Sam stares at the burnt wreck of the car with a strange expression shifting over his face. His dark red eyes narrow as he surveys the blackened ground, and his gold-feathered wings shift uneasily on his back.

"There are traces of magic here," he says, his short, sharp fangs showing as he bites his bottom lip. "The car didn't just burn. Someone used it as the focal point for a ritual. Whatever happened here, it wasn't anything good."

"A ritual? For what?" I ask. I'm still studying the charred frame of the car, working up the courage to look inside and see if it contains a corpse.

"I don't know," he says quietly. "All I can tell is...it was something dark. I can see the...shadow of a symbol of some kind. Any idea what this means?

He kneels and traces something in the dirt. It looks like an oblong oval with a horizontal line through the center.

"No," I say. "It looks familiar, but...no idea. We can look it up when we get back to the Lodge. How about you, Carlos? Seen that before?"

He shakes his head. "Sorry man. Magic is, like, kind of above my pay grade, you know? Maybe I come from a family of Asesinos, but I'm just a guy who works in a bar and helps out in his aunt's auto shop sometimes. And gets possessed a lot," he adds with a shrug. "If you want to know more about rituals and symbols and shit, you'd be better off asking Toni."

"She, or your mom, didn't teach you about that stuff?" I ask, curious.

My own dad had tried to teach me everything he knew when I was a kid. It had been like attending regular school and being home-schooled at the same time, and I hadn't excelled at either.

Now that my dad was gone, I regretted not having tried harder to learn from him back then. Whatever knowledge I'd failed to absorb—whatever he'd failed to pass on—now it was lost to me forever, taken to the grave.

Carlos stares off at the horizon, hands on his hips. "No," he says. "I guess if you want to be technical, my family weren't Asesinos. They were Asesinas. Only the women got the knowledge. The men could help out—the way I did with Toni's exorcisms—but they were never let in on all the cool secrets and shit."

"Huh. That's like my family, but the opposite," I say. "Until recently, the male side had all the power. I think it's better now that things are more equal. Maybe Toni would teach you, too, if you asked."

He lifts a shoulder. "Maybe. The thing is, I don't know that I'm interested. I'd rather just be a normal guy."

"Speaking of normal guys," I say, turning to look at Sam, "you'd better lose those wings before the Walkers show up."

Sam nods and shuts his eyes, but when he opens them, he still looks like a golden angel with horns.

"Urgh," he groans, "I thought I had the hang of this. Fuck me... What if I'm stuck like this now?" He looks down at his talon-tipped hands with a frown.

"You usually turn back after you satisfy your desires, right?" I say. "So...what do you want?"

He laughs. "Right now? Nothing we can do at a possible murder scene, with Carlos watching and a dead body a few feet away."

"Nothing?" I ask, raising my brows at him. "There must be something you want that doesn't require an X-rating."

He gives me a lop-sided, sharp-toothed grin, but it slowly fades into a softer smile. "Fine," he says, "just...hold me, okay? And...say that you love me again."

Despite the grim setting, I laugh. "For a demon, you sure are a softie," I say, shaking my head as I slide my arms around his back and under his wings, pulling him close. "Are all...uh...what did you call them? Ai..."

"Ainasya," he supplies.

"Are all Ainasya as sweet as you?" I ask.

He shakes his head, and his smile fades a little more. "No. Samasa wasn't either. He wouldn't have given a fuck if Carlos watched. In fact, he'd have asked him to join in."

A choking cough tells me that Carlos isn't just watching, either.

"So, where's all the sugar come from, then?" I wonder.

"From Asato," he murmurs sadly, resting his head on my shoulder and looping his arms around my back. "I—he—was just an innocent kid, you know? Even with all the shit he went through, he never hardened up, never lost that simple sweetness. I guess I still have some of that, too."

"Sam..." I hug him a little tighter. I don't totally understand what happened to him—how he became something new out of two separate beings, how he both is and is not the people whose existences joined to become one—but I do understand that he wasn't loved the way he deserved to be as any of them. "Wherever it comes from, I love it, and I love you," I say. "I'm glad you picked me."

"What do you mean?" he asks, leaning back to look at me.

"Well, I know there wasn't a great variety to choose from," I say, "but there were other folks in that diner the day we met. You could have picked any one of them."

"No, I couldn't have," he replies. "You were the only one."

"Oh." I feel a warmth spreading up from my heart to my face. It feels oddly good to hear him say that.

"None of the others were good marks," he goes on, a smile teasing at the corners of his mouth. "I could tell you were the only one idiot enough to get involved."

"You little..." I shake my head, unable to contain my own grin, and kiss him lightly on the lips. "I love you, you sweet, sneaky little demon."

He presses himself into me once more, nestling against my chest. "You really want to keep me?" he asks.

"Of course," I say. "I'll keep you forever, if you'll let me."

He makes a sound like a little gasp and I feel him shiver. Then, before my eyes, he changes shape, morphing seamlessly back into my beautiful little black-eyed kitten of a lover, looking up at me in surprise.

"Those wings are gorgeous," I say, touching his face, "but I like you this way, too."

"Ian," he blinks, and I see the glitter of tears in his eyes, "there's something I've been meaning to tell you..."

As he speaks, I see Jack and Elliot crest a small rise a few hundred yards away and lumber towards us in their bear forms.

"Sorry, Sam," I say, nodding over his shoulder at them as they approach, "it'll have to wait a little longer. Looks like we've got company at last."

The two bears enter the area of blackened ground, and then with a crack of bone and popping joints that would make a chiropractor cringe, they transform into men.

"Oh God...no..." Jack gasps, clapping a hand over his mouth. "Mom..."

"What the fuck?" Elliot shouts, staring at the wreck in disbelief. "What the... How did we miss this? We've been over this ground a dozen times!"

"It was hidden," Sam says, "with magic." He speaks while looking at the ground, obviously doing his best to avoid looking at the two naked men.

Carlos is doing somewhat less of a good job, staring between Jack and Elliot with his mouth slightly open, like he's been unexpectedly presented with all his favorite foods and doesn't know quite where to begin.

"Magic? How did you find it then?" Elliot asks.

Sam shrugs. "I have an eye for that sort of thing."

A look of suspicion crosses Elliot's face, but before he can challenge Sam further, Jack breaks in.

"Never mind that now! Mom—is she?" he looks at me, and I realize I still haven't verified the most important thing.

Taking a deep breath, I turn back towards the car. "I haven't looked inside yet," I admit. "I'll do it now."

Reluctantly, I approach the driver's side of what's left of the old car and lean down to look in. All the windows are shattered, broken by the heat of the flames or perhaps by some other, less worldly force, and the interior is little more than a burned-out shell—blackened, charred, and filled with ash.

I peer inside, and I'm relieved to find that no grisly corpse sits within. There are, however, several charred bones, though whether or not they belonged to Inez is impossible to tell.

"There are remains," I confirm, stepping away and walking back to rejoin the others where they stand at the edge of the black circle. "Just a few bones. Nothing identifying."

"She—she has a ring," Jack says starting forward, but Elliot catches him and holds him back.

"Don't look, Jack," he says. "Let Ian do it."

"What's it look like?" I ask.

"It's silver, shaped like a bear's paw," Elliot says.

I search around and find a decently sized willow branch and return with it to the car. Poking through the ashes of a crime scene is likely something Dane Hunter would tell me not to do, but I don't have it in me to tell Jack to wait. I don't think he'd listen anyway.

Carefully, I push the end of the stick into the mess of ash and bone, and try not to breathe as little particles swirl upwards on the air. It's quickly apparent, even to my untrained eye, that there's not much here.

As I shift one of the larger fragments of bone, however, something catches my eye. It's not a ring, and unlike everything else in the car, it's shiny. Without thinking, I reach in, drawn by curiosity, and pick it up. It's a little black obsidian sphere, like a marble, but something tells me it's nothing so mundane.

"Did you find it?" Jack calls, anxiety putting a shiver in his rough voice.

"No. I think it's either not here, or it melted. Silver wouldn't usually melt in a normal fire, but something tells me this fire wasn't normal at all. Anyone have a clue what this is?"

I rejoin them and show them the marble. It lays in my palm like a bead of darkness, and something about it almost looks liquid, like black oil.

Everyone shakes their heads.

"Huh. I'll put it back then. Could be evidence of some kind. Meanwhile, you guys should radio Maria and make sure she's called the police. We shouldn't mess with the scene more until they arrive."

"If this is some kind of witchcraft, what can the police do?" Sam asks.

"It's okay. Rockbridge is big enough to have its own department—barely," Elliot says. "The chief's a bear. He'll understand the situation."

"Good," I nod.

"You guys outta get out of here, though, before they arrive," Jack says, looking between Carlos, Sam, and myself. "Chief Stone doesn't like outsiders. You all should head back, tell Maria and the girls what you found."

I agree, and Sam and Carlos both look relieved. There seems to be enough trouble to go around without adding being suspects in a possible homicide to the mix.

I return to the burned car once more, intending to replace the black sphere in the ashes where I found it, but as I reach in to set it among the bones, something holds me back. It's almost as if it doesn't want to leave my hand: as though now that I've touched it, it belongs to me somehow.

"Why do I keep picking up weird shit I can't get rid of?" I mutter to myself.

Well, Sam turned out okay. Maybe this thing will be useful, too.

Then again, maybe taking strange objects from the scene of a murder-slash-magic-ritual is a bad idea.

Proud of myself for making the smart choice for once, I toss the little sphere back among the ashes.

The five of us return to the airport. Although we'd walked for hours before finding the car, we aren't far from it, as our course took the form of a great spiral with the airport at its center.

Jack and Elliot retrieve their clothes, and Sam, Carlos, and I head for my truck.

I climb in while Carlos and Sam load their packs in the back, but as I settle behind the wheel I feel something hard under the seat of my pants. I check my seat, but there's nothing there. Then I reach into my back pocket and feel something smooth and round.

"Please don't be what I think you are," I whisper, but my plea goes unheeded. When I look at what I've got in my hand, it's the same little black marble I'm absolutely sure I left in the ashes of the burned car.

"Ah, crap," I mutter. I don't know what this means, but I wouldn't bet on it being something good.