This was it. My last job, and then I'd be out of the hellhole, this pit of bloodthirsty snakes. I reached into one of the pouches of the tool belt I wore at my waist, that I'd always worn at my waist, for five years, nimble brown fingers searching for a bullet. When I found it, the metal seemed surprisingly warm, it must have been one that had been in the pouch for some time. But that hardly mattered, it would not affect the task at hand. Even though I continued to tell myself this, I couldn't get my mind off of the warmth of the bullet. Like the warmth of a woman's hand…

I shook myself. Memories of the days of my beginnings in this odious profession sprung to the surface of my mind like flotsam in a polluted lake. I could remember crouching by the window in an old musty clock tower, waiting for the third chime of 3 o'clock and grasping my sniper rifle to my chest like a child clinging to a soft toy. I'd been young then. Looking down at my hands, again clutching a sniper rifle, I reminded myself that I was still young. Only twenty-five years old, this Thursday.

The hand holding the warm bullet was not trembling. I wished it would, if only because it would remind me that I had morals, a beating human heart that constricted every time I had to do this. Gone were my lofty ideals, my stupid plans to "better the world" by weeding out men my employers marked as villains.

They were the villains. God. Every day, I wished even harder, until I felt my lungs would implode, that I had never seen that little girl's face.

"Focus, Jordan," I mumbled to myself, so softly that it didn't even echo in the tiny room. I set up the rifle at the window and attached the laser sight. Just this one job, and then I'd have enough money to leave. Flee the country with the help of a few trustworthy friends and start a new life. I spat on the dirt-encrusted window and rubbed at it with the sleeve of my trenchcoat, then looked through the rather smeary peephole this made.

If I'd wanted to see the mark, then I would've looked through the scope, but what I wanted to see was the big picture. There were guards posted in strategic places, of course, but I'd be out of this place long before they even knew which of these derelict hotel rooms the shot had come from.

That's it. Quit procrastinating, Jordan. I aimed. Just take the shot! Every muscle I had trained to this job screamed at me to do it, to take out the mark, a man I didn't even know. Some know-nothing politician who'd made a lot of powerful people angry. A man who was rumored to be so paranoid that he had hired actual ninjas, God only knew how and from where. I let go of the rifle to flex my fingers that had somehow seemed to cramp up, then repositioned myself. There was no time for this. The speech the mark was giving was almost over, I could hear it over the radio in my pocket, even though I only had one of the earbuds in my ear.

The sound never ceased to horrify me, and I was glad. That surprised and hoarse gasp that came from the mark when he met my bullet, and his end. I wondered if he noticed its warmth, like the touch of a woman's hand… Then I shook myself and put my gear away, quicker even than I usually did, trying to drown out the radio's transmitted cries of distress and horror with prayers for forgiveness.

How had I become this?

Two days later, I'd gotten my pay and transferred every last cent I'd saved to a bank account I'd had set up for my new identity, Jordan West. My father had named me Jordan, I wasn't going to let go of that name. Besides, I was going to America, the name was not uncommon there, so it would help me blend into the crowd. Oh, how I longed to do just that, blend in and become a faceless person, contributing to society in an unglamorous—and more importantly, bloodless—manner. Most of all, I wanted quiet.

I wasn't going to get it on the plane ride.

Either it was ill luck or karma, but the woman I was sitting next to was, although a rather attractive young lady, quite a chatterbox. At first I enjoyed the conversation, it gave me a chance to establish my new identity, but it soon became apparent that after so much time hiding in alleys and underground parts of the city, I was not up to this woman's social ability.

She had introduced herself as Kylie Lebeau, and even though she was sitting down, I had the impression that she was rather short, but by no means petite. One of the topics of conversation she seemed to enjoy was food, and though she was not overweight, it was easy to see why she enjoyed the subject of fine dining. "I'm a gourmet," she confessed, "which makes reviewing restaurants around the world an ideal job for me." Then she patted her stomach and laughed. This behavior rather confused me, as I had believed American women to be self-conscious about their weight. It would have been rude to say anything, so I merely smiled and nodded.

"You don't say much, do you?" she asked, her light red curls bouncing as she tilted her head to one side. It was hard to tell what color her eyes were behind the expensive sunglasses she wore, but I imagined that they were green.

For a moment I wondered how to answer her question, then shook my head slightly. "My English is not…what it should be." That was a lie, but did not sound like one thanks to my accent, which had always been rather heavy, even though I'd been fluent in English for at least fifteen years.

Apparently she had been traveling abroad for many years, or at least had a trick of picking up languages easily, because what she said next was in my native language. "A month or two in the States'll change that. Some people there aren't too tolerant…" There was a sad note in her voice, and for a moment her face seemed to fall a bit, but then she was smiling again, her full lips reminiscent of a flower's petals. "How long are you staying in New York?"

"I have a two hour layover there. I'm to go all the way to Phoenix." There were many things about that place I had found attractive in my reading, mainly the heat. And it would be amazing to see the Grand Canyon.

Ms. Lebeau's smile grew so much that it made her eyes shrink. "What a delightful coincidence! I have three restaurants in Phoenix begging for me to write articles about them, and one in Scottsdale, too. Perhaps I shall visit you sometime, Mr. West."

"I would like that." It was, of course, unlikely that I would ever see this woman again, but manners were always important.

Our conversation continued, far longer than I had first thought it would, and as we were speaking in my mother tongue, I was free to speak as I liked and not worry about ruining my identity as a man supposedly learning English.

"Where are you going to stay when you get to Phoenix? A hotel?"

I shook my head, then looked down at the bag at my feet. It contained all my papers, and I couldn't help checking occasionally to ensure that it was still safely with me. "I'm going to live there. I was…born there." That was a lie as well, I had never been there in my life, but the papers in my bag said that I was a Phoenix native and that I had dual citizenship. "However, I left when I was very young and haven't been back for years." Lying was far too easy and convenient. But that was a good thing, it would make my new life much easier.

Before Ms. Lebeau could say anything, the flight attendant, a stringy man with the name Jerry pinned to his uniform, brought our trays of food. After giving us our requested wines, he continued down the plane. Considering Ms. Lebeau's love of food, I was prepared to eat in silence as she enjoyed her meal, but as it turned out, she was one of those feminine marvels who could enjoy her food with gusto but still eat quite politely and carry on a conversation. As I had never been able to master such skill, I remained silent and listened to her, nodding at appropriate intervals.

Fortunately, our talk made an immediate change to food and several places Ms. Lebeau had traveled to, rather than anything concerning me. After the life I had led for the past five years, I was uncomfortable receiving that kind of attention, especially now. But I enjoyed simply hearing her speak to me, it had been much too long since I had had a pleasant time conversing with someone I did not know and trust with my life. There had been too much danger in it.

That was all going to change though, I thought after the pilot announced our arrival at Kennedy Airport. My former employers were pleased with all the work I had done for them over the years, and I had not left them on uneasy terms. They would find someone to replace me, and they would not care to find me again. In their eyes, I was and always had been expendable. People like that treated their employees like expensive tissue paper.

After we were back on the ground, Ms. Lebeau accompanied me until we had to go our separate ways. "Goodbye, Mr. West. Thank you for putting up with my chatter on the plane. It doesn't seem to matter how many times I fly, it always makes me nervous and I become a babbling wreck." She had taken off her sunglasses, and I could see her green eyes twinkling merrily. "Perhaps I'll see you if ever I'm in Phoenix."

Then she waved and was on her way, leaving me to continue towards the transit lounge.

There are few places more boring and ridiculous than a transit lounge, especially if you have no inclination to buy anything. I spent an hour and a half napping with one eye open, holding my bag tightly to me. After that, I was wide-awake and sore after the odd position I'd been sleeping in. Rather than staring at the wall and waiting for my flight to be announced, I got up and walked around, looking at the many shops and people and telling myself stories about them. It was an old game of mine, and was most amusing when there was no end of people milling about. The fair-haired woman in a pink sundress and straw hat was a model on her way home back to Alabama after a long modeling tour across Europe, and the man with a large camera hanging from his neck by a black design-covered strap was her photographer and favorite lover. I listened to them argue in French for a few moments, then moved on, pausing only to smile at the large family with seven daughters, all of them freshly rescued from various fates, such as terrible boarding schools and ill-mannered cousins.

But the one that intrigued me, before I could even look long enough to fabricate an illustrious past for him, was a thin man with dark black hair hunched up at a telephone booth. It wasn't really a booth, per se…it was one of those colorful telephone booths covered in advertisements, more like a telephone vending machine than booth. It seemed odd to see such an intense person even standing near the garish machine.

Curiosity and habit drove me to find a place to stand near him without being noticed. Not that he would have, from the sound of it, he was having a fierce argument.

"Yes, I understand that, Alianne, but—" he paused, clutching the phone so tightly that the skin on his knuckles cracked, a small rivulet of blood trickled down the back of his hand to his wrist. He didn't seem to notice. I wondered what he had done—or, indeed, what could have happened to him—for his hands to reach that condition. "Well, good work, love, now when someone slits my throat, I'll at least have the satisfaction of knowing you tried!" Then he slammed the phone back onto the hook and stomped blindly off.

Right into me.

With his head lowered and shoulders hunched, he practically head-butted me in the chest, knocking me back a few steps. I held onto my bag even tighter, lest I drop it and spill its contents. The angry young man glared up at me with surprised gray eyes, and I was struck by how tall he was. When he'd been arguing on the phone, I'd thought him to be a short man, but he was nearly as tall as I.

"Pardon me, I meant no harm," he muttered, then moved to brush past me.

I grabbed his arm, gently as I could, and pulled his hand up so he could see the blood that was marking his calloused white hands. They seemed even paler when compared to mine. "You're bleeding," I said simply. "I've bandages in my bag, if you will take them."

Instead of spitting out a curse at me for being meddlesome, the young man pressed his lips together and sighed, then smiled at me, a smile born of exhaustion and…desperation, I thought, but I was not sure that I could trust that opinion, even though it was my own. "Why not?" His accent was strange, impossible for me to place, in spite of the many I had heard in my lifetime. There was a look of oncoming hysteria in his eyes, and I wondered what his story was, his real story, not the one I would have fabricated for him.

He stumbled as I led him to a row of unoccupied airport chairs, and his hands shook as I cleaned up the blood and gave him balm to put on his chapped and cracking skin. When he had done so, I wrapped both hands in bandages, ones that I had kept merely because I was used to carrying medical supplies. They were never without use.

"You're a soldier, aren't you? Or were one." The exhausted smile was still there, as was a certain madness in his eyes. But it was a controlled madness that I found more frightening than any other I had encountered.

I took the jar of balm and stuffed it in my bag, then got to my feet. Whatever shadow followed this man, I wanted no part of it. Fortunately, the announcer on the PA system revealed the gate my plane would be departing from; I strode off towards it, hopefully leaving behind the mad-eyed man with newly bandaged hands.

Fate had never been my friend, this I had known since a very young age, but there was always a small amount of hope in me that I had some manner of luck. But whatever manner of luck it was that I might have had, it did not protect me from running into that man again. For the entire flight, I never gave him a second thought, instead spending most of my time reading, or sleeping. Even after the plane landed, I saw neither hide nor hair of him, not even a flash of white from his bandages.

But after I had passed successfully through customs and out onto the street outside the airport, I saw him, with a casual manner that suggested he was leaning on something, though I saw nothing. He was grinning disconcertingly, and he looked much younger than when I had seen him in New York, at least four or five years younger than myself. His unruly black hair gave him a mischievous air, and his mad gray eyes twinkled almost wickedly.

"I'm called Gabriel," he said, his voice and tone light. "And you're Jordan."

Something deep inside me told me that he knew my name, my real name. Fear boiled in my stomach and I was suddenly very glad that I hadn't eaten much on the flight from New York to Phoenix. "Yes," I said, before he could expose me, "I am Jordan West."

"Isn't Jordan an odd name for a man from your country?"

I glared at him. "Is this how you would repay a kindness?"

The wicked twinkle in his eyes became one of light-hearted humor, though it did nothing to calm my fear. "Actually, it is. You don't know me for what I am, do you?"

Confused, I took a second look at him, paying more attention to his features, and even his clothing. He was a sprightly-looking young man, no more than twenty years old, with a thin nose and rather long neck and ears that stuck out more than the average person's. Almost voluminous dark gray pants hid the shape of his legs, but his skinny arms were only covered by a worn out black jacket and white shirt. His black hair looked as though it had an inclination to be slightly curly, but that inclination was currently being half-ignored. The shoes on his feet, the bits of them that peeked out from his pants, anyway, were torn and covered in dust.

When I looked back at his eyes, he was practically laughing at me. "You did grow up in all the wrong places and all the wrong ways, didn't you?" Then an unexpected sobriety swallowed up all of his playful flippancy. "Your grandmother would be ashamed."

My grandmother? "What on earth…?"

"Never mind." The sobriety disappeared, as if it had never been. "You were right, you did pay me a kindness, though you've no idea what kindness you really paid. And what evil you wrought upon me."

"Evil?" I had not meant to do him harm, could not, in fact, imagine what he meant by that.

He sauntered over to me and made a small bow, then tugged a lock of his hair at me. "Since you seem to be so dense, I suppose I shall have to explain a few things to you. These bandages you so graciously gave me are, as far as my people and I are concerned, manacles. A collar, as you adorn your dogs with." He rubbed his bandaged hands together, then grinned up at me. "But make no mistake, I am not complaining. As a bound man, I not only do much of your will, but gain your protection in return." His voice grew serious again as he said, "Protection that I need."

Somewhere during the course of this day, I knew not when, reality had been set on its ear. I stared at the young man, Gabriel, and wondered if I was dreaming. Perhaps if I pinched myself…but no, that was silly. I looked for something to read, if I could read, then I couldn't possibly be dreaming, those two functions of the brain were on opposite sides of each other.

A green and white taxi pulled up in front of the airport, and I felt my body go a bit limp as I read the advertisement attached to its roof. "Well, Gabriel," I said, keeping my voice level and calm, "I can see that you're serious about this, but I haven't any room in my home or my life for a—"

"Stray? Do you really think I'm a homeless man looking for a roof and regular meals?" Gabriel laughed heartily, hugging his narrow waist. "Never have I needed to so much as beg for my bread." His eyes grew dark, and I swore that I saw a fire sparking in them. "I'm about as fond of this idea as you are, but neither of us can do anything about it. You brought this upon yourself, putting me in your debt like you did."

Memories of my childhood intruded on my thoughts, and I tried to ignore them. This young man was not so different from what I had been at his age, he was barmy and feral, but I could think of far too many things that could be responsible for that. Perhaps I could take him in, just for a short while…

Then what? Send him back onto the streets to fend for himself? I shook my head. I couldn't get involved in this, not after what I'd just escaped. "I'm sorry. I don't know why you're so set on attaching yourself to me, but—"

"Oy. Just my luck, getting stuck with a skeptic, a deaf one, at that." Gabriel hopped towards me, so quickly that I barely had time to blink before he was standing uncomfortably close to me. He reached up a bandaged hand and grabbed a fistful of my hair, and then yanked my head down. "Listen up, fluff-for-ears," he said, his mouth so close to my ear that his breath made me shudder. "I'm not hanging about because I like your face or something, alright? You bound me to you, and now I'm stuck with you until I repay my debt. If you try to abandon me, I'll find you and break your nose. If you try to sweet-talk me into leaving you alone—which I can't do anyway—then I'll pop you one in the mouth. Understand?"

His grip on my hair tightened, and the only way I could see to get out of my current situation was to say, "Yes." But he didn't let go right away.

Instead, he loosened his grip a small fraction and lifted my head a bit so I could see his scowl. I'd seen a lot of dangerous people in my day, and I could sense danger emanating from this youth, like fumes from a gas bomb. And in spite of my superior size and build, I was not in a hurry to find out exactly why I felt those fumes of danger.

Then, suddenly, my head felt painfully light; he had let go and was now standing a respectable distance away, arms folded over his chest. "So, big guy. Where do you live anyway?"

I smoothed my hair back, mainly to make sure all of it was still connected to my head, then sighed. "I have an apartment in Central Phoenix. It's big enough for two people, I suppose…" It wasn't really, at least, I didn't expect it to be, not from what my contacts had told me. But it hadn't mattered then, I hadn't known that a crazy homeless person was going to accost me and make himself my roommate. Doubtlessly a non-rent-paying one.

He grinned at me, and I couldn't help thinking it odd that he had three canines on the left side of his mouth. "I doubt it is, but that's okay. I don't take up a lot of space. It's been about a month since I had a good meal though, sorry if I rack up a high grocery bill for the first week."

"Are you going to pay for it?"

"Get me a job, and I will."

That made me perk up a little. He was obviously a strong young man, and even with the madness in his eyes, his manner of speech marked him as more than reasonably intelligent. If he was willing to get a job, maybe I could be rid of him at a not-too-far point in the future. "Alright then. I'll do that."

The disquieting frenzy in his eyes seemed to calm slightly, and his wild grin became a much tamer smile. "Great. Can we get out of here then?"

It would have been too difficult and complicated to buy a car before getting settled in the apartment first, which left the options of either renting a car or taking the bus. With all of my luggage, and my odd…companion…the bus was not an appealing choice, so I decided to walk to the nearest car rental lot.

To my surprise, Gabriel took as much of my luggage as he could, which was a substantial help, and walked alongside me without saying a word. It was impossible to read the expression on his face, but I wondered if he was thinking about whatever had been upsetting him when I'd met him in the transit lounge. He had said something about needing protection, and that he expected me to provide it.

Protection was not something I was equipped to give Gabriel or anyone else. I had been considered a dangerous man, but being able to take a life, especially the way I had done it, did not take courage or strength, only ability and talent. And patience. Lots of patience. Looking at Gabriel and thinking of the things he had already done, I knew that my somewhat vast stores of patience were going to be very useful.

We arrived at the rental lot tired, sweaty, and, in my case, ready to sell all my luggage for a bottle of water. A crisply dressed blonde woman sat behind a high counter, gazing critically at her nails. I told Gabriel to sit down in the reception area and take care of the luggage—which he responded to with a mock salute and a mocking grin—then, keeping one eye trained on him, I walked over to the counter and cleared my throat to get the receptionist's attention.

"Yes, may I help you?"

I explained what I needed and why, then after a ridiculous amount of paperwork, received a set of keys. "Thank you," I said, only half meaning it. It would have been quicker to just take the bus, even with Gabriel and the suitcases I had already begun to wish I'd left behind.

"Don't let the kid drive it, he'd wrap it around a telephone pole five minutes out of the lot."

Fighting the urge to do something rude, I nodded curtly, then dragged Gabriel out of there. I hated people who thought that their jobs granted them superiority over others, and from the sneer I'd seen the receptionist flash at Gabriel, she had thought of worse things she would have liked to say regarding him.

"What's got you gnashing your teeth?" For all that he looked as hot and tired as I was, Gabriel didn't sound it. I spared half a moment to envy his control over himself. "Never mind all the stupid paperwork, cars have air conditioning."

That was enough for me to forget my annoyance and walk faster towards the car. It was a dark blue sedan with new tires and no broken or cracked windows. It had been a long time since I'd driven a car without cracked windows and tires with patches upon patches. After I'd settled my over-large suitcases in the backseat, I climbed into the driver's seat, half-hoping that if I forgot about Gabriel and left him to his own devices, he'd run off and create a new delusion to live inside.

No such luck. When I reached for my seat belt, I saw him sitting comfortably in the passenger's seat, buckled in and staring thoughtfully at his hands in his lap. While we'd been walking, he'd taken off his jacket and it was now lying crumpled at his feet. He didn't move or look up at me, even when I turned the key in the ignition or when I turned on the air conditioning.

"It's been a few hours since I bandaged those for you," I said, maintaining a level of calm in my voice that I had once used to talk myself out of sticky situations with the authorities. "And they must be itching terribly what with all this humidity. When we get to my apartment, I'll change them for you."

For a long time, there was nothing but silence. Then he curled his fingers into fists and looked out the window. "Only if you give me some clothes first."

Clothes? I barely had my own clothes, and it was immediately obvious that my wristwatch would not fit this young man, let alone some pants or even a pair of socks. "I don't have any to spare…"

"You have money, don't you? Buy some." There was a dark commanding tone to his words, and I couldn't help wondering where he'd acquired it. An overly military father, perhaps? Or had he developed it on his own? "I'll keep these bandages until you give me some clothes."

I scoffed. "That's ridiculous, if you insist on wearing dirty bandages, your wounds could fester, and the healing skin will definitely knit together with the cloth."

"Good."

This boy was frustrating. The more time I spent near him, the more I thought of him as a troublesome child rather than a mad adult. But that was characteristic of madness, wasn't it? "Oh, alright. I'll buy you clothes." It annoyed me that ever since I'd arrived in Phoenix, I'd been making one concession after another for this person. "You'll need them anyway, won't you?"

There was no answer, but I didn't expect one.

My apartment complex was near the school I would be working at, which had been one of my major considerations when I had chosen it, but it was also near a small merchant's district—my term, I had no idea what Americans would call it—and I was sure there would be a shop there that sold clothing. But now was not the time for that, we were both covered in dirt and sweat, and I, for one, would have walked on nails for a long, cold shower. The heat was going to prove a very nice change, but I hadn't expected the humidity to be so oppressive.

Fortunately I had a parking space near my apartment, and there were no stairs that had to be climbed to reach it. After Gabriel dragged himself out of the sedan, I locked the doors, promising myself that I'd come back for the luggage later.

When we reached my apartment, I fished the key out of my pocket and said, "I'm afraid I only have one bathroom, we'll have to take turns showering."

"But I don't have any clothes yet!" Gabriel's voice sounded shrill and frightened, I wondered if he was suddenly afraid that I would try to take advantage of him, and then I nearly laughed out loud. This surreal person was still human, for all his strange talk.

I pushed the door open and strode in, then tossed my bag on the floor where I would probably put a couch later. It would have to be one that was big enough for someone as tall as Gabriel was to sleep on, and reasonably comfortable. Maybe one of those hide-a-bed sofas… I shook myself internally, I was already adjusting to this! He would be gone tomorrow, I'd find some way to make him leave.

Then I realized that he was still standing at the door, hugging his jacket to himself and looking distressed. "What's wrong?" I asked, concerned in spite of myself.

He glared at me, but the fear didn't leave his face. Humidity-induced frizziness had claimed his hair, and it was a bit difficult not to think of him as a scared cocker spaniel. "I cannot take a shower if I don't have any clothes. The ones I'm wearing are disgusting." He peeled his shirt away from his chest to demonstrate.

"Wear some of mine until we can buy you some and get those over to the laundry room. Don't you want a shower?"

For a moment, I thought he was going to give in and go along with my suggestion, but then he shook his head vehemently and said, "Let me have that chain around your neck, then!"

I took a step back, surprised by this unexpected demand. The chain he wanted was a cheap bit of thin steel that I'd bought on an impulse when I was still living in my home country, it meant nothing to me, but I wanted to know why he wanted it so badly. "Why?"

"Because!"

It was hotter inside than it had been outside, probably because the air conditioning hadn't been turned on yet, so I took care of that before continuing the argument. Gabriel didn't seem to notice, he was still standing in the doorway. "Just tell me why you want it."

"That's none of your concern." He blinked, sweat had probably dripped into his eyes. "Just give it to me."

I ignored his outstretched arm and grasping hand. "It's my chain, therefore why you want it is my concern."

He made a frustrated noise, then snapped his arm down back to his side. "Just…please…" All of the irritated demanding had left him, what was left was quiet desperation and entreaty.

What could I do? I unfastened the chain from around my neck and handed it to him. He gave me a look of relieved gratitude and just clutched it in his hand for a moment. Then he said, in a small, very young-sounding voice, "Thank you…" He was silent for a bit longer, then walked into the apartment and closed the door behind him, so quietly that I had to remind myself that he was definitely making some noise, that he had to be.

"I'm going to shower first, then while you take your turn, I can get my suitcases in here so I can try to find something that might fit you." If he was still here when I got out of the shower… I kept telling myself that he wouldn't be, but I knew he would be.

Therefore, I wasn't surprised that after I got out of the shower, wearing the change of clothes that I'd been carrying in my bag, Gabriel was still in the living room, sprawled out on the carpet near the air vent that was blasting cold air. He said nothing as he passed me on his way to the bathroom, but I noticed that he was already wearing the chain, and that he had started to unravel his bandages.

True to my word, though I had hoped I wouldn't need to keep it, I brought my luggage in from the car and opened one of the suitcases up to start looking for some clothes. All I found that looked at all promising was a pair of khaki board shorts that someone had given me for unknown reasons, and a white undershirt from an unopened pack of six such garments. I laid them on the floor, then put the rest of my things away as tidily as I could in as short a space of time as possible, then opened the other suitcase to find some shoes. A pair of sandals, at least. It would take a few extra pairs of socks to make his feet fit in my spare pair of boots, and that would be hell in this heat.

"I apologize for my behavior earlier…"

I turned around and saw Gabriel standing in the hallway, dwarfed by the large blue towel and still dripping. His hair was plastered to his forehead, and with the water straightening it completely, I could see that his hair was long enough for the tips to reach past his shoulders. I handed him the clothes, wondering if he would continue with his apology or if he would just take the clothes from me and rush back into the bathroom to get dressed. For a few wordless seconds, he just stared at them, then he looked at me. The entire top half of his face, from the tip of his nose to his forehead, was flushed red, and when he finally accepted the clothes, I noticed that his hands were red as well. It made him look like a sunburned teenager, and I had to bite the insides of my cheeks to keep from laughing.

After he'd left the room again, I set the suitcases up against the wall and leaned on them, trying to figure out how things had managed to change so fast. Only a few hours ago, my plan for the day had been to take a cab to the apartment, then go order some furniture and take a look at the school I was going to start working at on Monday. Now I was babysitting a crazy kid and waiting for him to get dressed in my clothes so I could take him to buy clothes of his own. At least he wasn't a teenager, then I'd have to put him in school and…I put my face in my hands and buried my fingers in my hair. This was insane. I barely knew this person's first name, I didn't even know how old he really was, or where he came from, if he had a family that was worried sick about their runaway son. All I could do was speculate and assume.

He looked at least twenty years old, but he could have been older, or younger. I groaned, the sound muffled by my hands. The only things I really knew about him were his first name and the fact that he was completely barmy.

The sound of the bathroom door opening knocked me out of my confused sulk, and I straightened, giving myself a mental shake. Even with all of this, I couldn't just abandon Gabriel, I owed it to…well, I just owed it. I'd been a half-mad youth myself once, and if someone hadn't taken me in, then I probably wouldn't be alive.

"Look, I'm not incredibly comfortable wearing your clothes when I haven't any underwear, so could we hurry and get to the shops?" Gabriel sounded irritated, and I wondered if it was some sort of defense mechanism. Perhaps he was frightened, even though he was the one who had thrust this situation on both of us.

"First we need to take care of your hands." His hands looked much better than they had in New York, but they still showed a substantial amount of damage. It would be a few days before they healed completely. After I finished wrapping up his hands, I got up and motioned for him to step out of the apartment, then made sure I had all of my keys and followed. The weather hadn't gotten any cooler, but now we were both dressed for the heat, so it didn't seem quite so oppressive, to me, anyway. Gabriel was quiet on the drive to the merchant's district, but when we arrived there, he spoke up. "You're not going to try to leave me here, are you?"

Honestly, I hadn't even considered it. For years, it had been part of surviving to adapt to changes and new circumstances, and I had been adjusting myself to this one in spite of myself. "No," I said, after a long pause.

"Good, because I meant it when I said I'd break your nose if you tried it."

I'd believed him then, and I believed him now. Not that the idea of getting my nose broken bothered me, but then I'd be right back in this situation, only with a broken nose. It would just be added pain I could do without. "Here we are," I said, hoping he'd let go of some of his anger eventually, and wondering who had given him a reason to be so angry.

There were quite a few shops that looked as if they sold clothing, but Gabriel pointed to a secondhand store. "I don't need anything fancy," he said. It didn't matter one way or the other to me, if he'd wanted expensive clothes, I could have provided them. After five years of an illicit and ludicrously well-paying career, I'd amassed a large amount of money. But I kept silent. He didn't know about that…at least, I didn't think he did.

When we were in a remote corner of the store, I looked around to make sure no one could overhear, then asked in a low voice that was almost a whisper, "At the airport…you knew my name. Do you know what I used to do for a living?" I half-expected that he would.

He continued browsing the racks of clothing for a little while before he answered. "Of course I do. Information is not hard to come by, not for someone like me." Then he looked up at me and grinned, showing off his extra canine. "If you so bid, I could find out plenty of secrets for you. It's what I used to do for a living."

If I had been in the business of secrets, that would have been a boon dropped into my lap by Fate, but I was tired of clandestine business. I shook my head. "I'll find you a job, you've no need to be involved in shady work anymore."

Gabriel's eyes widened and he blinked, his mouth hanging open slightly. At first he didn't seem able to say anything, but then he gave himself a little shake. "Oh. What kind of work will I be involved in, then?"

I shrugged. "We'll look around and try to find a place that's hiring. It's up to you, but it'd be best if it's somewhere nearby." I took a few likely-looking shirts off the rack, held them up for Gabriel to inspect, then put them in the cart after he nodded. "If you got a job here, then you could just take the seven o'clock bus with me."

"You really did do your homework about this place, didn't you?" He sounded almost admiring, as if he had gained a bit of respect for me. Where I'd come from, respect was more important and harder to earn than money; I couldn't refrain from feeling pleased.

But all I did was nod, it wouldn't do to smile stupidly or do something else equally silly. "I try to be prepared whenever I can be."

"I'd wager that you weren't prepared for me."

The grin on his face was catching, mainly because I had my own reason to grin at what he'd said. "Although I did not expect it, you'll find I wasn't entirely unprepared." If nothing else, I had enough money to take care of him, and I had the ability or, if necessary, connections, to help him gain employment. Then he'd be gone in a week or two, even less, if he saved his money after he started working.

"I think I'm going to like being stuck with you," he said quietly. "Already things look better than they were with the last person I was bound to…"

Damn it. I stared at him, horrified, but he didn't seem to notice. Perhaps he didn't realize he'd spoken loud enough to be heard. I bit my tongue so I wouldn't curse, then followed Gabriel as he continued down the long aisle of clothing. What on earth was I doing? I couldn't take care of this boy, he was too…scarred. Broken. Mad, my thoughts countered, before my conscience could win.

But maybe this was my penance. The price I had to pay for all the lives I had taken. If that was the case, then there was no price too high, and the only thing I could hope was that I wouldn't screw this up. More than ever, I was extremely glad that Gabriel wasn't a child. Or…was he?

"How old are you?

He spun around and fixed me with a stunned look. "Um…"

"Don't you know? Or are you planning on lying to me?" Madness was one thing, but if he told me something he knew and understood to be untrue, then we would have something to address. If there was anything that I needed nothing more of, it was lies.

The atmosphere between us grew thick and tense, but then Gabriel sighed and tugged at a lock of his curly hair. "I just turned twenty, three weeks ago."

Relief washed over me in torrents, although I did nothing to show it. "Alright. It should be fairly easy for you to get a job then."

Shrugging, he turned his back to me and flicked casually through a section of durable-looking jeans. "Whatever you say, boss."

I went rigid. "Don't call me that."

"Huh?" He glanced over his shoulder at me for a second, then looked away again. "Oh, I forgot. You don't like that word. Sorry."

Before I could react, he dashed off, quicker than I could follow, though I knew he'd be back. I knew why I knew that he'd be back, but I didn't know why he'd known that I hated the word 'boss'. Things could not possibly get much stranger.

It was not the first time that I would be horribly wrong about something related to Gabriel.

Walking all over the merchant district to collect job applications was not difficult work, probably because the weather cooled a great deal while we'd been buying Gabriel's clothes, and even more after we stopped to eat. By the time we finally trudged back to the car, it was getting dark and Gabriel was shuffling his feet. He fell asleep on the drive back to the apartment, and I wondered what he had been through before I'd met him in New York.

It really felt like I had left my life, my self, behind when I had left my country. But this was my country now, and it apparently came with a prepackaged life—and not the one I had signed for, to take the metaphor further.

I parked the car, then rested my forehead on the steering wheel for a few moments, trying to make sense of everything that had happened. Unfortunately, I couldn't. All I knew was that I had gotten saddled with an adult who, for all intents and purposes, was little better than a child, and often looked like one into the bargain, and that it had somehow become my responsibility to take care of him.

"Damn it," I said with a sigh. I looked over at him, curled up in the passenger's seat with his skinny arms wrapped around himself. He was sleeping so silently and peacefully that I had to watch him, nearly squinting, until I saw his chest moving, just to make sure that he was still alive. My first thought was to wake him up so he could help me carry his new things inside, but then he whimpered softly and hugged himself tighter.

Waking someone who was having a nightmare was never a good thing to do, they would awaken disoriented and frightened, and then be unable to go back to sleep. After the events of the day, I was not in any mood to sit up with a boy who was too afraid to go to sleep. I decided to leave his things in the car until morning, and carried him into the apartment.

When I slung him over my shoulder, he stirred, but did not wake, and then he whimpered again and clung to me. Quiet rage built up inside me, making my fingers ache. Whoever had hurt this young man had done a thorough job, and if I ever found them, they'd feel that pain visited back upon them.

The only piece of furniture in the apartment was the bed I'd ordered before I'd even arrived, so I laid Gabriel out on that and went out to buy a sleeping bag from a 24-hour store. Just a few more days before I started work… I had to get some furniture as soon as possible. I sighed as I tossed about on the sleeping bag. At least there was thick carpet here, and not the threadbare variety that I'd hardened myself to years ago. It was amazing what a difference that made.

Even so, I passed a fitful night, and when I awoke a few hours after I'd gone to bed, it felt as if it had only been a few minutes. But the manner of my awakening was worth every bit of restlessness. The first sounds I heard were the sounds of something frying, and the divine smells of butter-fried bacon and French toast filled the apartment. My eyes were still glued shut with sleep that was reluctant to release me, so I let my nose lead me to the kitchen.

I heard Gabriel laugh, then finally opened my eyes. "You looked like a bloodhound," he said, grinning, "walking in with your nose in the air like that." He was wearing an apron I didn't recall ever purchasing, which reminded me that we hadn't remembered to buy any food the day before.

"Where…?"

Gabriel set two paper plates with French toast, bacon, and scrambled eggs onto the counter, then poured some coffee into two plain white mugs. "You were sleeping like the dead, so I picked your pockets and got some grocery money." He must have seen my face go red, because he rolled his eyes at me before I could start shouting, which confused me into silence. "Hold, firebrand. I just walked down to the local market and asked the old woman who runs it to set us up a tab."

There was still something suspicious about this, but I couldn't bluster about it now that he'd given me a reasonable explanation. Besides, I was famished, and the food smelled so good that a monk might have called it sinful, and it looked even better than it smelled.

There was no table, so I leaned against the counter while I ate, and after he turned off the stove and moved the frying pans onto the previously unused burners, Gabriel pulled himself up onto a bare spot of the counter and sat cross-legged. He'd been right, he really didn't take up much space, not even sitting on the somewhat narrow countertop. "What do you think? I'm a fair cook, though I'm that one't says it."

I just nodded, chewing thoughtfully. Only after most of the food on my plate was gone, did I stop to say, "Where did you get the kitchenware? The market run by the old woman?"

"Yes. Thank you for the compliments and gratitude, by the way." He sounded a bit huffy, and stabbed a bit of egg with his plastic fork.

"Your cooking needs no compliment, and if I were to try to express anything regarding its excellence, I'd degrade it with my poor words." I meant it, of course, though I could have said it earlier in a much less grandiose way. Perhaps if he got used to a bit of praise, then he'd come back to himself a little and loosen his mental grip on whatever delusion was driving him.

The flowery compliment made him grin and even go slightly pink. "Oh," was all he said, then he went back to eating. I ducked my head so he wouldn't see my amused smile and take offense. Life with this person was going to be like being in charge of a very large ten-year-old, and so far, I didn't mind that.

He wanted to stay in the apartment while I went to order furniture, but I knew how long it would take, and if he became bored with whatever he planned to do while I was gone, all sorts of things could happen. At first, he grumped at me and shuffled his feet, but when I asked him to take me to the market he had gone to that morning, he brightened and rattled off directions as if he'd known the location all his life instead of all morning.

"There's a library a few blocks south as well." He had rolled down his window and was leaning his head out of it so that I could barely hear him, but whenever I asked him to sit back and roll up the window, he ignored me. "It's something of a walk, but well worth it."

If he called that 'something of a walk', I wondered what he called the walk to the market, a quaint little building called the Sunshine Market that was almost as far from the apartment complex as the merchant's district. But what interested me more than any skills he might have possessed regarding long distance walking, was his mention of the library. "Would you like me to drop you off at the library?"

His head whipped around so quickly that I almost understood how he could walk all the way to the Sunshine Market and back without thinking much of it. "Would you?" Then his face fell. "But…what if you need me to perform a service for you?"

This was the first he had mentioned anything like that since we'd been at the Phoenix airport. I'd hoped that he'd let go of that part of his delusion already. "What if we called this a service? You can stay at the library, stay out of trouble, and when I pick you up, you can make lunch."

For a few moments, he seemed to consider this. "Well, it certainly wouldn't be enough to repay you, as my debt is deep…" Curiosity nagged at me to ask him to explain himself, but I was afraid of making his delusions stronger. "Alright. If that's what you want."

"It's what you want as well, isn't it?" Even with the wind outside muffling his voice, I'd heard his longing when he'd spoken of the library.

There was a long pause, and then he said, in a low, choked voice, "Yes. For so long now… It's been eight years since I last saw the Great Library."

It was then that he reminded me of a wolf or other wild animal stolen from his home and put in a foreign place to which he did not even remotely belong. And I came perilously close to believing that he was not at all delusional. "The Great Library?"

He straightened and gave himself a nearly imperceptible shake. "What are you talking about? You're an odd man, Jordan West."

Neither of us said a word until we reached the library, and even then, I was the only one who spoke. "I'll be back in a few hours."

Gabriel shrugged dismissively, then wandered toward the entrance to the library with a purposeless stride that I couldn't help thinking was merely an affectation. Hopefully he'd drop the act and enjoy the library for whatever reasons he had to want to be there.

Furniture stores are singularly boring places, and it wasn't long before I wished that I had brought Gabriel with me, even though all that would have accomplished would have been making both of us bored and irritable. After far too much haggling, I managed to get the necessary pieces of furniture and nothing extra, and a reasonably soon delivery date, though it cost me more than I would have liked.

For all that he was an at times frightening enigma, Gabriel was human company and he didn't annoy me. I found myself breaking the speed limit on my way back to the library, then forced myself to slow down. Boredom was not a reason to get in a car accident, and neither was worrying about what trouble Gabriel might have gotten into at the library. It was a library, for heaven's sake, what sort of trouble could he get into there?

The answer to that was: quite a bit.

When I parked the car and walked toward the entrance, something felt a bit…off, but I didn't pay it any mind. Even if I had, I couldn't have known what was wrong, nor could I have helped the situation any, not until I got inside and realized that something had happened and Gabriel was part of it.

The guard at the front desk, whose purpose I had always had troubling divining, was standing in his usual place, grim-faced as any library guard I'd ever seen, but instead of adjusting his belt or simply resting his hands at his sides, he was holding Gabriel by the collar. I groaned inwardly, and wondered what he'd done and what I would be expected to do about it, if anything. But it was obvious that Gabriel wouldn't be able to get himself out of whatever mess he'd stumbled into, so I stepped forward and cleared my throat. "Excuse me, sir, but you seem to have some reason to detain my friend there."

He grunted and squinted sternly at me. Unlike the stereotypical guard, this one was of a very ordinary build, neither fat nor skinny, and had the air of a man who was just trying to do his job. "He your son? Brother, maybe?"

The question made me wince. Did I look that old? I knew I had a few gray hairs, but surely that wasn't enough to consider me old enough to have an adult son. Then I brushed it off, deciding to worry about it later. It had to be due to the guard's squint, Gabriel and I didn't look at all alike in the first place. "My roommate." I paused to send Gabriel a questioning look, then asked, "What did he do?"

"Last week he was in here, causing trouble with some other hooligans. Told him not to come by n'more," the guard said, his voice as gruff as his manner.

Gabriel struggled in the man's grip and made a low sound that was almost an animal-like growl. "I've already told you several times, you myopic troglodyte—I was not even in this country last week!" Though his voice was too hushed to be considered a shout, it had the same power, if not the volume.

The guard gave him a small shake, then turned his attention back to me. "That's what he's been saying for the past ten minutes."

"He's telling the truth. I was in New York with him, just the day before yesterday." At least this wasn't because of something Gabriel had actually done. But if the guard didn't believe me, then we'd be in for a long exhausting argument.

For a second, the guard was quiet, then he blinked. "Really." Then he looked at Gabriel and asked, "What's your name, kid?"

There was a much longer silence from Gabriel, but then, after I gave him a hard-faced stare, he sighed and answered. "My name's Gabriel."

"Gabriel what?"

"I'm not telling you!"

"Gabriel, just tell the man so we can leave."

He crumpled a little, then looked at me, his eyes pleading. If I'd understood what he was apparently hoping I would do or say, I might have said or done it. But I had no idea why he had such a desperate expression on his face. "…You tell him."

"What? I don't—" The pleading desperation grew deeper, etching lines on his face, which was paler than it had been before. I sighed. He was asking me to lie for him. Fine. "His name is Gabriel Harbin, and he certainly isn't the person you think he is."

The guard squinted at him one last time, then let go. "Pardon the mistake," he said stiffly. "My eyes aren't what they used to be."

Gabriel sniffed in reply, then walked over to me. "Let's get out of here, now," he whispered, his tone urgent and more than a little demanding.

"Hey, kid, I really am sorry, but you look just like the Bards' boy, Declan…" The guard leaned back against the counter, his arm behind him as if he were looking for something. "Anyway, can't let somethin' like this happen again, better get m'glasses, bugger the headaches."

Pain blossomed in my arm as Gabriel grabbed it and squeezed. "We need to leave, Jordan." Before I could say anything or pry his hand off, he started dragging me, his fingers digging deeper into my arm and making me glad the his nails weren't very long.

When we were outside, he let go of me and ran into the parking lot, not in the direction of the car, but as if he was so eager to get away that he was going to run and look for it rather than look for it first. I let him do what he wanted and focused my attention on my arm. There were a few small half-circle-shaped welts from Gabriel's fingernails, and the possibility of bruising, but more importantly than the result of Gabriel's behavior was the behavior itself.

But I wouldn't figure out why he'd acted the way he had if I just stood in front of the library staring at the abused skin of my arm. I put my hands in my pockets and walked at a sedate pace to where I had parked, thinking about what had just happened and planning what I was going to say.

He was leaning on the car with a brooding scowl that made him look like an angsty teenager, his arms folded over his midsection. "Are you going to unlock the car, or are we just going to stand here and broil slowly?"

It wasn't a very hot day, better than the previous day had been, so I knew he was just blustering. That gave me an odd feeling in my chest, to know something like that about him, to be so familiar with him that I could see through his attitude. I wasn't sure I was comfortable with that, so I put it on a mental shelf to be examined later.

"Well?"

I took the keys out of my pocket, but I didn't unlock the car. "What's your name?"

"You know my name." His voice was steady, but he let his arms drop, and his knees wobbled almost imperceptibly.

Seeing him nervous made me feel uneasy, as if I was stepping onto a minefield. An anxious delusional was a dangerous person, unstable and unpredictable… I wanted to step away from him, or better yet, to knock him in the head hard enough to knock him out, then drive away and leave him there in the library parking lot.

But I couldn't do that. I'd already hurt too many people, and I couldn't even find the capability to push Gabriel away or step on his foot when he had grabbed my hair in front of the Phoenix airport. He was still leaning against the car, but his hands were now clenched into fists at his sides. Part of me wanted to tell him to calm down and relax his hands so he wouldn't agitate his injuries, but my mouth wouldn't work and my throat had closed up.

As it turned out, not saying anything was the best thing I could have done then. Gabriel relaxed considerably, and the heavy scent of fear started to leave the air. But I still couldn't move. I was struck once again with the enormity of my situation. It had seemed fortunate to me when Gabriel had told me that he was over eighteen, but now it felt more like an extra complication. If he'd been underage, then I could have called Child Protective Services to take care of him, this was too big for me. There had already been so much pain, darkness, and violence in my life, I didn't need more! I'd come to Phoenix because I wanted a peaceful life, free from death and anguish, not so I could share the burden of a stranger's mental illness.

"Jordan? You're not angry with me, are you?" Gabriel's voice sounded far away and slightly muffled, as if I was hearing it from underwater. "It—it wouldn't be fair if you were, after all, I've done nothing out of turn."

I sighed. This man had nowhere else to turn to, and even if he did, then it was unlikely that he would return to whatever home he had. The thought was mind-numbing. What if he had a wife, or a child? That wasn't terribly likely, but…Parents. He had to have parents, and the guard had said something about him resembling someone's son…

"What is your real name?"

The anxiety flooded back into Gabriel's face, but instead of growing pale, his face flushed a deep crimson as he glared at me, menace shining through the fear. "Like you said, I'm Gabriel Harbin."

"Don't be daft, I made that up to protect you!" Damn it, I hadn't meant to say it like that. But it was too late to say something else, the words had escaped, and they hung in the air like fog.

They threw Gabriel off for roughly a second, but then he pushed himself away from the car and advanced on me, violent intent quivering throughout his entire stance. He thrust a bandaged finger into my face and growled, "Harbin is the name you gave me, it's mine now." The sharp smell of the balm he'd put on his hands that morning put an acrid taste in my mouth and gave the situation an extra sense of surrealism. I grabbed his shoulders to move him away from me, but he broke free and clipped me in the jaw.

More surprised than hurt, I staggered back until my back hit the car in the next parking space. Its alarm went off, louder than any I'd ever heard, with painful sounds that made my ears ache immediately. I reached to cover them, but then I noticed what Gabriel was doing.

He was crouched on the asphalt, his arms over his head, shouting at the top of his voice in a language I didn't recognize. A small crowd began to gather; I panicked and herded Gabriel into the car quicker than I would have thought I could, then peeled out of the parking lot as if there were an angry mob pursuing us.

Being in the car didn't calm Gabriel down immediately. He continued shouting just as loudly as he had been, until his voice grew hoarse and I found a remote place to pull over and tend to him. There hadn't been time for me to buckle his seat belt, and he hadn't been in any shape to do it himself, but as he was still crying out in a voice that was growing raspier by the moment, worrying about his seat belt felt like a desperate effort to cling to something mundane in a bizarre situation. I was leaning over, my hands hovering around him, too afraid to touch him.

Finally I broke down and smoothed his hair out of his face, then immediately regretted it. His eyes, usually showing only a shadow of carefully controlled madness, were wild and open much wider than should have been possible. His voice had become a husky whisper, but he was still speaking that language, and now that the sound of the car alarm was far behind us, I recognized what language it was.

Gaelic.

Slowly, it started to fit together, like a jigsaw puzzle that had previously been missing pieces. The guard had mistaken Gabriel for a boy named Declan Bard, a thoroughly Gaelic name, and it had agitated Gabriel more than anything I'd seen. Granted, the guard had admitted that his eyesight was poor and he hadn't been wearing his glasses, but it was worth investigating.

It would be quick and simple to call Gabriel 'Declan' to check his reaction, but it would also be foolish. He could have another attack, perhaps even worse. I bit my lip and continued smoothing his hair back, over and over again, trying not to look at his eyes. His skin was almost gray, and he had gone silent, perhaps his voice had left him entirely.

My ears were sore and my head ached, but that could be easily taken care of later, now I had to figure out how to help Gabriel. He seemed to be calming down, probably just because he'd exhausted himself, but he was still breathing too hard, and he was shaking so much I wondered if it was due to an accelerated heartbeat.

I could have slapped him, but I didn't know if he'd have a violent reaction to being struck, so I tried to think of another way to try to bring him out of whatever part of his mind he had retreated to. It was as if he was gone, as if his spirit had been called away to someplace I couldn't reach, and I didn't know if he could come back.

Whatever was going on, it was more than I could handle. I buckled him in, then leaned back in my seat, rubbing my temples and trying to remember from all the maps of the area I'd seen where I could find a hospital. It was unlikely that Gabriel had any kind of identification, so I'd have to take him to the emergency room and worry about the rest later.

Then perhaps I could leave him in the hospital to be properly cared for. It had been vain to think I could help him no matter what my reasons had been. I held the steering wheel so tightly that my hands hurt, but I didn't loosen my grip. I needed the pain, I needed to be angry…at myself, for letting Gabriel bully me into taking him with me, and at whoever had made Gabriel the way he was. Anger distracted me from the memories.

But no matter how much I let my rage grow, I couldn't push away the memory of a cold gun barrel being pushed into my cheek, people shouting at me, the sharp smell of smoke…

I had to pull over again, this time to prevent my getting us into an accident. Panting strangely, I put a hand to my chest and tried to calm down, then looked over at Gabriel. He was sleeping, looking no different from when he had the night before, as if the incident in the library parking lot had never taken place. I began to wonder if I hadn't imagined it.

Then he hiccupped and tried to burrow into the seat. I gritted my teeth. I had to take him to the hospital. I had to get him to people who would know what to do. All I could do was feed him and give him a roof and a clean place to sleep at night, maybe find him a job…that would all be fine and good if he wasn't hounded by shadows.

"Jordan?"

I jumped. He sounded hoarse, but in control of himself. "I thought you were sleeping." We were already in the car, all I had to do was pull back onto the road and drive to the hospital, tell them what I'd seen, and then all of my problems with Gabriel would be over. He'd get help and I wouldn't have to worry about him anymore.

"No…just trying to sleep…Jordan, I'm sorry."

The key was still in the ignition. If I started the engine, he would think I was driving back to the apartment, and might not even notice where we were headed until we were already at the hospital.

"Can you just…ignore what happened? It's not my—the noise. I've gotten used to all of these machines for the most part, but when I hear a noise like that, it's overwhelming…"

No matter how many mental commands I sent to my hands, they refused to move. I choked back a frustrated sound.

I could see Gabriel out of the corner of my eye, pressing his back against the car door as much as the restraint of the seat belt would allow. "I want to go back to the way things were. Just yesterday, and even this morning, it felt like…I had a real life." He wasn't looking straight at me, but I wasn't exactly trying to meet his eye either. "I'd do anything to get that back."

If I'd been a man of poor character, that would have been the end of it. My employers had been such men, it would have pleased them no end to have someone say that to them, to have such power over someone. But it only made me feel nauseous. "I don't want you to do anything." My throat felt tight. "You need help. Help that I can't give you."

"No I don't!!" Gabriel leapt forward about two inches, then halted. "I told you I was sorry, it wasn't my fault." He let out a shuddering sigh, and when I finally looked over to fully face him, he was gripping the armrest so that it was almost creaking. "Give me a chance, please. I meant what I said, I'll do anything."

Sitting there in a brooding silence, I waited for him to add, 'almost anything', or 'within reason', but he didn't. My nausea grew. "I don't want you to—" Then an idea struck me. "Will you go to a therapist?"

"Huh?"

It was brilliant, he'd get help, and I wouldn't have to worry about him having another attack if I tried to send him somewhere. Of course, it would have to be very intensive therapy…but he had said he'd do anything. "Therapy. You may not think you need help, but it's obvious to me that you do." My hands started to obey me again, they started the car and turned it back onto the road, even though we didn't seem to be heading to the hospital. "If you won't do this, then we're going straight to the hospital."

For a moment, I thought of his speech back at the airport and I waited for him to punch me in the mouth, but he didn't. He said nothing for quite some time, but when I finally managed to get us in view of the hospital, he gripped the seat belt in his hands, I didn't know why, and said, "Fine! I'll-I'll do it, just don't…ugh. And I thought it would be different. I thought…never mind."

Guilt traveled up and down my spine at the hopeless despondency in his concession, but it was overshadowed by a thrill of relief. "You'll tell me your name then?"

"No. You gave me a name, and I want to use that. Compromise, Jordan." Some of the confidence I'd come to associate with him was back, but he still sounded…sad. "With all of your contacts, you can easily fabricate papers and identification for me."

Gritting my teeth, I tried to focus on the road so I wouldn't yell at him. If loud noises upset him, then shouting would do more harm than anything else. "No one will be able to help you if they don't have your medical history. You have to give them your name—your real name—so they can look for your records." And find your family so you can go home.

"I don't have a family to go back to, Jordan. Not anymore than you do."

I jerked, and the car seemed to make the same shuddering motion with me. "This is not about me," I said, my voice too low to be noticeably shaken.

Gabriel laughed softly and I wished that I'd just driven to the hospital and left him there. He frightened me in so many ways, it would have taken too long to count them. But the worst and most unsettling one was how he seemed to know so much about me. It was certainly plausible that even someone as young as he was could have been part of the underground I'd once been a part of, but I didn't recognize him. But he'd said that his business had been information, and there weren't usually many opportunities or even reasons for assassins and informants to meet.

"It is about you, more so than you realize, anyway."

Sighing, I headed back for the apartment. I needed to lie down in my bed and think, maybe take a nap. My head hurt.

When we arrived, I waited for a moment before getting out. "I'm not doing the right thing."

"That's where you are wrong," Gabriel said solemnly. "For the first time in your life, you are most certainly doing what's right, without any room for doubt. The only problem is that you're too silly to understand that."

He didn't wait for me to reply, instead, he simply hopped out of the car and sauntered toward the apartment as if nothing strange had happened. But after all, he'd been the source of all the strangeness in my new life, why should any of it surprise him?

I sighed again, wondering if spending so much time expelling air was what was giving me a headache. Then I opened my door and stepped slowly out of the car. Gabriel didn't have a key to the apartment yet, so he was waiting for me at the door, almost like a cat waiting to be let in. He was a much bigger responsibility than a cat, but his resemblance to one was amazing, in personality, at least. He was like a scrawny, pigheaded, selfish tomcat that had spent its life being kicked and was now determined that he was going to be the one doing the kicking.

Why had he picked me to be the one he kicked?

Since I was able to sleep in my bed that night—no amount of cajoling or threatening could have convinced me to let Gabriel have it again, though he didn't even try—I slept deeply and without any troubling dreams. I woke up to find that Gabriel had been up before me again, and had opened the window blinds to let the sunlight in. I pushed the blanket off of me, then staggered to the window. It looked like a beautiful day. I wondered what would happen to ruin it.

It wasn't going to be breakfast. I'd no idea at what hour Gabriel was accustomed to rising, but it was early enough for him to cook another large meal, this time pancakes and fresh fruit. He had apparently found a card table somewhere and set it up in a corner of the kitchen; there were no chairs, but he had set boxes up as replacements. There was even a centerpiece on the card table made out of folded newspaper.

"You're trying too hard," was all I could say. It wasn't a particularly nice thing to say, especially after all of the effort Gabriel must have put into this, but I wasn't in a mood to be particularly nice or even tolerant.

Instead of spitting out an insult or even glaring at me, Gabriel just shrugged and handed me a plate. A real plate this time, although there were no designs on it, just a simple white plate. "I was going to wait for you, but I suppose it was a good thing I didn't."

"What?"

"I ate already. And since you don't seem as if you're at all eager to be around me, I'm going to go see if Mrs. Atsahm is still willing to hire me."

It took me a few seconds of staring at him to remember that Mrs. Atsahm was the old woman who owned the market that Gabriel seemed to have become enamored with. "She offered you a position?"

He smiled. "You could call it that. I'll probably be working as a stock boy, but it's work."

The tantalizing smell of the pancakes was demanding that I let him leave so I could eat in peace, but I had more questions. "What hours will you be working?"

"I don't know yet. Why? Oh, and where are my shoes? I can't find them."

I poked the pancakes with my fork, practically drooling now. "I've no idea. Why don't you know?"

"No reason, not a good one anyway. I'm not very fond of them. Yesterday I took them off and tossed them somewhere, now I can't—" He leaned backwards so he could look out into the hall and still stand in the kitchen near the hallway wall. "Wait, I see them." He straightened and gave me an odd look. "They're under your suitcases. Are you ever going to unpack them?"

How could he act so…ordinary? If someone were to just walk in and observe us both, they would get the impression that he was the sane one. I sat up straighter on the box of…something, then ran a hand through my hair to try to make it more presentable, though most likely that only made it stick up even worse. "I'm…waiting for the furniture to arrive." It was hard to accept this normalcy, it felt too out of place. It also felt like a distraction to keep me from seeing an ambush or oncoming attack.

"Oh. I'll be back tonight, sooner if Mrs. Atsahm doesn't hire me."

The apartment seemed incredibly quiet after Gabriel had gone, and I smiled while I ate, enjoying the silence. Nothing about Gabriel was not confusing, but it was even more confusing when he tried not to be.

I needed a drink.

There was a pub on the already infamous Grand Avenue, but it was still fairly early in the morning. Being a day-drinker had never been on my list of things to achieve, and I didn't intend to attach it as an addendum. I sighed and cleared my breakfast away, then went into the front room to rifle through my things and try to be busy. I would have liked to go to the school and take a look around, but it was Sunday, no one would be there. Therefore, all I had left to do was sit in the middle of the room and search through my things for a book that I'd brought with me and hadn't already read. I'd been in a breakneck hurry to get out of the country after I'd broken off ties with my employers, and hadn't been paying much attention to what I'd brought with me, and I hadn't had much to bring from the outset.

At the end of my search, I found that I had brought five books, and only two of them were in English. It would probably be wise to hide the ones that weren't, so I put them back into a suitcase and looked at the remaining two. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and War of the Worlds. Irony had never been something I fully understood, but as I looked at the small red book with an illustration of a young girl standing next to a rabbit, I could not push away the ugly feeling that it was strangely appropriate that I had brought this particular book with me.

There was a red ribbon inside it, serving as a bookmark. Its edges were frayed and so worn that they were a much lighter color than the rest of the ribbon, and the longer I looked at it, the harder it was for me to remember ever seeing this book before today. Of course, I'd seen copies of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland before, but I couldn't recall this particular one, yet it seemed to belong to me.

I couldn't bring myself to open it, something about the cover had grabbed my attention and was holding it as if it were a vice gripping a piece of me. The rabbit… I touched its painted face. There was something familiar about that rabbit.

When I realized what it was, I laughed aloud, the sound echoing off of the walls of the empty apartment like a ball bouncing around. The rabbit reminded me of Gabriel. But there were some incongruities in the resemblance, for example, the rabbit was pure white and dressed like an English gentleman, while Gabriel's paleness was contrasted by his dark hair, and he dressed like a man who was used to having nothing. What was even more striking were the eyes, though. As it was a white rabbit, its eyes were naturally painted red, a much harsher color than Gabriel's subtle gray.

I set the book down and rubbed my eyes. What a ridiculous idea, there was no resemblance at all. But…I looked back at the illustration, leaving the book on the floor. It wasn't the appearance, not so much…it was the way the rabbit was standing, and the look in its painted red eyes. Then I noticed something else, something I should have seen right away. Gasping, I threw the book at the wall and ran out of the apartment.

The rabbit's forepaws were bandaged.

For a long time, I had no way of knowing how long, I just ran, so fast and so hard that by the time I stopped, both of my legs ached from my ankles to my waist, and my chest burned. When I stopped, I was standing on the sidewalk next to a park. I grasped my knees and bent over to try to catch my breath, but even that laborious task couldn't erase the image from my mind.

I had not imagined it. The rabbit in the book's cover illustration had been wearing bandages on its forepaws, just like the ones Gabriel was still wearing. If I had ever read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, I could not remember it, but even so, I knew vaguely what it was about and I knew with a surety that the white rabbit had not ever been bandaged.

After I had caught my breath and stumbled over to one of the shady ramadas the park had to offer, so I could get out of the sun and think. When I had sat down on one of the stone picnic tables, I tried to reassure myself. I hadn't read the book, I couldn't really know for certain that the rabbit had not worn bandages, and it wasn't as if I had seen many works of art that drew inspiration from that book.

Once I'd calmed down enough to breathe normally and not wheeze, I laid my burning cheek on the cool stone of the table and stared out at the view of the park this position lent me. There weren't many people, a few men and women jogging, one or two mothers watching a handful of children running around in the play area.

One of the children caught my eye and seemed to hold my gaze with his own eyes. I was too far away to see the color, or even really pick out his individual features, but the intensity of the look he gave me made me think of Gabriel again. I wanted to sit up and shake myself or rub my eyes to try to bring the world back into focus, but I was still tired from my panicked dash. It seemed that after the incident with the white rabbit, I'd see Gabriel everywhere, so I shut my eyes. Nothing had been normal since he'd appeared, and it only seemed to be getting worse as the days passed.

After the incident at the library, I had taken a nap and spent the most of the remainder of the day avoiding him. It had been surprisingly easy considering the fact that we were living in the same small apartment, but even though I hadn't seen him at all, I could occasionally hear him doing various things, and I could tell when he left, even though it had been obvious by the sound that he had tried to be quiet about shutting the door. Remembering what Gabriel had said about compromise, I took that opportunity to call one of my contacts, a man I had only ever known as Sbao, and asked him to cook up an identity using the name Gabriel Harbin and the scattered bits of information I actually had on Gabriel. I hadn't wanted to wait for him to get back so I could get a picture of him, but it was necessary, and I dealt with it by saying as little to him as possible.

Now I regretted distancing myself so much. If I had paid more attention to what he'd been doing and asked where he had gone, then maybe I would understand about the copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, at the very least. Perhaps Gabriel had gone out and bought it, then put it with my things. But why would he do that? He wanted to stay with me, he wouldn't purposely upset me that way, it wasn't logical.

"I thought that the logic of schizophrenics wasn't supposed to match that of regular people."

It took me a fraction of a second to recognize the voice and look up. My face was cold and a bit sore where I had been laying on the table, but I forgot about that as I stared at Gabriel's amused grin. How had he managed to sneak up on me, and how the hell had he known what I was thinking? I hadn't been speaking out loud. "What?! I—I never said you were—"

He leaned against the brick wall of the ramada. "You haven't made it much of a secret that you think I'm crazy, especially since you demanded that I get therapy. Why not try to label me that way with a bit more efficiency?" His face was relaxed into a playful expression, as if he wasn't taking any of this seriously. Perhaps he wasn't.

"I'm not going to label you. I just want to help you." Why was my throat closing up? It was hard to say anything. Worst of all, even though Gabriel was standing there wearing the clothes and shoes I'd given him, his hands in clean bandages and well on the way to being fully healed, I felt guilty, as if I had been remiss in my duty towards him.

But that was ridiculous, I was not responsible for him! He had pushed himself into my life and I was too much of a doormat to push him back out. The longer this situation dragged out, the more the mystery surrounding Gabriel deepened and expanded, and even worse, I was beginning to actually like him. How that had started, with all of the chaos he'd incited, I couldn't begin to explain.

"It's because I'm a good cook. You'll go back to disliking me if ever you hear me sing. I've no great talent, but I'm skilled enough to make you jealous."

"Stop doing that."

Gabriel straightened, probably shocked that I was speaking to him in such a foreboding tone. It was not a tone I was fond of adopting, but it had its uses. "Doing what? I was only—"

What I would have liked to do was shout at him, tell him in a loud powerful voice that I hated his snooping in my mind and answering my thoughts as if I had said them to him, and just knowing things about me, things I would never tell anyone, but I couldn't find a way to say it that wouldn't make me sound crazy. In the end, I just grabbed his arm and started dragging him in the direction of the apartment.

"Ow! You're hurting me!"

Immediately, I loosened my grip, then cursed my own weakness a millisecond later. I knew I had a surly look on my face that bled into my posture as I watched him step warily away from me, rubbing his arm where I'd grabbed him. This was probably the most violent I'd been towards him, and it scared me more than anything that had happened so far. I didn't want to be a violent person, for any reason. I had left that behind, I didn't want to hurt people anymore.

Even though I was waiting for him to say something, he just stood there, holding his arm and staring at me. When I was about to start running again so I could go back to the apartment or just plain get out of there, he let go of his arm and said, "You're really upset about all this."

"Of course I'm upset!!" The half-shout burst out of me before I could even try to keep it in. "Yesterday you had a nervous breakdown while the only thing I could do was watch! And then today you try to brush it off by pretending that nothing happened, but it did! Then, I find that book in my suitcase and—"

"Wait, slow down." Gabriel took a step forward, but still kept a respectable distance from me. "What book?"

I was huffing and puffing again, but this time I had not been running. It came as a dismayed shock when I realized it was because I was trying not to cry frustrated tears. I hadn't done that since I was a very small child. "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. There was a picture of the white rabbit on the cover and he…he looked…he had bandages on…just like you!" I was making less sense as I went on, so finally I just clamped my mouth shut and waited for Gabriel to say something.

He had a thoughtful expression on his face, the playfulness was completely gone. "Damn it. Jordan, I apologize. I don't know exactly who put that book where you would find it, but I know why they did." He sighed and held his forehead in his hand. "I'm going to try not to use any words that I know will make you uncomfortable, but it might be difficult to explain without some of them. Are you willing to listen?"

Quite a few words that I was entirely comfortable with bounced around inside my skull, but all I did was nod dumbly and wait for him to go on. I knew that his explanation would just be more nonsense, but if I knew a little more about what was driving him, then maybe I would be better able to help him.

"I doubt you'll believe me, but you are owed an explanation," he started. "Where I come from, there are a lot of people who are angry with me. I did many things that made me a hero to certain people, and a dire enemy to others." He laughed a little at that, running a hand through his hair. "Unfortunately for me, the people who considered me a hero were the ones without a scrap of power."

"Like Prometheus?"

While he'd been speaking he'd focused his gaze on the ground, but when I spoke up, he looked up at me in surprise. "Yes. I suppose it was like that."

I nodded. That actually made some sense, and I couldn't help believing it, at least partially. I had met him at an international airport, and he had said himself that he hadn't been in America until then. It even explained the state of his hands, in a way. I decided to ask about that, to test him. "What about your hands?"

"When one is on the run, one accrues quite a few injuries that are otherwise difficult to sustain." He leaned his head to one side so I could see his neck better. There was a cut there, in the middle of his neck that ran from somewhere at the back and almost to his adam's apple. It was half-healed, but still rather red, and I wondered how I hadn't seen it before. "I heal about as quickly as you do, but none of my people can forgive nearly as quickly as yours. I'll have to hide out here for years before it's safe for me to return." He paused for a long time, and I thought he had finished speaking, but then he added, sounding melancholy, "If it's ever safe…"

The atmosphere between us was eerily comfortable. I wasn't afraid that he would do or say something upsetting, and I almost believed him. But it didn't explain his delusions or his behavior from yesterday, and it certainly didn't explain the book I'd found or what had been on the cover. It was just more of his imagined reality, delusions of grandeur at that.

He smiled weakly at me, looking somewhat dejected. "I thought you'd be different, but I suppose that was a bit much to expect, even from someone of your lineage. Your poor grandmother would weep to see you so disbelieving. She was a lady who knew what to believe and when."

Before I could ask him what he meant and how he knew anything about my grandmother, he stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked off. "I'm going to walk around here for a while. Mrs. Atsahm hired me, but she didn't need me to start today. Perhaps it was a mistake to go looking for you, I might have better served us both by staying away a bit longer."

And then he was gone. I stared after him for a while, wondering how he managed to act so unperturbed so often, but then I started walking back to the apartment so I could get the car. First thing I had to do was get my own car, and get rid of the rental. If I did something normal by myself, instead of watching Gabriel's affected ordinariness, maybe it would clear my head a little, and besides, I couldn't hang onto this car forever, it would be more expensive than just buying one in the long run.

Then, after I did that, I was going to go to the library and ask that guard about Declan Bard.

My employers had always provided me with a car when one was necessary, and in doing so, they had also protected me from the annoyance of car salesman. I left the lot with what I knew was an almost impossibly good deal, but I also felt worse than I had in the park. It had been wrong to threaten to throw the salesman through a wall if he didn't give me a fair deal without the runaround. I had never thought of myself as a person who looked very intimidating, but I had always lived around people who were inclined to be large and many were more muscular than myself. Although I certainly looked more intimidating than Gabriel, but that wasn't much of an accomplishment, even though he still managed to be far more intimidating than I could.

I was glad to be out of the car dealership for many reasons, but I pushed them out of my mind and headed straight for the library. The car radio was on, but I wasn't really paying attention to what was playing. It just felt good to have something to cover the silence. By the time I realized that I'd been lucky enough to be listening to a classical station playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons, I had reached the library.

The library wouldn't close for quite some time, and there didn't seem to be too many people there, judging by the number of cars in the parking lot, so I turned off the engine and left the radio on so I could lean back in the seat and let the violins relax me. Tension rolled out of me in gentle waves as I remembered when I had first heard this piece.

I'd been a stocky nine-year-old, wearing a stuffy suit that was a little too big for me, as well as a silly-looking cummerbund that the old woman who had taken me in had bought for me and insisted made me look 'precious.' It was the first time she'd taken me anywhere other than school, as I had only been with her for a short time, perhaps a week, and I was excited, even though the other children in my class had all exclaimed at how boring the outing would be.

As they had been with many things, they were wrong about this. As soon as the music began to fill the room, I forgot all about how my uncomfortable clothes, and even the tight pinching shoes, there was only room inside me for the notes and the way they wove together to make a peace that was so all-encompassing that I had almost felt I could touch it.

When it ended, I remembered that my disappointment then had been less sharp as it was now, perhaps because then I had only a few moments to wait before hearing more, and now I had to turn off the radio and go inside the sometimes unfriendly silence of the library.

The guard who had taken Gabriel into custody the other day was on duty again, but this time he was wearing a pair of black-framed glasses with rather thick lenses. He frowned when he saw me, then stood up straighter, as if I were a superior come to call an inspection.

"I'm very sorry 'bout the other day, sir," he said, sounding genuinely contrite. "And if the young man decides to forgive me and return, I'll turn him a blind eye 'less he does something he shouldn't."

That would probably put Gabriel at his ease. "I'm sure he'll appreciate that, but that isn't exactly why I'm here. The boy you mistook him for, who is he?"

The guard adjusted his glasses. "Declan Bard? He's just a local boy who's been making trouble all over the neighborhood since he was just a sprout." He took breath, then exhaled through his teeth. "Folks might say he only ever comes here to shout at people and harass them, but he's spent hours here just reading before."

"Harass people?" That didn't sound like something Gabriel would do, barring the incident the day before, and even that had not been unprovoked. In fact, he never seemed to do anything strange without provocation, even if it wasn't much. "Does anyone know why?"

"Most folks figure he's got a bad attitude, but I seen 'im. Poor kid just ain't completely right in the head is all."

That sounded like Gabriel. "I see. Poor boy…" There wasn't much more I could think of to ask. Except… "You said you saw him last week?"

"Yeah."

"Has he gone missing since then?"

The guard scratched his head, his frown deeper than it had been when I'd approached him. "No, sir, not that I've heard. O'course, I only ever see him when he comes here." The he leaned forward and scowled. "Why do you care? I can tell by your accent that you aren't from around here, so you couldn't be a friend of his father."

I had to get out of there, if I told him my suspicions that Gabriel might be this Declan Bard, then he would jump to conclusions and Gabriel wouldn't be able to come back here after all. I thought of how he'd reacted when I'd suggested he visit the library before. It was clearly something he loved, and if I took that away from him, even indirectly, it would be some time before I could forgive myself for it. "Thank you for your time, and I do appreciate your apology for what happened before, I'll be sure to tell Gabriel."

Before the guard could answer me, I walked briskly out of there, trying to look as if I had somewhere else I needed to be. Despite the fact that it was late Sunday afternoon and there were very few people who could have legitimate business at that time, I think I was fairly convincing.

When I walked back into the apartment, it was empty. Gabriel must not have come back yet, or he had come back and realized he didn't have a key, then left again. For about half a second, I felt bad for not giving him the copy of the key that I'd had made, but other things had been on my mind. He'd be back, just like the cat he had reminded me of so sharply the other day. If you feed a stray cat, he'll keep coming back to you.

The sun had gone down, so I turned on the light in the front room and then went into the kitchen to turn on the light in there. Maybe it was silly, but I couldn't help thinking of the kitchen as Gabriel's place. After all, he was the one who had spent the most time there, and he was a far better cook than I could claim to be. He had even been the one who had furnished it, from the improvised box-chairs and newspaper centerpiece, down to the last frying pan. I wondered if he would add a set of measuring cups and potholders the next day.

There was no way of knowing or even trying to guess when Gabriel would come back, so I started looking through the cabinets to try and make dinner by myself. We'd been sharing the apartment for three days now, and unless we'd had takeout, Gabriel had made all of our meals. That realization gave me a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I shrugged it off as hunger, after all, I'd missed lunch.

Considering the fact that the only time anyone had gone grocery shopping was when Gabriel went on his painfully early walks to Mrs. Atsahm's market, there was a great deal of food in the cupboards. I took out a can of tomatoes and a few other things, then started making a simple pasta sauce from an old recipe I'd invented. There hadn't been any pasta in the cupboards I'd looked in, but I hadn't looked in every cupboard, and if we had tomatoes and olive oil, and even basil, then it stood to reason that Gabriel would have bought some kind of pasta.

"I didn't know you knew how to make pasta."

I looked up, Gabriel was leaning on the wall with one hand on the counter. Then I returned my attention to the sauce. "I just know how to make sauce."

"Then why…? Well, I suppose it's a good thing I came back now, although it probably would have been better if I'd come sooner. You should always make the sauce last." He opened one of the cupboards and pulled out a bag labeled FARINA tipo "00", and a shaker of sea salt. Then he opened the refrigerator and took four eggs out of the carton built into the refrigerator door and set them on the counter.

"What are you doing?"

He smiled at me in a less wolfish way than I was used to seeing. "Isn't it obvious? I'm making the pasta."

When I'd finished the sauce, I turned off the stove and watched as Gabriel flipped and rolled the dough he'd made, until it was amazingly thin, almost transparent. He was sweating a little by then, and when he stopped to wipe his face, he got flour on his forehead to go with the smears of white that were already on his nose and cheek.

"Ravioli or spaghetti? No, wait, we haven't made any meat, it'll have to be meat-less spaghetti…" He went back to work as if he barely noticed I was still in the room. First he rolled the thin sheet of dough into a tube, then sliced it. After he'd done that, he shook it in his hands. "Damn, still no chairs… Jordan, bring in two of your suitcases, the ones that stand up straighter than you do."

Even though his description of the larger pieces of my luggage annoyed me and I couldn't understand why he wanted it, I obeyed, seeing no reason why I shouldn't. When I opened my mouth to ask him why he'd made such a peculiar demand, he stuck out his leg so he could point his foot at a towel that was hanging on the handle of the oven door. "Drape that towel between the suitcases, make sure it'll stay in place no matter what." Then he added in a less authoritative manner, "Please."

Again, I saw no reason why I should ignore this request, so I did as he asked, perhaps spurred on by the 'please.' At first I couldn't figure out how to keep the towel in place, but then I had the idea to open each one just enough to put one end of the towel inside each and close the suitcases on their respective end of the towel.

As soon as the towel was where he wanted it, Gabriel laid the uncooked pasta on the towel and stepped back warily, watching the towel as if daring it to collapse. When it didn't, he wiped his hands on his pants and grinned at me. "Not bad."

It took me a few seconds to realize that I was smiling back at him. Then I blinked hard and cleared my face of any expression but curiosity.

"It has to dry before I cook it," Gabriel explained as he repeated the process with the remainder of the dough. "Since it's fresh, it'll only take a few minutes, so we probably won't have to reheat your sauce."

I nodded, feeling a bit stupid. Pancakes and eggs were one thing, but this was an entirely different category. All of the meals Gabriel had been preparing had been simple but sufficient dishes that I could have made, though not with nearly as much panache or artistic flair. This was… "Where did you learn to cook like this?" I knew I sounded stunned, but as much as it would sting my pride when I thought on it later, just then I couldn't repress it at all.

Instead of smirking proudly or shrugging it off, Gabriel blushed a deep shade of pink and put the rest of the homemade pasta on the towel. "You aren't the first person I've stayed with, Jordan. One of my…a woman who took me in was a chef. She enjoyed teaching me a few things I could help her with in the kitchen."

What he said seemed to ring true, and I had to sit down on one of the box-chairs to think. Gabriel didn't appear to notice how any of this was affecting me, he just continued to bustle about the kitchen, wearing that plain green apron he'd had since the first time he'd made breakfast. Once he asked me to get a pot out of the cupboard near the refrigerator, but I didn't respond quickly enough, and he did it himself, tsking at me for being slow.

I watched him fill the pot with water and shake salt into it, humming something to himself, something that sounded vaguely familiar, though I couldn't place it. Before I could hear enough of it to figure out what it was, Gabriel stopped humming. I started to simply ask him, but he ignored me and set two plates of spaghetti on the card table. After that, he busied himself with other things, until I nearly shouted at him to sit down and eat.

"Why did you go to the library?"

The question made me drop my fork. "How did…?" Then I stopped, it was pointless to ask. Even if he did answer, it would just be more bizarre misinformation from his personal reality, which would have ruined this peaceful moment of…whatever it was. "I wanted to talk to the guard. He apologized for the misunderstanding and promised to leave you alone if you choose to visit the library again."

"Really?" Gabriel's smile was so open and honest that it made me feel like a worm for only telling him part of the truth. "I can go back?"

I nodded, then stared at my dinner. Why did I feel like I had betrayed him? It wasn't as if I hadn't had a perfectly valid reason for suspecting that Gabriel was not who he said he was. All the same, my stomach knotted itself so that I couldn't eat anymore. "Yes. As long as you behave."

"Behave?" There was a clink as the fork Gabriel tossed at me hit the floor. "What in hell makes you think that you can talk down to me that way? Just because you bound me to you doesn't make me your inferior."

Whatever hopes I'd had of helping him to leave his delusions behind and accept reality went soaring out of me. Gabriel was what he was, and nothing I could do would change that.

But what was he exactly?

A microscopic part of me wanted to dwell on the things he'd said, the few pieces of personal information he'd given me, and try to find a way to believe him, but every other part of me wanted to just grab him by the scruff of his neck and take him straight to an institution. I stood up and tried to keep my fisted hands from doing something that I'd regret later. "What are you talking about?! Do you realize how you sound?"

Gabriel gave me a withering glare that I would have normally shrunk away from, but I didn't move. "Of course I do. You've just lost the ability to understand properly. Poor Titiana, she'd weep no end to see what you've become."

No one I'd ever known had been able to upset or infuriate me the way this man could, somehow he was able to reach into me and sift through the things that comprised my self, then use those things against me. I didn't know who Titiana was, but the name struck something inside me, and I felt the mental cords restraining my temper begin to snap. "I haven't become anything. I threw that part of myself away, it's gone." My teeth were clenched with so much pressure that it hurt, but I couldn't relax my jaw.

Suddenly the severe look of reprimand in Gabriel's eyes dropped away. He let his mouth hang open slightly, as if he were too surprised to frown. "No, no, that isn't…I didn't mean…Jordan, do you even know who you are? Never mind, of course, you don't know now, but…have you ever known?"

I stared at him in complete silence, painfully aware of the way that reality seemed to have dropped away from both of us just as Gabriel's anger had dropped away from him. "I don't understand…why are you doing this?" My voice sounded irritatingly small, but so did the world around me. It felt as if everything had closed in on itself, leaving the kitchen as the only place left that was solid and tangible.

"No wonder you don't understand what I mean when I mention your grandmother," Gabriel said softly. "You never knew her, did you? She never got a chance to tell you anything." He sounded so sad, so defeated. "And all this time I thought that you were one of those ingrates who'd forgotten by choice, and you simply never knew!"

"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!" It was the loudest I'd ever been, but instead of setting off dozens of sounds the way I would have once thought it would, the shouts of annoyed neighbors, barking dogs and yowling cats…there was only a heavy silence.

Gabriel sat back down on his box-chair. He was exhibiting such an amazing level of self-possessed calm that I felt like a child for letting myself get so upset. "Damn it. I've never had to initiate anyone into our world. I was so sure you were already a part of it…!"

There was nothing else I could do. It was obvious that Gabriel was not some run-of-the-mill schizophrenic, he was too lucid, too sure of himself. He had a certainty about him that was nearly unquestionable now, and I was scared to death of it. If he wasn't crazy, then that meant he was telling the truth, and I didn't know if I could handle this dramatic shift in our mutual situation.

"I'm going to give you a choice," he said, breaking past the mental fog that was trying and failing to protect me from what I didn't want to accept. "Do you want to understand what's going on, or do you want to go on with the way things are?"

In the past, I'd been used to being given ultimatums, and I had thought that I'd reached the point where they no longer upset or even frustrated me. But this one made me want to crawl into a corner and cover my head for a year. I didn't want to make this decision, I didn't even want to be faced with it.

The feeling that there was nothing in the world but what I could see just then dissipated somewhat when Gabriel picked up my fork and started eating again. I stood up and got myself another fork from the cardboard box of plastic cutlery, then sat down again. After that, we both finished eating in silence, and I was almost able to believe that what had just happened had been another product of Gabriel's disturbed mind.

But when I looked up at him and caught his eye, I knew. All of it had happened, and he was waiting for my answer with the patience of ages.

"Give me a few days to think…" I said at last.

Of course, the first thing that Gabriel had asked was if I still insisted that he get therapy. If he'd been a bit more flippant about it, then I would have said yes, but he seemed to be perfectly serious, so I had simply said no. It was unnecessary now. He wasn't crazy, he was just…misplaced. Something was going on here, something far bigger than either of us, hanging over us like a shadow, and I was still trying to figure out if it was malicious or not. I could have just let Gabriel tell me, but I didn't want to know. I was barely beginning to see the shadow, I didn't want to know its nature. Not yet.

Fortunately, or perhaps in some ways, unfortunately, the next morning brought with it my first day of work. The skills of my contacts would never cease to amaze me even now that I would never see any of them again; Ella, one of my oldest associates, had procured for me a position at the nearby school as a piano teacher. Music had been a talent that I'd kept so secret that only Ella had known. My employers would have found some way to exploit it, and I couldn't trust anyone not to sell even such a simple secret as that.

The school was close enough that I could walk, and I needed to clear my head, so I woke up not long after the sun had risen and left, tip-toeing past where Gabriel lay on the sleeping bag in the living room, dozing soundlessly. I left him the key to the apartment and a note explaining why I would be gone and when I would return, then after a bit of arguing silently with myself, I left him the keys to the car. I could make the call to have him added to my insurance during my lunch hour, so that if he crashed the car I wouldn't want to hurt myself for doing this.

I was too nervous to eat and I was in a hurry to get going, but my stomach growled a little as I walked briskly towards the school. It had been built as part of a solution to the overcrowding in other schools, and there were quite a few students and perhaps even faculty that lived in the same apartment complex I'd moved into, all of them going in the same direction I was. Almost all of them were bleary-eyed and probably only half-awake, and none of them seemed to notice me. I was glad, after the night I'd had, I was dead on my feet and almost afraid of hearing the word 'hello.'

That was a feeling I had to shake off almost as soon as I stepped onto the campus. A frighteningly slender and tall woman that I would have sworn was a walking fire poker swept towards me, smiling broadly and holding her arms out in a gesture of welcome. "Mr. West, I'm so glad that you could join us as a new member of the faculty." She seemed friendly, perhaps overly so, but at least she kept her distance. "My name is Lydia Ruiz, I'm the principal here at Southeast Vista."

"Pleased to meet you," I said, feeling a bit less frazzled now that she had lowered her arms. It felt odd to have to look up to speak to a woman—every single one I'd ever met had either been shorter than me or just about the same height—but it wasn't particularly unsettling.

She continued to smile at me and I wondered if she normally wore that smile as if it were as much a part of her work attire as her sensible black heels and simple brown suit. "You'll fit in wonderfully here, Mr. West. I called all of your references and judging from the way they raved about you, I can't help wondering why you'd be interested in a small charter school."

That was a politely worded 'why on earth are you here, of all places?' sort of question. I took my turn to smile at her. "Small schools tend to boast more creative minds."

"What a sweet philosophy to have," she replied, sounding almost saccharine or acerbic.

But it would have been impolite to comment on her tone, so I held my tongue in that respect and instead asked her where my classroom was. She resumed her cheerful demeanor and rattled off a set of directions in the manner of someone who did so all too often. However, she must have taken note of the confusion that I could feel spreading over my face, because the stream of directions stopped and she said, "I'll just show you."

It would have been a harsh blow to my already rapidly failing confidence if she had sounded condescending or even pitying, but she actually sounded more like a regular person than she had in any of the things she had said to me so far. I thanked her, though my obvious relief annoyed me, and followed her as she led the way to the room I would be spending seven hours of my day every day until the end of the school year. As it had already started before I came here, it didn't seem like a very long time.

"I have things to take care of in my office, but I put a copy of the class schedule and curriculum—the same one we emailed you before—on your desk." She smiled, and this time, it was a very real smile, though much more tired than her previous one. It made her look fifty instead of forty-five. "You're lucky, no one has this class first period. You'll have 144 minutes to get settled, then you have four students in your second period."

144 minutes? I almost asked if she was serious, then I smiled and nodded. "Of course," I said to myself once she was gone, "this is a charter school. They have closed classes." That, along with many of the things I'd been told about this place, was a very new concept to me. Southeast Vista was a school designed to help students move quickly through their studies, so that they could catch up, or get into university sooner than they would at a regular school.

While that was a good thing for the students, it meant a long boring morning for me. Although…that could be a good thing as well. It would give me plenty of time to think, about everything. I sat behind the scuffed-up wooden desk and picked up the sheaf of papers that Ms. Ruiz had left for me. While this wasn't exactly Julliard or even Munsenbrich, I was glad to see that among the pieces my students would be studying with me were Eine Kleine Nacht Musik and even Jeux d'Enfants. There were notes beside the pieces the students would actually be expected to learn.

After I'd looked over schedule for a few minutes, I set it back down on the desktop and laid my head down beside it. Gabriel hadn't told me what hours he was going to be working at Mrs. Atsahm's market, but he was probably at least awake by now, it was nearly half past seven. It had surprised me that he had still been sleeping when I'd left, normally it seemed that he was up before any living creature.

I snorted. 'Normally.' What a word to use regarding Gabriel. He was so unpredictable, I never knew what he was going to throw at me next, and our situation always seemed to get crazier and more…interesting.

Life had never been boring for me, but I couldn't honestly say that it had actually been interesting before Gabriel popped up, not since my childhood, anyway. It scared me to realize that I enjoyed not knowing what was going to happen next, that I was eager to get back and ask him questions, about himself, and about what he wanted to tell me. I still didn't want him to tell me everything, but I wanted…small things. Tantalizing fragments of the whole story. The story so far…

Thinking of Gabriel reminded me that I needed to call the car insurance company. Even as I took care of that, I couldn't help wondering if I would have to courage to ask Gabriel any questions at all that night after I got home.

After I hung up, I slowly became aware of a tingling feeling in my chest. Puzzled, I tried to figure out what it was and why it was there, and when I finally did, a small smile crept onto my face.

Home.

It was the first time I had really thought of the apartment like that. I took a pencil out of the black-painted porcelain coffee mug on the desk and started tapping it on the desk, still smiling to myself. I had a home, a real home, for the first time since I was seventeen. Even more pleasantly strange, I had someone to share it with. It was a feeling so close to having family that it made my stomach hurt.

I looked up at the clock to try to distance myself from those feelings and prevent an onslaught of excessively deep thinking. 10:40. First period would be letting out about now, and then I'd finally get to start working instead of sitting in this empty room with nothing but my thoughts and a piano for company.

The somewhat irritating sound of an electric school bell ringing cut through any other thoughts I might have had, immediately followed by the sound of a couple hundred teenagers chatting at once.

It was a while longer before any of the students I saw passing through the halls actually stopped and came into my classroom, but finally a tall red-haired girl with so many freckles on her face and arms that there was no room left for even a single pimple walked in, clutching a purple backpack to her chest. She looked about sixteen, which would make her one of the youngest students in the entire school. No wonder she looked like a frightened deer. I tried to give her a warm, reassuring smile, and I must have been at least partially successful, because she looked a little less nervous and shuffled over to one of the desks.

While she was finding a way to stash her backpack under her desk, two boys walked in. One of them was an athletic-looking blonde and had his arm in a sling, and the other was a short, stocky kid with light brown hair that fell past his shoulders and into his eyes. They were both wearing dark blue school uniforms, which probably meant that they went to a different school for their first period. Neither of them paid me much attention, although the taller of the two nodded at me, and they both found seats near the wall with windows.

Ms. Ruiz had said that I had four students, and the fourth arrived right before the bell rang again to signify that second period was starting. She was an odd-looking girl, with large emerald green eyes accentuated by dark eyeliner, and skin as pale as Gabriel's, although I could see as she walked past my desk that she was recovering from a sunburn on her nose and forehead. Her auburn hair was cut roughly chin-length, and appeared to have been done in the back of a moving car, but I supposed that was a style rather than an accident. I wondered if her manner of dress was more typical than the other girl's. The anxious freckled girl wore a simple white blouse, denim pants, sensible shoes, and no embellishments other than small earrings the shape of which I could not distinguish from where I was, and even her hair was simple, long and combed straight. But the other girl seemed to have gotten dressed in the dark.

She wore red and white numbered shirt that looked as though she had borrowed it from an eight-year-old football player, a very short pleated black skirt with a purposeless metal chain hanging from her waist, striped stockings that reached almost to the hem of her skirt, and knee-high black boots. The oddest part of this already eccentric ensemble was a pair of wrist guards that seemed to be made of leather.

I spared a moment to wonder how even a young lady would want to spend so much effort putting together an outfit, then cleared my throat and walked around to stand in front of my desk. "Hello," I said, feeling a little shy in spite of myself. "You probably already know who I am, but I'll introduce myself for the sake of politeness. My name is Jordan West, and I'm your new music teacher."

There wasn't exactly a standing ovation, but they were all looking at me with mild interest in various ways. The odd girl was leaning over slightly so she could tap her boot with a pencil. "You're better-looking than the last one," was all she said.

"…Thank you," I said, feeling less sure of myself. "But that's hardly relevant to…well, anything." She stopped tapping her boot and sat up, grinning at me in a way that seemed strangely familiar. "We're going to be doing a lot of work together for the remainder of the six week period, so I'm going to ask all of you to introduce yourselves." I gestured to the short boy with long brown hair. " Why don't you start."

He coughed into his hand, then stood up, standing as straight as if he had an iron coat hanger strapped to his back. "I'm Bryce Flannigan. I…I'm new here."

After Bryce sat down again, the blonde boy looked up at me and grinned. "We're both new here, half-transferred in a way. Usually we're stuck at a private school downtown, but we're the guinea pigs for this music program." He took an unsharpened pencil off his desk and put it in his cast, presumable to scratch an itch. "My name's David Harley. Everyone calls me Harley, so you can call me that."

Bryce smiled at that. "Don't tease him about his name. He got in a fight with someone about it at baseball practice last Friday, and well, that's why his arm's in a sling."

"Ooh, a fight. I didn't know you had it in you, Harley." The odd girl laughed, although there was no malice in it. "Well, I suppose I'll go next, and I'll even introduce Beth if she'd like me to, she's a sweet girl, Mr. West, with fingers our old teacher used to rave about." Beth turned a rather endearing shade of burgundy. "At any rate, I'm Annis Nickneven." She brushed her hair out of her eyes, though the mischievous glow in them could be seen from anywhere in the room even when her had been hair half-obscuring her face. "There's probably a note about me somewhere on your desk. I'm here to study music with the others, but I don't play the piano."

"Oh don't you?" Puzzled, I sat on my desk and knit my fingers together in my lap. She looked perfectly capable of learning, and the piano was much less difficult to learn than quite a few instruments I could think of.

She tapped her fingernails on the desk. Considering the rest of her…fashion, I was surprised to note that she didn't paint her fingernails. "No. You see, Mr. West, I'm a singer. I provide the other students with accompaniment so they can get used to it and so I can get practice until the voice instructor gets here." Her expression soured. "If she ever does."

I rifled through the papers that Ms. Ruiz had left on my desk for a few moments, until I found a small slip of blue notepaper. Written on it in small, neat handwriting was a memorandum regarding Annis's role in the class, just as she'd described it, albeit worded differently.

When I looked up from the note, it seemed as if the my eyes traveled directly to Annis's face. There was something eerily familiar about her, but I couldn't fathom what it could possibly be; there wasn't a single reason that I would have seen her before today. But perhaps it was because she looked like someone…

A sharp gasp escaped me before I could reign it in. Change the hair to blonde, lengthen it to her waist, put her in a blue dress, practical white apron, and black buckle shoes…

She looked just like Alice from the cover of the book.

It took an enormous exertion of will to keep myself from running out of the classroom to go find Gabriel, to make him explain what was going on, but I did it. I got a few concerned looks from the students, Bryce and Beth in particular, but Annis seemed more curious than worried.

"Are you alright, Mr. West?"

I nodded, then composed myself and smiled at all of them as if I had not just had an upsetting internal realization. "I skipped breakfast, I'm afraid. Seems that it really is the most important meal of the day."

Harley grinned at that, and Bryce smiled politely while Beth seemed to take no notice one way or the other. Annis gave me a calculating look, then tore her gaze away from my face to examine her fingers.

Breathing a sigh that I wished could have been relief or simply an audible exhalation of air, I clasped my hands together. "Well, now that introductions are behind us, let's get started, shall we?"

My students were an intelligent group of talented people, and Annis had been right about everything she'd said about Beth. Even though Harley couldn't play the piano to show me what level of skill he was at, he was quite able and willing to take on the same role as Annis. They were all very in tune with one another and it wasn't long before I began to wonder if I'd just imagined the uncanny resemblance that Annis bore to the illustrated Alice.

But just when I was about to write it off as merely paranoia and stress, she had caught my eye while the others were all occupied, and the smile on her face seemed eldritch and disturbing, which transformed her entirely. It couldn't have been a product of my anxiety.

When the bell rang for lunch, Annis waved to Beth, promising to meet her at their regular table, and called teasingly after Harley to watch his temper and not start a food fight. Then she turned to me, that unsettling mischief flashing in her eyes. "Is your boyfriend meeting you for lunch?"

I choked on a surprised curse. "What?!"

"Your boyfried, the cutie with the dark hair. Is he a boxer or something? He's always got those bandages on his hands." Innocence flooded her features, making her look like a peculiar doll, but knowing Gabriel had schooled me well in seeing past emotional masks.

"He is not my…boyfriend." I shuddered. The very idea…! "But how did—"

She smiled broadly, and I noticed that she, like Gabriel, had an extra canine, but hers was on the right side of her mouth. "I live in the apartment across from yours." Then she leaned on the desk and casually smoothed the fabric of her skirt. "So, if he's not your boyfriend…is he your husband?"

This girl was baiting me, deliberately trying to make me lose my composure. I gritted my teeth. "I am a single, heterosexual man. He is my roommate."

"Ooh, then that must mean Tall, dark-haired, and handsome is available." The smile didn't wane at all, in fact, it seemed to be growing. "Better hurry up and make a move before I do."

Before I could stop myself, I snorted and said, "Ridiculous. You couldn't possibly be older than seventeen, and besides, I never said he was, as you said, 'available.' "

"Geez, you're touchy. If your big gorgeous friend is what—and who—I think he is, then I'm surprised that you haven't even gotten a kiss." She winked at me. "Then again, his father's legacy was constrained to maidens, and you don't exactly fit that billing."

Except for the sounds of people chatting in the halls, there was absolute silence, and soon even the chatter faded. Just like last night in the kitchen. I shuddered again, although this was for a much more familiar reason. There was already one person in my life with a tie to something otherworldly, and the flouncy entrance of another was anything but welcome.

The school was supposed to be my haven from the bizarre world that Gabriel had dragged me into, but I had been almost predictably wrong. I was beginning to think that I couldn't count on anything I planned anymore. And after living a carefully thought out existence for five years, this new life of unexpected and dramatic shifts at every unseen turn was jarring, to say the least. "I wouldn't know," I said, keeping my tone neutral, "he doesn't talk about himself, let alone his father."

Annis sighed, then pushed herself away from the desk and stretched. "Fine, if you're not in the mood to play, then I can wait." The idea that she was as much like a cat as Gabriel was flitted through my mind, I tried not to pay it any mind. "I've got all the time in the world."

"Being young often makes one feel that way," I snapped. "Good afternoon, Miss Nickneven, I'll see you when the lunch hour has passed."

Huffing slightly, she strutted out of the room and shut the door with a little more force than was needed, leaving me to lay my head on my desk and cover it with my arms. I groaned as quietly as I could, and found myself wishing Gabriel was here. Whatever was going on, I wanted it to stop. It hadn't been so bad when it had been just Gabriel, hell, we'd been on the verge of resolving things, or at least, it had seemed that way to me. Even if he did tell me absolutely everything I wanted and needed to know to understand him and what he was, perhaps that would only be another turn in a twisting road that was leading to something…

Something what? Something sinister? It certainly felt that way. When I had talked to Annis, that had only made the feeling grow, and I couldn't think of anything that would change my mind, when I saw Gabriel, I would have to tell him that I had made up my mind, I didn't want to be a part of this, I didn't even want to know Gabriel's part in it, or even what 'it' was.

"Curiosity may have killed the cat, but entire nations suffer from ignorance. Perhaps what it all boils down to is a question of whether you would rather run the risk of death or accept the certainty of suffering."

A weak smile tugged at my mouth as I looked up at Gabriel. "What a set of choices…"

He leaned on the wall next to the open window, and I wondered for a minute whether it would have mattered to him if the classroom had not been on the ground floor. "I suppose. But it's another decision that you're going to have to make yourself, Jordan. No one is going to do it for you, and if they try to, I'll loose my temper on them."

I hung my head to avoid his eyes, they seemed more wise than mad now, and I wasn't sure I preferred to see wisdom just then, especially when he was saying things like that. "Are you going to force me to make a decision now?"

The wisdom didn't dwindle, but instead became playful and impish. "Force you? Silly fool, how can I force you to do something that you want to do?" He pushed himself away from the wall and then, with a sort of hopping walk, moved over to my desk. Then he pushed a few of the papers out of the way and sat on the desk the way he sat on the counter in the kitchen, his legs crossed, looking as natural as if he were a bird nesting in a tree.

"Before I do…tell me who Declan Bard is."

Gabriel sighed and scratched his head, looking sad and even a little guilty. "He is a troubled young man who sees things that most of his kind should not. He is—was—my…friend."

That didn't make sense, and the most cynical part of me wanted to tell the rest of me to go back to thinking he was delusional, but I knew better now. There was more to his explanation than that, and I waited patiently for the rest.

"He couldn't bind me to him the way you did, so to protect myself, I hid from the view of others around him. The guard was partially right, I was at the library when Declan was 'causing trouble.' But…the trouble was my fault, not Declan's."

"How is that?"

"I was angry with him for not getting help. I wasn't the only thing he saw, he also saw demons and evil spirits." Gabriel's lower lip trembled, as if he were trying not to cry, and his voice shook very slightly. "They were constantly trying to take him, and the only things that could stop them were the medications the doctors prescribed. Odd that mere chemicals could hold malignant forces at bay, but they did just that."

The room was quiet, the same quiet that had enveloped us in the kitchen, but different from the one that had been present when I had spoken with Annis. It was as if Gabriel was pulling us into a calm. It was…comforting… "But you said that he wouldn't get help. It sounds as if he already did."

Gabriel's hands curled into fists, and I noticed that he wasn't wearing his bandages. The skin still looked tender, and I put my hands on his to make him relax them. It would be a nuisance if he did anything to lengthen the healing process. He looked at me, his mouth hanging open a bit, his expression somewhat startled. Then he seemed to gather himself together and forced his hands to go limp. I let go moved my own hands away. "He stopped taking his medicine because when he took it, he couldn't see me either… And he said that that scared him."

"Why?"

"I told you, we are—" he sighed. "Were. We were friends. And kinsmen."

Of all the reasons I had expected him to give me, that one didn't even compare. "You're kinsmen? But…Gabriel is a biblical name, isn't it?"

"It's a bit of an affectation. My father actually named me Ualraig. He was disappointed when I wanted to become a scholar, so I changed my name to better fit me." Then he laughed dryly and started to fist his hands again. "What with all the times he called me 'monk' because I preferred the company of a well-stocked library to a pubful of wenches, I thought the irony of calling myself a 'strong man of God' fit rather well."

Not knowing how else to react, I smiled weakly and said, "Why not call yourself Monachan then?"

His hands eased out of the fists again and he surprised me by laughing again, this time with good-natured humor. The shadows that had appeared on his face when he'd mentioned his father started to drain away, and he began to look more like the Gabriel I was used to seeing. "If the idea had come to me, I might have. But perhaps if I'd been so blunt, it would have only meant that my father and I would have come to blows sooner than we did."

Apparently I had been right about his father, in a way. It seemed that there was no love lost between them, which I couldn't help finding a little depressing. I'd had such a golden idea of what fathers were supposed to be, since I'd never had one to ruin that ideal, and though I'd seen more than my share of corruption and poor parents in my time, it hurt to see one of that one of my closest friends had not been spared that unhappiness.

I sat up straight in my chair, so rigid that my hips hurt. One of my closest friends? Further contemplation confirmed that it was true, Gabriel was definitely…dear to me… It was distressing that I had allowed myself to become so comfortable with someone so volatile and unpredictable, someone who alternately scared and intrigued me.

"If it makes you feel any better, I'm not sure I'm glad that I've come to rely on you. That's worse than liking you." Gabriel put a hand on my shoulder and patted me, then pulled his hand back and scooted away from me, perilously close to the edge of the desk. "But here we are. And…if it's alright with you, I'm not going to go anywhere."

"I thought that neither of us had a choice."

His adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, and when he turned away to hop off of my desk, I narrowed my eyes at him. "Actually, you do. And I had a choice in the matter, after a fashion. I chose not to tell you that you had a choice." He sighed, still not facing me. "Have. You still have a choice, even now." Then he spun around and glared down at me, his expression so hurt and angry that had I been standing, I would have taken a step back. "But if there's one thing I don't trust you to do, it's to make a choice. You don't have the worlds best track record with making decisions."

My own anger flared and it was all I could do to keep myself from leaping to my feet or shouting. Instead, I said, in a flat voice, "You have no right to judge me."

"I have every right! I may not have always made the right decisions in my life, but I was the one who made them! Every single one!!" Gabriel wasn't shouting either, but it felt like he was. The power and spiteful ugliness of his words cut through me like a thin blade of folded steel. "But you… You have had decisions far more important than the ones I've been faced with, and some far less important. But for each one, you've hesitated, forever waiting for someone to step in and tell you what to do. Declan fought the control of the spirits and voices that harassed him, but you give in to influences that shouldn't even touch you."

"Get out."

It wasn't me. I wasn't saying that. I didn't want Gabriel to leave, I wanted him to stay, to listen as I told him that he was right, and to tell me that it was okay. God help me, I wanted him to tell me that I didn't have to be like that anymore. That he would help me change. And yet I stood there, my face twisted in what was probably an ugly expression of hate and fury.

Somehow, he knew though, the way he seemed to know everything. He saw past the mask that I didn't even want to wear, and he gave me such a look of understanding mixed with a microscopic amount of pity that I wanted to fold up and sob.

Instead, I sat in my chair and gathered up the courage to do what I should have done before, when I'd first met him. "I want to understand."

"Understand what?"

"You. Everything." I sighed. "I want to know why all of this is happening."

Before he could answer, the bell rang and was immediately followed by the amiable din of students socializing. Gabriel growl and reached up to fist a hand in his hair. "I can't stay here, you probably already know why." I didn't know, but I suspected it had something to do with Annis. "I have to get back to the market, my lunch hour is over now too, but I'll meet you at the apartment at around four or five."

Then he leapt out the open window and disappeared, as if he hadn't ever set foot in the classroom. I stared after him, wondering how he could have such on impact on me and then vanish so easily, like a vision or fevered daydream.

"What are you looking at, Mr. West?" Bryce was holding the door open for Harley, and looking at me with curious concern.

I smiled at both of them. "Nothing. I was just…thinking about someone."

Harley pulled Bryce gently away from the door with his good arm, then grinned at me as he led the somewhat absentminded boy to his desk. "Someone special?"

After a pause, I nodded, smiling a little. "Yes. You could say that." Special was a good word to describe Gabriel. So was 'confusing.'

Then Annis came in, with Beth right behind her, her lanky arms looking lost without the backpack to cling to. They were both talking animatedly about something, but they both trailed off into silence soon after Beth had closed the door behind them. "Good afternoon, Mr. West," Beth said, her voice soft and shy. "Would you like me to close the window?"

While I was considering how to answer, Annis spoke up. "Oh no, Bethy, the window should stay open. It's nice outside, and wouldn't it be fun if someone heard our music and singing and came to the window to ask about us?" Her face was the glowing, excited happiness of a young lady happy with the world and her place in it, but there was something off. There was sadness in her, but she was denying it, trying too hard to magnify the happiness that she truly had.

My fear of Gabriel had left me, I didn't really know when, and maybe it would be the same with Annis. There was something captivating about her, as if there was a universe of stories she was waiting to tell someone who would listen. And they were all hiding under the exterior of lighthearted oddity.

But that exterior could also hide darkness and inhuman rage.

If Annis had somehow figured out that Gabriel had come to see me, she didn't say anything, and it certainly didn't show in her attitude or performance. Once or twice, Harley called me back from a distracted train of thought, but other than that, I was able to carry on as if things were the same as they had been that morning.

Even though they most definitely were not the same. I walked home as fast as I could, even though it would be another hour or two before Gabriel got off work and met me at the apartment. However, it all worked out since a group of deliverymen arrived with the furniture I'd bought. I had to take down the table and box-chairs that Gabriel had set out, which made me feel oddly sad, but I shook off the feeling and set about pulling plastic off of the mattress for Gabriel's bed, then putting sheets on it and wondering if I should have gotten something different. It was big enough for one person, and it fit in the spare room that I had been planning on turning into a study. There was even room for the bookcase, although having both pieces of furniture in the room made it much smaller.

"Wow."

I looked up to see Gabriel standing in the doorway, his hands in his pockets and an impressed smile on his face. "What?" I asked. "It's…it's just a bed."

"And a bookcase." He stepped into the room and walked over to examine the bookcase, running his fingers lightly over the wood and talking softly to himself. From where I was standing, all I could hear was snatches of words I recognized as Gaelic. "Jordan, this is… Why did you…?"

"You aren't the only one in this place who likes to read," I said, trying to keep my tone light. But it was stupid to try, he knew I'd bought the bookcase for him, and I had to fight to suppress a intense blush.

Although it was a perfect opportunity to tease me, all Gabriel said was, "Thank you."

We were both silent for what felt like forever but was probably only about a minute, and then I cleared my throat. "I'm making a choice now."

"You are?" His voice and arms were shaking, and I didn't blame him. Making decisions had never been something I could have been trusted to do, the only good decisions I ever seemed to make were regarding unimportant things like buying furniture.

I nodded. "Yes. You said that I have a choice, that I'm not obligated to keep you here with me." He didn't say anything, I hadn't expected he would. I knew that he was holding his breath and bracing himself for a painful disappointment. Simply because I hadn't given him a good reason not to expect that.

That was about to change. "Well, now I am."

He was quiet for a long time, then sat on the bed. "That means I get to stay, right?" The shakiness had not left his voice, had, indeed, appeared to have spread throughout the rest of him.

Again, I nodded, although this time I was smiling and feeling much better about my decision. I hadn't been sure that this was what he wanted, the knowledge that he might have preferred to leave had nagged at me, but his reaction had reassured me. "Come on, I'm hungry. You can tell me all of the things you said that I need to know while we drive to the restaurant, and then we can keep talking there."

"But what if someone overhears and thinks we're both crazy?"

I had to laugh at that. "That hardly matters now, does it? Gabriel, if anyone thinks we're crazy, then we can rest easy that they are not an enemy who knows otherwise."

That seemed to set his mind at rest, or perhaps he was too hungry to be very worried about some restaurant patron questioning his sanity. I read a book while I waited for him to shower and change, and then we were on our way. Before the deliverymen had arrived, I had been looking through the phone book for an interesting place to have dinner, and I had found a small place on 7th Avenue called Under the Tuscan Sun, an al fresco restaurant that served Italian food.

"I doubt it gets much business during the day. Who would want to eat outside on a hot Phoenix afternoon?" Gabriel said, while messing with the car's radio dial.

I was sure that a large percentage of the city's population agreed with him, but they also agreed with me that eating outside was pleasant on a desert evening. The restaurant was packed with people, and it was a small miracle that we were able to find a place to park.

"Maybe we should have walked?"

Gabriel shook his head. "Maybe we should have picked a different place to eat…"

Although I had been looking forward to this, I had to agree with him, at least a little, especially when we actually stepped inside the restaurant's waiting area. Although all of the tables were outside, the waiting area and kitchen were both in an air conditioned building, which, during the day, would have been wonderful, was annoying at night. The reason I had chosen this place was because I felt like looking at the clear sky and enjoying the smells of the night air, tainted as they were by civilization.

Just when I was about to suggest that we find somewhere else, an energetic young woman with a tight ponytail approached us. "Table for two?" After receiving a 'yes', she smiled and said, "I hope you don't mind that we have no smoking and nonsmoking sections. It's kind of hard to do with a restaurant like this."

After we'd gotten a table and menus, Gabriel knitted his fingers together and let out a long breath. "Do you have any specific questions, or can I just start anywhere?"

I grasped my glass of water as if it were filled with something alcoholic. "The book. I want to know why the illustration of the white rabbit looks like you." And why Alice looks like a young lady in my class.

"Damn, you couldn't have asked something easy…" Gabriel drank some of his water, then looked at the menu. "Do you know anything about Lewis Carroll, or why he wrote that book?"

"No."

"Then I'll just tell you what's important. Lewis Carroll—whose real name, by the way, was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson—wrote it for a little girl named Alice Liddell. He told her and her sisters a story one day, and then she asked him to write it down." Gabriel's smile seemed to glow a little in the failing light of evening. "I've often found that children are to thank for many of this world's great achievements."

I said nothing and waited for him to go on.

"Anyway, it's a rather controversial book, though I doubt you've ever noticed. Some people see it as a carefree and comedic whimsical fantasy, while others claim that it's an insane and violent nightmare with allusions to drug use." Perhaps it was just my imagination, but it sounded to me, by the way he described it, that the book itself was some kind of choice. "It's one of the works that, for whatever reason, crosses lines that have been set to separate worlds, and even art intended to illustrate the story can take on a life and truth of its own." His words took on a lighter, faraway feeling and without meaning to, I felt carried away by them. "Maybe I do have some affinity with the white rabbit, after all, I've led you into something of a rabbit hole. Except that the illustration on the book cover did not feature an Alice reminiscent of you."

"No…" I was going to say more, but then I saw a waiter coming toward us. For a few moments, I mulled over what Gabriel had said, while I opened up my menu and gave its contents a cursory examination. Neither of us ended up ordering anything fantastic, we both seemed to do it just because it was part of going through the motions of going to a restaurant.

After the waiter left, I hugged my water glass to me, half-wishing that I'd used my newfound ability to assert myself and order something with a very large amount of hard liquor in it. "There is a girl in my class, and she resembled the picture of Alice on that book."

"Let me guess." Gabriel pressed his head into his hands, his fingers pushing aside the dark curls brushing against his temples. "Her name is Annis."

Somehow, I wasn't surprised, which worried me a little. "Annis Nickneven. Do you know her?"

"Not personally, but I know of her, certainly. Her grandmother is one of the powerful people who I've…shall we say, annoyed. On numerous occasions in countless ways."

Now things were beginning to come full circle. "You said that before, that you angered powerful people. What exactly did you do?"

Gabriel sighed and slumped forward in his chair, leaning on the table. "What didn't I do? There are a lot of people in my world whom it is not wise to exasperate, and I'm afraid I ended up annoying all of them at one time or another."

"Your world?"

"Yes," he said, as if it were something I should have known already. "The world of the Elphame."

I blinked at him, barely noticing that the waiter had brought our orders and set them in front of us. "What?"

"The Elphame. I suppose, since you grew up with no one to tell you who you are or where you come from, you might think of it as Fairyland or some similar name, although not all of us who belong to it are fairies, at least not in name."

It was quite a bit to swallow, but I managed to stay in my seat and not stare at him blankly. "And you say that I belong to this world as well?"

"Oh yes," he said matter of factly, "you're a brownie. Or, if you prefer, a descendant of brownies. You've chosen a very different profession than anyone in your family. They've mostly decided to carry on the tradition of doing housework and blessing homes." He smiled. "Personally, I think teaching music is more interesting and suits you better than living in a coal cellar and cleaning a kitchen for a bit of the family's best cream."

After hearing all of that, I couldn't help gawping at him. "I'm a what?"

"A brownie. Household spirits aren't very well known in America, but they're commonplace where you grew up. Surely you've heard of brownies."

It was true, I had heard of them, but… "They're supposed to be tiny, how could I be—?"

"Think, Jordan. Brownies can change their size, and sometimes their shape. Lots of us can, especially the Alfar." Gabriel picked at his food, as if he were reminding both of us that we were here to eat as well as talk. "The people in my family have been known to have a bit—and sometimes much more—of the Alfar in us ever since my father's misfortune." A sneer twisted his mouth, but then he washed it away with a quick swig of water. "He, of course, thought of it as a 'right fun time.' Although, to his merit, he never complained that my mother freed him and so returned him to his humanity."

I picked up my fork and forced myself to eat some of my spaghetti and chicken primavera before I asked another question. "What are your parents' names?"

Gabriel grinned. "After what Annis told you, I would have though that you would guess. My father is Tam Lin, and my mother is his dear Janet. Unfortunately, he never did forget his days as a captured human-turned-Alfar, and probably still pines for the days when he stole maidens' possessions and virginity."

"But…" I sputtered for a few moments, then took a deep breath to steady myself. "I thought that Tam Lin was restored as a human when Janet rescued him from the Fairy Queen!"

The snort that escaped Gabriel made a few other restaurant patrons look our way, but he didn't seem to notice. "Of course he was! But you must be forgetting part of the story. Janet discovered her pregnancy long before she rescued Tam Lin. Her baby was born an Alfar, and remains an Alfar still." He drew himself up with something like pride. "That baby, is of course, me."

I retreated into my meal, looking at it instead of Gabriel while I ate, digesting his words while I ingested the noodles. Somehow, it all seemed to make perfect sense, and I felt almost happy to be hearing some of these things. Especially when he had told me that I was…a brownie. It was dull rather than glorious, and I liked that a great deal. I had never wanted to be glorious, and surely now that I was being pulled into this world, I was glad to see that my role in it was free of glittering charm and harrying excitement.

"What about Annis? How is she involved in all of this? Her grandmother? Who is she, who are both them? Either of them?" So many of my questions had been answered, but there were still so many that now, instead of swimming around in my head, they were using my voice to bump around each other in the air, violating laws of grammar without a second or even a first thought.

Gabriel's sardonic smile transformed into a wince. "Can I…do I have to tell you now? I've already told you so many things, I'm starting to get tired."

His remark prompted me to look at my watch, and I nearly gasped at how late it was. We'd been here for three hours. I stabbed my fork onto my plate and spun it around, wrapping noodles around it. "Of course, I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize, it's about time you heard some of this, and you need—"

I didn't get to hear what he thought I needed, because a cheerful voice interrupted him. "Mr. West! And I had thought that I had just been making idle chatter when I said I'd meet up with you again."

Eyes wide, I turned around and looked up, though not very high, because Ms. Kylie Lebeau was still as short as she had been when I had last seen her when we'd said goodbye at Kennedy Airport. I stuttered a hello, but before I could attempt a tongue-tied introduction, Gabriel said, "Good evening, madam. I wasn't aware that my friend had acquaintances in the area."

"That's probably because I don't actually live in the area. And I'm sure that neither of us knew we would meet each other again." She smiled warmly at him and asked if she could join us. After I had nodded and taken one of the vacant chairs from a nearby table, she set her handbag on the ground by the chair. "Are you two planning on ordering dessert? I hear that the lemon delicacy is divine."

"You hear?"

"Well, actually, I just had some," she admitted. "But it is lovely."

Gabriel's entire attitude seemed to have changed, he must have been more than just tired, and Ms. Lebeau's sudden appearance probably hadn't done much to make him feel any better. He'd had a longer day than I had, and now he was being faced with the task of being social with a woman he didn't know that I only knew well enough to remember that she was quite chatty. "Ms. Lebeau, while it is a delightful surprise to see you once again, we must be on our way."

Her face paled slightly, I had probably embarrassed her. "I'm so sorry, and it looks as though I've walked in on something rather intimate." That made me blush, but before I could correct her, she picked up her purse off the ground and scooted her chair back. "Well then, let me make it up to you by getting you a free dessert." She winked. "Being a food writer has its advantages, you see."

Then she waved over a waiter, a rather young-looking man with fair hair and an ill-fitting uniform. "Good evening. My name is Kylie Lebeau, I'm here to write an article about the food and service at this restaurant. I'm sure your employer told the entire staff about me." Here, she gave him a winning smile that had probably charmed many into doing her small favors. "It would earn this place a few bonus points if you would bring this lovely couple a lemon delicacy, billed to my magazine."

He nodded stiffly, then walked away, apparently undisturbed by the way I had gone red and coughed at the phrase 'lovely couple.' What on earth went on in the minds of women? "Thank you, Ms. Lebeau," was all I allowed myself to say, "that's very kind."

When the waiter was out of sight and she turned back to me, the smile on her face looked a little odd. "Not at all," she said. Then she stood up and pushed her chair in. "It's the least I can do after I just stepped in and invited myself into your…conversation."

If she had said 'date', I would have had to say something, but she had let the word hang about unsaid, hiding behind the harmless word she had substituted it with. Gabriel and I both said rather curt goodbyes and then Ms. Lebeau was gone, disappeared into the restaurant crowd that was leaving the dining area.

"We have to get out of here, Jordan," Gabriel said, his voice so low that I could barely hear him over the din of the crowd.

"What? Why?" I looked around, as if I could see whatever danger was upsetting him. Of course, I saw nothing, but that didn't mean that Gabriel was concerned over nothing.

He stood up, then pulled my chair back. If I hadn't gotten to my feet then, I was almost certain that he would have tugged at me until I did. But despite the urgency that was making him shift his weight from one foot to the other, he waited while I put some money on the table, and then shoved through the crowd. The cashier tried to stop us, but Gabriel jerked a thumb at the table where the wad of cash was clearly visible, which quelled any argument.

When we were within view of the car, I grabbed his arm, though it didn't stop him or even slow him down, and said, "Wait! Gabriel, why are you acting like this?"

"That woman, she wants you dead!" He lengthened his strides, then stopped so suddenly that I crashed into him.

Kylie Lebeau stood in front of us, leveling a nine millimeter handgun at my head. "Your little boyfriend is quite perceptive."

The icy chill that always traveled through my veins when I was on the wrong side of a gun barrel prevented me from expressing resentment at once again hearing someone jump to that false conclusion. Instead, all that I could say was, "Why?"

"Why?" Ms. Lebeau's face was wild and pained, as if she were forcing herself to relive an agony that should have been buried and forgotten long ago. Then she laughed, it was a harsh, almost shrill sound. "Of course you don't know why, you've killed so many people that you wouldn't remember any of their names, let alone the names of the family members you hurt."

Gabriel stood protectively in front of me, but he was too short to protect me completely. "Who did he take from you?" he asked softly.

For a moment I thought that Ms. Lebeau was going to burst into tears, but instead she gritted her teeth and aimed the gun higher, so that when she fired it would hit me and not Gabriel. "My brother. He was a gay rights activist." Then she laughed again, this time it was a wild, high-pitched shriek. "Andrew wasn't gay, but people hated him because he fought for people who were gay. What an insult added to injury! His killer turns out to be one of the people he was fighting for."

If I had shouted that I was not and never had been homosexual, it would have only made the situation worse for Gabriel and most likely immediately fatal for me, so I swallowed back the angry cry at the misunderstanding that just continued to perpetuate itself, and said, "If there is something I can do to appease your grief, then I will do it."

She cocked the gun, and I could practically hear Gabriel wince. "You can die and go to hell!"

"Don't, please!" Gabriel reached out his hands, pleading. "Please….! You hate him because of what he did, the last thing you want to do is make yourself into what you think he is…"

I didn't expect what Gabriel said to have any affect on Ms. Lebeau, I'd seen so many distraught people driven to this extreme, and they rarely deterred from the purpose they had set themselves. But Ms. Lebeau's hands began to shake, and even though the nearest streetlight was broken, there was enough light that I could see large tears rolling down her face. "What I think he is?" she repeated softly. "He's a killer!"

"He's reformed!" Gabriel reached out a hand. "Look, the person who killed your brother…he didn't do it because he wanted to, in fact, if he'd had a choice, really had one, then he probably wouldn't have." He sighed, but didn't let his guard down. "But Jordan isn't that person anymore, he threw him away. And he's already been punished, believe me. His whole life has punished him for everything he's done, and if he does anything else, I'll punish him."

A shudder ran through me as I realized that he meant that. Ms. Lebeau's hands shook a bit more, and then she let them drop, still clutching the gun, and wept openly. Neither Gabriel nor I made a move to comfort her. That would have disrespected her grief, and then she would probably shoot both of us. I let out a relieved sigh and rested my forehead on the back of Gabriel's head. It was comfortingly warm and solid, and I was tempted to stay that way, but he nudged me away so he could move.

He had not lowered his hand since he had reached out to Ms. Lebeau before. "Give me the gun. I'll get rid of it so that no one can use it to hurt you."

For a moment I thought that she was going to stop crying and glare suspiciously at him, but then she shuffled forward and handed him the gun, letting go of it as soon as he seemed to have a decent grip on it, as if she were eager to be rid of it. "I never should have listened to that man, I made my peace with Andrew's death years ago." Then she sniffed and looked up at me. "The men who employed you want you dead to protect themselves from what you know."

I cursed under my breath wished that I could go home, curl up into a tight ball on my bed and hide my face in a pillow. Of course they wouldn't just let me leave. "Please, don't tell them that you didn't kill me, they'll hurt you, maybe even kill you!" It was unlikely that they would do anything to hurt her if they thought she had done what they wanted, they would know that she would be afraid of being sent to jail for murder, and that fear would encourage her silence.

Guilt stabbed me everywhere as she continued to stare at me, a morose sorrow drawing lines on her face. "You're right. They would." Then she lowered her eyes and started to walk away. "I'm going to tell them what they want to hear, and they'll believe it. So will I."

As soon as she was out of sight, I slumped, then stumbled over to the car, forcing my limbs to propel me there and not trip on anything. It was depressing to realize how difficult that was. Behind me, Gabriel didn't seem to have moved. He stood there, holding the gun and staring down at it. Then he held it as far away from him as he could, muttered something, and I watched it disappear, as if he had just erased it from existence.

"My parents' humanity protects me from cold iron, but I still hate guns," he said quietly. "And I'm sure that you wish never to see one again."

All I did was nod and lean on the side of the car. I wondered if I'd be able to drive back to the apartment or if I should ask Gabriel to do it. The peace I'd come to this country to obtain seemed like just a far off dream now, and I couldn't even keep my thoughts straight. Ms. Lebeau had been one of the many people I'd hurt, and now I had to face it, instead of running away and telling myself that I could just leave it behind me.

Gabriel shoved his hands in his pockets and walked over to lean on the car next to me. "If you hadn't killed them, they still would have died. You know that."

I grunted at him. It was true, I did know that, I'd just been a tool, as much as the sniper rifle had been a tool. If I hadn't been the one who killed those people, then my employers would have just found someone else to do it. But that didn't change the fact that I had been the one who had killed them. I didn't say as much to Gabriel, simply because I knew that he knew. He knew so many of the other things that went through my mind.

But there was one thing that I did have to say out loud. "Thank you."

It was dark, too dark to see if the smile on his face extended to his eyes, but I imagined that it did. I needed to believe it was a real smile. "You don't need to thank me. It isn't my duty to protect you, but if I don't, then you can't protect me. It was purely selfish, really…"

We were both silent for a while, then I straightened. "Will you drive? I don't feel confident in my own ability to get us back home."

"Sure. Go ahead and lay in the backseat. I can't carry you inside if you fall asleep, so I'll have to wake you up, but…"

I laughed at him and shook my head. "Just get us home."

It felt surreal to just go to bed as if nothing had happened, but I was too tired to care. As Gabriel had thought I would, I had fallen asleep in the car, and when he woke me up, I'd been tempted to stay there. But when he pinched my thigh and threatened to lock me out, I had hopped out of the car just so I could pinch him back.

Hearing him laugh then had done a lot to calm me down. Something about a lot of the things he did was soothing, I wondered if it was something natural that he couldn't avoid, or if it was intentional. Perhaps a bit of both. But it was late and I'd just had someone I'd only met once try to kill me in a parking lot, and I wasn't in the mood to analyze my friend's nature.

With that in mind, I didn't know if it was understandable or unfair that I couldn't fall asleep after I'd brushed my teeth and changed into a pair of sweat pants and undershirt. While I tossed and turned, staring at either my wall, the ceiling, or my pillow, I tried to count sheep or do something else ridiculous that I had heard was supposed to help people sleep, but nothing seemed to work.

"Can I stay in here?"

There were times when Gabriel looked much younger than he professed to be, and now, when he was standing just outside my room wearing a set of mismatched pajamas with pictures of toast and clouds on them, was one of those times. He even had one sock on and was dragging the sleeping bag behind him. All he was missing was a sleeping cap with a puffball sewn to the tip. I sat up and watched him with a smile for a moment, then nodded and got up to help him set up the sleeping bag.

He grinned as he laid it out on the floor and started piling on the sheets and the blanket that he had dragged in along with the sleeping bag. "I apologize for the inconvenience, but…I couldn't sleep either." He knelt beside the sleeping bag in silence for some time, then looked up at me, his gray eyes wide and filled with anxiety. "You didn't tell me that people wanted you dead."

"I'm surprised you didn't know," I said lightly, trying to tease him.

"Damn it, I can't know what you don't know! And when you won't let yourself believe the truth to the extent that you are only subconsciously aware of it, then…even if I know what to look for, all I get is what you think, with the mental equivalent of static around it." Gabriel splayed his hands out on the ground, as if he were trying to prevent himself from fisting his hands and hurting them.

I didn't know what to say to him, so I pretended he hadn't said anything, and took one of his hands to see how it was healing. The skin wasn't chafed as it had been when I'd first met him, and it didn't look as tender as it had that afternoon when he'd gone to see me at the school.

Thinking of that reminded me of Declan, and what Gabriel had told me about him. "What happened to Declan Bard? And how could you have been at the library with him, you said that you weren't in the country…"

Gabriel gritted his teeth and stared at his knees. "That was a lie, one that I knew you would corroborate. I'm sorry, but it was necessary. I really do look enough like Declan that someone who doesn't know him well would mistake me for him. Like I told you, we're kinsmen."

'Kinsmen' was only a roundabout way of saying that they were related without divulging any other information. But if their appearances were so similar, then logically they would most likely be close relatives, cousins, or… "Is he your brother?"

"Of course not. For Alberich's sake, Jordan, I've told you so much and you still don't understand. I'm beginning to wonder if you're a bit dim." There was a teasing note in his voice, and he was definitely better at it than I was. "My father became mortal again and his line continued, but only some of them have any of the Alfar in them, and I'm the only one who is considered a true Alfar. If you want to split hairs, then Declan is probably my great-nephew, with so many greats exponentially attached to the prefix that it's not worth the time it would take to say it."

I didn't have anything to say to that, and he had asked me to wait to ask him about Annis and her grandmother, so I held my peace. It seemed as if time stopped while we sat there on the floor, until Gabriel cleared his throat—or rather, said, "Ahem"—and looked down at his hand, which I had forgotten I was still holding. I coughed and let go, feeling like an idiot, then clambered to my feet and hurried back into my bed. "It's late," I said, not looking at him, "and we both have word tomorrow. I'm sorry I kept you up, I'll not detain you a moment longer."

My over-polite and ill-placed language embarrassed me further, and it didn't help that I could hear Gabriel chuckled at me over the sound of the sleeping bag's zipper being pulled down. "Good night, Jordan."

The next morning arrived far too soon, as mornings often do, and I felt like a snail with a hangover from hell as I dragged myself through the routine of showering, getting dressed, and brushing my teeth. By the time I finished all of that, I was awake, but there was no time to eat. Gabriel was up before me again, as if yesterday's late-rising had been a fluke, and he sent me out the door holding a thermos of orange juice and a slice of buttered toast laden with eggs and bacon. I had to walk while I ate, but as soon as I was finished, but I had to break into a run. Even though I didn't have a first period class, that was not a valid excuse to be late for work, not when I had plenty of other things I could be doing during that class period.

I didn't see Ms. Ruiz that morning, but that was only one of the many things that made my second day of work different from the first. As I walked through the halls to my classroom, I ran into Annis, who raised a thin eyebrow at me and then laughed. She opened her mouth to say something to me, but I simply commented on her outfit—another outrageous conglomeration of oddly matched layers—and told her to hurry to her first period class. She pouted at me, but did what she was told.

Relieved, I staggered the rest of the way to my classroom and went straight to the piano, smiling at the knowledge I would soon be engrossed in a task that I enjoyed. Yesterday, I had noticed that it needed tuning, not badly, but better to take care of it now, and it would give me a chance to think.

Time sped by as I found other small tasks to do around the room and thought only of the things Gabriel had told me that had interested me, shelving whatever had been upsetting or left unanswered. I'm a brownie. It was such a strange idea, one that would have never come to me without someone to introduce it. I had always been a fair hand around the house, that was true, but so were a lot of people. It took no great gift to understand the inner workings of laundry or how to bake a loaf of rye bread. But those were things one usually had to be taught, and I could not honestly remember a time when I had not known them inside and out. It was possible, in spite of my lack of stylish finesse in the kitchen.

The bell rang, interrupting my thoughts, and I sighed. More than what I had been doing, what I had been thinking had relaxed me a great deal. Hearing the harsh sound of the bell had made my heart start to race and pushed me into memories of the threat that Ms. Lebeau had posed, and the fact that she could still be a danger to me.

Today, Bryce and Harley were the first ones in the classroom. "Our bus was early," Bryce explained. He was holding the door open for Harley again, as he had the day before. And just like before, he didn't move away from the door until Harley pulled him away.

"Come on, Bright Eyes, sit down."

Before the door could shut completely behind them, Beth pushed it back open, her face flushed underneath all of her freckles. "I can't believe you did that, Annis!"

"What? I told you that he likes you."

I shot them both questioning looks, and while Beth merely turned a dark shade of red, Annis pulled her lips back into a toothy grin. "Am I owed an explanation?" I asked after a few seconds of not receiving an answer from either of them.

Annis looked at Beth, then shrugged and flounced over to her desk. "All I did was ask Yager Evans if he liked Beth." Her grin widened and she sat down primly in her chair. "He does. And he asked her if she'd go with him to a movie next Friday."

That was all? I looked at Beth, a fraction of my confusion showing on my face. She covered her cheeks with her hands and said in a very quiet voice. "That's what happened, Mr. West."

"So did you say yes?" Harley was sitting on the edge of his desk and exchanging knowing smiles with Bryce, as if they shared a private joke. "I've seen the way Yager looks at you in the cafeteria, it'd kill him if you said no."

Annis wove her fingers together and turned to beam at Harley. "Of course she said yes! Yager's not the only one who uses lunchtime to moon over someone."

The bell rang, a little late, I noticed, so I spared Beth further prying into her private life and announced that I would be starting the lesson. She gave me a grateful smile, then hurried to her seat and pulled her textbook out of her backpack.

"Today you have a choice, we can work with the book now, or you can take turns practicing and we'll return to our study of Mozart after lunch." I smiled at the positive reaction that swept through the room, then went on. "I've tuned the piano, so it should sound better than it did yesterday."

Bryce looked particularly pleased to hear that, and raised his hand. "May I start today, Mr. West? I have a piece that I've been working on in my own time and I…I want to share it."

My eyes widened and I couldn't help smiling at him. When I'd told Ms. Ruiz that I believed small schools often harbored more creative minds than the much larger public schools, I had only said it to allay any suspicions she might have had about me. But after spending a bit of time with these bright students, I was inclined to truly believe what I had said. "Alright, Bryce, go ahead. I'm sure we're all anxious to hear what you've come up with."

"Thank you, sir," he said, practically glowing. All of the other students looked surprised, especially Harley, which I thought was notable. The two boys seemed so close, this must have been a bit of a bombshell if Harley hadn't known about it. Bryce opened the clear plastic box file that he carried around and took out a few sheets of crisp sheet music. "This is something that I started when the Starstruck Randoms' first album came out. I met Goomar when I went to by the album and he said something that made me want to try to write something of my own."

I waited for him to tell us what "Goomar" had said, but he didn't. Instead he simply sat down at the piano, set out the sheet music and started to play.

It was beautiful. The melody was sweet and innocent, and when it was mixed with the vibrancy of Bryce's playing, it seemed to come alive and change the colors in the room. At one point, I had to close my eyes to keep from floating away from myself. When I was able to actually look around the room, I saw that I was not the only one so affected by Bryce's song. Beth was silently enthralled, and Annis had her eyes closed and was smiling in a way that made her look less like Alice and more like a dazzled young girl, and Harley had his face propped up on his hand, his eyes riveted to Bryce.

When the music came to a close, I felt a strong disappointment take hold of me, as if the music had conjured something that I hadn't wanted to end. At first, no one clapped. We were all too busy dragging ourselves out of the daze that the music had pulled us into. But when we were able to clap, to show our appreciation and admiration, it was a result that tried to be deafening, despite what our little audiences lacked in size.

Bryce stood up and stared at us in awe, as if he hadn't expected such a reaction. He stammered a thank you, then took up his papers and walked back to his desk, blushing like mad.

"There are words, aren't there?" Annis asked, her normally proud and confident voice soft, hushed, and humble. "Please tell me I'm not wrong."

Everyone turned to Bryce again, which didn't help his blush. "Yes…yes, there are words, but…"

"But what?" I was momentarily shocked when I realized that I was the one who had asked.

"They aren't done," was all Bryce said.

Annis made a disappointed sound, then turned to look at Harley. "What if Harley sings the words you have? I bet he'd love to."

The attention shifted to Harley and I nearly laughed. Today was turning out to be as interesting as the rest of my life. And I was actually enjoying it. But it would have been rude and hard to explain if I laughed, so I just smiled an enormous smile and watched to see what my students would do next.

Harley was looking at Bryce as if he were rethinking his opinion of his friend, in a positive way. "I would," he said softly. "If you'll let me."

Rivaling Beth's earlier blush, Bryce simply nodded and handed the music to Harley. "I know it by heat already anyway." They both walked back up to the front of the room, Bryce sat at the piano, and Harley found a place to stand near him.

Although it was quite likely that Harley was a better pianist than a singer, he was more than passable and we were captivated all the more to hear Bryce's words accompanying his music. It probably would have made little difference if Harley's talent as a singer had been different, but something told me that it would have made a great deal of difference if it had not been Harley singing. The song had been written with him in mind, there was little doubt of that, and though I had only known him for less than two days, I suspected that the words had been written for him as well.

When the song concluded again, I experienced the same feeling I had before, but this time it was deeper. "What was it that Goomar told you, Bryce?" I asked, hoping for the sake of my curiosity that he would supply an answer.

His ears turned pink, nearly matching his face. "He said that music is the perfect way to express yourself, so someone like me should say things with music, since I have trouble saying them with words."

He said nothing more than that, and no one asked him to, not even Annis. I asked Beth to practice her piece next while the others listened carefully and acted as critics while I did my part as her teacher. We went on that way until lunch, but Annis never said a word until the lunch bell rang and the other students left the room.

"Maybe I was wrong about you, but I was right about them. Being in this place hasn't made me lose my touch." She grinned, and the look of Alice was back in her features as if it had never left. "Tell Gabriel that I'm going to visit the two of you today."

Before I could ask her how she knew his name, she pranced out into the hall and shut the door behind her.

Gabriel didn't visit me during lunch that day, although he did drop in through the window to give me a brown paper bag. "It's just a sandwich, but I hope you like it anyway." Of course it was more than a simple sandwich, but Gabriel's self detriment regarding his cooking made me smile. The sandwich was almost too large for me to take a bite, but when I did manage it, I found it was worth the effort. He had also packed a bottle of water, which disappeared almost as quickly as the sandwich.

It felt good to be eating normal meals. Not eating much the day before, combined with all of the things that had happened was probably why I'd been so out of sorts this morning, and when the bell rang again and I started the Mozart lesson I had left off on the day before, I felt rejuvenated and happy.

When I got off work, I decided to go to a few places before going home. We had a bookcase now, but only the five books I had brought with me, four if I chose not to count the copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. With that thought in hand, I stopped at a secondhand book shop and wandered the shelves that contained classics such as Dracula and a collection of works by H.G. Wells. I ended up spending almost fifty dollars and coming home with three bags of books in my hands, and an huge smile on my face.

I would have liked to spend the afternoon putting the books in the bookcase and then choosing a few to read, but I found out that I didn't have that luxury when I saw who was standing at the door, waiting for me.

Or more likely, waiting for Gabriel.

Annis had changed out of the clothes I'd seen her in at school, and was instead wearing something that brought the word 'ethereal' to mind. Looking at it, I wondered if I had seen it in a theatre production of Midsummer Night's Dream, as it certainly looked as if it were a modern adaptation of a Shakespearean fairy's dress. She had pinned her hair up as well, and looked quite different.

"Hello, Annis," I said, hoping I didn't sound as guarded as I felt. Alice had finally cornered the white rabbit, and I was rather afraid to see the outcome.

She smiled warmly at me, which made her look more like herself. "Good afternoon, Mr. West! Is Gabriel home yet?"

I put down one of the bags of books so I could look at my watch. It was about the time I expected Gabriel to return, but I wasn't sure if I wanted Annis to know that, so I just said, "No, he isn't off work yet."

"Lying to a Döcálfar princess is a very stupid thing to do, Mr. West," she replied, her tone light but somehow dangerous.

"Döcálfar?" That was not a word that Gabriel had explained to me yet, but Annis seemed confused that I did not understand her.

She huffed a bit, then composed herself. "Surely you know of the Döcálfar. You yourself are friends with one of the Liosalfar."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, then shook my head. "Never mind. I need to get these books inside." I took my keys out of my pocket, then walked past Annis to unlock the door and escape into the apartment.

But before I could do that, the door swung open and Gabriel stood in the doorway, smiling at first, and then looking confused. "What's she doing here?" he asked, sounding almost frightened.

Annis scowled darkly at him, her hands on her hips. "It is impolite to refer to a lady as 'she' as if she were not present."

"Pardon my rudeness, Highness, but I was not speaking to you," Gabriel snapped, then turned back to me. "She's your student, isn't it a little unprofessional to bring her home?"

I snorted. "Don't say stupid things. I didn't bring anyone home, she was just standing by the door when I got here."

"Do not ignore me!!" Annis half-shouted, making me jump. "I am here to exact my grandmother's vengeance upon you, Gabriel," she said the name in a dry, mocking tone, "and to bring you back to pay for all of your crimes."

My face went cold as I felt the color leave my entire body. She couldn't take Gabriel, could she? All that stuff about binding him to me, he couldn't leave now, I'd chosen to…er…keep…him.

"I'm bound to Jordan," he said, voicing my thoughts and easing my doubt-filled fears. "You can't do anything to me without his express consent, and you can't take me back to the Elphame unless he releases me."

I closed my eyes and sighed in relief. He wasn't going to leave. I wouldn't be left alone with unanswered questions and no one to keep me from turning around to drown in the guilt of my past. Then Annis did something that scared away my relief and brought all of my anxiety slamming back into me.

She laughed. It was the kind of laugh that put an unearthly chill in my bones, a frightening sound that made me step closer to Gabriel, as if by simply banding together that way, we could defeat whatever problem Annis represented.

Sadly, that was not the case. When Annis stopped laughing, she fixed us with a grin, the one I recognized from the first time she had talked to me alone in the classroom. "What a pair of fools," she said, sounding older and far too mature. "There is more than one way for you to be released, Gabriel. And you know that very well. You've only been hiding that knowledge, even from yourself."

I looked at Gabriel, praying that I would see confusion or denial in his eyes, but I saw only desperate horror.

"You thought you were so clever, didn't you? He healed your hands, he gave you clothes, even a home…" Annis's grin became openly malicious. "Even that silly chain." I hadn't realized until she mentioned it, but I hadn't seen Gabriel without that chain since I had given it to him. "But there is one service that trumps everything he could do to indebt you to him. You saved his life."

Gabriel looked as if he would have like to slump onto ground, but he didn't move. The world was silent around us, and it made me feel as if I'd suddenly gone deaf. Not even the wind made any sound. "But he saved mine." His voice was as raspy as it had been that day the car alarm in the library parking lot had frightened him. It felt odd to think that that had only been a few days ago, it tugged at my insides and twisted them into sailor's knots.

The malicious grin was almost a sneer now, and it was hard to believe that this was the same girl who had helped poor shy Beth with her love life, just this morning. "Yes, he did. But you did more than save his life. You gave him back himself the same night, answered his questions and told him things that no one else would have. And when you saved his life, you did so an infinite number of times." Her entire countenance softened so much that I nearly gasped. This was the Annis I was used to seeing, the one who was best friends with a shy young girl and encouraged her classmates. "That woman will never threaten Mr. West again. She's made her peace again, and this time, it's unshakeable." Annis sighed. "You always were gifted with a silver tongue, Gabriel."

Silence fell again, but not for long. I moved to stand in front of Gabriel the way he had for me when Ms. Lebeau had been aiming a gun at my head. Unfortunately, the feeling that my shield was as ineffective as his would have been if Ms. Lebeau had actually fired the gun made my knees wobble. Annis couldn't drag him off if she couldn't lay a hand on him, and I was certainly big enough to stop her.

There was a sad sound behind me and I looked back at Gabriel to see that he was holding onto my shirt and whimpering. "If I truly had a silver tongue, then you would not be here. You would have forsaken your grandmother and the wicked Döcálfar, and you would be with the Liosalfar, with your mother's family."

"Shut up!! I've heard enough of that to last me a hundred lifetimes!" But for all her angry words, Annis's voice shook. And suddenly, I knew.

I knew that the Döcálfar were the "Dark" Alfar, and the Liosalfar were their enemies, the "Light" Alfar. I knew that a union between a Döcálfar and Liosalfar was forbidden by a strict edict, but two brave souls had ignored that edict and had a child. I knew because my grandmother had told me.

I'd always thought that it was a only story, a fairy tale that Titiana had invented to make me go to sleep at night, but seeing Annis standing there and listening to what she and Gabriel were saying dredged it out of my memories and made me see the 'fairy tale' for what it was.

"They killed your parents."

No one had expected me to say anything, I could by the way they both stopped talking and some of the sound that the world usually produced returned. Gabriel's grip on my shirt tightened so that it nearly choked me, but that didn't seem important just then. Not when I could see the look on Annis's face.

Gone was the malice, the sneer, even the superiority. All that was left behind was a frightened little girl who needed her mother and had always known that need. Her large eyes seemed to dwarf the rest of her face, and her nose wrinkled as if she were trying not to cry. "You're lying. He…he told you that! It's one of his lies, he told so many lies… That's why Grandmother is angry with him, because he spread his lies to everyone, and they believed him." Her voice wasn't shaking, but her arms and legs were, as though she were cold in spite of the Phoenix heat.

"They weren't lies, Annis. Poor, gentle Annis…" Gabriel pushed me forward, then closed the door of the apartment behind him. "And I never told Jordan about your parents." He continued to push me until he could step in front of me and look up into my face, inquisitive and intrigued. "How did you know, Jordan?"

"Titiana," I said. My grandmother hadn't taught me the things I needed to know, and for that, she must have had her reasons, but she had told me the story of Annis's parents. "She told me a story about two fairies that had been killed because they were forbidden to be together, and that their baby had been stolen by the Fairy Queen, and used for whatever purpose the Queen saw fit." I had always thought it a horrible story, because unlike the fairy stories I read about, there was no happy ending. Only one man ever spoke out on the fairy princess's behalf, and he was forced into exile. But my grandmother had always insisted on telling me that story.

Gabriel left my side to take Annis's hands. She was quiet except for an occasional sniffle, and just stared at Gabriel as if she were trying to see through him. Perhaps she was. Now that I had met both of them, and remembered my grandmother's story, I understood who they were, but not why I had met them. Maybe there was no reason, and maybe it didn't matter.

What did matter was that Annis was listening to Gabriel. He was speaking to her in fast, fluid Gaelic that I couldn't follow. I tried to catch his eye, and when I finally did, he smiled at me, reassuring me, and I knew that it would be safe to go inside. I picked up the bags of books and lugged them into the house, then took them into Gabriel's room and started putting them away, pretending that he wasn't outside talking to a princess whose story I barely understood, a story I already felt slipping away from me. Soon I wouldn't be able to remember any of it, but Gabriel would tell me later. He couldn't leave, I'd saved his life again.

And I hoped that I had saved it as infinitely as he had saved mine.

After I'd put all of the books away, I tapped a finger on the spines until finally deciding on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, hoping that a light-hearted adventure story would lift my spirits. When I walked back into the front room to sit on the couch, I saw that Gabriel had beaten me there. He was curled up at one end of the couch with his head on the armrest, alternately talking to himself in Gaelic and snoring delicately.

It was almost as if Annis had never come to the apartment and threatened to take Gabriel back to the Elphame. Perhaps she hadn't, I could have just imagined it. Now that I couldn't see her in that fairy dress, I could not remember the story my grandmother had told me, and I was becoming increasingly unsure that she had ever told me any stories at all. I had only been with her until I was four or five years old, it wasn't likely that anything I 'remembered' about her was accurate.

I sat down next to Gabriel and pinched his shoulder, hoping that that would stop the snoring. I wasn't really in the mood to listen to his odd sleeping noises while I tried to read. He slapped at my hand and muttered something, probably a curse, then began to snore uninterrupted. After muttering a curse of my own, I shook him gently, which, unfortunately, only made the snoring even worse.

Perhaps he was doing it on purpose.

"Oy, wake up!" I shook him again, with both hands, then let out a cry of surprise when he leapt up and knocked me onto the floor. I had to gasp to get back the air I lost, and I could tell by the pain in the small of my back that I had dropped my book and landed on it. Gabriel's eyes were still shut, but he looked eerily fierce.

What was it they said, that you should never wake a sleepwalker? Perhaps this was somewhere along the same principle… Moving as slowly as I could, I sat up and gathered Gabriel up into my arms so I could carry him to his bed so I could read in peace. Unfortunately, he was turning out to be an annoyingly restless sleeper, something I had barely noticed when he had asked to stay in my room last night. He clung to my neck so tightly that I could barely breathe, and didn't let go even when I tried to lay him on his bed.

" 'et 'o!" I could barely understand myself, but Gabriel just kept his hold on me and snored softly. I took a deep breath, then exhaled through my teeth. Thus fortified, I reached up and peeled his arms off of my neck, then moved away slowly and silently, watching him to see if he would wake up. After what had happened, I didn't really want him to be awake, I was afraid I'd have to talk to him, that he would want to tell me what had happened with Annis, if she had even been here. It was entirely possible that I had imagined it all, it just didn't feel like a real set of memories.

Gabriel scowled in his sleep, but he didn't wake. When he rolled onto his side and hugged himself, no longer muttering or even snoring, I left the room and went back to sit on the couch and read my book. But I didn't really feel like reading anymore. Although I wasn't looking forward to finding out just how real Annis's visit had been, I couldn't get it out of my mind.

But it would probably be at least an hour before Gabriel woke up, so I tried to relax. The couch was comfortable now that we'd ripped the plastic off of it, and the first three pages of Huckleberry Finn were interesting. The first two times I read them. After I'd read the first pages four or five times, I got up and went back into Gabriel's room to put the book away. I just couldn't concentrate.

Maybe I could make dinner. While I'd been struggling to actually comprehend what I was reading, he had snoozed on, unaware of my distress. Although, when I looked over at him after I'd put away the book, he looked to be experiencing some distress of his own.

I sat beside him on the bed and touched his shoulder. He whimpered and shied away from me, but there was only so much room for him to move away. When he came up against the wall, he banged a fist on it, as if it were a door he desperately needed to have opened. Something was wrong, nightmares weren't supposed to have that much affect on a person physically. I grabbed his shoulders and hauled him into a sitting position, then shook him. "Wake up, Gabriel!!"

He didn't answer, and his eyes didn't open. Instead, his head lolled forward, as if he had the weak neck of cloth doll. I didn't want to slap him, but I was running out of ideas. I gripped one of his shoulders tighter with one hand so the other could be free to reach up and pinch his nose. It wasn't the most pleasant way to wake up, but it was far better than a slap in the face.

For a second, there was no change, but then he reached out and knocked my hand away. He had his eyes open, and his hair was frizzy and matted with sweat. "Jordan?" he asked, looking shocked. "Oh, thank God!"

Then he hugged me. He hugged me so tightly that I couldn't take any breath deeper than a light wheeze, and I wondered what I'd just saved him from. It couldn't have been any ordinary nightmare, could have, in fact, been the aftereffect of something Annis had done.

"What did she do?" I asked. It had to be Annis. She had been here, and I'd left her alone with Gabriel. I cursed myself for a thousand different kinds of idiot and returned Gabriel's embrace. Damn it. How had I been so stupid? I'd let her trick me, she'd tricked both of us. I could have lost him, and then what would I do? The peaceful life that he'd interrupted just didn't seem so very attractive anymore…

He coughed and loosened his hold on me, but didn't let go. "She listened to me, for the first time since…it's been at least a decade. The last time I tried to tell her the truth about her parents and Nickneven, she was only seven years old."

For a moment we sat there in companionable silence, and I tried to understand everything without asking questions. But I couldn't do it, I couldn't remember my grandmother's story, and I didn't know why.

"Annis is a very powerful being. Thanks to her origins, she has both the attributes of a Döcálfar and a Liosalfar, mixed together, each trait complementing the other." Gabriel sighed, and I could feel his warm breath heating my collar. "That's why she was allowed to live. The edict demands the offspring of a forbidden union be destroyed, but Nickneven—the Queen of the Elphame—knew the power that Annis would have, and was quick to take control of that power."

That still didn't explain why he'd been trapped in a painful sleep. "But what did she do to you now? You wouldn't wake…" My throat started to close up and I gave myself a mental kick in the head. Stupid, he's fine now. Stop bothering him.

Gabriel sniffed, which made me wonder if he had cried in his nightmares. "She listened, but she was so reluctant… I had to talk to her through the barrier she put up. It exhausted me, and…" He pulled away from me and scooted towards the wall. "The poor girl. There's so much of her father in her, the Döcálfar Alber, named for the king, Alberich. The darkness in her sapped my strength, probably even poisoned me a little." He was silent for a while, then he looked up at me, frowning sadly. "Thank you. You probably saved my life again."

"Will she come back here?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. I told her as much as she would let me, but not everything. There's so much I've been trying to tell her, for so long. You will see her at school, though, I know that for certain. She likes you." That seemed to make him happy, because he smiled when he said it. "That is probably her reason for listening to me, she had to hear it from someone she actually liked. For too long, her mind has been poisoned against me."

Everything he was saying was easy to understand, and it did make things clearer, but there were still so many things that I didn't understand. "Who is she to you?"

"She…she's no relation of mine, if that is what you mean." He turned away from me, avoiding my eyes. "Annis needs someone to care about her. No one ever has. Her parents died before they could even name her. Her mother never held her more than once, and her father barely saw her face when she was born." His hands were fisted in the fabric of the pillowcase, but I couldn't bring myself to reach out and calm him. "Her 'grandmother' sees her as a tool, and doesn't even care enough about her to consider her a soldier or retainer. She's a child, Jordan! Children should be protected and cherished, not used as instruments of war and torture…"

The foggy feeling had left me completely by now. I could not remember Titiana's story, but what Gabriel told me rang true. "That's how you made your enemies."

"It was one of many opinions I had that was not well-received by those in power." His hands relaxed, and I couldn't help breathing a sigh of relief. "But no matter how many believed what I said about the Queen abusing her power, or how mistreated the smaller creatures were, no one would listen to what I said about Annis. They all hid behind the edict and insisted that her parents had broken the law and deserved to die, but they conveniently forgot the part of the edict that demanded that Annis "deserved" death as well." He made a frustrated noise, then threw the pillow across the room. "Even her namesake, Gentle Annis, the weather spirit, would not listen. She was always a rebellious one, my ally until Nickneven honored her by naming the child after her."

Wordlessly, I watched him, noted how his shoulders tensed as he gone on talking, and that his left eye was twitching badly. It was plain that he was itching to release his anger and disappointment in his people—our people, I suppose—but had no idea how to go about doing that. "Let it go," I said, only half-realizing that I'd said it.

He snapped his head up to stare at me, his eyes wide and a little damp. Questions were written all over his face, but he didn't voice any of them. I couldn't help grinning when I realized that he didn't have to. I knew what he wanted to ask me.

"Let it go," I said again, knowing that the repetition would help him better understand what I was trying to say. "All of it. All of them. You don't have to be part of any of that anymore. They threw you away, and they don't have a right to ask you back." Then, I tried to tackle the hardest question, the one I was afraid to try to answer. "Leave Annis to figure things out for herself, let her decide to believe what you've told her. She's not seven years old anymore."

It soon became clear that that had been the wrong thing to say. Gabriel glared at me, his expression so ferocious that I actually balked. "I can't do that. And don't try to tell me that she isn't my responsibility, Alianne told me that. Maybe you're both right, but I'm not doing this because it's my responsibility. I'm doing it because the one's who are responsible aren't owning up to it." Before I could try to amend my mistake, he struggled off the bed and onto his feet, then stormed out of the room.

I didn't even make it to the living room to see him leave. By the time I had shaken off my shock and tried to follow him, he had already slammed the door so hard that it knocked a picture off the wall.

A sad voice inside me made the forlorn observation that he had not even had a chance to see the books that now filled his bookcase.

Trudging back to his room, I tried not to let a metaphorical rain cloud form over my head. He would come back, and then I could apologize. Whoever the person he had mentioned, Alianne, was, she had done or said something that was similar to what I had told him about Annis. It must have pained him. I'd told him to let go of his past, like I had, but perhaps he wasn't ready to, perhaps he never would be. It had been selfish to make such a suggestion.

"Idiotic fool." The self-inflicted insult seemed to echo off the walls of the empty apartment, and I had to take a deep breath to keep my composure. I wanted to berate myself further, but I could not speak. Why couldn't I just understand? I had known the questions that had been boiling in his mind, the way he always seemed to know the thoughts that crowded in mine. So why hadn't I known the answers as he did?

Hours seemed to pass, though I had no way of knowing how long Gabriel was gone. I didn't want to look at the clock, didn't want to give myself a reason to think he might not come back. I pushed away these unpleasant thoughts by making myself a rather late dinner and then cleaning the kitchen counter to within an inch of its Formica life. After that, I found myself curled up on my bed reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and trying to divine secrets from it. But I couldn't bring myself to read past The Mouse's Tale in the third chapter, and ended up hiding it under my bed.

I must have dropped off some time after that, because the next thing I knew, I was waking up to the sounds of Gabriel doing something in the kitchen. There was the metal clang of pots and pans being moved around, but I couldn't hear the other sounds that normally accompanied cooking, the bubbling of water boiling, or the soft hush of dry ingredients being poured into a bowl. Perhaps he was just moving things around.

Feeling like a sneak thief, I put on a pair of socks and tiptoed into the hallway, listening carefully. Gabriel wasn't talking, or even humming, and soon even the clanging and pinging stopped, leaving the apartment still aside from the sound of my half-bated breathing.

"You can come in the kitchen, I'm not…I'm not mad at you."

It annoyed me that he thought I had been waiting for permission, but I said nothing and simply walked in. Curiosity and the darkness of whatever hour of night it was made the light of the candle Gabriel had set in the middle of the table look ghostly and almost unnatural. "I didn't know if you'd…" I clenched my hands into fists and stopped that feckless tone in my voice. "Why did you run off?" I needed to be angry at him, he'd worried me needlessly, which was made worse by the fact that I didn't want to acknowledge the fact that I'd been worried at all.

He ignored my question and turned his attention to the candle. He was sitting on one of the new dining room chairs, and tapping his fingers almost silently on the tablecloth. "You're probably wondering who Alianne is. For someone who was once so afraid of what I have to say, you are damnably curious."

That was true, I could not deny it, nor did I want to. But I hadn't cared who Alianne was. I wanted to know why Gabriel had been so upset that he had to leave and not tell me where he was going or when he would be back. I wanted to know why he had left me to believe that the possibility of his returning was not a surety.

For once, he didn't seem to realize what I was thinking, the questions I wanted answered. Either that, or he did not want to answer them. "Alianne was an ally of mine, the one who normally smoothed things over with the Queen, or at least gave her false information." He ducked his head so that his chin nearly touched his chest. "She wanted to be more than that, to do more than that, but I blinded myself to her ambitions, to protect both of us."

Why was he telling me this? I didn't care about Alianne!

"Pretending to be blind and insensitive isn't going to work this time, is it? You want me to be more than what I am now." It wasn't a question, but it seemed to beg an answer anyway, an answer that I wasn't sure I had. "You want me to be someone who'll always stay, someone dependable and…interesting." He looked over at me and smiled then, the candlelight reflected on his face, making him look otherworldly. "Am I right?"

It struck me as odd that he asked. I couldn't recall him ever asking if he was right before, he always seemed to know that he was right. For a moment I was at a loss for an answer, but then I nodded, feeling stupider than ever. Something told me that he wasn't going to say something that I wanted to hear.

"You may be safe now, but I'm not. Annis knows where we are now, and even if we leave, then she will follow. If she chooses to believe what I have told her—and I have not a whit of certainty that she will—then her troubles will truly begin. If she chooses not to believe…she will hunt me down like a dog." Gabriel turned his back to me again, then put his face in his hands and said something muffled.

Feeling as if I were the one trapped in a nightmare, I crossed the room and sat in the chair beside him. "What did you say?" I didn't want to know what he'd said while hiding his face from me. I wanted to smile at him and go back to bed, then wake up and go about life as it had been.

He knew that, but he answered me anyway. "I said that no matter what Annis chooses, I will still do my utmost to help her. No one else will, so I must."

The cluttered quiet between us felt so heavy that I nearly expected it to snuff out the little candle's flame. Then I broke it with the one question I had never thought I'd ask him. "Will you let me help her as well?"

He fixed his eyes on me and I could see that they had a flame of their own, dancing angrily. "Why would I? You don't care about her! You just—"

"That isn't true!" My outburst surprised both of us, but I recovered quickly. "I've seen her in class, I've heard her sing. She's comfortable in this life she has, fabricated though it may be. She has friends, Gabriel. Perhaps I could convince her that she can keep them." I thought of Beth, and Bryce and Harley. If Annis did take Gabriel, or if we fled and she followed, the other students would miss her. Who would encourage them? Who would accompany their playing with a strong clear voice? Annis was as irreplaceable as Gabriel, and I would do everything I could to keep them in the homes they'd found. I didn't know what home Annis had in the apartment across from us, but it had to be better than whatever awaited her in the Elphame.

The candle flickered, and Gabriel put out a hand to extinguish it. "If you really care about her… Will you do everything you can to help her? Even at a cost to yourself?"

Protecting and aiding Annis meant doing the same for Gabriel. I nodded. "I swear it."

"God in his heaven, I wish I could just believe you…"

It was all I could do not to glower at him and give him a hard poke in the face. "You can believe me, you stupid bastard. Why would I lie to you?"

Being an assassin had given me good eyesight, even in dark places, and my eyes had already adjusted enough that I could see the astonished grin on Gabriel's face. "My apologies… It's just been so long since anyone has wanted to help me. Even Alianne has given up."

"I'm not Alianne." I had no idea why I said that, but I felt that it was an important fact to establish between us. "Now go to bed. God knows where you've been and what you've been doing." I got to my feet and cuffed him lightly on the back of the head, then walked back into my room. When I paused to pull my sheets back, I noticed that the sleeping bag was still on the floor. "If you can't sleep, come in here," I called out, then climbed into my bed and curled up around my pillow. Doubtless, I would wake up tired and sore, but that would pass. And then I'd have to find a chance to talk to Annis.

While I would have preferred to be awakened by a pleasant sound or smell, rolling off the bed and bumping my head on my dresser proved to be a bit more effective. Adrenaline, the kind that came with a dizzy sense of panic, shot through me and left me shaking and holding my sore head.

"Jordan? What did you bang into?"

I looked up and saw Gabriel in his apron. His sleeves were rolled up, and he had something white and powdery smeared on his cheeks and nose. It would have made me smile if my head hadn't been hurting so much. "Remind me to move that dresser later today…"

It wouldn't have bothered me if Gabriel had found that funny, but I wasn't surprised when he didn't laugh. Instead, he knelt on the floor and gently smacked at my hands until I let go of my head. "Let me look at it—no, stop covering it with your hands! For heaven's sake, put your hands down." I let my hands fall into my lap and tried to sit still while his hands poked and prodded at my head. Finally, he sighed and moved back. "There isn't a bump, but you'll have one hell of a headache for a while. Good thing it's only a quarter past five, you'll have time to recover before you have to leave."

"It's what?!" How could I be awake that early?

"5:15 in the morning. Sun'll be up soon, would you like to see?" There was a grin on his face, but it wasn't the one I was used to seeing. The playful mischief that I was used to was there, but there was something else in it, something softer, more tranquil. "We'll have to go up on the roof, though…"

Perhaps hitting my head had knocked some of the sense out of me, but whatever the reason was, I nodded and got a pair of shoes on. I couldn't remember the last time I'd watched the sunrise for the pleasure of it. When we stepped out of the apartment, I wondered how Gabriel expected us to get to the roof of the apartment complex. If there were stairs leading to it, I'd never seen any, let alone an elevator, but Gabriel seemed to know where he was going.

Soon he led me to a set of stairs I had never noticed before. He started hopping up the stairs, taking them two at a time and not even touching the handrail. My headache had receded somewhat, but I didn't have his energy or excitement. I felt silly as I watched Gabriel practically flying as he moved faster and faster, and I wanted to do the same. It was like watching a child play and feeling the urge to sit beside him and join in. So tempting, but too many things held me back.

When we reached the rooftop, I forgot the sadness I felt over not being able to push aside my inhibitions and focused on the brilliant colors of the sunrise. I was so enraptured that I didn't realize Gabriel had dragged me over to a spot near the edge until the sun had risen completely and I heard Gabriel saying something.

"What?"

He laughed, and it felt like some kind of rebuke. "I knew you weren't paying attention. I said we have to get back to the apartment. It's a good thing you woke up when you did, there's time to eat a real breakfast."

Going down the stairs, Gabriel did not display the same buoyant feeling, but instead went at an almost sedate pace that still afforded him more speed than I could keep up with. I lost sight of him after he reached the ground and bounded off, and I wondered if I'd missed something important, an opportunity perhaps. Something told me that I had missed similar opportunities many times before, and that it was likely that I would continue to miss them.

Thinking that way confused and depressed me, but I tried to move faster so that I wouldn't miss the well-known and comfortable opportunity to have a good breakfast. When I got back to the apartment, Gabriel was singing a Gaelic ballad and hopping around the kitchen, setting plates of crêpes and chopped fruit down on the table. It looked like a precarious balancing act, but he didn't spill a thing.

The singing came to an abrupt stop when he turned and saw me watching him, and it was replaced by a sheepish grin, his cheeks flushed, but he just pointed towards the table. "Breakfast is ready," he said, his voice serious, as if trying to make up the dignity he'd lost.

It was an odd thing to do, for him. He didn't need dignity, it was a completely unnecessary thing for him, and unsuitable at that. But I said nothing, merely smiled at him and sat down at the table. The candle that had been there the night before was still sitting in the middle of the table, looking slightly lost among all of the food and dishes. Even though I couldn't remember buying anything required for making coffee, there were two steaming mugs of it on the table, as well as a cup of cream and even a sugar shaker. It seemed a shame that I liked my coffee black.

Rather than let all of the accoutrements go to waste, I poured some of the white cream into my coffee, then stirred it as I looked over the rest of the table's settings. Everything had been set down in a simple and elegant fashion, and I had to grin at the thought that Gabriel might have had a bit of brownie in him. He had already served himself, but he seemed to be waiting for me to do the same, so I wasted no more time and heaped my plate with food.

"Are you going to talk to Annis today?"

I nodded, waited until I had finished chewing, then said, "She usually stays in the classroom after the other students leave for lunch. I'll try to speak with her then, but after what happened yesterday, she just might run off to the cafeteria with Beth."

Gabriel sprinkled strawberries onto a crepe and rolled it up. "Who's Beth?"

"Annis's friend, perhaps her best friend. She's a shy girl who needs a bit of looking after in regards to social matters, and Annis does that for her." That made Gabriel smile, as I had known it would. Any bit of light or humanity that Annis showed would probably be a ray of hope to him.

After that, neither of us said any more about Annis, and instead kept to neutral topics that didn't ignite any arguments or strong words. Oddly enough, even though we weren't talking about anything particularly interesting, I found it hard to get up and leave when the time came for me to start walking to the school.

Of course, Gabriel saw through my maladroit attempts to prolong our conversation. "Why don't I drive you to the school? After I drop you off, I can get an early start at the market. Mrs. Atsahm would probably appreciate my being there ahead of schedule."

It surprised me how much I wanted to accept the offer, but it also scared me. There was still no comfortable amount of certainty that Gabriel wouldn't leave or be taken away, and if I let myself become too accustomed to his company, then it would hurt that much more if he left, for whatever reason.

I stammered out a thank you and declined, then got up to go. Gabriel stayed in his seat, watching me unworriedly as he tapped a spoon on his plate. "Alright then… Perhaps that would be best, after all, it might upset Annis if she sees me. She's been conditioned to think of me as a high profile enemy." Then he pushed his chair back and stood up slowly. "You'd better get going, you don't want to be late."

"No…no, I don't." I stared at him for a while, then left the kitchen, feeling stupid. I was acting like a traumatized child, pushing Gabriel away like that. Of course he couldn't stay forever, it wasn't fair to expect him to, especially considering what he was. And who was to say that I would want him to stay forever if he could? Circumstances change, people change. But he had been right, if Annis saw him, then she would probably be uncomfortable, at best.

After calling out a farewell, I got an umbrella from the hall closet and left. Like any desert area, Phoenix saw a fair amount of rain in the spring, so I was willing to believe the meteorologist's report in the newspaper that had predicted rain for this afternoon. Most of the students who I saw walking to the school also had umbrellas, and those who didn't were either wearing or carrying windbreakers and plastic blue or yellow panchos.

One of them was actually wearing a purple rain jacket with a matching hat. Somehow, I knew without really looking that the person under the plastic hat was Annis, and that she was looking for me. Trying to look natural, I slowed down so she could catch up to me, then restored my pace to its former speed. She moved gracefully into a sort of hopping half-run to keep up, but didn't complain.

In fact, she sounded almost cheerful. "Looks like you're starting to adapt, Mr. West."

"I'll take that as a compliment, Ms. Nickneven."

She stopped, and I nearly tripped on myself trying to turn around and go back for her after I realized it. Everyone else around us was still moving, pushing past one or both of us occasionally. Annis's head was hanging, like a little girl holding out under a fierce scolding. "Don't call me that, please," she said, her manner as polite as her words. "Nickneven is the Queen of the Elphame, and I have neither the right nor the desire to call myself by her name."

As much as I would have liked to simply ask her what she meant, to take this chance to talk to her about all of things we both needed to say and hear, there was still plenty of pedestrian traffic to contend with, and even if we went somewhere to talk, Annis would risk missing her first period class. With as much of a gentlemanly manner as I could pull together, I took her arm and pulled her along until she was walking on her own. "What brought this about?"

"Some of the things Gabriel said. They were true, I just didn't want to see them…" She was still talking politely, with a touch of an accent that I had never noticed before. "Not what he said about my parents, but some of the things Nickneven has done."

Even though she seemed a bit distracted, she was still walking as quickly as she could, though I was tall enough to keep up with no difficulty. Moving at that pace, we'd reach the school quite soon, and I hoped there was enough time for me to ask at least one more question. "What sort of things has she done?"

"Many. Although recently, I suppose the problem is more in what she hasn't done. When she was younger, my age, really, she did amazing things," The accent seemed to be getting thicker, and I recognized it as belonging to somewhere in the lowland area of Scotland. "Wonderful things that helped the people. But as time has passed, she's sided more and more with the Döcálfar, and she's become so preoccupied with their interests in this world that she's let the people decline."

The school loomed ahead like the end of a tunnel, so I had to stop to say what I had to. "Annis, will you stay in during lunch and talk to me? It seems…we have much to discuss."

For a moment, there was laughter in her eyes as she looked up at me and nodded. "You're not making a move on me, are you? I'm making changes in the life I've made for myself, but I'm still seventeen. And you wouldn't want to disappoint Gabriel."

"I told you," I grumbled, "I'm not—"

"Silly man, that isn't what I meant." The laughter had spread to her voice. "He sees so much potential in you. You're a brownie, but you've broken barriers set on your people in ways that no one ever imagined possible. Gabriel wants to see you do well, and if you were to make a stupid mistake, I do believe he'd kill you."

I felt as if there were a million things that I could have, even should have said then, but they all spiraled down into one confused utterance that is not, as far as I knew, a word in any recorded language: "Gnuh?"

This, of course, made Annis giggle in a way that I had to admit made me happy. It gave me hope that she might find her life in this world more important than whatever hold her false grandmother had on her. And if she could be happy and stay here, than perhaps I would not be alone, even if Gabriel were to leave. I would still have my students, in particular one who would be able to tell me stories of the Elphame.

"See you in class, Mr. West." Annis waved, then skipped up the concrete steps and into the school, her plastic rain jacket flapping noisily behind her.

There was certainly hope for her. She had fallen victim, as I had, to the lure of this world. After all, it had much to offer—more peace than either of the worlds that I had been a part of, and probably far more than Annis had ever known. And, as is not often the case with peace, interesting things still happened. There was still danger and excitement, but in smaller proportions that appeared with less frequency.

But they still happened.

When Annis had said that she had made changes in her life, I had thought she meant changes in the way she approached things, or other such internal changes. And perhaps that was what she had meant, but only partially. The truly noticeable changes were purely external. Her last name had changed, a fact that I became aware of only because I happened to glance at my attendance sheet. She was calling herself Annis McGregor now, and when she walked in, the accent I had taken note of that morning was so thick she sounded like a native of Scotland. No one else seemed to be aware of the change, as if she had always been this way. Truth be told, she seemed happier as Annis McGregor of Berwickshire.

Of course, the first order of business of the day was apparently going to be asking Beth how her relationship with Yager Evans was progressing. Bryce seemed as interested as Harley and Annis were, but he was too polite to actually say anything to tease here, while Annis was still as bold as she had been before. "Okay, Bethy, tell us. Did Yager call you last night?" Being who and what she was, Annis probably already knew the answer to that question, but it was probably the dark magenta blush that had predictably erupted on Beth's face that had motivated Annis to ask.

"Yes…"

Harley looked up from the five-headed snake he'd been drawing on his cast and grinned so widely that he looked like he was impersonating the Cheshire cat. I had to stop my brain and take a few dozen deep breaths to keep myself from entertaining the thought that that resemblance actually meant something. He put down the black felt tip marker and turned his grin directly on Beth. "What'd old Yager have to say? Did he quote Shakespeare to you?"

"Lay off, on the Shakespeare, Harley, just because he's an aspiring English major doesn't mean he lives, eats, and breathes plays and poetry." Bryce started poking his friend's shoulder absentmindedly with an unsharpened pencil. "Just like you don't—"

Just then, Harley cleared his throat, making a sound that was almost like a car trying to start. "Yeah, okay. Never mind then."

Annis laughed, it was a richer sound, though the pitch of her voice had not changed. "What did he say, anyway, Beth?"

"Nothing much…we just talked about poets and…Italian food."

"What, like puttanesca?"

Annis flicked a large pink eraser at Harley. "Don't try to be a smarty pants, you aren't dressed for it."

He tossed the eraser back at her. "Oh, aren't I? I'm better dressed for it than you are, little Miss Micro Mini."

I assumed that he was speaking about her skirt, which was, in spite of her acknowledgement of the oncoming bout of rain, was typically short, and pleated, which made it look even shorter. But Harley's comment didn't seem to have much of an effect on her, she simply smoothed out the nonexistent wrinkles in her skirt and pulled at the plastic sleeves of her rain jacket, one at a time, so she could take it off. "Perhaps you are. But I'm still smarter than you are, and you know it."

There didn't seem to be any real animosity between them, but I wasn't in the mood to mediate a ridiculous argument, so I stepped in and announced that it was class time and we would begin using that time the way we were supposed to. "Open your books to Chapter 15…"

By the time lunchtime rolled around, I had become completely convinced that Annis had made important choices, and that most, if not all, of them were ones that would not hurt anyone. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that any of them could hurt her.

After the other students had left the classroom, all the while teasing Beth about any possible arrangements she might have had to sit with Yager Evans, Annis took a chair from one of the unused desks and dragged it over to sit near my desk. She didn't say anything right away, but just when I thought she was waiting for me to initiate a conversation, she fixed me with a doe-eyed looked of pure investigation. I felt as if she were trying to see through every last part of me, as if she were trying to find something wrong with me.

She must not have, because she eventually tore her gaze away from me and looked instead at the closed door. "You've taken lives."

It was not a question, but I decided to treat it as such anyway. "Yes. I regret it, but I can do nothing to change the past now."

"You don't completely blame yourself for your past crimes, do you?"

That was a question, a very difficult and painful one, at that. It was not a question that I could answer for myself yet, so I did not try to answer it for Annis. She didn't seem to care.

We both stayed that way for a while, neither of us saying anything, until I noticed a rumbling sound. It couldn't have been my stomach, I'd eaten plenty at breakfast, and somehow it seemed wrong to even assume that Annis could possibly be tethered to the need for food. It could have been anything in the school, even merely a machination of my overactive imagination. But no matter what I told myself, I couldn't push the sound away.

Soon, it grew louder and I saw that even Annis had noticed it. Her face was drained of all color, and her eyes were so wide that I decided that whatever was making that sound was very, very bad and that it would probably be a wise decision to leave the room.

"She's angry. She's sent it for me…" Annis's voice was hoarse, and frightened. She looked as though she wanted to leap to her feet and run, but she stayed in her chair, gripping the edges of the seat and shaking. "The kelpie has come to take me to her."

"The kelpie?" I had always failed to see the danger in a horse-shaped water spirit, at least when it was so easy to avoid the dangers it posed. But looking at Annis, I could hear a small inner voice telling me that the kelpie had hidden depths and menace that had not made it into legend. "What can it do to you."

"Maybe nothing." Her voice was at such a high pitch that I felt compelled to reach out and take her hand, as her father might have if he could have been beside her then. "If it comes in the shape of a horse, then it means only to take me back to the Queen, to make me listen to more of her sugarcoated lies."

"And if it assumes another shape?" I didn't particularly want to ask what that shape might be, but that was probably going to be my next question.

Suddenly Annis let out a choked sob and threw her arms around my neck. My entire body went rigid as I realized that she was crying. "She doesn't love me!" she said through her sobs. "All these years, no one has ever loved me…the kelpie is not here to take me back, its here to kill me." Her tears soaked my shoulder, but I could think of nothing else to do but simply hold her and pat her back awkwardly.

The rumbling had grown louder while Annis had been talking, and there was now a wet smacking sound accompanying it. Whatever was approaching us was not any kind of horse, not even a fey horse. "What other shape might the kelpie take?"

At first, Annis didn't answer, she just laid her head on my shoulder and sniffed, shuddering a little. Then she sighed and pushed away from me. "Have you ever seen a Japanese koi?"

"Yes…"

"Imagine what would result if the world's largest koi mated with a small but very vicious dinosaur, and you'll have a rather close image."

I swallowed hard and nodded, wishing that I hadn't asked. Although what happened next rendered any questions regarding the creature superfluous.

The first thing that could be determined by staring at the terrible thing was that it was strong enough and large enough to break through the wall of the classroom, but small enough that it still fit in the building. It was vaguely fish-shaped, with thick green-gold scales that covered everything but its thick black lips. It had enormous white eyes that gave the impression that it was blind, but from the way it seemed to stare at us, I could tell that it saw all to well. But most frightening, more than its size or even the almost tangible stench that had already begun to fill the room like thick smoke, were the rows upon rows of long sharp yellow teeth that jutted out of its open mouth like spikes from an iron maiden.

Its voice was a harsh croak that sounded as if it were constantly clearing its throat, and it had a Scottish accent so thick that I could barely understand it. "Give over the girl, Brownie. Your Queen demands it." How it was managing to speak with all of those wicked-looking teeth, I could not understand, but it seemed a stupid thing to worry about.

Perhaps because Annis suddenly looked so helpless, I felt a bit of bravery rise up inside me. I took her by the arm and gently made her stand behind me, then stationed myself against whatever attack might come. "I have no Queen," I said, hoping I sounded more like a competent hero than I felt.

A sick sort of sucking sound filled the room and the stench intensified. It took me a few disgusted moments to realize that the kelpie was laughing. "Foolish brownie. Give over the girl before you are crushed by forces beyond your ken."

"Stop this!"

Gabriel.

I reached behind me to give Annis a hand to hold onto, which she took with a strong and—I thought—grateful grip. Gabriel stood at the window, as casually as if he had always been there, holding a sword so large that he had to grip it with both hands. It was only a foot or two shorter than he was, but he looked completely at ease holding it before him, though I could not think of when he had ever seemed strong enough to lift such a weapon.

"You heard me, Wet One. Go back to your master and tell her she has lost her pet poisoned dagger, her favorite tool." When I had first met Gabriel I had noted his accent, but I had not thought of it since then, and now it was so strong that I was surprised that I understood him as clearly as I did.

It took me a moment longer to realize that he wasn't speaking English. The kelpie had not been speaking English either, and I wondered if I had been. They had all been speaking Gaelic, but such an old form of it that it was no wonder I had not known it right away. The reason behind this was not altogether clear to me, but it was quite clear that it would be up to me to take Annis to a safe place, if only a part of the room further from the kelpie.

"Foolish human-get!" the kelpie shouted, making the walls shake. "For all that you are an Alfar, you are as a great a simpleton as any human. Put down that great stick and follow the Queen's command, for once in your miserable life." It made another sucking sound, slightly different than its earlier laugh, and added, "If you surrender the girl, you might be spared the horrible fate that awaits you."

"Never!!"

From the corner of the room that I had led Annis into, the kelpie seemed a bit smaller, although it looked more foreboding. I glanced at the door of the classroom and spent about half a moment wondering why no one had come running to see what was causing so much noise, or at least to discover the source of the smell.

I spent the other half of that moment jumping up to shield Annis. Without any warning at all, the kelpie had spat a fat wobbly orb of black saliva in our direction, and were it not for the instinct my shady past had trained, I would not have been able to take the strike that had been meant for Annis.

The saliva ball popped as soon as it came in contact with my chest, but it did not spurt every which way, as I would have suspected. Instead it spread all over me, enveloping my body from my neck to half past my knees. Agony awakened in every nerve, and I could not see past it, nor even smell the odor of the kelpie. My only thought was that I had not seen the venomous substance spread to Annis or Gabriel, and it tried to comfort me through the extreme pain, though it eased only my mind.

It could have been an eternity that I spent in that condition, certainly if someone had told me that it had been even a small eternity, I would have believed them. But it did end.

At first, I thought that that ending was my death, and I welcomed it readily, seeking an end to the pain, an honorable end that I had never even thought to imagine. The pain bled from me, slowly, as from a minor wound, but no matter the pace, I could feel it leaving my body. It wasn't long before I could open my eyes again, and what I saw put me at ease and helped usher out even more of the pain.

Annis was kneeling beside me, holding my hand and biting her lip. "The poison…it cannot bear the light. I tried…Mr. West, does it still hurt you?"

Most of the agony was gone, but it had left an undeniable lethargy that made it hard to keep my eyes open. I fought against it with as much strength as I could summon, fearing that it was more than mere lethargy. "No, there is…no more pain…"

She closed her eyes and hugged my hand to her. "Good." Then she opened her eyes again and laid my hand on the floor beside me. "Rest. Gabriel is taking care of the kelpie."

Taking care of…? "Let me see." Now that I was no longer suffering, I became aware of the sounds. There was shouting, animal cries of anger, and the sound of a sharp blade cutting through the air.

"No, Mr. West, I can't—"

"Let me see!"

With more than obvious reluctance, Annis lifted me up and dragged me closer to the wall so she could prop me up against it. What I saw then made me wish that I had been smarter and pulled Annis out of the way of the projectile attack, rather than stupidly taking the blow. Gabriel was fighting the kelpie, leaping about and running from one point of the room to another, occasionally darting forward to slash at it with his sword. Somehow the kelpie was warding off his blows, but it didn't seem to be able to spew out any more of the venomous black saliva. Perhaps that one volley had been meant as a special sort of bullet for specifically chosen to kill Annis.

I looked over at her, she was still kneeling beside me and chewing on her bottom lip, watching Gabriel fight the kelpie. There was no doubt now that she had made at least some of the decisions Gabriel had hoped she would make, or else none of this would have been happening. But were the consequences of those decisions worth whatever benefits they had to offer?

Looking at Gabriel, I couldn't help wavering when I wanted to answer 'yes' to my own question. He was tiring, that sword held a lot of destructive power, but the weight was taxing him, especially when he had to dart away as quickly as he could to avoid a leaping bite from the kelpie. This was not a battle he could tolerate any injury from, if the kelpie caught him even once, he'd be lost.

"Annis," I croaked, my voice catching in my throat. "Help him…"

She whipped her head around to look at me, shock making her green eyes a much paler color. Or perhaps it was fear. "I can't!"

"Why can't you? If you don't help him, he'll die!!" The urgency I felt made my voice break in five different places. I barely noticed.

Gabriel was keeping his distance from us, perhaps hoping that if all he could do was hold the creature back for a time, that Annis and I would have the sense to run away. But we couldn't do that, I was in no condition to stand, let alone run, and Annis couldn't run off on her own. According to Gabriel she had all this power, but perhaps she wasn't confident enough to actually use it, or maybe it was truly controlled by the Queen.

No. It was Annis's power, otherwise the Queen would not have gone to so much trouble to control her and then have her destroyed. "Annis. You can do this, you can help!"

"But the kelpie is my kinsman, he serves the Döcálfar. If I help Gabriel defeat him, then that could start a war!" The kelpie lunged at Gabriel, barely missing; Annis and I both winced.

I tried to get up, to at least be a target so that Gabriel might get an opening when the kelpie attacked me, but I couldn't even move my arms. The desire to sleep was so strong, it was all I could do to keep from yawning and letting my eyelids droop shut. "You're not just a Döcálfar," I said, my voice stronger than I had even hoped it would be. "You are also a Liosalfar. Aren't they enemies of the kelpie?"

It was as if a light had gone on inside Annis's face, her eyes brightened and she nearly smiled. "Yes…that's right. I'm a…a wild card. The politics of the Elphame can't affect me and I can't affect them!"

Then she stood up and started to glow, like a radioactive monster in a movie, or the light bulb for a neon lamp. I had to shield my eyes to keep looking at her. "Go back to your Queen," she shouted at the kelpie, "and tell her I'll tolerate no more! If any of you return to bother me, I'll make you wish you had never been spawned."

The kelpie laughed an even fouler laugh than the first. "Do you really believe you can order me about like a dog? You must be as foolish as your men are."

"Better to be a living fool than a dead wise one." The glow surrounding her had softened so that it had an eerie feel to it. When I diverted my gaze from Annis to look for Gabriel, I saw that he had retreated from his battle with the kelpie to stand nearer me. His clothes were dark with sweat, and he did not hold the sword so high as he been before, his breathing was heavy and erratic, but still he stood. I would have reached up to tug him onto the floor, but I hadn't yet recovered the use of my limbs. Annis looked back at both of us and smiled, it made her look much older and curiously resilient.

"Odd words for one who is about to die," the kelpie said calmly. It bunched up its huge scaly body, then pounced.

Gabriel let out a surprised cry and moved to step forward and receive the assault in Annis's stead, but he stumbled and collapsed onto the floor in a heap. Lethargy still battled to take me into sleep, but I managed to push myself forward, grab him, and drag him away.

The kelpie had missed. Annis's movements had been difficult to follow, but she had done something to weave some kind of gigantic bubble around herself, one that had quickly grown to cover Gabriel and me. The bubble had become solid just before the kelpie could rip into Annis's body with its teeth, and had even knocked it back a bit when the two forces had collided.

It swore, using words so old that they had no English counterparts. I understood only their meanings and felt myself tremble. Curses were not called as much without reason. The older the curse, the more dark power it held, and these words were very old indeed. Shadows from all over the room began to gather, they grew into a concentrated blob that slithered towards the kelpie at a slow but alarming rate. My skin felt cold where I felt some of them pass over me.

It had taken the final reserves of strength I hadn't known I'd possessed to pull Gabriel away from Annis and the kelpie, I could only watch in horror as Annis stepped out of the protective bubble. She was standing in a pose that was reminiscent of a scarecrow, both arms outstretched on either side of her and her feet…dangling. Somehow a strong wind had blown into the room—probably through the hole that the kelpie had made when it broke down the wall—and although it did not touch me or Gabriel, or anything else inside the bubble, it was raging outside and was so strong that it had lifted Annis at least a foot off the floor.

She did not seem frightened, however. In fact, she appeared to be quite the opposite, and it was the kelpie that looked rather anxious. "You work under Nickneven," Annis shouted over the wailing storm of wind, "and you know who I am named for. But it seems that you were unaware of the gift Gentle Annis bestowed upon me along with my name."

The wind roared louder and stronger, then it seemed to concentrate into a funnel shape that grew until it was almost the full height of the room, then stayed in place, in between Annis and the kelpie. It was too loud to hear what she shouted next, but it might have been a word of command, as the small tornado broke free of its stationary state and lurched towards the kelpie, howling murderously.

Suddenly the dark hulking monster was gone, replaced by a large white horse with panic in its eyes. But shifting its shape did the kelpie no good—the wind cut through its body like a lawnmower slicing up grass. Annis must have had something like the sensibilities of a princess, however, as she also commanded the wind to carry away the remains of the kelpie. I was glad. As it was, I knew that I was probably going to spend the next few nights waking up with nightmares and throwing up in the bathtub.

Now that the kelpie was gone, its poison lost its influence on me and the weary stupor lifted from me. The first thing I did was check on Gabriel. He was unconscious but breathing. The sword he had been trying to defeat the kelpie with was gone, perhaps carried away by Annis's squall, though I suspected he had simply sent it away when he'd fallen. Annis staggered over to us, looking as limp and bedraggled as a half-drowned bird. The wind had left her auburn hair tangled and knotted, and her clothes were torn, but she was smiling tiredly. "I beat it. It was going to try to used the shadows against me…that was a stupid thing to do. Shadows would never harm me."

But I was only half-listening to what she was saying. I was glad that she would be safe now, but the battle had drained all of us, and Gabriel wasn't even conscious. Somehow, I knew that I wouldn't be able to relax until I knew he was alright. After all, he had saved us both, and it would be too cruel if he were to die now…

"He'll be fine." Annis put a hand on my shoulder, then let go to push her hair out of her face. Both her hat and rain jacket were gone, but I could see the rips in her clothing were beginning to mend themselves, as if dozens of invisible sewing needles were repairing them for her. Similar restorations were being performed on mine and Gabriel's clothes, and even the classroom was starting to come back together, the way it had been before the kelpie had arrived. Everything was being reconstructed with intricate care.

Judging from the frown of concentration on Annis's face, the reparation was her doing. While I was glad that there was a way to return this place to what it had been, and grateful that Annis was doing just that, I hoped it wouldn't drain her too much.

I lifted Gabriel's head into my lap so I would be able to shield him at least a little from the shadows that were flitting back to their places, as well as the debris that flew around the room as each piece of the wall returned it its place. Slowly I regained enough of my strength to pull the rest of him into my arms, which was fortunate, as things were beginning to move around the room at a much quicker rate and the danger of something hitting him had increased.

As soon as I was sure he was reasonably safe—for some reason I wasn't worried about Annis, after that display of power it was hard to worry about her—I closed my eyes and listened to things whizzing past my head. When they finally stopped, I looked around, unable to keep my mouth from dropping open.

Everything was exactly as it had been. If I had checked, I probably would have seen that all of my papers were in the same places I'd left them before the kelpie had broken down the wall. But I never really got a chance to look. Gabriel began to stir, so I laid him back on the floor and waited for him to fully awaken, hoping he would explain things the way he always did. Ever since I'd met him, strange things had happened, and they never seemed to make sense until he explained them to me. It wasn't that I was stupid, he just knew how to make them easier to understand, and more importantly, easier to believe. I couldn't even imagine what I would have done if the kelpie had been successful in its attempts to take Gabriel's life. What would happen to me? What would happen to Annis? Gabriel was a crux in both of our lives, an important man who knew the answers, and just as important, he anticipated the questions.

He groaned and lifted a hand to his head, covering the left half of his face. Then he opened his right eye and grinned at me, looking for all the world as if he had gotten drunk and passed out, rather than what had really happened.

It was fortunate that he chose to act that way. The door to the classroom opened, and Harley walked in, holding the door open with his shoulder. "Is something going on in here?" he asked, looking puzzled. Then he did a double take, looking first at Gabriel, then at me, then back at Gabriel. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped, though not very much. "Who's that guy?"

"He's Mr. West's—"

"Friend," I interrupted, before Annis could say something ridiculous. "He came to ask if I wanted to go out for lunch."

Harley scratched his head. "Why is he on the floor then?"

Oops. I hadn't thought about that. But Annis was ready with a plausible excuse, albeit one I did not approve of. "He tripped and fell, now he's just being dramatic."

It was probably a sign of Gabriel's quiet devotion to the young lady that he pushed himself up and started to get to his feet after that. "That's me, always being dramatic," he said, and it was likely that I was the only one who heard the pain in his voice. Annis had repaired the room and our clothes, but she had not fully healed his injuries. It was fortunate that my own injuries had been tied to the kelpie's life.

"What can you expect from an actor?" Annis laughed and inclined her head to Gabriel. He raised an eyebrow at her, and I wondered what was exchanging between them. It made me feel slightly helpless to watch their wordless communication. I was being left out and I didn't mind admitting to myself that I hated it.

Of course, Gabriel picked up on my irritation and looked back at me, a customary mischievous expression on his face. "What indeed. Now if only I could get an acting job."

"Good luck with that, I guess." I had never given much thought to Harley's social skills, he always seemed to do well with the other students, particularly Bryce, but apparently he wasn't comfortable with people he didn't know. He was looking at Gabriel with a guardedness that reminded me of a scared child.

As I would have predicted, Gabriel was unbothered by this. He looked at the clock on the wall, then said, "Well, looks like the lunch period is almost over anyway. Looks like we'll have to take a rain check on that lunch I promised you, Jordan." He winked at me, then turned a smile on Annis. "See you later, Little Miss."

At first I expected him to exit through the window, as he had before, but either he thought that it would arouse suspicion, or he simply thought it would be amusing to see Harley's reaction as he walked past him. Whatever his reason, Gabriel tugged a lock of hair at me, bowed to Annis, then went out the door. Harley backed away from him, opening the door wider, then moved away from it after Gabriel had disappeared into the hallway.

"You know some weird people, Mr. West," he said as the door slid shut.

Things were going to change. I could feel it, quite literally, in my bones. Particularly in my legs; they ached all the way home, while I walked and wished that I had had the sense to call Gabriel and ask him to give me a ride back to the apartment. I wondered how he had handled the rest of the day. It must have made him uneasy to leave Annis and me, but perhaps I was trumping up my own importance. After all, I knew why Annis was important to him, or rather, I could guess at why, but I had no reason to think he held anything but amused condescension for me.

Perhaps that wasn't fair, but it was hard to think highly of myself after everything that had happened that day. I was not as lively or swift as Gabriel, nor as effective—he had held off the kelpie while I'd been stupid enough to be hit by its attack—and I was not as powerful as Annis. There didn't seem to be any reason for either of them to want to keep my company, especially after this afternoon. I'd been too exhausted to be of much use as a teacher either, and had largely left the students to themselves until the last bell of the day. I'd wanted to leave at the same time the students did, but I had to stay if only for the sake of appearances, it wouldn't do to be useless and unemployed.

"For the love of the righteous and their kin, stop whining!"

I jumped, then stumbled into one of the bushes that lined the sidewalks of the apartment complex. Gabriel had materialized out of nowhere, his face drawn and pale. He reached out a hand to help me out of the bush, but when I took it and he pulled, his mouth opened in surprise and he lurched forward and fell on me.

"Damn it," he muttered angrily, "I can't do anything right today. Couldn't even stick a damn kelpie with a claidheamh mòr."

If I could have pushed him off of me without hurting him, I would have, but I couldn't yet figure out how to do that, so I didn't move. "What are you talking about? You were amazing!"

"Yes, I was an amazing a waste of time. Look, neither of us were exactly at our best when we needed to be, but it's not going to change a thing if we mope around moaning about it." He sighed and turned his head. "You're lucky you're at least comfortable to lay on. I might have had to curse something if you weren't."

I blushed without meaning to, and my mind worked more furiously to find a way to get out of this awkward position. "I've told you before, don't say stupid things. They don't become you."

"I'll become anything I like. I haven't any purpose anymore, I might as well become something stupid. It'd be fitting."

"Now who's whining?"

He was silent for a moment, then he lifted his head to look me in the eye. "You whine. When I do it, it's called 'angst.' "

I snorted. "Why are you assigned such a fancy little word?"

"Because I'm prettier than you are. Now stop talking so I can go to sleep." He laid his head back down.

"Oh no, you don't…!" I grabbed him by the shoulders, then pushed him up slowly until he was as close to standing as I could get him. He was rather heavy at deadweight, but when I reached my limit, I shouted at him to behave himself and stand up.

"Fine," he conceded sullenly, then stumbled into a standing position. He reached out his hand again to help me up, but I didn't want to risk it. I shook my head and rolled out of the bush.

And onto another just like it. "Damn."

Gabriel chuckled and took my arm, then pulled me carefully out of the bush. They were hardy plants, had to have been to hold me up and not be crushed by my weight. "Whinging in a bush is one thing, but I suppose sleeping in one is rather idiotic. Let's go home."

Neither of us said much as we walked the rest of the way to the apartment. Whenever I tried to ask him a question, such as why he was walking around when he had the car, he would just grunt at me and shrug his shoulders. Finally, I just stopped talking and let him stew.

After our walk had passed the way that it had, I expected Gabriel to wander straight for his bed as soon as we were inside, but he didn't. Instead he sat down on the couch and pulled his knees up to his chest. "I failed her," he whispered.

Sighing, I sat down beside him. "No, you didn't. You did what you could as best as you were able."

"I've fought kelpies before!" he said sharply. "With that same weapon, in fact. I defeated the ones before it, so why did I fail to defeat that one?" It didn't sound like a question I could answer, but I didn't think it was one he really wanted answered anyway.

And so I just sat there, trying to come up with a way to assuage his anger, to reassure him that he had not failed as he thought he had. But nothing I could think to say felt adequate. If there were any 'right' words, then I did not possess them. "You did your best and it was enough."

We were both silent after that, but it wasn't long before Gabriel broke the silence. "Why do you believe that?" His voice was tight, he was obviously trying not to be upset anymore and was probably confused.

"All of us had a role in today's battle," I said, not honestly sure of what I was talking about. "You provided hope. That's one of the most important things that a person can offer." I believed what I was saying, but I couldn't understand why I might have thought it would be comforting. It sounded like a bunch of sentimental hogwash.

Gabriel laughed, it twisted my insides to hear its vague similarity to a sob. "And people accuse me of being strange," he said softly. "You're at least as odd as I am, saying things and then thinking that you don't mean any of them."

I tried to smile at him, but it was too hard. I had said that to make him feel better, but I couldn't tell if it had worked. And I still felt terrible about my own insufficiency that day. Gabriel was wrong about being a failure, but I wasn't. There was so much more I could have done, for him, for Annis, and I had not done it.

"But you wanted to do it. If you can spout absurdity about intangibles like hope, then so can I. You gave us both strength and, more importantly, you gave Annis opportunity." Gabriel stretched out his legs and let his feet slide off of the couch and onto the floor. "If you hadn't taken the kelpie's venom in her place, she would have been too weak to do what she did. There are limits to her power, though she'd never let you know it."

That wasn't good enough, I knew it wasn't. "I could have—"

"Yes, you could have done it differently, yes, you could have handled things better. All of us could have." He reached out an arm and flicked my forehead with his middle finger, then laughed when I scowled at him and rubbed the irritated skin. "I suppose the important thing is that the day was won and we lived to whine about how badly it was done." Now that he was seemingly back to his old self, it was easier to interpret his use of the word 'whine' as a friendly rebuke rather than condemnation.

But whether it was either of those hardly mattered anymore; as he'd said, the day was won. We had done what we could, and I supposed that the really important thing was that we had acted at all. Although my actions hadn't been remarkably effective, inaction would have been far worse, and if Gabriel hadn't acted, we'd all be dead.

"Do you want to get something to eat?"

I grinned. "Alright." What better way to celebrate being alive than with food? I followed Gabriel into the kitchen, then raced him to the apron that he had left hanging on a cupboard door. He, of course, was faster, and reached it quite ahead of me.

"There's one for you hanging on the inside of the pantry door," he said as he tied the apron strings around his waist. "It's a bigger one, so it'll actually fit you." He started to roll up his sleeves, then paused to laugh. "This one would be little better than a napkin on you."

Even though he had a point, it annoyed me to hear him talk about me as if I were some kind of behemoth. I shrugged it off and opened the pantry door. As he'd said, there was a long, large brown apron made of sturdy material, with a picture of a very old and wrinkled man's face on the front, along with a speech bubble with the words, 'Keep the kitchen clean!' written in Gaelic inside of it. How Gabriel had managed to find something like this, I couldn't imagine, but it touched me to think he'd gone to such an effort.

"You like it?"

My throat had closed up, and I could only nod. It was probably the first time anyone had done something so remotely like giving me a gift since I was a child. And it was entirely possible that he had spent his own money to buy it, unless he'd made it himself. "Did you…?"

Gabriel shook his head, smiling softly. "No, I didn't make it—not the way you might be thinking, anyway. I had it commissioned of a tailor down by the shops. It's just a silly little thing, but I hoped it get a chuckle out of you."

"This-this is…one of the nicest—" I had to stop to clear my throat, it was making my voice sound odd. "Thank you." Talking was a bit too difficult for me to make a long grateful speech; I hoped that a simple 'thank you' would be able to convey at least some of my appreciation.

Still smiling, he went back to rolling up his sleeves. "You're…welcome." We were both quiet after that, except to discuss what we were cooking, and even then what was said was curt and in almost hushed tones. There had been too much noise today, and just then, we weren't just making dinner, we were making peace.

"What are we going to do now?"

I looked up at Gabriel and saw that he was fingering the chain I'd given to him the first day we'd arrived in Phoenix. For a moment I was afraid that he was going to take it off, and that such an action would be his way of telling me he was about to say goodbye. Nothing was holding him here now, he had said himself that he didn't have a purpose anymore. He had only been here to escape, and then when escape was no long an imperative, he had been here for Annis. Now she didn't need him anymore.

Or did she?

"Annis has changed her name," I said as I poked my food with a salad fork, keeping my tone very carefully even.

"I know, it's McGregor now. A bit of a random choice, but I suppose that's for the best." Gabriel sighed and pushed his food around his plate with his finger. "Heaven knows she's had enough meaning and symbolism in her life to bloat a cow."

Feeling purposeless must have been taking a toll on his mind, now he was making irrelevant and bizarre analogies. Maybe that was his way of letting me know he needed a good stiff drink. I knew I needed one. I didn't bother to ask him in words, I just got up and got some glasses and the big bottle of whiskey I'd hidden in the hall closet.

When I filled the glasses, Gabriel barely seemed to notice that I'd gotten up at all. I pushed the glass gently towards him, but he just kept on staring at his lap. If he didn't hurry up and notice the drink, I was going to drink it myself, then pour the rest of the bottle down his throat, even if I had to get a funnel.

"Thank you," he whispered, then took the glass and downed it in one gulp. For a moment he sat there, absolutely calm, then he erupted into a violent coughing fit that. I slapped his back until he calmed down, then gripped his shoulder so he wouldn't lurch forward and hit his head on the table. "Holy…! What was that?" he croaked.

I helped him lean back against the chair, then picked up the bottle to examine it. It wasn't exactly Jack Daniels, in fact, it was a cheap knockoff of something too generic to have so much as a catchy name…perhaps a bit rough for some people. "Oops. Apparently you weren't made to ingest whiskey…"

Gabriel stared at me, his eyes were already unfocused and he was swaying in his chair. It looked like he was trying to scowl at me, but the muscles in his face wouldn't obey. "I can invest…increst…ing… I can handle anything you can!"

"Right." My mouth curled up into a grin. This was going to be interesting. I downed my own glass, then refilled both of them. "There you are, then."

He gave his glass a cross-eyed glare, then drank it, spilling some of it. For some reason I couldn't pin down, I liked seeing him this way. It was a nice ego boost to see someone like Gabriel, who was usually so in control and sophisticated, struggling to keep a clear head when it was painfully obvious that he could do no such thing.

A few glasses later, he fell out of his chair. Between the two of us, we'd finished off most of the bottle, and I was starting to feel a bit unsteady myself. He looked so funny lying there, sprawled on the floor, with one leg stuck in the air, propped up by the chair. I snorted and held out a hand to him, but he didn't even look up at me.

"Gabriel," I said, my voice sounding a little slurred to my drunk ears, "Gimme y'r hand…"

He shot out his hand and slapped my arm, then continued smacking at me until he was finally able to close his fingers around my wrist. "Up," he demanded, like a toddler who hadn't really learned to speak yet.

I chuckled at him, then tried to comply and pull him up, but in the state I was in, I wasn't capable of pulling anyone up. After one or two half-hearted attempts, I tugged on him and ended up pulling myself forward and crashing into him on the floor.

My fall knocked over both of our chairs, and the backboard of one struck me in the back of the head. Luckily for me, Gabriel was surprisingly soft and cushiony.

"Hey… Gerroffa me…"

"Ngh."

Not our most intelligent conversation, and considering our mutual condition, probably not one that either of us would remember. I tried to push myself up, but the room was going places without me, so I just rolled over so that I was lying next to him. The ceiling moved in vaguely interesting patterns, but it couldn't capture my interest for very long.

"Will you marry me?"

"Whuh?" There was a rustling sound, Gabriel was probably trying to sit up and look at me. I wanted to turn my head so I could see him, but my neck wasn't listening to the commands my brain sent its way.

"Marry me. Then you have to stay."

More rustling, and a scrape of the chair legs on the kitchen floor. Then my vision was filled with Gabriel's rather blurry face. "What're…do you mean…?"

My cheeks felt hot. I'd said it twice, but it wasn't what I had meant to say. After hearing all the bunk about Gabriel being my boyfriend, it must have gotten twisted inside me until it had to just burst out of me in the form of verbal vomit. "No, I don't…I just want…"

"Want what?" Gabriel looked like a confused fifteen-year-old. "I don' nunnerstand…"

I rubbed at my eyes to see if that would make his face stop moving. "Just stay here. Don't-don't leave. Okay?"

"Oh, hell, Jordan, why'd you have to…? Crap." He pulled his legs up and then tried to kick me with one of them, but his aim was off. What he really ended up doing was jerking both of his legs out hard enough knock himself back onto the floor. "Ow…"

Finally I was able to sit up. My head was beginning to clear up a little, probably due to the serious subject matter we'd stumbled onto. "Are you alright?"

"Yes…No…why did you ask me to marry you?" Perhaps his head was clearing as well, his speech was getting less slurred. "I'm not…"

"I didn't mean it like that." I laid back on the floor and covered my eyes with my arm. "It's just that…there isn't anything to keep you here anymore. You don't need me to protect you, and you don't have to convince Annis of the truth, she knows it now."

For a while the only sounds were the humming of the refrigerator and Gabriel's labored breathing. Then I heard the chair scraping on the floor again, and I moved my arm. "Why do you care? Don't you want to get rid of me so you can have a peaceful life?"

"No!" Peace was worth nothing if I didn't have someone to share it with. Annis was going to stay, of course, but it wouldn't be the same if Gabriel left. Almost since the beginning of my new life, he'd been with me, turning both of our lives upside down, but he always managed to tip them right back into balance. "I don't want you to leave…"

He looked surprised, and that surprised me. How could he know so many of my thoughts and completely bypass that? Perhaps he hadn't wanted to see it. I felt my heart try to sink out onto the floor through my back, and I didn't do anything to stop it. If he didn't want to stay, then I'd just have to get used to the idea, as soon as I could.

"No one will ever mistake you for a genius, do you know that…?"

I grunted and pushed myself back up. "Huh?"

Somehow Gabriel had managed to get his hands on the bottle of whiskey, and was sitting with his back against the table leg and twisting the bottle so that what was left inside swirled around in it. I couldn't even remember where I'd left it, let alone figure out how he'd found it. The swishing liquid had a sort of hypnotic effect; while I stared at it, I heard Gabriel talking, but it felt like something far away.

"Even after everything I told you, you still think I'm going to leave somehow. Damn it, Jordan… Take a good look at me. I'm wearing clothes you gave me, I'm living under your roof, and now we're sharing…whatever the hell this stuff is." He sighed heavily, and I felt as if the sound was moving my brain. The next morning was going to bring one hell of a hangover… "I'm not going anywhere. Even if I could, I don't want to."

I didn't say anything at first. There were too many things that I wanted to say. I wanted to thank him, for a lot of things, or to apologize for all of my mistakes, but all I said was, "Why are you sober all of a sudden?"

"The sobering effects of a drunken marriage proposal are staggering. Better than coffee." Gabriel kicked me in the leg, successfully this time, then held out the bottle. "Bottoms up?"

Merely thinking about taking another drink of the cheap whiskey made my stomach churn. "No," I said, hugging my stomach. "Just throw it out…" It would probably be nice if I were to say that I promised myself I'd never drink again, but I knew better than to set such a goal when I didn't really have a good reason for it. Instead, I promised myself that I would never drink any of that stuff again.

Although I was not precognitive, I did wake up with the hangover I'd predicted. At least I woke up in my room, although I was not on my bed. I was lying on the makeshift bed that Gabriel had left in my room since the first night he'd set it up, and it was an odd sensation. The pillow smelled like a mixture of ginger and aloe, and I wondered if that was Gabriel's smell. There was also a hint of cranberry that made my nose itch, and was probably the reason I couldn't get back to sleep.

When I sat up, my head felt like it weighed more than the rest of my body put together, and I nearly lay back down, but the memory of the aromas locked in the pillow made me think twice about it. It was a wonder that I'd managed to sleep on it in the first place.

Fortunately, I didn't throw up, which always meant that the day would be bearable. But I had work.

"No, you don't. It's a holiday, haven't you checked the calendar?"

Gabriel was stretched out on the couch, a bunch of books were stacked up on the floor next to him, and he had about three of them open on his lap. He looked remarkably well for a man who should have been too hungover to breathe without wincing. I would have glared at him, but it hurt too much.

But it was nice to hear that I didn't have to go to work. "I've been a little too busy to even buy a calendar, I'm surprised I even know what day it is."

"So am I, after the way you passed out last night. You've a better head for drink than I do, but the aftereffects seem to enjoy residing in your head more they do mine." He closed all of his books and set them onto the top of the stack, then sat up straight. "Annis was by earlier. She wanted me top help her find someone to play the parent."

"What?"

He got up to help me stagger over to the couch, then sat back down next to me. "Although it often felt as if I were the only one willing to step up and help, there are others concerned for Annis's welfare. An old woman, a weather spirit who considers herself a friend of Gentle Annis, is going to move in and become Annis's grandmother."

I put my head in my hands. "Good, she'll be happy. What's going to happen to you?" It wasn't a question that I was particularly eager to ask, especially after the way I'd embarrassed myself the other night.

A hand on my shoulder made me look up. "Don't you remember? We talked about this last night." Gabriel grinned. "I'm not going anywhere, Jordan."

I hadn't had so much to drink that I couldn't remember it, but I had wanted a more specific idea of his plans. "But what are you going to do?"

"Well, I've received a marriage proposal…"

If I'd been drinking anything, I would have choked. As it was, my breath caught in my throat and made me cough. "What?" He couldn't be serious, we'd been—I'd been—drunk!

Then I saw the mischievous smile and nearly throttled him for being so blithe. "Sadly, I shall have to turn him down."

It was a game, I could tell by the way he was smirking at me. He wanted to see how I would react, if I would play along or sternly push the game aside. Again, I had that same feeling I'd had on the roof, that I was watching a child play. But this time…I would not let my love of dignity keep me from joining him. "How unfortunate. Why shouldn't you accept him?"

His eyes twinkled merrily. "I'd thought him too stodgy for me. Perhaps I am wrong, though…"

"You were probably right to turn him down. You'd be the death of a stodgy person."

"True. I was almost the death of you."

I smiled. There was truth in what he said, but I recalled something else he had said before. "Gabriel," I said, my smile broadening, "I would rather run the risk of death than allow myself to accept the certainty of suffering."

Por Fin