Meghan felt herself freeze like a deer in the headlights as Ivan leaped at her like a feral animal. Before she realized what was happening, she had moved to the side and thrown out her hands to add to his momentum. He collided face-first with the closet, cracking it on impact. Taking a deep breath, she stepped back, surprised that her instincts had cut through her hesitation.

  The man started getting up, and Meghan leaped into the air, spun, and threw a kick into his chest just as he got upright again. This time, Ivan went through the closet door and into the closet itself.

  “Jesus Christ, Meghan!” Isabel spat, swiftly getting to her own feet as well, having gone for a slight tumble when Meghan had pulled her out of the way. “What the hell was that?”

  Meghan gave Isabel a slightly dumbfounded look. She understood that the man was out of his mind, but what exactly was she supposed to do, just let him tear her to pieces? Hell, if she let it go on for too long, the officer would return to put a few bullets in him instead.

  “He’s still my cousin, could you maybe take it easy?” Isabel pleaded, her eyes widening as Ivan suddenly rocketed out of the closet and into Meghan.

  The Changeling got her arms up in front of her, crossing them like an X, just before he collided with her. Smmed firmly against the wall, Meghan found herself struggling to match Ivan’s strength. Most of her strength was in her legs, not her arms, but even so, Ivan had been sitting in a hospital bed after a grueling ordeal. Even as a Gnasci, he should have been spent. With his crazed eyes only inches from hers, she realized she couldn’t rely on simply outsting him. Meghan was going to have to put him down.

  “What have we found here?” Ivan whispered through his teeth. “Something sweet. Sweeter than any human. We smell fae flesh about you.”

  Meghan pushed forward with both arms and prepared to release at the same time she went for a headbutt. If timed right, he would plunge right into it. Before she could execute her pn, however, Isabel appeared behind Ivan with one hand pulling his head to the side and the other sticking a syringe in his neck.

  “RAGHH!” Ivan bellowed, hurling Isabel off of him and nearly through the window nearby. The woman caught herself on a piece of furniture before she could make contact with the gss. He turned, refocusing his attention on her for a moment before Meghan interfered with a roundhouse kick to the face.

  Ivan stumbled backward a couple of steps before bouncing back, hurling a fierce right hook at the Changeling, who intercepted it with a block. The pair exchanged a series of powerful blows, each blocking the other and neither gaining any ground. Ivan had a habit of going for the head, so Meghan kept her arms up, intercepting his attacks before shing out with her own.

  As he retreated a step, he stumbled and slipped. Meghan’s first instinct was to pounce on him and beat him into submission, but Isabel’s hand appeared on her shoulder, squeezing gently. The Changeling stood down, watching as the Gnasci in front of her struggled to remain on his feet. For a moment, he resembled a baby deer taking its first steps as he staggered and slipped around the room.

  “What... you do to me?” He asked with slurred speech, shing out sloppily with one arm despite being well out of reach of either woman. Then, with a long, uncomfortable groan, the man slid to the floor and colpsed. No sooner had he hit the linoleum than the door came flying open. The officer stood there in the doorway, staring in disbelief as he took stock of the scene before him.

  “Christ almighty,” the cop excimed. “What the fuck happened here?”

  Out in the hall, Meghan spotted a few of the nurses craning their necks to see into the room without getting too close.

  “He got loose,” Meghan answered. “I heard him go after her, and I just reacted.”

  “Reacted!?” The cop repeated incredulously, looking between her and the busted closet door. “With what? I fuckin two by four?”

  “I was able to get a sedative in him,” Isabel pressed. “He should be out for a while, but he might need to be moved somewhere more secure.”

  Still stunned by what he was seeing, the officer nodded and grabbed his radio. Leaning into the hall, he began speaking into it to rey what had just happened. His back was turned only for a brief moment, but it was enough for Isabel to discreetly scoop up the broken shackles from the hospital bed. The things had practically disintegrated once he’d put his back into it, from what Meghan could see. She was lucky he hadn’t given her the same kind of serious treatment.

  “Alright, you two. Out,” the officer demanded, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “Have a seat at the nurse’s station. We’re going to need to get a statement from you once my backup gets here.”

  As they stepped into the hall, Meghan spotted the nosy nurses scattering, going about their business as though they had been all along. Exchanging gnces with Isabel, she went to the station as instructed, sitting down in one of the chairs lining the wall.

  “What are you doing?” Isabel asked in a hushed tone.

  Meghan gestured with one hand down the hall. “He said he wanted us to---.”

  “Gimme a break!” Isabel reached down and grabbed hold of Mgehan under the arm and lifted her out of her chair. “We’re not sticking around to make a fucking statement, are you kidding me? I’m in enough trouble as it is.”

  “We can’t just leave,” Meghan objected weakly.

  Isabel nodded energetically. “Oh, just watch me. You just karate’d a guy through a damn closet. Do you really want to sit here and try to expin that to some beat cop?”

  Meghan pursed her lips in consideration, but Isabel jerked her arm again, practically dragging her back toward the elevator. She didn’t release her until they were descending toward the lobby.

  “Do you... Do this sort of thing often?” Meghan wondered aloud, looking over at Isabel with a curiously arched brow.

  “Do you?” Isabel countered with a sour face. “Why didn’t you tell me you could fight like that?”

  Meghan shrugged defensively. “I didn’t think I would have to. Besides, it’s been so long since I practiced, I wasn’t sure I still could. I just reacted.”

  Isabel bobbed her head from side to side. “Alright, as far as excuses go, you have a pretty good one, actually. But, still...”

  The two stood in the elevator amid a heavy, awkward silence as they watched the number in the elevator panel go down. Every so often, it would stop, someone would get on, and they would continue on their way. When they hit the lobby, they were met by half a dozen police making their way toward the elevator. Isabel took Meghan’s hand unexpectedly and casually led her out among the rest of the people exiting the elevator.

  None of the uniformed officers gave them so much as a second gnce. One of them lifted a radio to speak into, but the contents of the conversation vanished behind the closing metal door to the elevator.

  “Are they going to be coming after us?” Meghan whispered, gncing over her shoulder as they stepped through the front doors and back into the open, the sun already beginning to sink on the horizon.

  Isabel scoffed. “And how are they going to do that? They’ve got no names and vague descriptions. Hell, your mask is going to make it difficult for the officer to describe you with any kind of accuracy after an hour or so.”

  That was true. Now that her fractured Mask had been repaired with a little rest and food, it would be functioning more as intended. Every member of the Hidden had a Mask to some degree, but those of the Fae lent themselves to the ethereal qualities of the creatures that wore them, giving those mortals who didn’t spend enough time with them only fleeting impressions of who they’d met or spoken with. Unfortunately, none of it would apply to the people who had spent so much time with her in the asylum.

  “I guess that didn’t go well enough for us to get something to eat, hm?” Meghan joked, looking sideways at Isabel.

  “Ha!” The Gnasci responded, shaking her head. “Not even close. I have to report to Josephine as soon as possible. She’s going to be pissed.”

  “Would you like me to go with you? Maybe soften the blow a little?” Meghan suggested, as Isabel led them to a stop for the Red Line train. She fed a few tokens into a machine that granted them entry, while the Changeling felt her heart sink at the prospect of going underground again.

  Isabel sighed, appearing to consider the offer for a second before shaking her head. “No, that’s probably not a good idea. Besides, how would it soften the blow?”

  “I just thought that coming from both of us, she might take the fact that there is a Fallen in the city more seriously,” Meghan expined as they stopped on the ptform just shy of the yellow bumpy line.

  Furrowing her brows, the Gnasci grabbed hold of Meghan’s arm and pulled her aside, despite there only being two or three other people waiting for the train at that time. “What did you just say? A Fallen?”

  Meghan stared back at her, confused. “Yes?”

  “Why the hell would you say it’s a Fallen?” Isabel hissed, straining the efficacy of a whisper with how strained it was.

  “When I touched your hands, I got a glimpse of his experience the night before, didn’t you?” Meghan asked. “I saw something like it myself right before I woke up, come to think of it.”

  “Of course I saw it,” Isabel answered, gncing around uncomfortably. “I’d prefer that I hadn’t. What I don’t understand is how you jumped to that conclusion. It could have been anything.”

  Meghan’s lips pressed into a thin, skeptical line. “Could it?”

  “Have you ever personally seen one yourself?” Isabel argued, the squeaking of the tracks grabbing her attention briefly as the train approached.

  The Changeling shook her head. “Honestly? No. But I just have a feeling. Call it a hunch. But there’s no doubt in my mind that what we saw was a Fallen.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Isabel murmured. “You know what? Yes, I want you to come with me. There’s no way that Josephine is going to believe it if it’s just me, and your delivery almost has me convinced.”

  As they stepped onto the train and found a pair of vacant seats, Meghan couldn’t tell if she should feel insulted or complimented by the Gnasci’s remark. She couldn’t expin it, but the Changeling was completely sure that what they’d seen was a fallen Angel. They were the sort of thing that the Hidden told stories about, and everyone cimed to have a friend whose cousin’s roommate saw one once but had never seen one for themselves. As far as most were concerned, they were pure fiction. Those who thought they were real typically didn’t believe they still operated in the mortal world anymore, perhaps moving on through the Scatter or some other pne of existence.

  Maybe they had all gone home.

  Thinking back on what she saw, Meghan was positive it was a Fallen. It was the sort of thing that could utterly shatter the community just knowing that there was one present. The fact that it had committed such a vile act of aggression against regur people on a public bus would cause utter chaos. The fact that one of the Hidden had been caught up in it would serve as justification for everyone to stick their noses into the matter, regardless of which faction he belonged to.

  “What am I going to do about Ivan?” Isabel sighed, leaning forward to rest her face in her hands. “He’s still in there somewhere. What the hell did that thing even do to him?”

  “Be not afraid,” Meghan murmured ominously, earning her a sharp gre from the Gnasci. “No, I mean... that’s what they say in the Bible, right? Whenever they appear to someone, it’s a big deal, and people always freak out.”

  Isabel’s brows rose slowly. “I guess? I uh, haven’t read it in a while, if I’m being honest.”

  Meghan smirked a little bit, taking the woman’s admission to mean that she’d probably never cracked the book once in her life. She wouldn’t judge her for it. Even without considering generational differences, Meghan reminded herself that Gnasci were bred and raised by Vampires, so holy books probably weren’t on the reading list.

  “In the Bible, whenever an Angel shows up, it’s a big deal,” Meghan crified. “Now it’s never explicitly said, but I always figured it’s sort of like when one of the Hidden unmasks in front of a human. They don’t understand entirely what they’re looking at, and their brain responds to that struggle with fear. With Angels, it’s probably way worse, considering they’re on a whole different level than we would be.”

  “Hypothetically,” Isabel added. “Assuming this is real.”

  Meghan nodded in agreement. “Hypothetically, yes. If this same Angel were to exert influence on others, I imagine that their mind and soul would struggle with reconciling what had happened. Hypothetically.”

  “He did describe it kind of how I would imagine an Angel being described,” Isabel muttered, evidently considering Meghan’s expnation as truth. “Did you go to church a lot back in the day or something?”

  “Oh, Heavens, no,” Meghan ughed, her voice genuinely mirthful for the first time in a while. “In Massachusetts? With all that iron? No, no, no. Not a chance in Hell. But my father was the son of Irish immigrants, so...”

  Isabel snickered, shaking her head. Evidently, the Irish stereotypes still held enough weight to mean something even decades ter. Meghan supposed that there were some things about Boston that had managed to remain the same, after all.

  They disembarked at Park Street, went up a flight of stairs, and switched over to the Green Line heading northbound.

  “Shouldn’t we be going south?” Meghan wondered, gesturing toward the ptform with a thumb. Her eyes passed over the exit to the surface, and she felt a strange yearning in her chest that went beyond merely getting out from under ground. Images of a warm day, sunlight through the willows, and a cool breeze fshed through her mind.

  “We have a stop to make first,” Isabel answered, nodding toward the approaching train. It was one of the rare times when the timing on transfers was impeccable. They stepped into the car, but didn’t bother sitting. Instead, they disembarked at the very next station.

  As they stepped onto the ptform, Meghan turned around a few times, frowning. “I came through here earlier, I think. Shouldn’t this be Scoly, though?”

  “Scoly?” Isabel repeated, raising a thoughtful brow. “Oh! Right, yeah, they just changed the name when they remodeled it.”

  “Oh,” Meghan muttered a little childishly, gncing around the station. She supposed it looked nice.

  Isabel smirked and waved the Changeling along. “Come on, I think you’ll like this.”

  Meghan fell silent as she followed the Gnasci, heading toward what she had previously assumed to be the rear of the station. Isabel opened a gate that blocked the area off. It had appeared to be locked, but the moment Isabel made contact with the handle, it seemed to pop open for her. Stepping through. Meghan sensed the faint thrum of magic.

  On the other side of the gate, a tall man in a transit uniform leaned casually against the wall, where a sign posted stated that the area was strictly off-limits to the public. Isabel gave the man a brief nod, which was returned in kind. The pair continued on along a walkway that followed a diverging tunnel. Isabel gnced at her watch, but didn’t comment on why or offer any context. At the far end of the tunnel, a man in a booth looked up as they approached.

  “Is it open?” Isabel asked uncertainly.

  The man in the booth, who appeared to be in his sixties with thinning hair and absurdly thick gsses, shook his head slightly without looking up from his newspaper. “Couple minutes.”

  The Gnasci nodded and turned away, sucking her teeth impatiently as she began pacing back and forth in the narrow corridor.

  “What is this?” Meghan asked quietly, gesturing toward the booth and the retively nondescript door beyond it. “Where are we going?”

  “Adams Square Under,” Isabel answered, pointing at the door. “But it’s only open between dusk and dawn.”

  Meghan frowned and looked back the way we came. “If that used to be Scoly, we could have just stayed on the train. Why do they only open it after dark?”

  The Gnasci let out a brief sniff of amusement. “No, no. Not like the actual station. The station in the Scatter. It was moved there after they demolished it with their urban renewal thing.”

  “It’s gone?” Meghan asked, her brows shooting up. Earlier, when she’d ridden the train to come downtown, she’d not paid very close attention to her surroundings once underground. She’d listened for her stop and followed the instructions she’d been given. It hadn’t even registered that she might have been walking through areas that once held pces she’d once known.

  Isabel nodded and gnced at the man in the booth. He looked up from his paper long enough to give her a nod, then went back to his reading. Isabel reached for the door, and the moment she made contact with it, Meghan felt a buzz of magic in the air stronger than before. The nondescript white door, with scuffs along the bottom, suddenly transformed into a wider, wooden colonial door with detailed designs etched into its paneling and a rounded top.

  The Changeling could practically taste the magic of the Scatter in the air as they stepped through the door. It was potent and thick, swirling in her senses like the fog of an early autumn morning. It seemed vibrant and alive at times, dead and rotting at others. The Scatter was, in many ways, the remnants of the world that was. Things that were destroyed, forgotten, or pruned from the physical world ended up in the Scatter. There had once been a time when the two were bonded together, but that was before the time of any living among the Hidden, and no one knew for certain what had caused it. There were plenty of stories, though, like with the Fallen.

  Adams Square Under had been kept in near-immacute condition, from what Meghan could tell. Various people milled around, evidently waiting for the way to open from their side in the Scatter. A second door, on the other side of a divider, appeared to be the door designated for re-entering Boston. Across the station, yet another pair of doors was marked as leading to and from Haymarket with a mosaic sign set into the wall above it.

  Isabel hurried up the stairs to the surface with Meghan following close behind. They exited through an ornate headhouse made of granite and topped with a giant clock. The darkness of the sky overhead indicated a ter hour than what the clock said. Meghan assumed that it was one of the quirks of that specific Realm. Many followed the same day and night cycle as the rest of the world, but others didn’t. Some could have cycles that varied in length, while others remained frozen at a single time of day, such as dusk or midday.

  Meghan hadn’t been in the Scatter since she was a teenager. It felt oddly refreshing, like stepping outside after a long period of being cooped up inside.

  Adams Square was an interesting mix of colonial and modern architecture---at least modern by Meghan’s standards. She supposed that it all seemed rather dated to someone like Isabel. It resembled what it would be like to take different periods of time for a pce a smoosh them together in a crude ball. Parts of them would blend together, but some distinct parts protruding from the mass would still remain.

  People of the Hidden moved around them, going about their regur business as though the two weren’t even there. Seeing a few without their Masks caused Meghan to look down at her arms, where she was happily greeted by the sight of her feathers looking much healthier than st she’d looked upon them. Looking up at Isabel, the Gnasci appeared mostly as she did before, albeit with more vibrant color in her eyes and paler skin. Most Gnasci didn’t even have that much of a physical difference and would be able to pass for human were it not for the vaguely unsettling feeling they gave humans without the benefit of the Mask.

  Notably, as Meghan’s gaze shifted to Isabel, the Gnasci abruptly looked away and pretended as though she hadn’t been staring at her a second before. Meghan supposed that without her Mask, she was a bit more striking with her white skin, plumage, and talons. Then there was the fact that the st time Isabel had seen her like that, she’d been naked.

  “What do we need to get?” Meghan asked, breaking the silence between them before it became awkward.

  “Hm?” Isabel intoned, looking back at Meghan with a little color in her cheeks and her brows raised.

  Meghan gestured with her finger in a little circle. “Here. You said we had to pick something up here.”

  “Right! Yes!” The Gnasci ughed uncomfortably before resuming her errand. “Of course, sorry. I was thinking about what you said earlier---about softening the blow?”

  Meghan nodded along as Isabel expined her train of thought while taking in the sights of the Scatter Realm itself. “Mhm.”

  “Well, I thought maybe it would be a good idea to show up with a gift or something,” Isabel continued, her eyes darting between signs for the streets. She knew what she was looking for, but wasn’t precisely sure where it was, by the looks of it. “You know, to soften the blow.”

  “Okay!” Meghan acknowledged enthusiastically. “So, what do we get a Vampire to soften the blow of the worst news she could possibly get today?”

  The Gnasci’s lips pressed together in a thin, unappreciative line for Meghan’s assessment of the situation. “The same thing you always get a Vampire you want to suck up to: Blood.”