I am so sorry for how long this took, but you have no idea how hard this chapter was to write. I am actually surprised that this is the same century, never mind the same year, because I swear this chapter looked like it was dug in for the long haul. I would like you all to thank Kage Baker's novel Sky Coyote for unsticking me on this damn thing. So yes. I'm a horrible person for making everyone wait so long and then delivering a short chapter completely lacking in action. Please forgive me and review.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone ever thinks about their own feelings honestly. Because it often seems that somehow the language built up around them starts to take them over; starts to give names to things that don’t actually exist as separate, starts to delineate in a way that seems useful but before you know it you’re looking at this ugly, struggling mess and wondering what the hell it is and why no one ever warned you that it actually hurt.

So when I say that after The Day That Really, No, I Mean REALLY Sucked, I go home and sit down and think, I want it to be clear that this isn’t some sort of placeholder, a fancy way of saying ‘some changes are happening now and they’re totally logical and this is really just justification for them’. I want to communicate at least a little bit of how much NOT fun it is, but more importantly, how hard it is. Because if I have to sit on my bed, staring at the ceiling and feeling as if I am dissecting myself messily with salad tongs, then you might as well feel a little confusion and discomfort too. Sound fair?

It isn’t as if introspection is something new to me. It’s pretty much my base state of being. But as erratic as I seem, and as certain deities will try to assure you that I am, usually this introspection doesn’t come with a whole lot of emotional attachment to it. But this body…gods and demons. Why did no one ever tell me—why didn’t I remember—that bodies feel so much? The way the borders of the head seem to expand, to fill up with fragileness until your skull feels as if the air itself is invading it, the aching burning when you shift you head, the squirming unease down the spine and the pressure in your chest. These are feelings, these are the things people give ridiculous, stupid names to like anger and fear and hurt. They feel bad. And I don’t like it.

I keep hearing Jayden’s voice in my head: You don’t trust us. You don’t care about us. Is trust one of these body-feelings? Should I feel it when I look at someone, a little tug under the breastbone or in the pit of my stomach? Because if it doesn’t mean that, if it means something I have to make happen, something I have to change, I’m not sure I can. I’m not sure the selfish, self-absorbed Shade that I need to be can do that.

I never explained why I felt bad promising Gloria not to kill myself. Maybe it’s because I don’t like to talk about it; don’t like remembering the jobs that make me wonder if, really, the afterlife would be so bad compared to this. Because sometimes I kill people. Sometimes they need to die and don’t; they step out of the way of the car, they put the gun down, they don’t order that last drink. So I do it for them, and drift out of their bodies and try not to think about what I’ve just destroyed. And sometimes, and these are the ones I hate the most, they need to kill and don’t. The robbery goes wrong and the hostages are jumpy and someone screams but in just that split second he stops himself, he grabs onto his shaking nerves and doesn’t pull that trigger. And that’s hopeful and beautiful and then I come in and break it. Because he was supposed to.

I get through it. And I come Home and have a screaming fight with some god like they know I need to, and then I try to forget about it. But…humans don’t do that. They don’t; putting the individual before the whole is what mortals do. They fight and they claw and they scream and they never, ever sacrifice the person to the plan. And I do. We mere mortals are just so far below you, right? Jayden’s voice sneers, and I shiver. Chess pieces. Ants. No, no, I am not like that. I cannot be like that.

I used to hate sacrifices.

Have I really changed that much?

I shut that question down before I can think about it too hard. There’s a place in my head where I shove all of the questions that it isn’t a good idea to ask.: the questions that are uncomfortable to think about (what am I? How long will I live? Will I be around to see the end of the world, and what will happen to me afterwards?) and the questions I can’t ask, if I want to stay sane (what if I’d said ‘no’, when they came to me and said ‘this is your job now’? What if I’d moved just a little bit faster; if that knife had missed me or at least missed my heart? What if I’d just shut my eyes and tuned out her screams and let the knife come down?). And then there are the questions that I do need to think about but are No Fun: why has this job lasted so long? What aren’t the gods telling me anything? Why do I need them to so badly?

What if I can never get Home again?

I try to imagine living in this place, in this body, in this person, for the rest of my life. And then what? A chill sweeps through me at the thought of dying again, this time for good.

I don’t think I can live out Jacob’s life. To pretend for that long, to try to fit myself into the confines of his Plan and personality as if I was never anything more, anything me….I can’t do it. I would want too much to break out of that act, to make it clear that I am not him. To take a life that doesn’t—shouldn’t—belong to me and make it mine.

Sometimes I want a life of my own so badly I can barely stand it.

I turn that thought over for a while, indulging in some self-pity-wallowing, but eventually it starts to mutate into something new and a little disconcerting.

Jacob isn’t coming back for his life. If I had to guess I’d bet he’s already been re-incarnated, hopefully back on a path that he fits into. So…I’m almost a little scared by the audacity of this thought, but…this life could be mine.

It would be wrong. I had my allotted time span and I fucked it up, why should I get another chance with someone else’s life? And I can’t just abandon my job. This job is me, they told me. This is your function now. You life exists for this.

Hundreds of years ago, maybe a thousand by now, I met a boy in a cave. He was special, special like Michael and Jayden and Liana and Shay and maybe even that long ago me, and his eyes had been huge and lidless and pale and they saw things no one else could.

His people worshipped the moon, I think, and the only other thing I really remember about them is they wore red, all the time, a bright vibrant colour that made their dark skin look almost pure black, and that I think they dyed using clay.

Blood stains everything, even cloth that’s already red. There just has to be enough of it.

I didn’t do it, this time. My job had been to hide, when the other tribe who didn’t like the moon as much poured in and started killing. I’d saved a life, this time, instead of ending one, but somehow that didn’t make up at all for the moment when I uncurled in that horrible silence and met those weird, creepy eyes and heard him say “You knew this would happen.”

At least I had the guts not to lie.

“I don’t hate you for it.” He looked at me with those disconcerting eyes and I swear I felt them seep into me, like cold water through my skin. “If you’re not careful, though, there won’t be enough of you left to hate.”

When he said it, I’d thought it was a threat. Revenge of some kind, and I really didn’t want to find out what sort of revenge someone that scary could dream up and carry out. It was a long time before I realized that it was a warning.

So I’m taking this life, for as long as it lasts. I’m going to be awkward and scared and guilty and maybe even happy and I’m going to take all that and keep it and no one else can have it.

It’s mine, whoever the hell I am.