“I can’t believe I let you see me in squid monster mode.” I wrap my arms tighter around Caspar’s shoulders as he picks his way around the headstones. “So much for easing you in.”

  “Wait till you see me in pannenkoek monster mode,” Caspar says. “I put those motherfuckers away three at a time. That’s some inhumanity.”

  “It really didn’t bug you?”

  “It’s a privilege of being a woman’s man to see her without her face made up.” Caspar hikes me up his back. “Same difference. Just a little more literal for you and me.”

  I kiss the back of his head. “You are my perfect himbo, Caspar Cartwright.”

  He takes the epithet with smiling grace. It’s the mark of a sensitive, intelligent lover to know exactly the right moments to be a bit of a dunce.

  Caspar carries me up a mossy hill. On its crest stands the taphouse, relocated to Bina’s demesne. The agony made me lose my grip on nearly everything I’d made. It’s a point of pride to me that despite losing every other illusion I’d wrapped myself in, the taphouse held. I even kept the brews chilled. Now that I’m not fighting to keep the place and the people inside it from ruin, I have enough juice in me to bring back my proper manifestation.

  There’s a gathering outside—a getting-to-know-Bina’s-guts sort of thing, mixed with an impromptu celebration of our survival. A set of cheap plastic chairs, a grill, an icebox. Mostly it’s dead people. I took the discrete liberty of picking up the gun-dealer and his muscleman, though Bina’s got them stashed in a crypt somewhere while they adjust to their strange hereafter. Collecting these mortals has become a minor hobby. It tickles me, seeing how they interact. I’ve found myself rooting for that horn dog, Degmar. One of the checkpoint templars has taken it upon himself to be a romantic rival for Alys; when Degmar thrashed him at a not-so-friendly game of pool, I silently cheered the card dealer on.

  Sam the bricklayer’s at the grill, carefully caramelizing a row of wurst. Bina keeps it altogether warmer in her demesne than my chilly autumnal dusk, and he’s taken the opportunity to strip down to a grubby tank top. Kai (the man whose mouth I stole once) is having trouble hiding his admiration of his friend’s trapezius. On Diamante, he was a faithful man—an industrious clerk who promised his padre and his parents he’d save himself for the chapel and for a nice young woman he could give a child. But he’ll never set foot on Diamante again. Maybe here he’s someone different.

  “Don’t let her boss you into carrying her around everywhere,” Salome calls, as Caspar places me in a stubby white lawn chair. She’s perched elegantly atop a sunken mausoleum’s fallen wall. “That manifestation is perfectly able.”

  “Don’t listen to her, lover.” I kiss his ear. “I’m very weak.”

  He passes me a beer, then eases into the seat next to me and kicks his feet up onto a boulder. “Truth be told, Miss Salome, I just enjoy lifting heavy weights.” He glances at me. “And light, petite weights.”

  I pat his bicep. “Good boy.”

  “So fascinating, isn’t it. How hard humans work to change themselves. And only the specific changes they’d like.” Saoirse is tearing greasy little pieces of her sausage off and feeding them to a colony of ants that has gathered by her feet. “Months at the gymnasium, ballooning their arms. But give them a perfectly benign little growth or a swelling and the world’s ending. Hello, Caspar.”

  “Hello, Miss Saoirse,” Caspar says. “You all right down there, Adaire?”

  Salome’s warlock lounges on the grass. No beer and brats for Adaire—she’s stirring a small tureen of lobster bisque that she brought from Salome’s demesne.

  “Sure,” Adaire says. “I’m just asleep. You’re the unconscious one.”

  Caspar winces. “Tricky one out there.”

  “My condolences and congratulations. This is about how I expected a victory against Mr. Butcher would look.” Adaire blows on her soup.

  “If Adaire is watching, look alive, girl.” On the viewport, Jordan’s loading several surviving liquors into a knapsack. “Bout to wake you up. I need help getting these boys out.” She gestures to Caspar and the Butcher, whose gut shots she allowed him to evoke shut before she trussed him up in just about every ziptie left in their arsenal. “And then it’s high time you escaped.”

  “Oh, tits,” Adaire mutters, and picks up the pace on her bisque.

  Alys’s fellow prison guard, a stud named Loras with a disarming lisp, eyes the stolen alcohol with jealousy. “That bourbon’s a Revulin ‘86. You people better not waste that.”

  “Oh, look at him. My little pookie.” Saoirse coos as Jordan follows Peat Moss back up to the Calfsport’s main floor. “He did so well, didn’t he?”

  Caspar grins at their little adopted warlock’s ungainly gait up the steps. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Saoirse smiles at Caspar. “He likes you very much, you know.”

  “That, uh.” Caspar tries not to show how deeply the affection of the deer monster touches him. “That’s good to hear.”

  Jordan braces herself to return to the first floor in a hellion everyone out register, but there’s no need. At the sound of gunfire below, the last patrons cleared out. Only a matter of time before the templars show up. She puts some hustle into her step.

  “Bina,” Salome calls. “Would you mind a spot of dilation? I need my warlock for a while longer.”

  My sister doesn’t have a manifestation present, but we’re inside her; she hears us just fine. The world, through the viewport, slows to a fifth of its usual speed.

  Salome gestures. “Attend, my warlock. We have to plan your escape with Tilliam.”

  “Yes, mistress.” Adaire places her bisque to one side and stands, wiping the grass from her legs. After so much time with Caspar, Bina, and Jordan, it’s strange to see such a traditional and obedient Old One/Warlock dynamic.

  Though I bet I could get Caspar to say yes, mistress if I wanted.

  “But before we depart. Irene, Caspar.” Salome moves to the icebox. “You both fought valiantly. And shed a lot of blood. And while I maintain it was a necessary battle, better brought to Ganea than sprung on us, it was my call and my plan, and my demand.” She opens the lid. “I made this for the two of you.”

  She pulls out a sloppy cylindrical cake, with a sheet of plastic film over it. Red icing, squeezed by an inexpert hand, reads THANK YOU atop it.

  “Salami,” I say. “Is this handmade?”

  “Yes. Adaire tells me that’s important.”

  “Not necessarily,” Adaire says. “Not to me. I’d take a five-star dark forest gateau any day. I said it’s probably important to Caspar. Given what I know of the man.”

  Caspar’s grinning huge. “It’s very appreciated, Miss Salome.”

  “Look at all this edible glitter.” I run a finger across the frosting. “My goodness.”

  “Just eat the fucking thing, all right?” Salome clicks her tongue. It pings off the roof of her mouth like a doorbell. “So I can stop looking at it.”

  We eat together as Salome departs with Adaire.

  “It’s good.” Caspar chews. “Little yeasty, but good.”

  “Probably the first time Salami actually baked something,” I say. “We just manifest most of the time.”

  “Adaire’s right,” Caspar says. “It’s about making the thing. Remind me to do up a strudel for you once you’re fixed up and we’re back home.”

  I pick at my slice. “That might… take a while, Cas.”

  “That’s okay.” He puts a hand on my knee. “You take the time you need.”

  I flinch slightly at his touch. “I won’t be able to give you the power you’re used to. Or do the things that I normally can.”

  “Poor Irene doesn’t want to say it,” Saoirse says. “But she’s in a great deal of pain.”

  “Sersh,” I warn.

  Caspar goes pale. “Still?”

  “It’s—” I can’t say I’m okay, or it’s fine. I can’t lie to him. “I’m recovering. It’ll pass.” I shrink from his stricken expression. “You don’t need to look at me like that or be delicate with me, okay? I’ve got it separated from this manifestation. It’s something the rest of me is dealing with.”

  “How bad?” he asks. I hear the soothing village doctor in his voice.

  I promised him I wouldn’t hide anything from him anymore. I sigh. “It’s, uh. It’s agony.”

  His hazel eyes flash.

  “If I was human, I’d be mad with it. Or just dying of shock, I don’t know. But I’m not,” I hastily add. “I’m on top of it.”

  Caspar leans closer. “There has to be something I can do.”

  “Sure there is,” Saoirse says. “You could let her eat one of these little souls you’ve been storing in her.”

  Aaron’s eyes jolt to where we sit, like a flighty rabbit’s.

  “No.” My reply is sharp.

  “He asked.” Saoirse shrugs. “Irene may not have told you this, sir warlock, but when my kind devours a soul, it brings a good deal of power. Even a little mortal morsel would be enough to jumpstart her healing process. That’s the reason Eight is such a holy terror these days. She eats her warlocks when she’s through with them.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Why don’t the rest of you do it?”

  She titters. “We’re monsters, Caspar Cartwright, not monsters. It’s a shortcut and a rather grisly one. Also, your wife made us all swear we wouldn’t.”

  A stab of surprise from Caspar. I remember how touchy he gets about these mortal terms. “I’m not his wife,” I say.

  “No?” Saoirse taps her foot. “What do I call you, then? You can’t both be consorts. He’s the consort.”

  “I’m his girlfriend.”

  She tsks amusedly. “Really, Irene. How many millennia old are we?”

  Caspar chews his lip. “What about a piece of one? Of a soul. Is it an all-or-nothing thing? Or is it like eating a leg?”

  “It’s more or less like eating a leg,” Saoirse says.

  “It’s not like eating a leg. Caspar—”

  “What’s the leg equivalent?” Caspar asks.

  “Don’t answer that, Sersh.”

  “A sense, or an emotion,” Saoirse says. “Or a memory.”

  I throw my hands in the air.

  “A memory? A memory is fine,” Caspar says. “I’d lose a memory.”

  “Caspar. Let me fix myself.”

  “You’re in pain,” he says. “At least let me take that away. How about the first five years? When I still lived with my parents. My older sister. My blood family. Would all my memories of them do?”

  Saoirse hums. “I imagine that’d be a rather effective little painkiller.”

  “Cas.” I push a palm into his chest. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “They’re barely anyone to me, Miss Irene,” he says. “Blurry faces and quarterly phone calls, and a calendar of awkward holidays. And if this is forever, then a few years shaved off the very front, what difference does that make? Blink of an eye. That’s not me.” His fingers twine into mine. “This is me.”

  I brush my lips against his thumb where it folds around mine. “Are you sure?”

  “They didn’t choose me,” Caspar says. “You chose me. I choose you back.”

  He takes a knee before me. “Do I need to do anything for this?”

  I can’t believe I’m doing this. I’m eating a piece of my boyfriend. I blink back my gall and emotion. “Just… think about them. And hold still.”

  Most of it just lifts right off him. He’s not precious about these memories. They fall from him like slow-roasted meat off the bone.

  I can’t keep from releasing a whimper as it siphons off. The pain diminishes almost instantly. It’s so good. So warm. A hunger I’ve held at bay for decades, slaked once again.

  One little thing remains. The only thing he holds on to. The first gorgeous day in summer and they picked him up from seminary and drove to the beach. His parents and sister and her boyfriend.

  His father handed him an ice cold soda, and the sea air kissed the condensation against his fingers. “You’re being a good kid, right?” His father’s smile, crinkly at the edges, and Caspar saw himself in it, in the dimples. “You’ve always been such a good kid. Your mom and I, it wasn’t anything you did. Just couldn’t feed another one.” He popped opened the cap for Caspar with a little keychain opener. “But we’ve always been proud of you. You know we have. Right?”

  Caspar took the first crisp sip. And he said—

  —something.

  His reply, the beach, the taste, his father’s face. His sister’s name. The songs his mother sang to him when he was fussy in her arms.

  It all goes away.

  He reaches for the memories and they’re just gone. No hole or staticky censor. Just a total void. He knows he had a father, but he couldn’t tell you the first thing about him. This affects him more than he thought it would, more than he wants it to.

  “Good?” he asks me.

  My eyes shudder shut. I wish I could describe the taste to you. It’s like the thing from your childhood, the thing. The taste you half-recall whenever you’re trying something delicious. Your measuring stick. Like it was pulled out of you and served you again, and it tasted exactly as good as you remember, and it filled you up perfectly.

  I open my eyes again and my vision fills with his face. He’s crouching in front of me, full of hope and concern.

  I lay my hands on his cheekbones and my forehead against his. “I’ve never had a faith or a religion,” I whisper. “Nobody I’ve ever prayed to, nothing above myself. This is the first time I’ve ever felt its lacking. What god can I thank for giving me a lover like you?”

  “You can thank yourself.” He kisses the little ridge where my nose isn’t. “You saved me in every way a person can be saved.”

  I don’t care that my sisters are here, or Adaire, or all our victims. I wrap my fingers around the back of my warlock’s head and kiss him long and deep.

  “How viscous,” Saoirse observes.

  ???????????

  The Butcher is in captivity. Salome is treating with Ganea over the terms of surrender. Our part of the bargain is finished. Adaire is now working as our agent. The next step is to stage an escape, so that she can continue her act with Tilliam and turn his presence here to our benefit.

  Caspar and Jordan decide, for the sake of verisimilitude, to get rip-roaring drunk in their cheap hotel room. They leave Salome’s warlock and the archbishop in the van.

  “Fuckin’ shit, do I love being a warlock.” Jordan flicks a bottle cap off with her thumb. “Look at that. I couldn’t used to do that. I’m strong as fuck.”

  “Let me. Let me try that.” Caspar reaches for a bottle. Jordan passes it over. “Ow. God dammit.” He chuckles and tries again. “How the hell. Oh, Peat, that’s probably plastic, kiddo.”

  Peat Moss is chewing on the ratty bouquet their motel room is furnished with. “Oh,” he says. “That makes sense. Tastes terrible.” He hops off the desk. “Can I have a beer?”

  Caspar shakes his head. “When you’re older.”

  “What about some of that brown stuff?”

  “That’s whiskey. That’s worse.” Caspar winces as he shifts it. He’s only been able to heal partway, thanks to how weak I’ve gotten.

  “Let me, brother.” Jordan sticks the handle of whiskey onto the nightstand. “Look at him, Peaty. He gets the shit beaten out of him and he comes to with a big ol’ grin cause he’s been out in Heaven railing an eldritch horror in a sundress.” She giggles. “Always waking up all smiley. I tell you what. You know what?” She flops onto her twin bed. “I’d fuck Bina.”

  “Jordy—”

  “You can have babies with Bina?” Peat Moss asks.

  “I can have something with her, I bet.”

  “Jordan. Jordy.”

  “I thought fucking was to have babies,” Peat Moss says.

  “I love that bitch. She’s so fun. And nice. She’s always getting flustered and going ooooh cause she doesn’t get humans. It’s so fucking cute.” Jordan gasps and sits up. “Bro. And she’s hot now. Have you noticed? She’s hot, man. She got an ass and titties. I don’t even care about the wolf thing. She’s like a sexy werewolf now.”

  “Jordy.” Caspar’s shoulders are shaking with barely suppressed mirth. “She can hear you, Jordy. Remember?”

  “Oh, shit.” Jordan falls back and slaps her forehead. “Shit. I forgot. Oh, fuck.”

  Caspar clears his throat. “It’s out there now, though. Maybe that’s good.”

  “Maybe.” Jordan props herself up. “Out there now,” she murmurs. A wide smile spreads across her face. “Fuck it, man. Fuck it!”

  She bursts into laughter. Caspar joins in.

  “Hey Biiiinaaaa.” She looks into the full-length mirror on their closet door and bites her lip as she gyrates her gymnast hips. Her top rides up slightly; the edge of my sister’s brand is visible on the lower curve of her stomach. “Hiiii. I know you’re listening. You got cute, you know that? You think I wouldn’t notice?” A lascivious thrust flexes her abs beneath her cinnamon skin. “I noticed. I bet you wanted me to notice.” Her voice gets low and raspy. “What do those tentacles do, girl?”

  Caspar wishes he had a video camera for this so he could know in the morning whether he’s drunkenly hallucinating.

  “Bean. Beany Bean Bean. I love that nickname.” Jordan’s sexy expression breaks back into a giggle. “I like you. I wanna kiss you. I wanna do you. I wanna get fucking weird with it.”

  “Oh my lord. Not in front of Peaty.” Caspar shepherds the fawn over to the hotel room door. “Come on, kiddo.”

  “I already know about all this stuff!” Peat Moss headbutts Caspar’s extended hand in protest. “I wanna stay up!”

  “Go play outside for a while, okay? Go get you some real flowers. Just stay away from the van so they don’t think you’ve seen them.”

  “UGH. Okay.” Peat trots over to the door and Caspar opens it for him. “But for the record, I’m already like an entire month old in deer years.”

  I come dashing up to Bina’s viewing pool, carrying my heels in one hand, the better to hustle.

  My sister is staring wide-eyed into the water, a blanket across her lap and a cup of cocoa in her claw. “She’s drunk.” She looks at me as I sit next to her, out of breath. “She’s drunk, right? She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

  I watch Jordan simulating cowgirl on a cushion, her full, dark-chocolate lips stretched into a boozy laugh. “She is quite drunk. But sometimes that just makes them more truthful. If you want my expert opinion, give me a glimpse into her brain and I’ll give it.”

  “Umm.” Bina chews her lupine lip. “Okay.”

  I do a temperature check on Jordan.

  Oh, goodness.

  “That’s very real,” I say.

  Bina draws her blanket up past her snout.

  “Cartwright. I don’t mean to alarm you.” Jordan wobbles upright. “But someone got your partner a little bit.” She burps lightly. “Inebriated.”

  “Golly.” Caspar opens another beer. “Do we put out an APB?”

  “Yessir.” Jordan snaps her fingers at him. “Another Please, Brother.”

  Caspar tosses her a beer and realizes mid-air that he shouldn’t be tossing drunk people beers. He sighs with relief when the inspector’s well-honed reflexes catch the bottle, regardless.

  “Thanks, neighbor.” She does the bottle cap thumb trick again. Caspar tries not to be jealous. “Hey. What’s it feel like to have a tentacle inside you?”

  “Darius. For Pete’s sake.”

  “Peat’s not here anymore and I wanna know.”

  “I haven’t… I don’t really cotton to messing around with my, uh… barn door.”

  “What!? Caspar Cartwright, you got a girlfriend covered in fucking tentacles and you haven’t taken one up the barn fuckin’ door?”

  “She hasn’t asked. And it’s just not my flavor.”

  “You ever try it?”

  “I’ve never tried a lot of things that I know aren’t my flavor.”

  “Cas you’ve got eternity with this beautiful woman, man. This spectacular tentacular hottie. I guaran-fuckin-tee you’re gonna wanna try it some day. You’re gonna wanna do all kinds of shit with an eternity.”

  Caspar’s boozy brain latches onto an eternity with me. His eyes sting; his breath thickens. An eternity. With Miss Irene.

  “I bet she’d be fine with her barn door sometime,” Jordan is saying. He’s barely listening. “I bet that’s not off limits to you. Gotta be reciprocal. I mean, it ain’t like there’s anything coming outta there, right? Probably? That’s something I think about cause they’ve got asses, but if they have assholes they’ve put em there for a reason, you figure. And it’d be just so weird, an ass with no hole. I don’t know how I’d react to that. Does Irene—you ain’t gotta answer that one. That’s not a neighborly question.”

  “Jordan, can I tell you something?” He takes another drink.

  “Anything. Brother. Anything at all. Sorry I talked about your girlfriend’s asshole.”

  “That’s okay. I’d—wait. You’re gonna laugh.”

  “I am not.”

  “I’d marry Irene,” he says. “In a second I would. We’ve barely started courting but Saoirse called her my wife and it… it felt right.” He pictures me with a ring. He pictures me with a wedding dress. Then he pictures me in frilly white lingerie. He hiccups. “I don’t know who the hell would even marry us. Ain’t no Father to witness it or confirm it. But I’d marry that woman in a fucking heartbeat.”

  She snorts.

  “You said you wouldn’t laugh!”

  “I’m not. I’m not! It’s actually adorable. Your embarrassing secret is that you want to marry your girlfriend.”

  “It ain’t embarrassing until you laugh at it.”

  “You are such a fuckin’ rural farmhouse-next-door hunk, man. Overalls on your titties, missionary on a tractor, childhood sweetheart type dude. I think they sell calendars of you. You’re not the joke. The fact that you’re ga-ga over an ancient void monster and not some sweet preacher’s daughter is the joke.”

  Caspar scoffs. Then he thinks more about it and laughs loud. He takes a swig. “I ever tell you I was engaged once before? Lady named Vesta, back in Rogarth.”

  “No shit? What happened?”

  “She tripped and fell onto the neighbor. Had the courtesy of letting me know on our wedding day.”

  “What a bitch.”

  “No. I mean yeah, but no. I wasn’t there for her. Shipped out to the crusade, and then I came home, but I didn’t really come home, you know?” He smacks his lips pensively. “Still half of me over there. Wasn’t the man she fell in love with any more. Not at all. It was for the best. We’da been miserable together. And it brought me here.”

  “Hey!” She pours a shot of shamefully expensive whiskey and slides it to him. “Hey. A toast to your little wifey. The new one. The right one.”

  Caspar picks the glass up. “Aw hush.”

  “I’m serious. She doesn’t save you, you don’t kill me. And you killing me was the best thing that ever happened to me.” She raises her shot glass. “This one’s to Irene.”

  He clinks his rim against hers. “To Irene.”

  They knock them back. Jordan rolls over on the bed and reaches for the handle once more. “Now we’re doing one for Bina and her sexy she-wolf wagon.”

  Caspar sets his shot glass aside. “I think I am finished with the drinking.”

  “Sznrszzkt,” Jordan replies.

  Caspar blinks. Through some combination of system strain and inebriation, Jordan Darius has fallen asleep mid-conversation.

  She slumbers peacefully (for a given definition—Caspar has become acclimated to her chainsaw snoring). He chuckles and rolls her all the way onto her side, just in case.

  He has to go find Peat Moss and pretend to search for Adaire and Tilliam. “G’nght, Jordy.” He straightens his back and battles his buzz. “And good luck.”

  He trudges off into the night.

  Jordan sits up in front of us. She smacks her lips and the lack of alcohol on her breath surprises her.

  The memory of what she just said hits her like a bullet train. Her head slowly swivels to where we sit on the edge of the water and stare at her.

  “Um,” Bina says. “Hello.”

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