidan stepped out of the vehicle onto the curb, and subjected Finley to one of his hugs, followed by RJ. "How are you feeling?" He asked her.

"Like shit!" she said happily. "I've had worse, though, like the time we wrote Nitro and Al and I were up for like three days! Thank God for cocaine, man."

"Isn't that what got you into this situation?" Aidan criticized.

RJ shrugged. It was the sort of gesture that implied she didn't know how to care and didn't want to. "It's not sweet cousin cocaine's fault I abuse it. Besides, what really knocked me on my ass was the stuff in that dart, whatever it was."

"You don't know?" Tim was appalled.

"Well, the docs said it was heroin, but the guy who sold it to me told me it was ketamine. Who really fucking knows? Does it matter? It's done," she snapped.

"I'd ask if you learned your lesson here, but I'm not sure what the lesson was and if you're even capable of learning it," Aidan snarked.

"Probably not," Jeri surmised.

It was a long, quiet drive through heavy traffic back to Tim's house in Long Beach. Finley spent most of it nursing a headache developing between his eyes that seemed to be RJ-induced. Jeri slept in the front seat behind her sunglasses with her bare feet on the dashboard while Tim and Aidan stewed in silence, busily driving and looking at his phone, respectively.

As they parked in Tim's driveway, RJ took off toward the door and headed upstairs to the shower with nary a word. Tim sighed and followed her inside at a more sedate pace.

"I have some Neuropsych homework to catch up on," Aidan informed Finley as they stepped out of the vehicle. "Will you be alright accompanying her to the label by yourself?" He asked, eyebrows furrowed behind his black-rimmed glasses in concern.

"Don't worry about me," Fin assured Aidan, even as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "As soon as I get some acetaminophen, I'll be fine."

"I have some in my bag," he offered. Fin nodded.

Aidan returned to the guest room while Fin perched himself on the couch downstairs with Tim's book of Neruda poetry, passing the time until the medicine kicked in, or RJ was ready to go. He didn't find it hard to believe that a man with such passion, who expressed such beauty in his prose, had led such a troubled and controversial life.

He stumbled across a passage that unexpectedly gave him chills as his mind drifted over the funeral, his sister, and recent events:

I see the silent dreams,

I accept the final days,

and also the origins, and also the memories,

like an eyelid atrociously and forcibly opened, 

I am looking.

And then there is this sound:

a red noise of bones, 

a clashing of flesh . . .

"Hey nerd, you ready to go?" His sister's voice snapped him up from his perusal. He stared up into her ocean-blue eyes, startled to realize the passage had him thinking about her and that dreadful sound he'd only ever heard inside her head, and also realized his headache was entirely gone.

". . . Yeah, I'm ready when you are," he told her.

"Where's Aidan?" She wondered.

"He's staying behind, homework," he explained. He stood up and stretched.

She rolled her eyes at this. "What a fucking goody-two-shoes-smart-boy. Gotta love him. Alright. Let's get this damned freakshow on the road. T!"

"In the kitchen," Tim called back.

"I'm ready to go!" she shouted.

Magpie Records was about two-or-so hours north of them situated in Burbank, counting traffic. It had started off as a small indie record company about seven years ago, before gaining notoriety with Resurrection Rose's advent. Though they had many bands under their belt, RR was by far the most famous of them, as their second album, Nexus, had eventually gone platinum after only four short years in circulation. Finley didn't really pay attention to his sister's fame unless it affected his life, which it rarely did, but he knew off-hand that at least one of their songs made it to nearly the top of the charts on the day that she'd been arrested. It seems that only when you were metal guitarist did getting arrested for assault boost your credibility and popularity.

When they finally got to the squat, black-glass, industrial structure, Tim pulled down a side-street to find parking. They walked under the hot midday sun and felt relieved when they stepped inside Magpie's blissfully air-conditioned interior. Magpie shared the building with a few other businesses, including a local radio station, a law office, and a local entertainment agency. Inside, it was a great deal less severe-looking than the outside and housed a cheerful lobby with original floral artwork for sale accompanying a front desk with a dreadfully bored receptionist. Tim and RJ paid her no mind and went straight past her to the elevators, and Fin followed.

When they reached Magpie's floor, Fin elected to wait in the waiting room near the elevators for RJ while she went and talked to her band, where their legal representative was apparently awaiting them. He had no desire to be party to the band's inter-politics. "I'll be here," he promised her, "try not to get abducted, like an asshole." She flipped him off as she and Tim walked down Magpie's winding hallways toward their destination.

He spent the time examining the band posters on the walls and framed records, not startled to discover that he didn't know most of them. He spied Tim's other band, Fountain Breath, amongst them, and one of Resurrection Rose's records and posters featured heavily from a Halloween performance two years ago on the Queen Mary when they were all in costume. It was a mash of monsters - Jen was in front and featured, dressed in an elaborate band-leader outfit with his face painted skeletal; Loanna was an undead bride, dressed in white; Tino a vampire, teeth on display; Alex was dressed up like the Crow, in full goth regalia; RJ was a red horned devil in glamour makeup; Tim, last but certainly not least, was a werewolf with his face pointed up as if to howl at the full moon on the top of the poster.

Thirty minutes later, he heard the tail end of a tirade get cut off followed by the thunder of several pairs of feet down the hall. Finley poked his head out and was treated to the sight of a rarely angry Jen Sugiyama, dressed in normal clothes for once, stalking down the hallway with Valentino and Loanna Chambers in tow, looking nervous and hopelessly ship-wrecked respectively. Timothee and RJ were some distance behind them, and RJ was trying to get their attention while Tim seemed to be trying to get her to calm down. Alexei trailed last, hands in his pocket, whistling innocently.

Jen barely spared a glance as Fin stepped out of his way, and Jen hammered on the down-button on the elevator. It opened up as RJ caught up to them, and he cut her off with a final gesture.

"Talk to me when you get clean," he said curtly, and stepped into the elevator with a frown. Tino and Loanna followed him, more sedately. Tino waved at them, looking a little disappointed. Loanna wiped at her eyes and said nothing as the elevator closed.

RJ raged. ". . . Fucking bitch!" She cried. "I'm sober right now! Shit, I'm the reason this band is even a fucking thing - it's my name! My name!"

"Jeri, calm down," Tim tried to get her to listen.

"Is he seriously breaking us up over this shit?!" She nearly screamed.

Alex put a hand on her shoulder, drawing her attention immediately. She turned on him, seething, but he was nonplussed. "No one is breaking anything up, we're just taking a sabbatical," he said calmly. "That's it."

"A sabbatical is code word for band break-up," she pointed out angrily.

"Your band broke up?" Finley was shocked.

Tim shook his head. "No, not yet. We're just not currently going to be working on anything, not until, well . . . "

"Until my life gets back together!" RJ crowed. "Which is fucking never - Finley, you know me, you know my life is permanently a clusterfuck."

"So . . . You're taking a break, but not breaking up?" Finley tried to understand.

Alex shrugged. "That's what sabbatical means."

Jeri was still raging. "I can't believe those assholes just walked off - after everything I've done for them—"

"Yes, poor me, blah blah blah," Alex summarized, cutting her off. "Find a new tirade, would you?"

"You're lucky I love you," she threatened. "Or I'd chop your balls straight off right now. I'm so mad, I can't even . . . Argh!" She made an angry noise and kicked a chair in the waiting room around the elevator with her black boot, sending it spiraling out.

". . . Is this about her court-ordered sobriety?" Finley wondered, looking between Alex and Tim. Tim shuffled guiltily in place while Alex nodded. "Did anyone really expect her to adhere to that? I know I didn't," he added, scratching his head.

"See, Finley knows me," RJ said. "He gets it. Sobriety is for losers."

"Unfortunately, yours is court-ordered, so . . ." Tim trailed off.

Jeri pinched the bridge of her nose. "T, don't start with me. There's no fucking way on Earth that I would've been able to get through the most recent batch of bat-shit-crazy events that has been my life, if I had been sober through them. Drinking has been my only salvation."

"I, uh, can attest to that," Finley agreed, a little uneasily. He hadn't been able to cope with being entirely sober either, and was feeling a little bit of RJ's feelings on the matter. Her sheer indignance was starting to become some of his own. ". . . And also admit some culpability," he admitted. "Look, it wasn't entirely her fault, is all I'm saying." Not that he wanted anyone else to know about Anton, since that was also his fault.

"Between getting out of the fucking nut-house, the teleporting guy, the attempted kidnapping, and the funeral, I have enough on my hands," she snapped.

This started both Alex and Tim, who hadn't heard about the former two incidents. "The what?" They both spluttered simultaneously.

Jeri sighed. "Look, you guys really want to know? I'll give you the whole spiel when we get back to the house."

"How about in the car, on the way back to the house," Tim compromised.

"I have to follow in my bike," Alex complained, "so maybe save it 'til the house, yeah?"

"You really want to know?" Jeri questioned, doubtful.

"You're my best friend," was all Tim could say. "I may question your choices a lot of the time, hell most of the time, but I always want to know what's going on in your life."

"And I'm fucking curious now," Alex added. "I am also still mad at you, but it's very hard to be mad at someone who doesn't seem to notice."

"You guys," she gushed in a breaking voice and engulfed the two of them in a simultaneous hug. "I knew you loved me!"

"Of course we do," Tim offered.

"Go fuck yourself," Alex told her fondly, nonetheless tolerating the hug.

The rare combination of nice emotions that rolled off of all three of them was a good change for Finley, from RJ's previous contemptuous anger that had been setting him on edge and giving him the urge to snap at someone. They made their way through the record label's building back down to the bored receptionist, who once more paid them no mind and devoted her energy to a tablet game.

It was difficult to process over the sudden ringing in his ears, and the sudden shock of the tether connecting his awareness of the bored receptionist's thoughts, feelings, and fantasies to reality abruptly snapping, so he didn't notice until Alex was dragging him violently by the arm back into the elevator and shoving him into the corner out of sight of the opening door, that the receptionist had just died from a bullet wound abruptly through the throat and into her brain.

He realized he didn't have his gun on him, but he still had the tranquilizer pistol for some fucked up reason and was treated to the sight of Tim literally hauling a shouting Jeri to safety alongside them. He looked up at the wall, and noticed a bullet pierced it, but heard not the sound over the ringing in his ears.

Then the door slammed shut and started hauling them up and he heard nothing over the sound of his own heartbeat.

Someone shook him. Finley looked up and saw his sister's wide eyes gaze, and she told him to breathe. He obeyed. He hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath until that moment.

"What the fucking hell just happened?" Was the first thing he heard anyone say. He didn't immediately identify the speaker because it sounded so muffled, but he looked to Alexei first because it sounded exactly like the sort of thing Alex would say.

"Cultists, I think, maybe?" Was Jeri's shrugging answer. "I dunno for sure."

Alex blinked, his face blank as he started processing this information.

Finley started laughing, because he realized she was right. Downstairs, he was aware their ecclesiastical thoughts, full of Biblical quotes and laden with fear and writhing with hatred. There were three of them, united in a common purpose - to find RJ and take her with them or kill her. This time, they'd brought guns. He was shocked to realize one of them was only seventeen years old and had just had his birthday yesterday. Each of them was prepared to die for the sake of their mission, which they believed sincerely to be sacred and holy for differing, yet similar reasons. The youngest, the teenage boy, wanted the glory, the woman wanted the enlightenment she was promised by someone, and the man wanted the satisfaction of a righteous kill.

"We need to get you the fuck out of here," Finley said to her after he calmed down. He turned to Tim and Alex who were eying him the way he would be eying himself, if their positions were reversed - like someone who had just darted his sister with heroin as if she were an elephant in the '70s and was now laughing maniacally after being shot at by cultists. "They're after her. Trust me, it's a long story best told later."

"They'll come up the stairs if they're smart, since they'll know which floor we got off from the sign," Alex pointed out. "We should hide somewhere here and wait for the police." He dug out his phone and dialed 911, and immediately gave their address to the operator and told her that there were people trying to kill them with guns.

"We don't want to get cornered—" Tim rationalized, but Jeri had enough.

"Fuck that! Trust me! I've got this," she declared with the utmost confidence and ran in a seemingly random direction. Her mind was once more closed to Finley, so he couldn't tell what she was thinking even if you paid him.

"God damn it!" He cried and ran after her. "I hate it when you do this! Why do you always tell me to trust you when you do crazy shit?!"

"Just shut the fuck up and trust me already, Jesus Christ, Finley! Now is not the time to by judgy!" She shouted, gesturing wildly behind her at him.

"Police are on their way!" Alex shouted behind them.

The three of them followed her as she tore around corners, through the recording rooms and meetings of startled people, and eventually led them to a set of emergency stairs. "We go up!" She told them. "To the roof if we have to!"

"That's a terrible idea! What if they just take the fucking elevator and beat us—hey!" Finley had no choice but to follow her. He was startled to see how fast she could run upstairs in her boots.

He could feel the thoughts of the three definitely-cultists two flights below them, he could hear them breathing and shouting at them, and he was amazed at everyone's stupidity in the heat of the moment. Alex seemed to be the only one thinking ahead, and his paranoid vision of being held up at gun-point on the roof stood out sharply in Finley's mind. Nonetheless, Fin tore after Jeri, with Tim and Alex on his heels.

Finley generally didn't have the highest opinion of police, and the ones near the LA area were notorious for their busy days and response times, but he was generally impressed when they arrived in under ten minutes. For some reason, the door to the roof of the building wasn't locked when Jeri pushed on it, and she led them to the top-most floor of the building and immediately looked for something to hide behind.

"We need to barricade this door!" Tim declared.

"With what?" Alex wondered.

"Ourselves?" Fin suggested, and they all three shrugged and leaned up on the metal door. Luckily it opened out, not in.

"They can probably just shoot through it," Jeri pointed out. "We can hide behind the air conditioner, it's big enough for all four of us. Well, maybe three of us. Finley, can you take one for the team?"

"Go fuck yourself and hide," he told her.

Now that they were outside, they could hear the sirens pulling up. Jeri peeked over the edge of the building and waved to them, shouting down to the police that the perpetrators were in the stairwell. They told her not to move, to which she responded - "Fuck that and fuck you!" - and hid behind the massive metal air conditioner. Finley supposed it was as good a plan as any, if the cultists managed to get through the door - it would potentially protect her for a few seconds, at least.

A strangely muffled-sounding shot grabbed Finley's attention, as a bullet hole suddenly appeared in the door above his head. From the way Alex, Tim, and he were leaning on the door, it had just missed them all by the space of inches. They stared at each other for a second before leaving the door and running for Jeri's hiding spot. "Shit! Shit! Fuck!" Alex hissed as they ran and hid for cover.

"Hey! This is my hiding spot!" RJ objected.

They heard the door burst open. They heard the cultists shouting for, "ROSE OF JERICHO," and then, a strange and sudden silence as time seemed to slow down to Finely for a moment. He could hear the thundering thoughts of the police as they traveled up through the elevators and the stairs - they would catch up in a matter of seconds. Seconds might be all that they had to live.

It wasn't like he reached a decision about having to do something, but the necessity of the moment demanded it. He knew he had no choice. He dove into the cultists' minds, tugging on all three cords at once, and puppeted them. It wasn't a matter of controlling their thoughts so much as their reflexes - he had to shunt aside their consciousnesses for a split second to dive into their subconsciousnesses, reach into that deep abyss past all instincts that taught the body and mind how to survive, and executed a relatively simple command. Blood trickled down his nose as Finley raised their gun-arms, pointed them at each other, and simultaneously pulled the triggers. Their cords snapped, leaving behind empty husks as their bodies flopped onto the ground.

It was three shots, but they echoed as one. Finley knew he'd probably have tinnitus after this incident. The police arrived five seconds later to the sight of three cultists, dressed as Sunday churchgoers, one woman of about thirty, one teenager, and one middle-aged man, each with identical bullet holes in their foreheads as they had executed a three-pointed murder-suicide - a triangular zero-sum game.

Finley dispassionately wiped at the blood that poured out of his nostrils onto his black sleeve, and absently wondered if he'd ever stop pushing his limits. He hadn't know he could do it until he tried - that was always how it had worked with his abilities. I never know my limits, because I constantly am pushing them, he thought.

Jeri's hand reached over to tentatively touch his knee. He turned to stare at her. "Are they . . . ?" She wondered, trailing off. The ringing in his ears nearly drowned out her suddenly soft, normally brash voice.

"See for yourself," he suggested.

She poked her head over the top edge of their hiding spot and let out a loud, inappropriate whooping noise. "Hey guys, they killed each other!" She told Alex and Tim and leapt out from behind the air conditioner to examine the scene up close. Both Alex and Tim tried to stop her, but they were too slow.

They were both equally stunned by the sight of their three fallen pursuers. "What the fuck just happened?" Alex wondered aloud. Fin didn't want him to know what had really happened, so he remained silent, and hoped Jeri wouldn't blab about what he'd done.

"I-I don't understand," Tim blurted, just as the cops raced in with guns pointed in their direction. "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!! I'm unarmed!!" He cried desperately and fell back. A thousand and one miserable scenarios straight out of Tim's nightmares bombarded Finley's mind as Tim projected them unconsciously; like most African-American men, he had a deep and well-justified fear of the police shooting him down, born out of centuries of mistreatment that recent history had not amended. Especially after the recent treaty with Russia, America ever remained a place of struggle.

But, Alex positioned himself in front of Timothee, perhaps instinctively, and they all raised their arms in the air with a mixture of tension and relief. Finley stood up from his hiding place, on swaying feet, and held his hands up in the air as the cops prepared to do their jobs. Slowly, the police in uniforms lowered their weapons and ordered them all to stay put while they examined the scene.

"That's them, right there!" Jeri informed the police. "They shot each other when they heard you guys come up!" She struggled to explain. "At least I think that's what happened. Anyway, they're dead now!"

They were escorted by the police to the lobby while the officers examined the scene, and thankfully they were not detained. They had to wait about an hour while people swarmed the building, taking statements and pictures, and were interviewed by police no less than three times who were full of redundant questions.

After a while, Finley got fed up with the noise and movement and dared to ask if they were free to leave. He was directed to a detective in charge of the scene, who made them promise not to leave town for at least two days and took their contact information. Finley, as a measure of his faith in the authorities, gave them Omar Ibarra's information and hoped that something would result of it. Perhaps, with luck, the cops might eventually sneeze in the right direction, he thought. He highly doubted anything would come of it; Ramiel had appeared to them, not to the police.

It was a long, tense car ride back to Long Beach during which nobody talked except for Jeri, who seemed to be in a good mood. Finley ended up with another pounding headache that he had no recourse for, so he sulked in the back seat and laid down with his arm over his eyes to block out the light from the still-high California sun outside. Jeri gabbed here and there, fiddling with the radio station, attempting to draw Tim and Fin into conversations and miserably failing. Eventually she stopped altogether and seemed content to nap in her seat with her feet on the dashboard. It was quicker getting back than it was getting there, perhaps due to the route that Timothee chose - he had traveled up on the 10 but went back on the 5 and followed it all the way back down.

When they pulled back up to Tim's house, Aidan greeted them in Bahama shorts and flip flops, looking significantly more cheerful than he had any right to be considering the circumstances. Finley stared down at himself, in blood-stained black, and wondered just what it was Aidan saw in him. He greeted his best friend with a long-lasting hug as soon as he came in the door, and immediately begged for, "Acetaminophen?"

"I'll get it," Aidan offered and ran back upstairs to pry the pills out of his bag.

Jeri and Tim followed inside behind Finley. "You guys are sickeningly cute together," Jeri commented.

Tim said nothing and walked over to the dining table which was still rearranged in séance form. Finley noted the chair he had broken was still in the same position he'd left it in. The place was a mess. Timothee sighed heavily and sat down at the head of the ovular table.

"T?" Jeri said, questioning, and walked around behind him to rub circles into the man's back. "What can—"

"Just give me a minute," Tim requested desperately. "Just . . . A minute. For everything to slow down."

She sat down next to him and was, for once, silent.

Aidan came downstairs and passed the pills and a glass of water over to Finley. He took both and grunted in gratitude, downing the entire glass and swallowing the pills. It'd be nice to figure out how to use my abilities without inducing a damn nose-bleed every time, Finley internally griped.

"Oka-a-a-ay," Aidan drawled, looking around the room at the three of them. "What, exactly, happened?"

They heard Alexei's motorcycle pull up and reach a screeching halt outside, followed by Alex himself bursting in through the unlocked front door seconds later. He looked over to the table, toward Fin and Aidan, and promptly crossed the room and sat down next to Tim, putting his helmet and jacket on the table next to him. "I am ready," he announced.

Aidan's eyebrow quirked up. "Uh, for what?" He wondered.

"For the spiel," he declared. He looked to Jeri. "For whatever bullshit explanation you have for everything that just happened in the last twenty-four hours."

"Aidan, tell him," Jeri commanded.

Aidan looked completely lost. "Tell him what?"

"The things! All the things! The teleporting guy, the—you took notes, right? Show him your notes!"

"Oh. Just the things? All the things?" He repeated, jokingly. "Sure, let me, uh, grab my notes."

Fin parked himself on the couch and wished his headache would go away. Meanwhile, RJ struggled to explain to Alex and Tim the what and why of everything, despite missing several points of key information in her explanation - namely who those people were that were trying to kill her, and why they were after her. Her elaborate explanation was: "So, Fin picked me up from the loony bin, and on the road trip home - after we stayed the night at my place, we were headed back to his to fly out from Sacramento to go to the funeral, right? Anyway, on the drive there, this guy - this weird, Logan's Run looking guy teleported into the car and drops some portents on us. I can't remember exactly what he said, something about Prodigal Sons, and other bullshit, Aidan would know more because when we got back to Fin's place, the teleporting guy showed up again in the dining room - in front of all three of us - and said some of the same bullshit. Then we had dinner, went to this park, and some jack holes tried to nab me at the park. Probably the same jack holes that were trying to kill me back at the label. Don't know how they keep finding me."

"You're not exactly undercover," Alex said.

"Yeah, but shut up, what am I gonna do, wear a damn wig? I already dyed my hair!" Jeri objected defensively.

Aidan came back downstairs with his notes in that moment, and between his interjections and corrections and Jeri's rambling story, they were able to more or less give Alex and Tim the entire story of what had happened to them ever since he picked her up. In truth, Fin was sure the story stretched back further than that - back to when their mother was murdered - but Jeri left that part out of her story for the time being, perhaps because the subject was too delicate for her to brazenly approach in her usual way, or perhaps because it brought up bad memories. Either way, on the subject of their mother's death, she was silent. Even when the subject came up about Mara's death, she clammed up and it was Aidan who had to tell them the few details he knew about the matter.

Fin realized he would have been able to tell them, in intimate detail, just how Mara had died thanks to the memories he had plucked from Ibarra's and Félix's heads.

"I . . . Can see why you didn't want to talk about all this," Tim offered when everyone else had fallen silent after explanations were finished.

"Yeah, it's a lot to handle," Aidan conceded. "Luckily I took notes!"

Alex seemed unfazed and was nodding along. "Cool."

". . . Cool?" Aidan repeated.

"That's it? No, get-the-fuck-outta-heres? No fuck-yous?" Jeri was surprised.

The long-haired guitarist flung some of his hair out of his face and shrugged nonchalantly. "You have seen me transform into a bear, have you not?" He directed this at Jeri.

This caught Finley off-guard. He started laughing, despite the headache. "Uh, what?" Fin blurted out.

No one else at the table seemed surprised by this declaration; Finley was the exception. Even Aidan was just nodding. "Oh, neato," Aidan said, "you're an . . . ursanthrope, is that what they'd call it?" Alex nodded. "So, are you registered? If you don't mind me asking."

"Runs in the family," Alex further iterated, despite Finley's mounting confusion, "so no, not as such. I'd like to keep it that way."

"There was an unregistered felidanthrope in my home town, just next door," Aidan added. Finley stared at him as if he'd grown tentacles and started flapping them about.

"I'm not familiar with that one," Alex said apologetically.

"Big cat shifter," Aidan said. "They're rare, not unheard of though."

"Shifter? What the hell are you talking about?" Finley demanded to know.

"People with the ability to transform into animals," Aidan turned him and explained. "Witches - if you'll forgive the term - that have that ability, rather than you know, floating stuff, or setting stuff on fire, or what have you. They're rare and they seem to run in families predominantly. Lycanthropes are the most common, those who can transform into dog-like or wolf-like creatures."

"Those are real??" Finley blurted. "Wait, I thought the moon—"

"Moons have nothing to do with it," Alex said tiredly. "Trust me, I would know. Transformations are tied to our emotional states. Why do you think I am always so chill?"

"I-I just thought you naturally were that way," Fin said lamely.

"I have to be," Alexei said wryly. "Or I'd be a bear all the time, eating honey, chasing fish, snacking on berries, digging through trash, and getting shot at by the government."

"You didn't know that about him?" RJ wondered, looking at Finley. Finley's face must have indicated his incredulousness, because all she added was, "huh. Could've sworn I told you. Oh well."

"It must not have come up before now," Alex said, shrugging it off as if having the ability to transform into a bear was just another facet of his life and really nothing to worry about. "It's whatever. The point is, after those people tried to shoot us, I believe you."

"People tried to shoot you?!" Aidan must not have gotten the memo.

Finley looked to him apologetically. "Three of them. Cultists, I think," he offered. "When we were at the label, they came in with guns blazing and demanding Jeri. I think they wanted to abduct her."

"Shouldn't we tell the police that?" Tim wondered.

Fin shook his head. "They'll ask how I know they're cultists, and that would be an awkward explanation. Better to let them piece together the clues while we move on somewhere else."

"Move on where?" Jeri's left, pierced eyebrow scaled up her forehead in confusion and stayed there.

"Anywhere else?" Fin shrugged. "They know where you are now."

"That's an excellent point," Aidan conceded. "But where would we go?"

"Timbuktu?" Tim offered.

"Morocco!" Alex suggested.

"How about a place that's not an active war zone?" Jeri added blithely.

"Alaska?" Aidan chimed in. "I mean, not the Bering coast, that's a warzone, but I hear the rest of it is quite nice. Maybe Canada? Do you have a passport?"

"I'm not going to fucking Canada, man," Jeri complained, "I went there once on tour and froze my balls off." Then she buried her head in her arms, and for no good reason at all, started to helplessly cry.