Asher smiles when we get back from the mission today. It's the third or so we've been out on together since the incident, which is a word I've been trying to refrain from using: man, does it ever color everything. The first dinner as a family (plus us, guests) since the incident. The first time we've spoken to the undines since the incident. Everyone in town has to know, because you better believe they ask, about the incident. People have said incident more times in the last few days here than we say "disciplinary action" back at home.

Asher, who has practically become the incident, hauls himself up the stairs with my help. "And you didn't tell me that you used aura manipulation. That's so... unamerican of you."

My eyes widen. "Me? Unamerican? I'm more American than a bald eagle eating apple pie. What you're looking for is innovative. Cool. Sexy." I run my fingers through my hair, which is well-shampooed and smoother than I am.

"Aura manipulation is 'sexy' now." Asher blushes the brightest red I've ever seen it, like a cherry tomato. I guess the British are prude. At least I got Asher Northcott to say the word sexy out loud. Really gels well with his accent.

"Darn tootin'," I holler. The whole house trembles with the weight of my American accent.

Asher cracks up. "You have never said darn tootin' before in your life."

"Maybe it's time for me to start."

"I will pay you not to." He opens the door to his room. His physical therapy instructions are on the desk. The exercises are boring, basic trash, but I'll abide by whatever keeps my man safe. My main man. My homie. My bro. That feels awesome to say. I should bug him about it. "So, Washington, same time tomorrow?"

"Uh, unless you have something better to do."

"Yeah," Asher looks wistfully up at the top bunk. "Something better."

I haven't moved back in yet. We've considered it but I was thinking I should give him space. Waiting for an invitation from other people to do things is such a pain. This is one of the many, many reasons I like working solo. You get to do whatever you want. Want to consult with the boss? The boss is you.

Asher chokes up. "My parents found another dead cat today."
"Shit."

"Conway loved cats. She's just doing it to torture him."

"Jokes on her. He's not even around the house."

"He could be. He's a big tree, Gus, we'd never notice him unless he tripped off some magical alarm," Which they don't have, because as established, this family is practically incompetent. Even if they've had what, a few good ideas? "What if Greta burns him down? What if he dies out there and the last thing we ever said to each other was..."

I try to empathize. I run through every similar situation in my head that I can, imagining what it would be like if someone at the Academy screwed me over, but it just doesn't make sense. Why would you ever be so sentimental about someone who hurt you? Who cares about protecting one of the bad guys? "He'll be fine."

"Think so?"

"Know so, bud. Go do your exercises." I grab him around the shoulder.

We don't let go of each other. The pat extends into something way more awkward.

Asher leans on me a little, like he's drunk. I shift and Asher bolts up, announcing, cane in hand, "Whoops! Guess I fell."

"Yeah my arm slipped," I say. "For a good minute there. Bye, Asher?"

"See you at dinner," Asher says with a little smile. It's tentative and fleeting, but I catch it and stuff it deep in my mind. I turn with a hand flourish as he shuts the door and set off down the hallway. I'm still thinking about that smile. Silly. I don't think I've ever had someone at the Academy smile at me like that. The bracelets on my arm itch. It's been a while since I've seen them. Not like I haven't been texting, but I haven't talked enough or all that often. I open my phone with an idle thumb click and go down my list of contacts. I close it with another click, just as the rapping begins.

To clarify: not the fun musical kind. Something or someone is slamming against the walls, as if trying to get in, and scorch marks in the shape of hands appear down the walls. No, wait. One wall. The wall facing the exterior.

I fly down the stairs, landing on the next floor with a thump and kicking my wheelies up. I scoot out the door and see Sheryl firing wild at a bright red blur of energy, which zips from place to place, hovering close to the wall. Her gaze doesn't move from her target, but there's no way to shoot something that fast moving that quickly. The only thing taking heat here is the wall. The bullets shatter almost like snowballs when they hit said wall, thanks to magical wards on the house.

"Gus. Floor?" Sheryl asks.
I pull out my earbuds. They sit dormant in my hand, lacking any and all combat capabilities, you know, like earbuds. "Uh, zero?"

"Adult Northcotts will be back home in thirty minutes. We are cornering the wisp before that time. Tracker?"

"Okay, I have that," I say. "Gate one?"

"In town. Get to two. Round trip in ten."

"Affirmative." You want me to get here and back in ten minutes? Sheryl could make nine without wheelies, but this means pulling some five minute miles with them on. The things I do for this job. I'd ask for a raise, but technically I don't even get paid until I'm eighteen. Longest ten months of my life.

I don't have time to negotiate, so I rocket down the streets, dashing around a curve and sliding into an unused shop. It's my least favorite of the first gate locations, but what really creeps me out about the place is that Asher and Conway have been in there before. I can see their writing on the walls, small dusty fingerprints afflicting the place... must've been closed for years.

I come out the first gate and swing towards the second, which has to be somewhere in the woods. I take my integral out of my ears and swing it into nunchuck form. It gives me a hazy intuition on the next gate, which is close enough outside town that I can hop in without a problem. The dull light of my phone on the second gate informs me that I'm eight minutes in, with about four minutes back. Sheryl's gonna kill me.

When I swing up, unsurprisingly, they're gone. I follow the carnage out towards the woods, which is full of pixies at dusk, although I can sense the unsavory creatures in the bushes waiting for the sun to go down so they can start carrying off civilians.

I brandish my integral. "Sheryl?"

The click of sparking flames sounds through the silence of the twilight wood. I sense something in my peripheral vision, as if the heat is stroking my chin and cheek.

"Is that you?" I ask.

The red wisp, unlike any common blue will-o-the-wisp I've ever seen, zips around to stand before me. By all accounts, it should be colder, but the fire it generates radiates immense heat. I take a deep breath, steadying myself. "What do you want? Maybe we can... help?" Boy howdy. I'm breaching protocol. I bite my lips, nervous.

Greta's form fills out, a mane of fiery hair erupting around her and an almost complete human face with one side rising into flames stares back at me, white-hot eyes leering. Her body looks even more human than before, as if she's learned to control it, or perhaps something more... sinister. I can almost see pale human flesh beneath the flames, although it's too vague to reveal any detail.

"Can you talk?"

A seething, crackling noise fills the air as her mouth opens, forming something almost akin to human speech but undercut by a sound like scraping flaming sticks against each other. Whistling, hissing wheezing whines under her voice as she says, "Would you listen?"

I nod violently. "Uh, um-- yeah! Totally. Sheesh. So, what do you want out of the Northcotts?"

"I want the body of the traitor fae. He is a disgrace to our kind."

"You mean the gatekeepers? Normally I'd agree with you on the whole gatekeepers-and-fae-don't-mix thing, but in case you haven't noticed, you're also a fae right now." I keep my hands on my integral. Something tells me that this is a bad idea.

Greta's flaming eyes narrow. "He did this to me."

"Look. I know." I begin. Greta advances, her form inches from setting the grass ablaze. "But I'm a neutral... party. Yeah. Neutral. Could you uh... leave the Northcotts alone? Maybe?" Yeesh, diplomacy is hard.

Greta dips her head, though the flames still hungrily lick the air. "I am remaining here until I repay the favor and banish his blighted, soulless body from this mortal world."

You know, hearing those words from someone else's mouth on the wrong side, they sound a lot harsher than when my gatekeeper buddies and I back on the Academy talked about going out and slaying monsters. "Maybe we could strike a compromise?"

Greta's mouth curves into a fiery sneer. "What compromise is there to be made with monsters?"

Before I can offer some sweet sentiment about how it's what's on the inside that counts, she summons a knife of pure fire. With a tossing motion from her equivalent of hands, she strikes a nearby tree, which erupts into brilliant flame.

Sheryl leaps out of bushes. "Found you."

Greta evades the rain of bullets, flickering between the form of a wisp and the form of a girl. She reaches out to me with a blazing hand, and I can feel my skin cry out in agony. Instinctively, a blue aura crackles forwards from my hands and overwhelms Greta, whose form wavers and disappears just as her blazing eyes widen with pain.

Sheryl stands behind me, her eyebrows rising in the closest Sheryl ever gets to shock. She stalks forwards and moves the gun from where Greta stood to where I now stand, shaking violently from the exertion. She trains the pistol on me.

I shield my head. "Is Greta... did I kill her? Again?"

"No." Sheryl's voice is like curdled milk: I can feel it writhing in my insides. "I wager that she is not quite dead, much in the way you haven't been quite truthful with me. I see you've been negotiating with the fae. I believe I might have even heard certain snatches of conversation. Now, Augustine Washington, I want you to answer this question truthfully. Who killed Greta Ersteche?"

My lip trembles with an intense want, for the first time in my life, to lie.

"No desire to talk? That's quite interesting." Sheryl pauses. "Tell me or I'm incarcerating the Northcotts for deliberately misleading federal agents and child murder." When this doesn't provoke a reaction, she adds, "All the Northcotts."

I bite my lip, but it's already coming out. Honesty is the best policy? Great. I've been lying too long. "Conway Northcott killed Greta Ersteche. Look. Asher wasn't involved in this. Okay? Conway beat him up. It wasn't a dryad attack like he's been saying it is. He's been too traumatized to talk about it. It's a big... deal to him. Brothers and all."

"Unfortunate," Sheryl mutters. "He was quite verbose about his cover up." She puts her hands behind her back and holds them there, so that they coil together like twin snakes. She stalks past me, then turns and paces back the other way. "This place has been bad for you. We'll have you sent home tomorrow."

"We're... not done," I laugh, shell-shocked.

"We are now. I'll bring more officers in if I need to. We'll scour the whole countryside if we need to and neutralize the will-o-the-wisp and the changeling." Her voice crunches on neutralize. I can feel my face snap. She frowns. "Return to your room and pack your things, Washington."

I give her the stiffest nod I've ever managed in my life.

We walk home together. It's cold out and I shelve my integrals early, leaving me chilly and defenseless. Sheryl escorts me through the gates, like she thinks I might bolt for it. For a moment we don't even know each other, and I'm tempted to yell, Hey, Sheryl, it's me! You know anyone else with looks these good? There has to be something she'd get a kick out of.

"Sheryl. Sorry for slacking off, but it was integral to the mission." I give her a winning smirk as I bound up the stairs to the house. "Integral."

Sheryl closes the door to the house behind me.

The Northcotts are having dinner without us. Sheryl puts her fingers on the laquered table and drums the wood several times.

"Ms. and Mr. Northcott? I'll need to see you after dinner. I appreciate your cooperation thus far, but you and I are going to need to have... how best to put this? A brief discussion."

Ms. Northcott nods. Her eyes are big and sad, like Asher's get when he's nervous. I pretend I'm not meeting Bain's gaze, but she touches her face right around the chin. I touch my own and feel my skin tingle. I must have burned a little. It's funny. I barely noticed, but now everything hurts.

I settle in my room and start packing. The air is dead, so I turn up my music loud as I can, until the roar of trap blasts through my eardrums. I can hear the air beating around me when I take them off. I've somehow wandered through shuffle back to the first songs I ever recorded to the phone. Madness by Muse blares through the speakers. It's been so long since I heard something with a coherent bassline, and I...

Ha.

I crack open the door of the guest room. Ms. and Mr. Northcott's hushed voices sound from far down the hall. I scoot around to a staircase near the back and take it up into one of the lesser-used passages of the house, back where Mr. and Ms. Northcott sleep. I proceed to creep up the stairs to Asher's room, and with a single hand, I push open the door.
Asher is crying on the bottom bunk. When I enter, he bolts up, hitting the bunk above them, and out pour a stream of slurred profanities. He wipes his eyes off and runs a sleeve across his face.

"What do you want, traitor?"

Softly, I begin, "Hey, little man."

Asher's hands are making ten different shadow puppets at the same time, they're moving so fast. "Cut the-- cut the niceties out! Sheryl's going to bloody kill him!"

I clench my fists. "Asher, I need you to do me a favor."

He mirrors the gesture. "I'm not doing anything for you, you, you, lying, terrible, American twat!"

"Good news! I'm getting out of your hair. First plane tomorrow." I fold my arms. "Guess the mission comes first."

Asher's face goes straight from incredible anger to incredible hurt. He whispers, "You're going?"

I try not to nod, even though the truth of the matter is stuck on my throat, like a chip you swallow too early with the corners still intact. "Stay inside, okay, Asher? Just... maybe they won't find Conway. Maybe he'll have the sense to get out when the pros roll in. These are large Gates, right? He probably has a hectare or so of open space within the boundaries to run around in... plus, if he's really a fae, he can probably travel between Gate systems, where humans can't even go, and--"

"I don't want him to go!" Asher pushes me as hard as he can, which is just enough to push me onto the ground of his room. He's shaking, panting hard, and about ready to fall over. I would run forwards and help him up, as I've been doing when he overexerts himself, but from where I am I can't even get myself to stand up. "You bloody bastard. Stop derailing! I- I can't believe, after everything, you still went and told Sheryl!"

"She was threatening to incarcerate your whole family!" I retaliate, picking myself up.

"We could have solved this together if you'd just lied to her and said it was some local fae. Instead you lead her straight to him. To us." Asher says. "I thought you were my friend, Gus."

"This is what being a friend means. I have to protect you even when you won't protect yourself, because otherwise, you get hurt." I gesture to his leg. "Conway... is a monster, Asher. You shouldn't risk yourself to protect him."

"He's my brother, and until you came along, he was the only person who was ever there for me!"

Asher's voice is shrill and his face is running with tears at this point, his hands moving to try to wipe all of the damage off as it continues to pour down, rendering the gesture completely ineffective. Even at the worst of our fights, there was still some element of composure to him, but all of that is gone now. He is drowning in snot and tears, and he looks awful. My heart pulses hard with that terrible best-friend feeling, turned on me like Greta's flaming knives. Asher continues, "You wouldn't understand, because you don't care about anyone. It's just your mission. You live like a robot, doing whatever she tells you to do, enforcing all these rules and shooting living creatures without ever thinking about what you're doing. Worse, just when I think I can get you out of my head, you make all these jokes and do all these nice, incredible things, but you're just empty, Gus Washington, and I hate you so, so much!"

My brain churns for an answer. A joke is at the tip of my tongue, but I just shake my head, opening his door. "I'm sorry, Asher. It was nice being your friend."

Sheryl is waiting on the other side. The fae-iron glint of her nails shines a sick purple in the light, like an asphyxiated face. "I believe that will be enough, Gus."

"You can't try anything, Asher. He's going to kill you," I beg Asher as Sheryl drags me away from the exit. "Seriously, man. I'm not kidding."

Asher's defiant, cold blue eye peeks through a crack in the door, and then he slams it in my face. Sheryl follows me down the stairs, shaking her head all the way. She's never busted out the head shake--not since three years ago when the Academy kids snuck beer into the common rooms.

"Come on, Sheryl. Please at least make sure he doesn't do anything stupid." The ensuing laugh sounds almost manic. I cover my mouth.

"Everything is taken care of, Agent Washington." Sheryl pats my back as she escorts me into the windowless guest room, in all its moderately dusty glory, and as she leaves she locks the door.

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Written by ChronaLilly