"Oh, hello, Shilloh," Jasque said to her, once again greeting her before the rising sun had a chance to.

  She glared at him, stared at the fire boiling water for coffee, and then back at him.

  Remarkably tolerant and eloquent, if she did say so herself

  They had been on the road again, and she had learned not to eat before morning workouts. As much as it had been difficult before, Shilloh now had a goal. That meant a lot of things, but the biggest was that, if Scotty was trying to match her level of commitment, she was going to break him and turn his dehydrated, permanently fetal-position body over to whoever interviewed her as proof of what she could do.

  With the added shooting practice (she had agreed to it as part of getting her latrine gun), it meant her mornings were starting earlier and earlier.

  She hated it, especially since she couldn't sleep in the car all day if she was going to be keeping up with her book club. Lord preserve her if she fell behind in Dancing Darkness of Romance: Ballroom and Bedroom Dance.

  Jasque smiled, paused for a fraction of a second, and then turned his head to mime taking in the warm colors seeping up from the distant horizon. "Beautiful morning. Scotty told me that Birch was thinking about watching it with me. Is she around?"

  Some part of her wanted to call him out for being fake. He didn't care about the sunrise other than for how it would either expedite or delay the killing of cryptos.

  But that would ruin the game.

  "You hoping to take her on a date?"

  "I mean, it's hard to say no to a beautiful woman, and I think we might end up, well, you know." The bane winked and smirked.

  Aww. Poor baby. He thought he was poisoning the well. Innocent, dumb, dryad-dunce would tell Birch that he was sleazy and needed to be avoided.

  She grunted at him and turned her head to hide a smile.

  Wade had told her yesterday that he wasn't sure he could join her and Scotty for today's activities. There was a big, extensive workout planned with Jasque. Birch, of course, wanted to ruin it. The fact that he hadn't broken character yet felt like an insult to her skills as a chaos imp.

  Their game had progressed steadily as the days went on. He became hard to find, while always—technically— being available. Birch made sure she was even more visibly into him so that the caravan would notice. Because of that, he had to be seen making an effort to get in her pants while simultaneously ensuring that there was never actually a chance to spend time together. Otherwise, she would get her claws into him and steal all the time he wanted to spend devastating the ecosystem and indoctrinating Wade with 'dates'.

  The dates themselves were harrowing. She had downloaded the most vapid movies she could find, had managed to sew cute, annoying patches onto his clothes, and had been an inch away from having them get matching henna tattoos that she insisted would have looked like a baby animal even though the design was clearly phallic.

  Despite it all, the slayer was dedicated. He played the role of a swarmy fuck-boy while still trying to be a workaholic task master who indoctrinated storm—eyed boys in his spare time.

  Today, their match had started early. Having been told about her morning plans, he was at Birch's tent right when she should have been out looking for him. They would miss each other, he would have the whole morning to hassle Wade, and send him back even more worried about his BMI than he had been.

  Too bad Jasque was playing checkers while Birch was only pretending to play chess so she could distract him from a risk board she had already set up and moved thirty moves ahead on.

  "Jasque-y!" Birch squealed, popping out of her tent perfectly ready with all but her lipstick in place. "I can't believe it! How did you know I had slept in?"

  Her victim blinked.

  "I—"

  "Am reading my mind! Quick! What am I imagining?"

  The two stared at each other; Jasque was uncertain what his character would do, while Birch focused so hard that her face was turning red.

  "Slipping off—"

  "—my cocoon and becoming mothwoman! Exactly!"

  "I meant to say—"

  "—I'm walkin' here! Oh my gosh, how can we be so in synch! Come on, let's go. You're early enough that we can watch the sun rise AND have a long breakfast before loading up."

  Shilloh dedicatedly waved her fingers at the two as Birch hauled off her prey.

  Before too long, Scotty showed up, dragging a confused Wade who was trying to look patient while very clearly being nervous.

  "No," her personal trainer said, as he meticulously folded his shirt's sleeves until they were both the same length (as measured by a discrete press of his fingers), "I'm positive Jasque is going to be too busy and he'll be glad we're working you over for him."

  Shilloh didn't smile; it was too early and too cold for that. But she didn't throw anything at them when they settled around her fire and tried to talk to her, which was pretty much the same thing.

  The three of them proceeded, and things fell into the same comfortable rhythm they had been, but with the addition of Wade.

  She worked out hard with Scotty, all the while quizzing him on whatever blightbane procedures came to mind. For the most part, though, she used he and Wade as a way of getting into the mind and culture of the banes.

  Birch had been shockingly insightful about interviews and talked about culture fit being a well-known, statistically significant predictor of job success during the recruitment process.

  Ergo, getting an idea of how her interviewer would think. As a side benefit, the more she learned from her workout buddies, the more impressed she found herself. Some of the things Wade talked about fighting were deadly serious. Bad enough to make a limb stealer look mild. Once or twice, they paused to illustrate the fights with rope, stop watches, or pine cones on the dirt. Combined with fatality statistics that Scotty found in an old manual from the recesses of his computer, it made her realize what Wade had meant about seconds mattering.

  In fact, there was a hot debate about how to objectively and replicably score the danger of different threats. Some were evaluated in terms of property damage per hour, while—to Wade's credit—others preferred rating based on potential lives lost per minute. The really bad ones were measured in terms of napalm used and acres burned.

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  So it went. They worked out, they shot, they ate, and she wrung them for information. On the way back from scarfing down an insane amount of food that only seemed to be making her legs more defined rather than adding any actual fat, there would usually be some sort of practical joke waiting. Sometimes it was as mild as slipping extra packets of butter into Wade or Scotty's food to try to take the lead in their calorie-burning games. At other times, Birch or Agnes would have been recruited by one of the three to set up a bit of mischief.

  Everything stayed good-spirited. Though on the days when no one was pranked, Shilloh always kept an extra close eye on Jasque, just to see if he might be a little more surly than usual. That was because, rather than getting the pranking out of her system with her friends, Birch only seemed to be building up more steam. Thankfully, they had a lightning rod to draw off the bad ones.

  After that part of the day, travel time and rest stops were pure fun. She read and talked with Agnes and Birch.

  Each day, she found them to be more and more interesting. Birch was smart. Like, scary smart. She once casually explained Bayesian statistics just so she could poke holes in the monologue of a 'genius' character in one of their books. Somehow it segued into Shilloh learning about email spam folders, vaccine efficacy, and all sorts of other stuff. Not to mention that Birch seemed to have a weird amount of knowledge about every city that ever got mentioned. Bring up, say, Sarasota, Florida, and she could tell you about the famous historical circus that wintered there before building the Ringling Mansion and Museum. Then she'd casually cite an amazing Amish restaurant to try if Shiloh was ever 'passing through.'

  Agnes still talked about sex a lot, but the stories around the sex were fascinating. Also, her time as a sex educator had been very earnest. She really felt it had been her second calling once the kids were out of the house. Her knowledge about communication, healthy diets, stretching, and even some physical therapy was phenomenal. The back massages she gave were particularly divine.

  All that knowledge resulted in Agnes having met some fascinating and famous people. She'd heard hundreds of the kind of stories that would have been the crown jewel of anyone's memoir. Not many people could talk about the 'boring, standard' emotional process of becoming a millionaire only to realize you still weren't happy. Especially compared to all the 'voluntary lifestyle vagabonds' she had met.

  The two of them, obviously, also took great delight in giving her advice about Wade. For the first day, it had been good advice. By day three, it had become a game to see who could give her the worst tips.

  Evenings were free-form, towns became rarer, and she found herself truly content whenever she got to hang out with Wade during their downtime.

  The tension had been thick at first. But, gradually, things were just warm. She no longer found excuses to bend and snap in front of him. Sure, the validation felt good, but she could see the way his hands clenched. It had been cute at first, but then felt mean. Especially when she had similar issues every time he took off his shirt to exercise.

  After a week or two, it had settled into a near-normal friendship. They were both a little more prone to ask the other if a shirt looked good, or talk about wanting to go on such-and-such trip with a partner one day. But it never got further than them sharing a somewhat loaded warm smile and a compliment that was harder to ignore than usual.

  Not to say it didn't have its own challenges. Shilloh was constantly questioning if her impulses were friend-appropriate. Was she this willing to smack the dirt off the back of Scotty's shirt when he fell? Had she ever offered to help season Birch's dinner soup when it looked bland, or was that only with Wade?

  She didn't know. Some things were off limits for sure, like leaning against him at the campfire. But for the most part, she just learned to go with it. She paid more attention to who her new friend was, less to his ass. The most attention went into tracking how many times a night she could ask him to play Wonderwall on his guitar before he told Agnes to get out the ball gag. There was a reason behind his different levels of patience. Alas, she might have to keep going for a week to crack the code.

  Their fresh-earned comfort with each other was how she ended up going with the flow that morning and letting Wade and Scotty lead her off-trail looking for a familiar.

  Before their talk, it would have been strange and loaded. Now it was just nice.

  Well. Mostly.

  "Seriously," Wade said, "magic doesn't just slip out, Shilloh. It's not a fart."

  "Well, first off, your farts don't slip. They trumpet. They stampede."

  "Not me," he said, grinning conspiratorially at Scotty. "You're hearing the cave toads.

  She rolled her eyes. Nothing she could say would stop them from supporting each other in that lie. She had tried.

  "Whatever. The more relevant point is that your magic doesn't just slip out. But my magic isn't like yours. It's natural, varied, and doesn't brood like a megalomaniac control freak trying to conquer the world. But, not conquered by magic: no, conquered by a swarm of obsessive compulsive robots."

  The Were looked over to his best friend, who just shrugged, "You do have a domineering feel to your stuff. And everything falls on the spectrum of mechanistic versus wondrous. You and I have more mechanical, rule-bound magic. Shilloh has a very wondrous magic. Flexible. Elusive. Unpredictable. In fact, one might even say it is incontinent in its freedom."

  Whilst discussing her need for 'magical diapers', they searched for an incorporeal spirit that possessed amazing abilities, including stealth, medium-range transportation, and—most importantly—a profound inability to be held in captivity.

  It would be a perfect match for her, and had been Wade's suggestion.

  He had been, and still was, concerned about her inability to choose her familiar. But, to her shock, that had been his only concern. Not a word about which cryptos needed to be eradicated, or concerns that she would somehow empower some terrible, town-killing boogeyman.

  He just didn't want her to isolate herself because her skywhale familiar was too big to bring near cities. Or for people to attack her familiar each time she tried to walk through town. Beyond those fears, he had been supportive, maybe even enthused by the idea of her getting a familiar.

  Her surprise at his genuine supportiveness made her feel a little guilty. He had tried to gaslight her. But it was part of a secret identity. One that was guarding a serious secret, considering the power she had felt from him.

  She would probably have been freaked out if someone were loudly pointing out flaws in her cover, too. Hell, she had this far avoided gaslighting Birch and Agnes, but it would be a lie to say the temptation to do it hadn't been there.

  That, combined with all the genuinely horrific cryptos she'd been learning about, made her feel more empathy for his former position. He wasn't a bad guy, per se. In fact, he seemed to be a good guy who had been isolated by a horrible influence and had been waiting for the slightest reason to find a better path.

  None of those thoughts were new, though. There had been lots of time for rumination on their hike. As had been he case for the last few weeks, the forests seemed oddly sedate. Not oppressed by imminent danger, but like a pond that had been overfished.

  They found several fascinating creatures, and one that might have been 'familiar quality'. But none that were her familiar.

  Scotty sighed, "Not that I don't love our little nature walks, but this is making me wish we hadn't skipped our other plans to come out here."

  She shrugged, "I don't know. Have you noticed all the prey species?"

  "Yeah," Wade said. "I don't have the best read on this area, but I was just starting to wonder."

  Shilloh nodded and explained. The creatures at the bottom of the food pyramid seemed too vigorous and populous. It wasn't a huge thing, but the sense of balance here was off. Not so much that it was uncomfortable, but certainly within the territory of unusualness.

  "You think some key-stone predators have been culled?"

  "Yeah. I'm not sensing anything bigger than a badger or smaller than a bear.

  A thought came to her. "Hey, Wade. Can you look and see if there is a similar gap in prey species? Especially the ones with good natural defenses."

  His eyes went vague.

  "Don't quote me on it, but I think there is."

  She glanced at Scotty, and the slight man grinned a fierce grin.

  "You thinking what I'm thinking?" he asked.

  "I'm thinking I want a second shot at finding me a Wingin."

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