Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

JODI

Jodi is coming home for Christmas. When she figures out how to feel about this, she'll let you know.

It's not that there's anything wrong with home. Home is great: a house heated with someone else's money, her mother's cooking, a few weeks of safety during which all her responsibilities are gone. All right, she's supposed to do some reading and produce an essay ahead of next term, but come on. She has a month, more or less. That can wait.

And yet, sitting here on the train, watching the snow come down in thick, silent flurries on the fields as they race by, she can't help but feel a little uneasy about it. Bluntly? Mahogany is a small town. Everyone there knows everyone else; given a pad of paper and a few hours, she could probably write out the name of pretty much everyone in town, and a healthy number of their addresses too. Everyone knows everyone else, which means that everyone has their noses in everyone else's business, which means …

Which means that, about fifteen minutes after Jodi has the talk with her parents, everyone in town is going to know too.

This is fine, she tells herself. It has to happen; she's not going to spend the whole winter break indoors, not even if the snow gets deep enough that people tell her that maybe she should. (Thanks, she'll say, bright and cheerful. Great advice! I'm going out now.) (She won't say this.) But even so, she's spent this past term keeping things so carefully secret that the idea of the information spreading out of her control is more than a little bit frightening.

She feels a hum in her bones, some ultrasonic frequency plucking at her nerves, and turns to see Lothian looking at her with his head on one side.

"I'm okay," says Jodi, reaching out to bury her hand in the thick fur of his mane. "Don't worry, Lothi. This is all gonna work out fine."

He pushes his head against her arm and the rumble in her bones changes timbre, growing rich with near-inaudible sentiment. Between his finesse and her expertise, the message is just about translatable: questioning, concerned, anxious. Lothian can tell she's worried, and is worried in his turn.

"You got me there," she says, scratching his neck. "But it'll be fine. You'll see."

She leans back, and he climbs up onto the seat next to hers, all limbs and vanes. He just about fits – highland noivern run to maybe the size of a big dog, smaller and greyer than the huge Kalois bluewings – and she has to smile at the sight of him, crouched on the cushion like a gargoyle that got lost on the way to its cathedral.

"Dork," she says. "Cannot believe you're meant to be a dragon."

His humming shifts again inside her, now a low growl in her belly, and she laughs.

"Okay, Lothian," she says. "Okay."

Jodi returns her attention to the window, one hand still resting on Lothian's furry shoulder, and sees flashes of countryside that seem familiar. Something about the shape of that field, the branches of that dead tree. She blinks, and a moment later sees the old ruined temple sticking out from among the wind-tossed branches of a coppice. Site of countless field trips since the foundation of Mahogany Elementary. Jodi remembers going there herself, back when she was in Ms Pemberley's class. How old? Eight, maybe nine. Before her journey, for sure.

"Nearly there," she says aloud, seeing the forest thickening, slowly pushing the fields further and further away from the railway line. She's still thinking of the field trip, of the clipboards and pencils that everyone got: mark off the distinguishing features, class, and do a drawing in the space at the bottom. She'd never held a clipboard before, she remembers. It felt special. She said as much to Tacoma, forgetting who it was she was speaking to, and Tacoma laughed and called her a nerd. And Jodi laughed too and said yeah, probably.

It's still a fair assessment, even now. Jodi has an alphabetised tape collection and an academic interest in the intersection of acoustics and psionics. Sounds pretty nerdy to her.

The first of the buildings are just starting to become visible now through the branches. Only a few minutes to go, she thinks, and starts to wind her scarf around her neck.

"Okay, Lothi," she says, reaching for her cane. "Go get my rucksack, would you?"

The doors slide open: cold blast of winter air, platform crunchy with salt and meltwater. Little brick building that does the job of a ticket office, underneath the shadow of the pines. And Harry Jeffries, same as ever, hurrying up to help her with her bags.

"Alex Ortega, as I live and breathe." He smiles genially and lifts her case down from the carriage to the platform. Jodi smiles back, unforced. Harry is as much a part of the station as the platform; he's been here, taking tickets and blowing whistles, for longer than Jodi has even been alive. She likes him; every trip between home and uni, he's there, refusing to let the train depart till he's helped her and Lothian get their stuff on or off. He likes her, too. Hopefully he'll still like her, after the news gets out. "And Lothian too," he adds, as the noivern butts his head against his hand. "How are you both? Goldenrod treating you well?"

"Yeah, fine. Good to see you too, Harry." Jodi glances across the platform, to the quiet bend of street beyond the office. She sees her dad's toffee-coloured car parked there, knows he must have seen her by now. "So what interesting stuff's been going on in Mahogany while I was away?"

"One moment." Harry beckons her across the line painted on the platform, then blows his whistle sharply. A moment later, the train rushes out of the platform and disappears among the trees.

"As I was saying," he continues, "I couldn't possibly comment." He's moving now, wheeling her case across the platform while she follows, Lothian crawling hunched and batlike at her heels. "But, oh, Janine and Steven have broken up, I believe, about four weeks ago, and Keisha Simmons – you remember? Her chikorita destroyed Sarah Lutyen's curtains? – she's back from her trainer journey now. She says just for the winter, but we'll see."

"Right," says Jodi, letting the sea of familiar names and old stories wash over her in a warm, dense wave. There's something to be said for Mahogany, there really is. Everyone at university is surprised to hear her defend it, but there's a comfort in all this shared history, all this wonderfully boring gossip. "That's sad about Janine and Steven."

"It is," agrees Harry. "How's the weather compare to Goldenrod?"

He's grinning, and she grins back. Some rituals never die.

"You know what they're like in the city, Harry. Don't know the meaning of the word cold."

He chuckles his acknowledgement and brings her case to a halt.

"Well, here you are, my lad," he says. "León?" (Getting the emphasis all wrong.) "Got something here I think you're waiting for."

The car door cracks open and disgorges a tall, broad-shouldered man in a thick winter coat and hat. Jodi's face twitches into a smile without her noticing, and Harry steps back to let the two embrace.

"Hey, kiddo," says her father. They hold the position for a while, dissolving the ache of her extended absence in the warmth of human contact. "You took your time."

"Love you too, Dad." Lothian springs up onto the car bonnet, neck curving around her father's arm, insinuating itself into the folds of his coat. His ears swivel and his nose vibrates, and Jodi feels one of his deeper hums echoing through her ribs: a purr, or something very like it. "I think Lothian does too," she says, and her father laughs, scratches ineffectually at the noivern's head with gloved hands.

"All right," he says, lifting her suitcase into the boot. "Get him down there, let's get you both home. Been too long since I saw you."

"Sure." She swings her rucksack off her shoulder and directs a smile at Harry. "Thanks, Harry! See you around."

"You know where to find me," he says, and turns to walk back to the office while she and her father go through the rigmarole of getting her, Lothian and their assorted pieces of luggage into the car. Once Lothian has been lured into the back seat – he has never really liked cars – Jodi gets into the front, and her dad begins to drive.

A moment of silence, as he pulls out from the kerb. Jodi's starting to feel nervous now, although she knows she shouldn't. She is almost entirely certain that the conversation, when it comes, is going to go okay. It's hard to tell whether or not her parents even know that people like her are something that exists – you can't be certain about these things, especially not in isolated Mahogany; she didn't know it herself till she moved to Goldenrod – but she is moderately confident that their love for her is not so easy to shake.

It's 1976, after all. Modern times, even if modern times sometimes seem to have given up on converting Johto. And her parents are connected, clued-in people, right? Her father still gets the international papers, decades after settling down here in the back end of nowhere. He and her mother read about the Soviets and the Americans, the OPEC embargo and the looming threat of nuclear armageddon. They're open to new ideas. New daughters, even.

Or at least, she really hopes they are.

"The train all right?" asks her dad.

"Yeah," Jodi replies, fiddling with the handle of her cane. "Fine." A pause. Past the petrol station, and the tiny cluster of houses around it. Come on, Jodi, she thinks. Put some effort in. Show him that everything's fine. "How's Ella? Is she off yet?"

"One more week of school, then it's out." Her dad hesitates. "How's uni?"

"Fine, Dad. I'm doing good." She shrugs. "Be nice to switch my brain off for a month, honestly. Practicals this term have been kinda intense."

A left onto Park Street. Mahogany is starting to gather around them now, little houses beginning to push back the forest on all sides. It opens out a little from here, although not much. Wherever you go in this town, you can't get away from the towering darkness of the woods.

"What kind of thing have you been doing?" he asks.

Jodi pauses for a moment, trying to think how best to explain it. Acoustic empathy is a niche field, even in the context of the already esoteric field she studies.

"Sympathetic vibrations," she says. "My mind plus Lothian's vibes equals enhanced empathy. So we've got to do interviews with people who are trying to hide things and figure out what they're lying about and why, but we're only allowed to ask like five questions. That kind of thing."

"Like―"

"Nope."

"I didn't even say it," he protests, although his eyes are twinkling and his mouth turning up at the corners.

"You don't have to," she says. "I hope you know I'm not planning on training to be a psy officer after I graduate. You're gonna have to shelve that goal of pointing at Real Psychic Detectives on TV and going 'that's my son'."

Her voice almost catches on that last word, but she wrestles it back under control just in time. Lothian's humming flares up again, tingling at the base of her neck: a message of comfort. It's okay, he's saying. You're doing okay.

She concentrates for a moment, making her mind twist at a strange angle to her thoughts, and feels her response tremble through the aether towards Lothian's head:

Thanks.

"A man can dream, can't he?" Her father shakes his head. "Anyway, let's get you home. Your mother's been frantic."

Jodi frowns. That does not sound like her in the slightest. Busy, she can buy; her mother works four days a week, and spends the other three making sure Ella and her father don't starve or sink into a pit of their own decaying laundry. There's a reason why it's always her dad who picks her up, after all. But frantic?

"Why's that?"

"Huh?" Her dad glances at her as if he hasn't heard what she just asked. It is not particularly convincing. Even Lothian shifts suspiciously on the back seat, though a warning thought from Jodi makes him settle down again.

"Why's Mum frantic?"

"Oh, right." Her dad says it lightly, implausibly. "Just feels like a long time since we last saw you, is all. Even Ella's been asking when you're getting back."

Jodie snorts.

"Pfft. I'll believe that when I see it," she says. She's about to ask what's really eating her mother, but something – call it intuition, call it four terms of Applied Psionics – makes her hold back. "How's … how's everything else?" she asks. "Harry told me all the gossip I've missed out on."

Her calculation is perfect. He looks at her, far too fast. As fast as a man with a secret to keep.

"Yeah?" he says. "Like what?"

"Uh, Dad – turning."

"What? Oh. Damn it." He turns the car around and takes the right he missed, onto Long Street. They're deep in Mahogany now, the forest just a dark backdrop to the rows of houses, walls bleached by the weak winter sunlight. "Like what?" he asks again.

"Like Stephen and Janine breaking up, Keisha Simmons coming back from her trainer journey. You know, the usual stuff."

He hides it well, but come on. His daughter (a shiver at the word) is psychic. Not the cool kind of psychic, she can't levitate poké balls like Marcia of the Elite Four, but she is psychic. Even before she started studying to be an empath, she could always tell when her parents were being economical with the truth. And honestly, she's vaguely insulted that he's even trying, but okay, she's keeping secrets too, so she hardly feels like she can judge.

Lothian's nostrils clamp shut with an audible plap: he's not buying this either.

We'll get it, she thinks at him. Be patient.

Lothian responds with a symphony of internal hums and groans that express, in no uncertain terms, that he is patient, thank you very much, and is quite possibly actually the most patient noivern in the world, as Jodi would surely know if she'd bothered to check her facts before speaking.

It's pretty eloquent, for a vibration – but then, they've been doing this for years, and Jodi is psychic, after all. She suppresses a laugh and returns her attention to her father, who is currently looking slightly too relieved.

"Oh, right," he says. "Yeah, it's sad about Stephen and Janine. They were good together."

"I mean, something must have been wrong. Otherwise they wouldn't have broken up."

"I guess so," he agrees. "Didn't think of it that way. Guess that's why you're the empath and I sell wood."

Left at the junction with Foster Road. The house on the corner is still shrouded in scaffolding, but the workers are gone; the skip in its yard is full of snow. Elsie Lockwood is hurrying along over the icy pavement in front of it, head down, her ponyta clearing a path for her with superheated hooves. Jodi watches her dad's eyes rest on her for a long moment, before she falls behind them as they drive on.

"How is work, anyway?" she asks, feeling vaguely ashamed for not having asked earlier, and her dad shrugs.

"All right," he replies. "Not as good as it used to be."

Nothing is, these days. The sense of the recession hangs between them for a few minutes, heavy and stifling, and then they pull into the driveway and it's time for everything to be unpacked again, with all the ceremony and interrogation that requires. Did she remember Lothian's pills? Yes, obviously, Dad, that was one time six years ago. This is heavy. Full of Christmas presents? Lead weights for all of you, you deserve nothing less.

It's so easy to slip back into this, into the old routines of family. Of father and son. Jodi tries to resist, to remind herself of who and what she is, but for a moment there she forgets. Her dad says come on Alex, let's get in now, and she says okay sure without remembering her name is Jodi.

And then the moment passes and she goes inside, her gut tangled with guilt and a creeping terror that maybe she isn't what she thinks she is after all.

But she has to swallow it, so fast and hard she nearly chokes, because almost before she's even through the door her mother sweeps her into a crushing hug.

"Oh," she says, surprised, nervous. "Uh, hey, Mum. Nice to see you too."

"More than you know, chickadee." Jodi's face is full of her hair, rich with the smell of cooking, of rose-scented shampoo, of home. She blinks back a tear and tightens her grip. "How long do we have you for?"

"A month, give or take. You know that. Lothian!"

Jodi pulls away a little, but she's too slow; he's already galloped off into the kitchen, claws skittering on the linoleum.

"Lothian!" she calls again. Then, telepathically: Lothian!

"Oh, let him go," says her mother. "It's in the oven. He can't get to it."

She hears claws scratching on glass, and then the low rumble of noivern disappointment echoes through her gut. All right then. Dinner is safe. For now.

"Anyway," says her mother. "It's good to have you back, Alex. How's uni?"

"Good. Demanding. Fulfilling. All that stuff. How's work?"

"Work's work, darling." Her mother glances at her father, who has paused halfway through putting his hat back on the peg. "León?" (Getting the emphasis just right.) "Did you …?"

"I didn't say a word," he replies, exasperated. "I asked Harry not to, either."

Okay. This has gone far enough. Jodi leans back a little, looks from one to the other. Two careworn faces. A lot of obvious lies.

"Look," she says. "I wasn't gonna say, but … I am psychic, if you remember?"

Her father gives her mother an I told you so sort of look. She sighs and takes Jodi's hand.

"I just … wanted to tell you here, at home," she says, and at the back of Jodi's head something that is not Lothian starts to screech.

"What?" she asks, heart slamming into her ribs like an axe into wood. "What is it?" And unasked, in her head: who is it?

"Aaron Lockwood pulled a body out of the river this morning." Her mother falters. Some distant part of Jodi that remembers her training tells her to flex her mind, to call Lothian over to generate soothing vibrations from the pattern of her psionics, but she does not. She does not do anything at all, just stares, until her mother gathers herself and continues: "It's, um … it's Tacoma Spearing."

There is a roaring in Jodi's ears, but when she listens closely she can't hear anything at all.

How long has it been? Five years, probably. Five years since Jodi and Tacoma last exchanged so much as a hello. Best friends almost since birth, since their mothers were part of the same post-natal group, and then – silence.

When Jodi came home from her trainer journey, back when she was twelve, Tacoma came too. She insisted. You'll be back out there before you know it, she said, so I'll come with you, and then we can get going again. But Jodi didn't get back out there. And, after a couple of weeks, she managed to persuade Tacoma to leave without her, because there was no need for her to throw her journey in just because Jodi was quitting hers, and so Tacoma left to go on adventures all over again.

Jodi got letters from her. She did get that, at least. Hi Alex! Made it over the border into Kanto. So weird to see all these signs using the new alphabet. Hi Alex! Saffron's freaking huge, did you know? I spent an hour just trying to find the Pokémon Centre.

The letters got less frequent as time went on – simpler, too, and shorter. Jodi let it happen. She could sense that there were other people taking up Tacoma's attention; it would be better, she figured, not to waste her friend's time. Eventually there were no more letters at all, and that was that. By the time Tacoma got back, a year later, neither of them had anything left to say to one another.

So they let it drop. Tacoma went her way, Jodi went hers. And it was okay, really; Jodi had been diagnosed as psychic by then, and Tacoma had started her tuition, been identified as someone who should probably be applying for scholarships. Both of them had so much work to do. There wasn't time for regrets.

Except that now Tacoma's dead. Pulled out of the river with bruises round her throat by the town's resident misanthrope. She's dead, and now there is all the time in the world to regret everything.

Jodi sits there on the couch, hands cupped around a mug of untouched coffee. Lothian is perched on the back of the seat, his head on her shoulder and his best peaceful vibrations purring through her gut, but she barely notices. Tacoma is dead. Murdered, even.

Her mother explains, in a low, uneven voice. No, nobody knows anything yet. The police are still looking into it. Tacoma came back from university yesterday, never made it to her house. They only found the body this morning. Still haven't located her luggage.

Jodi listens with difficulty, trying to make herself believe it. Tacoma is younger than her, by six days. How can someone younger than her be dead? How is that possible? And Tacoma, of all people? Tacoma Spearing?

"Are you okay?" her mother asks, looking at her. "Alex, are you okay?"

Jodi stares. Her mind seems to be entirely disconnected from her face.

"I'm not Alex," she hears herself saying. A voice in her head asks her what the hell she's doing, this isn't the time, shut up, but somehow she keeps saying it anyway. "My name is Jodi. I'm a girl."

None of this has gone like it was supposed to. No one was supposed to be dead, for a start. Everyone was meant to be relaxed, happy to see her, open to new ideas. Perfect circumstances for a dramatic personal revelation.

But no. Because Tacoma Spearing is dead and Jodi was so shocked she didn't have the self-control to swallow her thoughts.

Some moments have passed. Jodi has clarified what she meant by that last statement. Her parents have still not responded. She sits there, Lothian's wing-claws resting on her shoulders and his ultrasonics thrumming through her nervous system, and watches their faces slowly deforming with their surprise.

"Jesus Christ," says her father, at last. "I … Jesus Christ."

Jodi does not need to hear the tone of his voice to know how he feels. Even if she was in the right frame of mind to control her ESP, the raw emotion swirling around the room is too powerful to be resisted; she feels her parents' shock as if it were her own, brutal, paralysing.

She detects no hostility. She didn't think she would, but even so. It's still a relief.

"How long?" he asks suddenly, and Jodi sighs. Okay. Less explaining to do than she feared.

"Almost a year," she says. "I'm sorry."

"You didn't say," says her mother.

Jodi nods. No. She didn't.

"Christ." Her mother still hasn't tried to tell him off for his language; she really is floored. "Alex, I― sorry. Jodi, was it?"

Something unclenches in her chest. Lothian senses it, grips her shoulders a little tighter in his claws.

"Yeah," she says. "Jodi."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

She shrugs.

"Fear. I guess."

"But you know that we …"

"Yeah," she says. "I know. I was afraid anyway."

Another pause, and then quite suddenly the two of them are there, both reaching out to hug her, unable to decide who should go first. Lothian shoves her forward into their arms, his voice buzzing at the base of her spine, and in the end her mother gets there first and somehow, strangely, it's all turning out okay.

Tacoma Spearing is dead. Nothing is going to change that. But at least she can mourn her with her real face now.

It doesn't feel like that should be much comfort, but somehow it is.

By the time her sister gets home from school, Jodi has changed and put on make-up. She stands there in the hallway as Ella kicks her shoes off in the porch, and then braces for the impact of her eyes as she comes out into the hall.

"Hey, you're home," she says, and then her brain catches up with her vision and she stops, dead.

Neither of them say anything for a while. Jodi feels like it's probably on her to make the first move here.

"Yeah," she says. "I am."

Seconds pass. Ella keeps on staring.

"You're wearing eyeshadow," she says.

"Yes," agrees Jodi.

"And a dress."

"Also yes."

"So …"

Ella turns her palm upwards in an I'm not getting it kind of way, and Jodi sighs.

"It turns out I'm a girl," she says.

Ella frowns.

"Is that a thing? You can just do that?"

"Yeah," says Jodi. "You can."

"Huh." Ella scratches her head, confused. "That's … okay, sorry, I need a minute."

"Sure," says Jodi. "Sure, take your time."

For a long moment, Ella just stands there, still staring as if she might be able to make sense of this if she only looks hard enough, and then she sighs and drops her bag.

"Guess I shoulda known," she says, coming over just a fraction too fast to be nonchalant. "C'mere, you big dork."

She's trying to hide her concern, but Jodi can feel it anyway, in the tightness of her embrace and the emotion radiating from her mind.

"What d'you mean, you shoulda known?" she asks, hugging back.

"You're such a girl," Ella tells her, and Jodi laughs.

"I guess I'll take that as a compliment," she says. "My name's Jodi, by the way."

"Jodi," repeats Ella. "Cool." She hesitates, like she isn't sure that's an appropriate response; Jodi tightens her grip a little, to let her know it's okay. "How are … how are Mum and Dad?"

"Fine. Surprised, but fine."

They step away from one another, Jodi transferring her weight from her sister to her cane. Ella looks good, she thinks, but then, she always does. Jodi has their mother's pallor, but Ella has the same golden skin as their father, the thick dark hair and mobile lips. She's six years younger than Jodi, but those who see them together tend to assume they're much closer in age than that.

She also looks worried. Jodi doesn't need to be an empath to guess what the next words out of her mouth will be.

"You heard about Tacoma?" she asks, and Jodi twists the corner of her mouth into something that isn't quite a smile.

"Yeah," she says. "I … yeah, I have."

The silence falls between them again. Out of the corner of her eye, Jodi sees Lothian crouched in the doorway to the living-room, head snaking around the door to watch.

"You okay?" asks Ella, tentatively. "Like really?"

Jodi sighs.

"I dunno, Ella," she says. "I really wasn't planning on … any of this." She still can't believe she just came out with it like that, at the worst possible time. They hadn't even finished talking about Tacoma yet. Still haven't, even. Her news swept theirs aside, left no space for dead friends or young lives cut tragically short. They sat there in the silence that it left, and then Jodi asked if her dad would help her get her case up to her room so she could get changed, and he said yes, and then when she came back down in the clothes her Goldenrod friends helped her buy they stared at her and tried unsuccessfully to hide it. She was glad to hear Ella's key in the front door; it gave her an excuse to get out of there.

"Yeah," says Ella. "I guess nobody was, huh."

The hall clock ticks. Jodi hears low voices from the living-room, and wonders if her parents are worrying about how this meeting is going.

"Your hair suits you better like this," says Ella. It sounds like someone casting around desperately for something to say. Like what it is. "It was too long for a guy. Like one of those hippy Americans."

"I know. I … I've been being Jodi for a while in Goldenrod."

Ella sucks in a breath.

"How long?"

Jodi shrugs.

"I've known for nearly a year. I've been … doing this, I guess you'd say, since summer term."

Now Ella's concern is almost overpowering. Jodi takes a moment to breathe, to try and dial back her ESP, and takes her hand.

"Still me," she reassures her. "Just being honest about it now."

"Honest," repeats Ella. "Right, right."

They keep looking at each other. What else can she say, Jodi wonders. Something banal, maybe. To settle the mood.

"How's Virgo?" she asks. It's all she's got.

"Hibernating."

"Oh," says Jodi. "Right."

Ariados can't take the cold. Virgo, the one partner Ella kept with her after her journey, spends every winter silent and motionless on the top shelf of Ella's wardrobe, among the dried-up marker pens and tubes of old paint. Sometimes if they have the heating on for longer than usual she'll crawl out for a day or two, surprised and disoriented, before giving up and retreating back to her sanctuary to sleep through to spring.

"Um … well, d'you wanna come inside?" offers Jodi, trying to move on. "I'm feeling kinda outnumbered in there."

"Sure," says Ella, shrugging off her coat. "Right behind you, sis."

She only stumbles a little on the word. It goes in Jodi's ears and lodges somewhere deep inside her chest, bright and warm as a summer afternoon. She is completely unprepared for it; her cheeks flame and she lowers her eyes to her mismatched feet.

"Um," she says, blinking quickly to try and stave off tears. "Okay. Let's … go."

They go inside, and there's Lothian, climbing on the sofa; there are their parents, doing their best to look like everything is normal. There's Lucille, her mother's old graveler, stumping in from the kitchen on her short little legs.

Tacoma Spearing is dead. Jodi is going to have to deal with this, some time very soon. But right now, in this moment, home at last with her sister and her partner and her parents, with the snow starting to fall outside the windows and the smell of dinner in the air, she is almost certain that she's okay.

Late that night, in the midst of an unpleasant dream, Jodi wakes. For a moment, she isn't sure where she is, and then the shadows fall into an arrangement that makes sense: her room, her real room, at home in Mahogany. Wardrobe, desk, chest of drawers. Moonlight around the edges of the curtains. Lothian, curled up in a nest of his own wings, ears twitching as he dreams of echolocation.

She lies there for a moment, letting her heart slow. Her dream was of the Silverblack Mountains, far to the north. For some reason she was there again, walking the trainers' trail through the pass to Hawthorn with Tacoma, except that Tacoma was just staring at her and whispering help me, over and over.

Kind of ominous. Jodi is used to ominous dreams – she's not the kind of psychic that can see the future, but she is the kind of psychic who picks up vibrations from other sleeping people and unintentionally synthesises them into spooky dream visions – but this one is worse than usual. She doesn't want to dream of Tacoma. Not tonight, maybe not ever.

She still doesn't know what to think about it all. What can you think, when your childhood best friend gets brutally murdered, three weeks shy of Christmas? She asked her parents about it again, once everyone had got over the initial shock of Jodi being Jodi, but they really didn't know a thing. Tacoma is dead. That's all: nothing more, nothing less. Tacoma is dead, and somehow, everything else is going on just the same as ever.

That night, she went to bed early, feigning tiredness but in reality just wanting to give everyone a chance to sleep on her news – the after-dinner conversation was starting to dry up in an awkward kind of way – and for some reason, when she walked into her room and saw all her childhood things laid out there she just started to cry. It wasn't for her, wasn't for any of the strangeness she had brought to this house today. It was for Tacoma, and the fact that she was never going to bring anything to any house ever again.

Afterwards, she felt a little better. Not that much better, but good enough to sleep. At least until she started dreaming about dead people.

Help me.

Jodi freezes.

Help me.

Is that …?

Someone. Please. Help me!

It's faint, crackly, like a voice from a badly-tuned radio, and Jodi can hear other voices chattering underneath it, too quietly for her to distinguish the words. It could be a dream. She could be asleep. But if that's what this is, then it's much more realistic than her subconscious usually manages. The distortion, the interference speakers – this all feels like a real message.

Help me …

But who? As far as she knows, Jodi's the only psychic in town. And if she's honest, she's not that good at it, either, not without Lothian's help. Her usual range is only a few yards; she picks up vibes from within the room, but no further. So unless Lothian's suddenly got a whole lot more articulate, or someone else has suddenly developed the kind of telepathic chops that would ordinarily get you a scholarship to brain school, then this can't be real.

Maybe it is a dream. Jodi pinches herself, and feels real pain.

Well. Crap.

Please! I don't know – where am I?

She chews her lip, telling herself that it's nothing, that she should close her eyes and go back to sleep, and then she throws off the covers and eases herself out of bed.

"Lothi?" she murmurs. Noivern can hear a pin drop from a mile off; for Lothian, a whisper is as good as a shout. "Lothi, wake up."

He tenses, and then with a sudden swift motion looks up, as alert as if he'd been awake all along. The folds of his nose quiver, and a little coded hum ripples through Jodi's nerves: what's wrong?

She reaches out and touches his mind with her own. A moment later, when the voice comes again, she can tell from the way his ears twitch that it's travelling through the connection to reach him too.

Please, someone help!

She gives him a look. Lothian flares his nostrils and uncurls, stalking over to push his head against her good leg.

He communicates that they should go, and there it is, decision made. Just as Jodi was hoping. And he's right, isn't he? Someone's lost in a sub-zero night somewhere nearby, and Jodi can (a) sense their pain and (b) find her way around town blindfolded, if she has to. She's got to do something. She just has to.

Someone …

The emotion is starting to bleed through now, along with the words. Whoever it is, they're panicking – really panicking, the kind that feels like your organs are tearing themselves to bloody shreds inside your ribcage. Jodi takes a minute to process it, to quarantine it carefully in one corner of her mind as she has been taught, and then she grabs her clothes and her cane and heads out into the night.

It's freezing. She knew this already, but it's something else to have it confirmed. All jokes about soft city slickers aside, a December night in Mahogany just has more bite than one in Goldenrod. Jodi shivers, tucks her chin deeper into her scarf, and taps Lothian on the back of the head.

Okay, she says, without words. Help me out here.

She opens her mind. His ears swivel into a position. Jodi feels the vibrations building up inside her, rumbling around in the pit of her stomach, and then, with that sudden twist of the mind, there it is: the vibe she needs, the timbre of the voice she's been hearing for the past few minutes. She hums a single voiceless note, down in the depths of her brain, and hears Lothian take it up too, richer and deeper, her mind carried outwards on a dense wave of sound.

Hello? The voice is clearer now, though still faint. Who is that?

Hello, projects Jodi, as clearly as she can. Stay calm. I'm coming to find you.

There's something out there; she can feel it in her bones. Beyond her range, but with her psionics mingled with his vibes Lothian can find it.

Hello? The voice sounds frantic. Hey, did you say something?

I'm coming.

Hello? Help! I'm – I don't know, it's so dark, I can't see anything.

I'm coming, Jodi replies, but it's clear that the other person can't hear her. Fine. She'll have to get closer.

"Come on, Lothi," she says, voice muffled by her scarf, and he moves slowly down the street, ears swivelling as he tracks the vibrations. Jodi follows as closely as she can, testing each step with her cane before she takes it. The streetlights turned off hours ago; except for the gleam of moonlight on snow, the world is a single formless mass of black. She didn't think to grab her torch. If she sticks close to Lothian, it shouldn't matter. He doesn't need light to find his way.

God, but it's cold. Even concentrating on tracing the voice isn't enough to distract her. It's an angry cold, nipping and scratching at every bit of exposed skin, burrowing down through your coat to scrape along your ribs. Jodi screws her face deeper into her scarf, pulls down her hat, but still it bites. How Lothian stands it with his thin fur she has no idea. When she caught him, he was living in an icebound cave in the Silverblacks, in the only noibat colony east of the Black Sea. It was even colder there than it is here, so cold her fingers were too stiff to get a poké ball out of her backpack, but he flew over to her as agile and curious as a growlithe on a summer's day.

Ugh. Stop thinking about the Silverblacks, she tells herself, and returns her attention to the mind she's trying to follow.

Hello? asks the voice. Are you still there?

Clearer now. Something strange about it, though it's hard to tell what. Where even are they? Huxley Road? Jodi looks up for a moment, but all she sees is the night, huge and dark. This was a terrible idea, honestly. She shouldn't have rushed out like that without telling anyone what she was doing. What if she falls over and freezes to death out here, a block from her own house? It's not going to happen, obviously – Lothian will drag her back home and blast the door off its hinges if he has to – but what if it did?

Bloody empathy. If she hadn't felt the other person's fear the way she did, she might not have―

The crunch of Lothian's claws on the snow stops, and Jodi has to stop too or trip over him. She squints ferociously into the dark, trying to figure out where they are. From the turns they took, it feels like Foster Road, and she doesn't think they went very far down it. She could tap into Lothian's echolocation, but it's not worth the headache. Bolting an alien sense onto her mind isn't good for her brain.

She reaches out instead, bangs her hand on something and hears the ring of metal. Weird angle, though; it seems to be sloping towards her. For a moment, she can't figure it out, and then she remembers the skip. Rick Fawkes' pet project, right? The house that never gets finished. They drove past it on the way home.

But why are they here now? Jodi concentrates for a second, but doesn't find anyone nearby. There's Lothian; there's something that feels like maybe a noctowl; there's some other animal, hiding somewhere nearby. Apart from that, there's nobody here except Jodi herself. No other humans at all.

"Lothi," she begins, but before she gets any further the voice breaks into her mind again, as clear now as if the speaker was just a few feet away.

Lothi? Lothian?

Jodi's focus shatters, just like that; she loses the link with Lothian, tumbles back into her body with a thump that almost knocks her off her feet. She knows that voice. And who it is, is … No. No, that's not possible. That just isn't possible.

Alex?

A leathery flutter, and the clang of claws on steel: Lothian has flapped up onto the skip. She hears scraping, rattling, and then something heavy hits the pavement at her feet with a crack.

He's found it, he announces, at the same time as the voice calls out:

Alex? Is that you?

She can't move. Her whole body seems to have locked in place, like the cold has seeped into her veins and frozen the blood mid-flow.

She knows what's coming, even before the voice says it.

Alex, it's Tacoma. Where are you?

Chapter Text

TACOMA

Tacoma is lost.

She really doesn't see how any of this happened. As far as she can remember it – and there is some haziness around the crucial moments – she was just on her way home. Got off at the station, said hi to Harry. He said hi back, refused to let her carry her case across the station, because he's just like that. Asked if her parents were coming to pick her up, but they weren't. Neither could get the day off work, and Nick hadn't arrived yet; his flight was supposed to arrive at Goldenrod at more or less the same time as her train arrived at Mahogany. He'd be up later that evening.

Nick. Did this have something to do with him? She was carrying that parcel in her bag. Take it to your Uncle Nick, said Keith, and Tacoma had to bite back her irritation at his overfamiliarity. You don't get to call him that, she thought. He's been telling me not to call him that for years, so you sure as hell don't get to do it. Makes him feel old, he says. And you're an adult now, Tacoma. No reason for you to be giving me epithets like I'm any better than you.

Anyway, she had that parcel in her bag, and she has a feeling that might have had something to do with it. Keith did say that it was to do with her uncle's research, and Nick is researching other dimensions, in his lab at Yellowbrick University. She remembers being irritated about it, even aside from the fact that she'd been roped into doing this for Keith. (She refuses to call him Professor Allbright. She is, after all, an adult now. No reason for her to give him epithets like he's any better than her.) The damn thing was heavy – really heavy, even. That was why Keith didn't just put it in the mail. When he handed her the parcel, at the end of that tutorial, she felt the heft of it in her hand and asked him what it was.

"A rock sample," he said.

"Since when is my uncle interested in rock samples?" she asked. "Or you, for that matter?"

Keith did that annoying thing he does where he smirks and adjusts his glasses, and Tacoma thought to herself, oh, just get to the point, you jumped-up little prick.

"It's a special rock sample," he said. "Related to your uncle's dimensional studies. I'd leave it at his lab, but I think he'll want it before he comes back from his sabbatical."

Obviously she tore the parcel open as soon as she got back to her room, but it really was just a piece of rock: a smooth, vaguely conical piece of stone about twice as big as her fist. Heavy, too. She spent a while examining it, trying to figure out what was so special about it, but other than a crack on one side she couldn't find anything. The brief note that came with it didn't give any details: Nick, here's that sample we were talking about. Think you'll get a kick out of it. ―K. As far as Tacoma could see, it was just a rock.

A rock that, for some reason, the Professor of Ghost Studies at Kanto's top university wanted to send to the Senior Reader in Extradimensional Research. So urgently that it couldn't wait until Nick got back from his sabbatical. You'll see him at Christmas, right? asked Keith. I wonder if you could do me a favour.

And, well, Tacoma needs to pass his ridiculous little course to keep on track for her degree in pokémon medicine, despite the fact that if ghost-types get sick or injured there isn't much a doctor can actually do, so she said yes. Which is why she was carrying the mysterious, possibly extradimensional rock with her as she tried to manoeuvre her suitcases down the icy streets of Mahogany towards her parents' house.

Which, in turn, might be why she appears to be in one of those extra dimensions right now.

She really doesn't see how it happened. One moment, she's cutting through the park in the fading light, cursing the fuck out of ice in general and this path in particular, and then … then she's not sure, but after that not sure comes this.

Tacoma looks around again. It's night, or it's dark at least; the air is still in a way that makes her think she's inside, but she can't see any sign of a window. Can't see anything at all, in fact. She bends down, as she has a hundred times before, and feels the floor: smooth tiles, rectangular, worn. Impossible to tell the colour or the material.

She takes a deep breath. It tastes of dust and age.

At some point, she's going to have to move. But in the darkness all around her, in the cave-like stillness of the air, she feels like she can see that ravine in the Silverblacks again, its awful, impossible depth. Anything you dropped in there disappeared forever. No trace, no sound. Even after she saw people climb down to the bottom and back, she couldn't shake the feeling that there was simply nothing down there but void.

And faced with that, Tacoma finds that she cannot move at all.

Another breath. This place is so quiet. She's used to quiet – she's from Mahogany, for Christ's sake – but even in her sleepy little hometown there are night noises: wind, noctowl, nightingales, the hum of electricity in the wires. Here in this unnatural dark, there is absolutely nothing at all. And that is something Tacoma has no idea how to deal with at all.

She breathes in again. She wishes Nikole was here, but she was in her ball when this happened, and none of Tacoma's bags have come with her. Suitcase, shoulder bag, rucksack: all presumably still in the municipal park, lying there in the snow with her uncle's goddamn mystery rock. And Nikole's poké ball, at the bottom of her bag.

Hell. If only she'd put it in her pocket. But no. Nikole had a cold, so Tacoma refused to let her help carry the luggage, and so she stayed tucked away right at the bottom of her bag, as far away from the freezing December air as Tacoma could get her.

So. No Nikki, no company, no light, no anything but a boundless abyss.

Okay, then.

She stretches out her arms in front of her: nothing. Slowly, carefully, she edges one foot forward, and is relieved to find that she doesn't immediately fall into a bottomless pit. Another step, and still the floor stays firm beneath her. Another, and another and another and another, and―

Her fingers touch something. Tacoma leaps back, breath catching in her throat, but then her brain catches up and she realises what it is.

Oh. Right.

Sheepishly, she puts a hand out and feels stone beneath her fingers. Yes: it's just a wall. Big blocks, smooth with age. Like the old city hall in Saffron. There's nowhere like this in Mahogany, as far as she knows.

"All right." It's the first thing she's said since arriving here. Her voice sounds thin and weak in her ears. The air, she tells herself. It's just a weird atmosphere. Bad acoustics. That kind of thing. This is much easier than admitting that it's probably all down to her. "All right, so … follow the wall."

Step after careful step through the dark. How long has it been now? Long enough that she'd have expected her eyes to have started adjusting, but she can't even see her hand on the stones, six inches from her face. She tries not to think about it, and keeps following the wall as it curves around the room.

A minute passes, or maybe an hour, or maybe ten years, and then at last her hand meets something flat. She reaches up, feels first one edge and then another. Almost like …

Stairs. Stairs! Of course, she's just underground! So if she can just take the stairs up, she'll be able to get out of here, back up into the light. Tacoma leaps for what she thinks is the bottom, cracking her shin against the step in her rush, and then yes, thank God, there it is: a staircase. She scrambles up as fast as she can, stumbling as the stairs curve around, and falls over the last step into a dark every bit as deep as the one she just came from.

"No!"

It slips out before she can stop herself. The sound of it sickens her. Tacoma Spearing, whiny little asshole. She grits her teeth, shoves herself back up onto her feet, and moves around the wall again, looking for a door, more stairs, anything; there are stairs, yes, on the far side of the room, and she climbs them more slowly than the last set, telling herself that she doesn't expect to find anything at the other end, just more darkness.

She finds more darkness. She's disappointed anyway.

But she's not going to give up, not now that she's psyched herself up like this; she's going to keep going, find more stairs, find an exit. So: around the edge of the room again, and up the next flight of stairs, and the next, and the next, and somewhere along the way around what is either the eighth or the ninth identical room in a row she lets her hand fall from the stones and sinks down onto her knees.

It's the same place, isn't it? Looping over and over. A circular room, stairs at each end. The same place, sucking her back whenever she tries to leave.

She's shaking now, the kind of shakes that come from deep inside your bones and work their way out in heavy, painful waves. Like there's something vital broken inside her and without it her body is just going to shiver into pieces.

"Help me," she whispers, arms wrapped so tight around herself they hurt. "Someone. Please help me …"

And then, quite suddenly, someone does.

Alex. It has to be. Who else has a pokémon called Lothian? Nobody that she knows. And, well, wherever she is, she's pretty sure that it would take extraordinary powers to reach her. Which, though Tacoma has never seen much evidence of it, Alex is supposed to have.

"Alex!" she calls, trying to find his voice again, somewhere in the back of her head. "It's Tacoma! Where are you?"

No response.

"Alex?" Please don't let him be gone, please for the love of God don't let him be gone and her alone in the dark again―

T-Tacoma?

He sounds upset. Shocked, even. Tacoma supposes she can understand that. She's not doing so hot herself.

"Alex!" She turns around and around, glaring into the dark as if he might somehow be there. "Alex, where …?"

Oh my God, Tacoma …

"What? What is it?"

The atmosphere in the room shifts suddenly, grows thick and dense as the muggy air of a summer night in Saffron. Tacoma's breath sticks – she coughs – feels the air collapsing in on her from every side―

―and suddenly there he is, looking down at her from between his hat and scarf, pale face blindingly bright after the concentrated dark of her prison.

"Tacoma," he says, a real voice now, not a hum in the bones of her skull. "Oh my God, Tacoma …"

"Alex!" She leans forward to grab him, trying to make sure he's really there, but something goes wrong; she just bumps her head against his shoulder. "Wait, what the …?"

"Hold still," he says, eyes wide. "Just – just hold still a minute, okay?"

Something's not right. How is Alex this tall? She's looking up from the height of his chest, somehow. And what's up with her body? Why can't she move anything?

"Alex," she asks, observing the fear in her voice and despising it, "what's going on?"

"I don't know." He bites his lip. "I, um … Tacoma, do you know what you … I mean, uh, can you see …?"

She turns her head. Her neck feels strange, elastic. If she pulls like this, and if she looks down …

There's Nick's mystery rock, in Alex's hand. And there's a thin ribbon of dirty purple mist, rising up from the crack in its side and into―

Tacoma looks up again, fast.

"Alex …"

"I know," he says.

She can't think of a response. She looks at him instead, all pale and fearful in the moonlight. He looks cold. How come she can't feel it? Or do ethereal severed heads not have that power?

"Alex," she says. "Am I dead?"

He's crying. Tacoma doesn't remember ever seeing him do that before, even when things were at their very worst. Seeing it now is almost as unsettling as being a disembodied head.

Almost.

"I just got home," he says weakly. "I just got home today and they told me your … they told me Aaron Lockwood found your body in the river."

It doesn't hurt, she tells herself. You knew this deep down, right? You must have done. So it doesn't hurt at all.

Tacoma is usually a pretty good liar, but tonight she can't seem to make it work.

"No," she whispers. "No, I can't be …"

But she can, and she is, and she can see it all on Alex's face, in the pain of this boy she hasn't spoken to in years. His face is an awful grey rag of a thing, barely recognisable. He still cares, she realises. He still cares, and he came home to find …

To find that she was dead.

She swallows.

"Alex," she says, straining towards him as best she can. She can't pull very far away from the rock, but she can get a little closer. "I'm sorry."

He wipes his face on the back of his glove, gives her a look.

"Not your fault that you got killed," he mutters.

"That wasn't what I was apologising for."

Alex looks at her for a little while. Somewhere beyond the little slice of night that she can see, Lothian's wings are rustling, and Tacoma imagines him pressed up against his partner's good leg, transmitting his soothing vibrations.

"It's bloody freezing," says Alex, in the end. His expression is unreadable. "Let me get back inside and I'll find you a mirror."

Alex moves more softly than Tacoma expects; he manages to get the door open silently, despite having both hands full, and though he's limping a little from the walk in the cold he still takes care to place his cane on the strip of carpet running down the centre of the stairs with each step, masking its click in the thick pile.

She watches him manoeuvre himself up to his room, quiet and efficient as a Swiss watch, and then raises her eyes to the wall, ashamed. Tacoma Spearing, making assumptions. Aren't you supposed to be Alex's friend, she asks herself, and gives a bitter answer: yeah, the key word there is supposed.

In his room, Alex places Tacoma carefully down on his desk and sits down heavily on his bed, rubbing his leg. Lothian crouches by his feet, ears locked in position to focus the sound waves from his nose into Alex's calf. Whatever they're doing, it feels like something private, so Tacoma drags her eyes away and looks around the room instead.

It's not like she remembers. Desk, bed, bookshelf – all right, that stuff's been there as long as Alex has, but there's a travel typewriter next to her on the desk, and serious-looking books on the shelves where there used to be comics. Different chest of drawers, different wardrobe. No posters any more, just a single framed picture of a landscape she can't make out clearly in the dim light.

There's a photograph on the desk too, on Tacoma's other side, but she's too afraid of who might be in it to look.

"Thanks, Lothi." Lothian chirps; Alex scratches between his ears and gets up again, flexing his leg slowly. "Okay," he continues, speaking to Tacoma for the first time since he said he'd take her home. "Are you ready?"

No, not really. She's dead. She's a ghost, maybe, or a ghost-type, possibly. She's trapped in a rock whose inside is a terrifying void and her only alternative is to stick her head out into this unfamiliar room and see all the ways in which Alex's life has become something she no longer recognises. No, she is not bloody ready.

"Yeah, okay," she says, and Alex picks up a mirror from his suitcase and shows her what she is.

A disc of grimy purple mist, swirling around the point where that thread connects her to the rock. Little bursts of green light eddying through it like drowned insects circling the drain. And there, drawn in thick, ugly lines of the same sludgy green: a crude approximation of the face of Tacoma Spearing, recently deceased.

She stares for a long moment. Wisps of purple smoke break off from the edge of her disc and dissipate around her.

She wants to tell Alex to take the mirror away, but she seems to have forgotten all the words she needs to make that sentence. As soon as she thinks it, though, he turns it away from her and puts it down regardless. Of course. Empath. Strange to feel it at work, after hearing about it for so long.

"I'm sorry." He sits down in front of her, not breaking eye contact for a second. "Tacoma? How are you feeling?"

She tries to shrug, but of course she has no shoulders. The failed movement is embarrassing, and more embarrassing still is the fact that she finds it embarrassing, when Alex is sitting right there and looking at her so calmly.

"I mean you know," she says, in the end. "Right?"

He has that look in his eyes, like the faintest suggestion of a sarcastic okay. It's comforting to see that that at least has remained.

"Yeah, well," he says. "I feel like it's polite to at least pretend that I can't read other people's emotions." He leans back and starts to take off his hat and scarf. When did his hair get this long? "Do you want me to tell you what I know about … what happened?"

"No," she replies. At least she has the guts to say it this time. "I'm, uh, I don't think I'm – ready."

It sounds pathetic, but Alex nods like he understands. He probably does, as well.

"Okay," he says. "Do you mind if I eat something, then? Because otherwise I think I'm gonna faint."

"Sure," says Tacoma. She knows this much, at least. ESP takes ridiculous kinds of energy; there's a reason Alex has always been hungry. He doesn't look as thin as he used to, though. She supposes – hopes – that after the diagnosis his parents must have stopped thinking he was greedy and just let him have more to eat. "Go right ahead," she adds, hoping that that sounds casual but encouraging, and not just like someone awkwardly accommodating her friend's unexpected needs.

He digs out a slab of chocolate from one of the bags on the floor and starts to demolish it, piece by piece. Lothian rears, gripping the arm of the chair in his claws, and Alex holds the chocolate up beyond his reach.

"Uh-uh," he says. "This'll kill you. You know that." Lothian stares up at him, a perfect picture of chiropteran innocence, and Alex makes a face. "Go on. Shoo." Lothian withdraws, curls himself into a ball at the foot of the bed. His ears fold right the way down over his eyes, Tacoma notices. So damn cute.

She tries not to think of Nikole, still out there somewhere all by herself instead of sprawled on her bedroom floor, and almost succeeds.

"So," she says. She has to say something. This silence is going to kill her all over again. "How's uni going?"

Alex pauses with a piece of chocolate halfway to his mouth.

"Really?" he asks, incredulous, and Tacoma feels something in her shatter.

"I just … I'm dead, Alex," she says, and now she can't stop, her voice rolling on without any input from her brain. "I'm dead, I – I don't want to be dead, don't want to be whatever the hell I am now, I'm dead, I―"

"Hey." He leans forward and puts his arms around her, fingers sinking a little into her fog. "It's okay, Tacoma. It's okay."

"No, it's not―"

"Okay, you're right, it's not." He's so warm. Tacoma never realised how warm living people were before. "It's not okay, and I don't know what's going on, but … tomorrow we can go to the library and do some research, try and figure what happened to you. I could take you home―"

"No." He's doing the thing, isn't he? The psychic thing? Tacoma feels a glow, deep in the body she does not have. Like his hug is going right through her down into her soul. "No, I can't, Alex, not like – not like this―"

"Okay." His voice stays level, no matter how much her own cracks and wavers. "We'll do what you want."

She takes a deep breath. A fake breath, even, because she has no lungs, because she's just a weird ghost head―

No. Another breath. Focus on Alex's psionics, she orders herself. Let him help you.

A third breath.

Okay. She's dead. She's dead, and in defiance of everything she has ever been told about the afterlife it seems she now has a choice between being a misty ghost head or trapped in an endless void tower. This is bad. Probably the worst, actually. Tacoma can't actually think of a worse situation right now, though at least part of that's down to the fact that her mind isn't really bringing its A-game tonight.

So yes. Bad. But – she's not alone. And if anyone in Mahogany has a chance at understanding her enough to be able to help, it's probably the psychic.

She sighs.

"All right," she says. "Okay. I'm … I dunno. Okay, I guess."

Alex sits back in his chair. The glow of his psionics starts to recede.

"You were really upset when I started tracking you," he says, after a moment or two. "Where were you? In that rock?"

She nods. It's about the only gesture she has left available to her.

"I guess it's not good in there?"

"No. No, it's … it's dark, and there are stairs that don't end."

"Stairs in the dark. My worst nightmare," says Alex, with a wry look at his leg, and manages to make her smile. "No way you can light it up?"

"I don't know," says Tacoma. "I, um, didn't try."

God. She is so damn thoughtless, isn't she? Should have at least had a go at it. You're a ghost, Tacoma. Spooky lights are sort of your thing.

"Hey," says Alex, maybe picking up on her thoughts, maybe just seeing them in her face. "You didn't know."

"I should've."

"But you didn't. And that's fine." Something about the way he says it makes it so much more persuasive than it would be in Tacoma's mouth. "Look," he says. "It's been weird. That's gonna make you feel weird. But none of it's your fault."

"I guess so," she says, only half convinced. "Thanks, Alex. I don't even know if I'd have got out of the rock if you hadn't … you know."

He shrugs awkwardly, like he doesn't know how to take the compliment.

"It's okay," he says, in the end. "It's okay."

Pause. He looks tired, Tacoma thinks: deep circles under his eyes, head slumping. He said he only got back today, didn't he? So still tired from travel, and then on top of that he tracked her down from a block away.

Time for her to do a good deed in return.

"I think we need to sleep on this," she says. "Like, we can't even look whatever I am up till the library opens, right? And maybe I'll feel better in the morning."

"Are you sure?" asks Alex. "I can talk now, if you―"

"No. It's fine." She does her best to smile, and finds it comes more easily than she anticipated. "Dying really takes it out of you," she says. "And I had to take the overnight train to get back to Johto. Never get much sleep on that thing. So. You know. I could use a rest."

Alex looks at her carefully for a long moment, but doesn't argue.

"All right," he says. "Are you okay there? You don't want me to move the rock somewhere more comfortable?"

"No, I'm fine. I think." She can't actually feel the desk beneath her. Whatever sort of ghost she is, the rock isn't a part of her the same way the purple fog is. Like a shell, maybe. Or a cage. "But thanks," she adds, wishing she hadn't thought of that. "You're handling this way better than I am."

That veiled sarcastic gleam in his eyes again, as comforting as fireflies on a summer night.

"I'm not the one who died," he says. "Okay. Night, Tacoma."

"Night, Alex."

He pauses partway through getting up, like he's thought of something else to say, but whatever it is, it remains unspoken. Alex gets back into bed without another word, and just a minute or two later, Tacoma hears a change in his breathing that probably means he's asleep.

All right, then. She did her good thing. Now she has till morning to get at least a modicum of her shit together.

Tacoma takes a deep breath, and withdraws back into the rock.

It's good to have a body again, even if it is stuck down here in the dark. Tacoma flexes her fingers, shuffles her feet, and, satisfied that all her limbs are still present, glares into the blackness.

"Okay," she says. Tacoma Spearing versus the void, round one. "I want lights."

Nothing. Okay. Maybe you need to focus more. She concentrates, imagines sunbeams and torches and bonfires, and then again she says lights, and this time―

Whoosh!

Purple flames roar out of nowhere and drift up to the ceiling, filling the room with an eerie light. Tacoma stares at them for a moment, then at her hands. These are definitely her gloves. The ones she was wearing when … well, when she died.

"All right," she says. "Getting somewhere."

She can see the room now: circular, maybe thirty feet either way, with a staircase at either end and a huge slab of stone on a dais in the middle. Grey stone walls, dull green tiled floor. She's seen this somewhere before.

"Pokémon Tower," she murmurs. "Lavender."

The last leg of her trainer journey took her up into North Kanto, into the huge stretch of wilderness that occupies the northeast coast. There's a little town called Lavender up there among the foothills, with a historic grave tower containing a thousand years' worth of cremated pokémon spread over seven floors. When she visited, it looked a lot like this, although it had oil lamps instead of spooky ghost flames, a rare fragment of Kanto left behind by the rush to modernise. What's that thing Keith said about the illusions ghost-types make? That they're mostly drawn out of the victim's memories? Maybe this is something like that.

Who'd have thought that Ghost Studies would turn out to be useful after all, huh. Tacoma tries to smile at the thought, but it get lost somewhere in the transition from brain to mouth, and after a moment she gives up.

Instead, she turns her attention to the big stone thing in the centre of the room. It's pretty clear what it is, even before she takes a closer look: a sarcophagus. There's a name on it too, engraved at one end. It isn't her name. Or possibly it is; it's in Chinese and completely illegible to her Johtonian eyes.

Although it does give her an idea. She stares at the name for a second, trying to commit it to memory, then goes up the stairs to an identical circular stone room to look at an identical sarcophagus there. Except no, not quite identical; that's definitely a different name. This one looks Italian: Mauro Pavone. So it's not a loop, then. There are other floors. Unsure whether to be encouraged or dispirited, Tacoma checks the next floor (Lucy Black), and the next (something in Arabic), and the next (Flavie Lavoisier). And up, and up, a new name on every floor, until she finally reaches a room where there are no more stairs and one final sarcophagus.

She reads the name. Tacoma Spearing. Right.

Well, at least she has the penthouse suite.

One hundred other floors. One hundred other names, from all around the world. Presumably, one hundred other people who are all just as trapped here as Tacoma. So where are they? Why is it her that can wander around, turn the lights on and off, push her face out into the real world, and not them?

She thinks about calling out to them, but the last time she did that Alex heard in his sleep, and she doesn't want to wake him. There's always just going downstairs and trying to open a coffin, she supposes, but somehow she can't face it.

She takes off her gloves, then her hat and coat; it's nowhere near as cold in here as it is out in Mahogany. She sits down, back to the sarcophagus with her name on it, and closes her eyes.

There's no coming back from this, is there? Tacoma takes Ghost Studies; she's read the books. There are no proven cases of ghosts ever returning to their bodies, despite the million and one novels and films claiming otherwise. When you die, if you are unfortunate enough to stay here instead of whatever the hell is supposed to happen, you're stuck like that. Until you run out of energy or another ghost eats you.

So that's it. She's lost her body for good, and what she has instead is … this.

God. Her mother and father are out there somewhere, trying to deal with the fact that she's gone. Nick. Her brother Everett. Everyone waiting for her to come home for Christmas, thinking her train was delayed, until the next morning they got the knock on the door and saw Con standing there with a grave face. Did they know then, when they saw him? Or did it happen a little later, when he asked if he could come in, his voice all low and quiet? Even then, maybe they still thought she was just in trouble, that they'd see her soon. Maybe they kept on denying it right up till the moment when Con sat them down and told them she'd been fished out of the river.

Tacoma meant it when she told Alex she didn't want to go home. She has already destroyed her family, by getting herself killed. She doesn't need to make things worse by showing them the monster she's become. That face she saw in the mirror – it's hers, yes, but it's approximate, ugly, like a drawing done in blunt crayon with bandaged hands. Show that to someone who loves her and it will only look like a defacement of her memory.

She's sorry she had to show it to Alex, even. The look on his face when she first appeared out of the stone just kills her, now she knows what it was he saw.

Maybe she should just get in the sarcophagus and disappear to wherever all the other dead people are. She almost gets up to try it, but in the end she lets the thought go. She can't do that. Not now Alex has seen her. Die a second time and she'll kill him too.

These are bad thoughts, Tacoma, she tells herself.

Yes, Tacoma, she answers. I fucking know that.

In the end, she gets a little sleep curled up on her coat with her hat for a pillow, and pushes her face back out of the rock as soon as she wakes up, unable to stand lying down in the tower for one more second. Back in Alex's room, the world is light again, suffused with that special winter kind of sunlight that looks as bright as summer but without any warmth whatsoever. Alex himself is still asleep, a tuft of tousled dark hair protruding from beneath the bedspread, and Tacoma makes no attempt to wake him. He got up in the middle of the night to follow a weird dream and rescue her. The guy's earned a lie-in.

Lothian is asleep too, although he has migrated further up the bed than he was when he curled up last night; now, he's almost sitting on top of Alex. Tacoma is reminded of Nikole, of the way she would go to sleep at the other end of the room and by morning be pressed right up against the side of the bed. So close that Tacoma couldn't get out without stepping on her. Which was exactly the point, of course. Nikole wanted to be woken as soon as her partner was up.

Ugh. Not a line of thought she has any interest in pursuing. Tacoma blanks it out and looks around the room instead. By daylight, she can see that the landscape is a painting of Mahogany, from the hills northwest of town. She thinks nothing of it, until she sees Ella's signature in the corner. After that, the fact that it's so good becomes less normal and more of a surprise. Tacoma knew she painted, but it's been years since she last saw one of her pictures; apparently Ella's got a lot better now.

After a moment of hesitation, she looks at the photo on the desk as well, and is relieved to see that it's just a picture of Alex's parents, with a young Ella. Figures. He probably doesn't want photos of Ash or Helen just lying around in the open like that. She's a little hurt that there's no evidence of her here, after well over a decade of friendship, but she's aware that this isn't a reasonable reaction. It's her who broke off contact, after all.

Lothian tenses and uncoils in one sharp, swift motion, and as he yawns Alex stirs and sits up too. He blinks, stares at Tacoma in something like a panic, and then seems to remember last night and relaxes.

"Morning," he says, rubbing the stubbly skin around his mouth. "Have you been there all night?"

"I went back inside the rock to sleep," she answers. "Figured out how to get the lights on."

"That's good," he says absently, still probing around his lips. "Hmph. Um. Gonna … have a shower. Get dressed. Then after breakfast I can take you to the library and we'll look up ghost-types." He looks up suddenly, taking his hand away from his mouth as if just now becoming aware of what he's doing, and smiles stiffly. "Is that okay? Sorry, I guess you'll have to hide in the rock for a while."

"Sure, Alex." Whatever he wants. Tacoma owes him, after all. And anyway, given that she doesn't seem to be able to move the rock by herself, she really can't afford to alienate the guy who can carry her places. "I really appreciate you doing all this."

"It's fine." He pauses, takes a quick, nervous breath, and says, "You know, I … I kind of changed my name. Earlier this year."

Tacoma tries not to look shocked, but it isn't easy. Alex is … well, he's Alex. Why would he change that?

"Oh," she says. "Oh, uh, okay. What – what should I call you now, then?"

A long pause. Tacoma hears the creak of floorboards in another room, the clunking of a cupboard door from downstairs.

Slowly, not quite looking at her, the fingers of his left hand fiddling with the thumbnail of his right, Alex answers.

"… Jodi."

This time she definitely doesn't manage to hide her shock. Like she could hide anything from an empath, anyway.

"Oh," she says. "Oh, I … see."

She does. She does see. She's heard of this before, vaguely. There was an article in that magazine, wasn't there? About that one trans― what even is the right word, anyway? Transsexual? Trans …. something else? It starts with trans, she's sure of it, but the article was a year ago; she can't even remember it properly now. At the time, it didn't seem important. Not something she'd ever actually come face to face with.

Something else to feel bad about. You hear about things and you never realise that they matter, that you're not reading about some distant curiosity but the lives of actual people. People like Alex. No, Jodi. Jodi. Get it right, Tacoma.

"You do?" asks Jodi.

"Yeah," says Tacoma. "I guess I do." Pause. Got to be careful. What she says here matters, really matters, and Tacoma really doesn't trust her mouth not to fuck it up without close supervision. "Okay, Jodi," she says, and sees her friend's shoulders untense in relief. "Um … I would hug you, but, well."

Jodi smiles weakly.

"I guess it's the thought that counts," she says. "Lothi?"

Lothian, who has been watching the conversation with interest, bounces off the bed and retrieves her cane from where it fell during the night. Jodi takes it, levers herself up, and comes over to put her arms around Tacoma.

"I really missed you, you know," she whispers, her voice thick with unshed tears. It feels like a stake hammered through Tacoma's chest.

"Yeah," says Tacoma, bowing her head against Jodi's arm. "I missed you too."

Neither of them make any move to explain. It isn't the time, yet. But they're back again, same town, same lives, and even if Tacoma is a ghost and Jodi is a girl that still counts for something.

Counts for a lot, actually. Tacoma doesn't know how to say it, has never been all that articulate about feelings, but it's there, and it matters. And that's going to have to be enough for now.

It's a little awkward being stuck in the background while Jodi gets on with her morning, but Tacoma manages. She hangs around in her room, trying to read the titles on the spines of her books – mostly non-fiction, which Tacoma finds sort of surprising; she thought Jodi liked novels – and waiting for her to return. When she does, popping back in after her shower to do her make-up, Tacoma is startled by how pretty she is. You can tell that she is what she is, but― wait. Is this prejudiced of her? It probably is. Why shouldn't she expect Jodi to be pretty, Tacoma asks herself, and is forced to admit that she can't come up with any answer except that Jodi wasn't a girl before.

Or was she? Was this always in her, waiting for the right time, the right knowledge, the right whatever it is that lets someone take the plunge and go public? Tacoma imagines the secret inside her, choked and stunted with ignorance and fear. Jodi will be twenty on the seventeenth. That's an awfully long time to have carried something like that. If that is how it happened.

Tacoma has no idea what to think, or even if these are things that she is allowed to think. She retreats into the rock to hide her embarrassment, promising herself she'll get better at this in future, and when she comes back out Jodi is gone again, along with Lothian. It's a relief, even if it is lonely here by herself, and it gives her time to try and recover a little of her composure. No need to make this more awkward for Jodi than it already is.

Don't worry, it's me, she hears in her head, just before the door opens and Jodi comes in, looking elegant in her sea-green dress and chewing the crust of a piece of toast. "Hey," she continues, aloud this time. "Sorry to abandon you. I told everyone that I'm gonna stretch my legs and get some Christmas reading out the library, so I guess we're good to go."

"Is that okay?" asks Tacoma. "You're going to go out like … this?

So much for not making it awkward; she regrets saying it as soon as the words have left her mouth. Jodi pauses mid-chew, eyes clouding for a moment, then swallows her toast and forces a smile.

"Yeah," she says. "People are gonna find out. Might as well let 'em know on my own terms."

Tacoma manages to not tell her how brave she thinks this is; that feels like it would be condescending.

"Right," she says instead. "Makes sense."

"Yeah." Jodi pauses. "So, uh, unless you want to explain to my family and everyone what's happening, I guess maybe you'll have to go back in the rock. Then I can put it in my bag."

This suits Tacoma just fine. Back inside she goes, to sit on her sarcophagus and kick her heels for a while, until she hears Jodi's voice in her head again.

Okay, coast is clear.

"Gotcha," she says, and pushes her head back out to find herself on one of the low tables at the back of the Mahogany Public Library. Yellow light, grey shelving units, a window looking out onto an icebound car park in which the lone car has been buried up to the wheel arches in drifting snow. Tacoma hasn't been here in months, but she knows where she is; the layout is as familiar to her as if she'd only left yesterday. Down that aisle and to the left is Lorna Rosemont's desk, where all searches for books begin; opposite her are the microfiche machines, last port of call for so many high school local history projects. At the other end of the library, perched in her chair hidden behind the stacks, Simone Weller will be reading one of the same three books on beekeeping, cover to cover. Time doesn't touch this place; Tacoma imagines that in thirty years' time, she could walk in here and still see Simone reading her books, still see Lorna showing teenagers how to read microfiche.

Actually, she decides, she really doesn't want to think about the future right now.

"You speak to Lorna?" she whispers, to distract herself. Jodi nods.

"She asked about uni," she replies. "Then pointed me to where the Pokédex is. And …" Her cheeks redden. "And she complimented my eyeshadow."

"That's cool of her," says Tacoma. "No, wait, that's not what – I mean, it is good. I don't even know how you blend it like that. I suck at that kind of thing. And now I'm talking too much." She sighs. Jodi is even redder now. Great job, Tacoma. "Sorry," she says, but Jodi shakes her head.

"No, it's … thanks." A little smile, awkward but unforced. "I'm glad you like it."

She sits there for a while, fiddling with her thumbnail again. Behind her chair, Lothian twitches his ears, listening out for who knows what; elsewhere in the library, Lorna says something to Simone in her low librarian's voice.

"Shall we look at the Pokédex, then?" asks Tacoma, after a moment.

"Oh. Yeah, sure."

They turn their attention to the thick, well-thumbed book on the desk before them: Pokémon Index, Fifth Edition. The library doesn't have the latest one yet, but hopefully this will do for their purposes. Jodi opens it at the section on ghost-types, then flips through, past informative factoids and years of annotations from kids dreaming of their journeys, until she finds a picture that she recognises: swirling mist, cracked stone, jagged faux-human face.

"Spiritomb," she reads. "Mercifully rare, both for the sake of those who encounter it and the spirits consumed in its creation, this artificial ghost/dark-type pokémon is the result of trapping anywhere between seventy and two hundred human souls within a spiritually conductive stone."

Spiritomb. So there's a name for this. That makes Tacoma feel a little better. If this is a thing that's happened before, if someone's written scholarly articles about it, then it exists, in a way that waking up in a spooky void tower does not. It has history and depth. She tries out the words in her head: I'm a spiritomb. Doesn't sound great, exactly, but she'll take it.

It's messed-up, though. Who exactly creates a spiritomb? Who believes they have that kind of authority over other people?

"That's gross," she says aloud. "What asshole invented that?"

Jodi raises her eyebrows, keeps reading.

"The method of their creation appears to have been discovered independently in many different countries; spiritomb have been found, composed of varying numbers of spirits, all over the world. The oldest appears to be an entity dating from during China's Song dynasty, composed of the spirits of one hundred and eight outlaws, and currently held for research purposes at Fudan University's Handan campus in Shanghai.

"Spiritomb vary in disposition; many are unpredictable, their personalities changing as the different spirits within seize control in their turn, while others are dominated by one spirit alone, the others lying dormant for reasons that have not yet been determined. In all cases, they are generally uncooperative, the circumstances of their creation having understandably soured them towards humans. This misanthropy and unpredictability, combined with their ability to club a man unconscious with pieces of his own shadow, makes them generally unfit for training, and dangerous to deal with. This contributor cannot recommend engaging with them under any circumstances."

Jodi looks up, biting her lip.

"Sorry," she says. "It's … well, I guess it was written by a dude. A dude who didn't particularly trust spiritomb."

"It's fine," says Tacoma. "Wish I knew how to beat someone up with their shadow, though. That sounds cool."

She isn't sure if she means that, but it sounds vaguely funny in her head, so she figures it might help the mood at least. Jodi smiles nervously. Maybe it isn't funny after all. Or maybe Tacoma's forgotten how her sense of humour works.

"I was carrying this rock home, by the way," she adds quickly, wanting to move on. "One of my professors – he teaches Ghost Studies – he gave it to me to take to Nick. You know, my uncle?" Jodi nods. "Said it was for his dimensional research. So that was in my suitcase. I don't remember when I … how I ended up in there."

"But I found it in the skip outside Rick Fawkes' project." Jodi's face twists into that familiar scowl, the way it does when she's thinking. "So whoever, um, you know, whoever it was, they knew about it. They dug it out of your bag and made sure to dump it there with all the other broken stones, where nobody would find it."

"Except they weren't counting on Psy Officer Ortega over here," says Tacoma. "Because you did find it."

Jodi shakes her head.

"Lothian found it," she corrects. "I just helped."

Lothian shuffles his foreclaws and pushes a few stray locks of hair back into place in his mane, unclear about what's being discussed but certain that he is being praised, and Jodi rests an absent hand on his head as she continues.

"So that might be it," she says. "That might be why you were … why you were murdered."

Heavy words. They fall into the space between them and sit there, as disturbing and enthralling as a traffic accident. Someone killed Tacoma for a reason. They knew about the spiritomb rock, they knew she had it, and they knew exactly how to make it disappear.

But Jodi found it. And if the murderer finds out – if they ever discover that this thing they were willing to kill to keep secret is, in fact, not secret any more – then she'll be on their hit list too.

Tacoma swallows.

"Do you, um …?"

She doesn't need to finish. She can tell that Jodi has worked it out too; it's in the lines of her face, in the way her hand has tensed on Lothian's head and made him look up at her with concern in his jaundiced eyes.

"We need," says Jodi, pronouncing each word with deliberate care, "to find out why your professor sent your uncle this rock."

Tacoma wants to ask if she's sure, to tell her this is dangerous and she should know that she doesn't have to do it just because she feels an obligation to the asshole friend who walked out on her because she couldn't travel any more, but when she opens her mouth what comes out is:

"Yeah. I guess we do."

They look at each other across the table for a long moment.

"We're gonna find who did this," says Jodi, closing the Pokédex with a decisive snap. "I promise."

Tacoma remembers being a kid, striking out fearlessly in search of trouble while Jodi hung back and mumbled excuses. The depressing thing is that she knows how they ended up switching places like this. You grow up. You see the light, at first in pieces and then in its awful totality, the blistering white glow of a nuclear explosion on the horizon, and with it the knowledge that by the time you have finished thinking this the wave of death will have arrived to wipe you and your town off the face of the earth. And that's the moment of truth: are you strong enough to take it, or do you fall?

Tacoma fell. She's been falling for years. And, well, it seems Jodi didn't. Anyone strong enough to come home to Mahogany and say, by the way, I am a girl now – that person is strong enough to see the light and stand to meet it as it roars across her face. Strong enough to go hunting murderers, too.

To hell with it. She needs to know who did this, and what's the worst that could happen? If it gets too dangerous, they can always back out. And Con and the cops will probably wrap this up before they get anywhere near the truth, anyway.

"Yeah," she says, hoping she sounds more confident than she feels. "Let's go catch us a killer."

Chapter Text

JODI

Jodi crunches through the snowy streets, making her slow way back towards Foster Road and Rick Fawkes' project. Lothian, always the more energetic one, ranges ahead, flying up onto lampposts and the eaves of nearby houses, dislodging showers of snow with the sweep of his tail and wings.

It's been a long day already, and it's barely half ten. Breakfast was weird – everyone staring and trying to hide it – and the walk through town to the library wasn't much better. She didn't pass many people, but she did pass some. Fergus Wright didn't recognise her and stopped to welcome her to town before figuring out who she was and trailing off awkwardly; Carrie Savage recognised her immediately, narrowed her eyes and said good morning Alex in such a cold tone that Jodi didn't have the courage to correct her. Fortunately, she didn't have to. Lothian banked around immediately and landed at her feet, making a thin, needling whine that set her teeth on edge and disrupted the venom radiating from Carrie's head, and Carrie just walked on by with her skiploom, leaving Jodi trembling and trying to stop her heart from pounding its way right out of her chest.

The library was okay, though. Lorna is a librarian right down to the pith of her bones, aggressively sensible in the face of any and all weirdness, and she processed Jodi's new face the way she would a new edition: old one stored away for archival purposes, new one taking its public position. Good morning, my dear, she said. I haven't seen you in a long time. And Jodi said (shaking a little) I know, it's been ages. By the way, can I update the name on my library card? It's Jodi. And Lorna said of course, Jodi, I'll just need you to sign the new one on the back here.

So off she went to find the Pokédex, card in hand, grinning at the clumsy new signature on the back like a kid on Christmas morning. Simone glared at her over the top of her book, but that was fine; Simone glares at everyone. She doesn't mean anything by it. Jodi said hi and Simone mumbled something back before returning her attention to the intricacies of beekeeping.

Then back to the awkwardness. Tacoma is … well, Jodi didn't really expect her to be doing well, given her current situation, but the girl thing and the way they've suddenly been forced out of their estrangement is making things even worse. Frankly, Jodi is a little scared of her. She does her best not to snoop too much in other people's minds – it's kind of rude – but it's hard not to pick up on the violent negativity seething within Tacoma's rock.

If she was any kind of friend, Jodi tells herself, she'd try to talk to her about it. But they aren't friends any more, just strangers shoved into unnaturally close proximity, and anyway Jodi doesn't have the guts to broach the subject with her. So. She walks on through the snow in silence, and tries not to think about how weird it is that she's carrying Tacoma's prison cell around with her in her shoulder bag.

Up ahead, Lothian glides down from the roof of the Mercers' house to land on the skip outside Rick's project. Now, after the weather has driven all the builders away until spring, it sits there looking raw and unfinished, the plastic sheeting covering the scaffolding flapping disconsolately in the wind. It's a familiar sight. A running joke in Mahogany is that Rick Fawkes' house will be just about done by the time the bombs finally fall, though Jodi has always found the humour somewhat limited. She pauses for a minute to lean against the skip and catch her breath, then beams a message down to Tacoma.

We're here.

Okay. Tacoma replies just a little too quickly. Okay, cool. Is it, uh … safe for me to come out?

Jodi looks around. Nobody else is out, although it's difficult to say who might be watching from the windows of the houses.

I don't know, she replies. Maybe?

Lothian starts scratching around in the skip, kicking little flurries of snow over the edge into the street. Jodi would like to oversee this herself, but she really has no way of getting up there to help; she can barely even climb steep stairs.

Huh, says Tacoma. Okay, I'll … can you take the rock out of your bag?

Sure. Out it comes, sitting heavily in her hand. How much do souls weigh? Enough to make this thing far heavier than it has any right to be, it seems. That okay?

Yeah. Yeah, I think, if I just lean in …

Something shifts. Jodi can't tell exactly what without enlisting Lothian's help, but something about the rock is not the way it was before.

Like I thought, says Tacoma, satisfied. I can see out the crack if I concentrate on not pushing all the way out.

Oh. Cool.

I can also hear, by the way. So you can save your energy and just speak normally.

"Okay." Suppressing the urge to look around for watching eyes, Jodi lifts up the rock and turns the crack to face Lothian, digging through the iced-over rubble in the skip. "Can you see?"

Yeah. Pause. Are we expecting to find anything?

"I dunno," says Jodi. "Figured it was worth a shot."

Abruptly, Lothian stops, and a faint hum that Jodi wasn't really aware of until it ended stops with him. He looks at her, and sends a guttural vibration crunching through her gut: nothing.

"Right." She sighs. "Guess they only threw the rock in here, whoever it was. Makes sense. Anything else would stand out."

Sure. Tacoma pauses. So, uh … what now?

What indeed. Jodi chews her lip as she mulls it over. What other leads do they have? Nick, obviously, but you don't need to be an empath to know that going up to a man grieving for his dead niece and asking probing questions is not a good idea. Apart from that, well. There aren't a lot of options, honestly. Maybe if she was a cop she could get away with just outright asking people if they know anything, but given who she is, she suspects that's not going to fly. (She thinks of Carrie Savage, and shivers in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.)

"About last night," she says, turning the rock around so Tacoma can see her. "You said you weren't ready. But, um, are you ready now?"

To talk about it? I guess. I mean, we kind of already are.

"Okay." Jodi glances up and down the street. Someone's walking down from the junction with Shadwell Road, and she decides to move on, to keep up the pretence that she's just out for a walk. Besides, it's cold. Too cold to just stand around like this. "Okay," she says again, "so what I know is that Aaron found you in the river. You were strangled, I think. That's all I've got. Does it maybe jog your memory?"

Um … not really, sorry. I don't remember being strangled.

Pause. Lothian swoops low over her head with a shriek, making sure to swipe at her hat with his tail. Jodi laughs and watches him soar upwards again, wheeling back and forth across the colourless winter sky. So bright today. She has no idea how he stands it up there.

Tacoma's mind darkens next to hers, curdling with sorrow, and Jodi's laugh dies on her lips as it slithers into the recesses of her own brain and poisons the moment. Nikole. Of course. And here she is, flaunting Lothian without a thought in the world for Tacoma and her heartbreak.

Should she say something? She should say something.

"I … I'm sorry about Nikole," she says, looking down at the rock in her hand. "Really. Maybe if we can find where it happened, we can track her down."

Yeah, says Tacoma. Maybe.

Jodi keeps walking. House after house, all as anonymous as each other under their coating of snow. Some of them have shovelled driveways, but most don't. Mahogany is small enough to walk, for the most part, and it's just easier to only clear enough space for you to get from door to pavement.

"Morning, Alex," calls Roger Young, as he steps out of his front door.

"Morning," Jodi replies. He smiles and sets off down the street in the other direction without sparing her a second glance.

Not particularly observant, huh, says Tacoma.

"Better than mean," says Jodi, and then instantly regrets it as a little tremor of concern runs through Tacoma's mind.

Right, she says. Right.

A few seconds' awkward silence. Then:

You know, I … I think I remember where it happened.

"Really?" Jodi stops, hefts the rock so she can look at her properly. "Where?"

In the park.

Jodi scowls, considering this.

"When did your train get in again?"

I didn't say. But four thirteen.

"So the sun was going down."

Yeah. People would've noticed if it had happened on a street …

"But not if it happened behind the trees." Lothian has landed on a wall up ahead, looking back at her expectantly, but Jodi barely notices. "And there wouldn't be anyone else in the park either, would there? Just you, because it's so much quicker to cut through the park if you're going that way."

Even with the snow, yeah.

"Yeah. Okay." Jodi breathes out, sends a plume of her breath steaming whitely through the chilly air. "I guess we need to head over there and see what we can find, then. While it's all fresh."

I guess. Tacoma doesn't sound that enthusiastic, but then, that's probably to be expected. Things didn't exactly go great for her the last time she was there. But, uh, won't your family be expecting you? You came home yesterday, you got up, you went out all morning?

"I'll say I … needed some time. Or something." Jodi shakes her head. "Doesn't matter. They'll buy it, what with – what with me, I guess. And you. And everything."

If you're sure, says Tacoma. I just don't want you to – I mean, you know. You just got home. You should …

Jodi waits, but it seems she has nothing else to say.

"If you're not ready," she says, "then that's fine, we can come back later, or―"

No. No, it's fine. Her mind swirls, dark and ominous. Let's go do this.

"All right, sure."

She doesn't move. Down the street, Lothian shuffles impatiently, and a familiar vibration plucks at her nerves: what's wrong?

"Nothing, Lothi," calls Jodi, forcing her aching legs back into motion. "We're just coming."

She glances down at the rock once more as she goes, like she could see Tacoma's face if she tried, but all she sees is the crack, as dim and lifeless as the stone it is.

Three Pines Park is all but abandoned. The long path cutting across it from the southeast to northwest corners has been ploughed at some point in the past few days – people use it to shave ten minutes off the trip through the town centre – but other than that, the whole thing is one smooth, unbroken sheet of white. The snow must have been building up here for a while; the children's playground on the left is almost completely buried, the upper half of the swing frame standing out above the tops of the rockers and roundabouts. On the other side, Jodi sees nothing at all but snow, all the way out to the railing along the King's Road.

It's always a little unnerving, walking through Mahogany after months in Goldenrod. The city wears the recession on its sleeve: boarded-up windows that have gone unrepaired since the war, smokeless chimneys, the homeless people in every other corner whose naked despair roars against Jodi's mind like a cold flame. Mahogany looks so quiet and comfortable by comparison – but Jodi knows well enough that all you have to do is open a door to see the threadbare coats and pinched faces. There's a reason Ella has been painting over and over the same five canvases for the past six months, and why Lorna lets Simone Weller sleep on the upper floor of the library.

Lothian flies on ahead and lands on one of the trees that line the path, before the snow slides off the branch beneath his claws and carries him with it. He hits the ground with an aggrieved shriek and jumps back to his feet, brushing snow out of his fur and trying hard to look like this is exactly where he meant to end up. Jodi hides her smile and lets him have his moment.

She has to slow down here. Not just because the path isn't as clear as the pavements, but because she's been out for a while now, and there's a limit to how much walking around town she can stand. She does try to take exercise and keep her strength up, despite her leg, but given that most of what she eats gets sucked up by her overdeveloped brain, she struggles to take in enough calories to maintain muscle tone. That was one of the problems she ran into on her trainer journey; she didn't have much money for food, and so she just didn't get any stronger, no matter how much hiking she did. By the time they got to Hawthorn she was actually thinner than when they'd left. Tacoma tried to go slow for her, but Jodi could tell that it was a struggle.

"Anywhere along here look familiar?" she asks, holding up the rock. "You can probably come out if you want a better look. There's nobody here."

Cool.

That strange rushing noise, and then there she is, swirling out from the crack in her purple cloud. Tacoma shakes her head a little, the thread connecting her to the rock flexing and stretching as she moves, and sighs.

"Light," she says. "God. This is so much better than peeking through the crack. Feels more like I'm outside." She looks around. "Right, so. I don't think it was here. Definitely came this way, though."

"Okay."

They keep moving, girl and ghost and the noivern up ahead, between thickets of bare branches and bright white snow. Jodi's hand is getting tired; she shifts the rock from her hand into the crook of her arm, making Tacoma float just in front of her shoulder. This close, Jodi can feel a faint warmth emanating from her mist. It's surprising. She always thought ghosts were cold. Then again – if you compress gas, it gets hot, right? So what if you compress a hundred souls into one rock?

Well, what would Jodi know? She's neither a scientist nor a theologian. She isn't even a proper empath, yet. Not certified, anyway.

"Maybe here, actually." Tacoma glares at a huge, skeletal beech. "I think – I definitely came this way. Might have been here? Might have been further on. I know I passed this tree, but I don't remember passing the, you know, Con Wicke's tree?"

Of course Jodi knows. Nobody will ever let Con forget that before he was a cop, he was a teenager with a pocket knife and an insatiable thirst to carve his name in anything that would take it. Over the decades, time and storms have taken out a couple of the benches that once proudly proclaimed that Con Was Here, but the massive oak halfway through the park is still there, and still scarred.

"Sure," says Jodi. "So, somewhere between here and there." She looks down the path. That might be the oak over there, though it's hard to tell from a distance, and without any leaves. There's nothing immediately obvious lying around, no monogrammed handkerchiefs or bloody handprints or anything else incriminating, but then, she supposed she wasn't expecting any. "Keep an eye out, then," she says. "I'll go slow. Slower."

Tacoma doesn't smile. Not that it was all that funny, really, but Jodi did think it might lighten the mood a little. Probably Tacoma isn't really in the mood for jokes.

They walk on in silence, eyes firmly on the path and the snow banks around it, but there's no sign of anything out of the ordinary. Jodi isn't sure what she expected. Tacoma was strangled, right? A bloodless way to go. Sure, she might have struggled, knocked over her bags or kicked the snow, but it's been a couple of days now. There won't be any evidence of that left.

It takes her a minute to realise what she's thinking, and when she does she's shocked. A bloodless way to go. God. What an awful thing. Jodi imagines thick fingers crushing her throat, and has to suppress the urge to glance over her shoulder. No killers here, she reminds herself. And even if there were, Lothian would hear them coming a mile off.

Okay. She really needs to say something now, or she's going to start imagining footsteps on the path behind her.

"So," says Jodi. "D'you, um … have any ideas?"

"About what?"

"About who – who we're looking for."

"Who killed me, you mean," says Tacoma. Her voice is as bitter and black as raw olives; Jodi winces to hear it.

"I was trying to put it nicer than that," she says. "Sorry. But yeah. About that."

"Right." She does not sound or seem apologetic. "Well. No."

"Nothing at all?"

"I don't know, Al― Jodi, sorry." Tacoma turns her face away, embarrassed. "I mean, nobody hates me that much. I think." She sighs. "I guess I don't know that any more, either."

"Sorry," says Jodi. "Just, if you do have any idea …"

"No. I mean, I don't know. I mean – hell, I guess Harry knew where I was, but he couldn't have known I had the rock, right? And I don't see why he'd care, anyway."

"Right," agrees Jodi, wishing she'd left this can of worms unopened. It's too soon for this. She should let Tacoma adjust before she starts throwing stuff like this at her. "Right," she repeats, and lets the silence grow between them.

At least they can be pretty confident the killer won't strike again. There's only one ghost rock in Mahogany, and as far as anyone else knows, it's gone now.

CON WAS HERE, says the oak, coming up on the left. Jodi sighs and glances at Tacoma.

"Okay," she said. "I guess you didn't spot anything either?"

"Nope." Tacoma won't meet her eye. "Thanks for looking, I guess."

"We're not done yet. Lothi!" Further up the path, Lothian turns, bounds back towards her. Jodi feels a bass hum in the marrow of her bones: what, he wants to know, does she need? "Can you do something for me?" An affirmative hum around the nape of her neck. "This whole stretch of path," she explains, "from this tree to the big beech back there. I need you to tell me if there's anything under the snow. No," she continues, in response to the questioning tilt of his head, "anything weird, okay? Not rocks or twigs, something that shouldn't be here. Got it?"

The affirmative hum returns, and Lothian begins to stalk down the path, ears locked together to form a single panel like a radar dish. Every now and then, he pauses to scratch away a layer of snow from the bank at the side of the road and uncover whatever it is he finds, but he doesn't immediately locate anything worth showing Jodi.

She watches him for a moment, then leans against Con's tree to free up her hand to go through her bag.

"Cigarette?" she asks. Tacoma looks uncertain.

"I dunno if I can any more," she says.

"You wanna try anyway?"

Tacoma's face cracks into an unexpected smile.

"Sure," she says. "Just, uh, stick it in there."

Jodi puts one in Tacoma's mouth and one in her own. She's just trying to find her lighter when Tacoma interrupts.

"Uh, hang on, let me get that," she says, and a moment later two tiny purple flames pop briefly into existence at the end of each cigarette, lighting them both.

"Nice!" Jodi takes hers out of her mouth and inspects it. It's glowing purple rather than red, but other than that it seems to be pretty much normal. "So you're getting to grips with your ghostly powers, huh?"

"Yeah, kinda." Tacoma does something that might be called inhaling; a wisp of smoke detaches from her cigarette and swirls around inside her before drifting out in erratic grey puffs. "Not quite beating up a dude with a shadow, but I sure can light a cigarette."

The acid edge in her voice burns Jodi with its touch. She smokes silently for a moment, wondering whether to say something or not, and then Lothian tenses suddenly and she feels the sharp hum of his excitement tingle down her nerves.

"What have you got?" she calls, relieved of the distraction. He makes a squeak without a message, then turns around with something shiny in his mouth.

"Is that …?" Tacoma doesn't finish. With some difficulty, Jodi bends down, and Lothian pushes the shiny thing into her hand.

"It's … a pen," she says, staring at it. An expensive one too, by the look of it – the kind that you inherit, or receive as a gift to mark a special occasion. Blue-black lacquered barrel and cap. Gold clip, gold nib, a little stained with ink. "I mean, it's distinctive," she says, sliding the cap back on. "But I don't know anyone with a pen like this. Do you?"

Tacoma keeps looking at the pen. Something awful is leaking from her mind, so strong and poisonous that Jodi almost chokes on it.

"Tacoma?" she asks, coughing. Her cigarette slips from her mouth into the snow. "Tac― ugh, Tacoma, what's wrong?"

For a long, painful moment, she says nothing, smoke billowing out of her in clouds. When at last she does speak, her voice is smaller and thinner than Jodi has ever heard it before.

"It's Nick's," she says, her cigarette tumbling from her lips to join Jodi's on the ground. "That pen belongs to my uncle."

Tacoma isn't doing well. Jodi had a sense that she wasn't doing well before, but she really isn't doing well now. So she had Lothian clear a park bench of snow, and then sat down there with her, to give her the moment she seems to need.

"How are you feeling?" asks Jodi, after a little while has passed. The question is mostly redundant; she already knows that the initial shock is passing, and now Tacoma is just deeply, painfully sad. But you have to ask anyway. It's just what people do.

"You already fucking know," snaps Tacoma, and then when she sees Jodi flinch she sinks her head down low against the cold slats of the bench. "Sorry," she mutters. "You didn't deserve that."

For a long moment, Jodi can't answer, has to concentrate on fighting the constriction in her chest and throat. Between her own sudden fear and Tacoma's own sorrow, her brain feels like it's going to burst open at the seams.

Lothian puts his claws on the side of the bench and rests his head in her lap, sending soothing vibrations thrumming down her nerves. A second passes, then another, and then, at last, Jodi's throat opens up again.

"It's understandable," she says, in the end. "I'm really sorry, Tacoma."

"You didn't―"

"I mean I'm sorry that this is happening." Jodi hesitates, then reaches out to put her arm around her. Tacoma resists for a second, but then leans in against Jodi's shoulder, mist splashing against her coat. "It's not conclusive," she says, hoping it isn't too soon for this. "Your uncle could've dropped his pen here at any time."

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess."

Long pause. Somewhere a long way away, past the trees and snow and the railing at the edge of the park, a car rumbles down a road.

Nick could have dropped his pen there at any time. He could also have dropped it there when he murdered his niece. It's strange, but until now it just hadn't occurred to Jodi to wonder who did this; she was too busy trying to deal with the fact that it had happened at all. But someone did. Someone dug their fingers into Tacoma's throat and pulled until they turned a living girl into a dead body.

Nick could have …

"His plane didn't get in to Goldenrod till my train got in to Mahogany," says Tacoma suddenly, twitching upright again. "He wasn't … God, he wasn't here."

Her relief courses through Jodi's mind like an avalanche down the mountainside, unstoppable, sweeping all else out of its path. Lothian chirps and pulls away from her, unnerved by the strength of this third-hand emotion, and Jodi lets out a long, shaky breath as he goes. Okay. Okay, great.

"All right," she says, not really hearing herself speak. "All right, that's … I'm glad, Tacoma."

"But then why's the pen here?" Tacoma is animated now, twisting to face her, disc spinning faster and faster in her agitation. "Last time he was here was – I don't even know, summer maybe? And he couldn't have lost it then. He would have been complaining about it, I would have heard, like – he loves that thing. Granddad bought it for him when he graduated. So what's the pen doing here?"

"I don't know." Jodi holds out a calming hand, tries to project conciliatory feelings. Lothian picks up on her efforts and joins in, translating her emotion into his vibes and pulsing it outwards at the world. "I don't know, Tacoma. It's just one clue, we don't – we really don't know enough yet."

"I mean sure. I guess." Tacoma makes a frustrated noise, swaying a little on the thread that connects her to the stone. Had she hands, Jodi thinks, she'd probably be gesturing frantically. "I just … I don't know what to think."

"I know. I don't either."

Some of the energy seems to leave her then; Tacoma closes her eyes for a second, lets the thread pull her back into position by the stone.

"Let's just go back," she says. "We're done here."

"Are you sure?" asks Jodi. "We could … I dunno, really. Look around some more."

Even as she says it, she can hear how inadequate it sounds. Look around some more. Like there's anything else to see here.

"We're done," repeats Tacoma. "C'mon, your family will think you died out here."

Jodi stays sitting there for a while longer, watching the branches sway in the icy breeze. Every so often they creak, as the weight of the shifting snow pulls them a little further out of position.

Out of nowhere, the thought comes to her that there's a murderer out there somewhere, beyond the dappled white and dark, and she shivers with more than the cold. Her family will think she died out here, huh? She did promise she wouldn't stay out too long. It sort of felt like the right thing to do, given that one of the friendly faces of her childhood is apparently not so friendly after all.

"Okay," she says. "Lothi, can you grab those cigarettes we dropped? Better throw 'em out on the way home."

Tacoma looks up at that.

"Your parents know you smoke?" she asks.

Jodi shrugs.

"Probably. I'm not a very good liar." Pause. "Yours?"

Tacoma smiles thinly.

"Nah," she says. "I was always a better liar than you."

"You were," agrees Jodi.

The past falls like snow, piling up in thick drifts around them. How many little secrets have they had between them? Broken windows, illicit cigarettes, stolen beers. One time just before they left for their trainer journey, Victor Orbeck was sent home from school with a split lip and Tacoma was sent home for causing it; nobody could ever get her to say why. But Jodi knew. Victor was the kind of boy who found Jodi's frailty objectionable. And Tacoma was the kind of girl who found her fists were a great way to solve problems.

"I never meant for things to work out this way, you know," says Tacoma. "I was gonna come visit."

She's lying. It's okay. She doesn't know she's doing it.

"You were busy," says Jodi.

"I was an asshole."

"You were busy," repeats Jodi. "You needed those results."

"I made time for other people. Shoulda made time for you too."

It's hard to argue with that. Harder still to explain why it is that Jodi doesn't blame her for it. But she really doesn't. Jodi was – well, she was dead weight. Busted leg, mutant brain, an annoying tendency to know how you feel before you do. Meanwhile, Tacoma was whip smart, the scholarship girl, one of just four from their year to go on to university. Jodi wouldn't have got a place at Goldenrod herself if scoring above fifty on the psychic test didn't get you a guaranteed government scholarship for psionics training. But Tacoma got her place – at Saffron's Yellowbrick University, no less, the best school on the Tohjo peninsula – off the back of her own smarts and hard work. And okay, Jodi didn't know she was going to do this back then, but as she got older she saw more clearly that Tacoma was way out of her league. People like Jodi don't get friends like her.

When it happened, it hurt. It really did. But at least Jodi was in a position to see that it was inevitable. Sooner or later, someone like Tacoma was always going to get tired of someone like her, and it was probably best she make that transition as smooth and easy for her as she could.

"Let's not fight," she says, unwilling to explain and risk a conflict that will make her head feel like it's about to explode. "C'mon. You're right, it's time to go."

She gets up. Lothian, who has so far been hanging back, places the two half-smoked cigarettes into her palm.

"Thank you, Lothi." She puts them in the pocket of her coat and turns to Tacoma. "Is it okay for me to …?"

"Yeah, sure. Go ahead."

She picks Tacoma up and tucks her back into the crook of her arm. Maybe she'll finally grow some muscles, if she carries this rock around much longer.

"Should we leave the pen here?" she asks. "I mean, I don't know if it's evidence or anything."

"Dunno," replies Tacoma. "I just … whatever, just put it back. Nick can get it himself."

"Sure?"

"No. I don't know." She sighs. "Look, it's a crime scene, right? You're not meant to interfere with those. And I mean like we are interfering, but we probably don't want to let the cops know."

"Right. Right, I guess so." Jodi gives the pen back to Lothian. "Put it back where you found it, Lothi."

He reburies it carefully, patting the snowdrift back into place around the pen, and looks up expectantly. Jodi transmits a grateful thought and gets a happy vibe in return.

"I guess I better go back in," says Tacoma unenthusiastically, intruding on their wordless conversation. "Don't wanna get you in any trouble."

Right. Someone went to a lot of effort to make sure the spiritomb rock was out of the way; they won't be pleased to discover that someone's managed to activate it. Jodi would like to say it's nice hanging out with Tacoma, that she doesn't have to disappear till they get out from behind the trees if she doesn't want to, but she can't quite make up her mind whether it'd be kinder to say that or to tell her she can go if she wants.

Tacoma's mind is dark, contradictory. No help from that quarter. In the end, Jodi just smiles awkwardly.

"It's your choice," she says, hoping that Tacoma knows what she means.

She doesn't answer. A moment later, she dwindles and disappears.

Jodi stands there for a few seconds, feeling something she can't quite name. Not quite disappointment, not quite sorrow.

She has to fix this, somehow. Really has to. Tacoma can't go on this way. Is there a way to put her back in her body? Probably not, honestly; Jodi's never heard of a ghost being resurrected, and even if there was, she wouldn't be able to figure it out before the funeral came and Tacoma's body disappeared forever. But she might at least be able to get her out of the rock. When it's safe, when the killer is caught …

Lothian plucks at her nerves and nudges her thigh, eyes turned up to her own.

"Yeah," she sighs, pulling herself together. "One thing at a time, right?"

It's debatable whether he knows what she's asking him, but he says yes all the same. Jodi pats him on the head, and sets off for home.

On the way out of the park, they bump into Gabriella Kendrick coming the other way with her shopping bag hooked over her elbow. She stops for a moment when she sees Jodi, looking puzzled, and then Lothian swoops down between them and the penny drops.

"Oh," she says, eyes wide, mind blank with shock. "I … didn't recognise you."

"Hi, Gabbi." Stay relaxed, Jodi tells herself. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. "It's, uh, it's Jodi now."

"Right." Gabriella blinks. It's a very pretty blink; Gabriella is widely reckoned to be the most beautiful woman in the county, with ice-smooth skin and vibrant auburn hair. This doesn't do much for Jodi's nerves. "Okay, Jodi. Nice, to, uh, see you."

The moment when they could have just said hi and walked on by each other is long past. Now they have to actually talk, and Jodi is certain that Gabriella is exactly as uneasy about this as she is.

At least her wingull isn't with her. Pocket description: his name is Jack, but long years of unintentional training mean that he also answers to 'bastard'. Even Lothian is a little afraid of him, and Jodi always finds his raw hostility kind of overwhelming.

"So did you walk all the way in from the station?" Jodi asks her. Gabriella lives with Sam Spade in a bungalow behind their petrol station, out on the edge of town. Sam has always claimed that Gabriella is her cousin from New Bark, and everyone has always pretended to believe her, with the notable exception of Sam's parents, who are only children and also not on speaking terms with their daughter.

"I did," says Gabriella. "Petrol's expensive, even if you own the station. And I thought I could use the air." She smiles. Jodi can tell she doesn't mean it, but she wants to mean it, and that's even sweeter, in its own way. "What, um, what are you doing out here?"

She's making an effort. Jodi appreciates that. She doesn't ask that people to be cool with her right away, she just asks that they try.

"Me? Uh, same, I guess. Getting some air." Jodi pauses. Can't be any harm in probing, can there? "And … and I figure this is the route Tacoma took," she says, letting her gaze fall a little.

"Oh. Right." Gabriella's smile dwindles and dies. "I'm sorry, A― sorry, Jodi. You two were close, right?"

"We fell out of touch a bit. But … yeah." Jodi sighs. "I miss her." She pauses for a moment, long enough to make Gabriella feel awkward, and then hits her with her best hopeful look. "You haven't heard anything, have you?" she asks. "Or seen anything?"

Now Gabriella looks about as uncomfortable as she really feels. Jodi can't imagine she ever thought she'd be having this conversation with her. Normally they just talk about music; Gabriella used to teach Jodi violin, and she is also one of very few people in Mahogany other than Jodi who like the synth-heavy stuff that's started coming out of the Goldenrod music scene in the past few years. From there to dead friends is a hell of a leap.

"Oh, I don't know," she says. You can hear the New Bark in her voice, in the way she enunciates. Whatever life Gabriella really came from, it sure seems classier than anything in Mahogany. "I mean, there have been all kinds of rumours …"

"Yeah?" Jodi doesn't need to feign her interest now. "What have you heard?"

"Well, Sam says there was a car drove into town that evening that she didn't recognise," replies Gabriella. "Blue Crowne with Kantan plates."

Crowne is a Kantan manufacturer; their cars are far and away the most common on Johtonian roads, mostly because they're cheap. But this wasn't a Johtonian car, clearly. And Jodi can't think of any reason why someone would be driving all the way from Kanto to Mahogany, of all places.

"Kantan plates?" asks Jodi. "There was a stranger in town?"

"Maybe." Gabriella shifts nervously on her feet. "Look, Jodi, it's probably nothing. Sam also said that Hester told her she saw someone driving a creepy black sedan with tinted windows that evening, and Jack Flanagan is telling everyone he meets that he swears he saw someone dragging a body down the alley round the back of Green Street." She sighs. "People are worked up, Jodi. You know?"

"Yeah," says Jodi. "I know." She fiddles with her thumbnail through her glove, trying to look like a thwarted kid. It's not very hard. It's basically what she is, after all. "I just miss her, is all."

Gabriella reaches out, puts a hesitant hand on her arm. Her awkwardness hovers around her like an anxious ghost. She can't be any older than twenty-eight; she probably doesn't feel old enough to be playing the role she's suddenly found herself in.

"I know," she says. "We all do." Pause. Jodi can actually feel the tears hovering behind her eyes. Maybe she's a better liar than she thought. "Why don't you go home, Jodi?" says Gabriella, kindly. "Talk to your family."

Jodi smiles weakly.

"Yeah," she says. "You're probably right. Silly idea, anyway."

Gabriella smiles back.

"Come by the station some time," she says. "Say Sunday? I have this new record I think you'll really like. This German band, Kraftwerk? Never heard of them before, but they're clearly going places."

"What's it like?"

"Think Black Peaches, but more so." The Black Peaches are one of Jodi's favourites from the Goldenrod electronic music scene: this is good news. "Sam hates the record, by the way, keeps telling me to put on some real music, so it'll be nice to prove to her that someone else likes it too."

"Sure," says Jodi. "Sounds good. Sunday, you said?"

"Sunday's good. Or any time, really," says Gabriella. "I'm almost always there, you know that." She seems satisfied now that she's dealt with the situation, that Jodi is going to go and do something more healthy than stalk her dead friend's final steps through snowbound parks. "Anyway," she says, holding out her bag. "I need to get to the shops. See you around, Al― sorry. See you around, Jodi."

"Bye!"

Jodi watches her go for a moment, then turns away and starts to move back down the path towards the street.

Blue Crowne, Kantan plates. A distinctive pen at the scene of the crime. Not much, but it's a start, and it's more than Jodi expected from her first morning as an amateur detective. She thinks about asking Tacoma for her thoughts, but given her mood at the moment that seems a little scary, and in the end she just beckons for Lothian to follow and walks on in silence.

"You were out a while."

"Got talking to Lorna," replies Jodi, closing the living-room door behind her. "And, um, you know. Needed a walk. To … to clear my head."

Her mother nods understandingly.

"Of course, chickadee." She puts a hand on Jodi's arm. "Are you all right?"

What can she say? Tacoma's not dead, she's in my bag and probably listening to this conversation? Yeah, right.

Jodi bites the edge of her lip, the way people say she does when she's upset, and shrugs.

"I can't really believe it," she says.

"Nor can I." Her mother pulls her into a hug, and Jodi leans into it as she would if she really were distressed. "I know it's not easy."

The clock ticks. Jodi closes her eyes, feels tears beading on her lashes. Maybe she is upset after all. Tacoma might not be dead, but she's not herself, and she's hurting in ways that Jodi isn't sure how to deal with. Sure, she knows the theory – it's part of empath training – but it's much harder to apply it to your ex-best friend than to a psy-actor in a practical.

"Okay," she sighs, pulling away. "Okay, you probably have more important things to do."

"What's more important than my eldest daughter?" She smiles, and Jodi's breath catches in her throat: that's her, she's her daughter, how amazing is that? "How is Lorna, anyway?"

"O-okay."

"Yeah? How was she?"

Jodi is about to say that she just asked that question, but then she realises that what her mother really wants to know is how Lorna treated her.

"She was good," she says, giving her a meaningful look. "She put my new name on my library card."

Her mother looks relieved, in a way that makes Jodi feel uncomfortable. It's nothing new to find her parents worrying about her – they've been doing it ever since she wrecked her leg – but this is a different sort of worry, and not something she was expecting. She'd thought that once – if – they accepted her, that would be the end of it: life as normal, just with a different name and nicer clothes. But no. No, they're her parents, and they worry, and now she's given them something else to worry about: will our daughter get the crap kicked out of her by small-town bigots?

"I'm glad," says her mother. "Lorna's always had a good head on her shoulders."

"Yeah," replies Jodi. "She does."

"Did you run into anyone else?"

Jodi hesitates.

"Yeah," she admits, in the end. "A few people. Fergus – Fergus Wright, I mean. Carrie Savage. Couple others."

"And?"

Her mother doesn't seem to know how to ask outright. That's fine. Jodi doesn't know how to answer, either.

"And it was … mostly fine," she says. "Think I might be off Carrie's Christmas card list, though."

"Oh." Her mother's face falls. "Did she …?"

"I dunno, Mum." Jodi sighs. "She just doesn't like it, I guess."

"Jodi, I―"

"It's fine. She's not the first." Jodi tries to block out the pain she can sense coming from her mother, but in her haste she fluffs it and it re-emerges elsewhere in her body as a stabbing sensation in her bad leg. She sits down heavily on the sofa, suppressing the urge to swear, and beckons for Lothian to come over and untense her muscles with his vibes. "In Goldenrod, I … look, I promise I'm okay, Mum. I always have Lothian. And my friends, they look out for me."

She's said too much. Now she'll think that Jodi spends her life afraid of every trivial encounter with every passing stranger, and okay, that's not entirely inaccurate, but Jodi's life isn't all bad. Yes, she's been insulted, shouted at, threatened; yes, she nearly got beaten up once in the Goldenrod Tunnel before Lothian screamed the guy into submission so she could get away. But that doesn't mean this hasn't also been the best damn thing she ever did with her life. She loves being what she is, even if she also hates it. That's just how it works.

"Oh, darling." Her mother steps around Lothian and sits down alongside her, slipping an arm around her shoulders. "I'm sorry. I wish I knew …" She spends a second or two thinking, trying to figure out how to end the sentence, then shrugs. "I wish I knew," she says.

Jodi raises the corner of her mouth, just a little.

"Yeah," she says, resting her head on her mother's shoulder. "I wish I knew too."

Tacoma has probably heard all of this. It's kind of embarrassing, really, the way that having your parents wheel out their affection in front of your friends always is. But not embarrassing enough to make her stop.

"Sarah has pomegranates in at the store," says her mother, after a while. "I saw 'em and thought of you. There are two in the fruit bowl with your names on 'em."

Lothian looks up sharply, eyes alight, and Jodi's half-smile matures into a full one.

"Thanks, Mum," she says. "We'll look forward to those."

She's lucky. Isn't she? Yes. Yes, she's lucky. She really should be grateful, for her mother who loves her, who buys her expensive fruit because she knows that pomegranates are her and Lothian's favourite. For her friend who isn't dead and gone after all. For a world in which even someone as unlikely as her is allowed to exist.

"I have to work this afternoon," says her mother. "Will you be all right by yourself till Ella gets home?"

"Sure." Jodi raises her eyebrows. "Mr Martell can't make it to Monday without someone to write his shopping lists for him?"

"Oh, bosses are like babies, chickadee, you can't leave 'em alone too long or they end up sticking a fork in a plug socket and electrocuting themselves. That's why they invented secretaries in the first place." She gets up and dusts imaginary crumbs off her blouse. "I'm making coffee. You in?"

You in? Nobody else Jodi has ever met says that except her. Like every cup of coffee, every slice of cake, is a little conspiracy. Something to be stolen together.

God, she's glad to be home.

"Yeah," she says. "Thanks."

Her mother leaves. A moment later, Jodi hears the gasjet hiss and the sound of water heating. Lothian looks at her with pleading eyes, and an unmistakeable vibration starts to rumble in her bones: pomegranate?

"You can have one," she says. "The other one's for my breakfast tomorrow, okay?"

He's out the door almost before she's finished speaking, bits of carpet fluff trailing from his claws. There's a thump and a low growl like stones chipping against one another as he collides with Lucille, at her usual post by the kitchen door, and then the sound of something juicy being shredded by three dozen brutally sharp teeth.

"You're cleaning this up, Jodi!" calls her mother.

"Sure, when he's done!" she calls back.

Lothian keeps slurping. The kettle keeps boiling. Jodi leans back in her seat, and shuts her eyes. She can talk to her now. She has the courage.

Tacoma? she asks, but there isn't even the faintest suggestion of an answer.

Chapter Text

CON

Police Chief Connor Wicke will be perfectly honest with you: he's not having a great week.

When was the last time he and his team had to deal with a body? There have been a few disappearances over the past few years, but that's par for the course; Mahogany is isolated, way out here in the middle of a dangerous stretch of forest. It's rare that a year goes by without some passing hiker overestimating their familiarity with the terrain and vanishing into the woods. Occasionally even Mahogany locals go missing. Everyone around here knows the risks, but sometimes you just get unlucky.

But murder? Hell, that just doesn't happen around here. Last time would have to have been six, seven years ago by this point. Con wasn't even Chief at the time. Imagine that. Five years and it feels like he's been doing this all his life.

Five years, and now Tacoma Spearing's dead.

He thinks of her as he drives south back through town, the icy wind seeping through the cracks in the cruiser's floorboards. Tacoma Spearing. Sort of a smartass, sure, but the kid had prospects. Not many people in Mahogany can say that. Johto is in a bad way, with the lingering effects of first the wartime occupation and then the OPEC embargo, and Mahogany has been hit especially hard. Who's building in this economy? Nobody. And that means there isn't much of a market for lumber.

Which means that Tacoma Spearing was one of maybe twenty kids in town who had a serious chance of being employed in five years' time. Or however long it takes to get a degree in doctoring pokémon, anyway.

And now, well. Better make that nineteen kids. Things keep going at this rate and Mahogany's going to bleed to death before the decade's out.

He shakes his head and pulls up outside the Spearing house. No time for wandering minds. Simeon and Dr Ishihara have got Tacoma down to the morgue; Toby is dealing with Aaron Lockwood. That just leaves one job, and it's one that Con refuses to delegate. He's meant to be protecting these people. When something like this happens, it's his face they need to see.

Con looks across at Byrne, in the passenger seat. She raises her eyebrows and looks back.

"All right," he says. "I guess it's time."

They get out, and let Moira out of the back. They turn to face the house.

Con takes a deep breath, removes his hat, and walks up the path to the door.

They know. They know the second he walks in. Lucas Spearing opens the door, already dressed to leave for the mill, and when he sees Con he lets go of the door and totters backwards like someone has set their shoulder to his chest and shoved.

"Who is it?" calls Annie Spearing from the kitchen, over the chatter of the radio, and then when Lucas doesn't answer Con takes him by the shoulder and leads him inside.

"Morning, Annie," he says, as Byrne closes the door quietly behind them. "Everett."

Annie stares.

"Would you like to sit down?" asks Con. "I'm afraid I have some―"

"Is this about Tacoma?" Annie asks, whispers really, and then Con nods and she crumples like a newspaper in a blizzard.

Con breathes in, and out. He manoeuvres Lucas into a chair, helps Annie sit down before she falls. Everett just stares, still as granite.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you that Aaron Lockwood found Tacoma's body in the Rageriver early this morning," says Con. Lucas is clutching his sleeve tightly, fiercely, like he's afraid the tide of his emotion will wash him away if he ever lets go. "Annie, Lucas, I'm so sorry."

Everett's spoon bends slightly in his fist. Little drops of milk spot the table around his hand.

"No," whispers Annie. "No, my … my baby …"

Her grief ages her. She's not so much older than Con, but it's like the tears are wearing new lines in her cheeks, adding decades long before they're due. She speaks again, but Con can no longer make out the words; it's just noise, just a low, painful moan. He stares, paralysed by the way she has so suddenly become something so unlike herself – but fortunately Byrne is here now, edging round him to take Annie's hand.

"I know, Annie, I know." Her other hand is moving back and forth across Annie's shoulders, massaging them as they shake. Everett is still just sitting there, mangled spoon jutting from his rigid fist. "Go get the neighbours, Con," says Byrne in a low voice, glancing up at him. "I'll stay with them till you get back."

He nods, not wanting to speak, not sure if he even can speak in this awful, poisonous atmosphere, and backs slowly out of the room, disentangling his sleeve from Lucas' hand as he goes. Out in the hall, he takes a moment to catch his breath, clenching and unclenching his fists and willing his pulse to slow.

Christ. He'd forgotten what it was like. The way people just stop being people any more, made raw and alien by emotions too big for human bodies. Just a jumbled mess of pain and broken gestures. Clutching hands, choked voices. He recalls the pressure of Lucas' fingers on his arm and shivers.

Moira has been waiting out here, and sensing her partner's distress comes over and rubs herself against his calves. It's a peculiarly feline gesture for a rodent, but it runs in the family; Moira's grandmother, Con's original partner on his trainer journey, did it too.

"Thanks, buddy," he says, bending to scratch between her ears. "C'mon. Better get the backup in and call the mill. Lucas isn't coming in today."

On his way out, he makes the mistake of looking back while closing the front door, and sees Everett still staring at him, still crushing the spoon in his fingers. He is crying silently, motionlessly, and Con turns away with a sick guilt beginning to fester in his gut.

Had to be done, he reminds himself. Had to be done.

It really doesn't make him feel much better.

"Con." Dr Ishihara wastes no time: the second he steps out of the lift, there she is, stepping forward to greet him. "How were they?"

He shakes his head.

"It's bad, doc. It's bad."

She sighs.

"It always is, Con." She gestures at the big swing doors at the end of the hall. "Come on. Through here."

Con was supposed to bring Lucas or Annie along, to ID the body for the paperwork, but in the end neither of them were in any state to leave their seats, let alone the house. Byrne said she'd bring one of the family along later. Con is grateful; he's good at his job, and he dislikes backing out of difficult situations, but he's really not the right person for this particular task.

The morgue is dim and cold, made colder by Ishihara's froslass, sorting through her partner's files on a side table. She came over with Ishihara from Japan during the Second World War, when the two of them were nurses attached to the medical corps, but unlike the rest of the occupying forces they never went home afterwards. Neither have ever explained why, but after thirty years people have stopped second-guessing them. They're Mahogany people now.

Tacoma is lying on a table under a sheet. Under the cold electric light of the morgue, she looks even less alive than she did lying on the riverbank; it brings out the grey in her skin and the blue tracery of veins in her temples. Con is glad that her eyes are closed. He's seen corpses before, but he doesn't like it when they see him back. Something accusatory about the way they look at you.

"What have you got for me?" he asks, transferring his attention to Ishihara's froslass. She says something incomprehensible in her thin, musical voice and hands a file to her partner.

"For a start, she wasn't strangled," says Ishihara, opening it. "Not while she was alive, anyway." She pulls back the sheet and turns Tacoma onto her side with a dispassionate professionalism that Con finds faintly unsettling. "Do you see this burn here, on the nape of the neck?"

"Mm. Yeah." There's a star of discoloured tissue just above the knob where spine meets neck, long red branches forking away across Tacoma's shoulders. Obscured by the bruising, but only partly. Very distinctive, if you know these things, and as a man with a raichu Con has seen more than his fair share of electrical injuries. "Lightning?" he asks, and Ishihara nods.

"Directed electrical discharge," she says. "Some sort of electric-type move – precise, surgical. From how tightly focused it is, I'd suggest a charge beam. Other moves tend to arc more. Messier."

Con winces.

"Nasty way to go," he says.

"Relatively quick," replies Ishihara, catching his eye. "I don't think she suffered, Con."

A pause. Her calm has cracked slightly; she clears her throat and sets her face again.

"As for the contusions around her neck," she continues, lifting Tacoma's chin, "the pattern indicates one pair of gloved hands."

"Fibres?" He knows the answer before he asks, but it slips out anyway. Looking at Ishihara handle the corpse like this is getting to him.

She shakes her head.

"She was in the river all night, Con. And wearing gloves, too. Nothing under the fingernails or I'd have sent it to the forensics team in Ecruteak." Back to Tacoma, rotating the neck now to show the shape of the bruising. "You see where the fingers were? She was grabbed from behind. That means she wasn't choked to stop her crying out while the electrocution was being performed; the attacker would have been in the way of the shot."

"Afterwards?" Con tenses. "You think someone was trying to hide their tracks?"

"Not well, clearly." Ishihara indicates the burn again. "The burn scar was still there."

"Amateur job, then. This wasn't planned." Con frowns, thinking hard. "She was jumped on her way home, somewhere she wouldn't be seen. Someone zaps her in the back, hard enough to kill right away, and then they panic. Not a lot of electric-types in town, are there? And they know the Chief of Police knows lightning burns when he sees them. So they try and cover it up by making it look like she was strangled before they get her out of town and dump her in the river."

"That would be my assessment, yes." Ishihara lowers Tacoma back into place on the table and takes up her arm. "I'd also like to draw your attention to these."

She holds it out, indicating with her gloved hand a series of uneven wounds in the flesh of Tacoma's right forearm. Con looks at them without comprehension.

"Someone attack her?" he asks hesitantly. "And what, she held up her arm to defend her face, or …?"

Ishihara shakes her head.

"No, Con. Look: these here have scarred over. These are still pink, and this one here only closed in the last few days. Very fine cuts – an extremely sharp knife, or perhaps a razor blade. Made over the course of the past year; the oldest are from perhaps nine months ago."

"Abuse, then? Did she have a boyfriend at uni, or―?"

"Con, these injuries are consistent with self-harm," says Ishihara. "One arm, controlled, same pattern. Clean cuts."

Con realises he's staring now, but he can't help it.

"She did this to herself?" he asks.

"Yes." Ishihara hesitates. "It would seem Tacoma was not as happy as her parents thought."

"But doc, that's … why would she do a thing like that?"

"I can't tell you that," she replies. "But I would speculate that she was not fond of herself."

"Christ." Con looks again at the scars: one, two, three, five, ten … that's a lot of hate, right there. He can't pretend to understand it, but he's going to have to try. Tacoma needs justice. That means she needs a cop in her corner who knows her properly.

"It is … unpleasant, yes," agrees Ishihara.

"You're telling me." He sighs. "You got an estimated time of death for me, doc?"

"Of course." She returns Tacoma's arm to the table and pulls the sheet back up to her neck. It's a gentle gesture, almost maternal; the steel has left her eyes now. Con is surprised for a moment – she's always so professional – but then he remembers: she would have delivered Tacoma, wouldn't she? Brought her into this world, and now seeing her out. The last thing any doctor ever hopes for. "Time of death …"

She stands there for a moment, staring at Tacoma. She does not seem to realise she has stopped speaking until her froslass lays a hand on her shoulder, and then she starts and returns her attention to the file.

"I would estimate somewhere between three thirty and five thirty PM," she says. "Did you speak to Harry?"

"Yeah. Her train arrived at four thirteen, six minutes late. He said he didn't have Nikole out to help her with the bags, so I'm guessing it would have been a good forty, forty-five minutes' walk back home with all that luggage."

"That's it, then."

The overhead light hums to itself. Con and Ishihara stare.

"Nineteen," says Ishihara, after a while. "She was going to be a doctor."

"I know," says Con. "I know."

The next morning, as the sun struggles slowly upwards through the black cage of the pine branches, Con sits at one end of the conference table at the Police Department and surveys the room. Everyone's here: Byrne, Simeon, Toby, Ishihara, Jackie, all nursing their cups of coffee and the pages of their reports. Their partners are variously coiled, sitting or hovering nearby – at a polite distance, in the case of Ishihara's froslass; she tends to unnerve the other pokémon.

"All right, well, good morning, everyone," says Con. Beneath the table, Moira nuzzles his calf in a tiny gesture of support. "Time to put together what we've got. Doc, if you'd like to run through the medical report for us?"

"Of course, Con." She goes through the details in her clipped, accented Johtoni, without wasting a single word. Electrocution, strangulation, estimated time of death. Con notes the reactions: Byrne leaning forwards with interest, probably already making a mental list of locals with electric-type partners; a wince of sympathy from Toby, always the people person; a look of shock from Simeon, never quite ready to hear gory details. Jackie, eyes wide. Like a play of themselves.

"Thank you, doc," he says, when Ishihara is done. "Any questions?"

"Yeah." Byrne glances at him before turning to Ishihara. "Can you draw any conclusions about what kind of pokémon we're looking for here? Definitely an electric-type, or could it be something else with an electric move?"

"Difficult to be certain," replies Ishihara. "The power suggests an electric-type – it is harder to kill with one blow than it seems, and it pierced straight through the hood of her coat – but there is no reason why another pokémon could not have performed the move. But unless it was a species that is naturally very familiar with electromagnetic manipulation, it would have to have been highly trained in the use of the move concerned."

"So probably an electric-type," says Byrne. "That's something to go on, at least. We pool our knowledge, we should be able to cover most electric-types in town, start checking for motives and alibis."

"I'll leave that in your hands then, Byrne." She nods. "Okay. Toby? What did you get from Aaron?"

"Not much," he replies. "He was out on one of those early morning walks he takes. You know Aaron. Happiest when there's nobody around but him and Steph."

"Yeah, that's Aaron. Anything else?"

"Nope. He just paused by the riverbank and saw the body floating by. Got stuck on some ice and he hooked it with a branch."

Figures. Con wasn't expecting anything much. Aaron does have an electabuzz, and presumably they can use charge beam, but he can't think of a reason why he'd want to kill Tacoma. Sure, he probably didn't like her, but Aaron doesn't like anybody, himself included.

"That it?"

"Yep."

"All right, makes sense. Byrne, what have we learned from Lucas and Annie?"

She clicks her tongue.

"They're in a bad way, Con; they weren't making all that much sense. Best I can tell, both of them were sure Tacoma said she'd be home by five, five thirty on Wednesday. She called them from Goldenrod when she got off the overnight train from Saffron to let 'em know what time to expect her. Both of them were working, neither were around to pick her up."

"Everett?"

"Hasn't got his licence yet, definitely can't handle the winter roads." Byrne shakes her head. "Poor kid hasn't said a word since yesterday morning, but I called Sarah and it seems like he was working that day too."

Still no licence? Maybe some people just don't have a head for cars. Con supposes it's probably safer that way. Most cars in Johto are ageing Kantan models from the fifties and sixties, back when they used to make the interiors out of plywood and plastic foam. The police department's three cruisers are among the sturdiest cars in town, and Con's still managed to put his foot straight through the floorboards on more than one occasion.

"All right," he says. "What about Nick?"

"Phoenix? Annie's brother?"

"Yeah." Con frowns. "I don't think he was up yet when we went round yesterday. Long flight the day before, I believe."

"That's right," says Byrne. "Alola." Con whistles. "Not a holiday, Chief. He's a researcher at Yellowbrick in Saffron, currently on sabbatical. He went to Alola to visit a new lab that's opened up there and consult with some of the scientists there in a city called … Heahea, I think."

"And when did he get back?" Nick has a magneton, Con is pretty sure. That alone doesn't mean he killed his niece, but it makes him one of relatively few people who could have done.

"About one o'clock. His plane landed at four fifteen and he drove back."

"Long drive," notes Con. "There a reason he didn't take the train?"

Byrne shrugs.

"Didn't say."

Hm. There's something there worth investigating. Who drives from the airport with petrol as dear as it is? Con isn't sure what the pay is for a researcher, but it can't be that good.

"Okay," he says. "Is that all we've got?"

"Yes, I think so." Byrne hesitates. "I didn't ask them much about Tacoma – you know, why she might have been killed, any enemies, that kind of thing. Didn't seem like the right time. I'd recommend stopping by again today to dig a little deeper."

"Good work." He stands up and indicates the rough map of town that Simeon drew for him on the blackboard. "Putting together what we know, then. Tacoma starts here, at the train station, and heads here, towards her house on Long Avenue. In between these two points, someone kills her with a lightning bolt, then tries incompetently to cover it up. Yes, Sim?"

"Electric-type moves aren't exactly subtle," he says. "Are we sure it happened in town? She wasn't abducted en route and taken somewhere else to be killed?"

"Good point. We don't know that, no. But either way, someone definitely jumped her in the middle of town. Now, what I'm thinking is that Tacoma went this way; she had heavy bags and her partner wasn't helping her carry them, for whatever reason. She'd want to take the quickest route she possibly could."

"Through the park?"

"Right." Con taps the stick of chalk on the path through Three Pines. "I guess you can see where I'm going with this, yeah?"

"The middle of the park is pretty quiet," says Toby. "Screened by the trees, isolated – someone might see a flash, but only for a second."

"Snow would deaden the sound, too," adds Byrne.

"It would," agrees Con. "And if Tacoma was killed in town, and if she did die as quickly as you say, doc, she wouldn't have had a chance to cry out. Say you parked at one end of the path, then you came up behind her as she walked. You zap her in the back of the head, then you take her and her luggage back down to the car and drive on out of town."

"Sounds risky," says Toby. "If anyone happened to pass by …"

"You did say it wasn't a competent job, Chief," points out Byrne.

"I did," he says. "So. Byrne, you get on that list of electric-types, start making enquiries – I know Pryce Aske on Tenarrow Road does trainer tutoring; you could see if he can fill in any gaps for you. Simeon, I want you to ask around the streets either end of the path through Three Pines, see if anyone saw anything – Tacoma entering the park, someone following, any suspicious vehicles or activity. Whether he took her dead or alive, the killer has to have got her out of town somehow. Talk to Harry, too. He was the last one who saw her alive."

What else? Come on, Con. You remember how to run a murder investigation. You do.

"Dr Ishihara," he says, voice slow with thought. "You're still waiting on toxicology?"

"Yes. I'll let you know when they fax the results through."

"Please do. Not sure I'm expecting anything, but it'll be good to know as much as we can." Okay. That's everything. "In which case, I think we're done here," he says. "Toby, you're with me. Let's check in with the Spearings, see if there's anything more they can tell us about Tacoma, and then let's get down to the park." There's something else, something he meant to― right, of course. "Jackie," he says. "I want you to call the mayor's office. I'm thinking a dusk curfew for the kids, just till this gets wrapped up. I know, they all have pokémon, but Tacoma's partner's one of the toughest in town, and our guy got to her all the same."

"Sure, Chief," says Jackie, making a note on her pad. "You have a statement about it you want me to release, or …?"

He shakes his head.

"Not yet; I'll write up something formal later today. When you're done with Town Hall, stay on the phones. Keep us all connected."

He is relieved to find he sounds like a man in charge of the situation, even to himself. He might not be able to get the sight of Tacoma out of his head, or the feeling of Lucas' hand on his arm, but at least he can do his job right.

"Everyone know what they're doing?" The line of heads ripples with nods. "All right. If you find anything, call in, and Jackie will pass the message on." He claps his hands together in what he hopes is a decisive manner. "Let's get moving, people."

The cruiser rattles through the streets, engine coughing in the cold winter air. In the back, Moira and Carson, Toby's growlithe, shove at each other in an attempt to secure the most seat space.

"Behave yourselves back there, or you're walking," calls Con, without taking his eyes off the road. Moira settles down; Carson simply takes advantage to push her further out of the way. She doesn't push back, though, and that seems to be the end of it.

"Like kids," says Toby, shaking his head. "Ain't that right, Chief?"

"Sure is, Toby."

They drive for a few minutes in silence. Long Avenue is still a little way off. Neither are looking forward to it. They called ahead, and the Spearings do seem to be doing slightly better today, but this still isn't going to be easy. It's why Toby's here. He's always had a way with people that Con just can't match.

"You heard about Alex Ortega?" he asks, as Con negotiates the tricky corner by the bank.

"The little psychic kid? What about him?"

"Came back from university in Goldenrod yesterday," says Toby. "Wearing a dress and asking his parents to call him Jodi."

Con blinks. He spent what little free time he had yesterday at home, unwilling to go out and walk into a conversation about the dead girl currently haunting his thoughts, but it seems he missed some serious gossip.

"What? Really?"

"Yeah. 'S true." Toby grins at the look on his face. "Surprised? I guess I was, when I heard. But it makes sense. Always had him figured for a faggot, you know?"

"No, I don't know." Con scowls. It's not that he disagrees, but something about Toby's glee seems vaguely unsavoury. "He's a kid. Never really had anything to do with him."

"Oh, well, nor have I, Chief, nor have I." His reply comes just a little too quickly to be entirely natural. "My nephew Victor used to be in his class at school."

"Right." They pass the general store and slow to a halt at a red light. Sarah crosses the road and waves as she sees the faces through the window; Con raises a hand in return. "'Jodi', huh?" He shakes his head. "Jesus. Must be rough on León and Michelle."

"Well, I dunno what they expected, letting the government send him to school in Goldenrod. You know what they're like in the city."

Con gives him a look.

"Do I?"

"Yeah, you know. Full of deviants and perverts."

Green light. Con takes the car forward again in a cloud of acidic smoke.

"When was the last time you went to this … hotbed of deviancy, Toby?" he asks, trying not to smile.

"Oh, I've never been," says Toby. "But you know, I read the papers."

"Sure," says Con. "Okay, Toby."

It is messed-up about Alex, though. Con isn't a father, thank God – the closest he's ever come to monogamy is a decade-long secret crush on Gabriella Kendrick – but he can imagine what it'd be like. Your only son comes home and says he doesn't want to be your son any more. Some grotesque drag queen bullshit. If it's true – and Con thinks it probably is; the Mahogany gossips aren't actually imaginative enough to come up with something like that – then he hopes León manages to sort him out. The kid's psychic, right? Maybe he just read too many girls' minds and got confused about which thoughts were his. Or something.

"Speaking of Alex," says Con, "he hung out with Tacoma, didn't he?"

"Ah, I know what you're thinking, Chief, but I don't think he's got any answers for us."

"Why not?"

"They haven't hung out in years. You remember he smashed up his leg on his trainer journey? He came home, Tacoma kept going. Haven't spoken since."

"Your nephew tell you all this, too?" Con is slightly concerned about how much Toby seems to know about the lives of these children. A man in his thirties, he feels, should probably have other things on his mind.

"Long time ago," he replies. "He used to be stuck on all the politics, back in high school."

"Right," says Con. He sees the sign for Long Avenue up ahead: time to put the crazy kid to one side for a moment. "Right," he says again. "Serious business now, Toby. I'll need your help on this."

"Sure thing, Chief." Toby sighs. "I hope they're okay."

"So do I, Toby. So do I."

He takes them around the corner and pulls over outside the house. Moira and Carson tense up in the back, picking up on the change in the atmosphere.

"All right." Con refuses to hesitate, refuses to let himself back away from this. It's his job, goddamn it. This is what being the public face of the Police Department means. "Let's get this over with."

They get out, the slam of the doors like gunshots in the quiet. Con runs his tongue over lips dried out by more than the cold.

Okay, he thinks. Time to be the Police Chief again.

Electric-types, interviews, crime scene investigation. Little by little, they make progress. Some digging around in the park turns up an expensive pen, which, when shown to the Spearings, turns out not to belong to Tacoma but rather to her uncle, Nick. He is surprised to see it, claims to have lost it some time ago. Con wonders whether this is the surprise of someone confronted with evidence of their misdeeds or the surprise of someone suddenly reunited with something they thought lost. Either way, there's definitely something odd about it. Why was the pen there?

I don't know, said Nick. I lost this last time I was in town, back in October. Maybe Tacoma had it. But why would she have it?

I don't know either, said Con. Why did you drive to the airport and back instead of taking the train?

And Nick looked nervous and said he had no reason, really, he just felt like driving; and Con kept his face neutral and said right, of course.

So: a question mark there. Question marks, too, about the car that people in the area heard – but didn't see – just after sundown, and about the apparently blameless life that Tacoma led, if her parents are to be believed. No enemies, universally liked, according to them. Which fits with Con's theory that this wasn't premeditated, but leaves everyone at the station wondering why exactly this happened in the first place. Killing Tacoma was important enough that someone risked doing it in the middle of town, just to make sure she was dead before she got home.

Con still has no answers. He asks Byrne for updates, puts Simeon in charge of organising a team to search for Tacoma's luggage upriver, and sits at his desk sifting through what feels like an ocean of pointless information. The toxicology report, for instance. Ishihara brings it round herself – the medical centre has the only fax machine in town since the one at the police station broke – and Con reads it through twice before he actually takes in any of the words, and a third before he realises it isn't relevant. Apparently Tacoma liked her weed: okay, so does every other student on the Tohjo peninsula, and probably the planet.

Byrne's report on local electric-types comes a little after noon, when Con is staring blankly at the notes he made during that morning's interview with the Spearings and feeling like his head is about to crumble into ash. He doesn't hear her knock; the first he knows of her approach is when she calls out.

"Chief?" Her words seem to come from the top of a deep, deep well. Con blinks and struggles slowly upwards towards the surface. "Chief?" Byrne looks a little uncertain. "Sorry, I knocked but you didn't answer, so―"

"It's fine," he interrupts. "What have you got, Byrne?"

"Pryce and I put our heads together and came up with a list of people to check out," she says. "Looks like there are about thirty electric-types in town, of which maybe ten seem like people we should check up on, and … Chief, are you all right?"

"Fine, Byrne." How long has he been holding this position? Con straightens up and feels his back protest at the sudden movement. Oof. Definitely been hunched like that for a while. "Just … going over what we've got."

Byrne looks less than convinced.

"Permission to speak freely, Chief?"

He sighs.

"Okay, sure."

"I think you might benefit from taking a walk. No, hear me out," she says, raising a hand to forestall argument. "Just five minutes. Get some air. This case is gonna kill you if you let it."

Con gives her a hard look.

"I don't know what you mean," he says. "I'm fine, Byrne―"

"Someone's dead on our watch," she replies. "A kid, Con. None of us are fine. I know that."

Con puts off answering for as long as he can, but he knows when he's beaten. This is why he hired Byrne in the first place. Toby and Simeon were a little uneasy about having a woman on the force at first, but Con has always believed in advancement by merit, and Byrne is just too good to not be part of the team.

"All right," he says grudgingly. "Leave your report there, I'll … take a look when I get back."

"Will do, Chief," she says, flashing him a smile, and leaves him putting on his coat. He stops in at the front desk to ask Jackie if anyone has come up with anything (they haven't) and heads out to make a circuit around the block.

The air is so cold it prickles going down and makes him cough. Con gasps, shivers a little, and feels something click back into alignment deep inside his brain. Byrne was right. He did need to get out of that room. There's only so long you can sit and breathe in your own sense of failure before you start to suffocate.

And it isn't even like they have failed, yet. It's early days, and this is a weird case. Sooner or later they'll find Tacoma's luggage, and sooner or later one of the electric-types in town will turn out to be the one, and sooner or later, the pieces will start to fall into place. They will.

But still, he thinks, as he crunches his way past the firing range, Moira scampering along at his heels. He screwed up. No matter which way you slice it, you're still left with a dead girl, a broken family and a town in shock. This isn't Goldenrod, isn't the kind of place where lives are just statistics. These things matter here in Mahogany. In Con's town, which he's meant to be protecting, and which instead he's …

"Goddamn it, Con," he mutters, clenching his fist in his pocket. "Get a grip."

He takes a left and stomps along under the trees that lean in over the station car park, feeling stupid. He has to get a handle on this. If he's going to do his job right, if he's going to put this one to rest, he needs to stay sharp and not wallow. A man has to stand firm. A man with the town on his shoulders, all the more so.

Above him, spearow burst suddenly from the upper reaches of a pine tree, scattering in all directions with a series of shrieks and rattling feathers. Con jumps and looks up to see the distinctive belly-and-blades silhouette of a skarmory glide by overhead. It unnerves him. You never see these things in summer. Only in winter, when pickings in the mountains are at their slimmest, do they get desperate enough to come down here.

"Keep flying," he murmurs, watching it go. "I don't have time to deal with your bullshit."

Last time a skarmory came down it didn't hurt anyone, but it did take a good few bites out of a cruiser before everyone got together to chase it off. Damn things are nearly as hungry for metal as for meat.

At his side, Moira shrinks uneasily against the ground, tail lashing. Raichu are less afraid of aerial predators than most, with their ability to thunderbolt a flying-type at fifty paces, but Moira is six now, ancient for a raichu, and starting to forget her strength with age. Con bends down and scratches between her ears.

"You'll be all right," he says. "He'll bugger off in a minute."

Sure enough, the shadow changes direction and disappears off to the west, over the treeline. Moira stays tense for a few seconds longer, then perks up and scurries on ahead. Con has to smile.

"Wish I could forget my troubles that easy," he remarks. "C'mon, then."

Left again, and again, and back around the edge of the station to the front door. At the desk, Jackie looks up from her typewriter and smiles.

"Feeling better, Chief?"

"A little," he admits. "Anything turn up while I was out?"

"I got a call from Dean Jackson," she says. "Tacoma's kangaskhan just passed out on his lawn."

According to Dr Ishihara, Nikole will be fine soon. She's running a high fever – a cold that got out of hand, perhaps – and the theory goes that when she finally broke her way out of her poké ball and set off to try and find her partner, she got lost in her fear and confusion and forgot to find water. Right now, she's shivering under a blanket in the pokémon wing of the medical centre with an IV in her massive arm, but Ishihara expects her to be ready to go home very soon.

Another thing Con isn't looking forward to. Bringing Nikole home will hit the Spearings even harder, and trying to explain to pokémon that their partners aren't coming back is always difficult. Con remembers the machamp that survived his grandmother, the pain he had no way of speaking. The poor thing lay down and died five days later. Just willed himself off the mortal coil.

Today, however, the morning after she found her way back into town, Nikole is still in the medical centre. And that means Con has a potential witness on his hands.

Obviously, there are a few problems with this. For one thing, Nikole must have been in her ball at the time of the murder, or else the murderer would almost certainly have ended up being the victim. Still, she might have heard something, and if her route through the woods can be traced, they might be able to find Tacoma's luggage and look for clues there. Toby has Carson trying to sniff out her trail, but with last night's snowfall it's proving difficult.

Which is why, on this cold, clear Saturday morning, Con and Simeon are driving down to the Ortega household.

He could call up the Ecruteak Police Department and ask them to send their psy officer over. This is definitely an option. But he has a hunch about what kind of evidence might be lurking in Nikole's head, and if he's right, it's something he'd rather keep within the town. There are certain things in Mahogany that outsiders just don't get.

"You, uh, heard about Alex?" asks Con. The silence in the car is starting to get to him. He was already nervous about this. Sitting and stewing is only making it worse.

"Yeah." Simeon glances at him. "How d'you want to play this, Chief? I mean, we need his help."

Con shrugs. He's been thinking about this himself, and he really doesn't have much of an idea.

"I guess we'll speak to León and take our lead from him," he says. "Look, he can't refuse to do it. He's Tacoma's friend, right? He'll want to see justice done."

"I suppose you're right." Simeon clears his throat. "Just, uh … well, I dunno. Guess I don't know how to feel about all this."

"You and me both, Sim. You and me both."

They park and get out, breath steaming before them. There's no one else to let out; on this occasion, Moira and Simeon's furret are in their balls. Today, the back seat is reserved for Alex.

A brief exchange of looks. Simeon raises his eyebrows in an up to you sort of way.

Con sighs, and knocks on the door.

Pause. Footsteps. And then―

"Con," says Michelle, looking surprised. "Morning."

"Morning, Michelle." Tight, anxious smile. "May we come in?"

"Sure, of course." She steps aside and they enter, Simeon nodding a greeting at Michelle as he passes. Con can see León watching from the kitchen doorway, coming out now with a wary look on his face.

"Con, Simeon." He shakes their hands. "What's the problem?"

All right. Moment of truth.

"Not a problem, León, more something you can help us with." Someone's turning pages in the next room. Is that Alex? A dozen lurid images flicker through Con's brain in quick succession and he swallows hard, trying to banish them. "You've probably heard that Tacoma's kangaskhan turned up yesterday?"

"Yeah, I heard." León folds his arms. You're always aware, when he does that, of just how big his forearms are. He might have moved up from the production line now, but he still has those lumberjack muscles. "Good sign, I guess."

"It is," agrees Con. "She might be a witness – could be really helpful. But in order to know what she knows, we're going to need a psychic."

A sudden silence. León's eyes flick over to Michelle's and back again. Her face tenses, almost imperceptibly.

"You want Jodi's help," she says, and Con has to work hard to squash his shock. They're actually going along with this? Why would you even do that? If someone goes crazy and claims little green men are controlling his thoughts through the radio, you don't help him make a tinfoil hat, you get him to a doctor.

"Y-yeah," he says, doing his best to sound natural and aware that he isn't succeeding. "Yeah, we do."

Michelle glances at a door to their left.

"Okay," she says, though she doesn't sound very certain. "Well, you'll have to ask her yourself."

She leads them through into the living-room, a cosy little space dominated by one of Ella's landscapes, a view of the mountains so vivid that Con can practically feel the icy wind rolling off the slopes. Faded curtains, twelve-inch TV that Con's Kantan cousins would think of as ancient and which in Johto is considered cutting-edge – and there, reclining on the sofa with a book and a cup of coffee, Alex.

He stares. There isn't even any question of him being able to hide it. That is Alex, yes, but it's also … Christ. In his tight sweater and flowing skirt, he looks like a high school girl. A pretty one. Con sees Alex Ortega, and he sees a pretty girl, and somewhere in his head the two crash into one another with a sickening thud.

Alex blinks and looks up sharply from his book. Eyeshadow, notes Con. And mascara. Con can barely hold his gaze. There's something wrong about this. A boy has no business doing a thing like that, making a man look at him as if he were a woman. It's underhanded. Vicious.

"Oh," says Alex, grabbing his cane and climbing stiffly to his feet. "Chief Wicke. Hi."

His noivern uncurls from in front of the hearth and glares suspiciously at the visitors, planting his claws and unfolding his wings a little to look bigger. Con does his best not to be intimidated. As far as he knows, Lothian is harmless, but Con's never been good with dragons. Or bats.

"H-hi," he says, focusing on Alex. "Uh … how are you?"

"Okay." He smiles nervously. It is beautiful in a way that makes Con feel dirty to have witnessed. "How are you?"

"All right." Obvious lie. Both of them pretend it isn't.

"Good." Alex fidgets a little with his thumb. "And, uh, and you, Mr Brennan?"

"Oh, me?" asks Simeon, startled. "Uh, fine, fine."

A long pause. Con tries unsuccessfully to stop staring; Alex looks anxiously from him to Simeon and back again.

"Con wanted to ask for your help with something," says León, after a while. "Right, Con?"

"Right," he says, glad of the prompt. "That's right, Al― Jodi, I wanted to ask if we could borrow your psychic powers for something."

"Yeah?" asks Alex. "Is this to do with Tacoma?"

"It is. You've probably heard that Nikole turned up?" He nods. "Well, we need to know what she saw," Con continues. "Or heard. Anything at all, you know, it'd be really helpful."

"You want me to try reading her mind?"

"If you could."

Alex shrugs.

"I can try. It's … well, normally I can only read feelings, not thoughts, but I have some training and some history with Nikki, so I might be able to get something."

"So you'll give it a go?" asks Con.

"Yeah. I mean, it's …" Alex sighs. "It's Tacoma, right? So. I'll try."

Just like Con thought. Although he's no longer sure whether or not he wants the help. A large part of him wants to be as far away from Alex as possible. Looking at him, hearing that voice coming from that face, is much more unsettling than he expected.

Maybe he should just call Ecruteak after all.

"Are you sure?" asks Michelle, stepping forward and laying a hand on his arm. Con is surprised at the gesture, although he supposes that maybe he shouldn't be. She clearly still loves the kid, despite the crazy. "You know you don't have to …"

"Mum. It's Tacoma."

Michelle hovers at his side for a moment, looking like she might argue, but then she sighs and squeezes his arm.

"All right, chickadee," she says. "I guess you got to do what you got to do. But if you can't get nothing, don't force it, okay?"

"Mum," protests Alex. "It's fine. Really."

"All right, all right. But Con, you don't let her push herself too hard, you hear?"

"I'll do my best, Michelle," he promises. "Are you able to come down to the medical centre with us now, Alex?"

Alex stares at him for a full five seconds before Con realises his mistake.

"Uh, shoot, sorry," he says, feeling the blood rush to his cheeks. "I mean, Jodi."

Con isn't sure he's ever seen a smile this obviously fake.

"Sure," says Alex. "No worries, I get it. It's new and all." He knocks back the last of his coffee and nudges Lothian out of the way with his foot. "Let me get my stuff and I'll be right back."

He leaves the room, Lothian crawling after him and glaring suspiciously at Con as he goes. Michelle drifts over to León and the two of them look at Con and Simeon as if daring them to say anything.

They do not say anything. Nor do Michelle or León. The four of them stand there in this awkward silence until Alex returns, wearing a woman's coat and carrying a handbag.

"Okay," he says. "Lothi and I are ready now."

Con smiles. It might just be as fake as Alex's. What are the odds? Two record-breakers in one morning.

"Great," he says. "Let's go."

The drive to the centre has never been so long. Con makes a token attempt at conversation, but pretty soon the well dries up and the four of them sit there collectively willing the experience to be over. When they finally arrive, Alex gets out of the car as fast as someone with his leg can, and Con isn't far behind.

"All right," he says, as Lothian disentangles his wing from the car door. "This way, Jodi."

The name tastes like ash in his mouth. It makes him sound like he's giving this bullshit his seal of approval. But there's no other choice, so Con bears it and ushers Alex along to the ward.

Injured pokémon are cared for in the east wing, although calling it a wing is a little grandiose; the centre isn't a big building in the first place, and given that Mahogany isn't much of a training town, there's not a lot of space devoted to pokémon treatment. They go down one short corridor and through one door, and that's the journey over with: there's the pokémon ward. Six padded steel slabs, one occupied.

"Nikki," murmurs Alex, staring. Must've been a while since he last saw her, Con figures. She's definitely a hell of a sight. He always forgets how big kangaskhan are; she barely fits on the table, let alone under her blanket. "She's sleeping?"

"Sedated," says Ishihara, emerging from somewhere and nearly giving Con a heart attack. Sometimes people grow to be like their pokémon; in Ishihara's case, that seems to have manifested as an unnervingly silent step and a penchant for sudden appearances. "She didn't like her IV." She looks at Alex. Ishihara isn't the kind of person who smiles, but something about her eyes suggests to Con that she might be trying to do it right now. "Hello, Jodi."

Con watches her closely, but can't tell if she's saying the way he does or the way Michelle does; Ishihara's face has always been a closed book. It bothers him. Ishihara of all people should be sensible enough to know crazy when she sees it. That she might not be is definitely something to worry about.

"Dr Ishihara," replies Alex, looking nervous. "Is Nikki gonna be okay?"

"She's fine. Bad cold that got worse for being outside so long." Ishihara indicates Nikole's poké ball, on a side table. "The seal on these old models is dreadful. Nikole must have been freezing in there, and then once she broke out …" She shrugs. "Well, her fever is going down now. I may be able to let her go this afternoon, if she continues to improve."

Let her go where, exactly? Con isn't sure the Spearings are up to dealing with a kangaskhan at the moment, particularly a kangaskhan who doesn't yet know that her partner is dead. Still, that's a problem for later on. Right now, he needs to get Alex inside her head and then out of his sight as quickly as possible.

"That's good to know, doc," he says. "Uh, Jodi, you ready?"

"Yeah. Sure." Alex looks around, pulls up a chair. Lothian insinuates himself between him and Simeon, his huge ears swivelling around like radar dishes. Both of them look almost comically tiny next to Nikole's massive bulk.

"Good." Con clears his throat. "Remember, what we want to know is where she came from. If we can retrace her steps, we can find Tacoma's luggage. If there's anything about the crime itself, that's good too. But since she was in her ball …"

Alex nods.

"Okay, Lothi," he says. "We're going to try fifty-six, nine, seventeen, in that order. All right?"

Lothian does not respond in any way that Con can see, but maybe that's to be expected of a psychic's partner. Alex nods, breathes in very deeply, and closes his eyes.

"Fifty-six," he says, and as Lothian's nose twitches Con suddenly becomes aware of a vibration in his guts, like the boom of distant guns. He takes a step back, feeling queasy, and sees Simeon do the same.

Alex leans forward a little, his plucked brows meeting in a scowl.

"Nine," he breathes. The word seems to echo in Con's head for a few seconds after he speaks: nine, nine, nine. "And …"

Nikki? Con hears, at the back of his head, and then the moment passes and the vibration seems to move away from him, humming through the floor towards Nikole.

Time passes. Con looks at Simeon, who looks back. The two of them try looking at Ishihara, but she is apparently immune to awkwardness, and just stands there as if this is something that happens every day. Maybe it is, if you have a ghost-type partner.

Alex opens his eyes with a gasp and slumps in his chair, forehead shiny with sweat.

"Oof," he sighs. "Um. Lothi?"

He's already there, dipping his head into Alex's bag and coming out with a chocolate bar. It takes Alex two tries to get it open, weak with fatigue, and once he does he just sits there and eats it in silence for a while. No wonder the kid's so skinny, Con thinks. If this is what being psychic does to you, it's kind of incredible it hasn't killed him already.

"Okay," says Alex, wiping his forehead and sitting up straight. "Okay, she came from the north, I think. There's a bend in the river where this huge tree has fallen down – I think that's where she broke out of her ball. Nearby to … something. A cabin, maybe? With a car parked outside." Alex frowns, like there's something wrong with that. "A blue Crowne."

"Licence plate?" asks Con.

Alex shakes his head.

"Nikki can't read. She doesn't remember."

"There are a few of those cabins out there," remarks Simeon. "Something to go on. We could ask around there and see if anyone's seen anything, Chief."

"Good call. What else, A― Jodi?"

"Something she heard. While she was in the ball, I think?"

Con starts.

"Something she heard," he repeats. "What? She recognise any voices?"

"No. I don't think so. But she heard … okay, it's garbled and I'm not sure I'm reading it right, but I think she heard someone say 'take her to the chapter house'?"

"The chapter house?" asks Con. "You're sure that's what she heard?"

"Pretty sure, yeah." Alex looks up at him, a question in his eyes. "What's a chapter house?"

Con twists his lip between his fingers, thinking. Damn. He was sort of hoping that his hunch would turn out to be wrong. But no. Alex has found exactly what Con was afraid he would.

"I don't know," he says, after a moment or two. "But I'm going to have to find out."

Alex gives him the kind of look a psychic gives someone when they try to lie to him.

"Okay," he says. "I'm glad I could help."

He sounds like he means it, but Con can feel his disbelief. It gets under his skin in a way that makes him uneasy. Nobody likes being mocked by a woman. Con likes being mocked by this grotesquely pretty boy even less.

"Sure," he says, as brightly as he can. "You've been a big help, thanks."

Christ. First Tacoma, then 'Jodi', now the chapter house.

That bad week Con's been having looks like it's going to get a whole lot worse yet.

Chapter Text

TACOMA

Something bad has happened. Actually, it's been happening for a while now; Tacoma's range of vision is limited when the rock is in Jodi's bag, but she can sense it in the air. Maybe it's because Jodi has been sending her so many psychic messages, maybe it's just because she's a ghost now and has picked up a few spooky powers; either way, she's starting to find that she can feel Jodi when she's nearby, on the periphery of her mind. And, well. Jodi has been on the verge of crying for about forty minutes now.

Tacoma can't figure it out. She's heard everything, except for what happened when Jodi was doing her psychic thing on Nikole and the feedback drowned everything out, and while Con's cheer seems strained he and Simeon and Ishihara all sound like they're being polite. It's hard to know what to do, although she supposes it doesn't matter. There's nothing she can do, at least until Jodi is alone. She listens to her make her excuses, refusing Con's offer of a ride home by telling him she has a few errands to run in town, and then, after a few minutes of silence, to her speaking in a low voice:

"No, I'm not okay. Couldn't you feel it, Lothi? How he … you know."

She doesn't hear Lothian's answer; probably Jodi is the only one who can. Still, it sounds like she's by herself now.

"Jodi?" she asks. Her voice sounds weird in her ears. She hasn't spoken in a while – since last night, actually, when she came out of the rock for a moment to tell Jodi she was okay and not to worry. And that was the first time she'd spoken since the whole thing with Nick's pen. Most of the rest of the time she's just spent lying here on top of her sarcophagus, staring at the ceiling and thinking without emotion about a stranger's hands around her throat. This is not all right, but it's just so hard to fight it that Tacoma can't bring herself to be concerned. It's nothing new, anyway. She has passed more than a few days this way at uni, unable to muster the energy to leave her bed.

You startled me, says Jodi. Her surprise bleeds through with the words.

"Sorry." Brief pause. "I have my eye to the crack," says Tacoma. It's not an accurate way of describing it, but it's all she's got; what's really happening is that a rough-edged image of the outside world is hovering right in front of her left eye, like she's sitting too close to a TV. At the moment, all she can see is darkness, but she can hear everything. "You can talk normally. I've … been listening in for a while." Come on. Say it. Say it, you asshole. "Are you okay?"

Jodi hesitates for far too long before she answers.

"Yeah. Just tired. It was hard, getting into Nikki's mind. But I did find―"

"You literally just told Lothian you're not okay," says Tacoma. She hears a sigh, and then a moment later her view clears and brightens as Jodi removes the rock from her bag. She's leaning against a brick wall by some icebound garbage cans, cane in the crook of her arm and a cigarette in her other hand. Tacoma can't see where they are, but it doesn't occur to her to look; her eye is irresistibly drawn to Jodi, pale and glamorous in the dull winter light. Even now, it keeps catching Tacoma by surprise, the way her face is transformed just by looking at it and thinking girl instead of boy. That nose, those lips and cheekbones – they are different now, and always will be. Tacoma has heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but she never knew that apparently everything else is, too.

Is she staring? She almost certainly is. And Jodi looks upset: probably best to focus on that for now.

"Sorry," says Jodi. "I just … Con really hates me."

Tacoma would like to say something reassuring, but nothing seems real when the rock comes between them like this. Jodi needs to be able to see her.

"Can I come out?" she asks.

"Sure." Jodi takes a quick drag on her cigarette. "I'm in the alley behind the bank."

Tacoma knows where she means: turn right as you leave the medical centre, left at the corner, past the bank, down the side. There's a gate but it's not locked, and in the whole twenty years that Tacoma has lived in Mahogany, nobody from the bank has ever noticed or cared.

"Okay," she says, and pushes into the image before her, springing out the other side of the crack with a whoosh of displaced air. Now she can see properly; there's the entrance to the alley, there's Lothian huddled against Jodi's leg. Incidental details, really. The important thing here is Jodi. "I'm sorry," she tells her. "He's an asshole."

"No, I don't think he is," replies Jodi. "He's trying to do his job and all, he just … I got close to him and felt his mind and he―" She breaks off, looking like she might throw up. "He hates this," she says, swallowing hard. "He'd – I don't know, but he really can't take … what I am."

"Which is called being an asshole." Tacoma raises her eyebrows. "He can't deal with you, that's on him, not you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Obviously. C'mon, Jodi, you – why would it be you?"

"I dunno." Jodi blinks. "Sorry," she says, looking away. "I, uh, well. Empathy. He hates, I hate. And like …" She swallows again. "There's this sickness, I― I mean, I thought I looked good this morning when I did my nails and now I look at them and it's just like I've mutilated myself."

Her breaths are shallow and irregular. Rarely has Tacoma wanted to hurt someone as much as she wants to hurt Con Wicke right now. It's a good feeling, in that it is a feeling, and that alone makes it ten times better than the awful emotional void that comes with lying on her back and staring at the ceiling.

"Sorry," she says, not wanting to say how angry she is, knowing that Jodi probably knows anyway. "It must be hard."

Jodi sighs and raises her cigarette to her lips.

"Yeah, well, I'm not looking for pity," she mutters. "I knew it wasn't all gonna be easy. And anyway, it's not like it's the first time."

"No?" Hell. Tacoma hadn't really thought about that. Too preoccupied with her own problems to realise that every single social interaction is its own special problem for Jodi. Christ. Friend of the bloody year.

"No," says Jodi. "It's okay. Lothian looks out for me. Right, Lothi?"

He looks up, nose palpating, and Tacoma sees Jodi smile slightly as some message passes from his mind to hers.

"He says yes," she explains, scratching behind his ears. "Honestly, I'm not entirely sure he knows the difference between men and women anyway."

Tacoma tries to smile, because that is the response that is expected of her, but it's hard for her to put her heart in it.

"I'm glad," she says. "I'm glad."

There is no immediate answer. Jodi taps the ash off the end of her cigarette and watches it spiral down into the snow.

"Guess you want to know about what I found out from Nikki, huh," she says, after a little while.

"Heard some of it," replies Tacoma. "But when you did your psychic thing, it all kinda went to static."

Another long pause. Tacoma wonders if she should say it, and then decides yes, she definitely should.

"You know, you're fucking gorgeous," she says, a little more aggressively than she intended. "No matter what Con thinks."

Jodi almost inhales her cigarette. After several seconds of coughing, and a lot of concerned looks from Lothian, she grinds it out on the wall and manages a response.

"Oh," she says weakly, cheeks as red as her fingernails. "Um … thank you."

"Well, you are," replies Tacoma, as embarrassed to have said it as Jodi is to have heard it. "So. You know."

Jodi smiles shyly, unable to find any more words. It's kind of cute, but Tacoma is literally incapable of speaking right now, let alone pointing this out. They fall back into the silence, broken only by the distant grumble of someone's car and Lothian's scratching as he pokes around the alley, and then at last Tacoma gathers up the energy to push free of it. Okay. Move on to something less awkward.

"All right," she says. "So what about Nikki? Dr Ishihara said she was okay, right?"

"Yeah. She said she could go home this afternoon."

Tacoma should be pleased, but it's hard to be. Nikole is one of those kangaskhan who remain childless, either through choice or some quirk of biology not yet identified by science, and she is as attached to Tacoma as she would be to her joey, if she had one. She is much less interested in Tacoma's family, and they, for their part, have never really been that good with her. Right now, they're almost certainly not going to be up to the challenge of looking after a kangaskhan who can't find her trainer.

"Hope my parents can deal with that," she says, shoving hard on her worry and not managing to shift it. "What about her memories? You said something to Con about where my stuff was?"

"Yeah," says Jodi. "Out in the woods, by a bend in the river. I think she got worried and broke out of her ball there, and then I guess she was all feverish, so she didn't drink and just wandered around till she found her way back to town."

Tacoma hears herself make a little involuntary noise of pain, which Jodi very kindly pretends not to have heard.

"I think it was near a cabin," she says. "Which I guess means north of town, near the Lake of Rage. There are a few up there, I think. Guess the police will probably be checking them out today."

"Right. I guess we can't really do that," says Tacoma. "I mean – actually, I dunno why I'm assuming you can't drive. Can you?"

Jodi laughs nervously.

"Technically, yes," she says. "But I don't. It's kind of difficult with this leg." Fantastic. Tacoma Spearing, queen of unwarranted assumptions. "But … well, I didn't say to Con, but I think we might have to go there anyway."

"What? Why's that?"

"There's a blue car parked outside," replies Jodi. "A blue Crowne."

"Oh. Uh … shit."

"Yeah." Jodi chews her lip, leaving a little red line across her incisors. "I feel like we need to talk to Sam. A bunch of people, even. Someone else must have seen it, right?"

"Right." Tacoma thinks for a moment. "Gabriella invited you over, yeah?"

"She did. I'll see if I can talk to Sam then."

"Good. I, uh, didn't know you were friends."

It's strange to think of Jodi having friends Tacoma doesn't. But of course she's had her own life, her own social circles to navigate. Not like Tacoma has a monopoly on her. Even if some pathetic part of her would like one.

"She likes the same music as me," says Jodi, looking a little uncomfortable. "And maybe if I go to church tomorrow, I can ask people about it?" she adds, changing the subject. "I'll try to be subtle."

"Yeah. You do that, I'll … I dunno, try to think of a way we can get out to that cabin." It sounds so inadequate, even as she says it. What's she going to do? Volunteer to drive Jodi over there? Sure, Tacoma, if that's what you want to think.

"Cool." Jodi nods, as if this is even remotely plausible. "There was one other thing I found."

"Which was?"

"When Nikki was in her ball, the night that, um, that it happened, she heard something. Can't tell who was speaking, but I think they said 'take her to the chapter house'."

"The chapter house," repeats Tacoma. "Where's that? What is that, even?"

"Dunno," admits Jodi. "Never heard of it before."

They look at each other for a moment.

"Library?" asks Tacoma.

"Library," says Jodi. "No time like the present."

Tacoma nods.

"See you on the other side," she says, and withdraws to brood, feeling the cold stone of her sarcophagus against her back again. One day she'll get through a conversation with Jodi without insulting her, she promises. She better, anyway. This is no way to treat a friend.

She picks at her lips, tearing off tabs of skin and relishing the sharp sting of air on raw flesh. But her window to the outside world is still open, and a minute later, after Jodi has put the rock back in her bag, Tacoma hears her murmuring incredulously to herself:

"I'm fucking gorgeous."

Tacoma pauses, startled into smiling. At least she got that one right, she thinks, and takes her bloody fingernails away from her mouth again.

A chapter house, it seems, is a building or room attached to a church where meetings are held. Learning this doesn't really help things make any more sense. There is a church in town, but it's pretty small, and both Jodi and Tacoma went there every week with their families right up until they got old enough to say no; they know the place well, and unless there's a secret chamber buried underneath it, there just isn't space for a meeting room there.

But the fact that Nikole heard it mentioned is suggestive. As is the fact that Con pretended he hadn't heard of it. Some people in town are meeting up in secret, people who may or may not be connected to Tacoma's murder, and the cops know but don't want to talk about it. That means something. Tacoma isn't sure what, and neither is Jodi, but it definitely means something.

"A secret society," says Tacoma, looking out through the crack at a sliver of Jodi's face. "I didn't think this town was big enough to have one of those."

"A secret society whose members will kill for ghost rocks," murmurs Jodi, closing the encyclopedia. "Where do you think their chapter house is?"

"Dunno. That cabin, maybe? My stuff's out there."

"Why would they dump it that close to their hideout?"

They're not sure, and it's not something they can look up. Right now they don't have the time for research, anyway. Jodi's been out for over an hour and a half at this point, and given the atmosphere when she left with Con, her family are probably going to be worried about her. It's time to go back and reassure them.

On the way back, she and Tacoma toss ideas at one another while Lothian flies on ahead. Where could people meet up without it being obvious? Town hall? Bar? General store? Remember, this place has to be somewhere you could hide a body. That's what the killer was thinking of doing, even if in the end they just dumped Tacoma in the river instead.

"Maybe we should just ask people," says Jodi. "Kind of like 'by the way, I heard something about a chapter house the other day, do you know what that is?' And then I'll know if they recognise the word or not. Then we could … I dunno, tail 'em or whatever, see where they go."

"Dunno." Tacoma paces back and forth along the tiled floor, the inside of Jodi's bag bobbing gently before her eye. "Think we should probably stick with the other lead for now."

"I could check the church tomorrow, I guess," suggests Jodi. "Just in case."

"How, exactly?" snaps Tacoma, frustrated. "You can't tell me you're gonna sneak out in the middle of the service."

"I … don't know," admits Jodi. "Sorry. I'm just trying to come up with ideas."

Tacoma forces herself to stand still, to release her grip on her sarcophagus and calm down. Don't be a dick, she tells herself. It's not hard, Tacoma.

"Right," she says. "Let's just – let's just leave that for now."

"Sure," says Jodi. "There are other things, anyway."

"Like?"

"Like, um … well, I was thinking, if the rock sucked you out of your body, then―"

"No."

Of course. Of course Jodi hopes she can fix this. She's the kind of person who has hope, and Tacoma isn't sure she's ever been this jealous in her life.

"You don't know that," begins Jodi, but Tacoma interrupts.

"Yeah, I think I do. And you do too, Jodi," she adds, unable to resist the impulse to twist the knife. "This was a one-way trip."

She says it with a kind of savage exultation that she does not like at all. Jodi doesn't like it either; Tacoma can't see her face from in here, but she can feel her pain, filtering through the link to stab Tacoma in the heart.

God damn it. Didn't she just say not to be a dick?

"Sorry," she says. "I didn't mean to … I shouldn't be mad at you."

"It's okay," says Jodi. "I understand."

What else is new? Tacoma hates this. She's aware that she shouldn't, that this is an unhelpful reaction to her friend's compassion, but she hates it anyway. Nobody likes to be reminded of how unoriginal their inner turmoil is. Everyone thinks their pain is special; everyone wants to avoid the truth that it's just another damn cliché.

"Yeah," she mutters, before she can stop herself. "Sometimes I wish you wouldn't."

The sound of Jodi's footsteps stops. Somewhere in the distance, Tacoma hears the soft thump of Lothian landing.

"Tacoma," she begins, except she doesn't seem to know how to finish it. "Tacoma," she tries again. "I … you know I'm still your friend, right?"

Tacoma listens. She knows she needs to answer, but her voice is stuck somewhere at the bottom of her lungs. Jodi is her friend. This is true. It's just that Tacoma doesn't know if she really should be, any more.

"I'm not just trying to help you solve the mystery," Jodi continues. "I'm … I can talk to you too. If that's, um, if that's something you're still interested in."

Christ. Tacoma had almost forgotten about this. The boy – girl – whatever, the child in her memory is sweet and shy and not quite openly sarcastic; Tacoma remembers the school trip to the old temple, breakfast in the Ecruteak Pokémon Centre, the campsite on Route 38, and what stands out in her mind is mostly Jodi laughing at Tacoma's jokes and losing a bunch of battles with her vulpix, Helen. But that's not all, is it? She was always just … nice. Like she is now.

"You don't have to," Jodi adds hurriedly, and Tacoma realises she hasn't yet responded. "I mean, it's just a suggestion, if you're – you know, if you want to talk, then that's cool, and if not then that's – well, that's cool too―"

"Okay," interrupts Tacoma, voice harsh. "Okay, I get it, you don't have to―"

Stop. She's angry at herself, not Jodi, but she isn't sure if Jodi can tell the difference and she doesn't want to give the wrong impression. She takes a minute, clenches her fists so hard it hurts, and breathes out.

Take the opportunity. Jodi wants to help? Honestly, Tacoma needs it. She might not like it, but she does. And more than that … well, whether or not she deserves it after everything she's done, she kind of wants her friend back.

"Sorry," she says, making an effort to sound calm, though of course Jodi probably knows she isn't. "Thanks, Al― shit. Thanks, Jodi. I … I think I might like that." Is that enough? It'll have to be. She can't take much more of this feelings talk right now. "Gimme a minute?"

"As long as you like," says Jodi, maddeningly kind, and Tacoma breaks the connection: a sharp movement of her head and the image in front of her left eye fades.

She stands there for what feels like an age, kneading her forehead with her knuckle. Could've handled that better. But at least she said yes. And it might work out, right? If they talk, if they're really going to do this, then maybe Tacoma can finally start making up for the past. Not even for abandoning her, really, but for what she did that meant Tacoma had to abandon her in the first place.

Because she did do something. Tacoma made a bad decision that day seven years ago, and she saw the results unfold with the slow and terrible majesty of a mushroom cloud above a burning city. And then she knew that there was nothing she could ever do to make it right. But it was okay, because nobody knew except her, and that meant that nobody ever had to know, as long as she just kept running.

Except that now, of course, there's nowhere left to run except up and down the stairs of her prison tower. And, if that's the way things are, if she and Jodi are stuck with each other for the foreseeable future, then that's got to be a sign. This is Tacoma's chance to make things right.

Her lips sting, and she realises she's picking at them again. She licks the blood away and grimaces.

"Today's the day you turn it all around," she says, unconvinced, and goes back to her sarcophagus to stare at the ceiling and wait for something to happen.

In the purple twilight of her prison, certain questions are impossible for Tacoma to avoid. They are very short and very simple, and she can't find answers to either of them.

Who? And why?

Her mind makes movie reels, her body superimposed onto horror movie victims. She sees her back recede in grainy black and white; sees a shadow creeping up behind her, merging with the darkness underneath the trees. In the next shot there are hands around a neck too thin to be hers, thumbs digging into her throat, and the whole thing falls apart into the childish dream it is.

Dumb, she tells herself, jabbing her finger painfully into the half-healed cut on her arm. Try again.

Okay. Harry, following her from the station? He seems pretty strong, or at least, he carries all that luggage around like it's nothing. He knew where she was, too. Or Nick. He― no. Not Nick. He wasn't even here, right? Right?

Her teeth hurt. She unclenches her jaw and forces herself to breathe out. It's not him. Can't be. He was in Alola. And her parents probably told a bunch of people when she was coming home. Everyone knows everything here, that's just the way it is. Anyone with strong hands and bad intentions could have found her that night.

But then there's the why of it, and this is where Tacoma feels her thoughts beginning to unravel, warp and weft spilling in untidy tangles across the surface of her mind. There are plenty of reasons why she should be dead – hell, plenty of reasons why she should be dead and trapped like this. If you think about it, she's almost getting off easy, after what she did.

Thing is, nobody knows. Tacoma has made damn sure of that. Nobody knows. Nick and Harry sure don't. So why? What about this rock is so bad that she couldn't even be allowed to live after having touched it?

She starts to say the question aloud, as if hearing it might help her hear an answer, but then she remembers that Jodi might be listening and stops halfway through the second word. In the silence, the questions ring louder than ever: who? Why?

Tacoma closes her eyes, and listens until it feels like they will deafen her.

Back at the Ortegas' house, it seems that Jodi's parents have been waiting. Her mother comes out of the kitchen to meet her as soon as she walks in the door, asking questions before saying wait, no, come inside and tell your dad, too. Tacoma has opened the connection again, because the alternative is staring at the ceiling for a while and if she's trying to be a better person she should be trying to avoid that, and she listens in from inside Jodi's bag, feeling like a spy on the end of a wiretap.

As they enter the room, she hears the rustling of newspaper, and is hit with a memory so vivid it almost hurts: León with his feet up, reading aloud from the paper and pausing occasionally to let his chatot repeat back any words that catch his fancy. Except no, not any more, right? Javier died years ago now. Old age, she thinks. That or pneumonia. Johto winters must have been a hell of a shock for a Managua chatot.

"Would you look at that," León says, over the shuffling of feet and the scratching of Lothian's claws. "Our bid for the new Gym might just go through. Apparently it's down to here and New Bark."

Cherrygrove Gym was bombed to dust by the Americans during the war, after the occupying forces used it to store arms; the Indigo League has been pondering where to put the replacement ever since they finally extracted the money to build it from the Kantan government. Like everyone else in town, Tacoma's been following the news with interest. Pryce Aske, Mahogany's only resident pro trainer, has been spearheading the town's bid to have it put here, and apparently doing a pretty good job of it.

"Good to know," says Jodi. "If we get a Gym, we get a Pokémon Centre. That's a bunch of jobs."

"Including one for a counsellor," León points out. "Something to think about." A thin rustly noise as the newspaper is folded up and put aside. "So how did it go with Nikole, kiddo?"

"All right," replies Jodi, after a moment's hesitation. "Chief Wicke was … polite."

"Just polite?"

"Yeah. Just polite."

León sighs.

"Well, I guess that's fine. He seemed kind of startled."

"One way of putting it," snorts Tacoma, unable to stop herself. Evidently she makes Jodi jump or something, because Michelle asks her if she's okay, and she has to lie and say the cold makes her leg twinge. Good one, Tacoma. Being real helpful there. She shuts up and listens enviously to Jodi's parents being nice to her, and then to Jodi's fumbling response:

"So yeah, it went okay. Just … I dunno. Seeing Nikki. And you know. Tacoma."

God, she really is a terrible liar. It seems to fool her parents, though; there's an uneasy pause, and then in response to some unseen gesture Jodi asks:

"What?"

"The, uh, the funeral's on Wednesday," says León, and Tacoma starts hard enough to bang her head on her sarcophagus. Right. That. Because she's dead.

Every time she thinks it, it gets a little less scary and a little more numbing. Dead. Who cares? Everyone who ever knew her, she answers, and the old guilt stirs inside her like a hornet's nest in her gut. Who and why. They'll be asking that too, same as her.

"I thought you should know," adds León.

"Thank you," says Jodi. "I … Yeah. Thanks."

A soft sound. Tacoma imagines Michelle leaning over, squeezing Jodi's shoulder, and suddenly misses her mother so much it almost hurts.

"If you need anything, Jodi …" Yes, that's Michelle's voice. The one time she didn't want to be right.

"There is one thing," says Jodi, in a tone of voice that suggests she wants to change the subject. "Unrelated. And nothing heavy, it's just – in my book, there's a word I don't know."

"Oh," says Michelle. "That'll be your department, León."

"I'll do my best," he says. "What is it?"

"It mentions something called a 'chapter house'," Jodi replies. "Can't figure out what that is."

Tacoma feels Jodi's mind unfolding, attuning itself to something she cannot see. Gauging whether or not her parents are lying, she suspects. She holds her breath, waiting for the answer: if they aren't truthful about this, if they know, then that's kind of a problem. Even in the best case scenario, they'd be involved in something bad. The worst … well, the worst case doesn't even bear thinking about.

"Never heard of that," says León, and Jodi's relief washes through the connection like a wave across a beach, smoothing her ruffled mind back into the usual calm. Okay. Telling the truth, then.

Thank God. Tacoma doesn't know what they would have done if he'd been lying. She listens a moment longer, to León asking for the context and Jodi claiming to have lost the page, and cuts the connection with a sigh.

She's too tired to listen to people who love each other. And if there aren't any more clues to be gathered here, she's just going to stay put till Jodi comes looking for her.

Not exactly the healthiest way to deal with this, but it definitely is a way. Given how her life is going recently, Tacoma will take what she can get.

In the end, she doesn't have to wait long. A few minutes later, she gets a message from Jodi.

We're alone. If you wanted to have that talk.

Tacoma waits for a long moment, so long that Jodi probably thinks she's ignoring her, and then when she can't put it off any longer she drags herself up and out through the crack to materialise on Jodi's desk. Bright sun, cold air. Lothian curled up unobtrusively by the door, unwilling to leave his partner but trying to stay out of this.

"Okay," she says. It comes out sullen and mean; Jodi wilts, and Tacoma grits her teeth and tries again: "Sorry. I do want to. I … I know I'm not doing great at being your friend."

Jodi looks sympathetic. The emotion rises around her like a gentle glow emanating from deep within the earth, and the hornets buzzing in Tacoma's gut calm a little as it comes.

"You died," she tells her. "I think you're allowed to be upset."

"Thanks. Almost managed to forget for a second there."

Jodi winces.

"Okay, sorry, I didn't phrase that very well."

They look at each other for a moment. Tacoma blinks first.

"I'm sorry," she says. "You don't deserve this. You're being nice, and I'm being a dick."

She isn't expecting Jodi to agree, and is pleasantly surprised when she almost does.

"I mean you could be slightly more friendly," she says, tentatively. "I guess. Like … I'm trying, Tacoma. I'm sorry I'm not getting any answers yet. It's only been a couple days."

"It's not that." Tacoma looks away. The hornets are back, and this time they aren't just buzzing but stinging. "I'm really grateful for everything you're doing. I'm just – I dunno, you probably know already, but I wasn't, uh, wasn't doing that good even before I got killed."

There. She said it. Hard to believe, but she finally actually said it.

"Yeah," says Jodi. "I noticed."

She's waiting, like she thinks Tacoma is going to say something else, but Tacoma has said all she can. Like – she said it. It's taken her literal years, but she said it. Tacoma wouldn't be surprised if after that she never managed to say anything else ever again.

"It's been really nice to see you again," says Jodi, after a little while. "Obviously I'd prefer it if it were different circumstances, but I did miss you."

Tacoma smiles. She has a feeling it probably doesn't look like she's all that happy.

"I missed you too," she says. "I'm sorry I abandoned you."

"You didn't abandon me," says Jodi. "You just moved on."

"What?" Is she seriously still trying to let Tacoma off the hook? "How is that any different?"

"You know," says Jodi, shrugging awkwardly. "We were busy. We grew up. I had ESP classes, you had tuition. We moved on."

Tacoma frowns.

"But you said you missed me," she says. "And you did, I know you did. Saw the way you looked at me when you found me the other night." She sees it again now, doubled in Jodi's eyes. That pain. "Hurt you to see me like this."

Jodi's uncertainty surrounds her head like cigarette smoke. She unwraps a chocolate bar and takes a bite, giving herself time to think of something to say, and then, still thinking, takes another. The clock ticks; Lothian glances up, and then when he sees Tacoma looking back quickly lowers his head again.

Jodi swallows, and leans forward on her elbows.

"Tacoma, I don't know you any more," says. "But you were my best friend. And I know everything is weird and we have to solve your own murder, but I kinda wouldn't mind if we gave that another go."

Tacoma's eyes prickle. Can she even cry, when her eyes are made of fog and green light? She doesn't really want to find out. Not in front of Jodi.

"Yeah?" she asks, through the lump in the throat she doesn't have.

"Yeah," says Jodi. "But you actually have to talk to me instead of just hiding in that rock all the time. This is … it's weird and horrible, I know, but we're not gonna make it any less weird or horrible unless we talk."

"I just figured you'd want to spend some time with your family," mutters Tacoma. "You didn't ask for me to take over your life like this, so. You know."

"Oh, you complete dork," says Jodi, exasperated. "Are you listening to yourself? 'Aw, gee, I don't know if that girl who keeps saying she really misses me wants to spend time with me, better just hide away and not ask her!'"

Tacoma coughs.

"Uh, okay, so when you put it like that it makes it sound way dumber than it did in my head," she says, and Jodi smiles at her.

"Sure it does. That's what I went to school for."

"To show me that my ideas are terrible?"

"To help people understand themselves better."

"Not sure I see the difference."

"Doesn't matter," says Jodi. "You're smiling."

Tacoma freezes for a moment, unprepared for this new line of attack, and then she realises that Jodi's right and, almost against her will, laughs.

"Okay," she says. "Jeez. You win, Jodi."

Jodi's happiness is effervescent, bubbling up all around her like the fizz in a glass of champagne. It's contagious; Lothian perks up and scampers over to put his head in her lap, and Tacoma finds that the echoes of her laughter won't leave her alone.

"Great!" says Jodi, eyes bright. "Just – great."

Tacoma does her best to give her a hard look, but she still can't stop smiling.

"Is this just because you made me laugh?" she asks, and when Jodi nods she laughs again. "Jesus," she says. "And you call me a dork."

"I can't explain it," says Jodi, but she doesn't have to. She wants Tacoma back, and Tacoma wants her back as well: that's all there is to it, all there needs to be. Somehow, despite everything, it looks like she's going to get that second chance after all.

"You're gonna have to take point on this," she says. "I don't have arms."

"Take point on what?"

"The hug, dimwit." Tacoma raises her eyebrows like she would have done when she was twelve, playing at being the girl she was before she ruined everything. "Or are you just gonna sit there grinning at me all day?"

Jodi does just sit there grinning, as it happens, but she does it with that sarcastic gleam in her eye that lets Tacoma know she's being mocked.

"You've got meaner," Tacoma tells her, making a face.

"So have you," says Jodi. "C'mere."

She leans in and hugs her tight, arms sinking slightly into her mist. Tacoma rests her head against her shoulder, and turns her face away. It looks like she can cry after all. But she thinks she's going to keep that one to herself.

Jodi is … well, she's very good at this. Now that Tacoma's let her in, she refuses to leave again. She can't spend the whole day up in her room, but she puts Tacoma's rock on the coffee table in the living-room, and spends the rest of the afternoon poking her mind into it, commenting on anything and everything that crosses her mind. It's annoying, but it means Tacoma can't wallow in her unanswerable questions or lie there staring at the ceiling, and for that she supposes she ought to be grateful.

I dunno if you saw Ella's picture over my bed? asks Jodi, when Ella comes down after a morning spent painting up in her room. She's got really good.

"She has," agrees Tacoma, watching Ella flop onto the sofa next to Jodi with a bag of nuts. "Also I think she just changed the channel."

"Hey," protests Jodi, but Ella waves it aside.

"You snooze, you lose," she says, popping a cashew in her mouth. "Budge. The Bug Show is on."

"Well, I know better than to come between you and your bug-types," says Jodi, and she raises her eyebrows at the rock in a way that makes Tacoma irritatingly aware that she knows she's just made Tacoma smile.

Or later, when Michelle comes in and asks about the rock, she shrugs and says it's a focusing stone. Something she uses for school.

"Well, what's it doing on my coffee table?" she asks, and Jodi goes okay, sure, I'll move it, nestles it in the crook of her arm with the crack pointed outward so Tacoma can still see. She watches the Ortegas moving through the room, watches Ella leave to hang out with her friends, Michelle bring Jodi some hot chocolate, León argue with the newscaster.

It's all so achingly familiar. She sees herself and Everett overlaid on Jodi and Ella, her parents' gentle bickering in the way Michelle and León take pleasure in disagreeing about things on TV. It hurts, even filtered through Jodi's constant commentary (she is still just as keen on bugs as you remember, by the way, half her paintings are of insects; which is your favourite news presenter? I always like this guy's terrible taste in ties) – but Tacoma keeps the connection open all the same. This still exists, she reminds herself. There is something outside dark stone rooms and empty corners of the library. People are still alive and doing all their normal people things.

She's startled by how much she needed to be told that. Late that night, long after Jodi has curled up at one end of her bed and Lothian at the other, Tacoma dims the lights in the tower and lies down to sleep with a strange feeling hovering somewhere at the bottom of her ribcage. It takes her several long minutes to classify it as contentment, and when she does she finds she is too startled and fearful to hold onto it any more.

On Sunday she wakes late, the way she would if she were still living, and puts her eye to the crack to find Jodi's room empty. The radio is gone from the desk, and drifting up from downstairs is the sound of both music and Jodi singing along. Tacoma smiles, surprised: she'd forgotten Jodi was musical. But of course she is; she played violin for years, and since then she's spent a lot of time working with Lothian and studying sound. As far as Tacoma knows, she refuses to sing when anyone else is around, but still, she's good at it.

Probably she's alone in the house, then. Everyone else at church, maybe? Which means that Jodi didn't go, in the end. She wonders why, then realises that if everyone's gone she can probably just ask.

Maybe it's the singing, but she's feeling reckless. She stretches herself out as far from the rock as she can, and calls out:

"Hey! Taxi!"

The singing stops. Tacoma hears footsteps, and then Jodi comes in, looking vaguely put out.

"C'mon," she says. "What if someone else had been home?"

"Is anyone else home?"

"Well, no. But they might've been." She leans against the side of the door, twisting nervously at the handle of her cane. "I thought about going to church, but then I realised that if I went, I was gonna walk in the door and absorb everyone's reactions at once. And while I do wanna help you out, Tacoma, I don't want a brain haemorrhage."

Right. Tacoma is willing to bet that the only two things anyone is talking about in Mahogany right now are her – and Jodi. And that means that everyone will be waiting to catch a glimpse of her, to satisfy their curiosity and be pleasantly shocked at the freak in the dress, and that in turn means that Jodi will be forced to feel a hundred people's pity and disdain exploding inside her own skull. Bastards.

But saying so would ruin the moment, so she just raises an eyebrow and fakes a smirk instead.

"Yeah, that would be counterproductive," she says.

"That all?" asks Jodi wryly, but before Tacoma can answer Lothian interrupts, poking his head through the door and butting it insistently against Jodi's good leg. "Oh," she says. "Sorry. I was halfway through giving him breakfast. Come downstairs?"

"Sure," says Tacoma. "Do you think I can drink coffee?"

"Dunno. Wanna find out?"

She does, and they do. As it turns out she can't, not even through a straw: the drops swirl around inside her disc and make her momentarily dizzy before they fly out and have to be sponged off the kitchen cupboards by Jodi. They laugh and for a moment Tacoma could swear they're twelve again, wasting a morning in a Pokémon Centre canteen while Nikki and Helen snatch leftovers from the plates.

"Kind of reminds me of our journey," says Jodi, clearly thinking the same. "You remember Ecruteak? We got to the Centre and we just … didn't know what to do, so we hung out there for like a whole morning till we figured we should probably go for a hike or something."

Tacoma remembers. How could she not? She's replayed her journey in her head, a thousand thousand times over. The tentative beginning. The glorious middle. And the brutal end. There is an epilogue too, the part when she went back out after what everyone calls the accident, but that part is dim and shadowy by comparison. Everything important happened before then.

"I think it was Helen, wasn't it?" Jodi's eyes have unfocused slightly. She's looking at her coffee cup, but Tacoma doesn't think she's seeing it. "We were sitting around in the lounge, feeling lost, and then she just up and ran out. Followed her, and she was sitting by the front door, looking at me like come on, time to go."

Lothian raises his head from his bowl of fruit, eyes wide. Tacoma reaches hesitantly for that weird connection, trying to figure out what she's thinking, but it's not something you can force, and Jodi's mind stays closed.

She swallows. Looks like she'll have to do this the old-fashioned way.

"I never said," she tells her, after a moment. "I'm really sorry about Helen. And Ash."

Jodi's face gives nothing away. Tacoma hopes this isn't her being forgiven. When your best friend's partners die, you have to say something, and Tacoma didn't. She was just too scared to say any of the important things, and so she just pretended everything was normal. You'll be back out there before you know it, she said, while the voice in her head screamed her condolences, and child-Jodi smiled weakly through her painkiller daze and said sure, sure.

This isn't how she ruined things. Tacoma committed her crime much earlier than that – before the accident even happened, let alone the aftermath. But it's still a black mark against her, and she hopes Jodi isn't so eager to please that she'd let her get away with it.

Jodi shrugs and downs the rest of her coffee.

"It was a long time ago," she says, and now Tacoma is sure: she's trying to be relaxed, trying very hard with every ounce of her empath training, but there are some things you just can't control. "I don't really think about them any more."

You don't need to be psychic to know that she's not telling the truth. Jodi and Helen were inseparable; Helen even followed her to school once or twice, and Jodi always let herself be charmed into missing her first lesson to take her back home again. Out on the trail, in the tent they shared in defiance of their parents' refusal to let them sleep over at one another's houses, Tacoma saw her sleeping curled around Helen like a cat around her kitten, and was vaguely jealous that she and Nikki couldn't do the same.

She loved her, she really did. She loved Ash too, even if she only caught him eight months before it all went to hell in the Silverblacks. And then Tacoma told her that she'd be back out there before she knew it, as if there was anything left for her out there at all.

"Okay," says Tacoma. "I just thought I should say it, is all."

A perfunctory smile.

"Thanks," says Jodi, although she doesn't actually sound very grateful. "Look, it's ancient history, okay? And honestly, I feel like there's been enough death round here recently."

Tacoma nods. She's probably reacting too fast but she can't seem to help herself.

"Yeah, I feel you," she says. "Kinda hard not to. In my position."

Jodi says nothing for a while, just leans back from the kitchen table and lets Lothian push his head into her lap. She reaches down automatically to pet him and then takes her hand away sharply, pulling a face.

"I have told you about doing that," she says, shoving Lothian away. "Not while you're all sticky with fruit juice."

He chirps unapologetically and returns his attention to his bowl, licking his lips. Jodi shakes her head and brushes at her skirt.

"So," she says, not looking up. "What's Saffron like?"

Tacoma starts.

"What?"

"You've been to Saffron." Jodi catches her eye. "What's it like? It looks cool on TV."

"Are you serious?"

"Why not?"

Tacoma's mouth is already open to answer before she realises she actually doesn't have a response. Why not? It just doesn't feel right, is all. She has some vague idea that what they're supposed to do is make the most of this second chance, to say all the important things that were left unsaid before and to plan out their investigation, but even as she thinks this it starts to sound dumb. The oldest spiritomb is from the Song dynasty, the Pokédex said. She isn't sure how long ago that was, but it has to be a few centuries at least. That means (and try not to think about this too much) that she's going to be here for a while. She has some time.

And, well. If she's going to make this second attempt to be Jodi's friend stick, she's probably going to have to actually get to know her at some point. It's been five years, after all.

"Okay," she says. "Why not."

Jodi smiles, and Tacoma feels her face answering without any input from her brain. It is actually kind of unfair how easily beauty comes to her. Tacoma has spent the last three years trying to lose weight and sort her hair out and she still looks like a sack of potatoes shoved into a pair of jeans and a clown wig. She shouldn't be envious – Jodi is thin and delicate because of a mutation that means she has to see Dr Ishihara four times a year to check she isn't dying – but then, Tacoma does a lot of things she shouldn't.

"So," says Jodi, taking away Tacoma's coffee and making a start on it herself. "What's Saffron like, then?"

"Well," Tacoma replies, "it's not as yellow as it is in the pictures."

"What!" Jodi looks scandalised. "But that's it's whole thing! It's in the name of your university and everything."

"Yeah, well. Have you ever actually seen a yellowstone in real life?"

"No."

"They're kinda hideous," says Tacoma. "One of my lecture halls is a yellowstone and on a bright day you can't even go near it without sunglasses."

"You're ruining my dreams. I always wanted to go there and find my fortune on Golden Row."

"Golden Row is the ugliest street in Kanto. It's like you've been eaten by a lemon."

"God, you go away to the big city and come back all jaded. How am I, a simple country girl―"

"Oh, fuck off," says Tacoma. "You're the one at brain school."

"I said how am I, a simple country girl―"

So it goes. They play at fighting, and then at reconciling. They talk about university, in a careful kind of way that leaves out their social lives and the state of their minds, and Tacoma complains about Keith Allbright in exchange for a story about Jodi's Professor Crapwell. Yes, she says. Seriously, Crapwell. She could not make that up.

Lothian insinuates his head back into Jodi's lap, still sticky but no longer noticed, and the three of them stay there until the car pulls up outside and Tacoma has to disappear. As she goes, Jodi catches her eye.

"By the way," she says, as if it doesn't matter. "You did say it."

Tacoma pauses halfway back into the stone, her disc a mass of bubbling fog.

"Huh?"

"That you were sorry. You said it."

"I what?"

But the front door is opening now, and before Jodi has a chance to tell her about the condolences Tacoma is certain she did not offer she has to vanish back into her tower.

Tacoma doesn't get a chance to ask about it. Michelle asks Jodi to help her with lunch – apparently this is a thing the Ortegas do on Sundays, or possibly just to celebrate the fact that Jodi is home and also no longer Alex – and her rock ends up in the corner of the kitchen counter while Jodi chops onions and shoos Lothian away before he steals them. (Raw onion. What is even with him.) It gets left there while everyone goes into the dining-room to eat, and nobody even looks at it until Jodi comes back out a couple of hours later, looking guilty.

Sorry, she says, filling a glass with water. Couldn't get away. But Dad says he'll drive me out to Sam and Gabbi's, and I'm gonna call her now to see when she wants me. Pick you up before I go?

"It's fine," says Tacoma. "'S your family, so. You know."

Still. Jodi shoots her a look. I shouldn't just leave you lying around.

Tacoma would like to argue, but it's hard to come up with a decent counter. She shrugs, remembers that Jodi can't see her, and sighs loudly instead.

"I can wait," she says. "Go on, before they start thinking you forgot how taps work."

She cuts the connection to underline the point, and spends a bleak half hour pacing up and down the stairs, trying to work out how it is that Jodi's got it into her head that she ever said anything about Ash and Helen. Tacoma remembers asking her if she was okay, several times, and then falling back on a bunch of trite platitudes. Nothing that mattered; nothing that Jodi could have mistaken for a recognition of her loss.

She's still mulling it over when Jodi returns with her coat and bag, and then she has to put it out of her mind and get her brain back in gear. There'll be time to dredge up the past later. Right now, there are leads to chase.

The drive out to the edge of town is quiet. Something seems to have put León on edge; he asks twice if Jodi will be all right, without apparently realising that he's repeating himself, and both times Jodi answers patiently that it's okay, Dad, I met Gabbi on Friday and it's all fine.

Right, he says, without conviction. Right.

In the rock, her eye pressed up against the darkness of Jodi's bag, Tacoma listens and runs out of loose skin to pull off her lip.

The car engine cuts out abruptly, and León clears his throat.

"Well, uh, here we are," he says. "I'll be back at four. That okay?"

"Sure," replies Jodi. "I'll call you if anything changes."

"Right," he says. "So … you'll be all right?"

Jodi sighs.

"Dad. It's fine. Gabbi is my friend. Okay?"

"Okay, okay." Pause. "Sorry, kiddo. It's just – this is so new, still. You know?"

"Yeah," she says. "I know."

"You always do." Tacoma can't quite tell if he's exasperated or grateful. She supposes there's no reason he couldn't be both.

Something rustles, and her window wobbles slightly: Jodi's picked up her bag.

"See you later, then," she says.

"Yeah," replies León. "See you at four, Jodi."

The clunk of the car door, the crunch of Jodi's boots, the scratchy noise of Lothian bursting out of the back seat. Jodi's breath sounds slow, so slow it has to be deliberate.

Tacoma imagines asking her if she's okay, and then imagines her response: yeah, it's just been weird lately, or maybe yeah, I guess, or maybe just I don't know. It's not a substitute for actually asking her, but for some reason she just can't quite make herself do it.

Knock knock. The door clicks open. Tacoma holds her breath―

"Heya, kid." It's a pack-a-day-for-fifteen-years sort of voice: unmistakeably Samantha Spade. Not the most well-liked woman in town, but Tacoma has always admired her. She's just so damn cool. "You, uh, here for Gabs?"

No immediate hostility. Tacoma breathes out again.

"Yeah," says Jodi. "She's expecting me, I think?"

"She is," agrees Sam. "Guessin' you two are about to fill my house with that shitty krautrock."

"Heh. Uh, yeah. Sorry."

A big, theatrical sigh.

"Can't be helped, I guess. Come on in, kid."

Footsteps. In the background, Tacoma hears a car starting up, and realises Leon must have just been sitting there, watching. Like the worried dad he is.

The door closes. Jodi takes off her coat, makes polite but distant conversation: how's uni? Okay. How's the petrol station? Shit; nobody's buyin'. But we're still kickin', so it's all right. They're just about to run out of things to say when Gabriella pops up from somewhere.

"Jodi! Hi. Come in. I made a cake."

"Oh," says Jodi. "You didn't have to …"

"Yes, she did," says Sam. "'Cos I wanted one and I can just pick her up and hold her in the air till she does what I want."

"And here was me thinking I was doing it out of the goodness of my heart," says Gabriella dryly. "Next time let me know when you're threatening me, Miss Spade. I might notice that way."

"Oi, behave, Gabs. I pay your wages."

"Better pay more if you don't want the lip then, huh?"

Both their voices are rich with unspoken laughter. Cousins, huh? Sure. When she was a kid, Tacoma always thought that something about that didn't quite make sense; it wasn't till she was seventeen that she figured out why.

"Whatever," says Sam. "You two nerds have fun. I'll be in the garage, see if I can fix that leak. You know. Doin' actually useful stuff."

"Good for you, Sam. Meanwhile, Jodi and I will engage in some serious appreciation of the arts."

A vicious shriek, so loud and piercing it makes Tacoma wince. She once looked up how long wingull lived, out of a kind of desperate attempt to figure out when Mahogany would be free of the mad bastard, and was disheartened to find out that many species of seagull can live for forty or fifty years. Add in a few more from the pokémon vitality, and it looks like the damn bird might be here even longer than Gabriella.

"Not you, Jack," says Gabriella. "You are getting shut in the bedroom before you get your beak in Jodi's cake. Or Lothian's ear."

That's genuine affection in her voice. Tacoma can't even pretend to understand this. How the posh New Bark girl ended up with a glorified seagull for a partner is completely beyond her.

"Thanks," says Jodi. "Um, sorry, Jack."

More shrieking, and a nasty snapping sound that Tacoma hopes isn't a beak closing on someone's ear, but Gabriella just talks right over it.

"Shut up, you," she says. "I'll be right back, Jodi. Make yourself at home."

Tacoma gives her a second to go away, then speaks.

"I hate that fucking bird."

Jodi suppresses a laugh.

"You can't see," she replies, under her breath, "but Lothian has literally just stopped trying to hide behind me."

"Wow. So much for loyalty between partners."

"It's not like that. If Bastard attacks Lothi, he'll run away. If he attacks me, he'll scream him unconscious."

Tacoma was joking, but she doesn't have time to explain before she hears clinking plates and footsteps.

"You like coffee cake, right?" asks Gabriella. "Because that's what I made."

Jodi does, as it happens, and so the time finally comes for the music to begin. It is exactly as awful as Jodi promised: it drones, it whines, what few lyrics it has are all in a language Tacoma doesn't speak; there are barely even any real instruments, just a bunch of synthesisers and voice modulators. Worst of all, Jodi and Gabriella can't seem to get enough of it. Tacoma listens to what she always thought were two of the smarter people in town talking appreciative bullshit about literally the worst song she's ever heard, and feels her faith in humanity slip a few notches lower. What the hell is wrong with a guitar and a nice voice?

But Jodi's happy. She laughs, talks excitedly about bands Tacoma has never heard of and vaguely suspects are just made up; and Gabriella reciprocates in ways that make her happier still and Tacoma viciously, pointlessly jealous; and Lothian chirps and hums like he's into the music too; and Jodi's happy, and despite herself Tacoma can't quite make herself close the connection on it all. She sticks it out, reminding herself that she's the one who broke the friendship in the first place, and finally, finally, the record player falls silent and the music talk gives way to something else.

"I'm glad to see you laughing," says Gabriella. "You seemed, um, really out of it the other day."

"Oh," says Jodi. "Yeah, I … I'm sorry. You must think I'm―"

"No. No, I understand. It can't be easy, especially when you can't get away from it; it's all anyone's talking about. Well, that and … and you."

The awkwardness in the air is palpable, even inside the rock. Tacoma finds herself shrinking back from her window out of second-hand embarrassment.

"Yeah," says Jodi slowly. "I noticed."

"Sorry."

"'S all right."

"No, it isn't." Gabriella sighs. "I owe it to you to make an effort. It's just that with this town the way it is―"

"Gabbi." The sound of Jodi's cane: she's leaning forwards maybe, half-out her seat. "Gabbi, it's okay, I know it's weird. I knew it was gonna be weird before, too. I just had to do it anyway."

"You had to?" The words sound heavy. All of the questions Gabriella is too polite to ask are crammed in beneath their surface.

Tacoma is appalled. She never even thought to have this conversation with Jodi. Is Gabriella really that much better a friend than she is?

"Yes." Jodi pauses, gathering her thoughts, and before she speaks again Gabriella jumps in:

"You don't have to talk about it―"

"It's okay. And yes, I had to. Once I figured it out, I couldn't hold it back. Like there was an arcanine straining on a chain and it was barking and biting and clawing and then finally the chain broke and nothing could stop it any more." Jodi stops herself, self-conscious. "I guess that probably doesn't make any sense."

"No," says Gabriella. "It makes perfect sense." Long silence. Somewhere in the distance, the door bangs and Tacoma hears the stamping of Sam's heavy boots as she comes back in. "I had something similar, a long time ago."

"Yeah?"

"Yes."

Gabriella does not elaborate. Jodi does not ask. It's fine. Tacoma feels like everyone here probably has an idea of what she's talking about anyway.

"Are you glad you set it free?" asks Gabriella. "The arcanine, I mean?"

"Yes." The answer is so immediate and heartfelt it makes Tacoma uneasy. She should have asked Jodi about this herself. "Are you?"

"Every single day."

This is a different silence, deep and comfortable. Tacoma imagines the two of them on those patched old couches that Sam and Gabriella have, settling into the moment, and tries not to grind her teeth.

She does not try very hard.

"I guess I'm happy for you," says Gabriella. "But I'm still sorry about Tacoma."

"Yeah," says Jodi. "Me too."

"You know she was one of the first people I met in town? Back when I'd just arrived, when Sam and I were living in one of those rooms Simone used to rent out, before she lost the house."

Tacoma remembers. Gabriella was wandering around town, looking lost, and Tacoma was riding her bike and searching for something interesting. And she found it too, in the beautiful stranger with the one-eyed wingull on her shoulder.

"Nothing happened," Gabriella goes on. "She just welcomed me to town. It was very cute; she must have been about nine, but you would have thought she was the mayor, the way she spoke. I suppose it isn't a very good story, really. But I always liked her for that."

"She told me about that," says Jodi. "I remember. She said there was a mysterious stranger in town, but it was okay because she'd checked her out and she seemed like a nice person."

"She really said that?" Tacoma can hear the smile in her voice.

"Yeah. She's … she was like that."

"Yes." The smile fades. "I'm sorry, Jodi. We're all going to miss her."

"I know."

The silence is unbearable. It's almost okay, at this point, to hear people talking about her like she's dead. (Because she is, she is and she has to keep staring at this fact until she finally understands it.) It's something else entirely to hear their pain, to know that she has punched a hole straight through her stupid, wonderful little town and now nobody can do anything but stare at the bleeding wound and try to remember.

Not her life to throw away, was it? But it's too late for regrets now. She's already gone and bought the fucking farm.

"I had a question," says Jodi, after a while. "You're smart, right?"

"Some people like to think so," says Gabriella. "What is it?"

"In this book I'm reading, there's a word I don't know. A chapter house? Dad didn't know, either."

"Oh, I know that one, I think. It's a kind of meeting house. There's one in Ecruteak, isn't there? On the old temple, where the Knights of the Luminous Order were based."

"A meeting hou―?"

The door opens.

"What did you just say?" asks Sam. Her voice makes something tighten in Tacoma's chest: no laughter there now, just suspicion.

"The Knights of the Luminous Order," says Gabriella. "Fourteenth century? Come on, even you must have heard of them."

A moment. A heartbeat. Jodi's worry drips slowly through the connection and pools around Tacoma's feet.

"Well, no," says Sam. "That's why I have you, innit, 'cause you can know things on my behalf."

"Glad I mean so much to you, Miss Spade. Are you coming in, or …?"

"Nah, you can tell me about your knights another time. Later, kids."

The door closes again. The tightness in Tacoma's chest does not go away.

She doesn't pretend to be an expert at reading people – that's Jodi's thing – but if Sam's really interested in knights then Tacoma is the Princess of Johto. That's an excuse if she ever heard one.

Which means, if she's right, then Sam knows a lot more than just who was driving into town that night. Tacoma wants to know who and why? Well, here's a bloody lead.

"Sorry, Jodi," says Gabriella. "I don't know what's got into her. What were you saying?"

"O-oh," stammers Jodi. "I, um … you know, I kind of forgot."

"Are you okay?"

"Yes. Yes, I'm … fine. I'm fine," she repeats, with more conviction. "There's one in Ecruteak, you said?"

"There is. I think it's free, if you ever felt like visiting. It has a tapestry that's very pretty if you ignore the fact that it's a picture of a white guy decapitating a Hoenner."

It goes on. Jodi expresses interest; Gabriella explains. Tacoma keeps listening, but at this point the words are going in one ear and straight out the other. Sam knows something. Sam Spade, of all people. If she had to pick one person in town who she thought would be trustworthy …

She isn't sure how Jodi's planning on starting that conversation, but now it looks more important than ever that she does.

In the end, Jodi doesn't have to. As she's getting ready to go, Sam puts her head in again and asks for a word.

"Sure," says Jodi. Somehow, she doesn't even sound nervous, though Tacoma can sense through the link that she is. "What's this about?"

"Come in here and find out."

"Very mysterious," says Gabriella, a hint of disapproval in her voice. "Play nice, Miss Spade."

"No promises, Miss Kendrick."

Jodi's cane thumps, and then starts clicking. Tiles underfoot. The kitchen, then?

"So," says Jodi, as the door closes. "What is it?"

"Where did you hear about the chapter house?"

Straight to the point. Her voice is low and serious, but not hostile. Or so Tacoma hopes, anyway.

"Like I said, I just saw the word in a―"

"No, you didn't," says Sam flatly. "Where did you hear about it?"

No answer.

"Kid. Seriously. Who's been talkin' to you about the chapter house?"

"No one," says Jodi. Her voice is level. Maybe it's that empath self-control at work, maybe she's just tough; either way, Tacoma is definitely impressed. Sam is scary when she's like this. "I'm just trying to help Tacoma, okay?"

"Yeah, and I know you was close, but she ain't gonna thank you for―"

"Sam. Please." Not so level now. There must be a limit to her self-control after all. "Please, I just want to …"

Silence. Tacoma strains to hear, like that even makes a difference, and all she hears is something dripping elsewhere in the house. It makes her too uneasy to sit still; she gets up, starts picking and pacing, willing someone to speak.

"I'm sorry, Jodi," says Sam. Still gruff, but gentler now. "I know you're hurtin'. But you got to leave this alone."

"Why?" Jodi sounds almost desperate. "What is so bad you can't even tell me about it?"

"The … well, the reason I left town," replies Sam. "You ain't the only one who's ever asked questions, Jodi."

Seriously? That's why she left? She was investigating this too? Tacoma had always thought it was just that a woman like Sam doesn't fit into a town like Mahogany. But if she was run out of town – well, that's not an option for Jodi. She has nowhere else to go. Nowhere she even can go.

Maybe Sam's right. Maybe they should drop this after all.

"You think I wanted to go?" she continues. "I love this town, kid. That's why I came back. But it's got some real bastards in it all the same."

"I know," says Jodi.

"No," says Sam. "You don't." There's nothing dismissive about it: this is, her voice says, just the way things are. Jodi must know this too, must in fact be able to sense the truth of it in Sam's mind, because for several long seconds she doesn't even respond.

"But I can't stop," she tells her eventually, her voice so quiet Tacoma almost doesn't catch it. "I … I really have to help her."

Sam sighs. So gravelly it's almost a growl.

"Yeah," she says. "That's what I told myself, too."

"What you …?"

"Like I said. You ain't the only one who's ever asked questions."

A pause. And then:

"I'm sorry."

"So was I." Movement of some kind. "I can't stop you," says Sam. "But I ain't gonna help you, either."

"That's … that's fair. I guess."

It seems like this is all the words they've got between them. Tacoma hears nothing for a long, long time, and then the low snarl of a motor outside.

"Guess that's our ride, Lothi," she says. "C'mon. Time to go."

Out in the hall, Gabriella tells Jodi to come back sometime soon, and Sam asks her to think about what she said. Jodi says she will, though which of them she's talking to is unclear, and then at last she and Tacoma are back outside and alone once more.

"Well," says Tacoma. "What the hell was all that about?"

"Dunno," says Jodi. "But next thing we do, we're gonna have to figure that one out."

Tacoma was going to suggest that maybe they should consider stopping after all, but in the face of Jodi's determination she just can't seem to get the words out.

"Yeah," she says instead. "I … I guess we do."

Chapter Text

GABRIELLA

It's been ten years now. And still, every single morning, Gabriella reaches out before her eyes are open to make sure Sam is still there. She just can't fathom how all this worked out. Even back then, when she was nineteen and naïve as hell, she gave them three months, tops. But here she is, twenty-nine, and there Sam is, thirty-one, and the house is slowly falling apart around them and the beautiful little shithole they live in is bleeding from the throat but here they are. Still.

Sam reaches back, still sleeping, and pulls her closer into their little cocoon of warmth. Beyond the four corners of the bed, the room is as cold as the frozen trees outside the window. But here, curled into Sam's chest, Gabriella is feeling just fine.

These are the precious moments, when things are for a few brief seconds comfortable. Soon, she'll get up and unbraid her hair and line her eyes with a stick of kohl worn down to a nub like a baby's finger, and take a cup of vile instant coffee out to the desk in the station to wait for people who want to buy cigarettes or snacks or – rarest of all – petrol, and maybe today somebody will come and maybe they won't but either way she'll come back at the end of the day and they will do this all over again.

It's not much. But it doesn't have to be. Not so long as they're sharing it.

Sam opens her eyes and wrinkles her nose.

"You again," she says. "Thought I'd chased you off an' all."

"Can't get rid of me that easily," says Gabriella. "Do you want some coffee?"

"Nah." She feels Sam's hand brushing through her hair, flicking something away. "Five more minutes."

Gabriella lets her head sink onto Sam's shoulder. She can smell her: motor oil, cigarettes, unwashed hair. As familiar as her own face in the mirror.

"Okay," she says, curling her arm tighter around Sam's waist. "Five more minutes."

Five more minutes then, and then five more, and then Gabriella insists, because Sam promised Fergus Wright his car would be fixed by this afternoon and she knows for a fact that she's barely even started, and then at last it's time to crawl out into the cold and undo her braid. Sam sits up in bed, watching her dress, until Gabriella turns around and throws a tube of mascara at her.

"Get up, Miss Spade," she says.

"I'm gettin' up, Miss Kendrick."

"You make it look an awful lot like staying in bed."

"I'm takin' my time. When you get to my advanced age―"

"You're two years older than me."

"―then you find it takes longer to get started in the mornin', dunnit."

"I'm going to throw my hairbrush next."

"Okay, okay, you win."

In the kitchen, they drink coffee while Jack screeches for food and Morgan, Sam's clefairy, jingles to herself in the corner. The two used to fight a lot, but while Jack is tough Morgan picked up a few electric-type moves back on Sam's trainer journey, and after some scorched feathers and pecked throats the two have more or less learned that this is a battle nobody wins.

"Can you do the shoppin' later today?" asks Sam. "Think this might be all the coffee we got."

"If you finish that car."

"Well. Guess I can see my way to doin' that."

She looks so much like herself, with her coffee cup in one hand and her cigarette in the other. Flannel shirt like one of the loggers at the mill. Close-cropped hair and nicotine-yellow teeth. Her parents called her Samantha because they were Bogart fans, but there is a sense in which she actually does look a little like him. That heavy, arrogant face. Those dark eyes.

"Take a picture," says Sam, watching her stare. "It'll last longer."

Gabriella smiles that particular smile that she knows Sam finds maddeningly beautiful, and grabs her keys from the bowl.

"See you later, grease monkey. Morgan, make sure she doesn't cut her fingers off or something."

Morgan mews in that cute clefairy way, like she's never flattened anyone with a beam of concentrated moonlight, and Gabriella takes her leave, down the hall with the threadbare carpet and out through the patched door into the blinding white of fresh snowfall.

No, it's not much. But it's hers, and Sam's, and theirs is a life lived only in the space between the lines but still, it's all she's ever really wanted.

Later that day, after a morning during which nobody comes into the little shop other than Sam, looking for cigarettes and a quick kiss, Gabriella leaves for town. She doesn't take Jack; she loves him, of course, but he can't be trusted in the shops. If she takes her eyes off him for an instant she'll look back to find him beak-deep in either the merchandise or someone's pokémon. So he stays, to perch on the station roof and call Sam out of the garage if a customer comes by, and Gabriella is left to make the long walk to the centre of town alone.

It's all right. She trudges along the side of the road beside the sparse houses and the huge, silent pines, trying not to slither on the snow, and soon enough the town thickens around her and other pedestrians start to appear: Carrie Savage, polite but disdainful (she is one of the few who really believe she is Sam's cousin, and doesn't see why someone as eligible as Gabriella has gone ten years in town without dating); Janine Williams, more cheerful than she has been in months; even Keisha Simmons, back in town now and walking a bayleef that looks altogether too energetic for a grass-type in December. Gabriella returns smiles and waves, asks after the appropriate people and enquires about Keisha's Gym badges, and carries on her way.

Yes, it's all right; and mostly she doesn't even think about the fact that another woman walking alone through town didn't live to see her destination the other day. Then she cuts through the park towards the shops, and about five minutes into this leg of the trip her day takes a turn for the unexpected.

At first she doesn't recognise the young woman coming down the path towards her, but this isn't unusual at this time of year; people wear so many layers that sometimes it's hard to tell who it is that's under it all. Even so, she seems distinctive enough that Gabriella should know her. How many young people in Mahogany walk with a cane? Not many, for sure. Probably only Alex. But he's not―

A thin, whining squeal, and an ash-coloured noivern thumps down onto the path in front of her.

Gabriella stops. Dead.

"Oh," she says. "I … didn't recognise you."

"Hi Gabbi," says Alex. "It's, uh, it's Jodi now."

Gabriella just about manages to stop herself saying that that's a pretty name. She isn't sure why, exactly, but it feels sort of patronising.

It is pretty, though. As is Jodi. Startlingly so. Gabriella never really noticed it before, but now that she's been placed in context as a girl, it's obvious enough that she's a little embarrassed not to have realised earlier.

"Right." She's the same person, Gabriella tells herself. Not a stranger. "Okay, Jodi. Nice to, uh, see you."

They stare at each other for a while, unable to just walk on past one another but also unable to think of anything to say, and then Jodi asks if Gabriella walked all the way out here from the station and they force their way slowly into a conversation. It turns out Jodi is here to retrace Tacoma's final steps, which makes Gabriella's heart hurt a little, and though she tries to talk her out of it she isn't sure that she's managed to help her at all. She extracts a vague promise from Jodi that she'll come and visit on Sunday, more or less entirely so Gabriella can check she's doing okay, and leaves feeling shaken. It's not that she didn't know this was a thing; during her and Sam's brief stay in Goldenrod, in the heart of what passes for Johto's gay scene, she ran into several women like Jodi. It's more that she never expected to come across one here in Mahogany.

Frankly, she's worried. This is not the best place for someone like Jodi to live; there's a reason why Gabriella and Sam pretend to be cousins, after all. Even if nobody really believes them, they need plausible deniability if they want a quiet life: this is their contract with the town, the compromise that allows everyone to feel okay about being Gabriella's friend. That defence isn't open to Jodi. Gabriella gets the sense that her family have their heads on right, and so she's probably got the support she needs there, but she'll have to keep an eye on her all the same. She can't pretend to understand what it is that Jodi is going through, but she knows the drill here. If you are peripheral, you look out for each other. Simple as that.

Not that she needs convincing. She sighs, tries to shake her worry out of her head, and carries on towards the shops. Maybe after Fergus pays them, she could get some eggs and make Jodi a cake on Sunday. She feels like she ought to do something, anyway. The poor kid arrived in town all ready to come out and found her best friend dead. She deserves a break.

Whatever she decides to do, she has to get through this shopping trip first. Given that Jodi is out and wandering the streets, she's got an unpleasant feeling that it isn't going to be as much fun as she was hoping.

Gabriella's first stop is the butcher's, where Steven works. She takes a moment to psych herself up – it isn't just that he might have heard about Jodi, it's also that ever since he broke up with Janine, he hasn't been able to shut up about it – and then she goes around the corner and walks in.

Hi, says Steven from behind the glass-topped counter, and more or less immediately says that it's terrible about Tacoma, isn't it? Yes, agrees Gabriella, heaving a mental sigh of relief. Yes, it is.

Steven leans on the counter and shakes his head. He keeps thinking she'll come in soon to pick up some bloodcake. Only a few people in town even like the stuff – traditional north Johto fare or not, it's still like eating salted scabs – but Nikole loved it. Tacoma came by every week to pick up three cakes for her. Every Friday, without fail. When the door jingled just now, he thought …

Steven shakes his head again and sighs like a man who has of late been feeling the blows and buffets of fate more keenly than is usual. Sorry, he says, reaching under the glass for the trimmings he keeps at one end of the counter. The usual, then?

Yes, of course. Gabriella takes the leftovers from a couple of this week's joints, passes Steven her last crown and gets two and five in change. Kanto decimalised last year, the florin taking over as the new currency, but here in Johto there are still lessons in school to teach you how to calculate your money. Not that it matters. None of it's worth anything any more anyway. Two shillings seven for a few scraps of meat? If this keeps up, there won't even be any point to pennies any more.

Thank you, she says, reminding herself that Fergus will pay later today and she doesn't need to worry about money just yet, and leaves to get the coffee and lentils.

Next up: Lutyen's Supplies, more usually known as 'the store'; it's small, but the shelves are high and densely packed, and it forms the cornerstone of any shopping trip in Mahogany. Like usual, there are a few other people around there – including Leanne Wright, Fergus' wife. She and her snubbull corner Gabriella by the flour and ask about the car; Gabriella flashes her the smile that earned her most of her tips back in the bar in New Bark and promises that it will absolutely be done by four.

Leanne thanks her, and then asks if she's heard the news. Which news, Gabriella asks, a nameless dread bubbling sluggishly inside her like molten tar, and when Leanne says that Fergus saw Alex Ortega walking round town in women's clothes she raises an eyebrow in polite surprise.

Really, she says, wishing Jack was here to end the conversation by dive-bombing Leanne's snubbull. I guess you never can tell.

This is meaningless enough to be safe, and Leanne readily agrees that no, you never can, can you, at which point Gabriella says that unfortunately she's in a little bit of a hurry but if either Leanne or Fergus want to come by the station at four the car will be waiting, and walks quickly away towards the counter.

But there's no respite here, of course. Sarah's central position in town means she's well placed to indulge her passion for gossip, and Leanne has already told her. Something vicious stirs in Gabriella at how pleased Sarah looks to have gained access to such juicy news, and when asked if she's heard about Alex Ortega she throws caution to the winds and says yes, she bumped into her on the way here.

The emphasis on her is slight, but unmistakeable. Sarah stares at her for a long moment, but Gabriella has weathered worse, and she stares right back.

By the way, Sarah, she says. Do you have any of that Kantan coffee left? It's Sam's favourite.

Yes, says Sarah, still staring. Yes, okay, she does.

Safely outside, Gabriella adjusts the weight of her bag on her arm and pinches the bridge of her nose. Leanne probably heard all of that. And now people will have something else to talk about when the news about Jodi gets around.

Well, fuck it. It's what friends are for. And it isn't like people don't talk about Gabriella already. She jingles the last couple of coins in her pocket, decides she can't afford to get the roofing nails today after all, and turns on her heel to start on her way home. If she leaves now, she thinks, she might even make it back by three.

Fergus paid 135 crowns, seven shillings and ninepence, of which Gabriella calculates they get to keep 31c, 2/6. The rest goes on the bills, some of which have been overdue for long enough that even Gabriella is having trouble charming the company reps when they call asking for money. That evening, she sits cross-legged on a dining chair at the kitchen table, adding up and subtracting and nailing down exactly what this week's take is, and looks up after some time to see Sam leaning against the doorway, watching her and running her fingers through Morgan's oil-stained fur.

"What?"

"You're very pretty when you're concentrating, Miss Kendrick."

Gabriella snorts with the kind of scorn that is meant to be seen through.

"Going to take more than that to wheedle extra beer money out of me, Sam."

"Ain't beer I'm after, kitten."

Sam's arms slip around her shoulders, her breath warm on the nape of Gabriella's neck. Gabriella fakes her resistance for a second longer, keeping the game going, then tilts her head back to lean against Sam's cheek.

"Fergus said he ran into your friend Alex," says Sam, after a while. "Did you hear?"

"I ran into her too," says Gabriella. "Her name's Jodi these days."

Sam's head bows against hers, her cheekbone grazing Gabriella's barrette.

"Is it now," she says. "She okay?"

"Not really. I found her wandering around in the park, trying to retrace Tacoma Spearing's last movements."

"Christ."

"Yeah." Gabriella squeezes Sam's rough fingers between her own. "Feel stupid, Sam. I just wasn't expecting it, and I couldn't hide my surprise. She didn't need that from me."

"Can't be helped. Nobody woulda expected it."

"I shouldn't have let her see my shock."

"Can't control your first reaction, kitten. 'S what you do afterwards that matters."

Gabriella sighs.

"Yeah," she says, reluctantly. "Maybe." Pause. That drip is still going. Sometime Gabriella will definitely have to get those roofing nails. "I invited her round on Sunday. Listen to the Kraftwerk record. Thought I might make a cake, too."

"You never make me cakes," says Sam, mock-angry.

"Just thinking of your dentist, Miss Spade."

She feels Sam's smile in the way her face shifts against her head, and smiles back.

"Krautrock and cake, huh?" asks Sam. "Guess I can get behind half of that, at least. Keep an eye on her?"

"Keep an eye on her," agrees Gabriella. "I think she'll be okay. León and Michelle are sensible people."

"So are my parents," says Sam. "Don't hurt to be careful, does it?"

"No. It doesn't."

Gabriella's parents claimed to be sensible, too. Claim, even. They're probably still alive, back in New Bark in the big, half-ruined house they're too proud to sell and too poor to maintain. Kendrick used to be a big name, back in the nineteenth century, when the royal family was more than a figurehead and you could make real money by squeezing your serfs just that little bit harder than was entirely ethical. But that time is past, and all that's left are two bitter ex-aristocrats and the daughter they so thoroughly despised for not knowing any better than the poverty she was born to that when a girl with a motorbike and a man's haircut offered her a ride out of town she took it without a second thought.

Sensible people, they said they were, and yet not so sensible that Gabriella ever felt like telling them about her crushes on the other girls at school.

She and Sam stay there at the table for a while, lost in the past and the feel of each other, and then Morgan tugs irritably on Sam's shirt and she follows her back out to the living-room to get the fire going for the night. Gabriella remains a few moments more, thinking about Jodi and running the calculations over and over, and then she forces herself to close the account book and call Jack over to her shoulder. Jodi will be fine. And there's Ally Foster's piano lesson tomorrow; that's another twenty crowns. Nothing to worry about, really. Nothing.

In the living-room, Sam is crouched in front of the fireplace, shoving balled-up newspaper in among the logs while Morgan tosses an embryonic fireball between her paws. Clefairy are useful like that. Their moon magic can mimic moves of almost every elemental type, with a push in the right direction from a TM. As Sam gets up again, Morgan blasts the wood with a star of orange fire, then sits down on the hearth with her little paws held out to the flames. After a suitable pause, so everyone knows he's doing this for warmth and not because he likes Morgan at all, Jack joins her, firelight gleaming through the feathers of his spread wings.

Sam flicks the TV on and sits down, Gabriella curled up alongside with her head resting on her shoulder. She closes her eyes, suddenly too tired to really process the tiny image on the screen, and only when Sam says hey Miss Kendrick, it's not bedtime yet does she realise she's been asleep for the past fifty minutes.

Saturday is slow and cold. A few people come in to buy snacks; Keisha comes along with her friend Crystal to buy gum and a couple of the glossy foreign magazines that Gabriella decided they should sell a few years back, when she noticed that Sarah didn't. So far, it's been a good idea. Mahogany's kids are an untapped market, and even if they don't have much money, they're willing to toss what they have at shiny pictures of Unovan cars and Kalois supermodels. Gabriella sells Crystal a fashion magazine, notices the way she looks at the woman on the cover, and wonders if she's figured out how it really is between her and Sam yet. She isn't sure about Crystal, of course, same way she isn't sure about Rachel or Xavier, but Gabriella likes to think she and Sam are doing their part to be a bad influence on Mahogany's kids.

Only Max Lockwood buys petrol, and only a little of it. The oil embargo has been over for two years, but it feels like Johto never got the memo. The country was hit too hard, too soon after the war, and now it's fallen it's struggling to get its feet back underneath it. But still, there are the magazines, and there's the cigarettes they sell to people like Jodi who are old enough to legally buy them but know Sarah will rat them out to their parents if they go through her, and all these things are tiny but they do add up, in the end.

At two Sam takes over while Gabriella spends an hour putting all her childhood piano lessons to good use. Her parents believed that a young lady of good breeding ought to be able to play violin and piano; it's one of the few things she can think of to thank them for. Gabriella likes music, and she likes teaching it to people, and most of all she likes making a little extra money out of it. She wishes she actually practised as much as she tells her students to, but there just never seems to be the time. Sometimes she plays the pop songs of the last decade for Sam while she lies down on the sofa, watching her fingers dance on the keys, and the attention makes her feel as shivery inside as when she first realised that it was her Sam was looking at, across the crowded bar.

For today, though: lessons, station, dinner. She and Sam spar and flirt and sharpen their wits on one another, firing Miss Spades and Miss Kendricks back and forth with gleeful vigour, and then that night they swap the mockery for pet names again and curl into one another on the sofa, watching an imported Kantan crime drama about people who have the free time to brood about their traumas. As usual, Gabriella falls asleep halfway through, exhausted even though she feels she hasn't really done anything today at all, and as usual Sam refuses to wake her until the last possible moment. Gabriella pretends to be angry that Sam let her miss the show so they can have the pleasure of reconciling, and then Sam says leave the dishes, kitten, I'll do them in the morning, and while Morgan puts up the fireguard the two of them retreat to the warm embrace concealed at the heart of their chilly bedroom.

On Sunday, Jodi comes to visit, and the routine is broken. Gabriella tasks Sam and Morgan with cleaning the living-room and lighting the fire, and applies herself to cake-making. Sometimes she's a little ashamed of it, but she really does enjoy playing the housewife. Her younger self would be appalled, probably, at least until she realised that she was also living several hundred miles away from New Bark with the woman of her dreams.

It occurs to her, as it sometimes does, that this is the rest of her life, maintaining this house in this gorgeous little town with her gorgeous partner and all her gorgeous friends who like her even if she is a bloody dyke, and the glorious shock of it holds her frozen for a long moment until Jack stalks along the counter to peck at her hand and break the spell.

She cups his head in her hand, smoothing his feathers with her thumb, and he squeezes his single eye shut in pleasure, leaning into her grip.

"You and me, Jackie," she says, thinking of all those hours she spent watching the gulls on the marina as a kid, dreaming of the day she could go on a journey and have one for her partner. "We turned out okay for a couple of degenerates, didn't we?"

He mewls and snaps lazily at her finger. The movement is sharp and vicious, but there's more than one way to show affection, and Gabriella knows what he means.

"I love you too, dirtbag," she tells him, tapping him on the end of his beak. "Go on. Over there now. I need to grease this tin."

He flaps off, wings fanning up a cloud of flour, and perches on the shelf to glare while Gabriella gets on with the cake. It's actually kind of comforting, honestly. She understands why his gaze unsettles people, but at this point, she feels vaguely troubled when he's not looking at her like he's judging the best way to pull out her tonsils.

Not too long after, Jodi arrives, and it's clear right away that she's doing better than she was when they last met on Friday; her eyes are bright, her voice is cheery, and Lothian is relaxed, no longer glancing up at her every few seconds to make sure she's okay. Gabriella banishes Jack to the bedroom, where he can do no harm to cake or noivern, and gets Jodi sat down on the good sofa with the record player on in the background.

The resultant conversation is long and surprisingly heartfelt, meandering around the topics of music and Tacoma and being true to yourself. Gabriella is kind of shocked at how much and how suddenly Jodi seems to have grown up; it feels like it was only yesterday that she was sitting there with her violin under her jaw, sawing away while Gabriella made encouraging noises. Now she talks about music in ways that Gabriella struggles to match, and comes up with a beautiful metaphor to describe what it feels like to say fuck it, I'm just going to be me and screw the rest of you that Gabriella makes a mental note to share with Sam later.

It's a little silly, but she's proud of her. Not like Gabriella can take much credit for this, really; she's probably just some adult to Jodi. But still. It does her good to see the way she's turned out.

Towards the end of the conversation, Jodi asks about chapter houses, and that's where things start to go south. For some reason, this draws in Sam, looking as suspicious as Gabriella has ever seen her; she departs as quickly as she arrives, barely even bothering to make an excuse, and Gabriella is left with an uneasy feeling in her gut. When she asks to speak to Jodi alone before she goes, it's all Gabriella can do not to put a glass to the door and listen in. Jodi comes out of the kitchen afterwards looking pale and determined, and Gabriella knows that this isn't one she can just let slide.

"Well?" she asks, the instant the door has closed on Jodi's retreating back. "What the hell was all that about?"

Sam shrugs.

"Nothin'," she says. "We was just talkin'."

"About?"

For a second, Gabriella thinks she's actually going to do it, is actually going to stand there and lie to her face, but then Sam's shoulders fall and she can breathe out in the knowledge that the truth is coming.

"Tacoma," says Sam. "She's still tryin' to investigate her death. I tried to talk her out of it."

"Okay. Good for you."

"You, uh, you don't sound too happy about it, kitten―"

"Not in the mood for that, Sam," says Gabriella, annoyed. "If that's all it was, why were you trying to hide it? And what was with you sticking your head in earlier when Jodi was asking about chapter houses?"

Sam holds up her hands in surrender.

"Easy, Gabs," she says. "You don't need to be mad―"

"I'm trying not to be," replies Gabriella, "but that really sounds like something you'd say just before you made me mad."

"Would you shut up a second? I'm tryin' to tell you, all right?" Gabriella nods, grinding her irritation back down inside her, and Sam sighs. "The chapter house thing," she says. "'S a place in town. Don't know where. But it's a place where, y'know, where they meet."

"They?" The word comes out before she can stop herself. "Who's they?"

"You know. Them." Sam makes a side-to-side motion of her head. "The ones who don't like it when you go lookin' for people who've disappeared."

Shit. Absolutely, terrifyingly – shit. Okay. Now Gabriella sees what Sam is driving at.

"Like Mae," she says, slowly. "Right?"

"Right."

They share a long, level look. Gabriella takes hold of both Sam's hands and pulls her closer.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I didn't mean to snap, I just – the look on her face when she came out …"

"Yeah, I know." Sam twists her hands around and suddenly now she's holding Gabriella's, squeezing gently. "'S okay."

They stand there for a moment, silent, until Sam slides her hands up Gabriella's arms and down her back to clasp each other over her spine.

"I don't think they had anythin' to do with Tacoma," she says. "No reason, is there? Whatever it is they do, they don't go for Mahogany kids. Definitely not Mahogany kids like Tacoma."

"I always thought she was …"

"Yeah, me too. But she's got― she had prospects. Know what I mean?"

"Yes." Gabriella shrugs. "I guess you're probably right, Sam. But if Jodi's investigating it anyway …"

She doesn't ask who Sam thinks did it. They've had that conversation already, back when they first heard the news, and both of them agreed they weren't going to be intimidated by some coward who skulks around in the dark. Gabriella isn't sure either of them believed this, but they did at least say it.

"I know, Gabs." Sam tightens her grip a little, and Gabriella lets herself be drawn in close, her nose against Sam's brow. People always think Sam's taller, but she isn't; she just has a big presence. "Don't think they'll do anythin' to her just for asking questions, but we need to watch out."

"Yeah. I'll ask around tomorrow night, see if she's been speaking about this to anyone else."

Sam nods.

"Right. I'm seein' Dino tomorrow. I'll ask him, too."

Pause. All the little noises of the house settle around them: Jack scratching around in the bedroom, the chiming of Morgan's magic as she cleans the oil from her fur, the drip of the leak in what they pretend is Gabriella's room. Each sound restores the calm just a little, until the two of them can no longer feel the tension in one other's muscles.

"You know, Jodi said something to me," says Gabriella, after a while. "About … about being true to yourself, I guess. She said it was like there was an arcanine straining against a leash inside her, and then it broke and there was nothing anyone could do to hold it back."

Sam raises her eyebrows.

"Nice," she says. "You shoulda just stolen that one. I wouldn't have known, you know?"

"Miss Spade, your capacity to find new ways of lowering your moral standards is simply staggering," says Gabriella, cupping Sam's jaw in her hands and tilting it towards her own. "Quite how you're still not in jail is completely beyond me."

Sam grins.

"I'm workin' on it," she says. "How about ram-raidin' the store?"

"Sounds delightful, but some other time. I have work tomorrow."

"You're never any fun."

"Oh, I think we both know that's not true," Gabriella tells her. "So … look, handsome, that was your cue, so quit laughing and accept your kiss with good grace."

"Yes, ma'am," says Sam, trying to keep a straight face, and then Gabriella laughs too and in the end it turns out to be quite some time before anybody gets kissed at all.

On Monday and Thursday nights, Gabriella does a shift at the Briar Rose, the little bar on West Street. She used to do it just to get out a bit and keep her hand in – working in Nero's in New Bark was mostly hell, but she has a few fond memories of her time there and besides, the Briar Rose has a nicer clientèle – but since the embargo started, it's been kind of a lifeline. She'd have taken more shifts, only Sam put her foot down. You do too much already, she said. Any more and you're gonna die, and no one else makes my coffee the way I like it, so if it's all the same to you I'd rather you stayed alive. Privately, Gabriella feels that this is a massive exaggeration, but she went along with it anyway. She has always found a certain sweetness in being defeated by someone she loves.

So: two nights a week, and on Monday evening Gabriella walks into town with Jack (for company, mostly, but also because it's dark and Mahogany nights don't seem quite so safe these days) to meet Aaron. He never looks great, exactly – he might have been handsome, once, but he's worn that sullen expression for so long at this point that it's worn permanent lines into his face – and today he looks worse than usual: black circles around bloodshot eyes, a few missed patches of stubble around his normally neat moustache. Can't have been easy, pulling a body out of the water. Especially if it's someone you know.

"Evening," she says, coming in and shrugging off her coat. "How are you doing, Aaron?"

He gives her a look. Behind his back, Jack settles onto his usual perch on the top shelf, knowing that Gabriella will send him home again if he comes down from it. She considers it good practice to make sure there's a decent space between him and Steph; despite the type match-up, he usually wins that fight, and likes to start it if he gets a chance.

"You ever seen a dead body?" asks Aaron, and Gabriella's attention snaps back to him.

"Yes," she replies. (A memory: the winter of '57, a walk down to the beach, a frozen woman curled around a near-dead charmander.) "Never anyone I know, though," she adds, trying to make him feel better. "Never touched one, either."

"Well, then you know, don't you?" Aaron folds his arms, annoyed at her for spoiling his story. "Terrible business, this."

"It is," agrees Gabriella. "Let me know if you need anything, Aaron."

He sniffs and disappears into the back room without another word. Gabriella shakes her head and hangs her coat up on the hook. There's a while yet before anyone will arrive. Time to clean this place up a little. Aaron thinks that the ratty cushions and the tarnish on the fittings lend this place a certain careworn charm, but Gabriella is pretty sure people wouldn't come here if there was anywhere nicer to get a drink in this town.

Time passes, and the bar begins to fill up. Gabriella has a theory that these days people drink more than they used to; at least, she's sure that this place never used to see this much traffic on a Monday night. León comes in with some of the boys from the mill for a round of beers; Gabriella tells him that Jodi is a fine young woman and a credit to her family, and in his stupefied delight he accidentally tips her a whole crown. She gives it back, aware that he has a psychic at home to feed, and he looks at it for a while before returning half of it to her hand.

Thank you, he says, looking more relieved than Gabriella has ever seen him before, and takes the first two beers over to the table. She stands there for a moment, trying not to cry at how happy he is that someone thinks of his daughter as his daughter, and then moves down the bar to greet Janine as she arrives. Janine says hi back, and that she's waiting for someone before she orders, thanks; Gabriella asks who the lucky guy is and Janine just shakes her head, grinning. She takes a seat at a corner table, and then a few discreet minutes later is joined by Simeon Brennan, who buys her some Cianwood peach brandy and stumbles over his words as he hands Gabriella the money.

Good luck, Sim, she tells him, with a mischievous smile, and watches him go bright red as he takes the drinks over to the table.

The hands on the clock make circuits of the dial. Aaron hovers, pours drinks and glowers at anyone who asks him how he's doing; Gabriella pulls pints and ruthlessly extracts tips from those she thinks can afford them. Steven pops in, orders a drink and then, noticing Janine, changes his mind and walks out again, leaving a couple of shillings on the bar to cover the beer Gabriella is still halfway through pouring.

Around her, tongues wag: wives, Tacoma, Jodi. Some guy asks his friend if he's heard about Alex Ortega, and the friend jerks his head backwards at León, two tables over. Better not, he says, and the guy nods and goes ahh, gotcha. Across the room, Brett Packard is telling León how the cops came round his parents' house to ask about his dad's electrode, and he's got this theory that it must have been an electric-type that killed Tacoma because they also asked the Astons about Crystal's ampharos. Well, says León, nodding his head at the door, I guess we might find out.

Gabriella follows his gaze and sees, of all people, Con Wicke. He stands in the doorway for a moment, as if uncertain whether or not he really wants to be here, then seems to come to a decision and takes a seat at the bar.

"Con," says Gabriella, moving over. "I didn't expect to see you here."

This close, he looks about as good as Aaron does. Gabriella suspects that this is a difficult time to be Chief of Police in Mahogany.

"It's been a rough few days," he says, not meeting her eye. "Hawthorn Redcap, please."

"Coming up." Gabriella brushes the dust off the bottle – it's meant to be the best whisky on the Tohjo peninsula, but nobody ever actually drinks it – and pours him a generous measure; he looks like he needs it. "Half a crown, Con."

"Jesus. Talk about inflation."

"Tell me about it," she says, taking his money and sticking it in the till. "How's the investigation going?"

He grimaces.

"Slowly," he says. "We have a few leads we're following. Can't say more than that."

"No, I know." She leans on the counter, brings herself close enough to unsettle him. Con has what he thinks is a secret love for her, and while it's a little underhanded to abuse it like this, Gabriella can't resist the opportunity to push a little harder. Besides, if he isn't observant enough to work out that she and Sam are together then he's just asking to be conned. "I'm sure you're doing all you can," she says. "Whoever did this, you'll bring them to justice."

Con moves back a little on his stool, sipping his whisky to cover his awkwardness.

"I appreciate the vote of confidence," he mutters. "Sometimes it feels like we're not making progress at all."

"Can't be easy. You let me know if you need anything, right?"

He hesitates, glass hovering indecisively between coaster and mouth, and then takes the plunge.

"Buy you a drink?" he asks. "I just saw Aaron go in the back."

Gabriella smiles, and sees a little answering light flicker in Con's eyes.

"Sure," she says. "What he doesn't know won't hurt him." She pours herself a glass of white wine and takes another few shillings off Con. "It really is awful about Tacoma," she says. "You know she was one of the first people I ever met in this town? My first day here, I was wandering around like a lost sheep, and she welcomed me to Mahogany like she was the Queen and I was the Unovan ambassador."

Con's only answer is a strained smile, which Gabriella takes to mean that he came to the bar to forget Tacoma for a while, not to discuss her further.

"Sorry," she says. "You've probably had enough of her for now, huh?"

"No, it's okay," he says, although it clearly isn't. "I get it. Everyone liked her."

"Someone didn't."

He sighs.

"Yeah," he says. "I guess so."

They both sip their drinks. People are watching them, Gabriella can tell, but she doesn't care.

"I heard Jodi Ortega's been helping out with your investigation," she says. "Looked into Nikole's memories or something?"

Con scowls, but only for a moment. Annoyed about the leak? Or about the fact that she called Jodi by her actual name? Gabriella has always had him down as a reasonably open-minded guy – he brought the first ever woman onto Mahogany's police force, after all – but it wouldn't be the first time she'd misjudged someone.

"Yeah," he replies. "Guess you can't keep a secret in Mahogany, huh."

"Nope." Gabriella smiles again, and sees his face soften accordingly. Good. Keep him on side. "Strictly confidentially," she says, "anything juicy in there?"

She gets the tone just right: Con chuckles, shakes his head.

"Looking for gossip, huh? Well, sorry, but unless you find the woods particularly interesting, there's not much there for you."

"The woods, huh?"

"Yeah. Someone must've dumped Tacoma's things out there."

Hm. That probably isn't a lead that Jodi can chase, unless she can come up with a reason to ask her dad to drive her out into the woods in midwinter. For the best. The less deeply she can dig into this, the better. Gabriella doesn't know who the people in the chapter house group really are, or if they really have anything to do with Tacoma's murder, but she does know they aren't fucking around when it comes to protecting their secrecy.

"You sure you should be telling me this?" she asks, and Con shrugs.

"Not like it's a secret," he replies. "I'm pretty sure half the town knows already."

The door opens, and Gabriella hears a familiar laugh: there's Sam, slouching in with Dean Jackson.

"Be right back," she tells Con, and moves down the bar to intercept the newcomers as they approach. "Evening, Sam. Dean."

"Miss Kendrick," says Sam, slapping her hands down on the bartop. "You're lookin' good tonight."

"Flatterer."

"Don't mean it ain't true," says Sam. "Dino. Beer?"

"Sure thing, Sam." He nods at Gabriella, raises one hand in a brief greeting. "Hey."

"Hey yourself, big guy."

She slides two beers across the bar and Sam slides back a handful of coins.

"No tip?" asks Gabriella, eyebrow raised.

"When you get home, Gabs," says Sam, winking, and takes Dino and the beers over to an unoccupied table. Gabriella watches her go for maybe one moment longer than is necessary or prudent, and then glides back down the bar to Con. He looks like he has something to say, and sure enough as soon as she gets back he starts speaking.

"I was thinking," he says, almost stammering but not quite. "You, uh, you … know Jodi, don't you?"

"Yes, I do. We talk about music." Gabriella feigns a scowl, which means it comes out much prettier than if it were the real thing and in consequence makes Con even more nervous than he already is. "Why?"

"I was in the store earlier today and I heard her asking Sarah some questions," he says. "About stuff that came up during the investigation." About chapter houses, if Gabriella had to guess. "Look, I get that she's cut up about her friend and all, but she's still a kid. A murder investigation is no place for her. You know?"

"Yes," she says. "I know."

She swirls her wine around her glass, trying to slow herself down. Her head is already feeling a little light; there isn't really enough in her stomach right now to absorb the alcohol properly. One of the reasons she doesn't drink much any more.

"I also think," she says, "that you and I both know this can be a dangerous town to ask those kinds of questions in, Con."

He starts, the whisky jumping in his glass, and then glances over his shoulder at the table where Sam and Dean are deep in conversation.

"She told you?" he asks.

"Of course she did. Why wouldn't she?"

"I don't know. I guess I thought maybe it's the kind of thing she'd keep to herself."

"Come on, Con, we've lived together in that house for ten years. You think either of us have any secrets left by now?"

"Huh. Ten years? Really?"

"Yes, I know. I can hardly believe it either." She pretends to take another sip of her wine, although at this point she's decided that she won't have any more. "But she did tell me about why she had to leave town, and it seemed to me you would know too."

"Before my time, really," Con says. "I'd only just joined the force back then. Didn't know about – well, about any of this stuff." He drinks a little of his whisky and shakes his head. "The things you learn as a cop, huh?"

"I think Sam picked it up from the other side of the law. Are you ever planning on doing something about them, by the way?"

"About who?"

"Them."

"Oh." He shrugs uncomfortably. "It's complicated. You think I don't want to? I'm Police Chief, Gabriella, I'm meant to―"

He cuts himself off, visibly suppressing the urge to glance over his shoulder. People are watching, but Gabriella doesn't think it's because of the subject; most don't even know about the chapter house group. The attention is more because they do know about Con's crush, and also about how spectacularly unavailable Gabriella is, and those two things next to each other are kind of entertaining.

"Look, it's like trying to grab a haunter," he says. "Looks solid, then you reach out and it just melts between your fingers."

"You're saying you can't find them?"

"You know what this town's like. People stick together." Something seems to occur to him: he sits up a little straighter, tries to rearrange his features into something reassuring. "Hey, uh, if you do ever find anything out, though, then you come to me."

Gabriella detects an unmistakeable undercurrent of because I can protect you. Jesus. She almost feels sorry for him; how is it possible to have watched her with the wide eyes of an unrequited lover for ten years and not figured out that this isn't the kind of thing that she's impressed by? Maybe this is cute, if you like policemen, but Gabriella is ambivalent about both police and men, and she just finds it kind of exasperating.

"Okay, Con," she says, with a neutral kind of smile. "I'll bear that in mind. And I'll speak to Jodi, too."

"Huh? Oh. Yeah. Jodi, right." He clears his throat. "I appreciate it. I, uh, can't say I get it, any of it, but I guess that doesn't mean she shouldn't be safe."

You guess, do you, Con? You guess. Gabriella can hear the reluctance in his voice, like it's some kind of concession to admit that Jodi deserves protection under the law, and she feels her heart close up like a pineco snapping all of its raised scales shut at once. Okay. You drink your expensive whisky and fuck off back to the station.

"Sure," she says. "Excuse me, I think Pete wants my attention. Enjoy your whisky, Con."

He raises his glass.

"Will do, Gabriella. Thanks."

She flashes him a smile, tucks her wineglass under the bar, and moves away to take Pete's order. Aaron re-emerges from the back a few seconds later, Steph clomping in at his heels, and then everything begins to speed up again. Gabriella collects glasses and tips as the bar begins to empty out, and though she feels Con's eyes on her for the next half hour she doesn't offer so much as a glance in return.

He's a useful ally, she tells herself. Don't piss him off. But when he gets up to leave, his glass empty and a too-generous tip at its side, she finds she still can't bring herself to wish him a good night.

By eight, the last of the casual drinkers are long gone. Those who are left are the punters who have come here for the alcohol, not the company: the out of work, the depressed, the drunks. Not so many in a town this small, but there are still a few. Gabriella quietly explains to Marlo Brown that he should leave the bar on two feet like a man who knows when to quit rather than being blasted out by Jack like a drunken boy; he staggers out, left arm down the right sleeve of his coat, and she gets a rare nod of approval from Aaron, watching from the corner. Gabriella is certain he only hired her for her looks, but like Todd at Nero's he's since found that she brings a little more to the table than just a pretty face.

One of the desperate people is Phoenix Wroth, Tacoma's uncle. He creeps in late, grey and silent as a raincloud, and sinks onto a stool at one end of the bar, surrounded by an invisible fog that nobody dares come close enough to breathe in. Bloodshot eyes, stubbly cheeks, hair hanging limp and unwashed around his eyes. Gabriella's heart goes out to him. Jodi was hurt. Phoenix? Phoenix is destroyed.

"Hello," he says vaguely, as she approaches. "It's, um … it's Carrie, right?"

Ordinarily, being mistaken for Carrie Savage would be something to take offence at, but given that Phoenix looks like he might die if she breathed on him Gabriella is inclined to cut him some slack. Besides, he hasn't really lived in Mahogany for years. It was only six months after she moved here that he went away to Saffron.

"Gabriella," she says. "Sam's cousin? Sam Spade?" Pause. Not even a flicker of recognition in his eyes. "Doesn't matter," she says. "What can I get you, Phoenix?"

That one gets a response.

"It's just Nick," he says. "Hmph. You know me and I don't know you. Sorry about this. I moved away and I …"

He loses track of the sentence, resumes staring at his fingernails. No gloves. And his coat is unbuttoned. Gabriella makes a mental note to remind him to do it up before he leaves, or he might not make it home.

"I know," she says. "It's okay." Smile. It won't fix anything, but it's all she has to offer. "What can I get you?"

"Redcap. No ice."

She thinks about saying something like oh, that's popular tonight by way of making conversation, but she isn't sure Nick wants to talk, and anyway she has this vague idea that he and Con don't like each other. She takes the whisky down from the shelf, flicking Jack's wing as she goes and eliciting a playful snap at her fingers, and pours him a glass.

"I'm sorry about Tacoma," she tells him, knowing that he probably doesn't want to hear it but unable not to tell him. "I really liked her."

Nick clutches his glass with both hands, like he's afraid it might escape if given a chance.

"Mm," he says. "So did I."

He downs half the glass in one go and sets it down on the bar just a little too roughly to maintain the illusion that he's still in control of himself.

"They sent her kangaskhan home," he says, talking to a point somewhere over her left shoulder. "No one's told her. She's broken three chairs."

"Oh," says Gabriella, lost. "That's … I'm sorry to hear that."

"Mm." The level in the glass drops again. "I had to get out," says Nick. "I couldn't …"

He doesn't seem to realise that he hasn't finished the sentence. After a moment, he takes another drink.

"Did you know her?" he asks, still not quite managing to look at her face.

"Not that well. I know her friend Jodi."

Nick frowns.

"Didn't even know she had a friend Jodi," he mutters. "Shit."

Ouch. Okay, wrong thing to say. But it's not Gabriella's place to out Jodi without her permission, so she can't explain herself.

"I'm sorry," she says instead. "She was special."

"That she was." The glass is empty now. Already? Jesus. "Another one of these?"

There are politer ways to ask, but at least it's halfway to a full sentence. While Gabriella's turning towards the shelf, Aaron taps her on the arm and murmurs about sending him home after this next one, and she nods. She wasn't planning on letting him have more than two, anyway.

"Here you go," she says. "Better make that your last, though."

Nick frowns, and for a moment Gabriella thinks they're going to have to fight about it, but then he sighs and nods.

"You're probably right," he agrees. "Can I sit here for a while?"

"Sure," she says. "But you can't put off going home forever."

"Maybe you're right," he says, gulping his drink. "Gonna give it a bloody good try, though."

He has no more to say, and Gabriella doesn't want to push him. She starts cleaning up, wiping down the bar and taking glasses out to be washed, and all the while keeps one eye on Nick, nursing his whisky at the end of the bar. Mostly, he doesn't seem to notice; once or twice, he sees her looking and looks back, raises his glass in an ironic salute.

"Kendrick," he says, when she comes close again. At this point, he's one of just three remaining customers – soon to be two; Aaron and Steph are gently but firmly ejecting Norris York even as Nick speaks. "Gabriella Kendrick. You're new in town."

"Hey, you do remember," says Gabriella. "Been a long time now since anyone called me new, though."

"Oh. Yeah." He sighs. "When was that, nine years ago?"

"It was ten in September."

"Ten years. Wow." There is genuine amazement in his voice. "What brought you here, if you don't mind me asking?"

It's a fair question. Even ten years back, Mahogany wasn't doing that well. If you wanted work, it made more sense to move to Goldenrod or Olivine. But Gabriella is happy enough to answer; that Nick is even asking is a good sign that he's levelled out a little. And like she said, it's been ten years. She's got her response to that question down to a fine art by now.

"Me and my parents don't get along," she says. "I wanted out. Sam had a motorbike and a place for me to sleep."

"Ah. Right, you're Sam's cousin." He hesitates. "You … don't look or sound like her at all."

"Nobody looks like Sam," says Gabriella. "And my parents were keen on elocution." She smiles. "You don't sound like Annie."

Nick's face darkens.

"Mm," he grunts. "Too long spent hanging around with Kantan academics." He tips the last few drops of whisky down his throat. "Bet she's still sitting there where I left her. Listening to that fucking kangaskhan banging on the walls."

Gabriella starts.

"Nick …"

"Yeah, no, you're right." He sighs. "She's upset, I just don't … how do you tell her a thing like that?"

Gabriella considers this for a moment. She's never had to deal with a pokémon whose partner has died before. But she's definitely had her share of difficult conversations.

"You go home," she says, in the end. "You go home and you sit down and you say it." She folds her arms, leans on the bar. "And every single time, afterwards, you find that the world didn't end after all. Sometimes you wish it had done, but it doesn't. And then the dust settles and nothing is the same, but it's what it has to be."

Nick gives her a long look.

"You," he says, "are smarter than half the bloody faculty at Yellowbrick. Do you know how annoying that is?"

"I think I have a pretty good idea."

"Hmph." Nick fumbles in his pocket and pulls out a crumpled crown note. "Here," he says. "That cover it?"

"Just about. Redcap's a half-crown a glass."

"Jesus. Fucking inflation." Nick blinks. "Uh, sorry."

"I've heard worse."

"Hah. Bet you have. Anyway, uh, sorry, all I've got for a tip are florins."

"Not a problem," Gabriella assures him. Change them at the post office and she'll be doing well; the exchange rate is very much in the florin's favour these days.

"Great." He gives her a handful of octagonal coins that feel flimsier than the round ones Gabriella is used to and stands up. "I guess I'd better get back," he says. "You're right. Someone's got to tell her. And God knows nobody else is up to it."

"Good luck," says Gabriella. "Come by again if you want whisky and a push into a difficult conversation."

The merest ghost of a smile flickers across Nick's lips.

"Maybe I will," he says, fastening his coat. "Goodnight, Miss Kendrick."

He leaves, a little more upright than when he left. Gabriella watches the door close behind him, imagining his return to the Spearing house and hoping the advice she gave him doesn't screw things up too badly, and returns her attention to the glasses. Got to concentrate now. Without customers to distract her, she can feel the fatigue creeping up on her again, and the last thing she needs is to fall asleep on her feet with an armful of pint glasses.

A few minutes after ten, Gabriella steps out into a night as black and cold as a banker's heart, as Sam would say, and feels herself wake up a little as the first breath of outside air chills her lungs. On her shoulder, Jack squawks and flips his head back and forth, scanning the street with his one eye. Old habit. Mahogany is usually a very safe town, but Jack has been at her side through night walks in much more dangerous places, and when it gets dark he's always ready for the possibility of violence.

If she's honest, Gabriella is thankful for it tonight. The later it gets, the harder it is not to think about the fact that someone in town is a murderer.

"Hey."

Jack shrieks and takes off, wheeling around to strike with blue light dripping from his beak; Gabriella whirls, heart pounding halfway out of her chest, and sees―

"Oh my God, Sam, you scared the shit out of me," she gasps.

"Uh, yeah, sorry." Sam scratches her head. "Didn't mean to do that."

Jack's water pulse fades and he settles back onto her shoulder with a thump, glaring at Sam as if he'd like to blast her anyway. She clicks her tongue at him and steps forward, patting Gabriella's arm.

"You okay?"

"I was, right up until you jumped out of the shadows like you were going to kill me." She shakes her head. "God, Sam. You remember there's a murderer on the loose?"

Sam coughs.

"Yeah, well, I … hm. Sorry."

"It's fine," says Gabriella, searching for her self-control and relieved to find it still within arm's reach. "It's fine. Just – maybe don't hang around in the shadows like a mugger."

"Maybe I am a mugger," says Sam. "Maybe I'm a criminal who abducts helpless young women late at night and takes 'em away to my isolated home in the woods, where nobody can see all the terrible things I do to 'em."

Gabriella has to smile. Trust Sam to turn it around.

"Are you going to abduct me, Miss Spade?" she asks.

"Maybe if you're good." Sam shoves her gently with an elbow, making Jack screech and flare his wings. "I was at Dino's," she says. "Thought I'd stop off on the way back to walk you home, Miss Kendrick. Like you said, there's a murderer on the loose."

"How long were you waiting?"

"Not long. Ten minutes, maybe?"

"Ten minutes in this weather? Why didn't you come inside?"

Sam makes an awkward movement of her head.

"Wanted to surprise you."

Gabriella sighs.

"Well, you certainly did that. Idiot." She glances over her shoulder, making sure they really are alone, then grabs Sam's hand. "Romantic idiot, though," she whispers. "It was sweet of you to come."

"That's me," says Sam. "Sweet to a fault." She indicates the street ahead, one huge void flecked with tiny puddles of streetlight. "C'mon. Let's get back before they turn the lamps off."

"Can't Morgan light the way?"

"She'll be pissed if I drag her out of her nice warm ball into this." Sam waves a hand at the snow banked up against the buildings. "Ready when you are, Miss Kendrick."

"I'm always ready, Miss Spade," she says, and off they go.

It's cold. It's starting to snow. There's a killer on the loose, the Police Chief is an ass, and Gabriella is so tired she feels like she might actually pass out before they reach the station. But here, walking with Sam through this freezing December night – God, she could be on a beach in Hoenn with a cocktail in her hand and still, she couldn't be any happier.

"I love you, handsome," she murmurs, so quietly that if it weren't for the way her breath steams in the air even she wouldn't be sure that she'd actually spoken.

But Sam knows, and while they are invisible in the space between the streetlights she turns her head upwards and brushes her lips against Gabriella's cheek.

"Pretty fond of you myself, kitten," she replies, and they walk hand in hand into the night.

Chapter Text

JODI

Monday brings yet more snow, and it's still falling when Jodi wanders down to join her mother at the kitchen table, the world beyond the window blurred with white like an untuned TV screen. Through the chatter of the radio – Johto 2, her mother's favourite station – Jodi can hear Ella and her father grunting monosyllables at each other as they shovel the driveway with Lucille. It's been their job for as long as Jodi can remember; she herself never had the strength to use a shovel, even before the avalanche. Something about hearing the three of them at it is comforting. Johto does its best to kill all its inhabitants every winter, but here they are regardless. The snow comes down and they just shovel it out of the way.

"Morning, chickadee," says her mother, handing her a cup of coffee without being asked. "What's on the agenda for today?"

"Maybe go to the library and get some work done," she replies. "I'm meant to be writing an essay on psy-acoustics."

This isn't a lie. She is meant to be writing an essay, and she is thinking of working in the library. It's just that the work she plans on doing there isn't anything to do with university. Going on what Sam said yesterday, someone must have been killed here in Mahogany about ten years ago – and it must have been connected to the chapter house. The library has microfiche archives of the Mahogany Courier going back at least thirty years; if Sam's investigation back then really was into another murder, that's where Jodi and Tacoma will find the evidence.

"You know," says her mother carefully, not quite looking her in the eye, "nobody's gonna be home. You can work here if you like."

"I might need some books other than the ones I brought home," says Jodi. "I don't know if they'll have them there, but it's worth looking."

"Hm. Okay." Her mother takes a meditative sip of coffee, furrows her brow. "You've been spending a lot of time out this past week, Jodi."

She leaves it at that: no need to actually ask the question. Even if Jodi wasn't psychic, she'd be able to tell it was there.

"Everything is okay," she says. "I guess I just miss this place. It's nice to see everything again."

"Is that it?" asks her mother. "It's just – you know, there's a murderer out there, chickadee, and I know it's not dark and you're careful, but … you know."

Oh, Jodi knows. Hard not to. She's spent far too much time recently thinking about killers. The thought had crossed her mind that her parents were probably worried about her getting murdered – she's worried about it, so if they weren't something would be pretty badly wrong – but she didn't really know how to reassure them. Learning what she's up to certainly won't make them feel any better.

"Yeah," she says, in lieu of anything better. "That's it. It was a long term, and everything is so weird. Just want to … feel like I'm here again. If that makes sense."

"I think so." Her mother chuckles, though Jodi can tell she hasn't stopped worrying. "The big city losing its charm already? Kids today are so jaded."

It's an offer to move on, and Jodi takes it gladly. The conversation isn't over, but it's on hold, for now at least.

"It's probably all that TV rotting our brains."

"It probably is," agrees her mother. "Here's trouble."

Thumping from the hall: Ella and her dad, stamping snow off their boots while Lucille clomps heavily along in their wake. They come in, Ella complaining about her friend Stacy, with whom she has for whatever teenage reason fallen out with.

"… and like I don't even get what her problem is," she's saying, while her father nods and hmms as if he can actually keep up with the speed of her thoughts. "I mean so what if―" She catches sight of Jodi and breaks off, startled. "Oh. Heya, sis."

Okay. So it's like that. Why can't people just be nice? The bombs could fall tomorrow; this kind of hate just seems like a waste of everyone's time. But Jodi smiles, knowing that Ella doesn't want her to acknowledge that she can tell what the problem is, and says good morning.

"Yeah, good for people who don't have school," Ella says. She's good at this – you can't see the nerves beneath the sarcasm – but of course Jodi can sense it anyway. "Honestly. How come you get so much holiday?"

"Because we have essays to write," says Jodi. "I'm going up to work in the library today. So think of me when you're having fun in art class."

"I don't have art today."

"Whatever. Lothian, stop bothering Lucille."

He pulls away from her and gives her his best innocent look, although the effect is slightly ruined by the way Lucille is glaring at him, a nimbus of greyish light shimmering around her fists.

"Morning, kiddo," says her father, leaning down to plant a kiss on the top of her head, the way he does with Ella. It isn't something he ever did with Jodi, and he does it now hesitantly, like he isn't sure if it's appropriate; Jodi blushes and tries to smile through her awkwardness, hoping he understands that the gesture is welcome. "You ready to go, Chelle?"

"Sure thing." Her mother drains her cup and gets up. "Ella? I found your chemistry homework down the back of the sofa. Put it on the coffee table."

"Oh. That's where it was? Thanks, Mum."

"'S what I'm here for," she says drily. "Have a good day, kids. I got to make sure Mr Martell doesn't strain his wrist typing out his own letters."

"You're the real hero of the mill, huh."

"I sure am, darling." She crosses to the counter and clicks the radio over to the Goldenrod Underground. The signal's terrible out here, but it's the only station that has a chance of playing any electronic music. "See you tonight. Jodi, if you pass by the store today, can you get some more potatoes for me? Get Lothian to carry 'em, if you're sure he won't eat 'em."

"Sure. See you!"

Off they go, her mother and father and Lucille, and then it's just her and Ella. Jodi wonders if she should say something, and then she's wondered for so long that the moment is past and Ella too is preparing to leave.

"Bye," she says, folding up her errant homework and stuffing it in her bag. "Catch you later, sis."

"Yeah," says Jodi, a little less certainly than she meant. "Bye."

If Ella notices anything wrong, she doesn't show it. The next thing Jodi knows, the door is closing again and she's alone with the crackly voice of the Underground DJ.

"…. next up, got some Black Peaches to start your day off right. Here's 'Electric Number Eight'."

The music starts. Jodi closes her eyes, concentrating hard on the chiming of the synths, and makes herself a promise to talk to Ella properly sometime soon. She did know that this wasn't going to be over with just that first conversation, that there would be complications to deal with and teething pains to soothe – but she was kind of hoping that she'd be wrong.

Okay. No point brooding, right? Just feed Lothian, get Tacoma, head out to the library. There'll be time enough to deal with Ella later on.

And if not – well, she's just going to have to make some.

Don't you think if someone got murdered here we'd already know about it? Sam came back in what, 1966, so go two years back from that – yeah, we were here in '64. We would have heard.

"Well, I dunno," says Jodi, turning the corner onto Pine Street. "Sam implied pretty clearly that she was investigating for the same reason I am. So …"

Yeah, I know. Just doesn't seem to make much sense.

"Checking won't hurt."

No. Guess not.

She doesn't sound happy about it. She hasn't really sounded happy at all this morning; it feels like something's on her mind, though she doesn't seem to want to talk about it and Jodi hasn't wanted to pry. It's not just that she'd rather not upset her, it's also that she suspects that it might have to do with what they talked about yesterday, and Jodi isn't sure she's up to that right now. Tacoma clearly still feels bad about what happened back on their trainer journey, and that's a problem that they're going to have to deal with, eventually. But that was seven years ago now. It's been three since the last operation on her leg, when she finally stopped growing and they didn't need to adjust the bolts any more. Jodi would be lying if she said she didn't still think about all of this – she dreams of it even now, especially in winter, and wakes up whimpering in a way that makes her feel small and ugly – but it's over, for her.

Not for Tacoma, though.

Like Jodi knows how to even begin helping her through that.

"Anyway, I'm gonna stop in at the store," she says, trying to put the issue out of her mind. "If I leave it till the way back I'll forget. And Lothi doesn't mind carrying stuff, do you?"

His nostrils quiver and an eager hum buzzes through the roots of her teeth. She isn't actually sure he got what she meant, but she can't fault him for enthusiasm.

Okay, sure. So we're there, right?

"Yeah. Sorry. Forgot the rock's in my bag."

'S cool, says Tacoma. I'll just … wait here. Like usual.

It's the kind of bitterness that demands that you ignore it. Jodi obliges, not wanting to make a whole thing of it just yet, and motions for Lothian to shove open the door to Sarah's store. She steels herself – this will be her first visit since coming out – and then follows him in.

This place never changes: flickery yellow light that doesn't quite compensate for the windows that are half-covered up by extra shelves, a million and one products crammed into far too small a space. The merchandise is stacked higher than most people can reach; it's usually Tacoma's absurdly tall brother Everett who gets things down from the top shelf for you, but Jodi suspects he's probably not working today. Sarah's aipom will have to pick up the slack.

"Good morning!" calls Sarah, craning her neck to see from behind the counter. And then: "Oh," she says, the chirpiness draining from her voice. "Alex."

Jodi clears her throat.

"Jodi, Sarah," she says, nudging Lothian out of the way so she can get by. "I go by Jodi now."

"Of course," says Sarah. "Jodi, sorry." Forced smile. Her aipom climbs onto her shoulder and slips his tail-arm around the back of her neck, unable to tell why she's worried but wanting to help anyway. "What can I get for you today?"

"Just some potatoes. It's fine, I know where they are."

"All right," says Sarah. Jodi thinks she probably knows she's staring, but she can't make herself stop. She's starting to feel shocked herself, half breathless just at the fact that she exists; this is definitely not her emotion, definitely just something she's picked up from Sarah, but it's very hard to remember that. She tugs off her gloves and is so startled to see her painted nails she actually stumbles a little on that one loose tile by the canned peas. "You … let me know if you need anything."

"Sure." Just get the potatoes and get out, Jodi tells herself. It will be fine. You will be fine.

The silence as she picks out her potatoes is deafening. She wishes the vegetables weren't directly in Sarah's line of sight; it feels like her eyes are about to burn a hole in the back of her neck. Lothian paces anxiously behind her, and because he's too nervous to be careful of his wingtips he brushes some cans off the shelf with a clatter that makes Jodi jump half out of her skin.

"Oh, don't worry," says Sarah immediately, before she's even had a chance to apologise. "Roy will get that. Roy?"

He hoots and leaps down to gather up the fallen cans, edging warily around Lothian. Most small pokémon are like that with him. Noivern only eat fruit, but if something looks as much like a dragon as Lothian does then other pokémon tend to give it a wide berth.

"Thanks," says Jodi, watching as Roy shuffles the cans adroitly between his three hands and back up onto the shelf. "I … yeah. Sorry."

"Oh, don't worry," repeats Sarah. "It happens." Brief pause. "Have you seen the news?" she asks. "We might get that Gym after all."

"Yep. We might." No, come on. She can do better than this. At least, she can if she can get over her second-hand astonishment at the fact she's wearing a dress. And no, it shouldn't be down to her to help Sarah through this, but you have to work with what you've got, and what Jodi's got, right now, is someone who has temporarily forgotten that she's known Jodi all her life. "Here's hoping we do," she says, taking her bag of potatoes up to the counter to be weighed. "We could use some more jobs around here. You could branch out into trainer supplies."

"Better not let the League know," says Sarah. "They'll want to put up a Pokémon Mart here."

"A little healthy competition never hurt anyone." Smile. No one but Jodi has to know how much effort it takes. "Right, Sarah?"

"I guess not," she agrees. Her head is clearing now; Jodi can feel the pressure on her own mind easing a little. Sarah's starting to remember that Jodi is a person and not just a spectacle. "How, um, how is Goldenrod?"

Jodi shrugs.

"Like everywhere else," she says. "But it's okay, I guess."

"Is that so?" Jodi dislikes that phrase. She has never heard anyone mean anything by it except I think you're wrong. "I read in the paper that they have terrible problems there at the moment. With all the immigrants, you know, there's even less work to go around."

"Is that so?" asks Jodi, before she can stop herself. Sarah blinks, and then she gets it and laughs.

"Oh no," she says. "Not you, Jodi."

No, it's never Jodi – not Jodi, with her mother's pale skin and green eyes. But it is her sister, and her mestizo father, and there is almost nothing that Jodi hates more than being taken for someone who can share in your disdain for people who don't look like you.

"Sure," says Jodi, with a smile. She can't argue. It's never worth it. "So how much is that, then?"

"Hm? Four and six."

"Huh," says Jodi. She isn't actually surprised; she just wants to say something, to put more words between this moment and the one in which she failed to challenge Sarah. "Okay."

The coins change hands. Jodi is about to say goodbye when she remembers that she's meant to be a detective.

"Oh, one more thing," she says. "Uh, quick question – there's this word I found in my book, and literally nobody I've spoken to can tell me what it means, so I'm asking everyone – anyway, d'you know what a chapter house is?"

It's like Jodi just threw a kitten out of a window: there's that shock again, crashing into Sarah's mind with such violence that Jodi struggles not to flinch.

"Nope," says Sarah, cheerful as anything. "Doesn't ring a bell. Are you sure your father doesn't know? He's good with words. Real good, considering."

She's an incredible liar, she really is. And she must know that Jodi can see through it, too. But she must also know that Jodi can't just demand that she tell the truth, not if she doesn't want Sarah complaining to her parents and things getting complicated, and so she's decided to play it this way instead.

What is it that she's hiding? Did she― oh come on, Jodi. Sarah? Really? Her strangling days are long past; if she ever had the strength to choke the life out of a struggling human being, she certainly doesn't now. Besides, everyone's saying Tacoma was hit with an electric move before she was strangled. Roy doesn't know any of those; Sarah partnered with him when she was mourning her old hitmonlee eight years ago, and he's never had any battle experience at all. He joined her for companionship, not to gain strength.

"Oh," says Jodi, playing for time while she tries to figure out whether or not to push any harder. "Well, uh …"

The bell over the door jingles, and Jodi glances over her shoulder to see Con coming in, looking what you might politely call careworn. Okay, decision made. She is not sticking around to hear his bile echoed in her head again.

"Thanks anyway," she says. "I better get going. Uni work to do. Say hi to Leo for me!"

"Of course. Bye!"

Jodi hands the potatoes down to Lothian, who flicks the bag expertly over his shoulder the way he's learned to do with all the things Jodi is unable to carry herself, and the two of them head for the door, pretending not to notice Con watching until the very last moment.

"Oh, hi Chief Wicke," she says as she passes, and moves on without acknowledging his mumbled response. She doesn't slow down until she's put the length of the street between them, and then she curses under her breath and lets herself relax a little. How much did Con hear, she wonders. The last thing she needs is him getting involved. He'd probably disapprove of this just as much as Sam, except unlike her he has the power to actually stop her.

Ugh. She could use a cigarette, honestly, and there are places near here where she could stop and smoke one out of the way of prying eyes, but she needs to stick to the plan. There's work to be done today. And given that she isn't even sure which year they should be investigating, Jodi has a feeling that they're going to be at it for a while.

The library is a little busier today than the last couple of times Jodi was here. There's Simone, of course, reading her beekeeping book, but there are a couple of kids in school uniform on one of the microfiche machines, and Victor Orbeck is browsing through the periodicals. She stays in the doorway until he's moved deeper into the stacks – he didn't like her before, and she's certain he isn't going to be any fonder of her now – and then moves to wait for Lorna while she swoops in to help the teenagers load the fiche into the machine.

"Text always runs parallel to the long side," says Lorna, plucking it from their fingers and rotating it. "Here. Like this." She glances over her shoulder, sees Jodi hovering there. "Excuse me now, Crystal."

"Morning, Lorna." The kids turn at the sound of her voice. Jodi recognises one of them now she's been put in context – Crystal Aston, a year younger than Ella – but she's still drawing a blank on the other. It's hard to say whether knowing or not makes their eyes and the startled curiosity behind them any easier to bear. "How are you?"

"Very well, thank you, Jodi," replies Lorna. "You're back quick. Book no good?"

"Huh? Oh, no, it's fine." Crystal and her friend are still staring. Jodi meets their eyes, just for a moment, and then they realise what they're doing and busy themselves with the microfiche again. "I'm just here to do some research."

"Ah," says Lorna. "University?"

"Nope. Personal interest."

"Really, now." Lorna folds her arms, peers at her over the top of her glasses. "How can I help?"

"You've got all the old Couriers on microfiche, right?" Lorna nods. "Great. So if I'm looking for, uh, let's say 1964 to start with …"

"That would be over here." Lorna glides over to the drawer in question. Somehow she never seems to make any noise when she moves. Like Dr Ishihara, now that Jodi thinks of it. Maybe it's a ghost thing; they both have spectral partners. "What are you looking for, exactly? That's a lot of papers to go through."

"It's … difficult to say," says Jodi, wishing she'd had the foresight to plan her answer. Tacoma is right, she's terrible at lying. "I'm, uh …"

You're interested, says Tacoma, out of nowhere. You came home and I'm dead and everything's different, and you feel like you want to know your hometown again.

It's so unexpected and so sad that Jodi can't quite contain herself; some of it slips out at the edges of her mind and makes Lothian squeak in confusion. God. She knew Tacoma was a good liar, and also probably clinically depressed, but – damn. She wasn't expecting that.

At least Lorna won't question it. It's much too personal for that.

"I'm, uh, interested," she says aloud. "I mean, I came home and – and you know, and everything is different." She glances at Crystal and her friend. Their eyes are on the screen, but they're probably eavesdropping all the same. "I feel like I missed something," she says. "I want to know this place again."

Lorna stands there, unmoving. Her face is as still as ever, but Jodi can read her sympathy, and her awareness that Jodi can read it.

"I think you probably know it better than you think," she says, after several seconds have trickled slowly by. "But all right, Jodi. You remember how to work the machine?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

"Okay." Lorna begins to walk away, then stops. "Jodi?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry about Tacoma. I know you two were close."

Second time in as many days that someone has said that to her. It's just as painful to hear as the first.

"Thanks," says Jodi, real tears filming her eyes. "I'll, um, let you get back to it."

Lorna nods and leaves to wheel a trolley of books deeper into the building. Jodi stands there for a minute, breathing slowly and trying to ignore her awareness of the two teenage minds currently bumping curiously up against hers, and then she tells Lothian he can put down the potatoes and opens up the drawer marked 1964.

Thanks, Tacoma, she says, sliding the first fiche into the reader.

Don't mention it, she replies. Figured I better actually help out for once. And, y'know. You can't lie to save your life.

Can't argue with that. Jodi hits the switch and listens to the familiar hum as the machine lights up. Let me get the rock out and I'll turn it so you can see too.

And here was me thinking that being dead would finally get me out of studying, says Tacoma, so deadpan even Jodi can't tell if it's a joke or not. C'mon then. Let's get to work.

They do, and Lorna was right: it really is a lot to sift through. Most of it is irrelevant: the community calendar, dull reports on the slow decline of the mill's, photographs of amusingly-shaped vegetables sent in by local horticulturists. Lost pokémon, a rare state visit from the Queen that Tacoma remembers and Jodi doesn't. A runaway kid whose name Jodi vaguely recognises from school and who she doesn't think was ever found. They keep at it for a long time – so long that Lothian gets restless and starts pacing around, tail flicking; Jodi tells him to go outside and fly around, but of course he refuses. Seven years on and he still won't let her out of his sight.

Onwards, fiche after fiche. In June, a fair comes to town; in September, two hikers go missing while trying to take an ill-advised shortcut between two trails and nobody seems to be interested.

Three people go missing in one year? Jodi chews her lip. Does that seem like a lot to you?

People are always going missing here, says Tacoma. You know?

It's true. Lots of hikers find premature ends to their journeys near Mahogany. When parents tell their kids to avoid the bog, and the Blackwood, and in fact all the forest except the well-mapped part connecting Mahogany to the Lake of Rage, they're not just trying to scare them. There are ursaring out there, and wolves, and places where the terrain seems to morph under your feet so you take a step onto what looks like solid ground and find yourself plummeting thirty feet into a hole. No maps, no ranger stations; break a leg out there and you're on your own. But people go all the same, overambitious hikers and even one or two kid trainers who manage to evade the locals' attempts to stop them, and sometimes they come back and sometimes they don't. Occasionally, search parties will come back with a body, but a lot of the time they don't even find that.

Missing bodies. A recent murder. A killer at large. It's so, so tempting to connect those dots, but part of managing empathy is knowing your emotions, and Jodi has had enough training to be able to know when her fear is getting in the way of her reason.

Yeah, she says. I guess all these secrets are just making me paranoid.

It doesn't help that Crystal's friend keeps looking at her, too. Crystal herself seems to have got back into whatever work it is she's doing, scribbling away and occasionally glancing at the screen – but the other girl keeps looking up from her notebook like she can't quite get over the fact that Jodi is there. Even when Jodi isn't watching, she can feel her incredulous attention popping in and out of existence on the edge of her mental perception each time. She probably doesn't mean it, but it's putting Jodi on edge all the same.

She sighs.

Back a year? she asks.

Yeah, says Tacoma. '64 is clearly a bust.

But we learned that Ina's jam won second place in the North Johto Preserve Enthusiasts' annual competition, says Jodi, trying to distract herself. Can we really say it wasn't worth it?

I swear you're only this boring to spite me. C'mon. '63. Let's go.

Okay, okay, whatever.

She gets up and switches the fiche for the first in the 1963 drawer. Lothian gets up with her, thinking they might finally be off, and then whines a note that makes the bones in her hands tingle when she sits back down again.

"I told you, you can go fly around if you want," she says. "Pretty sure it's safe to leave me here."

He whines again, this time adjusting the frequency to prod at her nerves in a way that she knows is a very petulant no, and sets his head on his claws to wait.

He won't leave you alone? asks Tacoma.

Nope. Not since the – since the accident. Damn it. She's meant to be avoiding that topic. Makes it very awkward to shower, she adds, hoping to change the subject. I either have to let him sit in the bathroom where he can watch me or he just scratches the hell out of the door, and I don't think my empath scholarship would cover what I'd need to pay my landlord if I let him do that.

Oh, says Tacoma. Right.

She says nothing else. Jodi curses her own thoughtlessness and shoves the fiche roughly into the reader. She can't think of an answer that wouldn't get them into a conversation too personal to have without looking at one another while sitting in a public library.

The silence deepens. Victor Orbeck leaves at some point, his dislike filtering into Jodi's head as he passes, but she doesn't acknowledge him, or he her. She concentrates instead on 1963 in Mahogany: a controversy over the colour chosen for the repainting of the town hall; Con Wicke joining the police force; Aaron Lockwood reopening the Snowdrop Cocktail Lounge as the Briar Rose, three years to the month after his father mismanaged it right out of business.

Two other hikers went missing as well. Separately this time – one in March, one in July. Who goes hiking in March, asks Tacoma, and Jodi shrugs before remembering Tacoma can't see her and saying she doesn't know instead. She's mostly just glad Tacoma's speaking again. Her silence was getting a little worrying.

Hey, she says, not long after. Another missing person. She adjusts the zoom a little. Mae West (age unknown), resident for three months in the Cedarshade development, has not been seen in over a week.

Mae West? asks Tacoma. Seriously?

Apparently. I guess there's no reason there can't be more than one.

Guess so. Let me see that.

Jodi pushes the rock a little closer to the screen, and they read together: staying in a cheap room on the northeast side of town, working nights in Aaron's bar and days at Ina's tea shop. A drifter, apparently. Not so many of them around now, with even casual labour difficult to find, but they do blow into town on occasion, taking whatever work they can get before moving on. For a while everyone thought that Mae had just left town without telling anyone, but when her landlord finally looked into her room he found all her things still there. The cops were looking into it, as of the time of writing.

Tacoma's attention shifts.

Think that's who Sam was talking about? she asks.

I don't know. There's that kid who ran off in '64, I guess?

He was sixteen. Sam was our age.

Right. Jodi chews her lip. So maybe? Let's keep looking. Maybe they found her.

They did not find her. But, a few minutes later, Tacoma picks up something else.

Wait up, she says. Look. In the gossip column.

Jodi moves back to the last page and rereads it.

Additionally, young Samantha Spade has left town. To judge by the size of the cloud she departed under, she may not be back for some time. "Ugh," she says aloud, concentration slipping in her irritation. "They have that in there? Really?"

She's never really read the Courier, and now she's glad. She has a horrible feeling that she's probably a news item in this week's issue herself.

Nobody gets to keep secrets here, you know that. Unless you're a member of a secret murder society, I guess. Look, point is, that's just a month after this Mae West person disappeared.

So you think …?

You got a better hypothesis?

Jodi sighs. Crystal's friend looks up at the noise.

Guess I don't, she says, scowling at the machine like she can intimidate it into telling her more. What do we do? Ask her about it?

Dunno. What else can we do?

Jodi thinks about it for a while. There really aren't any other options, are there?

All right, she says. Next time I see her, then. She turns off the microfiche machine and gets to her feet, wincing at the ache in her leg. Mission accomplished. I think we're done for now.

Mission accomplished, agrees Tacoma. And it only took, what, three and a half hours?

The joke isn't even that strained. For Tacoma, that's pretty good.

I'm honestly surprised it didn't take longer, Jodi says, wanting to encourage her. Lothian is up too now, looking at her with eager eyes. "Yeah, we're going," she tells him, and gets a thrilled hoot in response. "Ssh," she says, resisting the urge to glance at Crystal and her friend. (Both watching now.) "Still a library, Lothi."

She motions for him to pick up the potatoes, waves goodbye to Lorna and heads on out. Those eyes are on her back every step of the way.

It's okay. They got what they came for, right? One insensitive teenager is a small price to pay. And now they can go back home and be normal people for a while, while they try to come up with their next move.

What now? asks Tacoma, as they step out into the crisp winter air.

"First, I need to get lunch or I'm gonna faint," says Jodi, watching Lothian bound on ahead. "All that telepathy. And then … I dunno. Wanna see what's on TV?"

The pause before Tacoma answers is just long enough for Jodi to be aware that she is swallowing her first response.

Sure, she says, a nameless discontent seething behind her words. Let's do that.

Well, as long as she's not shutting her out again, Jodi supposes she can probably work with it.

"Hey. Jodi? You still awake?"

Jodi props herself up on one elbow to see Tacoma watching from the desk. All right. This definitely sounds like whatever it is that's been bothering her. She had a feeling it would come out if she waited, although she isn't sure whether it was her empath training telling her that or just something she remembered from when they used to hang out.

"Yeah," she says. "What is it?"

"Have an idea," replies Tacoma. "Just … don't know if it's a good one."

Jodi sits up properly, pulling the duvet up as if she's cold, although she isn't. She hates being seen like this, face unpainted and chest flat without her bra. There's an unspoken agreement between her and most of the world, which is that so long as Jodi takes pains to look like a girl, people will pretend to think she is one. Half the time they don't mean it, but they do pretend, and that's fine; that's all Jodi needs most of the time, to make it through whatever interaction it is she's trying to negotiate. But when she's unready, when she doesn't look like a girl …

It's okay. It is. She chose this, she reminds herself. She knew what she was getting herself into and she still chose it, regardless. And anyway, Tacoma is her friend, right? Tacoma thinks she's fucking gorgeous. She wasn't lying when she said that. Jodi can always tell.

She breathes in deeply and forces herself to stop hiding under the covers.

"Well," she says, trying not to feel incomplete and failing. "We're not gonna know unless you say it, are you?"

"Yeah, I guess not." Tacoma hesitates. "It's just, uh … it might not be very healthy."

"Why not?"

"'Cause I want you to get Nikki."

"What?"

"It gives you a reason to go out into the woods," says Tacoma, rushing her words as though she's had this argument prepared for hours already. As she has done. "Because she needs exercise, right? And then we can find the cabin and – and also I don't think my family can handle her for very long, you know? Because she's gonna be so upset and they're grieving because they think I'm dead and I mean I am dead but―"

"Tacoma." Jodi reaches for her cane, hauls herself out of bed. "Tacoma, slow down a minute, okay?"

Pause. The clouds in her mind are clearing. Jodi would like to send some soothing vibes her way, but Lothian is asleep and without him she's just too tired right now. A full morning of sustained telepathy really takes it out of you.

"Yeah," says Tacoma, watching her approach. "Yeah, sure. Sorry. I've been thinking about that for a while."

"It's okay." There's something familiar about that look on Tacoma's face, she thinks, and then a memory surfaces from somewhere deep within her: that look, Tacoma peeling the skin off her lip. Probably a good thing she doesn't have hands right now. "Seems like a good idea to me. They were never really very good with her, were they?"

"No. Kangaskhan are difficult, and she only really likes me. But she remembers you, I think. So … so you know. You could offer to look after her. And then you could …"

When it becomes clear that she can't finish the sentence, Jodi steps in.

"Show you to her," she says. "And she'd calm down, and everyone would think that it's because she remembers and trusts me. So they'd let her stay with me, and then you'd get to see her again."

"Yeah."

"And you don't think that's healthy?"

Tacoma doesn't answer, or even look her in the eye. Jodi sighs, leans forward on her elbows.

"I'd be more worried if you didn't want to see her," she says. "You know that would be weirder, right?"

"Mm." Tacoma's eyes slide up to meet hers, two dull green stars in the formless clouds of her face. "I guess so."

She's not saying what she means. It's fine. Jodi thinks it's almost certainly that she can't, rather than that she's trying to hide anything.

"I'll ask Mum and Dad in the morning," she says. "See if they're okay with Nikki coming to stay for a while. Then … well, if we're gonna do this, we'd better do it right then. Got to calm Nikki down before – uh. Before Wednesday."

God. Are they there already? It seems too fast, but it's just how it's always been done; some old story about Ho-oh, about how fire must follow quickly after death if you want to ensure rebirth. Nobody follows Johto's old folk religions any more, but the customs linger. So. Here they are, less than a week after Tacoma died, and it's already time to put her corpse to the flame.

It's frightening, honestly. Jodi didn't know how much she was hoping there might be a way to return Tacoma to her body until the prospect of it being torched loomed up like that.

Not that she really thought it was possible. Dead means dead: even people as ignorant about ghosts as Jodi know that, and Tacoma confirmed it, too. Barring a sudden intervention from Ho-oh, there's no coming back for her. It's just that up until now, with Tacoma's body still around, Jodi has been able to kid herself there might be.

"Sorry," she says. "You probably don't want to talk about that."

"No," says Tacoma slowly. "No, it's okay." Her disc has slowed to a crawl, so that the fog seems to billow almost in slow motion. "It's got to happen, right?"

They look at each other for a long time, trying to find a way to say no, but no matter how hard they think about it they can't come up with anything at all.

The next morning, Jodi wakes determined to get this over with. They made decent progress yesterday, but they have to do more, have to get this wrapped up as quickly as possible. Even if there's no way to get Tacoma back into her body, she has to go home as soon as she can, so she and her family can start to heal. Jodi is happy to spend time with her, of course, but it's not healthy for Tacoma to be so dependant on one person. She needs – well, for want of a better word, she needs her life back, as soon as possible. And until whoever killed her is unmasked, it won't be safe for her to come out of hiding.

So. First things first, they need Nikole. It'll be good for Tacoma, good for her family – and good for the investigation. At breakfast, while Tacoma sleeps late inside the rock, Jodi broaches the subject with her family. Her parents are surprised, but impressed by her kindness in offering to take Nikole off the Spearings' hands; her father tells her she must have got it from her mother, and her mother agrees that it definitely didn't come from him. Ella is a bit more hesitant – Nikole is, she says, kind of scary – but it's fine, Jodi has her permission. Her father tells her she'd better call ahead before she goes, especially since they've got the funeral tomorrow, and heads out to take her mother to the mill.

"Ella," he calls. "Your yellow folder's in the middle of the floor!"

"I know!" she yells back. "It's so I don't forget it!"

"You have got to come up with a better way to remember things."

"Okay!" says Ella, as enthusiastically as if she's actually going to do it, and rolls her eyes at Jodi. Jodi fires back her best responsible-older-sister glare, but Ella just looks disdainful. "Guess I'd better go too," she says, sliding her bowl into the sink. "See you later, sis. Try not to let Nikole break anything."

"Thanks for leaving me all the washing-up."

"No need to thank me," she says. "You earned it."

Jodi laughs.

"I guess I'll live," she says. "Is, um … is school okay, by the way?"

She can't quite make herself ask if that thing with Stacy is because of Jodi. She suspects that Ella probably knows what she means anyway.

"It's fine," she says, with a carefully careless kind of shrug. "Looking forward to the holidays."

Jodi raises her eyebrows.

"You know I'm psychic, right?"

Ella hovers there for a moment, fiddling with the cuff of her uniform shirt.

"I … I'm fine," she answers, in the end. "Catch you later, Jodi."

She leaves before Jodi can say anything else. Jodi sits there for a while, chewing her lip and wondering if this was worth it, if she really had the right to make her parents afraid and get Ella into trouble just because she wasn't happy, and then when the door bangs shut she starts out of her chair and goes to get Tacoma and her radio.

Nothing she can do to help her family, after all; she's already let the genie out of the bottle. For now, she just has to do what she can, and what she can do is wash the dishes and then sort out this thing with Nikole. That's not that hard, right? No. Not really. She just has to walk over to Tacoma's house and ask her parents. On the day before their daughter's funeral. At the same time as showing them her new face and trying not to absorb lethal quantities of other people's grief.

Nope. Not hard at all, right?

Standing in front of the Spearing house, staring at the door, Jodi suddenly finds herself wondering whether or not she should be here after all.

She's here alone, except for Lothian; Tacoma said she'd rather sit this one out, and Jodi doesn't blame her. She wouldn't want to come back and haunt her family after her death, either. But even if she is by herself, there must be at least half a dozen pairs of eyes on her right now. Everyone who lives on this street must have seen her and Lothian coming; his landing and her cane aren't exactly subtle. And let's face it: who isn't interested to see what Jodi Ortega is doing at the house of her dead ex-best friend? Even those people who are nice about the girl thing are going to be curious about that.

With all those people watching, there's no way to back out of it. Jodi forces herself to stop chewing her lip, checks in her pocket mirror to make sure she hasn't ruined her lipstick, and then, finally out of ways to put it off, bites the bullet and raps on the front door.

The wait seems to go on forever. Lothian's humming starts up in her bones, a familiar soothing pitch that warms her chest like walking into her house and seeing her mother waiting, but even he can't do that much to help. She stands there without breathing until she thinks she might actually faint before anyone comes out, and then at last the door opens and Tacoma's uncle Nick lurches unsteadily into the gap.

He stares at her in mute unrecognition, and for a long time Jodi just stares back. The grief is flowing out through the open door like the Rageriver during the spring melt, a vast thundering rush of emotion that could sweep away a gyarados, let alone a human. Jodi goes under for a moment, vision greying at the edges, hand slipping off the grip of her cane, and then before she can fall Lothian screams to disrupt it and she comes back just in time to catch herself on the wall.

"Ah," she gasps, half stunned still. "Lothi …"

She drags herself back up again, wincing as her leg creaks beneath her. Lothian shoves her cane back into her hand, and she manages to straighten up just in time to catch his worried look. A second later, the questioning vibe follows, and she nods, breathless.

"'M okay," she mumbles. "'M okay." He pushes his head into her hand, wanting her to prove it, and she scratches him between the ears while she tries to get her breath back.

All the while, Nick just stares. He seems completely unsurprised by any of this, although also completely uncomprehending of it.

"Hi," says Jodi, bringing her eyes back up to him. "Um – sorry, I'm psychic, and this house …"

She trails off. She can still feel it, throbbing all around her like the pounding of a gigantic heart. It's easily the strongest emotion she's ever felt, stronger than anything her teachers have ever thrown at her in training, but she can handle it. Just. She's going to need to eat something after this – maybe four or five somethings – but she can handle it.

"Sorry," she says. Nick still hasn't responded. "I'm Jodi? Jodi Ortega? I spoke to Jessica on the phone."

Nick blinks. He looks like he hasn't been sleeping. Or shaving, for that matter. But at least he's reacting now.

"Jodi Ortega," he repeats. "I didn't know there was a Jodi Ortega."

"Yeah, I think a lot of people have been kinda surprised about it," she says. "I, um … I used to go by Alex."

His eyes seem to come into focus. She can sense his surprise at her new look, somewhere deep inside him, though it struggles to make it out to show on his face. It's all right. As long as it's just surprise and not hostility, the two of them are cool.

"Alex?" he asks. "Tacoma's friend?" She's about to answer, but before she can even start to get the words out Nick carries on. "Right, right," he says. "The girl in the bar …"

"The girl in the bar?"

"Huh? Oh. Right, never mind." He coughs and takes a step back. "Sorry. Left you standing there in the cold. Come in."

"Thank you."

Jodi steels herself and takes a step in, trying to take shallow breaths. It doesn't actually help – emotions aren't like smells; you don't breathe them in – but she can't help herself. The pain here is ground into the woodwork, seeping out at every footstep and soaking into her brain. It's going to be here for a long time yet, even after the Spearings start to recover. Like nuclear fallout.

The room itself looks the same as it ever did: big clock on the left wall, mirror on the right. That rug with the missing corner from when Everett's quagsire took a bite out of it. All the same, except that between this and her last visit there are five years and a dead daughter, and now none of it looks quite the same as it did before.

Nick's magneton is hovering by the stairs, its cores orbiting one another like a model of an atom. It drifts closer as he approaches, cores revolving until all three of its eyes are on him, but he doesn't respond. Jodi is about to say hello when someone else speaks instead.

"Nick? Who is it?"

Jessica Fay comes out of the living-room, twitching the door half-closed behind her. It was her who answered when Jodi phoned earlier; she lives two doors down with her husband and two kids, and from what Jodi has heard from her parents, it's her who's been keeping the Spearing house running the last few days. She also seems to have already heard about Jodi, which was convenient. Coming out once is stressful. Coming out continuously, over and over for days on end, is proving to be even more so.

"Tacoma's friend," says Nick. "Al― Jodi."

"Ah. Right." Jessica stares with naked curiosity. At Jodi's side, Lothian spreads his wings a little and arches his back, trying to intimidate; Jodi takes as much of her mind as she can off the grief to send him a warning thought: back off, Lothi.

"Hi," she says, trying to be friendly even as Lothian continues to bristle. "We, um, we spoke earlier?"

"Yeah, of course." Jessica is still staring. It's not aggressive. She just doesn't seem to be able to stop herself looking at Jodi like she's an interesting animal at the zoo. "I spoke to Annie and Lucas, and I think they'd appreciate not having to worry about Nikole for a few days."

"You spoke to them? What'd you say?"

Jessica hesitates, twisting her wedding ring around her finger.

"I said that that Alex Ortega was offering to look after Nikole for a while," she admits. "Sorry. I didn't know what to … I didn't know how to say to them."

"Right. I understand." It's true. She's not happy about it, but she does understand. "So … where is she?"

"Wait," says Nick. "You're going to take Nikole?"

"Yeah." Jodi glances at Jessica, but she just shrugs. "Is that okay? I just thought, you know, you've all got enough going on, and like she knows me. And I'm good at soothing pokémon. It just made sense. I hope that's okay," she adds, aware that she's repeating herself but unable to stop in the face of Nick's silence.

"Hah," he says, the sound of laughter without the heart. "Yeah. Yeah, no, that's … that's good of you." His magneton flies closer to him, silent and unreadable in a way that makes Jodi uncomfortable. She's not used to minds that are quite this alien; she can feel something coming from it, some intricate metallic clattering that sets her teeth on edge, but what it means she has absolutely no idea. "She's up in Tacoma's room," Nick continues. "Hasn't come out for a day now."

"Better than her being down here," says Jessica, catching the look on Jodi's face. "She's been breaking things. Glad you called when you did; I don't know how much more of this they can stand."

Ugh. Jodi wishes she could tell them, she really does. And she will, one day soon, when all of this is over. This thought doesn't do much to assuage her guilt, but it's going to have to do.

"How are they?" she asks. Both Jessica and Nick look like they have an answer to give, but before either of them can speak, Annie calls out from the living-room:

"Jessica, who is it?"

Jodi barely recognises her voice; it sounds nothing like she remembers it. Thinner, somehow. And fragile. Like clothes so worn out that you can't wash them any more for fear of tearing them.

"It's …" Jessica looks at Jodi, panic in her eyes. What name? Is now the right time? Jodi wants to help, but she can't decide what she should say. Alex, to spare them the trouble? But then what if they want to see her? Isn't it better to just get all this out in the open?

She should have dressed in her old clothes this morning, should have taken steps to avoid all this. Except – what kind of message would that send to everyone who saw her walk over here? Half the town doesn't think she's a girl anyway. She can't give them the satisfaction of seeing her old face ever again. She just can't.

"It's, uh," Jessica says. "It's, uh … one of Tacoma's friends."

Movement, indistinct but unmistakeable. Jodi swallows her heart as it tries to climb into her mouth and curls her free hand into the thick ruff of fur around Lothian's neck. He twitches his nose, sends a low purr rumbling through her bones.

"Who?" asks Annie, and then she opens the door and all the thinking in the world won't save Jodi now. Because there she is, looking old and distracted but definitely still herself enough to know Jodi when she sees her – and here's Jodi, standing there, staring and leaning hard on her cane as the wave of maternal grief breaks over her face.

"Oh, Alex," says Annie, surprised. And then: "Oh. Alex."

It's heavier the second time around. Jodi says nothing, concentrating hard on the vibe Lothian is broadcasting to counteract the pain, and nobody else speaks either.

The tap drips once in the kitchen. An upstairs floorboard creaks.

Jodi breathes out.

"I go by Jodi now," she says. "And, um … I'm so sorry. I loved her still."

Annie looks almost relieved to be reminded of her dead daughter, to be helped back into more familiar territory. When did her face get so lined? Jodi could have sworn she looked ten years younger just this summer, when they bumped into one another in the store. Back then her mind felt sharp and crisp. Now it's vague and muddy, and Jodi can tell that if she lets herself get too close it will suck her in like the bog to the south of town and bury her so deep no one will ever find her again.

"Yeah," Annie says, mumbles really. "I loved her too. You know I always thought you …"

Several long seconds later, Jessica clears her throat.

"Jodi's gonna look after Nikole for a while," she says. "I told you, remember?"

"I'm grieving, not senile," mutters Annie, a little of that old fire returning for a moment. "I remember." With what seems like a herculean effort, she drags her gaze up off the floor and back onto Jodi's face. "If you can get her out the room, you can take her," she says. "I'm sorry, but I can't take any more of this."

"It's okay. That's why I'm here―"

"It's not okay," says Annie roughly, and for just a second her eyes flash the way they used to. Jodi never noticed it before, but it must be her Tacoma gets it from. "But it's what it is." She turns away, shoulders slumping. "Go on up, Alex. Please."

She doesn't notice her mistake, and Jodi doesn't point it out.

"Okay," she says. "I will."

"I'll show you up," says Nick, as if she doesn't know the way. "You two stay here with Lucas."

Jessica nods and steers Annie back inside while Nick takes Jodi and Lothian upstairs.

"Sorry," he says, over one shoulder. "We're all kind of a mess." He sighs. "Kinda fallen to me to be the responsible one. Which is … hah. Well. That's no good for anyone."

"I'm sorry."

"Aren't we all," he says bitterly. "Wait. No, I'm sorry, I'm – I know you were her friend."

Jodi tries to think of an answer, but honestly, she doesn't have a whole lot of brainpower to spare right now.

"Yeah," she says. "I am. Was." Damn it. "Where's Everett?" she asks, to change the subject, but Nick just shrugs.

"In his room. Hasn't come out either." He reaches the door to Tacoma's room and turns around, one of his magneton's cores zooming ahead to join him a moment before the rest. "Well. Here we are." He moves his hand as if to knock on the door, but seems to think better of it, lets it fall to his side. "We've just left her," he says. "She was … it was hard, when she was downstairs, so it seemed easier."

His voice is neutral, but Jodi can feel his shame, eating away at him like maggots.

"Oh. Um … right." Don't chew your lip, she thinks. Radiate confidence. Be as helpful as they need you to be. "So," she says. "Can I go in?"

"Huh? Yeah, sure, sure." He doesn't make any move to get out of the way. "You, uh – I heard you read her mind the other day."

He's good at hiding his worry, but not good enough. Concerned about what might have happened to Tacoma? No, that doesn't seem quite right; his head is full of conflicting emotions, difficult to untangle with the Spearings' grief deadening her senses, but Jodi's pretty sure that the main thing here is guilt.

"Yes," she says, keeping her suspicion out of her voice. "I did. Why?"

"You didn't – did you find out anything?"

She shrugs.

"Maybe something about where Tacoma's suitcase and stuff got dumped," she says. "Somewhere out in the woods."

Nick's eyes widen. She can practically taste the adrenaline coursing through him.

"Yeah?" he asks, and this time he's doing a much worse job of feigning calm. "Where in the woods, do you know?"

"Near some old cabin."

"O-oh," he says. "Uh. Good news, I guess. If it gives … if it gives the cops a lead."

"Yeah." It occurs to Jodi now that Nick's pen couldn't have been in the park for very long. If it had been there since before the snow, someone would have seen it and picked it up; those gold fittings really catch the light.

It can't be him. Can it? What would be the difference between the grief you feel at someone killing your niece and the grief you feel at the knowledge that you killed her, anyway? Could Jodi even tell the difference?

No, it can't be him. It can't. Look at him, Jodi tells herself. Look how broken up he is. How could it possibly be him?

"So," she says, pushing the thought out of her head. "Can I go in?"

"Ah. Right. That." He clears his throat and steps aside. "Go right ahead."

Okay. Jodi reaches out mentally to Lothian, feels the comforting warmth of his psyche against hers – and steps inside.

Tacoma's room. Bed, sofa, scattered clothes and a weird sweet smell thick enough to get stuck in your sinuses. It's a complete mess, although Jodi isn't sure whether that's down to Tacoma or to the kangaskhan currently crushing the sofa into the floorboards.

"Hey, Nikki." She motions for Lothian to shut the door, bends down as far as she can. Nikole's huge head is turned away, snout buried deep among the cushions. "Nikki? It's me. It's … well, I'm not Alex any more, I'm Jodi. But you remember me, right?"

Nikole does not move. Jodi can't even see her breathing, although she knows from the shifting of her mind that she's alive.

"What about Lothian, huh?" she tries. "You remember Lothi, right?"

He stalks forward and hops up onto the arm of the sofa, wings fanning the pages of a discarded magazine. Nikole still doesn't react, even when he leans down and squeaks at her.

Jodi sighs and sits down on the one corner of Tacoma's bed that isn't covered in her clothes. Now she's looking, she can tell it must have been Nikole who made the mess; the drawers have been pulled out of the chest, their panels splintered around the handles. There's broken glass on the floor around them, and a stain that Jodi guesses must be the source of the smell. Perfume. Since when does Tacoma wear perfume? Jodi can't imagine that she bought it herself. Maybe a boyfriend got it for her or something. Although Tacoma having a boyfriend feels about as likely as her buying perfume. She just … doesn't seem the type.

This is probably a mean thought, and it's definitely a badly-timed one. Concentrate on Nikole, she tells herself. Concentrate on Nikole, and get her back home to Tacoma.

"Nikki," she says. "I'm sorry about Tacoma. But she's not gone, you know? We can go see her."

Nothing. Lothian prods Nikole with a foreclaw and still, nothing.

All right. This is going to be difficult, with all the grief still caked around the edges of her skull, but she's going to have to try a more direct route.

Nikki.

Nikole's shoulders tense.

Nikki? Do you remember me? I'm Tacoma's friend.

Her tail twitches. Lothian starts and almost falls off the side of the sofa, claws snagged on the fabric.

Do you wanna come see Tacoma with me? The words are slow, seeping through the miasma of sorrow like water soaking into sand, but they find their mark: Nikole's head moves, just a little. Does she understand? Hard to say. But she's hearing her, and that's a start.

I mean it, Nikki. She'd really like to see you.

Tentatively, Nikole raises her head, one dark eye just visible beyond the sweep of her ear.

Jodi holds out her hand.

"Wanna come?" she asks. And Nikole slides slowly off the sofa, all its springs squealing with the shifting of her weight, and bends to take her hand in her massive paw.

Jodi smiles, reaches up to rub her muzzle the way she always liked. Nikole doesn't lean into it, doesn't react at all in fact, but she does let her do it.

"You're a good partner," Jodi tells her, backing up the words with the strongest wave of compassion she can project. "Tacoma's gonna be really proud of you."

Nikole stares at her, eyes blank. But her mind is moving, and somewhere fathoms deep within it Jodi thinks she can just about make out a little swell of hope.

It's a long, long walk home. After negotiating the hall at the Spearing house – no mean feat; Tacoma's family are pathetically, uncomfortably grateful, in a way that Jodi doesn't know how to deal with – she has to get Nikole back to her house, and she refuses to go back in her ball. Or to let go of Jodi's hand, in fact. And since even trying to pull away will get her fingers shredded by Nikole's claws, that leaves Jodi to try and match pace with her, and that's almost as painful as the claws; Nikole isn't like Lothian, doesn't see why Jodi can't go as fast as she can. She tries to pull ahead, then bellows her frustration when Jodi's leg seizes up and leaves her stuck a pace behind.

But at least Jodi can feel vaguely safe for once – any would-be murderers who mess with Nikole are going to end up in the medical centre – and she perseveres, keeps on smiling through the pain in her leg, until eventually they make it. After a protracted struggle to get Nikole to release her hand so she can take the front door keys out of her pocket, Jodi gets her inside and takes her into the living-room, where Tacoma's rock is waiting on the table.

"Hey," she calls. "Brought you a visitor."

Tacoma emerges almost immediately, making Nikole start and shrink back from the burst of smoke – and then, so quickly that Jodi isn't even sure how it happens, Nikole is right there, the rock clutched between her paws and her snout right up against Tacoma's face.

Thank God. Jodi was worried that she wouldn't know Tacoma in this form. But there she is, whining little delighted noises and staring like she could just eat her with her eyes. Partners. When everything's said and done, no matter what happens, that endures. Her and Lothi, Ella and Virgo, Tacoma and Nikki. It makes her heart swell to see it.

"Someone's pleased to see you," she says.

"You're telling me," says Tacoma, closing her eyes as Nikole pushes her muzzle further into her face. "Honestly, Nikki, you'd think I'd died or something."

She must be feeling good, to make a joke about it. Jodi sits down, suppressing a grunt of pain as the weight leaves her aching leg, and reaches out for Lothian. Watching the two of them like this makes her want to hug her partner, too.

Over here, you. He jumps on the sofa, which is a thing Jodi's parents have forbidden but which Jodi has never enforced, and settles his head into her lap so she can rest her hand between his ears. The two of them sit there for a moment, watching Nikole cuddle Tacoma so hard she'd probably kill her if she still had ribs to crush and basking in the warm glow of their combined happiness. After the grief in the Spearing household, this is exactly what Jodi needed; it even takes away the pain in her leg, for a few seconds at least.

"Okay, okay," says Tacoma, her disc pulling back a little on its thread. "C'mon, Nikki, lemme breathe."

Nikole sniffs deeply and licks her, tongue carving a brief path through her mist before it reforms, and then – finally – settles down by the other sofa, curled on her side with Tacoma clutched in her paws. The change in her is startling; it's hard to believe that this is the same kangaskhan she dragged out of Tacoma's room just an hour ago.

"You two are so cute," says Jodi.

"Oh, we know," says Tacoma. "We're the best. And, uh … so are you. Thank you, Jodi."

"'S okay. Still feel like it's not healthy to have Nikki back?"

Tacoma scowls.

"Yeah, okay, not my finest hour," she says. "Not my finest year, even."

There it is again: that horrible edge in her voice. Apparently not even Nikole can blunt that.

"Yeah?" asks Jodi.

"Yeah. But, y'know. Forget it." Tacoma wriggles deeper into Nikole's grip. "Got her now," she says. "Never thought there might be an upside to being this tiny, but this is kinda nice."

Nikole snorts and tightens her grip. Jodi can't tell what's going on in her mind as precisely as with humans, but she's pretty sure this is her saying she's never letting go again.

"Good. I'm glad. Because, um, we're probably not going out to the woods any time soon." She taps her leg. "I don't think Nikki gets that I can't go very fast. She wanted to hold my hand and also run, and now I'm not gonna be walking anywhere for a couple of days."

"Crap. Sorry." Tacoma twists around to bump her head against Nikole's snout. "Nikki," she says. "You gotta be nice to Jodi, okay? She's the reason we're even here. No, I'm serious," she adds, when Nikole closes her eyes and turns her head away. "Go say thank you. Now, Nikki. Don't pretend you don't know what I mean, I spent like a month teaching you this."

She hisses and grunts about it, but she does get up, cradling Tacoma in one arm, and hold out a claw for Jodi to take hold of.

"You know you don't need to," begins Jodi, but Tacoma interrupts.

"Yes, she does," she says. "Ella's gonna get home from school this afternoon and then I'm gonna have to go, and Nikki has to be able to deal with that."

"Okay, okay." Jodi shakes hands with Nikole – gingerly; those claws are downright savage – and tries not to be hurt by the way she snatches her paw back as soon as the gesture is over. Nikole has known her for more than ten years, ever since the day Tacoma found her in the woods, lost and motherless, and coaxed her back to town with a handful of raisins. When the avalanche hit, she was right there with Lothian, trying to dig her out. But now apparently Jodi is just another human stranger. "We're friends, right?" she asks, unable to keep the plaintive edge out of her voice. "Don't you remember me?"

Nikole bares her teeth, and less than a second later Lothian starts up out of Jodi's lap, ears swivelling forward into an attack position. Jodi pushes his head firmly back down and raises her hand in surrender.

"C'mon," she says. "You let me pet you back in Tacoma's room―"

"Probably because you told her you'd take her to see me," says Tacoma. "I … I'm sorry, I don't think she knows who you are." She hesitates. "Is it okay if I tell her your, you know, your old name?"

It just won't leave her alone, will it? That name, ringing in her ears wherever she goes. Bank statements, university memos, the minds of others. She's tried to update her details with as many places as she can, but it's never an easy conversation, and sometimes she just comes flat up against a wall: no, sir, we'll need to see documentation. And how do you get that documentation? A form you hand in at the city registry, signed and witnessed, along with a seventy-five-crown fee. Which Jodi doesn't have, especially after spending the last few months investing every penny she can spare in building up an entirely new wardrobe.

She sighs. Lothian presses his head against her ribs, making her chest tingle with vibration. It's cute, really. He has no idea what the problem is, but he wants to help anyway.

"Go on," she says. "If it will help her understand."

"Sorry," says Tacoma again. "Nikki? C'mon. You remember Alex, right?"

In her mouth, the name cuts like paper, leaving a wound that stings out of all proportion to its size. Jodi says nothing. Not worth stirring up trouble over necessary evils. Besides, she can feel the apology echoed once more in Tacoma's mind, and it seems mean to force her to say it all over again.

Nikole looks at Tacoma, but doesn't otherwise seem to respond. Kangaskhan are hard to read, though Jodi can sense something moving in her head.

"Alex," repeats Tacoma, avoiding Jodi's eye. "You remember? Our friend? Helen and Ash and Lothian?"

Nikole transfers her attention to Lothian, still huddled close against Jodi's body. She stares for a moment, then looks back at Tacoma, the scaly ridges around her eyes shifting in ways that probably mean a lot if you're another kangaskhan. Or someone who's spent the last ten years partnered with one.

"Yeah, that's him. So you know who this is, right? It's Alex." Nikole looks up sharply: she definitely remembers now, even if she doesn't believe. "But her name is Jodi now, right? And you, you're gonna be good for her when I'm not around. Okay?"

Jodi waits – Lothian tenses – and, finally, Nikole bends her head towards them.

Slowly, ready at any moment to yank her hand back, Jodi reaches out to rub her snout. Nikole lets her do it for all of three seconds before pulling away again.

"God damn it," mutters Tacoma. "Okay. Look, she'll probably be all right. Don't think she really believes that it's you, but she'll do what she's told. I hope."

Nikole snorts and stomps back off to her spot by the sofa, clinging tight to Tacoma's rock.

"I guess we'll see," says Jodi. "I'm sure we'll be okay."

Neither of them know what else to say. What can you say, in a situation like this? Nikole isn't like Con; there's no malice here, no disgust. She just genuinely doesn't know her. And while kangaskhan are smart, they're not smart enough to understand how the kid she once knew has become the woman sitting here before her.

Tacoma clears her throat. How is that even possible without a neck? It would probably be rude to ask.

"So. Uh. How was everyone at home?"

She knows the answer already. But Jodi supposes she has to ask.

"They're not doing great," she says. "I dunno, Tacoma. I think I did them a favour by bringing Nikole here, though."

"Yeah. Like I figured." Tacoma's disc has slowed right down again, crawling sluggishly around her face. "D'you think they're gonna be okay tomorrow?"

"I don't think I'm gonna be okay tomorrow, and I know you're still around. So … no."

"You're going?"

"I can't not. You know what people will be like if I'm not there."

"What about your ESP? If church would've bad, then this is gonna be―"

"I'll survive," Jodi says firmly. "I've got meditation exercises I can do. If I prepare, and if I try to stay out of the way, I probably won't pass out. And you know. It'll be a good opportunity to poke around in people's heads. See if I can learn anything new. And … and like I said, I don't have a choice."

"If you're sure …"

"I am. And I'll let you know how it goes."

"Thanks." She says it like Jodi's just offered to stab her in the chest, which seems a little bit harsh but kind of understandable. "I mean, thanks," she repeats, clearly trying to sound more sincere. "I just. You know."

"Yeah," says Jodi. "Guess I do."

She'd like to give Tacoma a hug. But Nikole might just rip her face off, and her leg still hurts so much she isn't even sure how she's going to get up to make lunch, and tomorrow she's going to have to put on her good dress and go to her best friend's funeral as the only person in town who knows she isn't quite gone after all.

Honestly, if she's still breathing come Wednesday evening, she'll consider that a win.

Chapter Text

ELLA

Things are just so weird lately. You know? This time last week, everything was just the way it always had been: school; big brother at uni being all psychic and stuff; painting pictures and sometimes selling them to adults who want some local art for their living-rooms. And then – well, then Tacoma Spearing died. And then there was a murderer somewhere in town for Ella to worry about on her way home in the dark. And then Jodi came home and Ella suddenly had a big sister.

She remembers the drive over here, sitting in the car and staring out of the window so she didn't have to look at Jodi and feel bad for finding her so unrecognisable. She kept her face turned away for so long that Jodi asked if she was okay, and Ella had to admit that she didn't know because there's no point lying about your feelings to Jodi, and then Jodi reached out across the middle seat and took hold of her hand for what must have been the first time in about four years.

"Me either," she said. "I think it's gonna be a rough one."

Ella had no idea what to say. She barely even knew the touch of her; Jodi's fingers were small and smooth and freezing cold, completely unlike what she remembered from when Jodi used to walk her to school in the mornings. Sometime in the years since they last touched hands, Ella had apparently outgrown her.

Another weird thing. Another weird thing, on this weirdest of all days, standing around in the corner of the Spearings' living-room and watching people pretending to be less hungry than they are out of some vague sense that they shouldn't be enjoying the food when someone is dead.

Dead. Can you believe it? Dead, and now Ella doesn't walk home alone any more. She bands together with a few others, and they hurry through the twilight in tense, nervy silence until they reach their front doors. The dark is full of potential lightning and grasping hands these days.

It's awful. Ella has committed to a trip into town on Saturday, but she's determined that after that, she isn't going outside again till either the New Year rolls around or the killer has been caught. She'd rather be bored than murdered, any day of the week.

Honestly, even thinking about it scares her, but it's one of only two topics of conversation at school recently, and she much prefers talking about it to talking about Jodi. By this point, she's an expert on the various schools of thought floating around town: was it Harry, who knew where she was, Nick, whose accent is suspiciously Kantan after all these years, or some out-of-towner, driving the black sedan that Hester reported seeing on the night of the murder? Ella could give you all the fors and againsts, if you wanted.

It's a mess, honestly. Probably the best Ella can hope for is to not think about it and hope Con catches the guy before anyone else gets killed coming home in the dark.

She tugs surreptitiously at her dress, trying fruitlessly to rearrange it into a more comfortable position. She only has this one smart dress, and she's been wearing it for a couple of years too long now; it's definitely too tight around the chest. Ella tells herself she's a nineteenth-century princess chafing in her corset, and for a moment Lucas Spearing and the knot of townsmen gathered around him to express gruff masculine sympathy become a king and his coterie of courtiers before the tapestries of her imagination fade back into yellow wallpaper and brown carpet.

It's different to how she remembers. Ella has been to one funeral before, but that was Asshole Grandpa's (as he was privately known in the Ortega household) and the atmosphere wasn't anything like this. People were sad, sure, but there was a sense in the air that he'd lived his time, that his life had been long and rich and for him to be leaving now was a natural conclusion.

This is worse. Lucas and Annie look like someone cut them open and pulled something important out; Ella can almost smell the blood in the air. Tacoma wasn't meant to die. Ella didn't really understand that properly until she found herself here, and now she feels young and stupid, the only actor in the drama who doesn't know her lines. Look at it all. The snow and sandwiches and the dozens of adults looking grim.

And her sister, Jodi, looking strange and beautiful in a purple dress so dark it's almost black. Talking to Sam Spade from the petrol station, who turned up in a man's suit and a face so firmly set that nobody has yet dared to argue with her about it. Ella watches them both: Jodi's fingernails glinting red in the light as she gesticulates, Sam shaking her head, arms folded. Beside them, Lothian and Sam's clefairy are poking warily at one another, clearly wanting to play but too aware of the mood to dare spoil it.

Ella thinks about going over and trying to join the conversation, but her nerve fails her. How can she talk to anyone in this atmosphere? Besides, Sam is scary. And it really hurts to think this, but – so is Jodi.

It's not that Ella isn't happy about her. She's always thought it would be cool to have a sister, someone to share in the rituals of adolescent girlhood. But now that she actually has one, she finds that she's too nervous to do anything with her. She does want to, does want to talk with her about all the things she never really knew if it was okay to talk to Alex about, but everything is so new and strange. Would Jodi even want to hear about Ella's life? Would she enjoy it if they painted their nails together and shared secrets?

Ella thinks she might. Jodi probably wants to be Ella's sister even more than Ella wants her to be. But she's home from Goldenrod, from a university Ella will never attend in a city she's never visited, and she's so smart and grown-up, and now she's also much prettier than Ella ever managed to be, and honestly how the hell is Ella meant to get on that level?

"Hello, Ella."

She tears her eyes away from Jodi to see Sam's cousin Gabriella approaching, smiling sympathetically. Taking pity on her, she thinks sourly. Because Ella is just that obviously lost.

"Hi," she replies. She should probably say something else as well, but she has no idea what it should be.

"How are you?" asks Gabriella. The question doesn't sound the way it normally does. This isn't just a polite enquiry.

"I dunno," admits Ella. "Um … not great, I guess."

Gabriella nods slowly.

"Yes," she says. "I don't feel so good myself."

Brief pause. Ella's gaze slides back over to Jodi, as it always does. Ever since she came home Ella can't seem to stop staring at her. She's aware she shouldn't, that Jodi can definitely tell she's doing it and that it probably makes her feel bad, but she can't help it. She just looks so different, and yet so much the same.

"How are you getting along with Jodi?" asks Gabriella, following her eye.

Ella shrugs.

"She's my sister," she says, which feels to her like a very inadequate way of communicating what she's thinking but which Gabriella seems to understand.

"Yes, she is," she says. "It's good of you to come today. I think she could probably use the support."

This is patently ridiculous, but talking back to people at a funeral is probably some kind of sin, so Ella can't really point that out.

"She doesn't need me," she replies, in the most neutral voice she can muster. It's just a fact, after all.

"That's selling yourself short," Gabriella tells her. "And it's putting a lot of pressure on her, don't you think?"

"What?"

Gabriella shakes her head.

"At the risk of sounding like an old person dispensing unwanted life advice," she says, "you should talk to her."

Ella gives her a look.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," confirms Gabriella. "Like you said, she's your sister. And I think she might also be about to get Sam angry, so if you'll excuse me, Ella, I'd better go over and intervene."

"Okay," says Ella, slightly too late. "Um. Thanks."

Gabriella flashes her a smile that cuts through the stagnant atmosphere like a laser beam and insinuates herself between Jodi and Sam with the ease of someone who has done this a thousand times before, her hand curling around Sam's arm and gently moving her a step further back. Ella watches her talking for a moment, sees Sam's brows part and Jodi's cheeks redden, and makes a break for the hall, unable to stand it any more.

What is she even doing here? Everyone else knows what to do, how to stand and talk and breathe in the awful air. Ella? Ella's only here because it was awkward to not come when her parents and sister did. Her father said she could just come for the service, if she wanted, but that seemed disloyal somehow. Tacoma was Jodi's best friend. The two of them really loved one another, so much so that Ella was always kind of jealous. And so, well, here she is. Because if everyone else respects what Jodi and Tacoma had, then Ella has to as well.

She sighs, tugs on her bodice again. Jessica Fay cuts through from the dining-room with a plate for Lucas, looking haggard; her daughter Charlie is close behind, holding a couple of full glasses. Probably conscripted to help out. From what Ella hears, Jessica's been holding the household together the past few days.

She tries to say hello with her eyes – Charlie might well be the only person in the house her own age – but the gesture goes unnoticed. Jessica and Charlie go out through the door Ella just came through, and she sighs again, drifts on aimlessly into the kitchen. (The alternative is the dining-room across the hall, but that's where the body is, and though Ella knows she should pay her respects properly she absolutely cannot make herself go in there.) Here are more people, pecking at the assorted food like birds scratching in the dirt. Janine, Chief Wicke, Dr Ishihara; Annie Spearing at the window, looking out while Ella's mother grips her arm and mutters to her in a voice too low to be overheard.

There's some shortbread at one end of the table, beyond the sandwiches and casseroles. Ella would kind of like a piece, but she isn't sure she can walk past all these people to get it. Instead she stands there by the door, willing her mother to turn around and see her, to save her, but this does not happen.

Half an hour by the hall clock till they put Tacoma in the hearse and leave for the service. Half an hour, and yet by the feel of it Ella could swear it must be six months.

The church is packed: all the people from the house, sure, all the friends and family and notable townsfolk, but also everyone else, too. Here are the Lockwood triplets, coming down the aisle while Steph and Rocky sit at the back with the other pokémon; there's Mayor Winshaw, in a suit so black it doesn't seem to reflect the light. (How would you paint that, she wonders. It would just look flat, right?) Sarah and Roy from the store. Old Ina, her ancient onix coiled heavily at the back. Dean and Ria. Jackie from the police station. Harry the stationmaster. Lorna, talking quietly to Alistair Buckley, the vicar.

Good crowd, thinks Ella, looking around as they all find their way to their seats, and immediately tells herself off for being flippant. Someone's dead. Her sister is sitting next to her and shaking so hard that she's having trouble breathing. Would it kill her to be aware of the mood?

She thinks about holding Jodi's hand or something, to make her feel better, but she thinks about it for so long that in the end her mother, on Jodi's other side, puts her arm around her instead and all Ella is left with is guilt.

Lorna sits down at the organ. Alistair takes up the pulpit. Ella clenches her fists so tight she can feel her nails cutting into her palms and listens to the music swelling as everything begins.

She can't believe that back at the Spearings' house she was actually looking forward to this. The music. The coffin. There's a dead body in there, she thinks, unable to process the information. There's a dead body in there and it's only six years older than her, barely even a woman. Or it was barely even a woman, anyway. Now it's not anything at all.

The thought feels blasphemous, somehow. But Ella can't see a way in which it isn't true.

"Good morning, all," says Alistair, and somehow in his mouth the words seem to mean something beyond themselves, something slow and painful that makes Ella tremble on the inside. "It is my pleasure, and my deepest regret, to welcome you here today …"

She's losing track of it already, his voice moving on in one smooth wave, rising and falling on the intonations of words she can no longer quite make out. Across the church, Annie is ramrod-straight in her seat, as rigid as a board, and next to her Everett has hunched over like a gargoyle, head barely visible above his shoulders. Named after towns in Washington. Why did they do that? Did they just pick the names out of an atlas or something? Maybe they were following in the family tradition. Phoenix and Anastasia are pretty weird names too.

Her mind is wandering. Next to her, Jodi is as shaky and breathless as a frightened kitten, leaning heavily on her mother's shoulder. Ella feels a buzzing in her teeth and knows that Lothian must be worried too, afraid for his partner but too obedient to leave his place at the back of the hall.

She wishes Virgo were here. She wishes she could do something to help her sister, wishes this was over, wishes that the world around them would crumble into ash and reveal the four comforting walls of their living-room at home, but most of all she wishes Virgo were here.

At least she feels something. She was afraid that she'd get here and have to stare at everyone's grief without even having the decency to be sad herself, but it looks like that isn't going to be an issue.

"… join me now in prayer," says Alistair, and everyone kneels except for some of the older folks and Jodi, who if she got down on the floor would never be able to get back up again. Ella repeats the words after Alistair mechanically, without hearing them; she breathes in the musty scent of old wood and the faded upholstery on the bar against which her knees are braced, and breathes it out again, and straightens up.

Jodi is holding onto her cane so tightly that it looks like her knuckles might burst through her skin. Hold her hand, Ella tells herself. She's your bloody sister, right? Hold her hand.

She does not hold her hand. She looks straight ahead, at the back of the mayor's bald head with its gleam of reflected candlelight, and waits for someone to haul Tacoma out into the yard to burn.

They passed the pyre on the way in, a huge platform of stacked wood that reeks of holy oil, crouched in the empty space beyond the memorial stelae like a malevolent toad. In other towns, Ella's father once told her, there are crematoria, where the bodies go into a furnace and come out as an urnful of ashes to be scattered on the wind. But Mahogany is too small for that, and so here they destroy their bodies the old-fashioned way.

Frankly, Ella hates it. The damn thing creeps her out.

"How are you doing, kids?" asks her father, as they all file out of the church and down the path to find places to stand around the unlit pyre.

"Okay," says Ella, not wanting to make a fuss.

"Mmn," grunts Jodi, the way she does when she's deep inside herself, doing her ESP stuff. Her father nods, understanding, and takes her arm so she doesn't trip and fall while she's distracted. Lothian is close behind, tail flicking anxiously back and forth, and Ella follows with her mother and Lucille. Best not to get in their way, she thinks. Dad and Lothian can probably help more than she can.

"Hang in there, darling," says her mother suddenly, slipping cold fingers through Ella's own. Her breath comes out in white clouds with every word. "You're doing great."

Ella swallows and turns her face away so she won't see the way her eyes are watering. It's the cold, she tells herself. And it's a funeral, right? It'd be weird if she wasn't a little bit teary at least.

They take up their positions among the crowd, shuffling back on either side of the path to clear the way for the pallbearers. Across from them, Ella sees the Franklins, their eyes all sharply focused on her sister. Stacy Franklin notices and looks back, one eyebrow raised in a devastating display of wounded teenage dignity. Ella moves as if to scratch her cheek and surreptitiously sticks two fingers up at her. Stacy's mother, Deb, notices and gives her a look, but Ella just looks straight back, and faced with such a stalwart refusal to be intimidated Deb becomes very interested in settling her pidgey on her shoulder.

Ella almost smiles. At least she got that one right. She remembers Stacy coming up to her at the end of their chemistry class and pretty much outright accusing Jodi of being some kind of predator. You sure he isn't just doing it to get close to girls, she asked. And Ella didn't know how to argue with her, because she had no goddamn idea how it is that Jodi being a girl actually works, had no idea it was even possible until she came home looking weird and pretty, so she just stood there and mumbled something vague while Stacy got more and more scornful. You can't even defend him, can you?

No. No, Ella can't. And it's killing her.

She winces when she thinks this. What a tasteless choice of word.

The music starts, a tune picked out on sacred bells by someone Ella can't see, and out of the corner of her eye she sees the coffin coming out of the church, turning the corner onto the path. She looks down at her feet, unable to bear the thought of seeing it again and getting stuck on the idea of Tacoma's body rotting inside, and watches the pallbearers' shoes crunching the salt on the path as they manoeuvre up to the pyre.

There is a final kind of thump, and then a scrape as the coffin is shoved over the stinking wood. The bells stop. Ella holds her breath.

"You have all heard me say my piece," says Alistair. "I'm aware that were Tacoma here, she'd thank me for keeping it brief." She still isn't looking, but he sounds upset. "I now open the field to you. If anyone else has any final words to share in Tacoma's memory, before God and this community, then now is the time."

She keeps holding it, hears shuffling feet and agonising silence and, at last, someone clearing their throat.

"Suppose I should say something," says Tacoma's uncle Nick, and Ella breathes out. She looks up to see him standing there near the pyre, his face a charcoal drawing in shades of grey. (Coffin just behind him. Don't look. Don't. Don't.) "Morning, all," he says, eyes flicking nervously across the crowd. "Guess you probably all know me, even if I've forgotten some of you. Nick. Tacoma's uncle." Long pause, too long, and then just as Alistair is about to step in he continues. "I've always been the one my family turns to when they want a speech. But today, I … I don't think I've got much I can say to you. Maybe no one can really say what Tacoma meant to them. To all of us. But she's – she was my niece, and there's an obligation there."

He straightens as he speaks, shoulders squaring and head rising, like he's talking himself back to life. When he raises his hand and brushes back his hair across his forehead Ella sees a sudden flash of beauty cross his face, and realises that he must be handsome, under all that grief.

"She didn't suffer fools lightly," he says. "She had principles, and she stuck to them, no matter what. She was smarter than me, and kinder than Annie, and tougher than Lucas: best parts of all of us, just a little bit better." His magneton rises silently behind him and hovers above his head, its cores swapping positions in patterns too complex for Ella to fathom. "I couldn't have asked for a finer niece. I'm proud to have known her, and to have been a part of what made her who she was, no matter how small. And I'm honoured to see all of you gathered here, not just to mourn what could have been but to celebrate what she achieved, even in just nineteen years." He bows his head. Someone is crying; Ella looks, sees Annie clutching Lucas' arm. "Thank you."

"Thank you, Nick." Alistair waits, but Nick seems to have seized up; his shoulders slump again, a loose lock of hair spilling over his brow, and instead of stepping back into the crowd he just stands there. "Thank you," repeats Alistair, and still Nick doesn't move.

"Oh no," murmurs Ella's mother, tightening her grip on her hand without thinking. "Nick …"

Other people are muttering too, heads turning toward one another, and Annie is glaring through her tears as if to say don't ruin this, Nick, and Ella feels all the tension building in her skull like a blocked pipe about to blow―

"Okay, Nick," says Con, stepping forward to put a hand on his arm. Taking charge of the situation. "Time to―"

"Don't you touch me," growls Nick, jerking back into life. "You―!"

His magneton whirrs into motion, rising, orbs spinning up cloaks of sparks; Moira tenses up at Con's heels, arching her tail over her back like a scorpion's sting.

"Easy, Nick." Con steps back smartly, hands raised. "This isn't the time for that."

"Isn't it?" What is that in his eyes? Ella has never seen hate like that before. Schoolyard rage, petty fury – these are things she's familiar with. But this is something else, colder and older and as brutal as the crunch of a scyther's claw into a girafarig's ribs. "I think I've been bloody patient in not throwing you out as soon as you―"

"Nick."

Annie's voice is shocking in its clarity. Somehow Ella had imagined that she'd have cried herself hoarse, but maybe that's another thing she's got wrong, another part of grief that only adults understand.

"Nick, if you bring this to my daughter's funeral you are not setting foot in my house again," she says, and he sags like a puppet with slashed strings. "And you," she adds. "Con. You should know better."

"Sure, Annie―"

"I don't want to hear it."

He nods, takes a measured pace back into the crowd without another word. Nick shakes his head and walks away in the opposite direction, ramming his hand viciously into his jacket pocket.

"God, Nick," breathes her mother. Ella can't tell if she knows she can hear. What is going on here? Why does she seem to be the only one who doesn't know?

"Um," says Alistair. "If … if that's all, then I'd like to invite someone else to speak."

There's a long wait before anyone else volunteers, and when someone does it's Harry, with a gentle summary of his encounters with Tacoma at the station over the years. It's a welcome relief from whatever the hell that was between Nick and Con, and it even makes Ella smile a little when he talks about Nikole. It's the kind of smile that stings a little, but it is a smile, and that's what she needs.

After Harry comes Victor Orbeck, who seems to have liked Tacoma more than he ever said; and after him, Steven the butcher, who is badly broken up and for some reason keeps talking about bloodcake; and after him Pryce Aske, who remembers sparring with Tacoma and Nikole with fondness; and on and on, people with memories and stories so warm with history that they take the bite out of the December chill even before anyone sets light to the pyre. Ina. Janine. Ella's mother. Even Everett, although he can't even get through one sentence without his voice cracking and his eyes watering. He loved his sister. Like Ella loves hers, except he can actually show it.

"Thank you, Everett," says Alistair, helping him away from the pyre. "Anyone else?"

Silence. Everyone who has anything to say has said it. Now all that's left is the fire.

"All right then. Lorna, if you'd―"

"Hang on."

Ella's heart pulses erratically. Jodi steps out from between their parents, and as the eyes gather on her like wasps on unattended marmalade she opens her mouth to speak.

LEÓN

It's been a while. León hasn't worked the mill floor since '63, and though he takes care to stay in touch with his old friends, goes out drinking with them and lets them mock him for softening at a desk, he still hasn't seen too much of Lucas. Once whatever it was that Tacoma and Alex – Jodi, he reminds himself, as he has done every time this week, Jodi – once whatever that was faded, the Spearings and the Ortegas started to see less of each other. Chelle and Annie still kept in touch, sure, but they stopped bringing their families along for the ride, not wanting to force Jodi and Tacoma back together after their parting. León stayed back too. He regrets it, honestly. Lucas was always good company. But, barring the odd drink in the Briar Rose, they let their lives diverge.

Now they've come to touch again. And it is absolutely nothing like it was before.

Lucas is holding himself together well, but León is a father too, and he knows the shadow behind Lucas' face for what it is. He thought he was going to lose his son once. (Daughter. His eldest daughter, damn it.) If it had actually happened, if Lothian hadn't acted as quickly as he did …

León would say it doesn't bear thinking about, but of course today, talking to Lucas like a stranger in this overheated living-room, he can't stop. Tacoma and Jodi were born just a few days apart. And whoever killed Tacoma is still out there.

"You know, I hear we're getting more snow before the week's out," he says, aware that he is letting his thoughts slow down the conversation. "I keep thinking of all those people living out in the woods." He shakes his head. "You couldn't pay me to do it."

León's distaste for snow is well known. He's travelled extensively, ever since he seized his chance to escape life under Somoza as a young man and worked his passage to Hoenn; after a godawful three months in Sinnoh's Snowpoint, he tried to stick to hot countries, but then he went and fell in love with a Mahogany girl, and he hasn't stopped complaining about Johto winters since. The old familiar gripe makes Lucas' mouth turn up at the corners just a little. Thank God. León was kind of banking on the fact that he might want a little shred of normality to hang onto.

"Shoulda stayed home," says Lucas, and León smiles back. When he first came to town, old Mick Field was still around, and the two of them have been taking the piss out of his half-baked racism ever since. "Good of you to come, León. I … I didn't know if you would."

"Why's that?"

Lucas shrugs.

"Y'know. Your kid. ESP and shi― and stuff."

Your kid. How … delicately put. Christ, but Lucas is holding himself together well. He really wouldn't have blamed him if he'd forgotten, what with his daughter lying in her coffin just across the hall and mourners flitting through the house like overgrown bats. León has enough trouble remembering himself, though he's trying his best.

"She wanted to come," he tells him. "Got, you know, brain control exercises she can do to make it okay."

Lucas' face creases in the middle. León can't really call it a smile, but it is something like the same shape.

"I know Annie appreciates it," he says. "Tacoma really loved him. Her. Sorry."

León nods. He isn't sure whether he's allowed to say it's okay or not. Jodi says that to him when he makes that mistake, but he isn't sure if he can say it on her behalf. There are a lot of things he isn't sure about these days.

"I think Jodi loved her too," he replies. "Even now."

The two of them look at one another for a while, thinking about what they wish they'd done, ways they wish they'd pushed their kids while both of them were still around. Jodi and Tacoma missed years of each other's lives. Too many, for people who still cared.

Before either of them can think of a way to continue the conversation, Con Wicke turns up wearing his Police Chief face, the one that usually means you're about to either get arrested or receive some terrible news, and Lucas has to stand there and accept his halting condolences all over again before he gives a municipal nod and withdraws to talk to John Winshaw instead.

"Seen a lot of him lately, I'll bet," ventures León.

"He's doing a good job," says Lucas. "He'll get the bastard."

He says it like you'd say it was sunny out, like it's just something that happens. León isn't sure what this means, but he's old enough to know pain when he sees it.

"Sure, Luke," he says. "Just a matter of time."

Another lull in the conversation. Voices in the hall: Con and someone else, a woman maybe. Wasn't he speaking to John a moment ago? León looks, but John is talking to – or at; it is John, after all – Nick now. He supposes that explains it. This would be a bad day for a fight.

"I should thank you," says Lucas suddenly. "For helping with Nikole."

"Jodi's idea," replies León.

"Your house. She been okay?"

León shrugs.

"Scared Ella a couple of times," he says. "She came home yesterday, ran into her in the hall and jumped right out the door again. But mostly pretty calm."

"Mostly pretty calm," repeats Lucas. "She broke things here." He shakes his head, so slowly that at first León can't actually tell what he's doing. "Jodi's done good."

"She has," agrees León.

"Didn't bring her?"

"Jodi thought it was best she stay at home. She's got her settled now."

Lucas nods.

"Probably right," he says. "Probably right."

The silences are getting more frequent, harder to climb out of. León reaches for their shared history, but he feels like this might be about as deep into it as he's capable of digging. Emotions are Chelle's thing. He just sells wood. Assuming anyone's still buying.

"Listen," he says. "Luke. I don't know when this ends, if it ever does, but … we're here. You know? Till it does. And then some."

Lucas meets his gaze. One of his eyes is brown, the other blue. León knew that – Tacoma's the same – but after so long it's almost a surprise.

"Never gonna end," he says. "But, León – thank you."

Noise from the doorway: the boys from the mill are here now, five or six all together, looking ill at ease in their suits and twisting their hats between their hands. León is relieved, in a way; now he doesn't have to do this alone. But he's glad that for a few minutes at least he did.

Later on, León gathers up his courage and leaves Lucas in the care of Pete and Mike to go and pay his respects in person. After the living-room, warm with a radiator on full blast and a crush of human bodies, the dining-room has the freezing feel of a mausoleum. The chairs have been cleared away, and aside from the china cabinet against the far wall there is nothing left but the table, spread with a pristine white cloth and a little under six feet of smooth, dark pine.

For a few minutes, León stays by the door, trying to ready himself. He remembers Chelle's father lying in his coffin, the way his face seemed to have sunk in on itself like a rotten fruit. Some of that was age, some of that was the cancer, but some too was death. There was something missing in him, and without it his face was barely even his any more.

This is probably not how it is with Tacoma. She is – was – young. And if the rumour mill is to be believed, she was killed by a thunderbolt to the back of the head; nothing there to ruin her features. She'll look like she's sleeping. Probably.

Part of León wants to see. Most doesn't.

He steps forward and sees.

She looks like she's sleeping. Except that she doesn't, that there is something off about her pallor that not even Ellison the undertaker's expert art can hide; that in life Tacoma's wild curls were never possible to tame; that the high neck of her dress and a layer of make-up cannot quite conceal the bruises on her throat. That this kid who couldn't sit still for even a second, whose leg always bounced and jittered with the urge to be moving if forced to stay in her seat, is now as motionless as carved ice.

Tacoma is patient. She stays motionless for the several long seconds that León stays at her side, staring, and when at last he turns away he knows she stays motionless then, too.

He knew it would be bad. But he wasn't prepared for this, for the uncompromising fact of the cadaver in front of him. There is a layer of meaning to a child's corpse that is absent from that of an old man. Not even twenty. Why? What in God's name can a child do to make someone do this to her?

More to the point, who would do it? León has found himself asking this question over and over, as the week wore on and the fact of Tacoma's death sank in, He can understand how someone might come to kill, if he puts his mind to it: anger, avarice, hate, all the usual suspects. But the thought that someone he knows, someone he probably goes to church with every Sunday, could give in to their passions like that and kill a child …

It scares him. León doesn't scare easy; he's seen enough of the world to know how the pieces fit together. People hurt people, constantly, often for no better reason than that they didn't really believe that the other was a person at all. Mahogany is no exception, and yet it always seemed that way. Until now. And, well, León has two kids, one of whom is Tacoma's age, and there's a murderer on the loose, and now? Now León is scared.

He's already had the talk with Ella and extracted a promise that she won't stay out past five; she gave him the distinct impression that she didn't want to go out anyway, poor thing. Jodi said that she won't stay out late either, though León didn't actually ask her. He supposes she sensed the question before he realised he was thinking of saying it.

So they should be safe. From whoever it is that is out there in the night.

Christ.

There's a noise, a familiar click, and he turns to see Jodi leaving Gabriella Kendrick in the hall to join him here in the dining-room. He is awed by her purpose: no hesitation, just straight over to the head of the coffin, to look into her dead friend's face.

She says nothing. León's temples prickle – apparently he too is very, very slightly psychic, which is where the doctors said Jodi gets it from – and he supposes she must be making her goodbyes on a plane where no one else can eavesdrop. It is such a private moment that he takes a few steps back without thinking, and the creak of the floorboards beneath his shoes makes Jodi start, look up over her shoulder towards him.

"Oh," she says.

He can count the number of times he's seen her this pale on the fingers of one hand: lying there in the hospital bed, her shattered leg hidden beneath a stained sheet; that moment last week when she looked into his eyes and told him she was a girl; and now, standing over Tacoma's body. She looks like blown glass, beautiful and too delicate to touch. He is as always startled by the realisation that she and Ella are his daughters, that something so perfect could come from him.

"I didn't see you there," she continues. "Sorry."

"It's okay, kiddo." He chooses the pet name deliberately, not wanting to make this worse by getting her name wrong again. "You take your time."

Jodi shakes her head.

"I'm done," she says. "It's not her, Dad. This is just … what's left."

He can't hold back any more: he steps forward, puts his arm around her. She leans gladly into his grip, head against his ribs. So small. Dr Ishihara said that all the energy that other kids used for their growth spurts just got eaten up by her brain, that she needed thousands more calories a day to actually get much growing done, and now it's too late to fix it. Jodi will be always be short.

"I'm sorry," he says. It's not what he wants to say, but it's all he knows how to. Jodi understands anyway, of course. She always understands.

"I know," she replies. "So am I."

He doesn't know when she got like this, where she got the kind of wisdom to navigate this mess. Sometimes he feels he doesn't know anything at all about Jodi, but she is his daughter, and he is determined to figure it out.

Jodi struggles at the service, León can tell; he doesn't know how exactly her empathy works, but he has a feeling it's much easier for her to blank out a single powerful emotion as she did at the house than to resist the curious attention of an entire churchful of people – not to mention the fact that this is Tacoma's funeral, that her body is right there at the front. About five minutes after everyone's found their seats, she starts shaking and struggling to breathe, and León burns with the desire to hold her but he's not sitting next to her and, if he's honest, Chelle's probably the best one for that job anyway. Nothing like a hug from your mum. Or so León is told. He never really got on with his own parents.

Right on cue, Chelle slips her arm around Jodi and pulls her close against her cheek.

"I know, chickadee," León hears Chelle murmur, and feels his love for her vibrate like the string of a guitar. "I know."

Jodi clings to her like a baby aipom, streaks of mascara blackening the skin around her eyes. In this moment she looks so much like a young Chelle that León momentarily forgets how to breathe, catapulted back into the spring of 1950 and one of Simone's cheap boarding room in the husk of Mahogany Manor, opening his door to the girl who cleaned the rooms and being punched straight out of his hangover by the brightness of her eyes. The night before last Jodi was up late watching TV with him, and without thinking he leaned against her the way he would against Chelle before remembering himself and abruptly jumping up to go to bed, equal parts ashamed and afraid of himself.

He was never like this with Ella. That he is with Jodi worries him, as so much about this does, but there's a time and a place for these worries, and this isn't it. León listens attentively to Alistair as he speaks, notes with satisfaction his choice of readings and the strength with which Everett and Lorna deliver them, and does his best to remain focused. It's not Jodi's day. She is incredibly brave to be here, is weathering God only knows what in that strange head of hers, but this is about Tacoma and her family.

It's a beautiful service. The hymns are few but well chosen, calculated to give a kind of release when sung hard into the echoing vault of the roof, and by the time they all rise to leave León imagines that there can't be a dry eye in the house. Exactly as it should be. Clean 'em all out of their emotions, make some space for the stories shared around the pyre. He never really understood why Johtonians do this until Chelle's father died; only when they stood there by the stinking mound of wood and shared memories that made even León remember the old bastard fondly did it start to make sense. Mourn, get all that pain out of the way, then celebrate. Wake, service, pyre. It has a rhythm to it, even if the order seems strange at first.

After the candles and the dim glow of winter light through stained glass, even the weak sun is blinding. León blinks to clear his eyes, and the next thing he knows Lothian is back and all over Jodi, making those squeaks with the strange gaps in where it goes too high for humans to hear. Poor thing. He must have known she was upset all the way through the service, but of course he must also have known that she wanted him to stay where he was until it was over.

"How are you doing, kids?" he asks, wanting to make up for not being close enough to Jodi to help earlier.

"Okay," says Ella, subdued.

Her second ever funeral. León is about to reach out and take her hand, but remembers how embarrassed she was the last time he did that in public and hesitates, torn between paternal affection and an intimate understanding of the fact that fourteen-year-olds want to be adults more than any adult does. Before he can come to a decision Jodi grunts a vague response, eyes clouded over in a way that means her mind is occupied elsewhere, and León's hand automatically redirects towards her arm. Better not let her fall. People don't need any more reason to stare than they already have.

Lothian falls into step alongside them, ears cocked towards her like radar dishes, and the telltale rumble in the nerves starts up a moment later. As they turn onto the path up to the flat space where the pyre has been built up, León catches Chelle taking Ella's hand out of the corner of his eye, and breathes out. Okay. Both the kids have someone looking after them. Good.

He tries to lead them all to a position a decent distance away from the pyre, but the crowd keeps pushing down the path behind them and they end up much too close to the front, where the fishy stink of the oil is almost unbearable. This feels like a bad place for Jodi to be, and for Ella, come to that, but now the Franklins are here, and the mayor and Con and the Fays and dozens of others, and there's no room to back off. León keeps his hand on Jodi's arm and an eye on Ella, looking lost between Chelle and Lucille, and holds his breath as the Spearings are slowly pushed through the crowd up to the pyre. Annie. Lucas. Everett, supporting him on one arm.

Someone starts on the bells, and as one they all take a step back as the casket emerges from the church. León cranes his neck with the rest of them, and inadvertently squeezes Jodi's arm as it comes near, the pallbearers grunting and shuffling beneath its weight. The physicality of corpses has always bothered him. That heaviness. Like the rolls of fat falling from the whales as they flensed them at the station in Albany.

Jodi starts at the tightening of his grip, directs a worried look up into his face. For a moment he contemplates a reassuring smile, but even if he could manage one this is not a time for smiling, and in the end he just nods at her instead. She nods back, with a composure that León is sure he never had at her age, and returns her attention to the coffin as its bearers slide it awkwardly up onto the mound of wood.

Is it just that kids are different now? That all these new ideas, the endless information that the TV and radio beam straight into their heads, gift them things that León didn't learn till at least halfway through his twenties? Or is it that Jodi is exceptional, mind enriched with the emotional awareness of every single person she's ever met?

León first felt old when Jodi went away to university, and he came back one evening to a cold, empty house (Ella out with friends, Chelle working late) and the realisation that his kids were moving on with their lives. Since then, the feeling has returned several times, with varying degrees of intensity; it returns now, standing here alongside the daughter who apparently does not need as much help as he thought to make it through the funeral of her old best friend, and he stands and waits for the speeches to begin in stunned, shameful silence.

SAM

Sam hasn't arrived in the right frame of mind. Let's face it, she's a little nervous; it's hard not to be, at a funeral, and when you add the most mockable man in town into the mix something in her just goes for it. It's Jessica who lets them in, but then Con Wicke catches sight of Gabriella as he passes and steps in immediately with an offer to take their coats. And the shark in her head scents blood.

"Thanks," she says, tossing her coat casually over his arm. "Chief of Police on the coat check? You've gone down in the world, Con."

Before he can react, Gabriella shoots her a hard look.

"You'll forgive Sam," she says, laying her own coat atop Sam's. "Sometimes she misses the tone of the situation."

"Yeah," says Sam, chastened. "Sorry. Nervous."

"I get that." Took him long enough to answer, didn't it? Like a teenager whose crush has finally spoken to him. "I didn't know you knew Tacoma."

"Knew her well enough," Sam tells him. "Know Annie better."

Half true. Gabriella knows Annie, because Gabriella knows everyone and given ten minutes alone with them can make them swear she's their best friend. And if Gabriella's coming, Sam is damn well coming with her.

"Right," he says. "I'm … sure she appreciates the support." Sounds like he's having trouble finding words. "You, uh, you let me know if you need anything."

Gabriella gives him the smile, and Sam watches with a certain glee and a certain self-loathing as the blood rises in his cheeks.

"I will, Con," she says, knowing he was talking to Gabriella but completely unable to resist. He's just such an easy target. "I will."

"Sure," he mumbles, eyes still fixed on Gabriella. "Annie's in, um, I think Annie's in the kitchen, if you wanted to talk to her."

"Right," says Gabriella. "See you, then. Come on, Sam."

She takes a firm hold of Sam's elbow and steers her towards the kitchen, Morgan skipping after them with strides too long and floaty to be natural. There was a full moon a couple of days ago; she'll be buoyant and mean for a week till her magic levels die down again.

"Sam," mutters Gabriella, under her breath. "I know he's an ass, but we're at a funeral."

"Yeah. Sorry."

Even Con's upset, isn't he? Everyone is. A girl is dead before twenty, shot in the back of the head and thrown in a river to be washed away. Sam should know better. She's been here before, after all. Back then, she was the only one who cared. And now she's making jokes at Tacoma's funeral.

It's the nerves. It has to be. Nerves and the fact that Sam's default response to any kind of stress is to make fun of it. Sometimes that works; sometimes it just gets you punched. (Goldenrod, mid sixties, a guy calling out to Gabs to leave the dyke and let a real man take care of her.) Gabriella is too well-bred to punch people, but she doesn't need to punch to make you hurt. All she needs to do is look.

She is looking now. Sam holds her gaze, ashamed but asking her to understand, until Gabriella sighs and reaches out to smooth the collar of Sam's shirt back into place. Not much. But it's enough for Sam to know that she gets it.

Christ. If Sam believed that anyone up there really gave a damn about her, she'd never be done with thanking them for leading her into Nero's that night.

"Come on," says Gabriella, taking her hand away. "Let's talk to Annie."

They're at the kitchen door now; Sam can see a table spread with clashing foods from a dozen different households. Morgan perks up at the smell and bounces on ahead, her stumpy wings flaring in the arm air. Sam follows with Gabriella, and over by the stove, Michelle Ortega turns Annie Spearing gently to face them.

"Annie," says Gabriella, rushing up to her with a click of heels on fake parquet. "God, I am so sorry."

Annie nods. How many times has she heard that recently? And she can't say anything, can she, because every single person who said it really means it. Sam nods back at her, unwilling to cheapen this with her attempts at expressing condolences, but she doesn't seem to notice.

"There was no one else like her," Gabriella says, and maybe it's the accent but this doesn't sound trite when she says it. "And I'm going to stop now, because I'm sure you don't need to hear it all again, but we're always here. If you ever need to get out of the house …"

Annie nods again. For some reason Sam can't seem to read her expression at all. Like looking into a broken mirror and seeing only scattered shards of human face.

"Thanks, Gabbi," she says. "It's … it's good of you to come."

Gabriella has a thousand smiles; Sam has counted them, grown first less surprised and then more as she keeps on bringing out new permutations for new situations. This one is sweet, sad, laden with shared pain, and it is so perfectly suited to this moment that it draws a faint response from even Annie's stony face.

"There was never a chance we wouldn't," Gabriella tells her. "I'm sorry we didn't have anything to bring."

Annie shakes her head.

"It's fine. Never gonna eat all this anyway."

"Right." Gabriella's eyes move from Annie to Michelle, appraising. Barmaid's knack for sizing up a situation. Sam's always admired that about her. Sharp as a new knife. "I'll let you go," she says, in response to whatever it is she sees in their faces. "But we'll be right here if you need anything."

She turns to Sam, who knows a cue when she sees one and repeats her earlier nod.

"Sorry for your loss," she says, aware that next to Gabriella she sounds like a worn-out tape recording but unable to do better, and follows her back out into the hall.

They look at each other. Behind them, Michelle says something to Annie and gets an indistinct response.

"You did good," says Sam.

"I hope so," says Gabriella. "Ready for round two?"

Voices from the living-room. Morgan floating out of the kitchen, holding a sugar doughnut that she shouldn't be eating but which Sam can't seem to find it in her to take away. The shark making nervous, hungry circles in her head.

One dead girl in the dining-room and another hanging off her back.

"With you?" she says. "Guess I can stick it out a bit longer."

They let their hands brush oh-so-accidentally against one another, aware as ever that someone might be watching, and then Gabriella goes in and from somewhere comes the energy to yank the doughnut out of Morgan's paws and follow her.

Mae just won't leave her alone today. In the living-room, after wandering around and saying a few awkward hellos, Sam runs into Jodi, and she knows right away by the look in her eyes that she hasn't taken Sam's advice.

Not that this is a surprise. Even before Gabriella reported that she was asking questions, Sam knew that Jodi wasn't going to let this lie.

"Hey, kid," she says, as she approaches. Quick look over her head: no, no one's watching. Ella Ortega in the corner there. Bunch of guys around Lucas. Nobody paying them any attention.

Good. Sam has a feeling this is a conversation that they don't want to be overheard.

"Hey, Sam," says Jodi. She looks good. Polished, like Gabriella. Nice nails. Killer eyebrows, like that movie star Gabriella has a crush on. Sam hopes people see these things when they look at her, instead of the edges of her discarded boyhood. As well as them, even, if that's what she wants. Not Sam's place to say. "I didn't know you'd be here."

Sam shrugs.

"Gabs is friends with Annie," she says. "How are you bearin' up?"

Jodi twists her hand back and forth around the grip of her cane. Lothian, who has been sniffing inquisitively at Morgan while she sulks about the doughnut, tenses up, pulls back to curl protectively around the back of her legs. Kind of incredible, really. Most people are close to their partners, of course, but Lothian and Jodi are clearly on a whole different level.

"I'm okay," she says. "I think I'm probably going to sleep through all of tomorrow, but I'm okay."

Sam starts to laugh, but it gives out halfway through and turns into a grunt.

"Yeah," she says. "Must be rough. The psychic thing and that."

A taut little smile.

"Yeah," says Jodi. "The psychic thing."

Neither of them have an immediate follow-up. Across the room, Jessica breaks away from a conversation with Byrne Winter and leaves, trailing her kid behind her.

Sam can almost feel Mae's breath on the back of her neck. Okay. Time to have this out.

"You might as well come out and say it," she tells Jodi. "Whatever the hell it is."

Jodi blushes, which is kind of cute, honestly; Sam is used to Gabriella and her brazen ruthlessness, and it's always refreshing to remember that regular people actually get embarrassed about things like trying to chase leads at their best friends' funerals.

"Um," she says, looking for her voice. "Yeah, we went to the library yesterday."

"We?" Christ. Sam hopes she hasn't dragged anyone else into this.

"Me and Lothian," says Jodi. "He won't leave me alone since I dropped that rock on my leg."

"Right," says Sam, not sure if this is a joke, or whether to believe her at all. "So what're you sayin', anyway?"

"I'm saying that this isn't the first time, is it? I read the old papers on microfiche. I know about Mae West."

In Sam's head, her fist snaps out, sends Jodi tumbling backwards into the wall with a spray of red flying from her nose. But she does not act on these impulses, hasn't done since she kicked a guy's face in when she was twenty and scared Gabriella so badly that she almost lost her for good, and so she just stands there and watches Jodi flinch as her ESP absorbs the aggression.

"No, you don't," she tells her, keeping her voice low and her hands by her sides. "You don't know a damn thing about Mae."

"I know she disappeared. And that you cared enough to start asking questions."

Cigarette smoke spiralling up through the trees. Buds vivid on the branches. And that face, twisted on one side from the scar.

―Listen, Sam, I'm a pretty patient girl but come on. When exactly are you planning on kissing me?

Yes. Yes, Sam cared. Mae was her first, and more than that she was the one who showed her that this was even an option, that she too could love and be loved, if she only knew what it was she actually wanted.

Sam sighs. She could murder a cigarette about now.

"Look," she says, folding her arms to stop herself making fists. "I told you I'm not gonna stop you. But I'm not helpin' you, either."

Morgan's picked up on the tension now; she's shifted into a fighting stance, knees bent and paws wide, ready to cast. Lothian crouches lower, arching his back and opening the edges of his wings to flash the pale membrane within.

"Please, Sam." Jodi moves a little closer, gesturing with her free hand. Her eyes are bright in a bad way, a maybe-tears kind of way. "She was murdered."

Goddamn. The worst of it is that she's right. Sam has stood exactly where Jodi is standing now, and if she had to, if someone disappeared Gabriella the way they disappeared Mae, she'd stand there and do it all over again. This time she probably wouldn't run away, either. She'd stand her ground until either she got her revenge, or they disappeared her, too.

But she can do that kind of thing. She's thirty-one, broke, in charge of a dying petrol station in a town where no one can afford to retire and the kids have no future; if Gabriella wasn't around, then she could afford to burn these petty scraps of a life to ash in her quest to get justice. Jodi is what, twenty, and she's got strong enough psychic powers that she'll get work for sure, as a therapist or psy officer or one of those League counsellors in Pokémon Centres who check the kids are staying sane out there.

That's not something you can throw away. It's definitely not something Sam can throw away for her. She's not sure she has the right to withhold the information, either, but it definitely feels less culpable.

"I know," she says, fighting to keep the anger out of her voice. It's too much. All of this is too much, this house with Tacoma in the dining-room and Mae in her head and Jodi right bloody here in front of her, being young and pretty and distressed. Dead girls and those who want to follow in their footsteps. How the hell did she get herself into this position?

"You think I don't know?" she continues, barely even hearing herself. "Mae was murdered too, Jodi. And I tried to fight about it, and guess what, I lost that fight. 'Cos it ain't one you can win. And it ain't worth you losin' too, just for the sake of someone who's gone."

"But she's not―" Jodi breaks off, her hand curled tight and trembling in a gesture Sam cannot even begin to interpret. "I'm sorry," she says, face falling. It doesn't have far to go, considering, but it does its best. "I didn't mean to have this argument with you again."

What a weird thing to say. Weird, and kind. That's what this is, isn't it? Jodi is being kind. To Sam. To her dead friend. Both their dead friends.

Anyone ever figures out a way to respond to that, Sam would love to know.

Fortunately, it's not on her to come up with one.

"Hello, Jodi."

A gentle pressure on Sam's shoulder. A flash of auburn waves in her peripheral vision.

"Oh," says Jodi. "Uh, hi, Gabbi."

It's her. She's here, with her always-cold hands and her metamorphic smile; and she does nothing to dispel the vague, angry fog clouding Sam's mind but she is here, and that's a start.

"I'm not sure what we're talking about here," says Gabriella, "but I think that this might not be the best time for it."

"No, I know." Jodi bites her lip, takes her teeth away again with red stains along the edges. "I'm sorry, I just … it's Tacoma."

"Yes," says Gabriella. "It is. Let's stick to that for today, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Sam?"

Gabriella's eyes change with the light; right now, fixed on Sam in the wan glow reflected from the snow outside, they are something not green and not brown but which Sam has always thought of as the natural colour of spring.

The fog is fading. It's all there still, the girls who died and the ones they left behind; Sam can hear Mae's laugh, scratchy with cigarettes, and see the fan turning round and round on the shelf in her crappy little trailer. But she can see Morgan and Lothian posturing at one another too, and the woman who turned her from a causeless rebel to someone who could hold a life together, and she is in control of herself, not the anger or the fog, and she is going to be okay.

"Yeah, Gabs," she says. "Morgan, get away from him."

She glares, but she moves, and across from her Lothian relaxes, folds his wings back up again. Behind him the world is moving the same as it ever did, Lucas and his friends, Byrne and Janine, Ella heading out into the hall. Impossible as it seems, nobody has even noticed that this conversation is happening.

Jodi is looking at her like she wants to ask if she's okay, and Sam wonders how much of that she saw. Gabriella says that Jodi can only read emotions, not thoughts, but if Sam could read minds, she'd be lying about it too, so she doesn't see why Jodi wouldn't.

Either way, she's not going to tell her anything. Gabriella's right, as usual. This isn't a healthy conversation to be having.

"Think I might get somethin' to eat," she says instead. "Gabs?"

Gabriella's fingers tighten momentarily on her arm: this conversation isn't over. But it's time for a break.

"Coming," she says."Jodi?"

"No, I should … you know." Hesitation. Her free hand reaching down as Lothian raises his head. "Go see Tacoma."

"Ah. Okay." This time Gabriella's smile is sympathetic, understanding. Watching her fills Sam with the kind of anger that happens to her when her love gets too intense. "Come on. We're heading that way."

"Thanks." She smiles back, shy and pained. Sam would like to get away from all this right now, honestly, but she doesn't leave. No one cared when Mae died. She will not be that asshole now that Tacoma has, too. "I'm ready. I think."

"Okay, then." Gabriella's hand brushes Sam's again, cold as the snow outside, and as the thrill of it echoes down Sam's nerves she follows her out into the hall.

Bastard Jack was excluded from both the wake and the service – Gabriella can usually keep him in line, more or less, but she didn't want to risk bringing him to a situation that delicate – but he glides down to settle on her shoulder as they leave the church, wings gleaming like white gold in the December light. His beak is stained an interesting colour, which Sam takes to mean he got bored and went to find a snack. Most wingull are exclusive fish- and garbage-eaters, but since being brought several hundred miles inland Jack has adapted to terrestrial hunting. Once Sam saw him fire a water pulse down a rabbit hole with such force that the unfortunate occupant was catapulted out of another exit halfway across the field.

"Hello, trouble," says Gabriella, rubbing a knuckle down his neck. "Found some wildlife to terrorise, I see."

Jack makes that mewling seagull scream that Sam hates and Gabriella (unaccountably) loves, and shuffles his feet into his preferred shoulder-perching position.

"Okay," she says, letting her hand fall. "Come on, we should get out of the way."

The four of them move off down the path between the rows of memorial stones, each stele wearing its own cap of snow. So damn bright.

"You should have brought your sunglasses," says Gabriella, as if reading her mind.

"Mm." Sam has managed to convince the rest of the town that she wears sunglasses to look cool, but the truth of the matter is that her pale eyes sting and water in even moderately bright lights. About the only time of year she doesn't need them is autumn, when the sky is as dull as rock salt; she's not wearing them today because she didn't know if that's allowed at funerals.

Gabriella's left eyebrow twitches up into a perfect arc.

"Are you all right?" she asks.

Sam's instinct is to lie, but she doesn't. It's fine. You can't help your first reaction: you can only affect what you actually do. She's lived by that line for over a decade now, ever since one of her Goldenrod friends took her out for a drink and a talk about anger.

"No," she says, keeping her voice low so that the others will hear nothing over the crunch of shoes on dirt and salt. "Not really."

Gabriella nods.

"Yes," she says. "I don't think I am, either."

Crunch, crunch. Some pokémon Sam can't see bleats from within the crowd.

"Good to be out," says Sam. "Don't like church."

She knows she sounds like a petulant teenager, but she also knows that Gabriella is aware that what she means is that she hates sitting around on a hard wooden chair while Alistair drones on about the infinite love of the God who hates people like her, and so she says it anyway.

"I know," says Gabriella. "I don't even know if Tacoma liked it, honestly. But being here's the right thing to do."

The right thing. Like nobody did for …

Sam has really got to stop this. Months go by at a time without her thinking of her and then suddenly up she pops again, laughter in her eyes and that big, twisted scar across her face.

―Just got the film star name. Didn't get lucky enough to get the looks as well.

She still doesn't know how Mae came by that wound. But she had other scars too, on her neck and deforming one breast, and even back then Sam knew better than to ask about it.

And then Tacoma … Tacoma. Sam remembers when they heard the news that day last week. Who d'you think did it, she asked Gabriella, and Gabriella shook her head.

I don't know, she said. But they better run, because if they ever get caught then half the town is going to come for their blood.

"Goddamn it all to hell," Sam mutters, earning a disapproving look from Sarah as she passes. "How much longer is this gonna go on for?"

Gabriella lays her hand briefly on Sam's shoulder.

"Let's light the fire when we get home," she says. "And just sit there until it's over."

Until it's over is something they've been saying to each other for years, and it means anything and everything that it ever possibly could: until the fire goes out, until they fall asleep, until the world ends. Sam imagines their living-room, Gabriella leaning into her, soft and fragrant. Firelight turning her hair into red flames. Asleep, or not, and Sam unable to risk moving for fear of ruining things, like when a kitten goes to sleep on your lap and you think, well, I guess I live in this chair now. Until it's over, and they go to bed to dream their intertwining dreams.

"Yeah," she says. "Let's do that."

They find places to stand at the back of the churchyard, between the last two rows of stelae. The names of the dead press in on them from both sides. Sam's eye moves instinctively to read them, but she has had enough of death today and distracts herself by picking up Morgan so she can climb on her shoulders and see over the heads of the Fays in front. Clefairy are always curious; if Sam doesn't let her watch, she'll only start scratching her leg till she does.

Not that there's all that much to see. Just a box being carried down the path and shoved onto a pile of stinking wood. What's holy oil even made of, anyway? It smells like old fish and gasoline. Like Jack when he got stuck in the garage and broke open a grease gun trying to get out.

The bells fall silent, and Morgan tugs petulantly on Sam's ear, uncertain why the pretty noise has stopped but sure that she can bully her partner into fixing it. Sam flicks her nose in return and she quiets down again, understanding at once that there is nothing to be done. This kind of petty insolence is like a language, and savage little things like them are more than fluent.

Almost makes her smile. Her parents got their tomboy daughter a clefairy for her trainer journey in the hope it might make her more of a girl; they never stopped to consider the fact that maybe clefairy don't know that being pink and fluffy is meant to make them sweet and demure. Sam was wary of her at first, but then Morgan threw a stick at an opposing trainer in a tantrum because she wasn't strong enough to beat his quagsire, and after that she had a place in Sam's heart that nobody else ever even came close to until Mae.

"You have all heard me say my piece," says Alistair. "I'm aware that were Tacoma here, she'd thank me for keeping it brief."

Sam appreciates it too. The sooner she can get out of here and back home to that fireside, the better. Maybe her irritation shows, because suddenly she feels cold fingers wrapped around her own, squeezing gently. She looks quizzically at Gabriella, what are you doing, and gets a shrug in response: we're at the back, nobody can see.

Risky. But hell, she'll take it.

"I now open the field to you," Alistair is saying, when she returns her attention to him. "If anyone else has any final words to share in Tacoma's memory, before God and this community, then now is the time."

No one takes up the offer. Sam wonders what they're meant to say. She liked Tacoma, is glad she knew her and sorry that she's gone, but these feel like poor offerings. Everything else she might say isn't the kind of thing she can share with the town; neither Tacoma nor her family would thank her for it. Probably wouldn't do her and Gabriella any good, either.

The silence goes on, long enough for Sam to start getting angry. This is the part where you celebrate the dead person's life, right? That's why they all came. Someone has to do something, has to have something to say to get everyone going. Tacoma deserves better than that. Sam saw her in the summer, sweltering in a long-sleeved shirt, and she's spent enough time among people who hate themselves to have her suspicions about what that means. If no one speaks at her pyre, that's just adding insult to injury.

"Suppose I should say something," says Nick, and Sam heaves a silent sigh of relief. Okay. She's never really been to a funeral before – when she came back home, she found that those of her grandparents who were alive for her childhood had passed away in her absence – but she imagines that the first speech is always the hardest. They've all just spent several hours feeling sad at the house and in the church; now it's time to celebrate, to share in Tacoma's life instead of her death, and that's a hard shift in tone to navigate.

It's a good speech that he gives. Short – which again, Sam appreciates – but punchy. Unsentimental. In Nick's telling, Tacoma is the kind of person Sam would like to be, although of course she is not sure that Tacoma quite made it all the way into being that person, either. She nods along with the rhythm of it, annoying Morgan with the movement, and then all at once Nick's gears seem to grind and he just … stops. Like a run-down car pushed beyond its limits.

Sam can see the situation unfolding even before it happens. There's Alistair, saying "thank you" over and over, but that won't make Nick move, and then someone else will have to step in, and that someone is going to be Con, isn't it, because he just can't shake off that urge to be Police Chief even when he knows that his intervention would be the worst way there is to handle this situation, and then when his hand meets Nick's arm …

It was just before she left town that it happened, and to this day nobody really has any idea why. But she was one of the ones who saw it. Back then, she had part-time work at the post office with Marlo – this was before his drinking got out of hand and someone else had to take over – and she was just coming back from lunch when she saw the two of them coming out the door, shouting like they were trying to wake the dead.

You have no understanding of human suffering, yelled Nick.

You don't have any idea what you're talking ab, yelled Con, but he never quite finished, because at that point Nick laid him out flat on the pavement with the best right hook Sam had ever seen.

That was back when Nick was a student, before he moved away permanently, and apparently he was on the Yellowbrick wrestling team at the time. Still impressive. Con's a pretty big guy, after all.

It was funny at the time, of course, because Sam was eighteen and even more pointlessly rebellious than she is now, but today it just seems ominous.

She holds her breath.

Con steps out from the crowd.

"Ah, shit," she mutters, and feels Gabriella's grip tighten. She knows too. And now they're going to see two grown men slugging it out over Tacoma's funeral pyre like toddlers fighting over a toy in a sandpit.

"Okay, Nick," says Con. "Time to―"

As he speaks, he lays a hand on Nick's arm, and that's where it all starts to go wrong.

"Don't you touch me," growls Nick, exploding back into motion like he just got filled with the breath of Ho-oh. "You―!"

That magneton of his zooms up over his head, arcs of lightning jumping between its cores; Sam can't see Moira, but she imagines she must be responding in kind, arching her tail and making her cheeks spark. The crowd pulls back, muttering like a parliament of owls, and she has to take a step back with Gabriella to avoid getting trodden on. For a moment Danny Fay's head is blocking her view, and the next thing she can see is Nick shifting position, fists rising.

Goddamn. Sam really didn't want to be proved right about this.

"Easy, Nick." Con raises his hands, backs off. "This isn't the time for that."

"Isn't it?" Nick's eyes flash with a cold light. What happened between these two? Sam is no stranger to hate, but this is deep stuff. Maybe he's spent the past decade brooding over whatever slight it was, condensing the hate down into something pure and violent. "I think I've been bloody patient in not throwing you out as soon as you―"

"Nick."

"Oh thank God," breathes Gabriella, and Sam finds she can't argue with that. Annie to the rescue. If anyone can pull Nick back from the edge of whatever cliff he's standing on, it has to be her.

"Nick, if you bring this to my daughter's funeral you are not setting foot in my house again," she says, and that's it: all the fight goes out of him in an instant as he remembers where he is, and why. "And you, Con," she snaps, just in case he thought he was getting away with his stupid intervention. "You should know better."

"Sure, Annie," he begins, but she doesn't let him finish.

"I don't want to hear it."

Never has Sam seen anyone so comprehensively shut down. Con barely even reacts, just retreats back into the crowd. Nick shakes his head and stalks off, pushing roughly through the crowd with one hand and searching for something in his pocket with the other. Cigarettes? Sam feels like she needs one, and she only had to watch.

"Um," says Alistair, his nerves obvious enough to give Sam a little thrill of satisfaction. Teach him to preach about what is and isn't natural. "If … if that's all, then I'd like to invite someone else to speak."

The wait for a second speaker is almost as tense as that for the first; Sam's eyes move restlessly around the crowd, flicking back to Nick every so often to see him still fidgeting in his pocket and glaring, but nobody looks like they're psyching themselves up to step forward. Eventually someone does, though, and old Harry makes his slow way up to the pyre, his ancient electivire dragging himself slowly along behind him. Normally Jacob stays at home or in his ball, sleeping, but evidently he felt his human needed support today. It's been years since Sam saw him; his fur is almost completely grey now.

"I mostly saw Tacoma while she was on her way to see something more interesting," Harry begins, to general smiles, and Sam knows that things are finally looking up. It's a nice speech, heartwarming really, and the only sour note is when he mentions that he regrets being the last person that Tacoma saw alive and Sam's mind jumps from Tacoma being killed with electricity to the fact that Harry (and maybe Jacob) knew exactly where she was on the evening she was killed. But that passes – why would he kill her, after all? Sam isn't sure if he's part of the chapter house group or not, but she is sure that Tacoma wasn't killed by members of the group – and then she can relax again. He's always had a knack for putting people at their ease. Good man.

After Harry comes that guy Victor, and that self-centred sap Steven, and Pryce Aske; Michelle takes a turn, talks about the way Tacoma used to run in and out of the Ortega house like it was her own, and Sam's eyes turn involuntarily to find Jodi in the crowd. She sees León and Ella, and assumes that Jodi is with them, but both she and Sam are too short for Sam to be able to see her.

She wonders if Jodi will speak. What would she say? Sam has no idea, really. She's probably sensible enough that she wouldn't talk about the fact that someone here is a murderer, but Sam doesn't know that for sure.

"Thank you, Michelle," says Alistair, and as she walks away to rejoin León Sam feels Gabriella pull her hand free from hers.

"My turn," she tells her, and edges politely through the crowd to tell her story about Tacoma being the first person she met in town. She comes back a little flushed, a little shaky, and grips Sam's hand tighter than before. Sam grips back, whispers that she was great, and feels her heart lift a little with Gabriella's nervous smile.

Ina. Marlo. Elsie. Janine. More and more of them, everyone who knew her and everyone who cared. They come and go, tossing stories into the crowd like coins into a fountain, watching the ripples spread across the mourners. The longer it goes on, the more distant Mae seems, the less ready to leave Sam feels. At some point, she even stops noticing the cold; the pyre still hasn't been lit, will not until the stories are done, but the glow of history here is like the hot charcoal in the bowl of a hookah, a gentle warmth that seeps in through your skin.

And then Everett returns to his parents, Annie wrapping one arm tight around him, and at last it is over.

Alistair looks around.

"Anyone else?"

No takers. Sam feels strange. Satisfied, maybe. She wasn't sure how she felt about watching Tacoma get incinerated, but now she thinks she's probably ready for it.

"All right then. Lorna, if you'd―"

"Hang on," says a thin little voice, and Sam swears under her breath. She's going to do it, isn't she?

She'd better not say anything that anyone comes to regret.

???

This is proving to be a difficult day.

He knew it would be, of course. He's dealt with corpses before, but he was never the one that created them, and he's certainly never had to stand and suffer through their funerals. This Tacoma thing was a bad business. None of it was meant to happen, it was just … well. She got herself involved, even if she didn't mean to. The moment she picked up that package in Saffron, the wheels were set in motion. And that encounter in the park was as good as sealed.

He feels bad about that, he really does. He didn't necessarily understand Tacoma, but he knew she was heading for a life more important than his, and he cared, he did. Sometimes he wants to climb up onto the icy roof of his house and scream it into the night for everyone to hear: please, you have to believe me!

But … but it's happened now, and it can't be taken back, and that means there's nothing left for it but to fight the guilt and suffer through her funeral.

The wake was bad, standing around with everyone else, all so apologetic, so cautious of the Spearings' loss. At least he didn't have to fake his sorrow; on one occasion, he had to excuse himself and stand in the bathroom, gripping the edge of the sink and breathing hard while his partner moved around in erratic little bursts, upset by his obvious distress. When he came out again, face as white as the snow outside, he saw people looking at him, and murmuring sympathetically to one another. If only they knew, he thought. If only they knew.

The service was a little easier; that was just sitting around, after all, and if he concentrated on the chiming of the bell-vanes on the roof as they turned in the wind he could blank out Alistair's sermon easily enough. Got a little dicey when Everett took the pulpit to deliver one of the readings, though. The God that the killer believes in has never quite matched up with the God of the Church, but in that moment he was certain that His judgement was only a matter of time.

Now, standing by the pyre with everyone else, he can take a measure of comfort in the fact that it is almost over, for today at least. (The police investigation is still ongoing, of course, and there's a lot to be done there yet, but that's a problem for another day.) There was that damn stupid fight – God, that was painful – but that's past now, and the speeches are pretty much done. He can't see anyone choosing to follow Everett and his choked-up elegy.

Except that someone does. Except that that damn Ortega kid still has something to say.

"Hang on." Eyes bright. Tears, or determination? Impossible to be certain. "I wanted to say something, actually."

"Of course," says Alistair, although he does not sound very sure about it. Probably wondering whether or not letting the kid make a speech would profane the rites. "Um, come on up … Jodi."

Up there now, moving slowly. Leg playing up, maybe. Lothian is there too, sticking close as a shadow.

He swallows. He has a feeling he knows what he's about to hear.

"Tacoma was my best friend, once. And I really wish that she still was." Surveying the crowd. Absolutely fearless, despite the empathy. He hates this: nerves would be more approachable, easier to deal with. "There were a bunch of reasons why we stopped hanging out, I guess, and I understood those, but I never stopped hoping she'd come talk to me again someday. Maybe I should have taken the lead. I guess that ship has sailed now.

"But that's not the point. The point is, I still cared. She did too, I think. I always got that sense from her, even when she'd pass me in the street and not say anything. And now she's gone, but she's watching, and I want to admit that, here where we can all hear. We missed an opportunity. I really hope we get a chance to make up for it, eventually."

Cute. Maybe this is going to be okay after all. This isn't any worse than what anyone else has said; it just reminds him that he tore a hole in people's lives, is all, and that's something he's been dealing with all this afternoon.

"I probably don't need to repeat what everyone else has said, about how smart she was and all. You know that stuff. But she was, you know. And now she's dead, and … and I'm standing here talking to you, and all I can think is that as I look at you, I'm looking at the person who did it."

People don't like that; heads are turning, low murmurs exchanged. By the pyre, Lothian unfolds his wings and arches his back, unsettled.

"I hope I'm wrong. I hope you're all the people I thought you were. But I don't know any more, and I owe it to Tacoma to be suspicious." Okay. Okay, this is starting to get harder to bear. "I'm not here to make accusations. I don't want to spoil things. But I hope Tacoma gets the justice she deserves."

Their eyes meet. As if … but nobody knows, right? It's impossible. Nobody can know. He was careful. So careful.

But what if someone could read minds?

He can hear the blood roaring in his ears. The world seems to be much further away than it used to be, except for those eyes, drilling down through his face into the dark place in his head where terrible secrets are kept, and suddenly it seems incredibly hard to breathe―

"Sorry." The eyes move on, turn their awful intensity on someone else. Just looking around. All of this was just a coincidence. He knows that. "Tacoma was … incredible. She still is, wherever she is. Let's focus on that." A sigh. "Thanks. I'm sorry for upsetting things."

Gone before anyone can even think of responding. He breathes out, tells himself he's being stupid. He's actually seen mind-readings take place before, and they're not the kind of thing you can pull off standing up while giving a speech; it takes real concentration to make them work. His secret is still safe. Even from the psychic kid.

"Uh … thank you, Jodi," says Alistair, looking confused. "All right. If that's all …? Lorna. It's time."

She hands him the holy taper, its handle carved with phoenix wings, and Alistair's flareon raises her head to light it with a breath.

"Most holy and gracious God," he says, "we commend the soul of this girl into Your eternal care."

It catches instantly, the holy oil flaring like petrol, and as one the crowd takes a step back as the fire roars up towards heaven, heat rolling off it in thick waves that seem to scorch their faces after the long winter cold.

There's an art to making a pyre; you want to choose the right woods, the right mixture of oils, so that it burns hot enough to turn flesh and bone into ash – and too bright to look at, so that you don't have to watch it happening. The coffin should hold for a little while, until the pressure of the hot air inside becomes too great, and by that point most of Tacoma herself should be gone.

In some places, he has heard, they arrange things so that the ash of the person cannot mix with the ash of the fuel, so that the family can keep them as a memorial.

He is very, very glad that this is not what is done here.

"Within the flame and in our hearts," begins someone, begins that damn kid, and as the old Johto hymn spreads throughout the crowd, the words rising up with the pillar of smoke, the killer stands there and keeps his eyes fixed on the flame, on the box even now beginning to crumble at the corners.

He stares until he can stare no more, and after he finally gives in and blinks he finds he cannot see anything at all but the ghost of the fire, flashing blue-green before his eyes.

Chapter Text

TACOMA

One day maybe Tacoma will get used to this. One day she might have a rhythm, a kind of order to her existence here, although it's hard to imagine what that would look like when at the moment only three living creatures know she's still around, and two of those are pokémon.

This is not that day. Hasn't even been a week yet, after all. The tower is already achingly familiar – she can recite those names in alphabets she can read for twenty-nine floors down – but it isn't home, not by a long shot. She's taken off her coat and boots, thrown her sweater across her sarcophagus at a careless kind of angle; still, she has the feeling that even if she stripped naked and flung her clothes everywhere she wouldn't be able to make this space feel like a place in which someone lived.

The problem is probably that this isn't a place in which anybody lives, really. Back on Tuesday, after she'd bid Jodi goodnight and promised Nikki she'd be back with her in the morning, she decided she'd try and simulate some kind of routine and actually got undressed to sleep for once. She noticed then that the stubble on her legs hadn't grown any longer than it was when she got dressed to catch her train home, which in turn made her realise that her nails were the same length too, and that despite a week without brushing her teeth her mouth still tasted normal, and after that she put her clothes back on and decided to hell with a routine, nothing mattered any more and there was no reason for her to do anything at all.

Dead. You get used to it, and then you notice something else and it hits you all over again.

Who, she thought, unable to care but equally unable to let it go. Why. Harry, Nick, someone else. Thumbs on her neck and lightning in her hair.

They know nothing. They know nothing, still, and in one sense that's fine; Tacoma has all the time in the world now. But lying there, staring at the even stones of the ceiling, she couldn't escape the questions. Who. Why. Repeated so many times now that she no longer bothers with the inflection.

She did not recover on Wednesday. Jodi was out, and Nikki is too used to her depressive bullshit to help her break out of it: she just lay down with the rock, holding it between her claws and whining when Tacoma went back inside. It's something Tacoma feels bad about. They both used to be so restless, and for a while after Tacoma's energy burnt itself out Nikole still was, dragging her out of bed and into the fresh air. Until she realised that there was something wrong with Tacoma beyond the fact that she didn't want to take her for walks any more, and she started to spend all her time just sitting with her, uncertain why she couldn't make her partner happy any more but desperate to do it anyway.

Thursday isn't any better. At this point, Tacoma hasn't heard from Jodi since Tuesday night; she pretended to be asleep on Wednesday morning, aware of Jodi's nerves but unwilling to start that conversation, and while she sensed Jodi's distress when she got back home she couldn't bring herself to ask if she was okay.

After that, Jodi ate almost without breathing for fifteen straight minutes and then immediately fell asleep. The last time Tacoma left the rock, her clock said it was about twenty past twelve. How long Michelle and León will leave it till they come to check on her Tacoma isn't sure, but she's been using the fact that they might do it at any time as an excuse to stay in.

This is not the right thing to do. Especially not after Jodi plunged right into her parents' grief to go and get Nikki for her. That's not nothing, especially not for an empath, and especially not for an empath who's just come out. Jodi did that for her, and she let Nikole wreck her leg on the way home too, and here Tacoma is, refusing even to stick her head out and say hello to the partner Jodi brought her.

She's not making this any better by beating herself up about it. She knows this.

She's doing it anyway.

Time might be passing, or it might not; hard to say, in here. Tacoma waits, scratches at the cut on her arm that is now stuck forever on the itchy verge of sealing up; she listens to Nikki making concerned noises outside, cuts the connection, opens it again immediately, wracked with guilt.

(Who. Why.)

Lothian is up, she thinks. But last she looked, he was just sitting there on the end of Jodi's bed like a gargoyle, completely uninterested in occupying Nikole. Worried about his partner. Like Nikole is about hers.

Tacoma did a course on partnership in her first year, as it goes, on the unique instincts that bind humans and certain pokémon together, but she really doesn't want to think about that right now.

Jodi's mind ripples, like water beneath a falling pebble, and Tacoma puts her eye to the crack to see Lothian stirring, shuffling down to the head of her bed. This is a chance to break the fugue, and Tacoma forces herself to take it: she pushes her head out, making Nikole look up and make a little breathy noise of pleasure, and watches as Jodi grips the bed frame and drags herself slowly into a sitting position.

"Mm," she grunts, scratching Lothian's head. "Hey, you."

Her voice is thin and quiet. She might at this moment be the most exhausted person Tacoma has ever seen.

"Morning, Tacoma," she says, looking up. "Gotta be quiet. Not sure I can do telepathy today."

"'S okay."

Tacoma jerks her head at Nikki, signalling that she should come pick her up. It's been a long time since she last carried her, but these past couple of days Tacoma has rediscovered the old pleasure all over again. Nikki always liked it. Kangaskhan are primed for parthenogenesis and motherhood; those who don't conceive for whatever reason feel better if they have something else to hold – a soft toy, a partner. And it's pretty nice being on the receiving end, too. Tacoma likes physical contact, even if she hates when people initiate it.

"Bit closer, Nikki," she says, and feels the thread connecting her to the rock stretch and sway as Nikole brings her over to Jodi. "How're you doing?"

"Tired." Jodi leans back against her pillows, eyes closed. Something about this position makes the bones of her face seem horribly prominent, like her skin could just melt off her skull at any moment; a second later, gathering up her energy or detecting Tacoma's unease, she opens her eyes again and seems to come back to life. "I'm sorry. I might not actually be getting out of bed today. Definitely not leaving the house, anyway."

"Because of the funeral?"

Jodi sighs.

"Yeah. Because of the funeral. Standing up all day, especially after I already hurt it yesterday" (Nikole's fault, thinks Tacoma, which of course means it's her fault, really, as if she hasn't hurt Jodi enough already over the years) "and the amount of … of everything I had to block out." Lothian moves closer, settles himself at her side with his fuzzy neck pressed up against her chest, and she slips her bony arm around him as she speaks. You could fit maybe two or three of those arms into one of Tacoma's. She isn't sure whether she's envious or worried. "Grief, sure, but everyone staring, and everyone wondering who …. you know, who did it, and their shock and curiosity and everything."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault."

"I meant that it happened," says Tacoma, although this is not, in fact, what she meant.

Half-smile.

"Okay," says Jodi. "Thanks." She scratches her face, then freezes for a second when her fingertips encounter stubble. Tacoma wonders what it's like. The way Jodi's mind feels, it definitely can't be much fun. "Hmph. Anyway," she says, taking her hand away with a visible effort of will, "it was a nice service. A lot of people really care about you. They're gonna be really happy, after all this is done and we can tell them you're not gone."

The terrible thing is that Tacoma believes her. People do care. They care about her, because she's the success story, the Mahogany kid who got the scholarship and soared even as the town fell off a cliff beneath her, and because they don't know what she did, back on her trainer journey. She wants nothing more than to tell them the truth, turn the pride in their eyes into horror, but she never has done, and now she figures it's probably too late. Let them have their moment. Let them celebrate a brilliant dead daughter. To take that away at this point would just be cruel.

"Okay," she says, aware that Jodi is waiting for some kind of response. "I … I don't know how to feel about that."

"I guess that's understandable." Of course it is. Jodi the empath, understanding everything. Makes her skin crawl. "Look, we don't have to talk about it," says Jodi. "The funeral, I mean. If you want, we can just focus on―"

A knock at the door. Tacoma is back inside the rock in an instant, Nikole's dismayed growl echoing in her ears; the next thing she knows, Jodi is calling out:

"Yeah?"

"Jodi?"

Ella's voice. What? Has term ended already?

"Ella?" Jodi sounds as confused as her. "Don't you have school?"

"We all got the day off for the funeral and then they figured there was no point bringing us back just for two days. Can I come in?"

"I, um … sure, I guess."

She's nervous; Tacoma can feel it in whatever it is that passes for her bones. Because Ella might have overheard them? Or because she hasn't shaved yet? It's only been a few days, but Tacoma is beginning to get an idea of the lengths Jodi goes to to avoid people seeing her on anything but her own terms.

The click of the door; a little gasp of inward breath.

"Nikki," says Jodi. "Calm down."

Tacoma presses her eye hastily to the gap and sees the room sway dizzyingly around her as Nikole shoves her into the crook of one arm, the other curling across her vision into a battle stance, ready to slash or punch.

"Nikki!" she snaps, hoping she can hear. Her ghost powers do seem to extend to some kind of telepathy; she summoned Jodi that night, and she got Nikki to calm down the last time she scared Ella, too. "You have got to stop doing this."

Nikole pauses, confused as to where the voice is coming from, but she does lower her claws, and Tacoma just catches Ella's sigh of relief as she moves.

"Sorry," says Jodi, like any of this is her fault. "What is it, Ella?"

"Um … who were you talking to?"

"Lothi. He wanted to know if I was okay."

"Oh. Right, I forgot he can … I forgot."

Pause. Tacoma reaches up to her lips, tells herself not to pick, and picks.

"Did you want something?" asks Jodi.

"Oh. No, I mean – Mum asked me to check on you if you weren't awake by one. Make sure you didn't die or anything."

"That's what she said?"

"Maybe she didn't use those exact words."

"Okay. Well, thanks." Jodi leans out of bed to grip Ella's arm, and all at once Tacoma misses Everett so much it hurts. "I'm okay. Exhausted, but okay."

"Are you sure?"

"Mostly." It sounds like she's smiling. "Are you okay?"

"What do you mean?" she asks, too defensive, too fast, and Jodi sighs.

"Because I'm psychic," she says. "And because I know that me doing … this, you know, it doesn't just affect me."

Another, longer, pause. Ella stares at the floor, nudging something around with her toe. Talk, Tacoma wants to scream. Your sister's still alive! Talk to her! But she stays silent, and so does Ella, and in the end it's Jodi who has to take responsibility.

"C'mere," she says, tugging Ella closer, and as she sits down on the bed and leans with an unexpected eagerness into the hug Tacoma cuts the line.

This isn't for her, she reflects, in the stygian gloom of the tower. Watching would be spying.

She thinks of Everett, for whom she is herself an Ella, a wayward little sister who doesn't know how to talk to him, and she thinks of the funeral he just attended where he saw her burnt to ash, and Tacoma yanks hard on her half-healed cut so that the flesh pops apart again like a bag of crisps but though it hurts like hell there isn't any blood at all.

When she next dares to look outside, both Jodi and Ella are gone, and only Nikole is left. She is delighted to see her, so much so that Tacoma doesn't have the heart to retreat again, and they spend an hour alone in Jodi's room that would be funny if Tacoma wasn't actually living it. Nikki seems to be aware her partner can't get things for herself, so she keeps taking books off Jodi's shelf (about music, mostly, and also one about that Watergate thing that Tacoma remembers vaguely was in the news a couple of years ago) and putting them down in front of her with an expectant look on her face. The kind of thing you'd laugh at on TV, but which in real life is just frustrating.

But it's Nikki, it's her partner, so Tacoma clamps down hard on her annoyance and keeps on thanking her for each one. After a while, she seems to get that they're unwanted and gives up to just lie down with her instead, resting her heavy head on her arm and staring at Tacoma's mouth. (She doesn't like eye contact, and assumes that everybody else is the same because she is even more self-centred than her partner.) Sometimes she reaches out with her free claw, just to make sure she's still there. As if she's afraid she might disappear.

It's not such an unwarranted fear, honestly. Kind of a shitty thing to realise, but there it is.

Eventually, the wait is over. Tacoma hears footsteps – very slow today, and uneven – and the muffled click of Jodi's cane, and then there she is, pushing the door shut behind her and leaning heavily against it.

"Hey," she says, closing her eyes. Tacoma is half afraid of seeing the skull beneath her skin again, but now she's made her face up it's much less obvious. "Sorry. We, um … I think we needed that."

"It's fine," says Tacoma. "She all right?"

"Mostly." Jodi smiles, and the skull fades even further, blanked out by her prettiness. "Thanks for asking."

Tacoma moves to shrug, except of course all she manages to do is wiggle the thread around a little.

"She seemed upset. So. You know."

"Yeah," says Jodi. "I know." Pause. "I need to spend some time with her soon," she adds, hesitantly. "Just us. If that's all right."

It is. Or no, it isn't, there is a huge selfish thing roaring in Tacoma's head for Jodi's attention, rattling its spines against each other and clawing at the sides of her skull, but this is unreasonable and she knows it.

"Sure," she says, certain that Jodi can see the spiny thing raging in her, not knowing what to do except try to hide it anyway. "I mean, she's your sister. Can't really complain about sharing you with her."

"Thanks." Jodi pushes herself away from the door, limps over. Normally she hides it better, but today the pain of moving is written all over her. "Tomorrow," she begins, and Tacoma leaps in before she can finish.

"Let your leg get better first," she says. "And your brain. Dunno what we're gonna find out there, but you should be ready."

"Tomorrow," repeats Jodi. "We'll go tomorrow. Then I think Saturday I might take Ella to Ecruteak. They probably have last year's movies by now."

It takes a while for films to reach Johto; there aren't a lot of cinemas, and not that many people who can afford to attend them. There isn't much of a home film industry, either; the closest thing to Johtonian film is Kantan film, and obviously that means that half the cinemas here don't show it on principle, even though the only real difference between Johtoni and Kantan is the alphabet and intonation.

"That's cool," says Tacoma. "Hope you guys have fun."

"Thanks. But. First – you know. That cabin." Jodi sighs. "I'm not gonna lie, I don't really know how we're gonna find it when the cops can't, but, um, we'll have to try."

"Can you get it from Nikki?"

"Dunno. Not today, anyway. Maybe she'd understand if you asked her." She frowns. "Actually, why didn't Con ask me to do that? You'd think they'd want the help. It's a nightmare finding anything up there even when it isn't snowing."

"No idea. Let's leave it for now." God damn, would Jodi just let herself rest for a bit? She looks like she might die if you asked her to go downstairs. "Where's Ella?"

"Painting. It's okay, she always plays her tapes when she paints; she won't hear us." Something seems to occur to her then: she straightens up a little, gives Nikki a look. "Are you two okay in here? Sorry, I just left you here all day."

"'S all right. Guess I wouldn't mind the radio or something."

"Right. Okay. Um … TV? Sorry, I think if I go outside I'll need to be rescued by Lothian before I get to the end of the drive."

"TV is okay," says Tacoma, relieved at the prospect of Jodi spending the afternoon sitting down. "You like TV, don't you, Nikki?"

The ridges around Nikole's eyes shift into a new alignment, and despite herself Tacoma has to smile. Sometimes Nikole has the patience for TV and sometimes not – but she always knows when her partner wants her to agree with her on something.

"That's a yes," she says. "She likes things that move."

"Cool." Jodi plants her cane, pushes herself back up. "C'mon then, you two. That TV isn't gonna watch itself."

It sure isn't, agrees Tacoma, and so they go downstairs, where Jodi drags her bad leg stiffly up onto the sofa and they watch a Kantan art historian talk expansively about paintings. The broadcast assumes you're watching in colour, unfortunately, but they can still see some of what she's talking about.

Jodi watches with genuine interest, curled against the arm of the sofa with her leg trailing stiffly along the cushions. Next to her, Tacoma listens to her breath, and out of the corner of her eye looks at the profile of her face against the light from the window, a portrait of concentration.

She's really interested, isn't she? In this moment Tacoma loves her more than ever, her brilliant friend who reads non-fiction and watches educational TV with genuine enjoyment, who is the kind of dedicated that Tacoma is fundamentally incapable of being; here is someone who has a future, someone curious to want one and brave enough to accept it, and even if Tacoma has burnt her life to ash the way they burned her corpse yesterday, she might at least be able to see Jodi's turn out okay.

Tacoma lets her disc slip to one side until it leans against Jodi's hip, fog splashing against her side, and apparently without realising it Jodi moves her hand around her back, to rest on the thread of mist between disc and rock and send a little tingle of excitement through what passes for Tacoma's body. How long has it been since she was this close to anyone? Probably not since she and Jodi went on their journey, honestly. Sure, the last time they spoke was probably only five years ago, but they were already almost strangers then.

Nikole watches them from across the room, eyes narrow with suspicion at the way this girl she doesn't know has wormed her way into Tacoma's affections. Tacoma could try to explain, could call her over and tell her again that this is the kid she once tried to dig out from under the mess of ice and stone and shattered trees; if she moves, though, if she speaks, then Jodi might move too and the moment could end, and right now she can't think of anything she's more afraid of than that.

She sits there, watching Nikole glare, and feels bad about the fact that she does not feel bad about this at all.

"You're sure you're up to this?"

"Nikki needs a walk, Mum," says Jodi. "And I … kind of need to get out too. After Wednesday."

Tacoma listens from the dark of her tomb, watching Jodi's lipstick shuffle across her vision as the car shifts the contents of her bag. Nikki's ball is in there too, somewhere. Took some convincing to get her to go back in there, but Tacoma had to try; even if she'd somehow managed to fit through the car door, she'd probably have just gone straight through the floorboards. After all this time, she's almost completely destroyed the old sofa that Tacoma inherited after her parents got a new one for the living-room, and that was sold as pokémon-proof. Cars are much flimsier.

Speaking of that sofa, she probably should've asked Jodi to have a look inside it. There's a hole in the arm that you can just get your hand into, if you try, and this is where Tacoma keeps things she doesn't want her parents to find: cigarettes, weed, a two-hundred-florin note she found in a park once and decided to keep in case she ever needed to put her secret plan of last resort into action. Would've been nice to have that stuff, and as it is she has no idea if she'll ever see it again.

"Okay," says Michelle, the sound of her voice bringing Tacoma back out of her thoughts. "If you're sure. I'll be back at noon, okay? Don't be late."

"I won't," promises Jodi. "And I'll be fine, I promise. I have Lothi and Nikki. It'd be pretty difficult to get any safer than that."

"I know, I know, I just …" It sounds like the kind of pause you leave when you're trying to think of how to finish, but in the end Michelle never comes up with anything. "Have a nice time, chickadee," she says, after a few awkward seconds of silence. "Back here at noon."

"Noon. Got it."

Car door thumping. The contents of Jodi's bag shift over her vision again, so close it feels like they're going to hit her in the face, although of course they never do.

"Bye!"

"Bye!"

The motor growls, the tyres crunch, and then, as the sound fades, there is nothing at all except a vast and eerie silence.

"Okay." Light floods into Tacoma's field of view, making her squint, and a second later it disappears again as Jodi's hand delves into her bag and blocks it out, made unsettlingly large by the weird perspective. "Nikki first."

The unmistakeable sound of a ball opening, and then of heavy paws settling onto hard earth.

"And Tacoma," says Jodi, as Tacoma's view swings around in dizzying circles; a moment later, it stabilises, and she thrusts her head out into the chilly air to find herself between Nikole's claws once more.

She looks around. They're standing in that area of cleared forest just off the north road where people park to take walks in the woods; there are no cars here today, just icebound earth, and beyond the wooden railing that marks the perimeter endless rows of pine trees, their branches almost black beneath the heavy load of gleaming snow.

Been a long time since she was last here. Probably she was exercising Nikki then, too. Summer, maybe, when she was hiding her depression from her family by making an effort to go outside and smile at people.

"Hey," she squinting against the dazzling reflection of sunlight on ice. "So we've got an hour and a half?"

"Yep," replies Jodi. She's wearing mirrored sunglasses that make her look like a movie star, lenses shining with magpie-feather iridescence in the winter light. Tacoma isn't sure if she's ever seen anyone look quite this cool.

"And the cops have been looking for how long now, exactly?"

"Almost a week." Jodi shrugs. "All we can do is try."

"Yeah," sighs Tacoma. "I guess."

The air rushes overhead, and Lothian glides down from somewhere to join them, claws digging effortlessly into the icy dirt. He looks at Jodi expectantly, fanning the edges of his wings; she smiles and waves him away.

"Going towards the river," she calls, as he takes off again. "And be careful! If you knock the snow off the branches on top of us, you are in so much trouble."

He hoots in understanding, or just out of the delight of having wings and space to use them, and vanishes again, into the upper reaches of the trees. Tacoma can't see him, but she doubts he'll go far enough to lose track of Jodi.

"Okay," she says, twisting around as best she can to look up at Nikole. "Nikki? Do you remember being here a few days ago?"

The ridges shift around her eyes.

"Don't lie to me," she warns her. "D'you remember where you came from?"

She sniffs deeply, casts a suspicious glance at Jodi.

"Yeah, sure, Jodi saw. But we need to go back where you came from, Nikki. 'S important, okay? And you like walks, I know you do."

Nikki stiffens a little, recognising the word walk in there somewhere, and as she turns her head towards the woods Tacoma suddenly understands: she didn't believe it, did she? After all this time, all those days wasted in lying in darkened rooms while the light crept cautiously around the edges of the curtains, she just didn't think that this was going to happen. That Tacoma might want to take her out again and wander through the forest.

Tacoma Spearing: literally the worst trainer on the peninsula. She swallows her anger, aware that Nikki will think that it's directed at her, and does her best to smile.

"That's right," she says. "We're gonna go for a walk, Nikki. Back to where my bag is. You remember where that was?"

She moves much faster this time, looks into the woods and points clumsily with one hand. It's not a natural movement for kangaskhan; their forelimbs don't have the same range of movement as human arms, and their hooked claws can't uncurl like fingers can. But she learned to do this watching Tacoma, back when she first started training her properly, and as she does it now it makes Tacoma a little dizzy with nostalgia and guilt.

"Nice," she says, talking around the lump in her throat. "Uh … c'mon, then. But not too fast, okay? Jodi can't keep up with you."

They set off, heading down the trail that goes west towards the river. The light beneath the trees is strange, moving from bright to dim in an instant; sometimes they'll walk through an early twilight, beneath branches so thick with snow that the sun seems to have disappeared, and a second later emerge into a blinding glare stolen from a summer's day. The brightness makes Tacoma's eyes water with something thin and discoloured that seems to be the liquid form of her fog; she blinks it back, but the odd drop escapes and gets caught in the swirling of her disc, to be hurled out into the forest and splatter against a tree.

She hates this. Most of the time she can kind of forget how inhuman she is now, but then something like this will happen and thrust it right back into her face again.

Here in the silence between the snow and the branches, it is hard not to be aware that the killer knew these woods. Knows them, even. And knows them well enough to take Tacoma to the river unseen, to dispose of her luggage and slip back into town without anyone being the wiser.

Well enough, maybe, to stalk a girl who can't run as she travels further and further away from anyone who could help her.

Lothian's here, Tacoma reminds herself. He'd hear anyone coming from the next county, probably. And if anyone did get close – well, maybe Nikki would protect her and maybe not, but Lothian isn't exactly a pushover himself. Jodi was never a strong trainer, but Lothian was the leading light of her team, back before … uh. Before.

Anyway, they're probably safe. No one's coming for them. Why would they? As far as anyone knows, Tacoma and the rock are long gone.

Jodi stumbles, cane catching on a root or a knuckle of frozen earth, and Lothian seems to form out of thin air, thrusting his neck out for her to put her hand on.

"Whoa," she says. "Thanks, Lothi."

He squeaks – it always seems to Tacoma like such a weird noise for a dragon to make, but she supposes that technically he is just a giant bat – and launches himself at a nearby tree, crawling up the trunk as easily as he would over flat ground. After a few seconds, he's hidden by the branches, and a little explosion of falling snow marks his leap back into the sky.

"How does he go that fast?" asks Tacoma, still unsure where exactly he came from in the first place. "Is that like a modified quick attack or something?"

Jodi laughs.

"Not a move," says Jodi. "Just fast. He likes to race my friend Carmine's jolteon. Sometimes he wins, and the jolteon gets so angry I always think she's gonna explode."

"Carmine?" asks Tacoma, feeling the selfish thing in her head raise all its spines again.

"Oh. Uni friend. Telekinesis and precognition. Really powerful, actually, like a 74% on the brain test. Most of us are in the fifties," she adds, realising Tacoma has no idea what that means. "She picked me up with her mind once, which was probably the scariest ten seconds of my life."

"What about when you looked up to see half a mountain falling on you?"

"Okay, whatever, second scariest ten seconds."

Tacoma makes no reply, aware that she probably shouldn't have said that. Jodi has to be uneasy, walking around in the woods with snowy branches all around; what kind of asshole reminds her that this is how she lost her partners and almost her life as well?

Tacoma Spearing, apparently. Figures, she thinks, and retreats sullenly into Nikole's arms as they walk on towards the gurgling of the river.

It's beautiful, and quiet. There's the creaking, of course, and the occasional whoosh as Lothian beats his wings harder than usual; there's the crunch of dirt and sticks giving way beneath Nikki's heavy feet. A couple of birds singing. Tacoma tries to remember what that one that goes whee-ee-oo! is, but the last time she identified a bird was on her trainer journey and she can't figure it out.

And then there's the Rageriver: a huge, pulsing mass of shattered ice and churning water, flooding south from the Lake of Rage to vanish underground into the Mount Mortar caves. When they get close enough to catch a glimpse of it through the trees, they can't help but get closer, drawn to see what it is that's making all the noise, and then when they emerge onto the riverbank trail, they just have to stop and stare. It's a good forty feet across even now, with fingers of ice clutching at its sides. In spring, after the melt – well, there isn't going to be a riverbank trail for at least a few months.

"Wow," says Jodi, taking off her sunglasses to stare. Today, it seems, her eyeshadow is the smoky blue of summer twilight. "I'd kinda forgotten."

"Yeah," says Tacoma. "Me too."

They watch. A branch floats by, its edges blending into the blackness of the water.

Someone threw her body in here, thinks Tacoma. And it floated away like deadwood until Aaron pulled it out.

(Who. Why. Christ, she's sick of this.)

"I don't even know when I was last here," says Jodi. "I usually only exercise Lothi in town."

"Same," says Tacoma. But this is a lie, isn't it, and Jodi cares far too much for Tacoma to lie to her like that, and so she corrects herself: "Or, uh, no. I … haven't been exercising Nikki."

Jodi looks away from the water then, eyebrows raised.

"You said she needed walking," she says. It's not an accusation, not quite, but it's very hard not to take it as one.

"Yeah," says Tacoma, uncomfortably. She can't seem to look away from Jodi's face right now, much as she'd like to. "D'you, uh, know what I do in the tower?"

"No …?"

"I, um, lie on my back. And stare at the ceiling."

Jodi looks at her for a long while. She's projecting a little without realising, or that link between them is open again; Tacoma can feel her pain from over here.

Christ. How does Jodi live with this? It's awful. Tacoma can hardly stand sensing her distress; what it's like to feel this for everyone you ever meet she can't even imagine.

"You don't just do this in the tower, do you."

Tacoma has had a lot of cause to feel ashamed, over the past few years. All the people she's been mean to, all the lies she's told, all the shit she's put Nikki through just because she couldn't make her emotions work properly. But this is something else.

"No," she admits. "I haven't."

Jodi's knuckles are white on her cane. Above her, Lothian comes into view, banking sharply over the river to land at her back.

"Tacoma," Jodi begins, reaching out towards her, but before she can finish Nikki tightens her grip and snatches Tacoma away, taking a too-long step back that leaves her off balance, and then suddenly she bellows and slips and Tacoma is falling onto the slope and rolling down towards the water, the world whirling nauseatingly around her, and in the tower she scrabbles desperately for purchase as if she could grab the roots bouncing past her head―

―and finds something, and grips it, and stops.

Tacoma's eyes are shut tight, waiting for the impact with the water that will carry her away into an underground lake for centuries of solitary immortality. Carefully, cautiously, she opens them again, and sees Jodi's eyes locked with hers.

Jodi's eyes move to the side. Tacoma's move with them, and together they look at the pair of hands locked together on the ground between them.

One small, red-gloved hand. And, gripping tightly onto its wrist – one dark, sludgy purple one.

Tacoma looks some more. The hand is connected to a forearm, far more similar to hers than the face in the disc; it's like the mist has been shoved into the shed skin of her living body, purple swirling beneath the surface around the livid green streaks of her scars. It fades away around the elbow, but it's her hand. Almost just like it used to be.

"Tacoma," says Jodi. There's a stick poking into her cheek, but Tacoma isn't sure she has a hand free to move it. She wishes she had a hand free to move it, but she only seems to have the one.

"Yeah?" says Tacoma.

"I'm not sure I can get up."

The world comes into focus again: here she is, halfway down the riverbank, hand in hand with Jodi. Who appears to have literally flung herself at the ground to catch her.

Holy shit.

"Oh," she says, which is about as coherent as she can get right now. "Right."

A few long breathless moments pass. It's starting to sink in, a little. The fall. The hand.

The scars, right there for everyone to see.

Jodi says nothing; she just pushes herself up off the ground with her free hand, dragging Tacoma up with her. Halfway through the movement, Lothian sinks his teeth into the fabric of her coat and helps her turn over into something vaguely resembling a sitting position, her good leg bent and the other stretched out at an uncomfortable-looking angle.

"Okay," she gasps, letting go of Tacoma's hand to push her hair out of her face. "Okay, thanks."

Lothian's nose twitches, transmitting some kind of message; Jodi reaches out to scratch his head, but he picks up her cane and puts it in her hand before she manages to actually touch him. She lays it on her lap and hugs him close.

"Okay," she says again, looking over his shoulder at Tacoma. "That … just happened."

"Yeah," says Tacoma. "It― are you fucking kidding me?"

Her hand is fading, its substance sloughing away and dissolving on the wind. She concentrates, digging her fingers into the earth in case gripping is what summons it – but still, it fades, and then it is gone and Tacoma is just a head again.

She takes a deep, sharp breath. She's not going to shout about this. She's not going to cry. She's not going to do so many things.

"I'm sorry," says Jodi, trying to shuffle closer. "Tacoma, I'm so sorry―"

"Yeah, well, maybe you shouldn't be," snaps Tacoma, and the things she is not going to do rise within her like a wild skarmory, four hundred pounds of angry steel flying at the world with unstoppable force. "It's just a hand. And I'm just dead."

"No, Tacoma―"

Hand on her disc, the warm glow of Jodi's psionics. Tacoma twists away sharply and slams the mental link closed so hard that shadows pop at the corners of her vision. She's a dark-type, isn't she? She doesn't have to take this psychic bullshit if she doesn't want to. Jodi flinches, clutches at her head, and even as the guilt begins to prickle Tacoma is filled with an acid satisfaction. Look at her, kicking her disabled friend in the brain. Turns out she really is the asshole she always thought she was.

Jodi is shaking. Holding her head like it might break. Tacoma can't see her face but she can hear her breath, thick and staccato. Like someone crying.

The skarmory folds its wings and falls straight out of her mind. What has she done?

"Jodi?" she asks. "Are you okay?"

No answer. Lothian hisses at her, teeth bared and ears forward, and as she shrinks away unfolds his wings and curls them around Jodi the way Tacoma imagines he would around a baby noibat, making a little echo chamber into which to fire his vibrations. She watches anxiously for what might be ten seconds or might be a year, and then Jodi sniffs deeply and Lothian pulls back.

She straightens up, and without looking at Tacoma reaches for her bag for a tissue and her mascara, fixing her tear-smudged make-up. Making her wait. When she's done, Tacoma thinks she might be about to speak but instead she gets out her cigarettes, and a heavy silver lighter with the bell-and-wing arms of Johto engraved on the side. Michelle's lighter. Tacoma remembers Jodi telling her the story back when they were kids: Michelle stole it from her father when she was fifteen, a petty revenge for his liberality with the belt, and ran off with it to offer boys a light and seduce them out of their sugar rations. Apparently Jodi has since inherited it.

Jodi smokes her cigarette for a while, taking care to direct the smoke over the river and away from Lothian, and just when Tacoma is starting to think she'd rather have been dropped in the river after all she speaks.

"That really hurt."

"I'm sorry," she says, immediately.

"I know." Jodi blows a smoke ring, watches it float away. "You can't do that to people, Tacoma."

"I know, I'm sorry, I don't – I'm not even sure what I did …"

Jodi finally looks at her then, and Tacoma wishes she'd just kept looking at the river.

"Me either," she says, "but it was dark-type."

"I'm sorry."

"I know," says Jodi again. "I know." She blows another smoke ring. Two for two. She must have had a lot of practice. There is so much that Tacoma doesn't know about her any more. "Look, I'm not gonna pretend I know what you're going through, but you can't do things like that."

"I'm sorry. I didn't even – I didn't know I was doing it, I was just trying to stop you psychicing me."

"I would've done that if you'd asked."

Four times Tacoma has apologised now, and Jodi hasn't said she forgives her. It stings, but Tacoma gets it. You don't get to demand that of someone. They have a right to their hurt and their anger.

"I know," she says. "I'm not trying to make excuses, I just … I was angry and I messed up."

Jodi sighs.

"Well, you wouldn't be the first person to do that," she mutters, stubbing out her cigarette on a rock. "I should have asked too, I guess."

"No," says Tacoma. It seems fundamentally wrong that Jodi should take any blame for this. Better that it all be on her, just the way it ought to be. "No, I like it when you … I like it. I was being unreasonable."

"I'm not saying you weren't," says Jodi. "Look, Tacoma, I know you're hurting, I know you don't even know all your powers yet. It's okay. But I think we're gonna have to talk sometime."

"About …?"

"About what's wrong." Jodi holds her eye, steady as a rock. "I know there's something you're not telling me," she says, and suddenly bands of ice seem to tighten around Tacoma's chest. "I'm sorry. I should have asked you sooner, but I didn't know how. Now I guess I feel like I have to do it, whether I know or not."

"I can't," says Tacoma. She didn't mean to whisper, but apparently that's what her voice is doing today. "Jodi, you don't understand―"

"Well, I'm gonna try." Jodi folds her arms. "I'm not offering you a choice, Tacoma. We're gonna talk. Soon."

She's right. God damn it all, but she's right. Did Tacoma really think she could run forever? She's not bloody D. B. Cooper, she's just some dumb, angry kid. Someone like her can only hide so long before she's caught and made to stare into the nuclear incandescence of the final judgement.

And after that? God only knows. But she has a feeling that she might be looking at the end of her second chance to find a place in Jodi's life.

"Okay," she says. It makes her feel physically sick to say it, but she gets it out. "Okay."

"Good." Jodi smiles, and just for a second Tacoma sees real warmth there. Thank God. She doesn't hate her, then. Or at least, not yet. "I think you should probably talk to Nikki now," Jodi adds. "She seems upset."

Tacoma follows her gaze and sees her, crouched a little way off on the other side of the path. Eyes down. Ears flat. Jodi's right, she does look upset. No wonder, really; she almost threw her partner in the Rageriver and lost her forever.

It's almost enough to make her smile. Like partner, like pokémon; it looks like Nikki is nearly as good at beating herself up as Tacoma is.

She supposes that that isn't really anything to smile at, when you think about it.

Okay. Time to forget her missing hand, her mean streak, her hurt friend. Time to be reassuring.

She calls out for Nikki to come over, and at first Nikki doesn't want to but she does, and in the end this turns out to be one problem at least that Tacoma can solve.

It's okay. It's not great – Jodi doesn't want to talk, and Tacoma hasn't got the guts to push her – but it's okay, and there are moments when it's even as high as good. When they decide to leave, for instance: Jodi is all set to get Lothian to hover over her and pull her up in his talons, but to everyone's surprise Nikki simply curls her claws into her coat and sets her back on her feet like a child righting a fallen toy.

"Oh," says Jodi, trying not to fall over again in her surprise. "Um, thank you, Nikki. Wasn't expecting that."

"She saw you save me," says Tacoma. "Maybe she doesn't know who you are, but she knows you're cool."

Jodi reaches out to rub Nikole's snout, and Nikole closes her eyes, silent. Kangaskhan only make noises when they're upset, or dealing with joeys too young (or humans too stupid) to have learned what the movements of their facial scales mean. If they can get away with it, they prefer to communicate with gesture and expression.

"She likes it," Tacoma translates, and Jodi nods.

"I know," she says. "I know."

This is about all that Jodi says to her for the next half an hour. They keep going, until the snow on the trail gets too deep and they have to turn off into the woods and trust in Nikki's memory to get them where they need to go. It's slow going, and Tacoma finds herself thinking more than once of the deadline Michelle set, but Jodi doesn't so much as look at her watch, and she figures that if Jodi's okay with this the least she can do is be supportive. Especially after dark pulsing her in the head or whatever it was she just did.

River and birdsong. Footsteps. The smell of pine sap. Odd piles of snow where branches have given way and dropped their burdens to the earth. It continues, until Nikki stops and scrapes one foot along the icy ground, snorting.

"Here?" asks Jodi. Nikki looks at her, and perhaps Jodi can read her mind or perhaps she's just good at reading faces, because she nods and looks around. "Yeah," she says. "Yeah, there's that tree from your memory."

She points at a particularly large pine, broken at the base and now leaning precariously against the branches of three others. How it hasn't been knocked down by the wind yet Tacoma isn't sure; she can see it wobbling.

"And I'm guessing if we went that way, we'd see the river bending," Jodi continues. "So … Lothi?"

He swoops down from nowhere in an instant, hooting his response.

"We're looking for a cabin," she says. "Somewhere close. Can you get up there and look for me?"

He cocks his head on one side, uncomprehending.

"A cabin," repeats Jodi. "It's like … hang on, I'll do you a picture."

Lothian squawks eagerly and leaps back into the air, message apparently received. It's kind of incredible how high he can jump: his wings must be twelve, thirteen feet across when he unfolds them all the way, and he has to be even higher than that to stop them clipping the ground with those first few wingbeats. Tacoma watches him twist upwards into the sky, wondering if Jodi is light enough that she could ride on him, and then drags her thoughts back down to earth.

"We're not looking for my bag?" she asks.

"I mean, we could if you want," says Jodi. "I dunno how I'd explain it to Mum, but we could. I just thought … we don't have much time, so the cabin is the priority."

"Right." Tacoma sighs. "Probably better leave it for the cops, anyway."

She can pick it up when all this is over, right? Minus the weed, probably, but that's fine. Most of what she had left is still safe at home inside her sofa.

"Yeah," says Jodi. "That's what I thought."

Her face is unreadable behind her sunglasses. Nothing more to say. They wait for a few minutes, Nikki scratching restlessly at the dirt and fallen branches, and then Tacoma hears a screech like a falcon's call and tilts her disc upwards to see Lothian circling above, the sun glowing through the thin skin of his wings.

"Looks like we're in luck," says Jodi. "C'mon."

She limps off, following Lothian deeper into the forest, and Nikole lumbers on behind, tireless as ever. She's doing better at matching pace with Jodi now. Was she pulling ahead before just to be mean? It's not beyond the realm of possibility. Kangaskhan are known for their gentleness, but they only really extend it to their kids, and to the trainers they choose. Once when Nikki was half-grown Tacoma saw her catch a blackbird and play with it like a cat toying with a mouse, flicking it over onto its back every time it tried to get up and flee until the poor thing went catatonic and just lay there, waiting to die. Fortunately that was when Tacoma arrived to order Nikki to let it go – and to her credit, she obeyed and never did it again, but she never really seemed to understand why Tacoma had a problem with it.

Something dark appears between the trees up ahead, and Jodi stops.

"Okay," she says, glancing back at Tacoma and Nikki. "I'm going to go knock on the door, and if anyone answers I'll say me and Lothi got a bit lost and could we get directions back to the trail. If they don't, then I'll come get you two and we can, uh … break in." She scowls. "I was trying to find a nicer way to say that but I'm not sure there is one."

"Right." Tacoma stretches up as far as she can, nudges Nikki's chin. "We're gonna stay here a minute, got it?" Nikki nudges back. "Okay. Go on ahead."

Jodi nods and walks stiffly off through the trees. In the quiet, the rapping of her knuckles against the door sounds like gunshots. Tacoma waits, heart in her mouth – what if the murderer lives here? and who would even know where to look if Jodi vanished? – and then relaxes again when she hears her voice:

"C'mon! It isn't even locked!"

Man. Ask anyone who knows them, and they'd tell you that Tacoma is the gutsy one, the one who wouldn't be afraid to break a law or two. Jodi's the nervous one who'd never do this without Tacoma talking her round. And yet – here's Jodi, breaking and entering like she was born to it, while Tacoma hangs back and worries.

"Coming!" she calls, putting as much feeling into it as she can, and concentrates on not shrinking back against Nikki as she brings her out into the clearing in which the cabin stands.

It's smaller than she thought. Windows dark, chimney cold and smokeless. Lothian up on the roof, kicking snow loose for the fun of watching it fall. The snow on the dirt track leading back to the main road is unbroken save for deer or girafarig tracks, and a tall drift has built up against the wall where Tacoma imagines you would park. Whoever lives here hasn't come home in a while.

"No blue Crowne," says Jodi, seeing Tacoma looking. "But this is the place. D'you remember, Nikki?"

Tacoma can tell that she does; she's tensed up, her grip on the stone tightening. She's like Tacoma in that way, as in so many others. Doesn't like to be reminded of her moments of weakness.

"Yeah," she says. "She remembers."

"Cool." Jodi takes off her sunglasses and sticks them in her pocket. "Ready to go in?"

It's nice that she's talking to her again, at least. She probably wouldn't be if she didn't have to, but it's nice all the same.

"Sure," lies Tacoma. "You said it wasn't locked?"

A lot of doors go unlocked in Mahogany, even now in the seventies. Out here, in the literal middle of nowhere, there are even fewer. You're more at risk from wild pokémon than people in the woods, and ursaring tend not to care whether a door is locked or not when they walk through it.

"Nope." Jodi twists the handle and pushes. "See?"

"Right, right." Is it obvious she's putting it off? Yes. Almost certainly. "Okay," she says. "Let's, uh … go."

Jodi nods.

"Lothi? Watch out and let us know if anyone's coming, okay?" The response must be ultrasonic or something; Jodi nods and goes in without another word. Nikki follows cautiously, hunched a little like she's ready to drop to all fours and charge, and in her claws Tacoma shifts uncomfortably. She is starting to discover that dangerous situations seem a lot more so when you lack the ability to run away from them. Is that how Jodi feels, with her leg and her cane? If so, she's even braver than Tacoma thought.

It takes a little while for their eyes to adjust to the dim interior of the cabin, after the sun and snow outside. When they do, they find they can see the whole thing at a glance; most of the cabin is a single room, a bed at one end and a bare-bones kitchenette at the other, and between them chairs around a table.

"What on earth …?" Jodi moves closer, frowning. "Looks like someone was trying to build a bomb or something."

Three of the chairs are stacked high with books; the tabletop is scattered with wires, papers, tiny pieces of metal. Screwdrivers. Pliers. An iron and a few lengths of solder.

Tacoma and Jodi exchange looks. It's not immediately obvious what they've found here, but they've definitely found something.

"There could be an innocent explanation," suggests Jodi.

"Could there?"

"I dunno," she admits. "Let's have a look."

She leans over, carefully avoiding touching any of the bits of machinery, and turns a stack of books to look at the spines.

"Home Electrical Engineering, Circuitry 101, Beyond the Veil: Essays in Cross-dimensional Transference, the Pokédex, The Massive― wait, sorry, that's in Kantan script, I think it's The Mechanics of Rarefaction." Jodi looks up at Tacoma, a question in her eyes. "Pretty eclectic mix."

"Yeah," says Tacoma. "Pretty weird."

If she had a heart, it would be pounding. Cross-dimensional transference? That rings a bell. A lot of them, actually, ringing and ringing in the back of her head like the fire alarm in her halls when her cigarette set it off and the noise sliced so cruelly into her depression that she almost cried.

Jodi's frown deepens.

"What's wrong?" she asks.

"Nothing," says Tacoma. "It's fine. What do the notes say?"

"Are you―?" Jodi breaks off, shakes her head. "Sorry. I won't push it."

"Uh," says Tacoma, unable to think of a response. She really doesn't deserve this kind of compassion. "Thanks?"

"It's fine." Jodi smiles without heart, returns her attention to the table. "So, uh, these look like … notes?"

"Yeah," says Tacoma, glad to be moving on. "What's it say?"

Nikki is holding her out so she can see, but she can't make herself look. She just can't. She already recognises that dark green ink; she doesn't need to look closer and realise she knows the handwriting, too.

Who and why, huh? Well. Here's the goddamn who.

"Hang on." Jodi leans closer. "Some kinda notes? 29th November: I'm starting to – I've started to – sorry, it's in Kantan – I've started to turn the plan into a reality. The calculations have been difficult to work out without the facility – without the faculty computer, but if you … okay, that is way too much maths for me. But I think this is about whatever they were building here?"

She glances at Tacoma again, and now there's no hiding it, wouldn't be even if Jodi weren't psychic.

"I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to ask," begins Jodi, and then Tacoma's resolve breaks and she crumbles like ash falling from the tip of a cigarette.

"It's Nick," she says. "It's his handwriting, and his pen was in the park, and he writes in green ink and he studies dimensions and he knew I had the rock and I don't think he was in Alola at all."

Jodi stares.

"Oh," she says, eyes wide. "Um … shit."

"Yeah," says Tacoma, voice as quiet as distant rain. "Shit."

Chapter Text

JODI

"Jodi!"

Her mother jumps away from the car, half running in her haste to reach her.

"Yeah, I'm sorry," begins Jodi. "I know we said noon―"

"Jodi, where the hell have you been?" She seizes her arm. "I was this close to calling the cops―"

"I'm sorry." Her mother's anxiety is like a swarm of locusts, their buzzing wings merging into one loud droning scream. Jodi is used to it – her mother has worried about her all her life – but even if she can blank it out, she can't ignore the guilt. "I shouldn't have come, I know. Nikki ran off and I couldn't …"

Her mother sighs.

"God, Jodi," she says. "Half an hour?"

"I couldn't leave her!"

"No." She throws up a hand, annoyed at Jodi, at herself for being annoyed at Jodi, at everything about this situation. "No, you couldn't, I just … half an hour, Jodi? You know there's a killer out there. You know we worry about you."

Leave it, she wants to yell. I had to break into the cabin of a suspected murderer and comfort Tacoma because it looks like her uncle is involved and I had to jump, actually jump, and my friend attacked me with a dark-type move and everything hurts and I really need to just lie down for a little while.

"I know," she says, refusing to let it show. "I shouldn't have come out here. I'll stick to town in future."

The hand on her arm unclenches slightly. With what seems like an immense effort, her mother looks away, forces herself to take a moment and relax.

"I'm … sorry," she says, after a second. "I know you know all this, Jodi. Know you know your limits, too. And if Nikole ran off, that wasn't your fault."

The two of them look at her, shifting uneasily on her paws. Jodi wonders how much of this she understands. Enough to think she did something wrong, anyway. Poor thing. If there were another way around this, Jodi would take it in a heartbeat.

"I'll stay in town in future," she repeats. "I just thought it would do her good to come out here."

Her mother shakes her head.

"Don't overthink this," she says. "You're doing fine with her, chickadee. It's just gonna take a while, is all. Bringing her out here won't speed it up."

So now her mother is making up her lies for her, huh. God. She can't take this. She just bloody can't.

"I just want things to be okay," she says, voice cracking. "I just want …"

Her mother sighs, puts her arm around her.

"Oh, darling," she says. "They will be. I promise. But you can't rush it."

If she speaks now, it will come out. Jodi is always in control of herself, has to be to keep her empathy in check – but right now, in her mother's arms and after the morning she's had, her grip on the reins is slipping. So she stays silent, lets herself be held, and waits for her mother to say the words.

"Are you okay, Jodi? Really, I mean? What you said at Tacoma's funeral …"

Just like Jodi thought. She can't avoid the consequences of her outburst forever. Really, she shouldn't have said any of it – shouldn't have advertised her interest to the killer, shouldn't have made the funeral all awkward for Tacoma's family. But after hours of holding off the tsunami of other people's sentiment, her brain was pretty much fried. She barely even realised what she was saying.

It's probably going to come back to bite her. Walking through the woods earlier, she couldn't stop thinking about people sneaking up behind her with gloved hands, and she has a feeling that this fear is much more justified than it was before she said all that by the pyre. Nothing she can do about it, though.

"I'm just worried," her mother continues. "We all are. You're going through a lot, darling. With Tacoma, and your, um …"

She doesn't know the word. Has Jodi really not talked to her about this? No, she realises. She hasn't told her parents anything. Somewhere in her notebook, she's got her plan for how she'd help them through this all written out, but this thing with Tacoma has sort of taken over.

"Transition," she says, promising herself that she'll be a better daughter, that she'll have these conversations. "I'm sorry. I meant to talk to you about it, it's just … Tacoma."

"I know." Her mother's grip on her tightens. "Sorry. Came at a real bad time, huh."

"Yeah, I―" She has to cut herself off, aware that she was about to blurt out everything. What is with her today? Is it the dark attack? It's true that her head still feels a little strange, but she doesn't know enough about how that kind of thing works to be sure. "I know," she says instead. "I want it to be over."

This much is true. Her mother can hear it in her voice; she stops hugging her and cups Jodi's face in her hands, tilting it up towards her own.

"It'll happen," she tells her, looking dead into her eyes. "When Doc Ishihara moved here everyone hated her. Only a few weeks ago we had Japanese soldiers camped out in the Manor and their dragonite flying out the tower to raid over the border, you know? But she stayed, and people figured out she was human too, and now nobody cares where she came from. They get used to that, they'll get used to you too."

"It's not the same."

She could kick herself for saying it. The last thing she should be doing is arguing with someone trying to help her. But her mother seems to get it: she sighs, shakes her head.

"No, it ain't," she agrees. "But they'll get used to you anyway. And those who don't – well, fuck 'em."

Jodi starts. It's not the first time she's heard her mother swear, but it's the first time it hasn't been an accident. She looks up at her mother in surprise, and as their eyes meet they both smile, connected now by this petty transgression.

"Okay," says Jodi. "Fuck 'em."

It's probably the first time her mother has heard her swear, too. She's a little nervous about it, but her mother makes no move to tell her off, just kisses her on the forehead and lets her go.

"That's my girl," she says, putting her hand on her elbow and guiding her towards the car. "C'mon, let's get you home. You look exhausted."

"Yeah," says Jodi, although in fact being called her mother's girl has taken the edge off it. "Yeah, I kinda am."

She gets Lothian into the back and Nikole into her ball, and falls gladly into her seat. From the driver's side, her mother catches her eye, tries a smile: okay?

Okay, Jodi smiles back, though they both know it's at least partly fake, and turns to watch the woods march backwards past them as they drive south towards the town.

Jodi doesn't mean to leave Tacoma alone, really. Her plan is to go up and sit in her room so they can talk; she figures Tacoma probably wants to know what it was she said at the funeral that got her mother so worried, and even if for some reason she doesn't Jodi definitely needs to make sure she's okay. So she accepts her mother's offer of hot chocolate, says she'll be resting in her room, and drags herself up the stairs – except that's where it starts to go wrong, because instead of sitting down in her chair she ends up lying down on her bed with her eyes closed.

God. She should get up, should get Tacoma's rock out of her bag for Nikole and shut the door, but she just can't seem to move. Her mother was right, she's exhausted. And everything hurts, too.

"Oof," she sighs. "God. Chronic pain, mutant brain."

The old mantra makes her smile a little. When was the last time she even said that? Probably not long after she moved to Goldenrod, back when the combination of walking around and psionic exercise left her too tired to even get out of bed at the weekends. She used to say it to herself all the time, but these days she doesn't seem to need the release any more.

Lothian's concern rumbles through her bones. She lets her smile broaden and reaches out in the direction of the sound; a moment later, she feels soft fuzz beneath her fingertips.

"Just tired and achy," she reassures him. "I'll get over it." She shifts her head, sees Nikole pawing anxiously at her bag by the desk. "Help her out, would you?"

For a moment she's not sure if Lothian quite understands – he's good at interpreting vague commands as long as it's her who gives them, but even he has his limits – and then her nerves shiver with his affirmation and he crawls off to open the bag. She knows he can do it; the morning after she bought it she woke up to find he'd discovered how to work the catch so he could steal the bag of dried fruit she had in there.

She closes her eyes again. Some time must pass, although she doesn't notice it, because suddenly her mother is there with the hot chocolate, warning her that Lothian and Nikole have got into her bag. Jodi thanks her, tells her she knows, and listens for the closing of the door.

A long and quiet moment. That chocolate smells wonderful, but right now she's got about as much chance of reaching it as she has the moon.

Jodi?

She raises her head a little. Nikole has the rock in her claws, scratching at it in a vain attempt to get Tacoma out.

"Tacoma," she replies. It's a little more sarcastic than perhaps Tacoma deserves, though she is realistic enough to know that she couldn't have stopped herself saying it that way.

You … okay?

She heard everything, didn't she? Including all that stuff about what Jodi said at her funeral. She heard it all, and now she's worried that she might have been hurting her even before she hit her with a dark move. That she's inflicted herself on Jodi in a way that no person has the right to do to another human being.

It's not the empathy that tells her this. It's just the fact that on some level, the girl in the rock is the same one who sprinted back to the cabin for the radio all those years ago.

"I'll live," says Jodi. "How are you?"

Pause – and then the soft whoosh of Tacoma pushing her head out of the rock. Jodi has let her head fall back against the pillow by now, but she can sense Nikole's alien animal delight.

"Same," says Tacoma. "I mean, I won't live, I'm― but other than that, same."

"You sure?"

She hesitates for too long before answering.

"Yeah," she says. "Sure."

Jodi closes her eyes. Tacoma's mind swirls like dishwater circling the drain, grimy with tangled feeling.

"Tacoma," she says. "You don't have to do this."

"Yes, I do. You're hurt."

That is finally enough to get her to move. She takes a deep breath and forces herself to sit up, leaning back against the headboard with a grunt. Her head spins for a moment, but it's okay. She was going to have to get up to drink that chocolate eventually, anyway.

The room is much as she left it: Nikki by the desk, Tacoma in her claws. Lothian uncurling from his spot near the end of the bed, suddenly alert to the fact that his human is up and moving again.

"You're not exactly healthy yourself," says Jodi, picking up her mug. "I think there's room for both of us to be hurt."

Tacoma glares.

"I'm," she begins, and then seems to run out of steam. "I, uh, I guess you're probably right."

Nikki lifts her up without being asked, hugs her close. Tacoma pretends to resist, but nobody is fooled, and a moment later she leans into her muscular grip.

"I didn't mean for it to happen," she says, not meeting Jodi's eye. "Didn't mean for you to get dragged in, either. Just didn't grow up, I guess. Not like you."

Not like you. Tacoma has said a lot of things this week that hurt to hear, but this one might be the worst yet. What exactly is it about Jodi that makes people think she has it all together? Tacoma, Ella – even Carmine once told her that she was basically the team mum for the whole psychic class. Are you sure you're nineteen? 'Cause sometimes I feel like you're the same age as my aunt. And Jodi just shrugged and said I dunno.

And it's okay, really; even before she knew she was an empath, Jodi always liked looking after people. That much is fine. It's just that Tacoma doesn't seem to be able to praise Jodi without putting herself down in the same breath, and that – that is not okay at all.

Besides, she's wrong. Jodi has made all kinds of mistakes this week, like her outburst at the funeral. She's kind of hoping people write that one off as a stressed psychic kid buckling under the pressure of a dead friend and a whole town's attention, but … well, she screwed up pretty badly.

Not that she can tell Tacoma this. She has enough problems right now without worrying that Jodi is going to get zapped in the back of the head and tossed in the river.

"C'mon," she says instead, sipping her hot chocolate. "I'm not any better than you."

"Aren't you?"

Her voice is as cold as the Rageriver, freezing Jodi's mind where it touches. She winces and puts down the mug, resisting the urge to rub her temples.

"Okay," she says. "I'm sorry, Tacoma, I can't argue this right now. I just … can't."

Tacoma says nothing for a while. Her disc has slowed again, fog crawling in sluggish circles around her eyes.

"You're right," she says, in the end. "After all that … you're right."

She's not angry at Jodi, but she is angry. And sad. And many, many other things, jealous and hateful and self-loathing and dozens of other emotions mingling with one another in a complex symphony of human pain.

Mostly angry, though. Trust Tacoma to turn pretty much everything she feels into anger, one way or another.

"I'm sorry," repeats Jodi. "I need to rest."

"No, I get it." Tacoma is swirling faster now, disk spinning up like a motor revving into life. "Stupid of me. Kicked you in the brain and―" She stops, shakes her head. "Look, we can talk about it later," she says. "Got no right to put this all on you, anyway."

"Tacoma―"

"Would you just fucking leave it?" She billows for a moment, growing larger and darker and making the shadows deepen dramatically all across the room before she shrinks back into her usual self again. "Rest," she orders. "I'll wait."

Jodi sits there, paralysed with the sudden frenetic pounding of her heart, and watches as she collapses in on herself and disappears.

Nikki whines. Lothian climbs onto the bed and puts his head in Jodi's lap.

She swallows.

"Yeah," she says, curling her fingers into his mane. "Yeah, that …"

She isn't sure how this particular sentence ends.

She has a feeling that might be for the best.

Tacoma doesn't seem to be coming back any time soon. Jodi finishes her hot chocolate and waits, but all that happens is that she falls asleep and slips into a nightmare about the Silverblacks, turning her head at a distant rumble and watching the mountainside crashing down towards her. She sees Ash stiffen, Helen prick up her ears, and then as she tries desperately to find their balls and call them back to safety the great billowing wall of cloudy ice rears up over her head like the tail of some cosmic scorpion―

She starts awake with a gasp, shivering in a cold mountain wind that exists nowhere but in her head, and is immediately set upon by Lothian and a low hum in her nerves.

"I'm okay," she says, wrapping her arms around him. "Just a dream."

The timbre of the humming shifts, turns disbelieving. She sighs and lets her head slip down onto his, forehead to snout.

"All right," she says, feeling his vibrations in her skull. "Maybe not so okay."

She looks up to see Nikole curled up around the rock, staring at and occasionally poking it with one claw. No sign of Tacoma herself.

It's difficult to just sit there and let it happen: Tacoma is hurting so badly, and even if that doesn't excuse what she did in the woods Jodi knows it wasn't intentional and that she won't do it again. But it doesn't take an empath to tell that what Tacoma needs right now is space to calm down, and so Jodi has no choice but to leave it.

She thinks of Ella, the day before. That was so much easier to deal with; Ella doesn't get angry, just anxious and sad. What she really needed was a hug, and that much Jodi could handle.

"You know I'm always your sister, right?" she said, feeling Ella trembling against her shoulder. "Before I'm psychic, before I'm a student, before anything else. Always your sister."

"I know," whispered Ella. "I know, I just … I'm sorry."

"What for?" Jodi wanted to put out some soothing vibes, but even with Lothian's help she was far too tired, so in the end she just had to squeeze her a little tighter instead. "C'mon. Let me get dressed, then let's go downstairs and talk about this, yeah?"

So in the end she got up after all, and they talked, and honestly it wasn't even as bad as Jodi thought, just the weirdness of suddenly having a sister and being intimidated by her success. She hated that Ella apparently doesn't consider herself successful too – she must be one of the best artists in town at this point, and one day when Ella is older and readier Jodi will put her in touch with the gallery-owning bug enthusiasts she met at an illegal concert in an abandoned factory – but it is what it is. Jodi doesn't know how she could have avoided making her feel this way.

She really should take her into Ecruteak sometime, to talk and shop and catch a movie. Try and bridge the chasm that seems to have opened up between them. But after the morning she's had, Jodi suspects she might have to put it off for a few days.

One last glance at Tacoma's rock: still cold and silent. Jodi chews her lip for a moment, then slides awkwardly off the bed. Maybe Tacoma will come out to be with Nikki if she leaves. And even if she doesn't, this is probably a good time to follow up on yesterday's talk with Ella. She might not be up to a trip to Ecruteak tomorrow, but she can at least be a better sister than she was a brother.

Closing the door on Nikki – who displays no interest at all in the fact that she's abandoning her – she pauses on the landing to gather her thoughts. From within Ella's room comes the voice of Jackson Browne, singing about perfect lovers looking like perfect fools; from downstairs drifts something twangy that Jodi suspects is her mother's beloved Patsy Cline. One of the things she loves most about coming home is the way her family play their radios and record players all at once, tracks leaking out of individual rooms to mingle promiscuously in the hall. Some days when Jodi plays her own tapes there are so many competing songs in the air that Lothian goes cross-eyed with the vibrations and has to lie down for a bit.

She listens for a moment, watching Lothian's ears swivel in different directions to take in both songs at once, then knocks on Ella's door. After a moment, it opens, and Jodi is greeted by Ella and a strong smell of paint.

"Hey," she says.

"Hey," says Ella, taking a paintbrush out of her mouth to join a couple of others in her hand. "What's up?"

"Nothing," says Jodi, which might just be the biggest lie she's told all day. "Can I sit down a minute?"

"Oh. Sure."

She steps back to let her in. Lothian is about to jump into the gap, but Jodi puts her cane down firmly in front of him and tells him to be careful, after which he carefully picks his way across the carpet without going near the papered section of floor where Ella's paints are arranged around a canvas. Jodi follows, sits down heavily on Ella's bed, and puts her hand on his shoulder to keep him from causing trouble.

"So," says Ella. "I know you said nothing was up, but what's up?"

"Very funny." Jodi can do this, right? She is genuinely interested in what her sister gets up to. Shouldn't be too hard to prove it, even with Nick and the cabin and Tacoma rattling around in the back of her head like runaway pinballs. "What're you painting?"

"Huh?" Ella glances at the canvas: mostly white, scattered patches of colour over a few vague pencil lines. Nothing like the depth and detail of her finished pieces. "Oh. I thought I'd do a scyther? I was thinking about them the other day."

"Scyther," repeats Jodi. "Nice." She stares at the canvas, trying to see the image in the rough shapes, but gets nowhere. The marks Ella has made are designed to guide the artist's hand, not the viewer's. Like Jodi's psionic engagement notes, long sequences of numbers and occasional annotations that only she and her tutor can actually decipher. "Is that the wing?" she asks, of something that she has no reason at all to suspect is a wing.

"Uh, no. That's gonna be a girafarig."

"Okay, well, this was not in the initial description, so you can't blame me for not getting it." Ella laughs, because this is a thing she is meant to laugh at, but she sounds subdued. "Anyway, that's cool. Looking forward to seeing that one when it's done."

Pause. The song ends, and the tape whirrs on to the next track, Browne singing now about hiding his tears.

"Listen," says Jodi. "About yesterday―"

"Oh, that was nothing," says Ella. "I, uh, I was feeling weird 'cause of the funeral, you know, and …"

Jodi takes her hand and she trails off as if the touch of her has sapped the words from her throat.

"D'you wanna go to Ecruteak sometime this week?" she asks. "Just me and you. I bet you haven't bought any Christmas presents yet, so we can do that."

Ella stares at her, face as blank as new snow.

"Yeah," she admits. "I, um … kind of haven't even done your birthday present yet."

"Thought as much." Jodi smiles. "Wanna hear a secret?"

"What?"

"I haven't got your Christmas present yet, either."

And finally, finally, Ella smiles back.

"You know all that paint on my hand is wet, right?" she asks.

"Yeah," says Jodi, without letting go. "I realised that about half a second after I reached out, but I figured I had to commit if I wanted the gesture to work."

This time Ella's laugh is free and unforced. She pulls her hand away and gives Jodi an awkward hands-off hug, trying not to get paint in her hair.

"Dork," she says, like she did the day Jodi came home last week. Jodi hopes she means it, hopes she's remembering now that Jodi is still her sister, the same way she was her brother back before all of this happened.

"That's me," she replies, hugging back. "A tiny little dork with psychic powers and an unhealthy interest in acoustics."

"You're not that small."

"One time a bug flew up Lothian's nose and he sneezed so hard he knocked me over."

"Okay, you're kinda small."

"Yep," says Jodi, as they disengage. "That's me." She flicks her hair back into place with her clean hand. "I'm gonna talk to Mum and Dad this weekend," she says. "About my transition and stuff."

"Your transition," repeats Ella. She sounds like she's testing the word out in her mouth. It's probably the first time she's ever heard it in this context.

"Yeah. I know I haven't really said anything about it so far, and that's not really fair to any of you, so … what I guess I mean is, you're welcome to join in." What are the right words here? Jodi isn't sure, but there's no time to stop and think it over: she needs this sentiment out, right now. "I did this for me, without talking to any of you about it, and I kinda had to – but I don't want this to make things weird for you. Or, not any weirder than they need to be, anyway."

She waits. Ella picks anxiously at the paint on her fingers.

"Okay, sis," she says. "Um … thank you."

Still me, Jodi told her, last Thursday when she came home. Back then, she wasn't sure if Ella believed her.

She's feeling much more confident about that now.

Nothing lasts forever. Not even the fury of Tacoma Spearing. Late that night, when Jodi at last says goodnight and leaves her father watching the millionth rerun of Moonlight Over Cinnabar, she comes up to her room to find it lit by eerie violet flames that gutter and die as she flicks the light switch.

"Hey," she says, as Tacoma looks up.

"Hey," mutters Tacoma.

Silence. Nikole climbs to her feet, unnervingly swift and silent, and lifts Tacoma up with her. Jodi thinks she might be about to snatch her away again, but she doesn't, just holds her there for Jodi to speak to. Looks like she really is starting to warm up to her.

"I'm sorry," says Tacoma. "I'm an asshole."

"Sometimes," agrees Jodi. "You're kind of a nice asshole, though."

Tacoma shoots her a look that Jodi chooses to ignore.

"Look, you've apologised, and I've accepted your apology." Jodi sits down at her desk and turns to face her. "I'm not angry with you, okay?"

"Yeah, well, maybe you should be."

Jodi snorts.

"I definitely should be, Tacoma, but surprisingly enough I kinda like you."

Even Tacoma has to smile at that. It used to be her who told the jokes, who could wring a smile from Jodi under even the most trying circumstances, but so much else is different now that Jodi sees no reason why this shouldn't be, too.

"How are you feeling?" she asks.

"Not great," says Tacoma. "You?"

"Tired."

"Yeah," says Tacoma. "Makes sense."

She falls silent, although Jodi gets the impression she isn't finished speaking yet. A second passes, then another, and then at last Tacoma sighs and says:

"Okay. You want to ask me about it, don't you."

It's not a question.

"Maybe I can help," suggests Jodi. "Like – I want you to get better, Tacoma. Really."

"Yeah," she says, unconvinced. "Yeah, I … I know." Pause. "I know it's messed-up," she says. "I know that. I know that healthy people don't carve up their arms like goddamn Christmas turkeys. I just …"

Her voice catches. Nikki holds her closer, burying her snout in the top of her disc.

"I did something bad," says Tacoma, eyes fixed on the window beyond Jodi's shoulder. "I did something real bad and now I'm paying for it."

The words come out all in one breath, stumbling over one another in their rush to leave her mouth. It sounds unreal. Who even says something like that? Like something from a Kantan TV drama. And yet Tacoma believes what she's saying, with an intensity of feeling that tears through the room like a midwinter gale, blasting Jodi's mind against the back of her skull. She grips the arms of her chair tightly, trying to focus on weathering the storm, but after the blow to the head this morning her psionics feel strange and hard to control, and even with Lothian's help she barely manages to hang on.

"O-oh," she manages, as the wind at last begins to ebb. "I … sorry, that – that was strong."

No response. Jodi clears her throat, tries to marshal her thoughts. Priority: get Tacoma through this. She's finally opened up a little. This might be the only chance you get to help her put her head back in order.

"This is going to be a really hard question, Tacoma, and I get it if you can't say right now, but – what did you do?"

Tacoma shudders, her features sliding out of position for a moment as the tremor runs through her fog.

"I can't," she says, shrinking back against Nikki's chest. "I can't, Jodi, I – if you knew you'd― I can't."

"Okay." Jodi is about to come over but stops herself half-out of her chair; Nikole has the hug covered already, and honestly she's probably much better at it. Jodi is too bony to be comfortable for the other person. "Okay. Can you promise me that you'll tell me, though? Not now, obviously, not even any time soon if you don't want, but sometime?"

Five seconds. Jodi counts. She never knew how long that was until now.

"Yeah," says Tacoma, slowly. There is something in her mind that Jodi has never encountered before. Like a live animal being torn in two. "I don't know if I can make that promise."

Another two seconds, while Jodi tries to process this. What can she have done? What could Tacoma of all people have done that's so bad she couldn't tell even Jodi? If she had to guess, the most that Tacoma could possibly be guilty of would be punching someone who deserved it, maybe petty theft at a push. Nothing that matters, nothing that really hurts anybody. Nothing … like this.

This time she does get up. She plants her cane by Nikki's foot, leans down as far as she can, and puts a hand on the thread connecting Tacoma to her rock. It feels weird, but it's about as close as Tacoma's got to a shoulder.

"Could you try?" she asks, looking intently into Tacoma's eyes.

Tacoma looks back. She looks like she'd rather be looking literally anywhere else, but she looks back. How is this even the same person that punched Victor Orbeck? Jodi knew she wasn't doing so well – of course she knew that – but this? Once in Goldenrod, coming home a little too late at night after a concert, Jodi saw a man being beaten up on the corner of Fast Street, just standing there and taking it as two others went to work on his face and ribs. She'd forgotten about it until now, but looking into Tacoma's eyes, all Jodi can think of is the awful resignation emanating from the man's head.

"Okay," mutters Tacoma. "Okay, I … I promise I'll try."

It's a start. Jodi has no illusions about this; Tacoma won't be herself again for a long time yet, and she's probably going to need the help of someone more qualified than an empath one term into her second year at university to get there at all. But it is a start, and that's all either of them can hope for right now.

"Thank you," she says. "I know it's a lot to ask."

"You always know," says Tacoma bitterly. "D'you know how much I hate that?"

"Just about as much as you love it," Jodi tells her, and is rewarded with the smallest of smiles. "All right, I have to get up or I'm gonna need Lothian to rescue me. But – seriously, Tacoma. Thanks."

A long, wordless look. Jodi nods and settles back into her chair.

"Okay," she says. "Um … I'm sorry, but I'm gonna ask you another difficult question now."

Tacoma grimaces.

"Gonna be pretty hard to top that last one," she says, with just a touch of the usual fire. "Go on then, let's have it."

"What d'you want to do about Nick?"

The grimace deepens.

"Well, I can't say you didn't warn me," she grumbles. "Look, Jodi, I dunno. I mean, you're right. Innocent till proven guilty and – and all that."

"Sure." It's painfully obvious that Tacoma doesn't believe this, but Jodi figures she's pushed her enough for now. "So …?"

"So I dunno. Thought you could talk to him, maybe, but if he did … do it, you know, then that might be dangerous."

"Might be," agrees Jodi. "I'll do it, though. If that's what needs to be done."

She doesn't quite realise what she's saying until the words are out, and then it comes as a surprise: she really would do it, wouldn't she? And more. If it had to be done. If Tacoma needed her to do it.

Jodi remembers telling Annie that she loved Tacoma still. She meant it then, of course, but only now does she realise how much.

"I dunno," says Tacoma. "I just … don't know." She shakes her head. "Don't know anything, any more. Last week, I hated everything, but I thought I understood it. Now the only thing I understand is that I don't understand anything." A momentary hesitation. Jodi feels the tension gathering, knows that something difficult is coming. "You know, we could just … leave it."

"No, we can't," replies Jodi, unsurprised. "Or I can't, anyway. I know what you mean, Tacoma – God, I know – but I can't."

"Is it really worth―?"

"Are you worth this, you mean. And yes. You are."

Tacoma's disc slumps at an angle, its edge splashing on Nikki's forearms.

"I wish," she begins, then changes her mind. "'M sorry. Never meant for any of this to happen."

"It's okay," says Jodi. "I don't think anyone ever does."

"No," says Tacoma, staring into the carpet. "I guess they don't."

In the small hours of the morning, Jodi wakes from one of her ominous ESP dreams to see Tacoma out of her rock, face scrunched up in concentration. Even half-awake, some instinct tells her to lie still and pretend to sleep, and as she lies there she sees out of the corner of her eye the faint misty outline of a hand form at Tacoma's side for just one brief second before it vanishes again and Tacoma lets out a thin, choked cry.

Something about this failure is inviolably private. Jodi closes her eyes again, and tries to fall asleep to the sound of Tacoma's frustrated tears.

Daylight helps. It always does. When Jodi opens her eyes to the watery December sun, she feels all those midnight anxieties start to ease. Tacoma doesn't know what to do, would probably put off the decision forever – well, that just means it's up to Jodi now. Okay, so there's an argument for not confronting a possible murderer, but honestly, and with all due respect to the parties involved – screw it. Tacoma really, really needs help. And so they have to get her home, and so they have to end this, and so Jodi is going to have herself a talk with Mr Phoenix Wroth.

It should be okay. Her head feels clearer today; she should be able to gauge how dangerous the situation is, and she isn't planning on asking him outright about the murder, anyway. The way she pitches the idea to Tacoma is that she'll just ask him about the cabin and see where that gets her.

"I dunno," says Tacoma, for whom the morning does not seem to have brought the same sense of release. "S'pose I trust you to make the right choice."

It's not a blessing, but it's not a refusal, either. And while Tacoma's disengagement is something to be worried about, the only way Jodi can think of to help right now is to figure out what's really going on with Nick.

Besides, Jodi is so sick and tired of not knowing. Of walking around town scared that everyone she meets might be a wolf in sheep's clothing. It's time to change that and get some bloody certainty – both for herself and for Tacoma. And what's Nick going to do, kill her? Good luck with that. Literally everyone in town is watching her, constantly. Even if he does get her alone, she has Lothian and Nikole, and Tacoma seems to be getting the hang of her spiritomb powers. Nobody's catching her out the way they did Tacoma.

It's not the best argument she's ever made in her life. But sometimes a girl is just plain tired.

"Okay," she says. "Then my choice is, let's go do this. Do you want to come?"

Everything about Tacoma's mind says no.

"Yeah," she answers. "Guess I will."

Jodi is about to raise her eyebrows, but doesn't; that feels like it would be condescending.

"You're doing this to make yourself feel bad, aren't you?" she asks.

"… so?"

"Look," says Jodi, changing tack. "I can't take Nikki with me if I go there, right? So it only makes sense for you to stay here with her. She'll just cause trouble on her own."

A moment passes. Lothian squeaks dismally, anxious about the tension; downstairs, Ella calls out indistinctly, gets some kind of answer from her mother.

"Yeah," says Tacoma. "You're probably right."

Jodi breathes out. She wasn't even aware she was holding her breath, but apparently she was.

"Okay," she says. "Cool. I'm … gonna go, then."

"Now?" asks Tacoma.

"No time like the present," she replies. "We need to get this done, Tacoma. Soon."

And Tacoma doesn't have an answer to that.

Ten minutes later, Jodi has offered her excuses to her parents and is making her way across town towards the Spearing house. Her head might feel better today, but the rest of her body still hasn't forgiven her for jumping to catch Tacoma as she fell into the river, and she has to take it slow and steady, her every movement adding another ache to the list. But she knew this was coming, factored it into her travel time and everything, and though it takes her close to forty-five minutes to even make it to the other side of Three Pines she refuses to get impatient with herself. There are plenty of other people who'll do that for her without her joining in.

Coming out of the path between the trees and the banks of snow smothering the playground, she sees Ella and a few other girls her age heading towards the town centre, laughing at something. Jodi is about to pull back and stay out of her way – the last thing she wants to do is embarrass her sister in front of her friends – but she's too slow, and before she can duck back behind the trees the whole group sees her.

The laughter stops. Curious minds descend upon her like crows on roadkill.

Jodi tries to smile and raises a hand in a weak kind of wave; Ella waves back without quite meeting her eye. She's too far away for Jodi to get a read on her mind, but she doesn't have to. Her shame is etched into her face as if with a pen of acid.

The girls move on, eyes lingering; Ella keeps her head down and hurries on with them. Jodi watches them go, and as Lothian swoops down to join her she puts her hand out to rest on his fuzzy head.

It hurts. There, she admitted it. It hurts to have her sister treat her like this. She forgives her, of course – Ella is thirteen and therefore completely at the mercy of her peers' judgement – but it hurts all the same. Especially after the conversations they've had over the last couple of days.

She's hanging out with that girl from the library, too – the one who was working with Crystal Aston. Hard to miss her, really; she was staring just now the same way she was the last time they met.

"She's probably a really nice person," Jodi tells herself. But she still waits a couple of minutes to let the girls get ahead before she starts walking again.

A long quarter of an hour later, she's once again turning the corner onto Long Avenue, where she takes a moment to brush the snow off the Fays' garden wall and rest there. The town centre is busy today; as well as Ella's friends, she had to make it past what felt like half the town. (Outside the store: Leanne Wright, a hard look, a stage whisper to Carrie Savage – look at him!) Add the long walk on top of that, and she's worn out before she's even knocked on the door.

Lothian climbs up beside her, sweeping half the wall clean in a single movement. In these moments he looks more dragon than bat, tail dangling and foreclaws gripping the masonry between his legs. For once in his life, he has nothing to say, no humming or squeaking, and nor does Jodi; she simply sits there with him, listening to his breath and watching Ray Burton trying to back his car out of his half-shovelled driveway further down the street.

There are eyes behind the darkened glass of the windows. Hell, even Nick's probably seen her by now. She's probably just making this harder by hanging around beforehand.

She hangs around some more, trying to dull the ache in her legs, and then at last she gets up and knocks on the door.

"Jodi," says Jessica, looking nervous. "You're back."

Even prepared for it, Jodi struggles with the sudden rush of grief; it's not as bad as Wednesday, or even on Tuesday, but it's still there. But she's done this twice before now, and after the first shock of it, she manages to push it to the back of her mind.

"Yep," she says. "I am."

"Is there a problem with Nikole?"

"Nope." Jodi takes a deep breath. It's fine. She can handle this, she can. "I … actually need to speak with Nick."

"Oh." Jessica scowls slightly, her confusion touching Jodi's mind in light, tingly waves. "Is something wrong?"

"I hope not." Jodi smiles her best smile, pushing at Jessica's suspicion with a beam of positivity. "Just have a couple of questions."

"Okay." She looks at her for moment longer, perhaps aware of Jodi's psionics and perhaps not, and then stands aside. "Well, uh, come on in."

"Thanks."

The door closes on the street behind them, and the warmth at last begins to seep back into Jodi's bones after the long walk through the snow. Jodi takes off her hat and gloves, stuffs them in her pockets and loosens her scarf.

"You want some coffee?" asks Jessica, but Jodi shakes her head.

"No, I'm not staying."

"Right. I'll … go and get him."

"Thanks."

With one last curious glance at her, Jessica goes into the living-room. Jodi sighs and glances at Lothian.

"Well, that wasn't as awkward as I thought," she says, to cover her anxiety. Lothian squeaks and bumps his head against her hand. "Yeah," she says, in response to the question buzzing in her bones. "Pretty much."

It's awkward, being back here. She can almost see the wake superimposed on it all: Con and Mayor Winshaw sweeping around in a municipal kind of way; Dr Ishihara's froslass calmly filling a plate for her in the kitchen. It's bad.

The door opens and Nick comes out. He looks a little better now, although it is only a little. Had a shave and a shower at some point, anyway. His magneton follows, making a series of strange pinging sounds that make Lothian whine and fold his ears flat along his skull.

"Hello," says Nick, looking at Jodi the way you might look at a tall man with a knife who's just asked for your purse. "I heard you, um, wanted to speak to me?"

Okay. Moment of truth. Don't let him prepare: just go for it.

"When did you get back from Alola?" asks Jodi, and right away she knows. It takes a lot of training to hide your mind from a psychic, and a lot of willpower, too. Nick doesn't seem to have either right now; his panic is an open book. To his credit, though, he doesn't break: he just stands there, nods slowly as if he's considering the question.

"That's a strange thing to ask me," he says. His voice gives nothing away. He's good; this might actually work, on anyone except Jodi.

"Yeah, well, I went for a walk in the woods," she tells him. "Do you own that cabin or do you rent it?"

It's a little more aggressive than she meant to be. Nick stares at her for a long time, his mind seething like an unattended stewpot, and then he gestures at the kitchen.

"I don't think we should have this conversation in the hall," he says.

Jodi nods, waits for him to move first, and then follows him into the kitchen. It's longer and thinner than their one at home, without room for a table, but there's a little conservatory at the back that Lucas built years ago when Jodi and Tacoma were kids, and in there are a table and chairs, along with a pile of junk that doesn't fit anywhere else. Nick shifts an old dartboard off one chair and takes a seat without offering one to Jodi; she closes the door behind her and sits down across from him, Lothian crouched at her side.

It's cold in here. Jodi's glad of her coat. But Nick doesn't seem to notice.

"Okay," he says, and now he does seem nervous, now he looks at her like he's afraid of what her mutant brain will see. "Okay, I was afraid of this."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He hesitates, lips twitching slightly as if unable to select the right word to begin with, and then his words all come out at once: "I didn't do it. I can't tell you what I was doing, but I didn't do it."

Jodi can feel his guilt mirrored in her mind, a deep, wrenching shame that tears nauseatingly at her stomach. My fault, she thinks, and then shoves the thought away: no, not hers. This is Nick's problem.

"How am I supposed to believe you?" she asks, fighting the sickness his mind is breeding in her belly. "You didn't tell the truth about going to Alola."

Nick's magneton drifts closer to his head, its three eyes locked on Jodi even as the cores spin faster and faster around one another. It seems to have collected some of the junk piled up against the wall; there's an old screwdriver stuck to one core, a bag of nails and a tailless dart on another.

"You're psychic, aren't you?" he says. "So … you know, right?"

Mostly, yes. But in this house, where the air is so thick with grief it's hard to breathe? Sitting across from this man, whose guilt is burning a hole in her guts? That's dicey. Jodi has never really practised using her psionics in difficult situations; it's hard to replicate stuff like this in the psy labs at uni. With this much interference, all she can be sure of is that Nick feels very, very strongly about this.

"I'm trying," she tells him. "But there's a lot of grief in this place. Hard to be sure."

"You have to believe me, though," he says, leaning forward on the table. "You have to―"

"I don't have to do anything." Focus, Jodi tells herself. It's not hard. (It is hard.) It's not hard. You just need to concentrate, get him on your side. "Look, Nick, I'm not accusing you. You wouldn't kill your niece, right?"

"No," he answers, without even a second's hesitation. "No, I wouldn't."

"Then what's up with the cabin in the woods?"

He hesitates. Lothian pricks up his ears, detecting something that Jodi can't quite reach beneath the guilt.

"You got this from Nikole, didn't you?" he asks. "Goddamn. Should've guessed. Everyone was saying Con got you to help out. And then you came here offering to take her off our hands …"

"I meant that sincerely. But, um, yeah. That didn't hurt."

Nick sighs, unclenches his fists with the deliberate steadiness of a man trying to calm himself down.

"You know you shouldn't―"

"No," Jodi interrupts. "I shouldn't. But here I am."

This time the silence is too long for hesitation; this is an appraisal, a judgement. Nick studies her face for several seconds, then meets her eye and immediately has to look away again, unable to hold it.

"Jesus," he says, in the end. "I see why she liked you." Jodi waits for more, and after a moment he tells her: "Look, uh, Jodi. I didn't do it. I mean that. But … it is my fault."

Jodi folds her arms, leans back in her chair. It was a hell of a gamble she just took, but it looks like they're finally starting to get somewhere.

"All right," she says. "So why don't you tell me all about it."

Chapter Text

NICK

It's been so long, and Nick has been so careful. He's spent years in planning, in careful research and strategising; he's gathered advice and resources from as far afield as Akala University's Dimensional Research Lab and as close to home as the Yellowbrick Department of Ghost Studies. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that he's made this his life's work.

And yet, after all that, after ten exhausting years, it only took one night for everything to go to hell.

He thinks of it now, as he sits across from Jodi Ortega in the freezing conservatory of his sister's house. He was all set to stage his return from Alola: took the back roads east from the cabin and around the fringes of town, looped back on himself and drove in from the south, taking care to be spotted by Sam Spade out at the petrol station on the way. He even had the stub of his plane ticket from his real trip there a few months ago, carefully worn with a little folding and scraping to obscure the date.

And in his jacket pocket, the machine. His little contribution to history, safely wrapped up in waxed paper. Ready to put an end to things.

But none of that mattered, did it? Because that night, Tacoma died. And when he arose from his feigned jetlag the day afterwards, long after the cops had been and gone, Nick found a letter waiting for him in the kitchen.

Nick, my errant friend, I hope Alola has treated you well! As if sun and science weren't enough, I have an early Christmas present for you. No one will miss it over the holidays, so I've made the executive decision to lend you that spiritomb keystone I was talking about. If your theory about it being linked to a pocket dimension is correct, and you do succeed in working out how someone managed to seal that dimension shut, then let us know – although I must warn you, we've been poking the damn thing for thirty years(!), and to have our mystery solved by a member of another faculty would earn you a fair few enemies among the phantasmologists! I don't dare trust such a relic to the baroque incompetence of the Johtonian Postal Service, so I'll be sending it along with that bright niece of yours, Tacoma. I'll bet you our next round of drinks she's already opened it by the time this letter reaches you …

He didn't have to read more. He already knew. Tacoma came home with a rock that would have helped his project, and then before she made it halfway to her front door she was killed and her luggage vanished into the night. Dead at nineteen. Over some godforsaken rock that Nick didn't even need any more.

The way Nick sees it, he might as well have had Turing blast her in the back of the head himself.

Jodi's eyes bore straight through his skull and into his brain, making his guilty conscience writhe like a nest of snakes – and with a certain detached horror Nick hears the words slipping straight out of his mouth:

"I didn't do it. I mean that. But … it is my fault."

Fantastic. Didn't even last five seconds before she got him to confess. And she didn't use any psychic powers either, just sat there and judged him.

You're a goddamn mess, Nick tells himself.

Yes, he replies. You might have noticed, my niece died.

Turing drifts closer, cores twisting slowly through the air. Most people don't know it, but buried deep in those three silicon brains is something like emotion, if not the kind that humans are familiar with, and Turing knows when his partner is distressed, even if his idea of helping is to emit radio waves that Nick has no way of receiving.

Hell. Maybe there was never any chance he could resist. It's strange enough to be confronted with Jodi, with this attractive young woman who apparently used to be Tacoma's friend Alex Ortega. Nick always used to tease Tacoma about that, called him her boyfriend to fulfil his obligation as her uncle to embarrass her, but though he can't help but look for traces of Alex in Jodi's face he hasn't found a single one. For some reason, this is unsettling as hell.

"All right," says Jodi, her gaze unwavering. "So why don't you tell me all about it."

She folds her arms and leans back in her chair, cool as anything. Nick has a vague idea that psychics have to be calm, for their own safety and that of everyone around them, but that doesn't make her composure any less unnerving. Who walks up to a murder suspect and confronts them like that? Admittedly, almost everyone in town is watching Jodi at all times, so she'd be a hard target for a killer to isolate and pick off, but still: she's either very stupid or very brave.

Going by the look in her eyes, Nick's putting his money on brave.

"Uh, well." He clears his throat. How is he going to explain this one? Preferably without launching Jodi on a suicidal murder investigation. One dead girl is already too many – and besides, there's no point. Nick is going to end this himself. He just needs a little more time. "If you went to the cabin, you know I was working on something. Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Right. So … a colleague sent me something." Got to pick his words carefully here. Tell her nothing she couldn't have guessed from what she found in the cabin. "It was meant to help with my project."

"The one you lied to everyone about," clarifies Jodi, raising her eyebrows.

"Yeah. That." Her noivern is glaring at him, too. Eyes as sharp and bright as broken glass. These two don't pull their punches, do they? "So, uh, someone must have been reading my mail, because they knew it was coming. The package, I mean. And they knew Tacoma was carrying it. So …"

"So this person wanted your work stopped badly enough to intervene," finishes Jodi, her mask cracking. "God. I'm―"

She cuts herself off with a brusque shake of her head.

"You know I'm sorry," she says bitterly. "That's why I'm here."

Every time he talks to someone new, it hits him. You get someone killed, they don't go gentle. It's like uprooting a tree: you think you've got it under control, and then as the roots tear loose from the ground they rip up half the street with them. And the next thing you know, you're standing up there at the funeral and you are so overcome by how many pained faces you are looking at that you cannot even breathe.

"I'm sorry too," he tells her. They aren't the right words, but they are the only ones there are.

Neither of them speak for a while. Turing's eyes are all on the noivern, though it isn't returning the favour; either it hasn't realised he's alive yet, or it's just very dedicated to making Nick feel uncomfortable.

Good. Nick got his niece murdered. If he is ever comfortable again, there is no goddamn justice in the world.

"You really didn't kill her," says Jodi.

"No," agrees Nick. He thinks he should be relieved that she's said this, but he can't seem to feel anything at all right now. "I didn't."

Jodi unfolds her arms and leans forward on her elbows. She looks tired, he realises. Far too tired for a kid her age. That might be a psychic thing too, or maybe she just misses her friend.

"Why didn't they just rob her?" she asks.

Nick shrugs. He's been asking himself this same question all week. Do they really hate him that much? So much that they'd snuff out one of Mahogany's brightest young sparks? Surely not. Except as he always says to his students, beginning anything with 'surely' is a hack answer, because it means that the argument is already over in your head, and that's the worst possible starting point for any kind of discussion.

"I don't know," he answers. "I wish I did."

"Do you know who they are?"

He hesitates too long. Jodi sighs and straightens up again.

"Nick," she begins, but he interrupts:

"No, I – it's not like that. I don't know who killed her. I just―"

"Think it was down to the chapter house group?"

By the time Nick has picked his jaw up off the table, it's far too late to try and hide his shock.

"You, uh … you know about that?"

Her face gives nothing away.

"Just tell me, Nick."

God damn it. Nick can't exactly judge – it was being young and full of righteous fury that set him on this path in the first place; that kids are still angry about injustice is a good thing, in his book. But it's not hypocrisy to keep Jodi out of it, not at this point. Nick is ready. He has his machine, and his plan, and now he has a dead niece to fight for, too. There's just one more piece to fit into the puzzle, and then there will be nothing left for the bastards skulking around in the chapter house to protect.

"No," he says. Then again, more assertively: "No."

"I'm getting sick of people saying that," says Jodi. "What's your excuse? It's too dangerous for me?"

Oh, she's good. She knows exactly how to needle him, just as you'd expect from a psychic. But Nick's made up his mind; she's not getting another word out of him.

"If you like," he says. "Look, I think we both know I've already said more than I meant to."

"Do you know where it is?"

Relentless, that's the word. Like Tacoma is. Was.

Was.

"Where what is?" he asks, trying not to think about it.

"The chapter house."

"If I did―"

"You wouldn't tell me, right."

"No," he says. "If I did, I wouldn't even be here."

Jodi stares, taken aback. The noivern tenses, its huge round ears moving in ways that Nick cannot interpret but which make Turing buzz with mechanical unease.

"What d'you mean by that?"

"Sorry," says Nick, and really means it: who wouldn't be? Jodi has a right to know. Tacoma was her best friend, after all. And everyone deserves to know what monsters are hiding in their hometown. It's just a question of timing. He's put in too many years and too much effort to risk anyone interfering at the last moment. "I can't tell you."

"Yes, you can," insists Jodi. "You know I could go to the police―"

"But you won't."

"I might."

He shakes his head. She's smart (like Tacoma, says the voice in his head that will not let his dead niece lie), but her inexperience is starting to show.

"You won't," he repeats. "Because you know I didn't do it. And more than that," he adds, seeing her open her mouth to argue, "you're not stupid enough to think the cops are on your side."

It's a bit of a gamble, but the look on her face tells him it's paid off.

"I'm sure you figured that out when they came to ask you for help with Nikole," he says. "Don't think you even need your ESP for that one."

"No," says Jodi, in a soft voice that makes Nick feel bad for saying it. "No, I didn't."

She make no move to leave, though Nick feels this has to be the end. Her noivern puts its head in her lap, and her hand wanders down into the thick ruff of fur around its neck.

"You know I can't leave this," she says, after a moment.

"Yeah," he says. "I think so."

Turing is very close now, close enough for Nick to hear the humming of his electric nerves. Magneton don't understand why humans like physical contact, but Turing has always tried to oblige anyway.

Nick sighs. Jodi isn't giving up, is she? And if he can't stop her, he might as well try to direct her, at the very least.

"Look," he says. "How about we make a deal?"

She scowls.

"What kind?"

"Give me a week," he says. "One week, and then I'll tell you everything."

The scowl deepens.

"What are you planning to do in that one week?"

"Tell you afterwards."

"God, Nick," she says, a trace of irritation showing beneath that empath calm. "A week, huh?"

"Saturday next," he agrees. "Hell, you're an adult now, I'll buy you a drink. Raise a glass to Tacoma and spill all there is to spill."

Jodi chews her lip for a while, sullen. Something about that gesture seems familiar, and then Nick remembers that he saw her do that years and years ago, back when she was Alex. There's one fragment of her past self, at least.

"Okay," she mutters. "Deal."

She holds out her hand across the table, and Nick shakes it, relieved.

"Glad to hear it," he says. "I promise you, Jodi, you're doing the right thing."

"Yeah, whatever," she says, grabbing her cane and levering herself up. "Just make sure you hold up your end of the bargain."

She doesn't trust him that much, then.

He'd be lying if he said that didn't sting, but at least he can take some comfort in the fact Tacoma knew how to pick her friends.

Pretty much as soon as Jodi has left, Nick starts making preparations. He's lost a lot of time this week. Hard to get up in the mornings. Hard to come back home at night, too. He's spent a lot of time and money in the Briar Rose since Tacoma's passing, though unfortunately that Gabriella girl was only there one other evening.

But things crystallised, after the funeral. It might have been seeing Tacoma go up in smoke, it might have been that stupid spat with Con – but something lit the fire again, gave him the kick up the backside he needed. He has the machine. It's time to make a stand.

Besides. If Jodi could find his cabin, the cops can too – and that means that sooner or later people are going to turn up asking questions about why he lied about being in Alola. Questions that Nick isn't sure he can safely answer.

So: there are certain precautions that need to be undertaken. It's fine; Nick is a past master at this kind of petty dissimulation. He goes out to the garage where his car is parked, times four minutes on his watch, then comes back complaining that it won't start.

"Take ours," says Annie, without looking up. She doesn't ask where he's going. Nobody asks many questions in this house any more.

"Thanks," says Nick, and leaves without bothering to see what's wrong. He's almost certain he already knows what the matter is, and there's nothing he or anybody else can do about it.

He takes the old car north on Bent Street, heading for the road gouged into the forest up to the Lake of Rage. The streets are clear right up to the mill – these roads are important; that lumber doesn't ship itself – but after that he has to slow down. Last thing he needs is to miss a patch of ice and smash Lucas' car into a tree. Nick isn't sure that Lucas is fully aware of how expensive Tacoma's funeral was just yet, but it didn't come cheap, and a busted car wouldn't help at all.

Slowing down makes the temptation to look through the mill gates almost irresistible. Time has been, the place would be buzzing with activity, trucks coming and going like ants swarming over their nest, but now three of them are just sitting there under oilcloth, mute testament to the bite of the recession.

Another year like this and we might not have a mill, Lucas told him in an unguarded moment. It mattered then, before Tacoma died; everything did. The whole reason Nick is doing this is to save his hometown, after all. Now, looking at the shrouded trucks outside the drying shed, Nick finds himself starting to care again.

It's not just vengeance. That's part of it now; they killed his niece, and a man can't forgive that kind of transgression. But there's some vestige of a noble cause there, too. Nick can't bring the money back, but he can make it so people don't have to be afraid of disappearing.

He finds it a comfort to think of this, if for no other reason than it takes his mind off Tacoma. Nick thinks about it for as long as he can, and only when the trees have closed in on either side and crowded out the weak winter light does the righteousness fade back into the cold void of loss.

Sometimes Nick wonders if he really was the only one who could see it, if Annie and Lucas really did just take her smiles at face value. Everett's ignorance he can buy; he and Tacoma have that space between them that Nick and Annie have and must constantly work to push past. It's not easy, being the one who goes away to university to fulfil your parents' dreams that their kids will be better than they were. Nick knows this firsthand, and he's always tried to make it easier for Tacoma, ever since it first became clear that she was coming top of her class without actually bothering to do any work. But still, she was unhappy, and nobody asked her about it. And now she's dead.

The thought has circled around so many times that by this point Nick has stopped trying to shake it off. He lets it ride with him in the car, breathing it in and out like poison spores, and drives on towards the cabin.

He gets out in the car park where the hiking trail starts – carving a trail through the snow on the road up to the cabin strikes him as a bad idea – and makes the last leg of journey on foot. It's further than he remembered, and the creaking of the branches is frankly alarming.

"Watch your step, city boy," he mocks himself, a fragment of his small-town childhood rising within him to stick its tongue out at his academic present, and as if this was some kind of omen he slips on a patch of ice and almost falls. "I'm okay!" he calls, as one of Turing's cores dives down to peer anxiously into his face. "'M fine."

Jesus. How did Jodi make it out here? Nick wouldn't have said that the noivern was big enough to carry a human, but then, there's nothing of her; maybe it could have managed. Either that or she walked, and that would make her intimidatingly tough. He's not even sure what the deal is with her leg, now he comes to think of it. She broke it on her trainer journey, he thinks – he remembers Tacoma coming home with her – but it must have been a hell of a bad break to leave her using a cane seven years later.

Not relevant, he reminds himself. Just clear out the cabin and get back to town, before anyone sees you out here.

The cabin itself looks untouched, but then, Jodi wouldn't have had to force entry; when Nick rented it, the owner didn't give him any keys. No lock, he said. Nobody out here to keep out. Turns out he was wrong about that.

Okay. Now he's just standing here putting off going inside. He shoves the door open harder than he intended, annoyed at his hesitation, and sees – well, nothing, honestly. It's all just as it was. Notes, books, the remnants of the machines he disassembled to build his device. Stuff he thought would be safe here, where no one would look.

"Turing?" he says, scrunching his notes together into one big mound. "Over there."

Turing buzzes, his prime core – in theory all three of his constituent magnemite are equal, but after all these years Nick has come to recognise that one tends to take the lead – diving to hover near the fireplace. The other two look at each other, bump surfaces in some inscrutable gesture, and follow.

"Here," says Nick, stuffing the wads of paper into the hearth. "Thunderbolt that, would you?" A sharp crack, a blinding flash, and as the smell of ozone fills the room the paper starts to smoulder. "Good."

He leaves the fire to take hold and starts gathering up the books and bits of metal, putting the former in his bag and tossing the latter at Turing, to whom they stick with a series of metallic clinks. Ten minutes later, he's out again, leaving behind a fireplace full of warm ash and a riverbed strewn with metal debris. The environmentalist in him isn't thrilled, but the wannabe vigilante in him is satisfied he's covered his tracks as best he can.

Won't hold them off long; this town being as small as it is, Nick couldn't really hope to go unrecognised and rent this place under an assumed name. Once the cops think to look, they'll know he was out here, and then so will everyone else. But at least nobody will know why.

He glances at Turing, cores turned outward to watch the forest for any approaching threats.

"Cautious as ever, eh," he says, flicking one of Turing's cores. It doesn't make the ping noise with his gloves on, but Turing doesn't hear high sounds anyway, and he knows what Nick means from the feel of finger on steel. "Look at the pair of us. Jumping at shadows."

Turing buzzes.

"Yep," agrees Nick. "Come on. I have an idea about where we should start." He feels in his pocket for the machine, still there, still safe in its cloth wrapping. "Annie's been kind enough to lend us the car," he says, closing his fingers around it. "Least we can do is fill it up."

The petrol station looks cleaner than he remembers. Who ran it back when Nick still lived in Mahogany? Earl Blackman, that was it. He wonders how Sam came by it – hell, he wonders what happened to Earl; it's only now that Nick realises he hasn't seen him in years. Maybe he's dead too, he thinks sourly. Or no, maybe not. Maybe just … retired.

Right. Like anyone retires these days.

Back in Earl's day, this place was a mess, in the best possible way; the garage at the side used to spill out parts and oil and music into the forecourt, and nobody stopped by without speaking to Earl himself, who would perpetually be just in the process of unbending himself from the guts of a broken car, wiping his hands on an oily rag. Now the place is clean and quiet, the garage door closed and the only sign of life a solitary wingull on the station roof.

It screams at him as he pulls in, keeping its head tilted to one side. Missing an eye, Nick notices. He's never seen a bird with a missing eye before. How does that even happen?

"Long way from home, huh," he tells it, getting out and holding the door for Turing. "Nothing for you here, sailor."

The wingull screams again and stalks off along the weathered red plastic of the roof. Nick shakes his head and applies himself to the pump. Dumb bird. God only knows how it ended up here in midwinter.

He fills the tank – just halfway; his florins go a long way in Johto, but even so, the price of petrol is nothing to joke about – and heads into the little shop to pay. As he opens the door, the wingull dives past him, wing ruffling Nick's hair and making Turing grind in agitation, and makes a break for the counter.

"What the hell―?"

"I see you've met my assistant," says a familiar voice, and Nick tears his eyes away from the bird to see that Gabriella girl from the bar, looking incongruously beautiful between the wingull and the cigarette display. "Sorry, Nick, Jack was at the end of the queue when they were handing out manners."

Nick blinks. There are several questions waiting in his mouth right now and none of them seem to be coming out.

"Oh," he says, in the end. "You … work here?

"Got to earn my keep somehow."

"And you have a wingull?"

"Yes, I get that a lot," she says drily. "What can I say, I have a soft spot for vermin."

Jack gives Nick an evil look and hops up onto Gabriella's shoulder. He looks far too big – and mean – to be there, but she doesn't seem to mind.

"Anyway," she says. "Petrol, right?"

"Right."

It's extortionate, honestly, but he can't complain; the fault lies with OPEC, or perhaps more accurately the goddamn mess that was the '73 war, not Gabriella. He asks how business is these days, and gets a shrug in response.

"We get by," she says, in that carefully neutral way that Johtonians have come to say it in recent years.

"Yeah," he says. "I, uh, get it."

She smiles the sort of smile that tells him he probably shouldn't be telling people much poorer than himself that he gets it in the same breath as flaunting his shiny Kantan florins. Damn it. Miles is always warning him about that kind of thing; the problem with left-wing academics like us, he says, is that we're still assholes to the people we say we're championing. Let's not be That Guy, huh?

Miles. Nick hasn't actually called him since he arrived here. He wanted to – still does – but hasn't. Nick has always made a point of keeping his Saffron and Mahogany lives separate, even after Tacoma followed him to Yellowbrick. He calls this self-preservation, though after meeting Jodi, he suspects that it might just be cowardice.

"Here's your change," says Gabriella, diplomatically not responding to what he actually said. "Anything else?"

Okay. Moment of truth.

"Yeah," he says, as casually as he can. "Your cousin around?"

Gabriella raises her eyebrows.

"Car problems?" she asks.

He considers lying, but doesn't see what good it will do; if she and Sam talk at all – and they've lived together for ten years, so he imagines they must do – then she'll find out what he was really after soon enough.

"Not so much," he says. "Need to talk to her about an old friend of hers."

Gabriella's face freezes, just for a second, and then her smile drains away as if a plug has been yanked out of the back of her head. Nick is startled to see how much of her charm is an act; she is beautiful still, but in an unapproachable kind of way. Now he can finally see the similarities between her and her partner. The last time anyone looked at him like that, he was ten seconds away from being mugged.

"Mae," she says. It's not a question. Nick answers it anyway.

"Yes," he says.

She scowls. Something about the way she does it reminds him of Jodi, frowning at him across the table in Lucas' freezing conservatory.

"We don't think they had anything to do with Tacoma," she says.

So she does know. This could be awkward; he was kind of hoping to do this alone. This is his quest, after all, his cross to bear. Best to keep everyone else out of it. When old Mick Field asked Nick politely if he was planning on staying in Saffron all those years ago, the subtext was clear: come back, keep interfering, and we will have to act. He's willing to bet Sam got a similar ultimatum. And yes, both of them did come back, eventually – Nick has always come home for Christmas, and apparently Sam got tired of wandering Johto in the end – but Nick's been sure to keep himself well away from chapter house business, and Sam's probably the same. If the group find out he's after them again – well, they'll act, just like Mick promised. And Nick is not going to drag anyone else into that with him, least of all other people who had the decency to stand up to injustice.

"I still need to speak to Sam," he says, maintaining the casual tone of voice. "There are some things I want to know."

Gabriella studies his face for a long time. Her eyes are every bit as sharp as that of the wingull on her shoulder. Like she can see straight through him to the morass of inadvisable ideas within.

"You might as well tell me," she says. "If you don't, I'll just ask Sam once you've gone. And I think you're more than sharp enough to know that she won't lie to me."

On her shoulder, Jack glares and snaps his heavy beak. Nick isn't sure what it's like to be bitten by a wingull, but he's absolutely certain he doesn't want to find out.

"The chapter house," he says, reluctantly. "I need to know where the entrance is."

He's expecting a fairly dramatic reaction, but Gabriella just raises her eyebrows.

"And you think either of us know?" she asks, cool as anything.

"You live here," he says. "And you know about it. Who else am I going to ask?"

It's not like they would be the first to figure it out, after all. Nick got in once, back when he first started investigating this. That's how he knows what he knows; he followed that hooded figure from Mae's trailer, saw the door in that crypt behind the church, and came back late that night to break in and see what the chapter house group were protecting with his own eyes. He ran from it then, of course – no shame in admitting it; the man who could have stood his ground in the face of that would be a hero straight out of a comic book or an old myth – and when he got up the courage to return, the door refused to open even to his crowbar. A couple of days later, workmen arrived to conduct 'repairs', shrouding the crypt in plastic sheeting, and when they left there was no door there at all.

There have to be other entrances. More people have gone missing since then, and as far as Nick knows someone at the post office is still reading his mail: the group is definitely still active. And since its members themselves aren't going to volunteer the information, Sam is the only lead Nick has.

Gabriella sighs.

"Try to understand where I'm coming from here," she says. "My friend Annie, she recently lost her daughter." (And I lost my niece, screams a dark, bitter voice within Nick, but it is buried too deep inside him for the sound of it to escape his ribs.) "And now her brother comes in here asking how to do something suicidally misguided, and I have to ask myself, Gabbi, are you really going to be the reason Annie loses a brother as well?"

Nick sees her point. He really does. These people are killers, and they have made it very clear that people who persist in interfering with their business will have to leave town, either on a train or in a coffin.

But that's exactly why he has to do it. This has got to end. God only knows how long it's been going on – the chapter house is centuries old, and its secret burden could well have been there all that time – but it's nineteen seventy-fucking-six and this kind of thing has no place in the world any more.

He looks Gabriella dead in the eye.

"Yeah," he says. "Annie lost her daughter. And someone's got to answer for it."

"We don't think it was them," repeats Gabriella, but she doesn't sound as certain now. "They don't go for Mahogany kids."

"Unless they have a reason," he says. "Is Sam in or not?"

Gabriella takes a deep breath. It's the kind of breath that seems to signal some kind of action, but for some time afterwards she just stands there, looking at him. Nick looks back, glad that Turing is here to stay with him while he does it, and then after what feels like a generous slice of eternity Gabriella sighs again and flips up the end of the counter to join Nick on the other side.

"I am not encouraging this," she says sharply. "And I don't think you're going to get what you want, either. But okay, Nick. Let's go talk to Sam."

He breathes out. Christ. And he thought Jodi was tough.

"Thank you," he says. "I appreciate it."

"Oh, I'm sure." She prods Jack with the kind of confidence that looks like it loses fingers. "You stay here and shout if anyone comes in, okay?"

He squawks and jumps from her shoulder to the counter, strutting back and forth like a cockerel surveying his yard. Gabriella runs her fingers absently over his head and motions for Nick to follow; with one slightly nervous look at Jack – he wouldn't put it past him to attack even with a magneton there in the room – he does, across the snowy forecourt and through a door around the side of the garage. In here, at the centre of a tangle of tools and pieces of metal that probably mean something to people more practically minded than Nick, Sam Spade is doing something to the underside of a car.

Her clefairy is standing nearby, holding a screwdriver between its stubby paws. When Nick and Gabriella enter, it mews and pokes its partner with it.

"Oi," she grumbles, sliding out from underneath the car. "What was that― oh. Uh. Hi."

She gets up, sweeping her hair back across her forehead with one greasy hand. Nick has seen her before, of course, but it's always hard not to stare. She's not the only butch he's ever met, but she's one of very few, and definitely the only one outside of Saffron. Why she came back is beyond him. He would have thought she'd have settled down in the Kantan or Johtonian capitals, where she might actually find kindred spirits, but no. Out here in the sticks it is.

"Miss Spade," says Gabriella. "Nick Wroth's here to see you."

"Yeah, I noticed." Sam spreads her hands in a here I am sort of way. "So. Nick?"

Ready? Ready. He's said it once, he can say it again. The time for nerves is past: they killed Tacoma, after all.

"I want to get into the chapter house."

At least Sam reacts. Gabriella might be able to take this without batting an eyelid, but Sam starts and clenches her fist around the wrench in her hand.

"Didn't have you pegged for a fool," she says. "Look. It weren't them who got Tacoma―"

"You don't know that," he tells her. "And even if they didn't, is that any reason to let them keep getting away with it?"

Sam's brows knit together, and she tugs thoughtfully at the edge of her lip.

"Hmph," she says. "So what, you have a plan?"

"Yes."

"And it is?"

"A good one."

Sam snorts. Her clefairy jumps up onto the bonnet of the car in what looks like slow motion, beady eyes locked distrustfully on Nick's face.

"You ain't givin' me much here, are you?"

"You don't want to be involved," says Nick. "Look, Sam, I got run out of town too, right? I know what they do to people who trouble. When you came back, you must've known you could only stay here if you kept your head down. Same as me."

He has her attention now, he can sense it; she didn't know about this, did she? Stands to reason. No one did. Even after he got into that fight with Con about his apparent inability to bring a single member of the group in.

"You have a life here," he says, pressing the advantage. "I can get in, do this and leave. All I need to know is where to go. Do you see what I mean?"

Her arm swings to and fro, the wrench moving back and forth with a hint of suppressed violence. Nick doesn't think she knows she's doing it, but he can't help but watch it and worry. It's been a long time since his wrestling days, and he has softened considerably over the last ten years; Sam, on the other hand, looks like she could quite comfortably split his head open with that thing.

"Yeah," she mutters. The clefairy lays the screwdriver down carefully on the car bonnet and shifts on its feet, motes of light gathering around its little fists. What a pair they make. "Guess I do."

Silence. Gabriella takes a deliberate step around Nick to stand at Sam's side, and joins her and the clefairy in staring judgementally at him.

He's been getting a lot of that today. It's fine. He probably deserves it.

At least with Turing he can glare back with almost as many eyes.

"You knew about Mae?" asks Sam, after what seems like half an hour.

"Yeah," he says. "That's what got me started."

"Right."

It's hard to tell if that look on her face is illness or anger. Gabriella puts a gentle hand on her arm, and in the moment that she turns to look at Sam's face it all suddenly becomes clear: this is why Sam hasn't gone in search of other women like her. She already found one, ten years ago. And for some reason she brought her home again.

God, but he's … how did Nick not notice? He isn't even sure Sam's parents have any brothers or sisters. She doesn't have a cousin. And he's willing to bet everyone in town except him has known that ever since Gabriella arrived here.

"Why did you even come back?" he asks, and Sam's face twists like a dying snake.

"Why did you?" she asks. Definitely anger now. "This is home. And I … we got tired of fightin'."

Nick nods.

"Yeah," he says. "I understand."

"No," says Sam coldly. "You don't."

I do, he wants to say. I know: I was in Saffron in the sixties, and I know the way the cops watched certain bars and car parks, and if they saw a man there – never mind who or why – then they would take him for a long ride in the cruiser and talk and insinuate and threaten until he pleaded guilty and paid whatever they wanted just to make it go away; and that was the best you could hope for, because there were also the undercover cops and visits to the station that broke bones and spirits and we all knew someone who had been destroyed by those; and by the time the riots started in earnest I had retreated back into the lab at Yellowbrick, too afraid of losing my position to stand with those I used to love, and Miles and I watched from the window of his apartment as the riot cops and their arcanine met them in a welter of shouts and blows that shook the very street on its foundations.

"No," he says, instead. "I probably don't."

Can't tell her. Mahogany and Yellowbrick stay separate, no matter what. Sure, he can probably trust them – hell, if people know about them and don't mind he could probably trust more people in town than he thinks – but there's no sense courting unnecessary danger. Let them think he's just another asshole.

It hurts, but of course that doesn't matter. His niece was killed because she got too close to his plan; any pain that Nick can gather he has to hang onto. Like an old Kantan saint wrapping himself up in his hair shirt.

"I'm sorry," he says. "None of my business. But – will you help me?"

Sam and Gabriella look at one another, asking and answering questions with their eyes. After a moment Gabriella turns away with a sigh, and Sam returns her attention to Nick.

"I would," she says. "For Mae. For Tacoma too, and all the others." He can hear the but coming, like the first rumble of an oncoming train resonating down the tracks. "But I don't know," she says. "Sorry, Nick, but I just don't know how you'd get in."

That's real regret in her voice. It's unreasonable to be upset, he knows this, but he is anyway. This was his best lead. Without an answer from Sam, he might not even have time to find the chapter house before the cops find the cabin. And once they do – well, he's probably looking at some time in a cell, and honestly he can't say he doesn't deserve it. He got Tacoma killed, didn't he? He might not have pulled the trigger, so to speak, but he deserves to take some of the flak.

"Okay," he says. He and his voice seem to be on opposite sides of the room. "I guess that's it, then."

"Guess it is," mutters Sam. "Don't think you should stay, Nick. But if you think you can do this, then good luck to you. Give the bastards hell."

"I'm going to give them a hell of a lot more than that," he says.

Her face creases into something not quite like a smile, cold and painful. Gabriella squeezes her arm for a moment – so subtle he'd have missed it if he didn't know – and steps away from her, motioning for Nick to follow.

"I'll be back in a moment," she says. "Come on, Nick."

He follows her back out into the cold of the forecourt, where a few fat snowflakes are beginning to drift lazily down beyond the edges of the roof. Once there's a good few yards between them and the closed door, she sighs again and shakes her head.

"I told you that you wouldn't get what you want," she says. "You're not the only one hurting, Nick."

"I know," he says. "That's why I have to―"

"Save it for someone who buys into that lone wolf macho bullshit," she says, with an edge to her voice that cuts like a murkrow's talon. "I know how this works, Nick. I don't have a lot of patience for heroes."

It takes him a moment to respond, taken aback by her anger and her readiness to curse. He'd have thought she'd be happy about this. She knows what's going on; isn't it a good thing that someone wants to stop it?

"Okay," he says, voice slow with surprise. "I'm … you know I can't leave this. Right?"

"Of course you can't," she says, in a tone that suggests he has said exactly the wrong thing. "Bye, Nick. Good luck to you."

She doesn't wait to hear his response. Nick watches her stalk off back to the garage, unsure why he's being judged but fairly certain that he deserves it, and turns to Turing.

"Come on," he says. "Starting to snow. And we've got work to do."

Turing rattles two of his cores together and floats over to the car, waiting patiently for Nick to open the door.

"Least you're on my side, huh," says Nick, and gets in.

Forget Sam and Gabriella, forget however it is that he's failed. He's got a cult to destroy.

Without any easy answers, there's nothing for it but to burn some shoe leather. Nick takes the car back home – that petrol was expensive – and heads straight back out again with a notebook and his backup pen. The cops still have the gold one; apparently it's evidence. Thinking back, he probably shouldn't have lied about when he lost it, but he was panicking at the time, and admitting that it had only gone missing the day before Tacoma was due home would have had Con asking about how he lost a pen in Alola and had it turn up in Three Pines.

That's going to come up when they arrest him, isn't it? Yes. It definitely is.

"Never mind," he tells himself, closing the front door behind him. "Cross that bridge when we come to it."

For now, he has a plan. The chapter house is old – very, very old. Everyone in town knows Mahogany's history: centuries ago, before there was a town, there was a hidden fort buried under the earth, where the nameless tribe that occupied this slice of the world before it was Johto hid to wait out the wars between the bigger clans, occasionally emerging under cover of darkness to claim a few heads. Generations of kids have gone looking for the secret tunnels that they're sure are still buried beneath the town somewhere. None have found them – or at least, if any have, they've never talked about it. Because those tunnels are still occupied, possibly always have been, and the chapter house people keep a close eye on anyone who comes or goes.

But, leaving aside the danger, it means Nick has an idea of where to look. Old buildings, centres of civic activity – these are the kinds of places that might house entrances to the chapter house. He can't imagine it's easy to dig more without arousing suspicion, especially now that Mick Field is dead and his building company dissolved. So, if he can just compile a list of likely places … well, if he can do that, he'll still have to poke around, maybe stake them out for a couple of nights. But it will be a start. And that's enough for right now.

Once in town, his first stop is the store, which he circles slowly, searching the surrounding streets for doors whose purpose he cannot immediately identify. Sarah's part of the chapter house group, after all, and the store is an old enough building that it might house an entrance, but he remembers from his part-time work at the store as a teenager that the only doors inside lead to the loading bay and the stairs up to Sarah's flat. If there's a way in here, it isn't in the building itself.

He finds three unidentified doors: one beyond the gate in the alley behind the bank; one around the side of the butcher's; one half-hidden by a piece of aluminium siding leaned up against the back wall of the hardware store. Of these, the last seems the most likely: that gate isn't locked, and Steven is far too soft to be part of the group. Nick writes down all three, draws a star next to the third – who owns the hardware store these days? He needs to check that – and moves on.

The library is an iffy proposition. Lorna strikes him as the kind of person who would refuse any involvement with the chapter house, but that's not to say that there isn't an entrance there, left over from an earlier era. Once he's managed to get rid of Lorna and her condolences, Nick makes a quick circuit of the library's upper floor, just in case there's a hidden stairwell or anything (there isn't) and then more thoroughly investigates the ground floor, trying to ignore the way that Simone Weller glares at him over the top of her beekeeping book. He'd forgotten about her, honestly. From the lady of the manor to boarding-house landlady to living unofficially in the library. It makes Nick uncomfortable. He's all for the redistribution of wealth and the removal of the ruling classes, but, well. Not like this, he supposes.

Besides, the hostility in her eyes feels like a judgement. And yes, he got Tacoma killed, yes, he deserves it, but this is the fourth woman today to stare at him like she wants him dead and frankly it's starting to wear on his nerves.

He doesn't even find anything for his pains. After a while, he gives up and leaves to see that the snow that was threatening earlier has begun in earnest, blurring the air like static on a TV screen. Nick pauses on the threshold to pull up the hood of his coat and tug his scarf tighter around his throat. God. You just don't get weather like this in Kanto. Not even in south Johto, actually. So many of his visits home are for Christmas that he sometimes struggles to remember what Mahogany even looks like without its heavy white coat.

He stares out into the whirling snow for a moment, turning over the idea of going home to wait out the weather, and then he feels the pressure of Tacoma's ghost on his spine and trudges on out into the cold.

Town hall, church, Briar Rose. There really are a lot of doors in town, when you really start looking. Nick stomps through the steadily thickening snow, trying to ignore the chill eating into the few inches of his face between the top of his scarf and the bottom of his hood, and envies Turing his complete indifference to the cold. Magneton have something like a nervous system, tiny wires threading the inside of their cores, and all cold weather does to them is make whatever thoughts they have move faster than normal through their brains.

Three Pines. Post office. The old line of houses on Back Road. Everywhere he goes, he finds a few doors that don't seem to lead onto anything, testament either to the fact that old buildings are full of strange nooks and crannies or that this town is riddled with entrances to a secret network of tunnels.

Maybe it's looking at all these doors, wondering what's hidden behind them, but he's starting to believe he can feel eyes on the back of his neck. He manages to resist the temptation to look around, for a moment or two, and then he caves and sneaks a glance over one shoulder. No one there. Of course.

"Get a grip, Nick," he mutters, and refuses to look back again.

On he goes: from one side of town to the other and back again. His route makes no sense; he winds back and forth in ludicrously inefficient loops, cursing the fact that he didn't stop to plan his itinerary before he left. Christ. And he calls himself a scientist. He'd expect this kind of sloppy methodology from a student, but he should know better.

He has plenty of time to think, though. Too much, even; the more he criss-crosses Mahogany, the more familiar the places he passes come to seem, until things come to mind that he hasn't thought of in years: there, on that corner, he once broke Mr Mead's window with an inexpertly lobbed ball; here, outside what was once a tower sacred to Ho-oh and which is now the primary school, he looked up with Daniel Goldberg to see something huge and indistinct moving through the sky to the north, and by the time they had recovered enough to shout and point it had disappeared behind the mountains. Nobody believed them – just a skarmory, said Miss Smith, when they went back inside after break – but they did see it. Whatever it was.

Here, in the street whose name Nick can't remember that runs behind the post office, Tacoma once tripped and broke her nose running after Nikole. That was back when Nikole had just discovered that rubbish bins made a delightful clatter if she headbutted them hard enough to knock them over; Annie had been threatening to send Nikole back out to the woods all week if Tacoma couldn't keep her under control, and so Tacoma was desperate to stop her. She'd wanted to show Nick something she'd found in town – he can't even remember what now, a murkrow nest or whatever; in those days she found all kinds of things, and on his visits home he always encouraged her curiosity – and he was walking with her and Nikole to go see, and then …

He remembers picking her up and running to the medical centre while she pressed his handkerchief against her face and cried. It's been a long time since she was small enough to be carried. But he can't forget how she felt in his arms.

When was the last time he hugged her? Too many years ago. And now he never will again.

He stops in the middle of the street. The houses seem different somehow, as if he's taken a wrong turning somewhere that led him into a different town altogether. All at once he is no longer sure what he is doing, why he is here or what he hopes to achieve. Does he really think he can end this? With amateur detective work and a machine that may or may not even work, when it comes down to it?

Turing encircles him, cores orbiting his head and staring inward at his face. Nick reaches out to touch him, struck by an irrational fear that his hand might go straight through the steel and shatter the illusion of company, and is relieved to find steel beneath his gloved fingers.

"Think it might be time to go home," he murmurs, but he carries on and visits the place where the mill used to be all the same.

When he finally gets back, nobody comments on his absence. Nick doesn't actually give them a chance – he comes in and goes straight upstairs – but he has a feeling they wouldn't anyway. He shuts his bedroom door on the world, moves to close the curtains, remembers he never opened them that morning, and collapses into bed, half-frozen and more tired than he has been since the killer flights to Alola and back. Sleep is waiting impatiently for him – he's finding this happens now, from time to time; apparently you don't get to stay young and energetic forever – but he fights it off just long enough to set his alarm for half five, and then melts into the dark beneath his eyelids.

He wakes to the shrilling of the clock, and perhaps it's the weird time throwing him off, but for a long and blissful moment he remembers absolutely nothing except that he is home for Christmas. Then the fog clears, and everything settles back onto his shoulders once more.

Nick takes a slow, deep breath. Turing drifts closer, pinging softly. Two eyes on him, one on the door, just in case.

"We're okay," says Nick roughly, forcing himself up. "Hang on. Let me get my coat."

This one takes a little planning. In the kitchen, Nick makes a pot of coffee, and while the water is boiling runs through his notes. He circles some of the likelier candidates, pours the coffee into a thermos, and sticks his head into the living-room to ask if he can borrow the car again.

"I filled it up," he says. "So don't worry about petrol."

Lucas shrugs. No Annie tonight, notes Nick. No Everett either, but that's to be expected. Since Tacoma died, he has either been in his room or non-specifically 'out'.

"It's fine, Nick. Did you speak to Sam about yours?"

That's a little more lively than Nick expected. Maybe he isn't the only one for whom the funeral was a help.

"Yeah," he lies. "She'll come take a look next week."

Lucas nods.

"All right," he says. "All right."

He turns back to the TV without another word. Nick watches him for a few seconds, observing the stillness of his face as the studio audience laughs at the Kantan actress onscreen, and then forces himself to pull away. He has a job to do tonight. Watching his brother-in-law attempting to vegetate his way out of loss is not it.

He takes the car down dark, silent streets, marvelling at the transformation – it isn't even half six and everyone's already home. Afraid, maybe. There's a killer on the loose, after all. Or, as Nick knows, a few of them.

Maybe they aren't afraid. Maybe it's just that this is Mahogany, and here even Saturday night is a quiet affair. That's much more comforting, and it has the advantage of being at least half true.

Was that something moving, over the rooftops?

No. Probably not.

Five increasingly tense minutes later, he parks just down the road from the big houses where the old mill used to be. Back before bread came in bags on the shelves of the store, this was where people brought their wheat to be ground into flour; the mill itself was a victim of the turn-of-the-century rush to modernise, back when Johto could still pretend to compete with Kanto, but Nick is almost certain that whatever as under its foundations is still there. Earlier, he found a bolted door in a strange, isolated shed on the footpath that leads around the back of the houses. It was plastered with signs warning people of high voltage, but Nick is more or less certain that the electrical substation for this area is between Dane and Mallard Streets, a block to the west.

He learns back into the shadows and unscrews his thermos, eyes on the entrance to the footpath.

"Gonna be a long night," he remarks.

Zzt, replies Turing, all cores watching the street. Nick smiles at his zeal, castigates himself for anthropomorphising, and pours himself a measure of coffee. If someone's using this door, then he wants to know about it.

He doesn't see anything. Of course. Why would he? After a couple of hours, he switches to the town hall, but doesn't see anything there, either. Staking out random doors is a stupid idea, and all he manages to find is a certain cloying fear that someone is watching him back.

The next morning, worn out, he wakes very late, and finds a note on the kitchen table to say that the others have left for church. Looks like they're starting to put their routines back together. He isn't sure how he feels about that; some obscure feeling tells him that the wound Tacoma left should bleed forever, should turn septic and rot until the whole family follows her into the hereafter, but he is aware that this may not be the most rational thought he's ever had.

He stalks disconsolately around the house for a few hours, uncertain if or when he should resume his stakeout; when Annie finally snaps and tells him to stop pacing, he snaps back and storms out in a huff, only to regain his senses the instant the frigid air hits his face and sucks the moisture from his eyes. But it's too late to back down now, so he keeps on storming all the way to the end of the street, at which point he is safely out of sight and can therefore slow to a walk as he makes his way over to another one of the suspicious doors. This stakeout is obviously a bust, it being the middle of the day, and not long after he arrives he goes home again, to sleep until dusk and creep out once more to seclude himself down the side of the florist's and watch for anyone using the door behind the hardware store.

The shadows deepen, swallowing the street inch by dusky inch. In his hiding place, Nick shifts from foot to foot, trying to stave off boredom and the ache from standing up all day. He hasn't really been in shape since he left the wrestling team back in '66, though he still has some of that bulk and strength. It's a Wroth thing: Spearings are tall, Wroths are tough. Everett only got the Spearing genes, but Tacoma has both.

Had. She had both. And then someone took them and everything else away from her forever.

In the cold depths of the night, it becomes harder and harder to ignore the feeling that she is still here, somehow. Like if he looked over his shoulder he'd see her there, standing by the trash cans full of dead flowers at the back of the alley. Looking back with her mismatched eyes. He tells himself that this is ridiculous – just the grief and the paranoia and the whisky ganging up on him in an unguarded moment – but he can't bring himself to look back and prove it. Better to think she might be there than to know she's not.

"Fucking idiot," Nick diagnoses, disgusted with himself, and glares out at the street as if he could make a target appear by sheer force of will.

Time passes. The ache in his legs deepens. His feet would hurt, but they're too cold to be anything but numb. He wiggles his fingers one by one, and isn't sure he can actually feel the movement.

At his side, Turing hangs in the air like a low-flying constellation, his patience stretching out without end. He could wait here with Nick for the rest of their lives, probably. As long as he got struck by lightning every once in a while.

Nick sighs and stamps his feet. Okay. Probably Sunday night was the wrong time for this, if there even is an entrance here. There's every chance that the door is just that, a door, and frankly if he doesn't head back soon he's probably looking at frostbi―

The sound of a door closing. Nick twitches back onto full alert, cold and fatigue forgotten, and pulls back further into the shadows just as Harry walks past his hiding place, whistling cheerfully.

"… on the feast of Ste-phen!"

Moments later, a huge, humped shape limps painfully after him, paws dragging on the snowy pavement. Jacob stops at the mouth of the alley, and though Nick can't see him clearly with the streetlight at his back he can make out the tilt of his head and the pricking up of his antennae as he senses something lurking nearby.

Nick holds his breath―

Jacob peers into the shadows―

"Come on," calls Harry. "Too cold to be playing silly buggers like this."

Jacob lingers for just a moment, a faint crimson light showing in his eyes – and then Nick sees the turning of his heavy head and he lumbers off down the street.

Okay.

Goddamn.

Nick breathes out, as slow and silent as he can manage. If Jacob had grabbed him – well, Turing's loyal, and judging by the way he's watching Jacob wouldn't need much encouragement to go for him, but even a crippled electivire is a force to be reckoned with, and there's not much a magneton can do to make one let go of something it wants to keep hold of.

But Harry, huh? Well, his brother Dick might be a part of the group; he works at the post office, and there's definitely someone there who reads Nick's mail. Harry could be in on it too. Maybe he didn't actually do it – Jacob couldn't sneak up on a piloswine, let alone a young woman walking alone after dark – but he could have called ahead from the station to let someone else know Tacoma was en route.

Think, he commands himself. You're jumping to conclusions. Are there other reasons Harry might be out here at this time of night? He could be visiting someone. He and Sarah are, after all, the worst-kept secret in town; even Nick knows they've been seeing each other for years now. But why would he bring Jacob, if that was the case? Hell, why would he bring Jacob anywhere, if he's too arthritic to move properly?

Too many unknowns. Here's a question he might actually be able to answer: which door did Harry come out of, anyway? It wasn't the one Nick was watching, or he would have seen him. Nick edges closer to the corner, peering through the inadequate streetlight to try and make out where the footprints lead, but it's impossible to be sure. It might be Sunday, but this is still the busiest street in town; the snow has long since been trampled into an indeterminate slush.

Nick curses under his breath. Trust his luck. He finally sees something and he can't even make any damn use of―

He hears the door close again, and from around the side of the store comes Deb Franklin, her pidgey huddled inside the hood of her coat. She walks briskly past Nick's alley without so much as glancing at him, and disappears around the corner.

Turing looks at him. Nick looks back.

"Yeah," he whispers. "Yeah, I think we … shit."

They wait there another half hour, but see only one other person leave, again just long enough after Deb for it to seem coincidental: a man Nick doesn't recognise but who looks uncannily like Aaron Lockwood without the moustache and with a few extra pounds – his brother Max, presumably. As far as Nick's concerned, this clinches it. Three people from this one place? Only one of whom is a person Sarah might actually invite to her place for dinner? Yes. It's not conclusive, but it's a hell of a strong suggestion. There was a meeting in the chapter house tonight, and some of the members left via an exit hidden in the store.

"We got 'em," mutters Nick. "We got 'em, Tur!"

His partner hums softly, and at this reminder of the real world Nick comes out of himself, realises once more how much his legs hurt and how cold he is. He swears again, shakes the thermos to see if it's empty, and – finding that it is – slips out of his hiding spot to hurry quietly back home.

Tomorrow, he tells himself. Tomorrow, he's going to end this; tomorrow, Tacoma sees justice; tomorrow, he will gouge out those eyes that he still half-believes are following him, even now.

Tomorrow, maybe, he can finally go to sleep and not wake up more tired than before.

After all of that, Nick sleeps even later than he did on Sunday, and only wakes when Turing swoops down low over his bed and grinds loudly in his ear.

"Knock it off!" he snaps, pushing him away and forcing his eyes open. "What in the goddamn?"

Zzt, says Turing urgently, nudging Nick with one core and sending another to tap against the window. Zzzt zzzzt zzzzzz―

"Okay," grumbles Nick, tossing off the covers. "Okay, I'm coming."

He stumbles over to the window – forgot to draw the curtains again, he realises – and stares blearily out at a mess of light and colour before remembering his glasses. With some effort, he retrieves them from the bedside table, and then on returning to the window he finishes waking up very, very fast.

Police car. Parked outside, with a flash of orange in the back seat that means Con and whatever his current raichu is called must be here.

Did Jodi …? No. No, she wouldn't. They must have just found the cabin. And then the owner. And then the booking.

Bloody hell. Nick stands as still as he can, straining to hear, and yes: there's Annie's voice, coming from the hall.

"… isn't up just yet," she's saying. "What's this about, Con?"

"We're going to have to ask him some questions," comes the reply. "We've found evidence that suggests he may have kept some facts back from us the last time we spoke …"

Time to think fast. They'll search his room, right? But – but they've already searched Tacoma's.

"Turing, I think you just saved us," he says, and snatches his jacket up off the floor. In here – one of these pockets – there! He pulls out the machine, its metallic contours fitting familiarly to the shape of his palm, and sneaks across the landing to Tacoma's room. Stepping in gets him for a moment, the smell of spilled perfume and old memories bringing tears to his eyes, but there's no time for grief and Nick does his best to sidestep the feeling, to let it rush past his shoulder while he stuffs his machine into the drawer of Tacoma's bedside table. Then it's back across the landing and into the guest room, to climb quickly into bed and feign sleep while footsteps sound on the stairs.

"Nick?" Annie's tone and knock are less than friendly. "Nick, get up. Cops are here for you."

He allows a second to pass, as if frozen in shock, and then jumps up and opens the door.

"What's that?" he asks.

Annie's gaze could freeze a slugma.

"What did you lie to the bloody cops for?" she asks. "I swear to God, Nick, if you've―"

"If I've what? Killed my niece? Annie, I can't believe you'd―"

"You said that," she snaps. "You said that. Not me."

They glare at one another for a few moments, and then it falls to Nick, as ever, to take the blame and fix things.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean … that."

"Really," says Annie.

"Really." Nick sighs. "Look, I'm sure this is a misunderstanding. I was jetlagged out of my brain; I probably just got mixed up. I'll get dressed and come down, we can straighten all this out."

"You are dressed," says Annie. She's right, of course; he didn't bother undressing last night. Honestly, he just wanted a few more minutes to figure out a plan of action, but it looks like that's not going to happen. "Sort this, Nick. Now."

He raises his hands in a placatory kind of gesture that she does not accept.

"All right," he says. "All right. Come on, Turing. Let's go find out what they want."

Con is waiting in the hall, looking ill at ease; at his side is a uniformed woman that Nick doesn't recognise. He's surprised: female cops in Mahogany? It's not so long ago that a woman on the force was news in Saffron, and that's probably the most progressive town on the peninsula. Still, he kind of figures that she's not here for her feminine touch; there's a dragonair at her side, twelve feet of scaled muscle with eyes like liquid jet, and though it has curled up and rested its head on its coils Nick figures it could kill everyone in the room as easily as blinking, if it wanted to.

Dragon clan, then. Con's brought the big guns, it seems. If Nick doesn't want to come quietly, he's betting the dragonair will rear up and he will be asked politely to reconsider. Turing will defend him – he's already moved his cores into an aggressive stance, vibrating with more than usual anxiety – but he's not much of a fighter, and a police dragonair is going to be much more than a match for him.

Nick's not going to pretend he thought much of Con to begin with, but this is low, even for him. Intimidation tactics, huh? Model policing, right there.

"Con," he says, attempting to be civil. It's not a very good attempt, but it is an attempt.

"Nick," replies Con. "This is Byrne Winter. I don't know if you've met."

"Morning," says Nick. "Annie says you had some questions for me?"

"Yes." Con glances at Byrne. "You drove in from the airport, didn't you, Nick?"

Well. Nick can't say he wasn't expecting it. He just thought he would have a little more time.

"That's right," he says. "There a problem with that?"

"There might be," replies Con. "You mind showing us the car?"

Nick opens his mouth to reply, but Annie gets there first.

"What is this, Con?" she asks. "What are you getting at?"

"It's all right, Annie," says Nick. "Just a minute." He reaches deep inside himself, looking for a smile, but he can't manage it. He was there. He was right there, he had the opportunity, and now―

No. Keep it together, Nick. Annie is right here, and you might have lost a niece but she lost a daughter, and this weekend is the first time she's looked even halfway alive, and you cannot take that away from her. Not yet.

"Appreciate it, Nick," says Con. He looks a little confused; Nick imagines he probably expected him to deny everything. But what would be the point? It's not like he can run from this. All he can do is― actually, he has no idea what he can do. He supposes he'll have time to figure that out in prison.

Christ. If Tacoma's death hadn't blindsided him like that, if he'd just been a little quicker to get his head back together …

"Let's go," he says, as brightly as he can. "This way, officers."

Confidence, that's the thing. Confidence will get him through the next few minutes, if no further than that.

Outside, the day is bright and cold. Nick, Turing and the cops assemble before the garage door, the dragonair slithering out to coil itself behind them. The snow turns to steam on its flanks, Nick notes. Dragons aren't snakes: they run too hot to hibernate.

He sighs, looks away to see Annie watching from the front step. She is asking a question with her eyes, but he pretends not to see it.

"Open her up, Nick," says Con, gesturing at the door. "If you don't mind."

Nick waits for a second, his confidence draining away like blood from a slit throat, and then because there is no alternative he opens the door and looks with everyone else past Lucas' brown Škoda to see a shiny blue Crowne, tucked safely away from prying eyes at the back of the garage.

Con looks at Nick.

Nick looks back.

"Are you arresting me?" he asks.

"Not unless I have to," says Con. He looks calm, concerned. He looks like a man who is ready to bury the hatchet.

He'll have to pry it from Nick's cold, dead hands first.

"I think you'd better come down to the station," Con tells him. "We're going to have to talk about this."

"Yeah," says Nick, slowly, all his energy spent. "I … I guess we are."

Gabriella has no patience for lone wolves, he remembers. He has a feeling he's just figured out why.

It occurs to him that he really should have called Miles after all.

Chapter Text

TACOMA

So much of Tacoma's life (if you can call it that) is about waiting, these days. Even when Jodi's around, there isn't much she can do; a severed head can talk, but that's about it. Sure, talking can be powerful – Tacoma has said a lot of things that have really hurt Jodi, after all – but come on. It isn't any substitute for real, tangible action.

But then she realised she could do things. After whatever she did to Jodi, it just seemed obvious. She's a pokémon, right? And a ghost-type at that. She's basically magic. Okay, her attempts to get her hands back haven't worked out, but still, she has a lot more going for her than just spooky purple flames. The Pokédex said she could beat people up with their own shadows, and that seems to be true. Sitting here in Jodi's room, waiting for her to come back from her meeting with Nick, Tacoma finds that if she concentrates, she can wrench a piece off the shadow beneath the desk and lift it into the air.

She looks at it for a while, wriggling and twitching as it tries to pull free of her control and leap back into place. A scowl, an effort, and it grows still and resigned. Like that blackbird Nikki caught, way back when.

Tacoma was thinking that maybe she could sculpt it into a hand, but in the end just looking at it makes her feel too sick to go any further and she lets it go again, not wanting to find out whether it's possible for a spiritomb to throw up.

Nikki watches without a sound, leaning back on her tail by the end of Jodi's bed. She seems a little wary of whatever it is her partner is doing, and with good reason. What her partner's doing is objectively pretty bloody creepy.

"Yeah," says Tacoma bitterly. "Me too."

What is wrong with her? It can't all be Nick. Shouldn't all be Nick, even. She's had a day now; why can't she just get over the fact that he's a suspect? Maybe it's Jodi, pushing her to give up her secret. Because Tacoma won't be able to resist forever, and then she'll learn exactly how far Jodi's saintly patience goes.

But she can put that off, and keep putting it off for a long time, in all likelihood. So no, it's not that, or not all that at least. It's something deeper. Something to do with this shape, these powers. You'd think it would be cool to be magic like this, but whenever she ends up looking at what it is she can do, at her dark attacks that hurt her friend and her writhing, captive shadows, she just can't stop her gorge rising in her throat.

She thinks of Jodi probing the stubble around her unshaven face. There was a time when she wondered what that felt like for her. Hard to be sure, but she feels like she could probably take a guess at it, now.

Downstairs, the front door closes with a thump, and Tacoma feels a corresponding door open in the back of her mind, letting in a faint breeze of concern. Jodi's home, then. So Nick didn't murder her. Does that mean he isn't the one who killed Tacoma?

It would be nice if that it did. But honestly, too much shit has gone down recently for Tacoma to dare hope that it might be true.

Voices in the hall. Cane clicking on the stairs. Something sounds off, but it isn't till Jodi actually opens the door and comes in alone that Tacoma realises she didn't hear Lothian's claws following at her heels.

"Hey," says Jodi, closing the door and sitting down heavily at her desk. "Ugh. Okay. First off, he didn't do it."

Once, caught in a surprise storm up in the hills around Lavender, Tacoma saw a tree struck by lightning: a flash, a blink, and then when she could see again it was transformed from a tree into a scorched black husk. This is that kind of feeling. There was the world before she knew this, and the world after, and the difference is everything.

"You're sure?" she asks, although she knows Jodi wouldn't have said it if she wasn't.

"Yep," she replies. "I really don't think he did it. He's … I dunno, Tacoma, he's doing something, but he didn't kill anyone. Least of all you."

"So what happened?"

"As far as I can work it out, your Professor Allbright―"

"Keith."

"―Keith, right, he sent him the spiritomb rock to help with a project he was working on. You know, whatever it was that was going on in that cabin?" Tacoma nods. "Only I'm not sure Nick knew it was coming," Jodi continues, "and I think in the end he found another way that didn't involve it. Anyway, the point is, someone was reading his mail―"

"Chapter house?"

"That's what I think, yeah. So someone was reading his mail, and so they knew you were coming with the rock before he did, since I guess he was hiding out in the cabin and the mail came to your house, and so … yeah. They, um, they were waiting for you."

It's starting to fall into place now. Someone was monitoring Nick's mail. So someone thought there was a reason to monitor Nick's mail. So …

"He's on our side?" asks Tacoma, incredulous.

"I don't know about that," says Jodi. "But he's working against the chapter house, so …" She shrugs. "Enemy of my enemy, I guess?"

All this time – well, a week and a half; it feels like forever, but that's only because Tacoma has spent so much of it in the tower, wondering who put her there and wishing she could cut – all this time, and they could have just spoken to him. He'd have told her, wouldn't he? He'd have told his dead niece, if she'd asked. Maybe she should ask. It's not too late.

Who and why, huh. Here's the why, and at least half of the who. They both knew she was killed over the rock already, of course; for a while now, it's felt like that's all they do know. Still. It's a slap in the face to have it confirmed that this was all just a case of wrong place, wrong time.

"Anyway," says Jodi, watching her with the kind of careful eye that tells Tacoma her empathy is still going strong as ever, "he wouldn't tell me what he was up to. But he's going to, I think. He said to give him a week and ask again."

Tacoma frowns.

"Why? What's happening this week?"

"Dunno. I guess he thinks he has a solution or something?"

"You couldn't get it out of him?"

That's a much harsher question than Tacoma meant to ask, but for some reason Jodi just smiles.

"I didn't need to," she says. "You might've noticed, Lothi isn't around?"

Tacoma starts.

"He's …?"

"Yeah," says Jodi. "Took a lot of persuading, and I think he's expecting me to buy him pretty much his own pomegranate tree when he gets back, but he agreed to leave me alone for a bit and follow Nick around." She shakes her head. "I didn't think he'd go for it, honestly. I guess he saw how important it was to me."

Seven years, it's been. Seven years of Lothian sticking so closely to Jodi that she jokes about not being able to shower without letting him into the bathroom, and he decides to fly off and leave her now? It's hard to believe it. But given that he's not here, Tacoma supposes she's going to have to.

Maybe it makes a difference that Jodi asked him to do it. Tacoma has seen firsthand how dedicated he is; when it happened, when the avalanche bore down upon the trail and there were three living beings standing between it and the edge of the cliff, he chose which one to save without even a moment's thought. There is a reason why Jodi is alive and her vulpix and stantler are not, and it has two wings and an insatiable appetite for fruit.

"I guess so," says Tacoma, not sure what the right thing to say is. "So what, we wait?"

"Yeah," says Jodi. "We wait." Slight hesitation, probing with her eyes and mind. "I'm still not sure I trust him completely," she says. "Nick, I mean. But I'm not gonna judge till Lothi gets back." Another pause, a little longer this time. "Are you okay?"

Difficult question. Tacoma takes so long trying to figure out how to respond that she has to give up, aware that her silence has answered on her behalf.

Jodi bites her lip.

"Do you want a hug?" she asks.

Even now, the temptation to mock her for offering is there, moving beneath the surface of her depression with the other angry thoughts. But Tacoma thinks of Jodi's hand on her thread the other day, and the glow of her psionics deep inside her, and in the face of all that there's really only one thing she can say.

"Yeah," she mutters, ashamed and glad at once. "Yeah, okay."

She leans into Jodi's arms, listening to the pulse of her heart through her chest, and though she tells herself this doesn't solve a goddamn thing, she can't deny that it makes something hard melt inside her all the same.

It's a slow kind of morning. Jodi says something about wanting to talk to her family about her transition (this is what it's called, apparently), and offers to bring Tacoma's rock so she can listen in if she wants, but it's pretty clear she isn't actually up to having that conversation right now. For a couple of hours, she barely moves, listening to the radio and making increasingly lacklustre conversation with Tacoma; it takes forty-five minutes for her to even get around to taking her scarf off.

Tacoma doesn't like it at all. Part of it's down to the selfish thing, of course, rattling and roaring and demanding Jodi perk up and feed it, but most is just down to the fact that she suspects the worst is yet to come. Honestly? Jodi is what's got her through this. Tacoma herself has no staying power, not any more. She just wants this to be over. But Jodi got Nikole, tracked down Nick, unearthed a conspiracy – and, most impressive of all, managed to drag Tacoma along with her while she did it.

Except that apparently her spirit can only take her so far. Now she's hit the limits of what her mutant brain and busted leg will let her do – limits that Tacoma should have anticipated, would have anticipated if she was half as good to Jodi as Jodi is to her – and Tacoma has no idea at all how to deal with that. After a while they fall into complete silence, broken only by the radio and the scratching of Nikki's claws on Tacoma's stone, and a few minutes later Tacoma realises that Jodi is asleep.

"Hey," she says, and watches with guilty satisfaction as Jodi starts awake again. "Don't sleep in your chair. You'll screw up your neck."

"Mm," says Jodi, raising her hand to rub her eyes and then stopping herself, remembering her make-up. "Yeah, you're right. Sorry."

"What are you apologising for?"

"Falling asleep on you, I guess." Jodi sighs. "Never mind. Silly. I think … I think I'm gonna go downstairs. Is that okay? It's just I could really use a sofa right now, and also if I don't get up and have some coffee I might just fall asleep again."

"Sure," says Tacoma. She thinks of suggesting that Jodi take a nap, but it's so hard to shift the thought from brain to mouth. For the best, anyway. Best to keep her dumb ideas to herself.

It's a mark of how tired Jodi is that she doesn't even pick up on this, let alone try to argue about it. She asks if Tacoma and Nikki want to come down too, which they do, and heads downstairs to field questions about where Lothian is ("Napping," she answers; it's so obviously a lie but nobody questions it) and receive anxious attention from her parents. Is it the weather? You've been out so much recently, and with this much snow that can't be easy. Let me make you some hot chocolate. Okay, coffee, if you want. You are okay, aren't you? Kiddo? Chickadee?

Jodi smiles, but from her little window onto the world Tacoma can see the bones of her skull standing out through her face again.

"Yeah," she says. "Things are just weird right now, is all." Pause. "Um … I dunno if I can do it right now, and I want to wait for Ella anyway, but, uh, I remembered that we have some things to talk about. I know you've been pretending really hard that this is normal, and I really appreciate it, but." Deep breath. "We should talk about it. Me, I mean. I meant to do it before, but … Tacoma died."

It doesn't even hurt, at this point. She's beyond all that now, or at the very least she isn't in the right frame of mind to feel the emotion properly. Yes: Tacoma died. Now she's an awful fog ghost who weeps ooze and makes ugly shadow puppets to scare her partner with. What else is new?

"I know what I need to know," says Michelle, somewhere beyond the limit of Tacoma's vision. "You're my daughter." Jodi's fingers tighten on the handle of her coffee cup; Tacoma feels her unshed tears ripple down the psychic link between them. It hasn't even been two weeks since she told everyone, has it? Sitting around in Jodi's bag, talking constantly and catching glimpses of her minds, has kind of made it seem like it's always been this way. For everyone else, it must all still be so tender and new. "But okay, Jodi. If that's what you want."

"It's not about what I want," Jodi replies, keeping it together. "I think we need to. Right?"

"Yeah," says León. "I think so."

He sounds relieved. Tacoma wonders what it's like to have your son turn around one day and reveal she was a daughter all along. It was weird for her, of course, but she's willing to bet it's weirder for León. And anyway, once she thought about it, Jodi being a girl made sense to her. Tacoma always wondered what the deal was with her, back when they were kids. She just didn't know that this was a viable solution to the problem.

Jodi's parents probably weren't able to run those particular calculations. How could they? Only Tacoma knew, after all; only Tacoma saw her from that angle. And so it's a shock to them, and now León and Michelle are going to need some help adjusting.

"Okay, then," says Jodi. "Like I said, I really don't think I can do that right now, but … I just wanted to tell you that we will do it. Soon."

"Appreciate it, kiddo," says León. "I think it'll do us all good to, uh, understand."

They talk as if unsure how the words fit together, so awkward that even Tacoma, stupefied with depressive indecision as she is, cringes a little. Maybe she doesn't want to be there for this conversation after all. There's nothing more uncomfortable than intruding on someone else's family business.

She hesitates for a moment, unable to decide whether she should cut the connection, and then when León moves across her field of view closes it anyway. She doesn't want to think about family right now. Nick mostly kept out of her way in Saffron, presumably because he's aware that all students are constantly doing their level best to pretend they have no family beyond the university at all, but still. If she ever needed someone in town, he was there. He's actually lent her money a couple of times, and he takes her out for lunch once or twice a term, too. Tacoma always pretends that she's doing him a favour, of course, but she likes it really. Nick is the only other person in her family like her, the only one for whom the world does not end in Ecruteak. He was the one who said she should go to university, who organised her tuition on Saturday mornings and helped her apply for scholarships.

And now, maybe, he's something else: maybe he's still fighting her corner, maybe he wants to bring down the people who did this to her. Maybe he's asked for a week so that he can fix everything, to take the weight of it off Jodi's shoulders and free her from the burden of her dead asshole friend. Maybe on Saturday Tacoma can come out of her rock and talk to him.

She's gone too far. In an instant, her hope sours and turns to mockery: yeah, Tacoma, sure. You can show him the monster you've become and he'll be delighted. Just so happy to see you finally have a form as grotesque as the soul it houses. And everything will be fine.

This was why she didn't want to think about family, but it's much too late to change that now. Tacoma lets her head slump against the sarcophagus, and settles down to pick her lips until Lothian returns.

At around two, some time after the three of them have retreated to Jodi's room so that Tacoma can come out of her rock to settle Nikki, there's a knock at the window and Jodi pulls back the curtain to reveal a pointed face peering in like an inquisitive devil. Nikki snorts in surprise, pulling Tacoma away from the window with one hand and raising the other in readiness to strike, but before she can do anything Tacoma twists herself around, tries to put herself between her and the supposed threat.

"It's okay," she says. "You know who it is, Nikki."

"Yeah," says Jodi, smiling without showing teeth. Nikki has long since learned that humans use bared teeth to convey many things other than aggression, but Tacoma is touched that Jodi remembers. "Just Lothi."

Nikki glowers, but faced with this united front she does back down, and Jodi returns her attention to the window, mostly safe now from a claw in the back of the neck.

"Here's my favourite spy," she says to herself, which is much cuter than Tacoma is willing to admit to her face, and opens the window onto a rush of freezing air. Lothian seems to flow in rather than climb, twisting around from wall to window-frame to desk and finally down the floor like smoke coiling above a fire, and immediately rears to put his wing-claws on Jodi's shoulders, staring into her face like he hasn't seen her in a week.

"Someone's glad to be home," she says, leaning heavily into him to avoid being crushed. "Lemme close the window, okay?"

It takes her a couple of minutes to disentangle her dress from Lothian's claws, after which she shuts out the deepening night while Nikki relaxes with an audible sigh, evidently deciding that the danger of Tacoma or the girl she is so inexplicably attached to being squashed by this weird pointy dog is past.

"Okay, Lothi," says Jodi, sitting down on the bed. "Fifty-six, nine, twenty-one, in that order. Narrow tendency, please. I don't really want another nosebleed."

Tacoma listens incuriously to the ESP jargon, feeling like she should take an interest in Jodi's work but unable to muster the enthusiasm, and watches as Lothian climbs onto Jodi's bed to put his head between her hands. Something hums in her ears – the rock rattles slightly on the tabletop – and Jodi's look of concentration melts away into perfect, deathlike vacancy, her mind far away from her body.

Nikki scratches uneasily at the carpet. Tacoma can't blame her. It's much creepier than she thought it would be.

One second. Ten. Thirty. Three minutes pass, silent but for the relentless ticking of Jodi's clock and a few faint strains of music from downstairs, and then Jodi opens her eyes and sinks inelegantly back onto her pillow.

"Oh," she sighs, as Lothian starts back into life. "Lothi …"

He brings her chocolate and rests his head on her belly while she eats, twitching his nose constantly in some strange batty communiqué. Not batty, Tacoma corrects, a fragment of her degree floating to the surface of her memory. Vespertilian. Noivern: strideauris magna, the great screaming ear. Highland noivern are a different species, but she can't remember what the name is.

"He's looking for the chapter house," says Jodi suddenly, pushing all thoughts of taxonomy from her mind. "Lothian has a good memory for sounds. Little bit garbled because he hears more frequencies than we do, but he heard Nick ask Sam about it … I guess he knew she looked into it, back when Mae West died. And from what he said to her, I think he investigated that too. Separately, I mean. Part of why he left."

She tries to sit up, but not very hard, and after a moment relaxes again.

"Anyway, after that he spent all day wandering around town making notes, then he went to bed just now. I'm … I feel like that means something but I can't figure it out. Tired. Thoughts are a little mixed up still."

Okay. Enter Tacoma. It's a puzzle; she's good at puzzles. She's not good at a lot of things, like being kind or telling people how she feels, but she's good at puzzles. She can help.

And – thank God for the answer. Nick really didn't do it, did he? He really is against all this, really is still fighting his niece's corner. Whatever he was doing in that cabin, it wasn't planning a murder.

Small mercies, huh.

"He was looking for ways in," Tacoma says, trying to concentrate on the question. "And then – then I guess he went to sleep early so he could stake out some of the places tonight. Saturday night in Mahogany, what're you gonna do except meet up with your secret society buddies?"

Jodi smiles without opening her eyes.

"You're not gonna go to a concert, that's for sure."

"That what you do?"

"Sometimes. If I'm not too tired and have any money left." Her smile broadens. "You would hate it."

Tacoma recalls that godawful record she and Gabriella liked.

"Yeah," she agrees. "I would."

"Anyway. You're right, that's got to be what he's doing." Jodi pushes her fingers deep into the ruff of fur around Lothian's neck. "You were always the smart one."

Yes. She was. And Jodi was the kind one, and Tacoma has seen enough smart people in her time at Yellowbrick to know which of those is truly the more valuable quality.

"Whatever," she says, without hiding her disgust. She can't tell if it's because she can't be bothered or because she just can't do it. "Are you okay?" she asks, as if this could make up for her rudeness.

"Yeah." Jodi forces herself back up, dragging her eyes open. Lothian curls around her, wings folded tight against his body so that she can lean against his side. Nikki looks at them in an envious kind of way, then picks up Tacoma and holds her close, claws curled protectively around her rock. Tacoma freezes for a moment, startled, then makes herself relax into her grip. She's only just started talking like an actual human being again; she probably needs this. "Yeah, I'm fine. Gonna be craving fruit for hours now, but that's Lothi's brain for you."

His ears prick up at the word. Jodi laughs softly to herself, like she's forgotten that her dead friend is even here, and in this moment she looks so purely delighted that it makes Tacoma faintly angry at the beauty of it all.

"So," she says, looking to break the magic. "What do we do now?"

There's that old sarcastic light in Jodi's eyes again, a so now you've woken up kind of thing, but all she says is:

"I don't know."

Tacoma scowls.

"Seriously?"

"Surprisingly, Tacoma, I'm not actually sure what the correct response is to 'your uncle is probably on our side, but he seems to believe he can take down the chapter house group all by himself'."

Not a good comeback; too wordy, too rambling. But that little upward flick of the eyebrow could kill a guy, it's so sharp.

"Yeah," says Tacoma, abashed. "I, uh … I guess that tracks." She sighs. "Figures. Nobody wants you involved."

Jodi gives her an odd look that Tacoma cannot parse, even with the link to help her out.

"Well, um, based on all the available evidence – yeah, I guess," she says. "D'you think he's looking for evidence about who the killer was?"

Another puzzle. Okay. Easy.

"No. He was planning this before they got me." Barely even hurts to say it now. "There's a reason he made everyone think he was in Alola, right? He needed to be here, doing whatever he was doing in that cabin, without anyone watching. Why not do it in Saffron? It's safer. But it had to be here, for some reason." Her brain feels like it's creaking with the effort, after so many days of inactivity, but she keeps kicking it and it keeps spitting out answers. "There's something here. Something he could have monitored from the cabin, somehow. Gonna give you three guesses who's got it and where they've put it."

Jodi's wide awake now, looking startled.

"Chapter house," she says. "And this – this thing, that's why they kill people?"

"Dunno. Don't know enough." Not to be sure, no. But honestly, what else is it going to be? Circumstantial evidence is still evidence, and as far as Tacoma knows people generally need a pretty strong motive for murder.

"But it looks that way, huh," says Jodi, her thoughts mirroring Tacoma's own. "What kind of thing could you be hiding in a secret room and still have someone monitor it from miles away in the woods?"

Solve it, Tacoma orders herself. This is a good dynamic: Jodi asks questions, Tacoma answers. All this time she's left her friend to do the heavy lifting in this investigation, and sure, Jodi's done well – she found out about Mae West and Nick's cabin, set Lothian on spying duty, did all the difficult, boring groundwork – but now they have some actual data to crunch. Tacoma can help with this. She still isn't sure that she should – what's Jodi going to do with this information? Get herself in even more trouble? – but she can, and after so long being a dead weight, it feels good to have some kind of purpose again.

"Not sure," she says. "Didn't see any specialist equipment in the cabin. But Turing can pick up radio waves, so maybe that's how he was doing it. Question is, what emits radio waves and is connected to spiritomb rocks?"

This one she can't solve. She looks at Jodi, but of course she can't either. It's not a question of smarts, it's just that they don't know enough to tell what the answer might be.

"I'll get Lothian to follow Nick again this evening, when he goes out," says Jodi, after a few seconds during which neither of them can find any words. "Maybe that'll tell us something."

Something cold seeps into whatever it is Tacoma now has in place of a heart. It'll tell them something, all right. It'll tell them one thing, and it is something she would rather Jodi didn't know.

She has to ask. She's afraid of the answer, with the vicious kind of fear that seems to jump down your throat and throttle your insides, but she has to ask.

"You know the only thing it'll tell us is where the chapter house is, right?"

"Yeah, I guess," says Jodi, as if it hadn't occurred to her. "But then, you know, we could …"

"Break into the place where the murderers hang out."

"We could do it when they aren't there," says Jodi. "I'm not looking to get killed, Tacoma. But I do want to get to the bottom of this."

"Nick's going to―"

"Nick's going to do whatever he's going to do. And okay, it's probably a good thing he's doing, but I'm sorry, Tacoma, I'd be lying if I said I trusted him completely about this."

Tacoma stares.

"But he's going to stop them," she says, hearing the wishful thinking in her voice and despising it. "He's …"

Jodi is silent for a few seconds, searching her face.

"Do you really trust him?" she asks.

"What? What kind of a question is―?"

"I'm sorry!" cries Jodi. "I just – look, what I mean is, if you really think we can leave all this to him, then okay, we will. We'll wait till Saturday and see what happens. But if you don't, then we need to do something." Her upset presses on the link. It hurts her to ask, doesn't it? It hurts her because it hurts Tacoma. Empathy, or love, or both or something else that Tacoma doesn't deserve from her. "All those people," she says, and when her voice catches on people Tacoma knows that she has lost this fight. "Mae West, and you, and – and God knows how many others. What about that runaway kid? I keep wondering, did he really run, or did they get him, and I …" She shakes her head. "If I can do anything, anything at all, then I can't not do it, Tacoma. So if you aren't sure we can leave this all to Nick, then I need to know."

Once, coming out of the Galkirk Village subway station in Saffron, Tacoma saw a woman slip and fall heavily on her arm. She didn't immediately get up, just cried out and clutched her wrist, and Tacoma thought that's a break and she just kept on walking. She was running late. Nikki was already several yards further down the street. Someone else would stop and help. And someone else did; she looked back and saw figures gathering around her.

Jodi would have stopped. She would have ditched her appointment in a heartbeat, for the same reason that she abandoned her holiday and her psionics homework to try and save Tacoma, because in the face of human need she does the right thing and comes to help.

"No," whispers Tacoma. Talk properly, screams a voice at the back of her head, but it's no use; she can't. "No, I don't know for sure."

Jodi drags herself effortfully along the bed to its foot, next to Tacoma.

"I'm so sorry," she says, reaching out. "I am."

Nikki tenses, but makes no move to intervene. It's Tacoma who refuses this time, holding her disc back against Nikki's chest, and then Jodi drops her hand and sighs and the moment has successfully been ruined.

Lothian heads out again as soon as it gets dark, a huge leathery whisper cutting through the twilight above the rooftops. As usual, Jodi goes back downstairs, to sit with her family and read or watch TV; this time Tacoma doesn't join her, stays up in her room to keep Nikki company and call for Jodi when Lothian returns. Jodi asks her if she's sure, surprised and perhaps a little concerned, but Tacoma is adamant, and in the end she leaves her alone.

She needs a plan. This much is clear. Somehow, she has to dissuade Jodi from trying to break into the chapter house – because she will go, otherwise. With or without Tacoma. She'll go, because she wants the truth, and she won't come back and Tacoma will be alone again, with nothing left but Nikki and the knowledge that she is responsible for the death of Jodi Ortega.

There are a few possibilities open to her. She could physically stop her, probably. A little more practice with these disgusting shadow powers and she could stop anyone, more or less. Lothian might have something to say about it, but he's very reliant on his sonic tricks when it comes to confrontation, and though not a lot of people know it, they are technically normal-typed: he wouldn't be able to help Jodi out.

But force should be a last resort, obviously. What other options are there? Trying to talk her out of it didn't go so well, and Tacoma has her doubts about whether the repeating the conversation with a little more honesty about her motivations would work, either. Should've expected it, really. Who argues an emotional point with an empath and expects to win? So: that one's off the cards. It's fine. There is one other that Tacoma trying her best not to think about.

If Jodi no longer cares about Tacoma, she won't fight for her. If there were some way to make her hate Tacoma, to drive her away from this investigation and deliver her up to Nick in disgust instead of putting herself in danger, that would do it. And Tacoma does have one thing she could tell Jodi to show her just what kind of horse it is she's decided to back.

She doesn't want to. This was meant to be her second chance, right? Her golden opportunity to get back the person who still meant so much to her after all this time. But maybe people like Tacoma don't get chances like that; maybe there are no happy endings for people who crash through the lives of others with all the subtlety of blunt force trauma. What was she going to do after she answered her precious who and why, anyway? Legally, she's dead. It's not unheard-of for ghosts to continue their human lives after death – there was a Professor of Ghost Studies at Yellowbrick in the thirties who ended up as a yamask after an encounter with an irate cofagrigus and taught for eight more years before retiring – but whoever heard of a ghost doctor? Tacoma has no body any more, no hands, no pulse. How can she finish her degree now? Who would entrust their partner into her ugly, shadowy care?

No one. And Tacoma couldn't help them anyway. She's never helped anyone in her life and it doesn't look like she's going to start now she's dead.

So no: there's no light at the end of the tunnel, no purpose to look forward to. And there's no reason not to tell Jodi the truth that Tacoma has carried all these years like a cyst in her chest. None apart from cowardice, anyway, and cowardice doesn't count for shit.

Nikki's claws shift suddenly on the rock, and she twists Tacoma around to peer anxiously into her face. Somehow she knows, even without the cues of pulse and posture to give Tacoma's emotions away.

"'M okay," says Tacoma quietly, pressing her disc against Nikki's snout, the way that kangaskhan do among their own. "I just … I think I'm gonna have to do something difficult, Nikki, and I don't think Jodi's gonna like me any more when I do."

Slow blink of those crimson eyes. A delicate movement of her nostrils. Tacoma doesn't even smile.

"I know you love me," she says. "But I'm sorry, Nikki, that's not enough this time."

Nikki sniffs heavily, but she's faking it; she's worried, not angry.

Tacoma wishes she could reassure her. It's just that there really isn't anything she could say.

When Lothian comes back, it is with a memory of Nick hunkering down for several cold, fruitless hours in Tacoma's dad's car, shivering and downing coffee like a student during finals week. Apparently he kept looking around like he thought someone was watching him, but fortunately his night vision isn't great, and Lothian is certain he wasn't seen.

"Nothing," says Jodi, through the tissue she's holding pressed against her bleeding nose. Apparently trying to make sense of memories in which Lothian is using echolocation rather than sight is hard on her brain. "I guess he'll try again tomorrow?"

"I guess so," agrees Tacoma, trying to keep the relief from her voice. If Jodi doesn't know where the chapter house is, she can't go, and that means Tacoma doesn't have to make her hate her yet.

"Well, I suppose I didn't expect him to find it right away," sighs Jodi. "I mean, he gave himself a week, so …"

"Yeah."

Jodi's eyes are like backlit emeralds, their light impossible to hide from. Tacoma can feel them slicing straight through her apparent indifference to the shaky relief within.

"Something wrong?"

"Nah," says Tacoma. "Just … all this. Today. It's been a lot, you know?"

That should do it. Something vague enough that even Jodi can't really identify it as a lie. Sure, she'll know Tacoma's holding something back, but that's not exactly news at this point.

"Yeah," says Jodi, a tired little laugh fluttering under the surface of her voice. "Yeah, I … yeah. I know." She starts to shake her head, but doesn't get very far with it; maybe it hurts, maybe she just doesn't have the energy. "I can't believe it hasn't even been two weeks yet."

"Yeah," agrees Tacoma, unable for once to come up with anything more creative. "I know what you mean."

The bleeding slows, Jodi goes to bed early – as she needed to; Tacoma was going to suggest it if she didn't herself – and the house falls dark and silent, room by room. Tacoma stays quiet and still next to Nikki until she falls asleep, and then – as is starting to become a habit – gets in a little practice at being a scary ghost. At first it's just twisting a few shadows, pulling the dark out from beneath Jodi's desk and forcing it into rough balls; she tries to shape it further, to force it to extrude some shadowy fingers and become a limb she can use, but every time she stops concentrating on one finger to make the next it just collapses.

She knew it already, but it's depressing to have it confirmed. There really is only one way for her to get her limbs back. And that's next on the list: she might have failed last night, but tonight, if she just tries, she might be able to call her hand again. And then, maybe, a full arm, and after that …

Can't put it off any longer. She can do shadows and spooky flames, right? She can do this too.

She tries, and fails. She tries again, and fails again.

She keeps trying. It's a long night.

Jodi doesn't wake till eleven; she's not kidding when she says that her ESP takes it out of her. Tacoma only gets a couple of hours herself. Even after she's done failing to master the only ghost power that matters, she can't seem to fall asleep, Nick and Jodi and her great crime all going round and round her head like murkrow waiting for the honchkrow to turn up and finish the job.

At least the usual suspects are a little quieter. She knows the why of it now, even if she needs to narrow down the who a little further, and that's … not great, exactly, especially since it looks like she really was killed just because she accepted Keith's stupid rock sample and that feels like an insult, but she supposes it's better than not knowing.

Still, she's tired that morning – either even ghosts need their sleep or she's just worn out with worry – and does not do a good job of hiding the poison within her. She snaps, apologises, snaps again, and is then startled by Jodi's suggestion that she come downstairs and hang out for a bit while Jodi goes to help with lunch.

"Do you good to stop brooding," says Jodi. Apparently they're at the stage where she can just say that to her face now, and it's pretty hard to argue with something so indisputably true. Tacoma has to agree, reluctantly, and spends a reasonably tolerable hour or so in the kitchen, watching Lucille spread her four arms wide in the doorway to block Nikki and Lothian from stealing the vegetables that Jodi is chopping.

"Two of 'em now," says Michelle, closing the oven on a somewhat sorry-looking joint. (A teenage daughter, a psychic and her dragon, a birthday and Christmas coming up; Tacoma is honestly impressed the Ortegas can afford even this much.) "It's a miracle any of this ever makes it into our mouths."

"It's just till Tacoma's family are able to look after her again," says Jodi a little too fast, evidently thinking along the same lines as Tacoma. Michelle frowns slightly, puts a hand on Jodi's cheek.

"She'll stay as long as she needs to," she says. "You leave the worrying to me, Jodi."

Jodi goes pink, looks away.

"Right," she says. "Sorry, I … should have known what you meant."

"Even psychics don't get it right every time," says Michelle cheerfully. "Now how are them parsnips doing?"

Cute. Tacoma watches, even smiles for a moment before she thinks of her own mother, and almost forgets to pick her lips.

This week, she gets to sit in on the Ortegas' Sunday dinner, instead of waiting in the kitchen: Nikki makes sure to take the rock with her and place it securely on the sideboard before settling down to browse on the winter greens that Michelle has provided for her.

"She's got real attached to that focusing stone of yours, huh," observes Michelle.

"Yeah," agrees Jodi. "Um … she's welcome to it, honestly. Whenever I try to use it I get a nosebleed."

"What kind of thing is it used for, anyway?" asks León, and so the conversation goes, petty lies shading into half-truths that, Tacoma suspects, become full truths somewhere along the way, because soon Jodi is telling anecdotes about this professor, that classmate, that sound too much like the ordinary weirdness of campus life for Jodi to have made up. Her family like this stuff, it seems, just like Tacoma's like her own university stories; they are careful, attentive, and Tacoma can just picture León in the Briar Rose with some of the mill workers later this week: my daughter, she was telling me that in Goldenrod …

It's nice, in that it is normal and alive and not a dark spiral inwards towards the sarcophagus at the centre of a prison tower. Tacoma tries to lose herself in the rhythm of it, to forget that soon she will have to flick the switch on the detonator and bring her part in all of this to an end with the kind of explosion not even Jodi can forgive. Look at them. They love each other. They are happy; they are laughing. Even Nikki seems pretty relaxed, leaning back on her tail and picking her teeth, completely ignoring the fact that Lothian has stolen a leaf from her bowl so he can vibrate his nose at it and make it float.

The only one spoiling the picture is Ella, strangely. She doesn't laugh with the rest, can't even seem to look at Jodi, and afterwards when she and Jodi are washing up in the kitchen Jodi turns to her with a hesitant look on her face.

"Can we talk?" she asks, voice low so their parents can't hear it from the next room.

Ella puts down the plate she is drying.

"I'm sorry," she says. She chews her lip the way Jodi does – same tooth and everything, that upper left incisor. Tacoma never knew that about her before.

"I know," says Jodi calmly. "I forgive you. But please don't do that to me again."

Ella stands there for a moment, wringing her hands, and then Jodi turns off the tap and hugs her, holding her wet hands away from her back. Tacoma can feel her psionics activating through the link.

"I'm sorry," says Ella again, her voice thick and muffled, and Jodi sighs.

"I'm sorry too. I know this is hard for you. I knew that it would be and I still did it, so … I'm sorry for that."

This is definitely not something Tacoma is meant to be watching. She lets the window fade into the dimness of the tower, and closes her eyes. They sting like she's been watching TV too long.

She tells herself that one day when she goes home Everett will hug her the way Jodi hugs Ella, but of course she knows he never will.

It is time.

The more Tacoma thinks about it, the more certain she is. She will always find another excuse to put this off, if she lets herself. Given the stakes, this is unacceptable. And Jodi seems to be settling things with her family – sorted out whatever drama it was that she and Ella are going through, promised to sit down and talk through her girlhood with them. She has support there. She won't need a conspirator any more.

At three seventeen by the clock above the mantel, Tacoma begins.

"Jodi."

Casual, at first. Just the name. Only one word. She can manage that. Soon she will have to say a whole lot more than that, but for now, to begin with – one word. Nothing to it.

Jodi blinks and momentarily grips her book a little harder than she needs to.

Tacoma?

"I've been thinking …"

She intends to say a bit more than just that, but her voice dries up. It's okay. With psychics, you don't have to get all the words out to be sure you're understood.

One second, says Jodi, marking her place and closing her book. We'll go upstairs.

"Where are you off to?" asks León, as she gets up and beckons Lothian over.

"Nowhere," says Jodi. "My room."

"Not good enough for you, are we?"

"That's right, Dad. Sometimes genius just needs seclusion, you know?"

He laughs, clearly delighted at her turn of phrase, and that, fortunately, is an end to the questioning. Tacoma is impressed, despite her distraction. Jodi might be a terrible liar, but she's not bad at avoiding having to lie in the first place.

Upstairs, Nikki and Lothian trailing curiously after her, Jodi pushes open her bedroom door and drops heavily into her chair, although she's so light it doesn't even move that much. She turns, gives Nikki a hesitant kind of look, and after a long few seconds – so long, in fact, that Tacoma half expects an argument – Nikki hands over the rock.

Tacoma feels Jodi's hands dip with the weight of it, sees the way her skeletal arms tense through the tight fabric of her sweater. She holds back, trying to commit this moment to memory, and then she takes the deepest breath she can before she reduces herself to a lungless head and pushes out into the world.

"Hey," says Jodi. Looking worried. Doesn't know what's coming, but aware that something is.

"Hey," says Tacoma.

Now she's out, she can no longer breathe; if she tries, she will simply feel her fog shift a little, like a tremor in her marrow. But if she moves her mouth the right way and doesn't think about it too much, she can pretend.

So. She pretends, and she pretends, and – so slowly – she speaks.

"You wanted me to promise you something." Plan is to distract her. Make her think that this is because she asked. And it's not even a lie; it is because she asked. That's what made Tacoma certain that one day she would have to say this. It's just that it's come a little earlier than she would have liked. "So, um. Here we are."

Jodi sits up a little straighter, eyes wide. Somewhere behind Tacoma, Nikki and Lothian are moving, reacting to the tension they can sense in their partners and the words they are speaking. She doesn't look, but she takes a measure of comfort in knowing that they are paying attention. They deserve to know this too, after all.

"Are you ready to make that promise?" asks Jodi. Hesitant. Hopeful.

"Do you one better," says Tacoma, each word like a stitch torn out of her tongue. "I'll … tell you."

Jodi doesn't start. She barely even seems to breathe. She simply sits there, very still, and then when this information has ceased to stun her she puts Tacoma down on the desk in front of her and clasps her hands tightly in her lap.

"Can I ask why?"

Keep pretending to breathe. It's fine. She is fine. She is a disembodied head about to destroy the only thing that makes being a disembodied head okay, and she is absolutely fine.

"Because you deserve to know," says Tacoma. "And – because I need you to know."

She hates that her voice caught like that. She hates so many things, but right now she hates that most of all.

Jodi's face is still almost motionless. She must be able to feel this, although Tacoma would be impressed if even she knew how to interpret it, but still. She just doesn't move.

"Okay," she says. "I'm listening."

Tacoma closes her eyes for a moment. Nikki is scraping her claws together with nerves; Lothian is twittering to himself, so high she can barely hear it. TV downstairs. A loud, determined bird outside.

She is breathing. She is fine.

"It's my fault," she says. Her voice sounds so normal that it seems obscene. "Before the avalanche, I … it was me, Jodi. I killed Ash and Helen, and I destroyed your leg."

Seven years ago, Tacoma and the child who was not yet Jodi but who had also never really been anyone else hiked through the Silverblacks, the mountains over which Ho-oh once flew away and never returned. It was slow. The paths that they let kid trainers walk alone are safe, yes, but not easy to walk, and Tacoma and Nikki spent a lot of time waiting for Jodi. (Tacoma will call her this, even though it was not what she called her then. She remembers the way Jodi looked when she tried her old name with Nikki, and she never wants to make her feel like that again.) Still, they made it up from Ecruteak to Hawthorn eventually, and from there up to a cabin high up in the mountains, chasing rumours of noibat that for some reason Jodi couldn't let go of.

It was okay. She was so excited about sound, even then, kept chattering about the way some kinds of noivern could actually affect your nerves with their calls, and Tacoma thought it was more sweet than anything else. Besides, they had a few years, didn't they? There was time to indulge that kind of thing. And it wasn't like she didn't think Jodi could catch a noibat, if that's what she wanted. Pokémon liked her in a way that made Tacoma envious; many more wild pokémon came seeking her partnership than came for Tacoma, and very few of them wanted to fight her and test her strength, as they did for everyone else. Empathy, Tacoma supposes. Even before she knew she was doing it, she just made everyone around her feel better.

She accepted one: a stantler faun with big eyes and not even the slightest nubs of those hypnotic horns. Where's your mum, she asked, when he poked his head around a tree trunk. And when no answer was forthcoming, Jodi said well, you better come with us, I guess. You like the name Ash?

He would probably have lived longer had he stayed in the woods near Ecruteak. On their way back down to Ecruteak for the next leg of the journey – Olivine, said Jodi, I wanna see the sea at least once in my life – they walked along a clifftop path, on the lip of a great ravine carved out by a glacier or a river or just the cracking of the planet as it shrugged its shoulders. Snow-streaked stone on their right, blackened in places by a few tenacious pines; to their left, a tall, strong fence (this was, after all, the path that kid trainers took) – and then nothing at all for what looked like a mile or more, all the way across to the flank of another mountain.

And that ravine. Tacoma looked once, and then stayed on the other side of the path, trying to pretend she wasn't afraid. But how could she not be? It just … kept going, so deep it faded beyond all sight. If you jumped off, she thought, you would have forgotten what the ground even looked like by the time you finally hit it.

Staying on the other side of the path, though, you could almost forget it, and just enjoy the acoustics. Both of them had found out on the outward journey that if you shouted loud enough, it could echo through these valleys like a gunshot, and being twelve, this was something that they took full advantage of. Why wouldn't they? It was so bright up here, and the air was so cold; everything felt alien and alive and almost unbearably vivid. Tacoma looked at Nikki at her side – still her only partner, after four months; she didn't feel ready yet – and at Jodi too, just about keeping up with the three excitable young pokémon that kept bouncing around her like dogs waiting for a ball to be thrown, and the knowledge rose within her that this was only the start. Okay, the bad winter had delayed them a year – but still, just look where they'd got themselves already! Look at the size of those mountains, at the actual dragon-type following Jodi around! And by the time they got back down south, summer would have started properly, and Olivine would be a picture from a postcard, all smoke-white sand and glittering water, and hell, maybe she'd even be ready to try a Gym at that point. Or maybe not. That would be fine too. Everything would.

Echo, she shouted, out of the sheer delight of being alive and having lungs, and she and Jodi both laughed as the mountains shouted it back in a huge, hollow voice. And Jodi kept laughing for a moment, but Tacoma heard a distant crunch, a rumble, and then there was nothing to laugh at any more.

She froze. It wasn't the right thing to do; she should have shouted, should have called out to Jodi and pulled her away. But she froze, because she had shouted and now there was an avalanche and she could not quite process that these two events were connected; and she watched as Ash's ears pricked up, as Helen turned her head and Lothian tensed his wings, and she looked with them as the mountainside began to move.

It was so hard to see how it happened, from their angle. At first the ground seemed only to slide, like a lone piece of paper slipping free of a thicker sheaf, and then without warning it ballooned out of itself, ripping trees and snow and stones from the earth into a huge roaring mass that came down towards them as if the Silverblacks had tired of their shouting and laughter and wanted to smash them straight back down into silence.

Tacoma ran, of course. She could see the edge of the landslide; there was a place where a promontory blocked its progress, funnelled it towards one specific point on the clifftop, and something deeper than thoughts rose within her to say that if she could just make fifty feet she would (probably) be fine. Only when she got there did she remember that her friend wasn't going to be able to make those fifty feet.

She looked back. Saw the huge fist of ice and stone, so close now it seemed like a second sky of dirty cloud beneath the first. Saw Jodi too, running weakly through its shadow.

It could only end one way. Except it didn't, because just then Lothian made the impossible choice and decided which of the other three he was going to save, and he leaped at Jodi's back and the ice roared past and the world was completely white with flying snow and the noise became so loud that it was no longer a sound but a feeling in Tacoma's bones.

Nikki pushed her against the side of the promontory, hugged her tight with her armoured back against the screaming clouds. Tacoma stayed there for what felt like forever, until the ice mist began to settle, and then took her face away purple with bruises.

She pushed Nikki back, clumps of snow falling from her arms. The world seemed shattered; it took her a moment to realise that the lenses of her sunglasses had broken. She pulled them off, squinted through the blinding light – and there she was. Jodi, lying there at the foot of a new hill of icebound debris, one leg bent unnaturally over her back and the other nowhere to be seen.

Tacoma stared. Jodi stared back.

Her face was the same colour as the snow blanketing her hair and coat. Her eyes were so wide that Tacoma was half afraid they would fall out.

She tried to speak, but when she opened her mouth nothing came out but a soft, pained eep.

"I'll call the ranger station," said Tacoma, as Nikki and Lothian started to dig and the panic began to explode all over again in her mind, and sprinted back down the path towards the lodge and the radio that they had been sure they wouldn't need when they set off that morning. Because this was a safe trail. Because this was the place where they let kid trainers wander around in search of alpine pokémon.

It was almost okay. One of Jodi's legs healed. It's just that the other one had to be put back together again, repeatedly, for several years, and also that Helen and Ash fucking died.

Jodi clutches her hands close to her chest, curled inwards against her breastbone. Her eyes, and the link, are full of hurt.

Tacoma waits for her judgement, utterly spent. She feels as if she just ran a marathon; her nerves are gone, her fear blown out. It has been said, after all this time, and all that's left is to see what punishment she gets.

"Oh, Tacoma," breathes Jodi. "You've – I mean, all this time?"

She nods.

"Nobody told you?"

"Told me?"

As quickly as it departed, the fear returns: told her what? Told her what, exactly? Jodi is afraid too now; she bites her lip, and Tacoma sees a little bead of blood on her tooth.

"About the tyranitar," she says softly. "It … there was a pupitar, waiting underground. Must have been there for longer than the ranger network was set up, because nobody knew, you know? That's why they said the trail was safe. Except it was there, and it – well, it came out of its chrysalis."

Everyone's read that particular Pokédex entry; every kid trainer dreams of being partnered to that kind of power. When larvitar reach a certain age, amass a certain energy, they bury themselves and let the rock harden around them. If nobody disturbs them, they might not move until a year later, or five or ten or more, when they will explode back out of their shells as one of the most formidable alpine predators in the world.

If one were to emerge halfway up a mountain, as two children walked by beneath …

"No," says Tacoma. "No, that's not – how the fuck can you sit there and lie to me like that?"

"I'm not―"

"Yes, you are!" Some small part of her tells her to keep her voice down, to avoid drawing the attention of Jodi's family, but it cannot be heard over the roaring of the avalanche inside her. "I know what happened, Jodi! I – I fucking saw it―"

"Tacoma, please," says Jodi, leaning forward. "I would never lie to you―"

"Then the ranger lied!" That could happen, couldn't it? Yes. Someone sees what happened, sees two traumatised kids who don't need any more trouble in their lives, decides to try and spare their feelings. Yes, that has to be it, because if it wasn't Tacoma then that's the last seven years gone, that's everything that makes her Tacoma Spearing atomised in one thermonuclear instant, and who the hell is even left if you take this away? "The ranger lied, because he didn't want us to know. But I saw, Jodi. I yelled, and then it fell. That's what happened."

"Please don't shout, Tacoma," says Jodi, her voice infuriatingly quiet. Over her shoulder, Nikki is shifting on her feet, trying to work out whether to intervene; for one terrible second, Tacoma imagines her claws descending on Jodi's shoulder, turning her throat into a red mess and finishing the job that Tacoma started seven years ago, and maybe it's that or maybe it's Jodi, tears in her eyes, or maybe it's Lothian twittering and trying to get her attention so he can help, or maybe it's all of these things, pounding on her head like a peasant mob battering down the doors of a manor to beat the lord to death with sticks, but Tacoma feels the shadows surging around her and she cannot stay here one single bloody second longer and in an instant she is gone.

It can't be.

It just can't be.

Tacoma thinks she might never come out of here again. Why should she? It's quiet. No surprises down here among the graves. This place is cut from the cloth of her own mind, after all. Nothing here will contradict what she knows of the past.

Jodi's wrong. She's not lying; Tacoma believes her when she says she wouldn't do that to her. But she's wrong. She has to be. Tacoma knows who she is: she's the girl who killed two young pokémon, who broke her friend's leg so badly she would never walk unaided again.

She paces for a while, unable to dispel the frenetic, directionless fear rattling against the sides of her chest, then turns with a sudden sharp movement and drives her fist into her sarcophagus. It feels exactly the way she thought it would. She does it again, and again, until there are red smears across the lettering, and then she screams and kicks it and falls without caring onto the tiles, hunched and clutching at her head.

How could the ranger lie? Jodi is psychic. Even before she got her training, you couldn't even try to deceive her without her calling you out on it. He would have had to tell her what he believed to be the truth.

They'd played with the echo before. Several times. And there was no landslide then.

Shit.

She wipes her hand across her face, tastes the salt of blood and tears. Tacoma is the smart one, right? And she knows a winning argument when she sees it.

Someone touches her shoulder.

"I'm sorry," says Jodi. "I really couldn't let you run away this time."

Tacoma looks up, certain she must be hallucinating – but it's her, kneeling at her side.

"What the … Jodi?"

"Full projection," she explains. "It's, um, please don't tell anyone I did this, because the strain will actually make my heart explode in about six minutes and I had to sign something at uni to say I'd never do it outside the psi labs, but it's basically like telepathy, except instead of just a message I'm sending my entire mind into yours." She tugs gently on Tacoma's arm. "C'mon."

Tacoma lets herself be pulled up, too overcome by the feeling of Jodi's actual hand on her own actual arm to resist. Here. Jodi is here, in the tower.

"Here," says Jodi, sitting her down on the sarcophagus. "Better than the floor."

She sits next to her, head level with Tacoma's shoulder, and holds her hand, heedless of the blood that oozes over her fingers. Tacoma can do nothing but sit there and hold it back. It's been so long. She never knew how far a week and a half could stretch until she had to spend it without any human contact.

"This is where you live now, huh," says Jodi, looking around at the green tiles and purple flames. "Did you do the ghost fires yourself?"

"Yeah."

"They're really pretty."

Tacoma is crying again now, although she couldn't really tell you why.

"Thanks," she mumbles.

Jodi leans into her, making sure she can feel her their bodies touching. She knows, doesn't she? She knows exactly how much Tacoma misses this.

"It's okay," she says, putting her arm around her. "You know it was an accident, right? Even if it was you. Which it wasn't. And … I'm not gonna say I don't still think of them, but …" She swallows. "They're gone, Tacoma. You're still here. I have to hold onto you."

"You don't wanna do that."

"No, you don't want me to do that." Jodi sighs. "I didn't come here to fight. I just wanted to see if you were okay."

"Thanks," says Tacoma again. She isn't sure what else she can say. All her usual scripts, the bluff and bluster and asinine aggression, just won't cut it now. If the blame doesn't lie with her, then Tacoma Spearing as she knows her doesn't even exist.

"I know this won't fix anything," says Jodi. "I know that there's still gonna be a voice in your head telling you that everything was your fault. But I couldn't leave you."

"Why? Why can't you just leave me?"

Tacoma knows what answer she's going to get, but she has to ask. She cannot believe it unless Jodi says it aloud. Maybe she won't believe it even then.

"Well, you're an asshole, but I love you," says Jodi, squeezing as hard as she can. It isn't very hard. Apparently even her mental projection of herself is pretty puny. "When you're good, you're really bloody good."

Tacoma can't think of an answer that wouldn't start an argument. She bows her head and simply sits for a few seconds, hoping feebly that this moment never ends.

"I do need to ask you two questions," says Jodi. "Is that okay?" Slight nod. "All right. This blood? I'm a little bit worried …"

"Not cutting," says Tacoma flatly, showing her arm. "Wounds I had before I died don't bleed." She raises her hand, takes in her ruined knuckles for the first time. It isn't the first time she's split them, but it is the first time she's done it quite this badly. Like she drove her fist into a jar of jam and took it away as a sticky red mess. "New ones do, I guess."

"I'm sorry," says Jodi. "There's nothing to clean it with, or I'd …"

"I'll survive. Next question."

Jodi pauses for a moment, just long enough for Tacoma to feel bad, and then asks:

"Why did you tell me now?"

"'Cause you needed to know."

"Liar."

Ah. Of course. Tacoma sighs and looks away, into the darkness of the stairs down to the next floor.

"Wanted you to hate me," she says, ashamed even as the words leave her lips. "So you wouldn't get yourself killed breaking into the chapter house."

"Oh, Tacoma." The link seems sharper now, somehow clearer; maybe it's because Jodi's entire mind is in her head with her, but Tacoma feels her pain the way she imagines Jodi feels the pain of others, like a wound doubled onto herself. "Look, if you feel that strongly about it, I won't go, okay?"

This she wasn't expecting. Tacoma looks up, startled, but Jodi seems to mean it.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," says Jodi. "I'm not giving up, but I can't do this to you. Won't do it, even." She smiles. "So. I guess your plan kinda worked, in the end."

It seems almost impossible, but the evidence can't be denied. Tacoma, in defiance of everything still seething within her, smiles back.

"Yeah," she says. "I'm sorry. I picked the dumbest way possible to do it."

"You sure did," agrees Jodi. "It worked out in the end, though. And hey, I even got to see you again." She gestures vaguely at Tacoma. "I forgot how tall you are."

"I forgot how titchy you are."

Jodi makes a face.

"Didn't forget how mean you are, though."

"No one ever does." God, she's missed this. It's like everything has been undone, all the way back to the avalanche and beyond – even Jodi's leg; Tacoma realises now that she hasn't brought her cane here to the tower, that she actually knelt to help her earlier. "Where's your cane?"

"This isn't me, Tacoma," explains Jodi. "I'm lying on my bed with my alarm clock set and Lothian ready to wake me up. This is just my mind, wearing your memory of me." She stretches out both legs, wiggles her feet. "It's my body that needs a stick, not my psyche."

"Oh. Right."

Pause. Jodi smiles shyly.

"It's all your mind, honestly," she says. "Like … hang on a moment."

She closes her eyes, and when she opens them again Tacoma is struck by the feeling that something has changed, like a cloud passing in front of the sun. A moment later, a guitar begins to twang – and a familiar voice informs the world that she goes out walking after midnight.

"See?" The smile broadens into a grin. "You remember it, I can make it happen. For as long as I'm here, anyway."

Tacoma listens, on the verge of tears again. Jodi must remember too, to know what music to pull from Tacoma's mind.

"Of course, you still have the same taste in music as my mother," says Jodi, nudging her ribs. "But it's okay, I guess." And then, noticing the tears: "Hey, what's that for? I thought you liked Patsy Cline."

It isn't very funny, but it makes Tacoma smile.

"Sorry," she whispers. "I'm sort of a mess."

"Don't worry," says Jodi. "When that mountain fell on me I was kind of a mess too."

Tacoma wipes her eyes on the back of her good hand.

"Yeah," she says. "Guess you were."

They sit, listen to the song. Cline has a great voice. Surely even Jodi must appreciate that.

"I have an idea," says Jodi, getting up. "I think it might make you feel better."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." She turns lightly on one foot, holds out a hand. "I've got maybe two minutes left, and I don't know when or if I'm gonna be able to project like this again. So. May I have this dance, Miss Spearing?"

Tacoma blinks, surprised.

"You can't dance," she says, though of course this is the wrong thing to say. "You've never danced in your life."

Jodi shrugs.

"That's probably just gonna make it more entertaining," she says. "Two minutes, Tacoma. Last chance for either of us. Wanna try?"

Tacoma looks at her outstretched hand.

She feels like shit. Her knuckles are bleeding more and more with every movement of her fingers. She wants a sharp piece of metal to draw across her arm.

"Yeah," she says, taking Jodi's hand. "Yeah, I'd like that."

In two minutes, there will be no more music and no more hands to hold; in two minutes, Tacoma can be as violent and ugly as she wants. But until then, she is human again.

She really can't say no to that.

Chapter Text

JODI

Truly, Jodi cannot dance.

Still. It was worth it just to see Tacoma's face. There's only so long you can be serious before it starts grating your mind down to the bloody core, and Tacoma had been serious for far, far too long. So: some music, some dancing, or rather some stumbling around the tower as Tacoma led and Jodi tried her inadequate best to follow. Tacoma laughed then, with the tears and the blood still wet on her cheeks, and Jodi knew she was going to be okay even when the alarm clock rang and Jodi had to leave.

That's all it was, really. She just … had to be sure. And she still says it's worth it, even if she might actually be dying right now.

Jodi opens her eyes to the shrilling of the alarm, struggling for breath. Everything hurts – leg, head, chest; it feels as if most of her organs decided to take advantage of her absent mind to try and break out of her body. She can't breathe for some reason, and then she opens her mouth and realises her nose has bled and blocked her sinuses.

"Lothi," she wheezes, though not much sound actually makes it out. "Lothi …"

He is there, turning her head so the blood can run free, squeaking and dropping chocolate on the pillow. She tries to take it, fails, lies still again.

Six minutes, she realises, was probably a bit much to ask.

Lothian's humming intensifies, are you okay are you okay are you okay, and Jodi smiles.

"Actually feeling pretty good," she says, voice barely above a whisper. "Think she's all right."

The hum travels from bone to nerve, changing in timbre until it is an unmistakeable but what about you?

"Uh. Feel like I might die? But pretty good all the same."

A familiar soft whoosh, and Tacoma's face swirls into existence above the desk.

"Jesus," she says, staring. "Are you okay?"

Jodi gives her a thumbs-up.

"Trying to be," she mumbles. "Just gotta eat something."

The clock is still ringing. Tacoma scowls, and without Jodi quite catching how switches it off.

"Nikki," she says. "Sit her up, yeah?"

Clawed paws descend upon her shoulders, and the next thing Jodi knows she is being forcibly propped against the headboard. Nikki is not the gentlest nurse around, but at least she can lift her; Lothian struggles to get leverage if he isn't in the air.

"Oof," she gasps. "Thanks, Nikki."

"Should we get your parents?" asks Tacoma. "Lothian, go get―"

"No," says Jodi, shaking her head, fumbling for the tissue on her bedside cabinet. "No, don't."

"You need help―"

"It's my body," says Jodi, too drained to mask her irritation. "Might be busted, but let me deal with it myself."

Tacoma stares, mouth working silently, and bows her disc.

"Yeah," she says. "Sure."

Wonderful. There's all that effort Jodi put into cheering her up down the drain, then. But okay, it had to be said.

"Sorry," she mumbles, pressing the tissue against her nose. "I'm just tired."

"No, you're right," says Tacoma, without looking up. "You're right."

There is a conversation to be had here, but Jodi can't manage it right now. All she can do is sit and wait for the blood to clot and her head to stop spinning, and then finally she feels like she might be up to opening the chocolate bar. She drops it twice, but eventually she manages to make a little tear at one end, and after that the hard part is over.

Tacoma watches her the whole time. She probably doesn't mean to look this horrified, Jodi tells herself.

It's fine, anyway. Jodi gets that a lot.

"God," she sighs, wiping the sweat from her forehead. "Okay. Okay, next time I'm only gonna go for five minutes."

"There isn't gonna be a next time," says Tacoma. "Please. Don't do that again."

She doesn't say not for me. She doesn't have to.

"I'm pretty sure how I destroy my body is my own prerogative," replies Jodi. "Ouch. No. Sorry, I didn't mean …" She sighs again. "I'm really sorry. Can I have a minute?"

"Sure," says Tacoma, much too quickly. "Sure, as long as – as you need."

Jodi nods her thanks, closes her eyes. The dark beneath her eyelids seems to rush and roar, like the waterfalls thundering in the pitch black of the Mount Mortar caves. There seem to be voices in it, just a little too quiet for her to catch; she resists the temptation to try and listen. You pick up things, when you send your mind out of your body like that. Giving them an opportunity to follow you back in is not advisable.

Lothian puts another chocolate bar in her hand. She's going to need more than that – when she can walk, it will be time to raid the fridge again – but it'll do for now.

"Okay," she says, opening her eyes. "Okay. I'm all right."

Tacoma and Nikki share a look. It's so unexpected that Jodi almost laughs.

"You sure?" asks Tacoma.

"I mean, it's a relative thing, but like it's always a relative thing." Did that actually make any sense? Hard to be sure. Jodi's thoughts still haven't quite found their way back to their usual seats yet. "Anyway," she says. "Thank you for the dance lesson."

Tacoma goes a darker shade of purple.

"Um," she says. "Was my pleasure."

"Not sure when I'll get to put what I learned into practice, but you know. Glad I did it."

"Dork."

"Ah," says Jodi, with her best sententious nod. "You're insulting me. So. Guess you're feeling better?"

She hopes she hasn't asked too soon. Tacoma's face does close a little, but Jodi senses this is more out of habit than actual annoyance.

"I dunno," she says, voice serious. "I … I really liked that, Jodi. But. I still – I mean if I didn't …"

Jodi waits for her to finish, although she knows she won't.

"I know, Tacoma," she says, after a few seconds have passed. "But I'm glad you liked it. I liked it," she adds, and is rewarded with another spectral blush.

"Like I said," mutters Tacoma. "My pleasure."

"You dance much?"

"Not for a long time." Tacoma hesitates. "I … you are sure, right? About the tyranitar?"

"Yes."

"Right. Right, sorry, I don't – shouldn't doubt you."

She takes a breath. "It was good, though. Dancing. I'm – grateful."

It sounds like each word has to be pushed uphill before it makes it out her mouth. Pretty much what Jodi was expecting. The Patsy Cline and the dance was only ever meant to calm her down. And to make the most of an opportunity that might never come Jodi's way again, but the important thing is that it helped calm Tacoma down.

"It's okay to still be hung up on the avalanche thing," says Jodi. "Really. I mean it."

Everything about Tacoma's face and mind says she's about to argue.

"Yeah?" she asks, instead.

"Yeah," says Jodi. "If you wanna talk more about it …"

"No. I mean, yes. I mean – I dunno." Tacoma shudders, ripples spreading through her face as if through disturbed water. "What else is there to even say?"

"Well, um … sorry, but there is one thing."

"Yeah?"

Wary, guarded. Tacoma is calm, yes, but that could change. Jodi has to ask, though, and this is still probably the best time.

"I kinda – sorry if this is the wrong time – but I kinda need to know how you missed the news. 'Cause if no one told you, that's – something went really wrong, you know?"

Tacoma's lip twists.

"Yeah," she says. "Guess it did. I dunno, Jodi, I guess I just wasn't there when he said."

"But you never left." Jodi can see her in her mind's eye, through the haze of seven years and half a ton of painkillers: little Tacoma, tall even then but not as broad or strong, clinging to the chair by Jodi's bed like she was afraid someone would drag her away. "People kept saying you should go back to the Centre, but you didn't want to. I remember that. You lived in that hospital ward."

"The ranger came there?"

She says it like she really doesn't know. How is this even possible? She had to have been there. She had to.

"Yeah," says Jodi. "He did. Don't you remember?"

Tacoma shakes her head.

"No," she says. "I don't."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I think. Or …" One of those patent Tacoma scowls, like she thinks she could intimidate the past into revealing itself. "I dunno. Was he tall? Light brown hair?"

Jodi's own mental image of the ranger is a little shaky; she wasn't at her best when he and his colleagues flew in to rescue her, or when he visited her in hospital. But this seems broadly right to her.

"I think so, yeah."

Tacoma's frown deepens.

"I remember … I remember he visited," she says slowly. "I think. Dunno why. I guess I assumed to see if you were okay?"

"That's when he told us, though," says Jodi. "All of us. You, me, my parents. I'm sure of it."

Tacoma sighs.

"Maybe you're right," she says. "But I don't remember."

"How, though?" Jodi is pushing too hard now, she can tell, but it's so difficult to stop. She has to know how this happened, how someone like Tacoma ended up so convinced she was the bad guy. "Sorry. I guess … I guess maybe you forgot. Maybe you didn't want to know if it meant it wasn't your fault."

Tacoma snorts dismissively, but what she actually says is:

"Yeah, maybe. I think … I think I remember looking at the floor. Scared. Knew he knew it was my fault, and …" She sighs again. "I don't know whether I'm actually remembering this or just making it up," she says. "Can we leave it? For now?"

"Sure," agrees Jodi, relieved that they haven't started fighting again. "Sure."

"Not like it matters," says Tacoma. "Must've been a pretty dumb mistake, whatever it was."

The words sound like they're meant to hurt them both. Jodi ponders this one for a little while, trying to come up with an answer that both of them can accept, and settles in the end for something that responds to what Tacoma means, rather than what she says.

"You know if you carry something really heavy for a really long time, it's hard to straighten up again afterwards?" she asks.

Tacoma rolls her eyes.

"Jodi, I know where you're going with―"

"So yeah," she continues. "You thought you killed them and broke my leg for seven years, Tacoma. I don't think you should expect yourself to be able to put that down right away. But …" She shrugs. It's much harder than it should be to raise her shoulders, but it's the right gesture for the sentiment, and that means she has to make an effort. "Whether you want me or not, I'm gonna be right here to help you while you try."

Tacoma blinks the kind of blink that's probably hiding tears. Jodi is reminded of the last time she saw Tacoma crying, inside the tower, and isn't sure she manages to hide the little stab of pain it sends through her chest. It took everything she had to stay calm and soothing then, seeing Tacoma – actual Tacoma, in her actual body – in that awful place, looking so … defeated. She'd imagined what Tacoma's existence was like before, of course, but nothing could have prepared her for that.

"Thanks," she says. "I … God, are you sure? Are you seriously sure you wanna do this?"

The sound of her voice just breaks Jodi's heart.

"Yes," she says, smiling regardless. "Absolutely."

And though Jodi is absolutely certain that she isn't feeling it either, Tacoma smiles back.

Neither of them are okay. It's all right. They're here, together again after all this time, and though they don't even know what they're going to do with tomorrow when it comes they have that much at least. Nikki brings Tacoma over to the bed, and they sit there for a while the way they did when they were kids and small enough to both sprawl over it, listening to the radio. Sometimes they speak. Mostly they don't. Both of them need to rest, after everything.

After a while, Tacoma nudges Jodi with the edge of her disc and asks her if she'll go get something to eat. Jodi accuses her of acting like her mother in addition to sharing her musical taste; Tacoma laughs, albeit weakly, and says she won't ask again. So Jodi goes, Lothian following her with quick, nervous footsteps, and is caught in the kitchen by her father, who takes one look at her and orders her back up to bed immediately.

"What were you doing, Jodi?" he asks, plying her with bread and cheese and fruit. "You look like you died and someone dug you up again."

"Homework," Jodi lies. "I … wasn't in the right frame of mind. Sorry. Kinda messed up."

A sigh, aggressive, exasperated.

"I know your work's important to you, kiddo, and I want you to do well, but I can't help but feel that the weekend after Tacoma's funeral isn't the right time."

"I know," says Jodi, with unfeigned shame. "I know."

Her dad looks at her for a long few seconds, the crows' feet at the corners of his eyes crinkling in concern. He looks like he might say any number of things, but in the end he just tells her to eat and take a nap.

"Come down later, okay?" he says. "Because I'm going to have to tell your mother about this, and she's going to want to know you're all right."

"Sure, Dad," she replies. "I just need some rest."

He nods.

"I don't need to tell you to keep an eye on her, amigo," he says to Lothian, who puffs out his chest in a way that suggests he is the very best at keeping an eye on things in general and his partner in particular. "You too, Nikole."

Less of a visible reaction from her, though even weakened by fatigue Jodi's empathy can pick up on something that might be agreement. Her father waits for a response for a while, evidently not noticing the shift in her facial ridges, then turns away awkwardly and says he'll see Jodi in a bit.

Tacoma reappears as the door closes, unfolding from the rock in Nikki's claws like a complicated umbrella. Her face is unreadable; her mind, dark.

"He's right," she says. "And, uh, I'll be okay without you for a bit." Pause. "Promise?"

She clearly doesn't mean to sound so uncertain about it, so Jodi pretends not to have noticed and just says okay instead.

"Got to send Lothian out first, though," she adds. "I think we should still watch Nick, even if we're not breaking in."

"But what― no, fine, okay. Guess you're right."

That's as much resistance as she offers. Some corner has been turned here, Jodi realises. God. Tacoma probably wouldn't want to hear it, but she is so proud of her right now.

"What are you smiling about?"

"Nothing," says Jodi. Then, aware that this probably won't be enough: "Dancing."

That stops that line of enquiry pretty fast. Tacoma goes all stumbling and hesitant (and cute), and Jodi is able to send Lothian off without any further interruptions. He's much more reluctant this time, with his human looking so ill, but after making some enormously extravagant promises that neither she nor he really believe will be fulfilled, Jodi manages to get him out the window and flying off to Tacoma's house.

"Right," she says, after a protracted and kind of embarrassing struggle to get the window closed again. "Definitely got to sleep now."

"Yeah," says Tacoma, as she falls back onto her bed. "Talk later, Jodi."

Her attention never wavers. Right up until the moment she falls asleep, Jodi can feel it curling around her mind, as soft and dark and comforting as a summer night camped out on the trainer trails.

Jodi really isn't up to accessing Lothian's memories that night – not that she wants to just yet, anyway; she couldn't bear to put Tacoma through that. She comes down later, is told off and fussed over, and then wakes up at eight to her mother shaking her arm. Go to bed, chickadee, she says. Else I'm gonna be carrying you there.

The rest of the night is lost to her. In the morning, Lothian is back, though she has no memory of his return; at some point, he must have wedged himself artfully under the duvet with her, because when she wakes she has her arms wrapped around his angular shoulders.

"Huh," she says, blinking sleepily. "Missed me, did you?"

He clicks his nose at her and buries his head in the curve of her neck.

"Yeah, I know." She sighs. "I'm sorry, Lothi. I know you don't like to leave me."

A tingle in her palate: Lothian is declaring he won't do it again. They're probably going to have an argument about this later today, when they have to send him after Nick for a third time, but fine. No sense getting him upset now.

"Okay," she says, hugging him a little tighter. "Let's stick together for now, huh?"

Most pokémon don't like hugs – reasonable enough, when you consider the fact that they must feel like they are being captured by some big predator – but noivern have a habit of enfolding noibat in their wings, creating echo chambers so they can teach them the vocal signatures of the colony. They tend to keep doing it into adulthood, less to teach them than to signal to another noivern that they like them, and though Lothian has always been a little concerned that Jodi's wings seem to be missing a few vital components he accepts her hugs as somewhat clumsy attempts at the same behaviour.

It's always been a comfort. Helen would tolerate hugs, when Jodi was too young to know any better, but Ash never would. That the last surviving member of her team actually seeks them out is something rare and precious.

Lothian clicks his satisfaction at her answer and pulls his head back, his hug quota fulfilled. Jodi sits up and sees Tacoma on the desk, dark wisps of something fading away around her.

"Morning," she says, leaving it unmentioned. It was already obvious Tacoma has been practising her ghost powers; it's also obvious she doesn't want to talk about it yet. "You okay?"

Tacoma hovers on the edge of a lie for a moment, and then backs off.

"Not really," she admits. "Keep thinking about … everything."

Figures. Jodi takes a moment to think of a good response.

"I need to shave and stuff," she says. "Then I'm gonna go eat my parents out of house and home. Wanna come listen to the radio with me while I do it?"

Half-smile, hurt eyes.

"Yeah," says Tacoma. "That sounds pretty good."

And it is pretty good, honestly. Jodi's parents are working, and without school to get her up Ella sleeps late; the two of them have the kitchen to themselves, to listen to the oldies station that Tacoma likes and watch Lothian and Nikole argue wordlessly about who gets the last red apple.

They don't talk about Tacoma being dead, or about Nick, or about the capacity of ordinary people to kill their friends and neighbours over rocks. They don't talk about anything that cannot take place in a warm kitchen with snow on the windowsill and the smell of coffee in the air, and so when the phone starts to ring and Jodi goes out into the hall to answer it she does so without the slightest suspicion that anything might be amiss.

"Hello?"

"Hey. Is Ella there?"

Jodi doesn't recognise the voice, though that isn't unusual. She often struggles with recognising people on the phone; apparently it's an empath thing, a failure to identify a voice without the familiar psychic mindprint to go with it.

"I don't think she's up yet," she says. "Who's calling?"

"Charlie." Who on earth is that? Jodi knows pretty much everyone in town, and the only Charlie she can think of is Charlie Rackham, out in the Cedarshade development. But he's far too old for this to be him. "Charlotte Fay?" the voice clarifies, and suddenly Jodi gets it: Jessica's daughter. She was following her round at the wake, helping out.

She was also in the library that day, staring at Jodi while she went through the microfiche archives. And walking around town with Ella on Saturday.

Hm. There is something here, but Jodi can't quite see it yet.

"Okay," she says. "Can I take a message?"

"Oh. Um – hang on, is that – is that Jodi speaking?"

Jodi can't tell what that is in her voice, not without her empathy. It might be fear.

She really hopes it isn't.

"Yeah," she says, uncertainly. "Is something … can I help you?"

"Um, uh, no," stammers Charlie. "It's – it's fine, really. I – actually I guess you'd wanna know too? I mean – uh – sorry, I was gonna say, I saw – and I thought since she's been following the whole investigation thing she'd wanna know – and, um―"

"Slow down a minute," says Jodi, trying not to sound too defensive. "What's happened, exactly?"

"Uh … they just arrested him? Like Chief Wicke and Sergeant Winter, they came over with that – um, I mean they got him to come outside and open the garage, and there was like – apparently it was his car? They were looking for it? And―"

"Wait." Jodi can feel her pulse in her chest all of a sudden, like the slow rumble of an incipient landslide. "Wait, Charlotte – Charlie – who did they arrest?"

"Oh. Right. Um – like Nick. Annie's brother? Nick Wroth. Yeah."

The rumbling is louder now, so loud it cannot possibly be her heart. It sounds almost like the roaring she heard when her mother told her that Tacoma had died.

"Shit," she says, unthinking, and hears as if from a great distance a nervous laugh come down the line. "Sorry. I didn't mean to swear. I'll … I'll let Ella know you called, Charlie. Thank you."

"Oh, it's fine. I mean I was just going to say, you know, because – because I thought that – well, I mean …"

"Thank you, Charlie."

"Ah. Um, yeah. Cool. Uh … bye?"

"Goodbye."

Jodi puts the phone down without waiting to hear more, although the rumbling is by now so loud that she isn't sure she would hear it anyway, and walks back into the kitchen.

Lothian looks up sharply. Tacoma narrows her eyes.

"What's wrong?" she asks, suspicious, afraid, and Jodi tells her, and everything that they had shut out of their warm kitchen with the snow on the windowsill and the smell of coffee in the air piles back in again in an instant.

"Oh," says Tacoma, her voice cracking. "Oh, fuck."

He didn't do it. This is what Jodi keeps telling Tacoma, to try and reassure her. He didn't do it, and when the cops find all the evidence they'll come to that conclusion too. The fact that Jodi can't make herself believe this will happen doesn't do much for the strength of her argument.

They argue quietly, furiously, making sure their voices stay low enough to be concealed by the radio, and then when Tacoma's panic has blown itself out Jodi suggests diffidently that now might be the time to take a look at Lothian's memories.

"But you're not going, right?" asks Tacoma, the fear stealing back into her voice. "You won't actually – I mean you promised―"

"I did," agrees Jodi, although the way she remembers it she never actually made it a promise. "We're not gonna do anything that you don't want to, Tacoma. I just feel like we need to know as much as we can before we can decide what we are gonna do. You know?"

Tacoma is boiling over on the inside, all her anxiety sublimating into anger that rolls off her in thick waves like the heat from a funeral pyre. Jodi expects at least a little of it to show, but all Tacoma does is nod.

"Yeah," she says, with a certain unconvincing calm. "I guess that's … I hate that you're always right," she adds, a little of the anger breaking free.

"It doesn't always feel so great for me, either."

"What?"

Jodi shakes her head.

"Never mind. C'mon, let's go upstairs. Ella will probably be down soon anyway."

Back in her room, tissues and chocolate at the ready, Jodi climbs stiffly back onto her bed – she's getting a little sick of it, honestly; she seems to have spent half her waking life this week lying down here – and sets up with Lothian. She puts her hands on his temples, feels him send the required vibes buzzing down her arms, and―

in the eyedark I must use the CLICK and wall and CLICK and oddbat and CLICK and colony of metalthings scattering CLICK sounds all tumblewise on their clustered sphereselves and I am very patient, am goodbat, CLICK and oh? oh? someone else is CLICK and CLICK and it is littlebat! fluttering away scared of me HELLO but it does not want to play and―

Forward, the staccato bursts of sound that make up Lothian's night exploding all around her so fast that the world is one huge silvery firework; nothing changes but for littlebat and featherbat, out to hunt but driven away by the presence of a dragon on the rooftops, and then―

door closing and CLICK and oddbat in the street, crawling all biped (balance! how!) with CLICK lightningape behind, foot drags pain slow would be easy fight not fruit but sometimes meat good for growing babybat CLICK oddbat and metalthings hiding in eyedark but CLICK lightningape smells pauses CLICK oddbat in street I know sounds: come on too cold to be playing silly buggers like this CLICK lightningape follows ah partner! I have partner in homenest worried but swirlghost and bignik there so but wait CLICK another oddbat, tiny little featherbat riding so tiny! HELLO but it is not listening―

She cannot pull herself away, but that's what Lothian's for; he knows what needs to be done by the movements of her mind and switches to vibration three immediately, disrupting, cancelling, gently sliding her out of his skull and back into hers.

"Augh," she mumbles, wiping blood off her lip. "God …"

The room comes slowly into focus, Ella's painting and the shelves of books swimming through one another until they find their places on the walls.

"You okay?"

Tacoma's voice.

"Sure," says Jodi.

"Liar."

"Yeah, okay. You got me."

She sits up, stiff and painful, and starts to fumble open the chocolate bar. She's going to need more snacks soon. Maybe some dried fruit this time. Jodi likes chocolate, but she feels like she's eaten half a cacao tree this past week, and she could use a change.

Three sets of eyes on her face: Nikole's red glare, Lothian's anxious yellow gaze, Tacoma's opaque green lozenges. Jodi ignores them as best she can, eats, and settles back against the headboard.

"He found it," she says. "The chapter house, I mean. It's kinda difficult to tell from the memory 'cause it's all in echolocation, but … I think it's in the store."

She closes her eyes, sees again the strange shadow world of Lothian's ears open in the dark beneath her eyelids. It isn't what it's really like – Lothian doesn't experience this visually – but it's as close as her brain can get to the way his functions. Even that took years of working with him to achieve. Jodi is not a great telepath, and accessing sense-data your brain can't read is difficult even for those who are.

"Yeah," she says, watching silvery lines shimmer in the night, describing rooftops and walls. "From the sound of it … I think that's the florist's? Where Lucy Fisher works? So. Yeah. Around the corner there … that has to be the store."

"Nick knows that?" asks Tacoma. There is an urgency to her voice that makes Jodi want to offer her a hug, though right now she's certain she can't even get up. "He knows where it is?"

"Yeah. I think he does. And also – the reason he knows is because he saw some people leaving." She frowns at the echo-picture, trying to figure out who it is she's looking at, but it's hopeless. "I can't tell who from the memory, though. Except the first one. That thing behind him – I'm pretty sure that's an electivire. So that's Harry, I'm guessing."

"Right." The information seems to go in one ear and straight out the other; Tacoma's mind is still full of that first thought, casting a long, dark shadow over everything she's feeling. "So Nick knows, right? And he can do it? If we clear his name, he can do whatever it is he's planning?"

"I think so." Jodi pauses. "Wait. If we clear his name …?"

"If we had evidence," says Tacoma. "I mean, there has to be something in the chapter house―"

"Tacoma, I just promised you that I wasn't going to go there―"

"―and if we could tell someone―"

"Tacoma!" cries Jodi. "C'mon. Calm down a sec, please."

She reins herself in with a visible effort, her disc juddering as it slows.

"Right," she says. "Right, I just – Christ, Jodi, you know he'd hang for this. You know?"

"Yeah," says Jodi. "I know." She hesitates, wondering if she's supposed to ask just yet, but before she can decide Tacoma continues anyway.

"Right now all the evidence points to him," she says. "The car, the cabin – all that weird stuff he left in there, all the lies about being in Alola. None of that looks good. So …" She takes a breath. "Would your parents believe us if we told them?"

"Yes," replies Jodi, without a second's hesitation. "If you showed yourself to them, then they definitely would. But … you know they'd just go to the police, right? We can't ask them to break into the chapter house."

"Oh. Shit. Of course." Angry sigh. "Sam and Gabriella?"

"I think they might," says Jodi. "But I don't know if I can ask them to do that, Tacoma. You know how Sam and Nick investigated the chapter house, way back when? I think they both got found out, and that's why they had to leave town. If people found out that Sam was investigating again … well, I don't think they'd give her the option of leaving this time."

Tacoma's disc stands still for a moment.

"You think they'd kill her?" she asks.

"I do," says Jodi. "Maybe Gabbi, too. And I'm really sorry, Tacoma, I can't ask them to take that risk."

"No," says Tacoma, sullenly. "No. Guess you can't."

The silence feels like a living thing, some thorny monster sitting in the room with them and hissing its fury whenever anyone tries to speak. For a long time neither Jodi nor Tacoma can meet each other's eyes, busying themselves in picking fluff from Lothian's fur or in watching Nikki scratch dead skin from her armour, and then because it is her job to take on this burden Jodi steels herself and speaks.

"Okay," she says. "Tell me what you want, Tacoma. I'm not gonna do anything without you."

"Course you aren't," snaps Tacoma, her anxiety sublimating into anger. "Sorry. I mean. I mean, fuck." She moves her mouth as if she's grinding her teeth, although Jodi isn't sure that's a thing she can do any more. "Why is it … why?" Plaintive now, her mind setting thin, sour notes chiming through Jodi's own. "Why?"

Get up, Jodi tells herself. Hug her. But it's the same old story, chronic pain, mutant brain, and after the weekend she's had she just can't seem to make it off the bed.

"Because they've been doing this for years," she says, hoping her voice is enough. "They're the ones with all the power and we're just two kids. And that's never gonna be an easy match-up."

She doesn't mention that the last time two kids went after the chapter house, both ended up being run out of town. That feels like it would be an unhelpful thing to say, and she's sure Tacoma knows this anyway.

"I … have to clear Nick's name," says Tacoma. "I can't let him be … I can't. So. I guess I'm going after all. But you should―"

"If you go, I go."

"I can't die. You―"

"―will never forgive myself if I let you go alone." Jodi raises an eyebrow. "Besides. Nikki's tough, but you're gonna want someone with hands for this, Tacoma."

"Jodi―"

"Can't have it both ways, Tacoma. Either we're friends or we're not. And if we are, I'm not letting you go into the lion's den by yourself."

"Friends. Right." The jagged green slash of Tacoma's mouth twists like a scar under strain. "Uh … thanks, Jodi. I'm sorry it worked out like this."

"Hey, no need to talk like we've already lost," says Jodi, with an optimism she can't quite make herself feel. "If they had a meeting yesterday, they're probably not gonna have another one tonight, right? Even if they do have one, Harry and the others left by nine, so if we go later, it'll be fine. We'll be in and out before they even notice."

"You don't believe that."

Jodi's smile fades.

"No," she says. "I guess I don't. But … but I'm hoping it, anyway. Is that good enough for you?"

Tacoma laughs. It is not a very pleasant sound.

"Not sure," she says. "Guess it's gonna have to do."

It's simple, really. Any teenager worth their salt is good at sneaking out, and Jodi is still a teenager for a few more days yet; she takes a long nap in the afternoon, is appropriately sombre and withdrawn at dinner when her parents ask if she's heard about Nick, and then at one o'clock she wakes Lothian and Nikki and makes her way out of the house.

Simple. Most of the time, Jodi is annoyed at the way people look at the cane and underestimate her, but sometimes it plays to her advantage. She's been doing this for years at this point, and as far as she knows her parents have never even dreamed that she might be capable of such a thing. It's going to be a shame to finally tell them, when all this is over and Tacoma can safely reveal herself, although she also kind of wants to see the look on their faces when they realise.

Thinking about this is less uncomfortable than thinking about what they're about to do, but as they make the long walk to the store, following Lothian through the freezing dark, it gets harder and harder to keep it up.

Tacoma says nothing, of course. She doesn't have to (streaming from her mind: relief that Jodi is coming with her; fervent hope that she can save Nick; shame at making Jodi promise not to come and then dragging her here anyway; fear that Jodi and Nikki and Lothian will die; a vast and pitiless anger at the world in which any of this is a thing that can happen), but Jodi can't help but feel it would be nice if she did. The silence is making this much creepier than it has to be.

Lothian hoots softly, and a moment later something buzzes at the base of Jodi's neck: stop, he says, we're here.

"This is it," she says, squinting ferociously through the dark and not seeing much except a vague impression of something big in front of her. "Apparently."

I see it. Tacoma's voice is clipped, curt. Jodi looks around instinctively, and sees a glowing purple crack in the surface of the night, gleaming dully on Nikki's claws. What's going on inside that rock? Don't need light to see, if I concentrate. And …

Jodi catches a glimpse of indistinct movement out of the corner of her eye, and a moment later, something clicks.

Like turning your alarm off, says Tacoma. You know what the Pokédex said. Beat up a guy with his own shadow.

Jodi blinks. She was expecting to have to get Lothian to do this, honestly. He can scream a door off its hinges, or – with a little more time – vibrate the bolt in a lock till it shears in two. Usually he just does this to follow Jodi into rooms he's been shut out of, and so it's something she tries to discourage, but she's always figured she might have a use for it some day.

"You …?"

Unlocked it. The crack glows brighter for a moment, fades again. Not hard. Shoved a shadow in and twisted.

"You can do that?"

Yeah. Can we just get inside?

"Right, sorry." Jodi pats the door until she finds the handle, pushes it open and steps aside to let Lothian take point. He gives a vibrato all clear, Jodi passes the message on to Tacoma, and the next thing she knows, she's shutting the door behind her.

They did it. They actually broke in.

Jodi takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly through her nose. She has done a fair few things in her life that are technically illegal: underage drinking, some trespass, a couple of experiments with drugs during her first year at uni. But this is the first time she's done something whose consequences hang over her in quite this way. If she's caught … well, okay, she might just get murdered by secretive cultists, but even if she isn't, things won't ever be the same again. This is Mahogany, after all. It's a town with a long and very invasive memory.

Bloody hell. At least it's warmer in here..

"Okay," she whispers, although she isn't sure Sarah or Roy would ever be able to hear from up in the flat. "Let me get the torch―"

No, says Tacoma. Not yet. The glow intensifies again. Windows. No curtains. Someone could see the light.

"Okay. Where are we?"

Corridor behind the shop floor, I think. Trying to remember if Everett ever said anything …

"It's fine." Jodi reaches out into the dark and finds Lothian's ear with her fingertips. "Lothi? Time to do what we talked about."

She hears an affirmative hum, and the scratching of claws on floorboards as he makes his way down the passage. The plan was always to avoid going upstairs, if they could; the chapter house might well be in Sarah's flat, or even be the flat, but sneaking in there is a completely different proposition to skulking around on the lower level. Before they attempt that, they need to make absolutely sure that there isn't a hidden room on the ground floor, or an entrance to a secret basement.

Fortunately, you can't hide a room from Lothian and his sonar. If there's a space behind a wall, he will find it. Jodi waits there in the dark, trying not to shift nervously on her feet; after a moment, her eyes adjust, and she starts to see the faint outline of a window behind the curtains. Not quite such a moonless night after all, it seems.

Jodi, says Tacoma.

"Yeah?"

I'm gonna come out of the rock.

"Okay."

She appreciates the warning. If Tacoma had just jumped out, in the middle of the dark and the silence, Jodi thinks her heart might have stopped.

"Right," says Tacoma, shaking out her disc. "Now I can see better. Lift me up a bit, Nikki?"

A soft grunt from somewhere in the shadows, and Tacoma rises as if by magic; without the glow of the crack, Jodi can't even see Nikki's claws.

"Yeah, I recognise this," mutters Tacoma, her eyes glowing a brighter shade of green. "Door to the shop floor. That way to the stockroom in the back. Up there" – she motions into the dark with her head – "that's Sarah's flat."

Jodi starts to fidget with the handle of her cane.

"Please don't remind me," she whispers. "I'm trying not to think about that."

"Oh. Right. Sorry." Tacoma withdraws a little, thread collapsing back into the rock. "It's, uh, my first time too. Breaking in someplace, I mean."

"I kinda hoped so."

Thin, nervous laugh.

"Yeah," says Tacoma. "Yeah."

Time ticks by. Jodi looks at her watch without thinking, only remembering that it was her old one that glowed in the dark when she finds herself unable to read the face. How long has it been? Probably only a minute or two, but it feels like hours. Where even is Lothian? She can't hear him any more. He would call if he was in trouble, right? Yes. Yes, he's just being stealthy, is all―

Found something, he announces, and Jodi starts so hard she almost trips over.

"You okay?"

"Fine," she says, trying to catch her balance against the wall. "Just Lothi. He's got something."

"Where?"

"Dunno. Hang on, let me …" Lothi? Come show me.

Finally, she can hear him again: there's the scratching, there's the familiar swish of his tail.

"Hey," she whispers, bending down and feeling around for his head. "Hey, Lothi."

He nudges her hand for a moment, broadcasting a soothing vibe, then turns and taps his tail against her leg.

"Okay," she says. "Lead the way."

Down the corridor. Around a corner – Jodi is glad of her cane; if she didn't have it to probe ahead before she takes a step she would have walked into the door frame – and into a space that feels in some indefinable way larger than the one she just left.

Nikki snorts, and Jodi steps carefully to one side to allow her through.

"Stockroom," says Tacoma. "Only window is on the other side of those shelves, I think, and it looks out onto the yard. So … you're okay to put the torch on, I guess."

"You guess?"

"Kinda hard to be sure. But, um, I think so?"

"Okay," says Jodi, trying hard to be calm, to put her empath training into practice and keep her own nerves and Tacoma's separate. "Here, um, here goes."

The light is dazzling, after so long in the dark. Jodi points it down at the floor and looks away, eyes watering; after a couple of seconds, she brings it up and her eyes down again, and sees rows of cans ahead of her. Corned beef, mostly. Some tomato soup. She has no desire to read the labels but they push their way into her head anyway.

Lothian looks up at her, pupils shrinking to pinpricks in the sudden light. Absolutely fearless. He's concerned, because his human is afraid, but he has no idea where her fear is coming from, no real reason to feel it himself.

"Hey, there you are," she says. "That's better. Why don't you show me what you've found?"

He squeaks quietly and stalks off between the shelves, past unopened crates and still-wrapped pallets. It's probably Everett's job to unpack this stuff, Jodi thinks, and immediately wishes she hadn't. She follows, doing her best to put that line of thought from her mind, and swings the torch back and forth across the shelves, trying to assemble the circles of visible room into a coherent whole. How big is this room? Hard to say, and she doesn't want to raise the torch too far and shine it out of the window by accident.

Lothian stops. She lifts the torch a little, and sees the gleam of metal shelf fittings.

"Here?"

Apparently so. Lothian rears up and grips the edge of the shelf, then drops back down to all fours.

"O-kay," says Jodi. "Do we have to move that?"

"Nikki can," offers Tacoma.

"I know, but that feels like it would be loud. You know?"

"Oh. Crap. Should've thought of that."

Jodi runs her fingers over the shelf, searching for some kind of catch. People come in and out of here all the time, right? There has to be an easy way to move this thing.

"Help me out here," she says. "Tacoma? Lothi? Some kind of secret switch or―?"

A floorboard creaks upstairs.

Tacoma's eyes meet Jodi's.

"The light!" she hisses. "The―"

"I know!" Jodi replies, fumbling frantically with the torch. "I'm trying, I keep missing the bloody―"

The creaking develops into footsteps. Where are the stairs? Are they heading for them? And where the hell is the switch for the torch―?

The footsteps stop.

Jodi wasn't sure it was possible, but this is actually more worrying than if they'd kept going.

Something dark crawls over the surface of the torch, and it clicks off. Jodi starts again and this time she does trip, but Nikki reaches out with unerring accuracy to catch her as she falls.

"Thank you," she mumbles, too busy listening to pay attention to her words, and then―

A toilet flushes, and the footsteps creak their way back across the ceiling as Sarah makes her way back to bed.

Silence. Jodi clicks the torch back on.

The corner of Tacoma's mouth twitches.

"Your face," she mutters, an unstable bolt of raw affect ricocheting around her mind, and whether it's her own emotion or just her empathy mirroring Tacoma's Jodi feels the same burst of hysterical laughter welling up inside her. For a couple of long and painful minutes she and Tacoma are stuck choking on twin giggling fits, shaky and breathless and terrified, and then at last it's over and Jodi can gulp down a frantic breath of air.

"Oh God," she gasps. "Oh God, I … I don't think I'm cut out for this."

"Me either." Tacoma swallows. "Christ. I thought she was gonna … I mean I guess I could have, uh …"

She can't seem to finish. Jodi is okay with this. She didn't really want to hear how that sentence ended.

"Look, I think I saw something anyway," Tacoma says quickly. "There. See?"

A little purple flame appears beneath a shelf just above Jodi's head. She looks up, sees a square cut into the metal.

"Right." She hesitates. "D'you, um … d'you think it's gonna be loud?"

"Jesus. Don't jinx it."

"Right."

Breathless pause. Lothian sweeps his tail back and forth impatiently; Nikki sniffs and starts eyeing up the food.

"So are you going to …?"

"Yeah," says Jodi. "Yeah, I am."

She presses the button. Something clicks once, then twice, and then on the third click the wall swings silently inwards and takes the shelf with it.

The four of them peer into the darkness beyond.

"Stairs," says Tacoma, eyes glowing again. "Going down."

She glances at Jodi.

"Ready?"

Jodi supposes she could lie about it, but Tacoma would never believe her.

"Nope," she says, stepping through the doorway and angling the torch down the stairwell. "But it's okay, I'll go first."

As she starts moving down, step by painful step, she can feel Tacoma's gratitude at her back, burning as warm and bright as a fireside in midwinter; and despite herself, despite the dark and the murderers and the almost-being-caught, despite everything that has gone wrong with the world so that this night can even happen, Jodi finds herself starting to smile.

The stairs go down for far longer than seems reasonable or even possible, the winter cold thickening again with the dark and the dust, and when they finally make it onto level ground again, the torchlight picks out huge slabs of time-smoothed stone beneath their feet.

"What is this place?" murmurs Jodi, flicking the torch around. The walls look just as ancient: pillars with their flutes worn out, the stones in between pushed half-out of position with the weight of the years and the town above. No decoration; the pillars have no capitals, just push straight into the ceiling. Aggressively functional. Someone built this corridor to last, and not much else.

"Dunno, but it's been here a while," says Tacoma. "Longer than the store has, for sure."

"Longer than Mahogany has?"

"Yeah. Probably." Nervous sort of smile. "Guess there really is a secret fortress down here after all."

"Yeah," agrees Jodi. "Just didn't really think there'd still be people hiding in it."

Lothian's ears swivel on his head, mapping the darkness. Jodi doesn't think the corridor is small enough for him to be scared – he's fine with houses, after all, and even cars as long as Jodi's with him – but something is bothering him. The dust? His nose is sensitive, even for a noivern; Jodi never takes him anywhere without also taking his special bat antihistamines. They're in her bag now, if he needs them, though it's always difficult to get him to take them without some fruit to hide them in.

She glances at Nikole, and sees her tense, one claw cupped around Tacoma's rock and the other held away from her side, ready to swing. Not just allergies, then. There's something else here. Something that the pokémon can sense.

"What is it, Lothi?" asks Jodi. "What's the matter?"

He scratches hesitantly at the floor for a moment, then sends a single vibe thrumming through her nervous system:

Big.

"What'd he say?" asks Tacoma. "You look, uh … well. What'd he say?"

"Big," says Jodi. "Just … big."

A brief pause, during which both of them try not to think about the possibility of a pokémon-based security system.

You could fit a tyranitar in here. Not one of the really big ones – the ceiling's pretty low – but given the starting point, that isn't really very much comfort.

"Maybe he meant this place," suggest Jodi. "Not, you know, something that lives here."

"Yeah," says Tacoma. "Maybe."

Jodi starts to fidget with her cane, rolling the handle between her fingers.

"We have Lothian and Nikki," says Tacoma, twisting uncomfortably on her thread. "Right?"

"Yeah," agrees Jodi. "We do."

When was the last time Nikki battled? Given what Tacoma said, Jodi can't imagine it was any time recently. And Lothian hasn't done more than scare people off for many years now; he didn't seek out human partnership for strength, as so many pokémon do, and so he hasn't needed Jodi to keep him in good battling form since her journey ended.

Can't back out now – and can't hang around being afraid, either; stand still too long and she might never move again. Before Tacoma can think of a response, Jodi starts to walk, and because she goes so too does Lothian, and Nikole behind her, padding along with a lightness of step that speaks to a readiness to pounce.

The corridor yawns ahead, dark and empty. Once or twice Jodi thinks she sees something, someone, but Lothian never reacts and so each time she tells herself it's nothing and carries on like everything is fine. Which it isn't. But you know.

God, she wishes she had something to put on the end of her cane. The dust muffles it a little, but the way it clicks on the stones is really starting to get to her. Not least because it's the sort of sound that carries in the still air, and somewhere in here is something that Lothian can only think to describe as big.

She never really noticed how ominous that word is before.

"How the hell has nobody found this already?" asks Tacoma, voice hushed. "This place is huge. And if it really is the fort, it has to be older than the water mains, right? So how didn't they find it when they dug those …"

"Not sure," says Jodi. "Maybe people have found it, and, um … you know."

She regrets saying this as soon as the words have left her mouth. So does Tacoma, although she doesn't actually say anything.

"Anyway," says Jodi. "Um, look, there's – crap, is that a fork?"

Worse: a crossroads. Jodi looks for footprints in the dust, but it looks like a lot of people have passed through here; there are a huge confusion of shapes and scuffs in the dirt, not all of which look like they were left by human shoes. Partners have come here too. Hopefully that means that the big thing isn't loose, whatever it is; Jodi doubts the pokémon would be too happy with some giant predator on the prowl.

Nikki sniffs the air, like she thinks she might be able to scent her way to their destination, but all that happens is that she sneezes.

"Bless you," says Jodi, trying to lighten the mood a little. "So. Lothian? What direction?" He cocks his head to one side, thinking, then looks back the way they came. "Yeah, okay, I'd like that too, but we can't turn back now. Which way is the big thing?"

He tenses, and she feels his no vibrating deep inside her.

"Lothi." She plants her cane, bends down as far as she can. "Lothi, listen, I know you're worried but you have to trust me, okay? We have to do this."

He fluffs up his mane and lashes his tail a little – but it's all just to make her wait; it's his prerogative as her partner to get snippy when she tries to do something like this. He concedes, as they both knew he would, and after some disconsolate squeaking flicks his ears forward again and slopes off down the right-hand path.

"Thank you," says Jodi, and gets a vibe in response that is the exact equivalent of a human harrumph.

It's not quite enough to make her smile, but she thinks about it, and given where they are and what they're doing that's more than she had any right to expect.

The footprints get thicker; the dust, thinner. In some places, the stones even look shiny, worn by decades (centuries?) of passing feet. They must be getting clo―

There's no warning whatsoever. The pain comes from nowhere, screaming out of the dark like a childhood nightmare, and cuts her legs out from under her in one savage motion. Her cane slips from her hand – the world spins – and she's lying on something warm and bony, clutching limply at her belly and trying breathlessly to scream.

"Jodi? Jodi, are you okay?"

Tacoma is spilling out of Nikki's claws, grown huge and shadowy with her panic. The bony thing wriggles beneath her, shifts her gently onto the stones, and then everything vanishes into a musky dark and the thin whine of Lothian's disrupting vibration cuts through the hailstorm in her skull.

Her training knows what to do, even if right now she doesn't. Jodi leans into the vibe, feels it echo and re-echo through her mind, and as the pain begins to fade remembers that she exists.

"Aah!" she gasps, trying to sit up and realising that the darkness is Lothian's wings. "What did they do to you?"

Lothian squeaks and rolls off her, clouds of dust rising all around him. Jodi barely even notices; the pain is fading, but it's still there, a hunger so deep it feels like her stomach has been scooped clean out of her abdomen.

"The big thing," she says, breathing hard. "It's – Tacoma, they're starving it. It's lost and alone and it's so hungry and―"

"Jodi," says Tacoma. She is still larger than she was, her fog stretched thin and wide into a disc half as large again as usual. "Jodi, what the hell is going on?"

Her fear is distant, drowned in the bigger emotion of the creature raging in the bowels of the chapter house. It is old – so old that even the sliver of its past Jodi is able to sense makes her head hurt – and it is as far from human as anything Jodi has ever encountered, but pain transcends species. And this thing is in a lot of pain. It's been trapped here for a long time, long enough that it barely notices its wounds, but it cannot forget the hunger.

Nor can Jodi, now. She's always hungry, but this is something else.

"I … there's something in here," she says. "The big thing Lothian mentioned? It's trapped somewhere in here. Being tortured, starved. God, it's so …" She stops, tries to take a deep breath, but her chest hurts too much for her to fill it properly. "It hurts so much," she whispers, holding her wrists close to her chest as if this might somehow dull the pain. "Like nails in my bones."

"Jodi," says Tacoma. She says it like she has no idea what to say, but it's okay; the feeling is there, glowing beneath the words like moonlight through curtains. Difficult to make out, through the pain of the big thing, but it's there. "Jodi, what the hell is going on?"

"I dunno." She hunches further over her aching joints. "We have to find out."

Lothian tugs on the sleeve of her coat, heedless of the dust that cakes his teeth. Jodi uncurls a little, lays a stiff hand on his neck.

"Thank you," she says. "You saved me. Again."

She feels him make some kind of response, but it's too hard to make out with all the interference.

"Sorry," she mumbles, smiling instead. "Can't get it right now." She brushes some dirt from his mane and looks up at Tacoma and Nikki, still watching her like they're afraid she might shatter into glass. "Um … Nikki?"

A snort, an outstretched claw, and Jodi is dragged back up onto her feet. Nikki holds her there until Lothian has given her back her cane, and then a moment longer, just in case Jodi falls – which, to be fair, she nearly does; her legs hurt as they haven't since the last surgery. But she stays upright, just about, and with an effort even manages to unhunch her shoulders.

"Okay," she says, wiping the sweat from her forehead. "Okay, we have to go."

"Just like that?" asks Tacoma. "C'mon. Seriously, Jodi, what the hell―?"

"We're close, Tacoma. Real close. And there's only one way we're gonna figure out what this is."

"I know, I just …" She shakes her disc furiously, shrinking back to normal size. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"No," replies Jodi. "Obviously not. But we're here, aren't we? And if there's anywhere in town we'll find something to clear Nick's name―"

"Yeah, I know," growls Tacoma. "I get it, Jodi. I'm the one who brought us down here―"

"Tacoma." Jodi wishes she could do more, but even standing is an effort right now, with the big thing's pain screaming in her veins. "We can't do this right now."

They almost fight about it. Even here, even now, they almost fight about it; Jodi doesn't need her empathy working properly to see Tacoma's fury. But they don't, of course; Tacoma gives in and turns away, glaring angrily into the dark.

"No," she mutters. "We can't."

Jodi isn't sure whether she'd welcome a hand on her thread right now. But she takes the risk, and at her touch Tacoma faces her again, and as their eyes meet a vast number of unspoken words pass them by, awaiting a better moment.

"Almost there," says Jodi softly. "I'm sorry I scared you."

"Thanks." It's not what Jodi was expecting to hear. From the look on Tacoma's face, it's not what she was expecting to say, either. "Let's just do this and get out of here, okay?"

"Yeah," says Jodi. "Let's." She takes her hand away and holds it out towards Lothian. "Can you get me my torch, please?"

He can. She thanks him, wipes the torch down on her coat, and points it back down the corridor.

One painful step forward, the big thing's wounds dragging at her flesh. Difficult, but manageable.

"You all right?" asks Tacoma.

"Sure," says Jodi. "C'mon."

Nobody believes her, not Tacoma or Lothian or Nikki or even herself, but they don't challenge her about it either, and the four of them move slowly onwards into the dark.

It isn't far now. Jodi knew it wouldn't be; her empathy's range is pretty limited, even for emotions as strong as this one. Just a little further, and the corridor merges with several others into a single broad hall.

She flicks the torch back and forth. At one end, the darkness recedes forever. At the other …

"Hold up," says Tacoma, her eyes burning green again. "It looks like the floor's busted."

"It's there," breathes Jodi, not quite hearing her. "Sleeping, but …"

She loses the sentence partway through, starts limping down the hall towards the hole.

"Wait!" hisses Tacoma. "Jodi? Jodi! God – Nikki, catch up with her!"

Lothian comes too, nose and ears twitching so fast now that they almost seem to blur in the air. Not much further to go. Jodi can see the hole better now, a huge rift in the floor stretching thirty feet or more across, and by the light of her torch she can make out strange shards jutting from its rim like pieces of glass from a broken window. Stone doesn't shatter like that, though. But is that even stone? Jodi moves the torch from the broken stone at the pit's edge to one of the shards and sees the light stick inside it, a perfect triangular slice of the beam standing there in midair.

"What the hell?" asks Tacoma. "That's not the floor, that's – that's the air."

"Space," says Jodi.

"Dimensions," says Tacoma, finishing the thought. "What Nick was monitoring …"

There are so many conclusions to draw and so few that seem to make sense. Jodi can see more of the shards now; they start to shine as she gets closer, the cone of light from the torch growing thin and moth-eaten as slivers of it stick in the fractured air.

And then, quite suddenly and without really knowing how, Jodi is right there on the edge, looking down, and at last she sees it.

The inside of the hole is as impossibly broken as the rim, sharp spurs of spacetime stabbing inwards and distorting her vision like warped glass, but it's not enough to hide the occupant. It fills the pit to the edges, its flanks and arms pierced in a thousand places by the crystalline knives that sprout from the walls, yellow ichor oozing from the rents in its black hide. As the torchlight scatters from spike to spike, Jodi sees first a tiny head, slumped with sleep or resignation, then skeletal arms, one buried up to the elbow in the broken spacetime and the other simply pierced through the wrist – and then at last the belly, split open down the middle as if by the blow of some cosmic axe. It gapes up at them like a mouth, and then Jodi sees the huge tombstone teeth at its edge and the forks of a massive tongue lolling from its corners like dying pythons and she realises that it is a mouth, that this creature's entire body is one single gaping thirty-foot mouth―

The head moves. Just a little twitch, as the light glued to the walls sneaks in beneath its horns, and then a sharp jerk as it snaps back on the bloated body, featureless blue eyes squinting up through the dazzling glare.

"Oh shit," breathes Tacoma. "Jodi? Jodi, I think we need to―"

It's like someone flipped a switch. One moment the big thing is startled, inquisitive – and the next it is suddenly, savagely mobile, wrenching uselessly at the shattered space pinning its arms in place, tongues rising up towards them and revealing great flabby pincers at the end, soft and wet and reeking of old meat, and its wounds bleed and Jodi's limbs seize up with phantom pain and it screams―

And they are gone, swept away in Nikki's arms while Lothian sprints after her with Jodi's cane in his mouth and the voice of the big thing echoes down the tunnel after them like exploding suns, like alien whales in Martian oceans, like nothing on earth that Jodi has ever heard or ever will again, and somewhere in the middle of the pain and the hunger and the noise she realises that they are completely and utterly out of their bloody depth.

Chapter Text

TACOMA

Looking back on it now, the escape has an unreal quality to it, like a 3AM nightmare considered over a lunchtime beer on Saturday afternoon. Tacoma isn't even sure how they got out, honestly. She remembers Nikki running, Lothian galloping strenuously at her side, unable to spread his wings; she remembers Jodi sealing the secret door, stumbling back out into the bitter Mahogany night. She remembers the slow, silent walk back to her house, scarcely able to breathe for fear they'd hear the roar again and look up to see the shadow of those noisome tongues against the stars, ready to snatch them up and draw them into that awful mouth.

She remembers the mouth most of all. Remembers seeing the outline of the beast's spine and ribs through the sickly blue flesh of its palate. No organs in there, no sense, no anything that matched what Tacoma knows of biology. Just a hunger that could swallow Mahogany whole.

If those jaws had closed on Tacoma, she has no doubt that she'd be dead all over again, for real this time. Not even a ghost is coming back from that. If they'd closed on Jodi …

She tries not to think about this, but of course it's all she can think about.

She remembers so much, so vividly. But back in Jodi's room, with no evidence of any of it but Jodi's missing torch (in the pit now, lost for ever) and the dust all over her clothes, it feels like none of it could have really happened at all. There's no such thing as nightmarish mouth-chested monsters, right? And there definitely isn't one trapped in a razored nest of shattered spacetime buried in the remains of a fifteen-hundred-year-old hill fort accessed through a secret door in the back room of her local fucking grocery store.

Right?

Jodi closes her bedroom door and leans against it, breathing hard. She looks at Tacoma.

Tacoma looks back.

"That happened," she says.

"Are you sure?" asks Tacoma.

"No." Jodi pulls off her gloves with trembling hands, though she fumbles and drops them before she can put them on the desk. "Or maybe … I mean it had to be real, right? I felt it. All that hunger." She touches her wrist, like the echo of the pain is still there. "My empathy doesn't work in dreams."

"Right." Pause. Should she …? Probably. "Hey, sit down," says Tacoma. "You look beat."

"Yeah," says Jodi. "You're right."

She shrugs off her coat and climbs stiffly onto her bed, Lothian going with her to help her along. He settles himself curled around her, his tail and head both draped over her lap, and she busies her hands brushing the dirt from his mane.

Nikki's probably dusty too, but unfortunately Tacoma's going to have to leave her to deal with that one herself. She'd like to soothe her – she can hear her pulse racing through the wall of her chest, right behind her head – but for the moment just staying here and not thinking about how Jodi could have been eaten is taking everything she's got.

"Well," says Jodi, chewing her lip. "I think … I think we know where the bodies go."

Tacoma nods; she's figured it out too. People going missing. A monster from another world. Jodi thought they were starving that thing, but now they've seen it Tacoma figures maybe that's just how it feels all the time; maybe it can't ever fill the emptiness in its impossible chest. And so many people disappear in these woods, and so few bodies are found.

"But then why did they put your body in the river?" asks Jodi. "I don't know what that thing's meant to eat, but I'm betting it'll take anything. They could've got rid of all the evidence right away."

Tacoma shakes her head.

"Would've been a waste," she says. "They'd just figured out Nick was onto them, right? Knew he was trying to do his thing with the spiritomb rock. And they know he and Con don't get on, right? You feed Con some evidence that the guy he hates most might've murdered his niece …"

"Oh my God." Jodi's jaw actually drops slightly. Tacoma has never seen that happen before – wasn't even sure it actually did, outside of books and TV. "They deliberately set him up?"

"Why not?"

"No reason, I guess." Jodi sighs. "I know people are awful, I shouldn't be surprised, I just … these are people we know, Tacoma. People like – God, Lothian saw Harry coming out of there, didn't he?" Lothian's ears twitch. "Nice people," she says, sadly. "People I thought – people I thought better of."

Tacoma isn't sure what to say; she hadn't even thought about that. Christ. Imagine that: Harry, smiling the way he does when he welcomes her off the train, standing around by that pit and talking to his friends about how it would be a criminal waste of a good corpse to throw Tacoma to the beast. Kill two birds with one stone, he'd say. Stop the rock reaching Nick – and stop Nick for good.

"Jesus," she says, and something in her voice must sound bad, because Nikki clutches her a little tighter when she hears it. "You're right."

"And that thing," murmurs Jodi, hardly listening. "I don't even know … I mean, I know there are weird pokémon out there, but―"

"That wasn't a pokémon," says Tacoma flatly. "The way that pit was fractured? With that thing stuck in it? I don't think that thing's from our dimension." She shudders, and can't even bring herself to feel ashamed about it. "You saw, right? How … empty it was?"

"I saw," says Jodi. "I saw."

Silence. The wind picks up outside, begins to moan and whine around the lampposts in the street.

"I don't know what to do," says Jodi, sounding close to tears. "Tacoma, I just … I don't know what to do any more."

Lothian whines and curls tighter around her. Tacoma just stares. This is Jodi, right? This is the girl who's carried her through all of this, who's never fazed by anything, who has psychic equanimity and the kind of courage Tacoma can only dream of. Sure, Tacoma has sensed her distress, through that psychic link – but Jodi's always had an answer, even if all she can say is let's watch TV for a bit, we'll think of something later.

She hates herself for thinking this. Jodi is human, isn't she? Human, and only a handful of days older than Tacoma. She can't be any more at home with all this.

But if Jodi wasn't so nice she'd say that this was an unhelpful kind of thought, right, so Tacoma tries to swallow it and focus on something more useful.

"Hey," she says. "Give me to Jodi, Nikki. Now," she adds, when Nikki hesitates, and listens to her sniff in irritation as she deposits Tacoma in Jodi's arms. "Jodi," she says, growing bigger, trying somehow to extrude some sort of misty arm to put around her. "It's gonna be okay."

"Is it?" Jodi shifts Tacoma into one hand so she can wipe her eyes. "The only way I can see this ending is everything stays the same. I don't think even my parents would believe me if I told them what I saw, and sure as hell Con won't. He thinks I'm insane anyway."

Her bitterness filters through the link, sharper and more acerbic than anything Tacoma has ever seen outside of a mirror.

"Who cares what Con thinks," she starts to say, but Jodi doesn't let her finish.

"Me," she says. "Because I'm an empath, Tacoma, and I don't get a choice about it. And because I'm pretty sure we can't take on the chapter house ourselves. Unless you have a plan?"

She says it in an angry sort of way that makes it clear she does not expect Tacoma to say yes. And sure enough, Tacoma doesn't – but she has something else to say instead.

"No, I don't," she tells her, looking up into her eyes. "But Nick did. And if he was looking for a way into the chapter house, he was ready to put it into action."

Jodi's eyes widen.

"What?"

"We have to speak to him," says Tacoma. "And we will, okay? Say you want to visit. Hell, they'll probably ask you to, since you're psychic and all. I'll think of some excuse. And then" (another of those fake inward breaths) "then you'll get the truth out of him. I know you will. You almost got it the other day, right?"

"Are you sure?" asks Jodi, with a kind of nervous self-doubt that reminds Tacoma of the way she took the news that she was beautiful.

"Of course you will," says Tacoma. "I'll be there too, yeah? We'll figure something out." She stretches her thread as far as it will go, trying to bring herself level with Jodi's eyeline. Can't quite reach, but whatever. Close enough. "We're not beaten," she says, and although even she can't say whether she believes this or not it sounds so good in her mouth, like something a real person would say. "You're not beaten," she adds. "Not yet."

A weak, embarrassed kind of smile.

"You have a lot of faith in me," says Jodi, wiping her eyes again. "Sweet of you."

"Yeah, well, you're pretty sweet yourself," retorts Tacoma, mock-mean to hide the fact that she's gone a deeper purple. "You, uh … deserve sweet things."

Now Jodi's blushing too. Part of Tacoma wants to just tear into the both of them for being such sentimental dorks, but a larger part is too awestruck and afraid of the fact that she did a good thing for once to dare ruin the moment.

"Thank you," she says, trying to figure out how to hug Tacoma without dropping her on Lothian's head and having to give up halfway. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't be giving up like that."

Tacoma snorts.

"You literally can't give up worse than I've done," she says, hoping it sounds like a joke and not just bitterness. "Look, it's … God, it's like quarter past two. Let's just go to bed, okay?

"That's probably the best idea either of us have come up with all night," says Jodi. "Right. Nikki is glaring like she wants you back, so―"

"Let her glare a minute," says Tacoma, giving up on the idea of a hug and just leaning into Jodi's shoulder instead. "She's gotta learn to share me sometime."

So they let her glare, and Lothian quietly pulls back and leaves them to it.

It's been a fuck of a bad night, all things considered, and tomorrow doesn't look like it's going to be much better, but Tacoma can't deny that this helps.

Knock knock.

"Jodi?"

Ella's voice. Sounds wrong, somehow.

Tacoma vanishes back into the rock and opens her window again, a sick dread in her heart. As usual, she was up first, watching fresh snow build up on Jodi's windowsill; it's past eleven now, but Jodi and the pokémon are still asleep. All that creeping around in the dark had to catch up with them eventually, Tacoma supposes.

Listening to Ella now, she has a horrible feeling that it might be about to catch up with them in another way, too.

"Jodi, uh … sorry, but it's kinda important."

The blanket nest shuffles and stirs.

"Ella?"

"Hi. Yeah. Um … the cops are here?"

Jodi sits up suddenly, wide awake. Her eyes do not leave Tacoma's rock.

"What?" she asks.

"The cops are here. They said it was about Tacoma."

Okay. Okay, maybe it's just a coincidence. Maybe they just need a psychic to have a chat with Nick.

Maybe.

Tacoma begins to pick her lips.

"O-kay," says Jodi, brows knitting together. "Um … tell them I'll be right down."

"Okay." Tacoma hears no footsteps: Ella's still there. "Everything's okay, isn't it?"

"Yes, Ella," says Jodi. "Everything's fine, I promise."

"Right. Right, cool, I'll – I'll go tell them."

"Thank you."

Tacoma waits to hear Ella go down the stairs, then sticks her head out.

"I'm coming," she says.

"Wasn't gonna try and stop you," replies Jodi. "Talk to Nikki, okay? I don't think we can take her."

They say these things easily, naturally, as if making plans to meet up for coffee later. As if it were all just a matter of logistics.

If there were anything left in Tacoma's stomach, she thinks she'd probably be sick.

Ten minutes later, they're both on their way downstairs, Nikki left unwillingly in Jodi's room and Lothian stalking on ahead. Tacoma can't actually see – she's back in Jodi's bag again – but she keeps the link open anyway, watching lipstick and tissues tumble over her vision while she strains her ears to hear who it is that's turned up.

"Hello, Jodi." Byrne Winter. Tacoma doesn't have much of an opinion about her; she's the first female cop in Mahogany and possibly all of north Johto, which is definitely some kind of milestone, but she also has a dragonair – and that has always struck Tacoma as suspicious. There's something annoyingly superior about people from the Blackthorn dragon clan. Like they think pure tribal blood and a big scaly partner make them better than you.

"Hi, Sergeant Winter," says Jodi. "Sergeant Brennan. What's this about?"

Simeon too, then. Him, Tacoma actively dislikes, if only because he ratted her out to her parents once when he caught her drinking stolen beer in one of the abandoned trailers in the Cedarshade development when she was fifteen.

"Tacoma," says Byrne. "Would you mind coming with us to the station? There are a couple things we need to discuss, in light of recent events."

"You mean Nick?"

"We really can't talk about it here," says Simeon. "I'll fill you in at the station."

"Okay," says Jodi. "Will this take long?"

"No. Shouldn't do."

"Fine. You hang on a sec, Ella, I'll be back in a minute."

"Okay," says Ella, nervously. "Sure."

The ride to the station is horribly, unnervingly quiet. The only one with any desire to break the silence is Lothian, who clicks occasionally and gets a telepathic answer from Jodi that Tacoma senses without properly hearing. Without being able to see any landmarks, she has no idea how long it takes; all she can be sure of is that she has far too much time to think.

Did that torch really fall in the pit? Or did someone see it? And if they did, if they knew – would the kind of person who could frame Nick for Tacoma's murder be ready to throw Jodi to the cops as well?

The entrance is in the store. Sarah knew what the chapter house was. Oh hi Jackie, Tacoma imagines her saying, phone against her ear and Jodi's torch in her hand. No, I'm afraid I'm calling on business. I think I might have had a break-in …

Tacoma runs out of skin tabs to pull off her lips, and starts probing the wounds on her hand instead.

After what seems like hours, during which time Tacoma successfully manages to make all of her knuckles start bleeding again, she finally hears the engine turn off and the doors open. Doors, the stamping off of snow from boots, words with Jackie – and then, just like Tacoma was afraid of, Con.

"Hello," he says, and from the reaction in Jodi's mind Tacoma knows his omission of her name is one hundred per cent deliberate. "I'll take it from here, Byrne."

"Chief Wicke," says Jodi. "What's this all about?"

"I'll explain. Can you leave Lothian out here?"

"What? Why?"

"Just do it," he says, cool as the snow outside. "Thank you."

A nervous little pause, then a sigh.

"Lothi? I need you to … yeah, I know. I know! But you have to, okay?"

"Caradoc and I will look after him," says Byrne, to the distinctive sound of a ball opening. "Won't we?"

Whatever response Caradoc has, it's silent. Figures. Dragonair aren't really known for their voices.

"Okay," says Jodi, and now there is just the faintest hint of a tremor in her voice. "Lothi? Please."

He hisses furiously, but apparently he agrees. Tacoma hears boots on tiled floors, a door closing, chairs being pulled up.

"Thank you for coming out this morning," says Con. "I appreciate it."

"Sure," says Jodi. "Are you going to tell me what this is all about now?"

The silence stretches out, like a knife being pulled slowly across a throat. Tacoma jams her fingernail deep into the broken skin over her knuckle, feels the slick hardness of her bones.

Someone puts something on the table. Jodi inhales sharply.

"Do you recognise this?" asks Con.

The torch. Tacoma knew it. They left the torch and Sarah found it and―

"If I'm not much mistaken, it belonged to your grandfather," he continues, and Tacoma pauses in her exploration of her wounds, startled. How on earth would Con know that? "And then to your mother, before she quit. Now, I think, it belongs to you."

Wait. That's not the torch.

Jodi's lighter? Tacoma didn't even know she had it on her last night. Did it fall from her pocket when Nikki grabbed her to run away?

"Do you know where this was found?"

She doesn't answer. Tacoma can't tell if she's afraid or just plain stubborn.

"I'm waiting," says Con. He still hasn't said Jodi's name even once. He knows, right? He knows exactly how much of his intent she can sense, and he's levering it against her.

Christ. What Tacoma wouldn't give to leap out of the stone now, cut the lights and scare him shitless with the blazing of her eyes in the dark.

"I don't know," says Jodi, at last. Her voice sounds strong, still. Somehow. "Are you going to tell me, or are we going to sit here all day and stare at each other?"

Con pauses for a moment before he answers, just long enough to indicate that he is not at all impressed.

"In the back room of the store," he says. "Sarah called us early this morning."

Fucking called it! Tacoma grimaces, senses the purple flames all around her flaring up with her anger. Goddamn Sarah and the goddamn chapter house. They knew Con hated Nick, and they know he doesn't like Jodi, either. And most of all, they know that he is a small-town cop right down to the core of his tedious little soul, and given a piece of evidence will pursue it doggedly to the obvious conclusion.

"Right," says Jodi. "What was it doing there?"

Even she's struggling to sound unafraid now. Not hard to see why. This is the kind of trouble that sticks, in Mahogany. Everyone knows everyone. And that means everyone feels entitled to judge.

Besides. Michelle and León would be disappointed, and considering the kind of relationship Jodi has with them, Tacoma feels like that would hurt her most of all.

"Well, I was hoping that you could tell me," says Con mildly. "I have to say, I was pretty surprised. You're not the type to do something like this."

Again, no answer. Now Jodi's fear is strong enough that Tacoma can sense it through the link, sour and dry as sloes.

Con sighs.

"Okay," he says. "Can I take a guess? You're not a thief. You've been looking into Tacoma's death, still. Even after you were warned against it. And for some reason, you thought that Sarah was connected, so you started poking around in the store."

Tacoma hears skin rubbing against something hard: Jodi, rolling the handle of her cane between her fingers. She's probably chewing her lip too, right. Can't blame her. Con is closer to the truth than she'd like.

"How d'you know I was warned?" asks Jodi warily.

"Because I asked Gabriella to talk to you," says Con. "It's my job to notice things."

Okay. Gabriella didn't actually do that though, did she? So not so close to the truth after all.

Small comfort, honestly. Tacoma does not like where this is going at all.

"So," he says. "I'm going to take that question as confirmation that I was right. I'm glad we're not denying things here." The rubbing sound gets faster, punctuated with clicks as Jodi's cane taps against the edge of the table. "You are going to stop this," Con says, quietly and clearly. "You are going to stop this now, and then I won't tell Sarah who this belongs to. Or your parents." Pause. "Do we have a deal?"

A clatter: Jodi's hand has slipped and her cane has fallen to the floor.

"Let me get that for you," says Con, over the scraping of the chairs, and then Tacoma hears a sharp intake of breath and feels Jodi's panic flood the connection, so hard and fast it's all she can do not to spring out of the rock to her defence. Two agonising seconds of silence pass – and then there's Jodi's voice, small and fearful:

"Please give me back my cane."

Tacoma never got it, before now. Never really understood what it was that Jodi's cane meant. But trapped in this rock, dependent on her partner or her friend to take her places, it all starts to make sense.

She isn't even sure if Jodi can crawl, if maybe she still isn't meant to put weight on her left knee. By holding her cane on the other side of the table, Con might as well have cut her hamstrings.

He leaves her hanging for a long moment. Tacoma imagines him looking at her, at the cane: oh, this old thing? and a smile like a shark's, vapid, dangerous. She clenches her bleeding fist hard, the last of the scabs cracking open again, and then just as she thinks she can't hold herself back any longer she hears him speak:

"Sure," he says. "And we'll both forget about this. Yes?"

The rustling of some quick, desperate movement.

"Yes," says Jodi fervently. "Yes. Okay. I'll just … I'll go home."

"That's a good idea," says Con seriously. "Don't let me catch you here again. I'm not going to cover for you twice."

He says it like he's doing her a favour. Like he actually believes this, like he did any of this by accident.

Strange feeling, wanting to hurt someone else as much as she wants to hurt herself, but Tacoma supposes there's a first time for everything.

"Right," says Jodi. "I'm sorry. I was stupid."

"No," says Tacoma fiercely, knowing she shouldn't distract her but too angry to hold her tongue. "Don't apologise to him!"

She doesn't get an answer, which strikes her as fair enough. If Jodi even hears her, she definitely has more important things on her mind right now.

"I get it," Con tells Jodi. "You're upset about your friend. We all make mistakes." He waits for her to make some kind response to his attempt at amicability, but none is forthcoming. "Okay," he says. "Okay, I don't see any reason to keep you here. You can go now."

Jodi says nothing. Tacoma listens to her breathing as they make their way back down the corridor to the lobby, and then to Lothian's anxious scratching and squeaking as he checks to see if his partner's okay. He doesn't sound convinced to Tacoma, but then she figures she probably doesn't know enough to tell for sure.

"Someone missed you," says Byrne. Jodi mumbles a response that Tacoma doesn't catch. "Sure," says Byrne. "Seems that way."

"All right." Con's voice again, making Tacoma's gut twist with hate. "Byrne can drop you back―"

"Actually, there's one thing I want to do before I go," says Jodi. She sounds better now, with her cane in her hand and her partner at her side. Probably Lothian could take Con and Moira, if it came to it. Maybe not Caradoc, but still. Hard not to feel a little better with a dragon in your corner. "I'd like to visit Nick."

"What?" Byrne sounds like she wasn't expecting that. "Jodi, I don't think that that's―"

"Hang on a moment," Con interrupts. "Why?"

This is Tacoma's cue, of course. Jodi's sweet, but you can't trust her to have a good story prepared.

"Because you want to see him for yourself," she says, raising her voice a little. "Because you want to know if it's true."

"Because I want to see for myself," repeats Jodi. "Because I want to know if it's … you know."

"Jodi," says Byrne. "I really don't―"

"No, let her."

"What?"

"You heard me," says Con. "Let her see his guilt."

Tacoma snorts.

"Jesus Christ," she mutters. "What circle of hell is it that cops go to when they die, again?"

"This will put an end to it," says Con. "You hear me, kid?"

"Yes," says Jodi. "I hear you, Chief Wicke."

There's that old steel in her voice again. Feels good to hear it, after that awful interview.

"Okay," says Byrne. "Right this way, Jodi."

Footsteps, slithering, scratching. Tacoma worries her busted knuckles and broods.

"Are you okay?" she asks, when the silence becomes unbearable. "Sorry for interrupting."

Jodi's answer comes a bit too fast for comfort.

It's okay. I'm okay. He just …

"I know. I heard."

I feel wrong, says Jodi, sounding like she did after her last talk with Con, way back at the start of all this, but before Tacoma can come up with any kind of answer Byrne tells her that she's going to have to leave Lothian out here and Jodi breaks off contact to argue with him again. Byrne then has to check her bag, and of course she asks about the rock, but fortunately it seems she doesn't recognise what it is and accepts Jodi's lie about focusing stones; Tacoma hears it all without really listening to it, suddenly overcome with nerves. Nick's right there. Her uncle is right there on the other side of a door, and why the hell did she even decide to come, Jodi doesn't need Tacoma's fear dragging her down―

Do you want to talk to him? asks Jodi.

"Oh," says Tacoma. "Um. No. No, it's … it's fine." She can't show him what she is. Even if he knows about spiritomb, she just can't do that to him. "I mean, I can, I guess, if – if you need me to … but I don't know if they have a security camera down here? So, uh, maybe it's not such a―"

It's okay, says Jodi, infuriatingly nice. It's okay. I won't make you do anything you're not ready for.

Tacoma Spearing, niece of the year. She picks anxiously at her knuckles, and waits with bated breath as Jodi makes her way down the passage.

"Ten minutes," says Byrne, opening a heavy metal door. "I hope you find what you need, Jodi."

"Thanks," says Jodi. "Okay."

The door closes. Only one set of footsteps now, and the click of a cane.

"Hi," says Jodi, after a while, and Tacoma knows they are no longer alone. "I came to visit."

For the longest time there's no answer at all, and then a sigh so painfully familiar it makes Tacoma's heart feel like it might split in two.

"Well," says Nick. "Not sure how you talked your way in here, Jodi, but here you are, I guess."

"Yeah," says Jodi. "Guess I am."

This is a different kind of silence to the one in the interview room. This is the silence of a grown man trying to find the courage to admit to a teenage girl that he's fucked up.

Assuming Nick thinks of Jodi as a girl, that is. Tacoma really hopes he of all people does, but after Con she can't help but be suspicious.

"I don't know how long they're gonna let me have, so I'll cut to the chase," she says. "I had Lothian tail you after I left on Saturday."

"What? You …" Nick breaks off, laughs hollowly to himself. "Christ. I knew you were smart. Don't know why I thought I'd talked you round."

"Call it insurance," says Jodi, and despite herself Tacoma has to smile. For once, Jodi's managed a halfway snappy retort. "I saw where the entrance is, Nick. And I … I went in there last night."

Pause. Tacoma wonders what she'd say, if she was Nick and some kid told her that she'd broken into the chapter house. She isn't sure she'd have any words. She definitely isn't surprised that Nick doesn't seem to.

"You saw it," he says.

It's not a question.

"Yeah," says Jodi. "We did. Me and Lothi and Nikki. And now, Nick … now I don't know what to do."

Tacoma can hear all of it in her voice: the pain of the beast, the two-in-the-morning despair, the second-hand nausea from Con, the panic of having her cane taken. And yet she's here, right? Still here, still asking all the right questions. Tacoma would have gone home to get drunk and hurt herself long ago.

"Okay," says Nick. Can he hear it too? Or is it just that he knows what it is to see that creature, that nobody can come away from it unchanged? "I don't think I can in good conscience keep hiding this stuff from you. So."

He doesn't finish the thought. Maybe there's a gesture there that Tacoma missed, or maybe that's just all there is. So what? So nothing. So.

"What is it?" asks Jodi.

Nick sighs.

"A visitor," he says. "I don't know, exactly. Some dimensions aren't well understood. Most of them, even. Don't know what kind of things might live there. But the general term for things like that – things that have come here from another world by accident – is a faller."

He sounds so professional. For the first time, Tacoma can imagine her uncle at the head of a lecture hall, notes in one hand and a stick of chalk in the other. Students at Yellowbrick can attend any lectures they want, provided they also attend those compulsory for their subject, but she's never gone to any of Nick's. It would have been weird. Like it is now.

"A faller," repeats Jodi, testing out the word. "So it wasn't them? They didn't … I don't know, summon it?"

"Don't think so. More a case of right place, right time. Wormhole – that's a portal – opens up, poor bastard falls in and gets stuck in the doorway, so to speak. Then some poorer bastard finds it, and well." Nick sighs again. "Doubt you of all people need telling that people do terrible things when they're afraid."

In the old days – way before Tacoma's time, back in the days of the feudal lords – they used to build temples when they found places that seemed holy, touched in some way by Ho-oh or Lugia. Where fire and flood are close to the surface of things, as Alistair once put it in one of his more interesting sermons. A pure spring. A cave of glow-worms. A forest grove. These things were built upon to keep them separate and divine.

What would the people who did things like that have done if they had found the monster? If they had found something connected to neither Ho-oh nor Lugia, some other power so vast and alien they could never hope to understand or conquer it?

Look at the monster. See the mouth, see that its whole body is shaped by hunger.

How do you worship a thing like that?

Tacoma thinks of a drifter with a movie star name snatched from her trailer, falling past the crystal spines towards that gaping chest. She thinks of the kid who ran away back when she and Jodi were in school. She thinks of hikers, of wanderers, of loners without anyone to mourn their passing.

"How long?" asks Jodi, her thoughts evidently on the same track.

"God knows," says Nick. "Longer than the town. Maybe it's why people settled here in the first place. Not like this place has much else to recommend it."

The sound of his voice makes Tacoma shift uneasily on her sarcophagus. Somehow this kind of sourness is much worse coming from someone other than her. Worse still from someone like Nick.

"Sorry," he says, after a brief and awkward silence. "I'm, uh. Not at my best right now."

"It's okay," says Jodi. "I don't think either of us is really doing great."

"Hah. Yeah. Guess not." Nick takes a deep, steadying breath. "Jodi, can I ask you something?"

"Okay," she says, wary. "What is it?"

"Why did you come here?"

Jodi hesitates. Tacoma wants to help, wants to come up with some kind of reason for her, but she can't seem to speak, all her breath trapped deep in her throat by some malignant force.

"I … know you had a plan," says Jodi. "And I can't let this continue."

"No," says Nick. "You think I'm going to ask a kid to do this? I know I've been irresponsible, but―"

"You called me an adult on Saturday, Nick. Can't have it both ways. And besides," she continues, before he can reply, "you started all this when you were my age, right? Back when Mae West died and you broke in yourself."

"How did you …?"

"Like you said," says Jodi shortly. "Smart. Do you want help or not?"

Tacoma stares into the dark so hard her eyes sting. She wants Nick to relent, because this is what Jodi wants; she wants Nick to refuse, because if she has to send Jodi back down into the chapter house she is going to smash her other hand too. She wants Nick to relent, because saving Mahogany is the right thing to do. She wants him to refuse, because this whole thing is terrible and she can't stand to be stuck in it a moment longer. She wants him to relent. She wants him to refuse. She wants―

"Yeah, okay," says Nick. He sounds tired, and ashamed. As he should be, honestly. As Tacoma is. "I want you to know I'd never ask if there was any other―"

"Well, there isn't," says Jodi. "Tell me, Nick. How do we end this?"

"Close the wormhole," he replies. "That's what I've been doing all this time. Whole reason I went into dimensional studies was to find a way to get rid of that thing."

There seems to be something hard gripping the inside of Tacoma's chest. Nick's a hero after all. Ten years – more than ten, even – of working secretly against the chapter house and its murderous inhabitants. Collecting materials and knowledge, biding his time until he was ready to drive his lance directly into his opponent's heart.

Tacoma knows there's a gap between the way kids see adults and the way adults really are. She knows there's no such thing as heroes, only people who are less defeated than the rest.

Still. Her uncle has dedicated his life to defeating this evil. That's something to be proud of, at least.

"Took a long time," he's explaining, slipping deeper into lecturer mode. "Lot of trial and error, too. Most of my colleagues are interested in how we might open wormholes, not close them. For a while I investigated ghost-types – dusknoir can move on the shadow plane, spiritomb contain a small dimension inside them. That, uh … that's why my contact sent me that rock. It's inert, see – someone found a way to seal it off, stop the ghosts from coming out. The Ghost Studies people thought it was something to do with taking the lead spirit out, somehow, but―"

He stops. Just like that. Tacoma knows this kind of stop; it's the kind you make when you suddenly realise that your cleverness has run away with you, and you have for the last five minutes been so focused on your idea that you have forgotten to feel the emotions you were meant to.

Faced with that, she almost doesn't even notice that she's finally learned why the rock swallowed her up in the first place.

"Doesn't matter," he says, his disgust oozing through his words like mud trickling into shoes. "I thought I could learn something from it and I was wrong. So I moved onto the next thing, and I forgot I'd asked my contact in Ghost Studies if I could study the rock. I wasn't expecting him to send it to me, I really wasn't."

It's her, isn't it? He hasn't mentioned her, but of course that's what it is. He wants to tell Jodi the truth about her dead friend, confess his sins in the hope it might buy him some kind of redemption.

God. Maybe fucked-up just runs in the family.

"I'm not gone," she whispers, picking her knuckles. "I'm sorry …"

Something warm and bright begins to glow inside her, fighting the hardness gripping her chest. Jodi must have heard her. That's pretty bloody embarrassing, really, but not so much she's going to argue with her if she wants to use her psionics to help out.

"I'm sorry," says Jodi. Tacoma thinks she's talking to her for a second, and is faintly surprised to hear Nick answer.

"Yeah, so am I, Jodi. So am I." He speaks quickly, viciously, then stops. When he starts again, his voice is kinder and more measured. "Look, it's over now. What I was trying to get at was that I did find a way, in the end. When I went to Alola – I really did do that, by the way, just not when I said I did – I got the last of what I needed from the experts there. It's the world capital for extradimensional research."

"I didn't know that."

"Not a lot of people do. But there was one researcher there whose paper I'd read, and … well, the specifics don't matter. I came back, set up shop close enough to Mahogany to monitor the wormhole but not so close that the chapter house would find out and come for me, and built myself a machine for closing it."

This is great news, it really is. It's just that Tacoma suspects that making use of it is going to involve breaking into the chapter house. And maybe, maybe, there's a happy ending here where nobody ends up dead and the cult falls apart without its horrific ravening totem – or maybe they have a guard on the door now, or they figure out it was Jodi who did it and send someone after her for revenge, and then Tacoma has to spend the rest of eternity with the fact that no, she really did destroy Jodi after all.

"You did?" asks Jodi, none of Tacoma's fear evident in her voice. "So where is it? Did the cops―?"

"No, I hid the machine before they arrived," he says. "In the drawer of Tacoma's bedside table. Red button, blue button, drop it in the pit and get as far away as you can."

"That simple, huh." That's not relief in Jodi's voice. Tacoma couldn't tell you what it is, but it's not relief.

"That simple," confirms Nick. "I didn't want to get it wrong."

"No," says Jodi. "I guess not. So … red button, blue button? And then it's all over?"

"Some of it. The bit about feeding people to a monster from another world, anyway."

"And you? Will you be okay?"

Pause.

"That, uh … that depends. I've called my – my lawyer, and―"

Behind them, that heavy door clunks open again, and Nick falls silent.

"Time's up," says Byrne. "Satisfied?"

"Yeah," says Jodi. "I've seen enough."

Looks like she's finally learning how to lie. She sounds exactly like an empath who's just tasted someone's guilt at killing his niece: shocked, exhausted, pained.

Or maybe it's too good to be an act. She must be feeling some of it for real, after everything that's just happened.

"All right," says Byrne. "Back for you in a moment, Nick. Ecruteak forensics have just got back to us about that cabin of yours, and we have some more questions."

"You know where to find me," he says sourly.

"Come on, Jodi. I'll drop you home. Your sister will be worried."

"Thanks, but I'll walk." The metallic boom of the door closing. "I have a couple of errands to run in town, and I'd rather not walk back here again." Momentary hesitation. "Can I use the phone and tell her?"

"Sure," says Byrne. Her voice is friendly in a way that Tacoma doesn't trust at all. "I don't see why not."

"Thank you."

They keep walking. After a few seconds, when it seems unlikely that the conversation is going to start again, Tacoma dares to speak.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

No, says Jodi. Are you?

Tacoma snorts.

"What the hell do you think?"

Yeah, says Jodi. I honestly don't know what I expected you to say.

Ella is scared. Of course she is: she's thirteen, afraid that someone's going to murder her or her sister in the dark the way they did Tacoma, and she just saw Jodi get gently but firmly taken away by the cops in connection to a murder. But she also trusts Jodi, and she wants to be calmed down, so after a few minutes of soft tones and soothing lies she seems to accept that although everything seems terrible it is, in fact, okay.

Fine. Next job.

They don't discuss this, although they both know what it is they're planning on doing. Talking about it seems dangerous, somehow, like if the idea gets out there into the world it might run off and leave them on their own. Instead, Jodi tells Tacoma that she's in a little bit of trouble right now, and could Tacoma talk to her, please? Just keep talking? And Tacoma has no goddamn clue what to say, but she knows Jodi still has Con in her head, still has a man carving his hate into the back of her skull like he did his initials into that tree in Three Pines; and so Tacoma starts talking about her parasitology course for some reason, about Professor Leadbeater and his obsession with a particular kind of quasi-living rust that infects steel-types; and it sounds completely inane even to her, but she keeps talking, and Jodi keeps on trudging towards Long Avenue, emitting sporadic uh-huhs, and then at last Jodi sighs and says okay.

Thank you, she says. That would've been way harder on my own.

Tacoma shrugs.

"'S fine," she says. "I'm your friend. You know."

Yeah. I know. She sighs. We're here, though. And, um, I won't be able to hear or speak to you while we're in there, since I'll need to concentrate on not having the grief melt my brain. So if you need anything, any kind of preparations … now's the time.

Like what, Tacoma almost says, but she is determined not to be an asshole this time, so instead she shakes her head and forces herself to put her bleeding hand down at her side.

"Let's go," she said. "Get this over with."

Okay. Can you help me think of a reason to get up in your room? It has to be something urgent. 'Cause Nick just got arrested on suspicion of your murder and honestly this is the worst possible time to turn up here uninvited.

"Oh. Right." Why didn't she think of that? "Uh … Nikki's acting up. She has this soft toy she likes – you know how kangaskhan like to hold things? It's this cuddly teddiursa my aunt who doesn't know what I like gave me when I was a kid – and you think it would help. You know it was probably in my luggage, but you have to check my room anyway, because things are so bad with her right now."

Brilliant. Thanks. Brief pause. Are you ready?

She's already asked, but fine.

"Yeah."

Okay.

Knock knock. A long pause. Tacoma steels herself for another familiar voice―

"Oh," says someone she doesn't know at all. A girl, by the sound of it. "J-Jodi."

"Hi, Charlie," says Jodi. "I'm really sorry, I know this is a bad time, but―"

"Yeah. It kind of is. I―" Charlie (whoever that is) breaks off and starts again, a little quieter. "I'm really not meant to let anyone―"

"Please," says Jodi. "Just hear me out. It's Nikki – she's really acting up, like I think she might break something, and I think if I can just get her that teddiursa doll she likes, I could probably calm her down."

"I don't know – Mum was really clear that I shouldn't let …"

"I won't disturb anyone, I promise. I'll just come in, go check Tacoma's room, and then leave. Please, Charlie."

Tacoma holds her breath …

"Okay. Okay, if it's just for a moment."

… and lets it out again.

All right. They're in. Thank God. There wasn't really any sort of backup plan here.

"Thank you," says Jodi, with that special earnestness that only she can manage. "C'mon, Lothi. Quietly now."

The door closes, and three sets of footsteps make their way across the hall. Tacoma listens hard, hoping to hear some evidence of her family even as she dreads it, but there's nothing. No TV or radio in the background or anything.

Possibly the silence is actually worse than if there was something.

"Here," says Charlie pointlessly, leading Jodi upstairs. "Her room is on the end there."

"I know," says Jodi. "Thank you."

She doesn't hesitate. Tacoma hears the door open and knows she is right now in her room again, at last. Two weeks late and without her suitcase or her body, but she's here.

She feels less strongly about this than she thought she would. It just doesn't seem real, not while she's in the rock and unable to see anything but the inside of Jodi's bag.

"Okay," murmurs Jodi. "Bedside table …"

A drawer opens. Small hard things slide around on wood. And then―

"Found it," whispers Jodi. "I think. Not sure what else this could be."

"Nice," says Tacoma, because she feels like she should reply even if Jodi can't hear her. "Now let's go."

Good thing she can't be heard, honestly. That came out much more desperate than she would have liked; her house is a bad place to be right now. She might not have Jodi's empathy, but she can tell a bad situation when she finds one, and the silence is making her skin crawl.

"Did you find it?" asks Charlie, as Jodi closes the door.

"Oh!" Tacoma's view jumps wildly, dim shapes sliding across it as the detritus of Jodi's bag slithers over the rock. "Sorry, you startled me. I wasn't expecting you to be waiting here."

"Um." Charlie laughs nervously. "I … yeah. I figured that, um. You know."

What is up with this girl? Tacoma has never met anyone this jumpy before. The thought strikes her that maybe it's because of Jodi, and she feels her knuckles sting again as she clenches her fist. Jodi doesn't need this. Not again, not after Con. Can't the kid at least be polite?

"I'm not sure that I do," says Jodi. "Sorry."

"Oh. Uh, never mind. Did you find it?"

"No, unfortunately." Jodi sighs. It's a pretty good fake sigh, all things considered. "I'm gonna have to try to calm her down the old-fashioned way. But thank you for letting me look. I know this came at the worst time."

"Oh, it's okay!" says Charlie, far too eagerly. "I mean, I – since it's you―"

"Since it's me?"

"Yeah. Um. You know. You're – you were Tacoma's friend. And you're looking after Nikole. So."

There is a long, long silence. Tacoma is at this point completely lost; there's something here that's not being said, something bothering both Charlie and Jodi, but with only their words to go by she hasn't got a snowflake's chance in hell of figuring out what it is.

"Charlie," says Jodi carefully. "I don't think that's what you meant."

"I-it is," stammers Charlie. "I mean it, like of course―"

"You've been staring," says Jodi. "Everyone has, but you've been really staring. In the library, and the other day when you were out with Ella."

What? That's the first Tacoma's heard of any of this. She doesn't even know who Charlie is, let alone that she and Jodi apparently have some kind of history. How has she missed this? She was right there in the library with her, and she didn't even know there was anyone else around but Lorna.

Hard not to be hurt by this. It's unreasonable, yes, but Tacoma's world is small right now, and even tiny things like this seem huge when you stuff them into a space as cramped as that.

"Are you okay?" Jodi asks. One step forward, cane clicking on the floor. "'Cause Charlie, I'm psychic, and now that I've actually met you, I'm not sure you're doing this because you have a problem with me."

"I don't know what you're talking about," says Charlie, but she's an even worse liar than Jodi. "I'm fine. Really. It – it's just a surprise, honestly, 'cause I didn't even know that this was a thing―"

"But you wished it was, didn't you?" (Soft, pained noise from Charlie that makes Tacoma's insides shrivel up.) "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to assume. But if you're looking for some kind of answer, Charlie, I might be able to help you with that."

The thing that Tacoma isn't getting is right here now, hanging over the conversation like the ominous shadow of a honchkrow. She feels like this is something she shouldn't be listening to, and at the same time as if she cannot possibly close the link on it.

"It's nothing," says Charlie, her voice thick with the potential for tears. "I'm …"

"You can tell me," says Jodi. "I know we don't really know each other, but if there's anyone in town you can talk to about this, you know it's me."

Tiny sob. Jodi takes another step forward, and her coat rustles in a way that suggests an arm around shoulders.

"Hey," she says. "I'm sorry. I know it really hurts."

"I just want it so bad," whimpers Charlie. "I just really …"

"I know. Believe me."

"Ugh." Deep sniff. The sound of someone pulling away. "Sorry. Stupid of me."

"Not stupid at all," says Jodi. "I promise you, I was at least this much of a mess."

The penny finally drops. A girl called Charlie. Short for Charlotte, right? This is Charlotte Fay, Jessica's daughter, and that's why she's here; Jodi did mention that the Fays were helping her parents out. Tacoma's never heard anyone call her Charlie before, but then, she barely knows her; she's just a kid who lives two doors down.

Anyway. There has to be a reason why she prefers Charlie to Charlotte. And judging by what the two of them have just said, it might well be the same reason why Jodi prefers Jodi to Alex.

Tacoma is stunned. Somehow it never occurred to her that there might be more than one person like Jodi, even though she knew there must be. Even if she'd thought about it, she would have guessed that Jodi had to be the only one in Mahogany.

But then – Jodi didn't know till recently, right? And Charlie sure as hell wouldn't have found out that this was an option for her any other way.

He, even. Tacoma should stop saying she. She wouldn't call Jodi he; she should extend Charlie the same courtesy.

"I'm sorry for being creepy," says Charlie. "I heard about you, and it was like … you can do that? But I didn't want to ask because – well, because Mum and Dad have been talking about you, and, um – sorry, but, um …"

"It's fine," says Jodi, although Tacoma gets the distinct impression that it is not. "I'm guessing they don't get it."

"No." Charlie sniffs again. "They don't."

This feels like the kind of silence in which someone is trying to find the right words.

"Okay, Charlie," says Jodi. "I don't want to rush you or anything, and I think that this probably isn't the best time or place to have this conversation. But I want to ask you one thing right now, and I'd like you to answer without thinking about what your parents are saying. Can you do that for me?"

"… okay."

Charlie's voice is very small. Tacoma is in awe of Jodi's capacity to deal with this; she herself would have been completely lost the first time Charlie started showing any sign of distress at all.

"Do you really want to be a girl?"

Charlie swallows.

"No," he says, so quietly Tacoma almost misses it. "No, I don't."

"Then you're not one," says Jodi. "Only you get to make that decision. You wanna be a boy, you can be."

"I can?"

The disbelief in his voice is painful to hear. He really didn't think anyone would ever say anything like this to him, did he? So he's been skulking around these past couple of weeks, staring at the one person in town brave enough to do what he wishes he could and sinking deeper and deeper into the green slough of envy.

This is what it is, Tacoma realises. This was Jodi, once. Tacoma imagines her alone in a room in a strange city with no company but Lothian and these thoughts, this pain; she imagines what it would be like if there wasn't a cool older kid to swoop in and turn the hurt into an idea you could hold and act upon. If you had to figure it out for yourself. If, when you did, you had to take that terrifying leap alone.

She never asked. She thought about it, that one time, but Tacoma never once asked how long Jodi has known, or how strewn with thorns the road that led to her introducing herself by her new name that morning really was. And now, listening to Charlie, Tacoma realises that even a connoisseur of self-loathing like herself probably only has a partial view of what that must have been like.

Shameful, to have left it so long. But so what; she's always ashamed. Better to be glad, right? Better to be glad that Jodi is here for Charlie, that one person at least gets a shoulder to lean on as he figures this shit out.

She tries it on for size: gladness, bright and crisp as morning in early autumn. It doesn't fit very well, and a moment later she throws it off again, unable to bear it one more second.

At least she tried, huh.

With her lost in thought, the conversation slips away from her; when she comes back to it, Charlie is apologising again and Jodi is telling him that it's fine, really, she is more than happy to be here.

"You know you're stuck with me whether you want me or not, now," she says. "And you have my number, right?"

"Yeah. Same as …"

"As Ella's. Just ask for me." Brief pause. "I'm really sorry, but I don't think I can stay," says Jodi. "Are you going to be okay?"

"I-I don't know."

"Sorry, wrong question. Do you feel better?"

"Yeah." Tacoma can hear the smile in his words, faint and surprised. "Yeah, I think so."

"Good. Call me soon, okay? We should talk some more."

"Yes. Yes, we― yeah. I'd, um, I'd really like that."

Rustling.

"Hey," says Jodi. "You did something real difficult. And I'm sorry, there's a lot of difficult things to come, but still, you should be proud. Okay?"

She sounds almost like Michelle for some reason, the Goldenrod gloss wearing away from her words and revealing the Mahogany beneath.

"Yeah," says Charlie – hesitant, fearful, hardly daring to believe what he's hearing. "Okay."

Tacoma finally cuts the connection.

"I'm not bloody crying," she says, but of course even if there was anyone around to hear her they wouldn't be fooled for a moment.

It's been a hell of a morning. Con, Nick, Charlie – and then, when they get back, Ella and Nikki, too. Jodi takes one and Tacoma the other, and by the time they end up in the same room as each other again it's past two o'clock.

"Okay," says Jodi, coming back into her room and holding the door for Lothian. "That was a lot of lying I just did, and I don't know if she believed all of it, but I guess it's okay. I can tell her the truth when we're done." She shuts the door, slumps in her chair while Lothian climbs on the bed. "Oof. I'm sorry, I've had a bunch of distractions. Are you okay? I know you weren't really expecting to go back home today …"

It's the first time they've spoken since their conversation on Tacoma's doorstep; Jodi might have tried to talk to her on the way home, but Tacoma had the window closed. Needed a little time alone, after her awful, silent house and that whole awkward thing with Charlie.

"'M fine," she replies, from her usual perch in Nikki's claws. "Are you?"

"I honestly don't know." Jodi sets her elbow on the desk and rests her head on her hand. "I feel so … weird. I mean, there was Con, and I didn't even know he was – I knew he didn't like me, but I wasn't expecting that." She closes her eyes. "Should've done, I guess. People feel like they can get away with things. With me, I mean."

"Yeah?" asks Tacoma.

"Yeah." Jodi smiles without opening her eyes. "It's sweet of you to get angry on my behalf, but you don't need to."

"Someone has to. You let them get away with that?"

Now Jodi opens her eyes, but there's no trace of a smile at all on her lips.

"They'd do it with or without my permission," she says. "And there are so many of them, Tacoma. I can't fight every single battle. I don't have the time or energy to back that many lost causes."

Well, Tacoma's screwed up again, hasn't she. Great. True friendship, right there.

"Sorry," she mutters. "I guess I wouldn't know."

"It's okay."

"No it― sorry. Never mind." Perfect recovery, Tacoma. Bloody flawless. "Anyway, uh, so Con's a giant mound of dickcheese, but Charlie, huh?"

There: the smile is back like a sunbeam piercing clouds. Almost enough to make Tacoma jealous, honestly. Be nice if her name made Jodi smile like that.

"Yeah," says Jodi. "That's why 'weird' and not 'awful', I guess. I mean … two of us, here in Mahogany? What are the odds?"

"Pretty low, probably."

"You're telling me. I barely know anyone like me in Goldenrod." Slow shake of her head. "Guess we really need to come out of this okay now, huh? I'm not gonna get eaten while Charlie needs me like that."

What about me, Tacoma's jealousy wants to know, what if I need you – but she jams the words back down her throat. Not everything is for her. This thing that Charlie and Jodi share? That is not something that needs Tacoma's intervention. Or that of anyone who isn't … like them.

There's probably a word for that, for the opposite of Jodi. Tacoma has always been the one with the vocabulary, but she feels like Jodi probably has her beat in this particular area.

"Sure," she says. "Kinda figured it's not the sort of thing you wanna do alone."

"No," says Jodi. "It's not."

"Mm." Tacoma shifts uneasily on her thread. "About that. Did you, um, wanna talk about it?"

"Not today." Jodi seems unsurprised by the question, which Tacoma supposes is actually pretty reasonable for a psychic. "That's a conversation I'm gonna have to prepare for, and I'm really not up to that now."

"That's cool too," Tacoma hastens to assure her. "Really. I just – thought I'd ask."

"Thank you." Jodi smiles. "You're sweet."

"Sometimes. So, uh, you gonna show me that machine Nick made or what?"

"Oh. Right." Jodi laughs. "You know, I almost forgot about that. Actually no, I honestly just completely lost track of why we even went to your house in the first place. Sorry. Lothi? Can you get my coat?"

He squeaks and drags it over to her, where she goes through the pockets and comes up with an old cigarette tin, cut apart and soldered inelegantly back together around a tangle of wires and diodes. Two scraps of plastic glued to the side, one red, one blue. Just like Nick said.

"Doesn't look like much," says Tacoma. "That little thing can send that monster home?"

"I really hope so. I didn't get a chance to ask Nick if he'd tested it."

"He seemed to think it would work."

"Yeah. Hopefully that means it'll put an end to this."

She's talking like they already know what's going to happen tonight. And sure, they do, but Tacoma was hoping for – well, for she doesn't know what, really. Something. Some idea, some line of enquiry, that would mean that her very mortal friend doesn't have to go back to the chapter house.

There's nothing, of course. But she figures she might as well argue about it anyway.

"So we're going," she says. "Are you sure?"

Jodi gives her a look.

"Aren't you?"

For all her long words, Tacoma has no answer for that. Aren't you? Meaning – you saw what's down there, you know what they do with it, and you still doubt? You still think that we can walk away with our hands clean? That if we see evil in the world we are not obliged to make a stand?

Yes, Tacoma doubts. No, she doesn't think that they can walk away without guilt. She just wants to do it anyway, and if that means blood on their hands then so be it, they will hold their bloody hands and talk about things more important than the loss of other people's loved ones. And eventually they'll get over it.

But Jodi doesn't think that way. Nor does Nick. He gave them his machine on the condition that they use it. And as much as Tacoma doesn't want that responsibility, it looks like she's going to have to shoulder it.

Fuck it. Lying hasn't been doing her any favours; let's try honesty for once.

"I don't know if I ever could be," she says. "Not sure if I'm that … kind of person. But, uh. I think you are. So I'm with you, I guess. And if anyone tries to kill you, I guess I'll beat the shit out of them with their shadow."

Jodi stares. For so long, in fact, that Tacoma starts to regret saying anything. And then she smiles (sunbeams again), and glances up at Nikki.

"Can I?" she asks, reaching out, and then when Nikki blinks her assent lays her hand on the thin tendril of fog that binds Tacoma to the rock. "Thanks," she says, returning her gaze to Tacoma. "As for you … that was really sweet. Right up till the part where it got violent, but you know, it's all part of your charm."

Tacoma tries to smile, because this is a joke and you are supposed to smile at these, but even with Jodi's hand on her she can't manage it.

"Just don't die tonight," she says. "Think you can swing that?"

Jodi considers this for a moment, and then nods. Something about how deliberate this movement is makes it seem much more comforting.

"I will do everything I can," she replies, simply. "I hope that's good enough."

And it isn't, really, but what are you gonna do, so Tacoma nods back.

"Okay," she says. "Okay."

Tacoma has never really known an afternoon like this. Slow, quiet, cold with unspoken terror; the closest thing she can think of is waiting to go off to university for the first time, but even nervous as she was then she never feared for her life. Now she keeps looking at Jodi and wondering if this is finally the day she finishes the job and gets her killed properly.

Tacoma knows there's no job to finish. That she didn't really break Jodi's leg or kill her partners. But knowing is not believing, and in the mouldy recesses of her soul Tacoma can't help but keep clinging to her story. It's not like she has much else left to cling to, at this point. There's Jodi, obviously, but you can't treat people like lifeboats, and Tacoma cannot pin all her hopes on her.

Especially if Jodi ends up being eaten by the chapter house beast.

Damn it. She's trying not to think about it, but that seems to take significantly more effort than Tacoma has to spare. The thought returns, again and again; she stops talking, starts picking her lip and knuckles inside the rock while outside Nikki lows for attention and Jodi tries unsuccessfully to mediate. Eventually even Jodi's patience gives out, and she joins Ella in front of the TV, putting Tacoma's rock on the cushions where she can see the screen.

Reruns of sixties Kantan sitcoms. None of them watching laugh. After a little while, Ella shifts closer to Jodi, and without speaking Jodi puts her arm around her.

Tacoma watches them watching TV: black-and-white reflections in their eyes, Jodi's fingernails vivid against Ella's blue sweater. The way Ella clearly wants to lean on Jodi but knows too well that she would squash her to follow through.

Tacoma wants to go home, so badly, but this is home now, this prison cell in a hunk of old stone, and there's nothing she can do but sit here.

Eventually, Michelle and León come home, and the silence is broken by the sound of tired people shedding layers. They come in and stop as one, both smiling to see their daughters curled up together.

"Well, this is all very domestic," says León. "Good day?"

"Yeah," says Jodi. "Uneventful. You know."

Ella looks at her, eyes full of bewilderment.

"But …"

"But?" Michelle comes closer, her fatigue falling away from her in an instant. "But what?"

Jodi sighs.

"I mean, I did run into Carrie Savage in town," she says, and maybe she really did do that on the way home from Tacoma's house because goddamn, even Tacoma can't tell if she's lying. Okay, so León and Michelle will figure out what she isn't telling them first thing tomorrow, when they hear Jodi was seen going into the police station – but hopefully by then they'll be able to come clean about everything, anyway. "That's all."

"That so?"

All eyes on Ella. And, well. She might not know what's going on, but Tacoma can't deny, the girl knows how to take a cue.

"Yeah," she says. "I guess it just … startled me."

"But you're okay?" asks León, and then as the image disappears Tacoma realises she's closed the window. She sits there in the gloom, blinking in confusion; for some reason she can't figure out where or who she is, and then a moment later it's all over and she slides back into her body with a thump.

It takes a moment, then she shakes it off and settles back into the familiar comfort of the pain in her mouth and hand.

She's not okay, but that's okay. Nothing ever is.

There's no one standing guard tonight. Jodi and Lothian sweep the store very carefully from the street, one with her mind and the other with his ears, and are able to say it with certainty: there really is nobody here. Something about this makes Tacoma's skin crawl. Why not? What trick are they missing here? Because there has to be one; the chapter house can't be completely unguarded the night after a break-in. That just doesn't make sense.

"I know," says Jodi, when Tacoma points this out. "But I'm telling you, there's no one here."

Tacoma grinds the heel of her hand against her sarcophagus.

"I don't like it."

"Me either. Maybe they're not expecting us to come back. Maybe they thought we got scared off by their pet monster."

"You don't keep a cult secret without being more paranoid than that," says Tacoma bluntly. "Maybe we should call it off. Come back another time―"

"No." Jodi's voice is still a whisper, but it's the most emphatic one Tacoma's ever heard. "We're here. And we can't let it go on any longer. Besides, we forgot to look for any evidence last night. And if we're gonna save Nick, we have to find some."

Of course. Tacoma had almost forgotten, too scared of losing Jodi to remember that Nick's life is on the line too. The death penalty was abolished last year in Kanto, but as always Johto lags behind. Not that it's given out that much any more, even here; still, though, for killing your beloved niece in cold blood? Yeah. Tacoma has a feeling that that might just earn you a short drop and sudden stop.

It occurs to her that Jodi might be manipulating her here, and then a moment later that she doesn't care. Maybe she is, but that doesn't stop her really meaning it. And anyway, she's right. No matter how big a coward Tacoma is, she just doesn't have it in her to leave Nick to the gallows.

"Yeah," she mutters. "I guess." She presses down a little harder, feels the grain of the stone pushing against her palm. "Fine. Sorry. Get the rock out and I'll do the door."

It's easier in the dark. The shadows hate her still, wriggle in her grip like fish trying to flip their way back out of the boat into the water, but with so much darkness to draw on there's no question of losing her grip. A little applied effort, and the door swings right open.

"Okay," she says. "Let's get in there and I'll come out. See better."

Inside, the store is just the same as last night. Tacoma's not sure how her night vision works; everything still looks dark, but somehow she can tell the difference between all these different shades of black: that's the windowsill, that's a shelf, that's a tin of corned beef. Black writing on black labels, all perfectly legible.

Nikki growls softly to herself. Tacoma twists around to touch her nose to her snout, but she pulls back, baring her canines.

"C'mon," hisses Tacoma. "I don't like it either, but we have to. Okay?"

The scales of Nikki's ridges shift, move into aggressive patterns that among other kangaskhan would either start a fight or scare them off, and which here just make Tacoma sigh angrily.

"Last time, Nikki. I promise. We go in, we do our thing, we get out."

It seems to work. Nikki is far from happy – even if Tacoma couldn't see in the dark, it would be hard to miss the way every other breath seems to rasp with the suggestion of a growl – but she's her partner, and if Tacoma is set on going back down into the hell tunnels then she is bloody well coming with her. By the shelves with the switch, Jodi is just straightening up after what Tacoma assumes was a similar but more telepathic conversation with Lothian, whose tail is switching back and forth like anxious clockwork.

"Guess Nikki's not happy either?" she whispers, raising her torch a little.

"No," says Tacoma. "Don't blame her."

"Yeah. Same." Jodi turns to face the shelves, flicking the torch up and down in search of the button. "Let's just keep moving."

Hard to argue with that. They're close now; they shouldn't slow down, or otherwise they might just stop for good. Jodi presses the switch, and then it's back down that awful tightly-spiralling stairway, Nikki moving slowly so she doesn't trip and Lothian abandoning the steps entirely to climb around the walls instead. Back into the dusty, crypt-close air. Back down the tunnel where Lothian starts sneezing, and past the crossroads where Jodi starts limping and holding herself awkwardly, and back into that hall once again.

Back to the pit.

The four of them stop a little way back from the edge, Nikki and Lothian visibly distressed and their partners not much better. Tacoma looks at Jodi, her face bone-pale above the vivid red of her scarf, and says:

"This is it, then."

And Jodi looks back and says:

"Yeah, I guess it is."

She clamps the torch she stole from her parents between her arm and her side and takes Nick's machine from her pocket.

"Two buttons and it's all over," she says, brushing the casing with her thumb. "It kind of doesn't even seem real, huh."

Over, huh. Sure, thinks Tacoma. So long as nobody comes seeking revenge.

"Mm," she says, noncommittally. "Let's just do it, please."

Jodi nods.

"Okay." She fidgets with the machine for a moment, turning it over and over between her fingers. At her side, Lothian drags his eyes away from the wormhole and whines at her in an I know you don't want to be here either, so why don't we leave kind of way. "Sorry," she says, without looking at him or Tacoma. "It's just sorta … terrifying."

"Yeah," agrees Tacoma. "Sorta."

Pause. It is so unbelievably quiet down here. You wouldn't know there was a monster from another world just a few yards away.

"Okay," says Jodi. "I'm gonna―"

And at that moment, someone turns on the lights.

Chapter Text

JODI

The first thing Jodi thinks about is the machine.

Can she get it into the pit? Maybe. She might be able to throw it, or get Lothian to drop it in, but now there are footsteps behind her – and didn't Nick say something about having to run after she set the machine off? She's pretty sure he did. If her escape route is cut off, then it might be too dangerous to try and close the wormhole. Jodi wants this over with, of course, but not at the expense of anyone's life.

The second thing Jodi thinks about is that they might be about to kill her anyway.

She takes a long, deep breath. Lothian and Nikki have already turned around; at some point, she's going to have to join them.

"Okay," she whispers, and turns.

She must have missed them in the dark, but there are construction lights set up along the sides of the hall, their glare impossibly bright after all time skulking in the shadows; in between them, the approaching figures are grey and shadowy, looming like a pack of machoke closing in on a sick deer.

"Oh my God," she murmurs, as her brain starts to adjust to the light and the panic. "That's …"

Is that Deb Franklin? And Sarah, Roy's tail curled around her shoulder. Harry – and God, that's Jacob, fur so silvery now with age that his stripes have all but disappeared. Max Lockwood, whose brother fished Tacoma's corpse out of the Rageriver. Pete Fisher from the mill. Sally Fawkes, who with her husband is renovating that house that's never finished. Dick Jeffries from the post office.

Real people. Just like she was afraid of. Not faceless murderers, not imaginary cult agents, but actual people, people who have populated the stage of Jodi's life since she was a child. She stares, and stares, and as Lothian leaps between them and her with a warning hiss she feels like she might throw up.

Nikki is moving forward too, holding Tacoma's rock back and her other paw forward, claws curled into a vicious fist. Next to her, Lothian spreads his wings with a sharp snap, ears swivelling forward in the very last warning you get before he blasts you.

Tacoma herself is nowhere to be seen.

"All of you," murmurs Jodi, watching them approach. There's young blood here too; that's Victor Orbeck and his donphan, who she remembers from school, and Rusty Bates who was two years above her. Keeping the flame alive for the next generation. "How many of you even are there?"

Ten, as it turns out. There's just one more to come, stepping out from between Victor and Pete with his partner scurrying along at his heels.

He looks at her, and through the dull note of the beast's pain and the uneven roar of the cultists' anger and the uncomplicated animal fury of the pokémon Jodi feels his sorrow cut her to the bone.

"I did everything I could," says Con Wicke. "I got Gabriella to warn you off, I tried to scare you, I showed you how guilty Nick felt, but you just couldn't let it go, could you?"

Jesus fucking Christ, says Tacoma. Him?

Hard to breathe. Hard even to stand. She hears that noise again, the one she heard when her mother told her about Tacoma, and when Charlie said that Nick had been arrested. The one that isn't there but which roars in her ears like a hurricane of flames.

They stare at her, the ten of them and their partners, who love them the way Lothian loves her, and their eyes slice through her nice coat and her eyeshadow and her skirt and her new boots right through to the mess of tortured flesh beneath.

And Jodi cannot say if the sickness scraping the inside of her gut is theirs or hers.

"I'm sorry about your cane," Con tells her. He has a gun, Jodi sees: his police pistol, held casually at his side. Like he thinks maybe she won't notice. "I know that was a low blow, and I don't want you to think that I'm the kind of man who does that. But I was desperate. I just thought, if you were a little more afraid …" He sighs. "None of us wanted this, you know."

Jodi says nothing. There is no breath left in the world to speak with.

"Nothing to say for yourself?" Pity, not anger. His friends are angry, some of them – Victor, Deb, Dick – but not him. "I've tried to be patient with you. You just wanted to do the right thing, after all. That's admirable, really. And I'll admit, I'm partly to blame here. I shouldn't have got you involved. I was looking to keep the Ecruteak detectives out of this, but it was a miscalculation, I know."

His voice is so reasonable, so calm. He believes every word. Jodi thinks that maybe she does too, except that these are his emotions, not hers, aren't they? Or are they? It's so hard to tell, because after all she is so dumb sometimes, so misguided; look at her, standing here with a cigarette tin in her hand, thinking she can throw it in the wormhole and end this.

"You liked Tacoma," says Con. "You clearly need help that you aren't getting. I understand that, Alex. But you've forced our hand."

She really has, hasn't she? It's all her fault. Her fault for persisting with this investigation, for her asinine insistence that she is a girl―

Asshole, growls Tacoma, out of nowhere. Don't let them get to you, Jodi. They know you're an empath. This is deliberate.

Jodi starts.

"Huh?" she murmurs. "But …"

I told you once already, didn't I? You're fucking gorgeous.

Tacoma's mind howls with faith, a huge angry lioness of a feeling that sets itself between Jodi and the cultists the way that Nikki and Lothian have done, claws out, fangs bared. Jodi stares at it for a moment, uncomprehending – and then all at once the world slams back down into place around her with a crash.

She looks at Con, at Deb glaring, at Victor with his face like he's smelled something bad. She looks at all of them, these people who think they can decide who lives and who dies, and she says:

"My name is Jodi, Con. I think we've established that already."

Right on cue, Lothian hisses sharply, flicking his wings several intimidating feet outwards and making Moira leap back to Con's side, cheeks sparking.

You tell him, says Tacoma. God. You had me worried there for a second.

"You're still sticking to that, huh," says Con.

Behind him, Dick scoffs, and Deb shakes her head. Their minds make a symphony of spite, ten sickly notes of mistrust and revulsion chiming out above the bassline of the beast's pain – but Tacoma is here, and Lothian and Nikki, and though they can't quite crush the ache in her bones their fierce love is more than enough to keep the cultists' emotions at bay.

"Look, there's no need to get defensive," Con says, half-raising a hand in some semi-formed gesture. "Let's be civil here, all right?"

"Civil? You're murderers, and you're asking me to be civil?"

"You don't know a damn thing about what you're talking about," snaps Deb all of a sudden, her pidgey flaring his wings on her shoulder. "We are the only reason this town hasn't gone under―"

"So killing random people is your civic duty, is that it?"

"Enough, both of you," says Con sharply. "Listen, Alex, you have two options here. You can keep mouthing off until you start a fight, at which point you get yourself and your pokémon killed. They're strong, I know, but you're not a trainer, and without proper direction they're not going to be able to take all of us at once. Or you can listen for a minute, and we can settle this like adults."

He's right, says Tacoma. And I think he's realised that you can't set the machine off yet either, 'cause otherwise you'd have done it already.

So? asks Jodi, trying hard to look like she's thinking over Con's ultimatum.

So keep him talking. The only thing he hasn't planned for is a vengeful spiritomb. But we're only gonna be able to surprise him once. Trying to think of how and when.

She is terrified, Jodi can tell – but there is nothing at all in her voice but anger. Under better circumstances, it might make Jodi proud to see her this driven; right now, however, that kind of positivity is a little hard to come by.

"Fine, then," she says, glaring at Con over the arch of Lothian's wings. "I'm listening, Con. What have you got that's so important to say?"

"Don't you take that tone with us, you little―"

"Dick," says Con warningly. "Come on now. He's a kid."

"'S a fucking pervert, is what he is," growls Dick. It's almost funny, really. This is the same tone of voice he uses to complain about kids loitering in the street, or the way radio is worse than it was in his day, or the scandalous length of girls' skirts these days. Except that honestly it isn't really funny at all. "Let's have an end to this, Con."

At least she's getting them riled – as well from Dick and Deb, Victor and Max are looking restless too. They're more likely to make mistakes like this, right? But Con's the important one, and he still seems so calm. Just like the cop he is.

"I have to agree," says Max. "We're not going to come to an understanding here. Better just to end this and get some sleep at least."

He steps forward as he speaks, and then hurriedly back again as Nikki snarls, eyes flashing. Moira darts forward again, apparently less afraid of her than of Lothian – but before things can go any further there is the sound of something huge shifting and the roar of the beast rolls out overhead, with a wet slapping sound that has to be the forks of that grotesque tongue pounding on the walls of the pit.

The pokémon hate it. Deb's pidgey rockets off to the other end of the hall; Victor's donphan trumpets loudly and stamps his heavy feet. Even Jacob shrinks back a little, as if he could hide his massive bulk behind Harry. Nikki just freezes up, eyes rolling in their sockets, and Lothian squeals like a stuck pig – but there's nowhere left to run now, and with their partners in trouble they don't even consider backing down.

"You'd best keep those two in line," says Con. He hasn't reacted at all; none of the cultists have. Jodi supposes they must hear this all the time. "Our mutual friend doesn't like loud noises."

"Yeah?" Keep him talking, Tacoma said: well, here's something to talk about. "What is it, anyway?"

"Now that's more like it," says Con. "Conversation, not confrontation."

So fucking condescending, mutters Tacoma. She's right, Jodi realises. It's difficult to tell sometimes, with ten minds pushing at hers, but Con is being a jerk. She does her best to cling to Tacoma's words, to absorb her feelings in place of Con's, and feels the angry little flame inside her swell in response.

"It's for the town, like I said." Deb's pidgey is fluttering back now; she holds out her hand as she speaks and he settles himself nervously on her wrist. "I don't know what you think we are, but this isn't a cult. We keep that thing fed because of what it does for us."

"You can't have missed that these are hard times," says Con, like he's talking to a child. "The mill barely made it through the war, for a start. Over in Blackthorn, they've closed the mines already. But Mahogany's clung on, just about. It's because we have something nobody else does."

"In my grandfather's day, they worshipped it," adds Harry, with the same genial smile he uses to greet people at the station. "Of course, we know better now – modern times, after all."

"But it can't be denied it has an energy to it," explains Con. "You're a sensitive kid, Alex, and you've travelled some. You must have felt it. How this town is different to others? How it feels like home?"

Jodi doesn't like the light in his eyes. It isn't even faith, really; that would be acceptable, even if horrible. But what she's getting from him is the grim satisfaction of a man undertaking a painful duty. He hates this, doesn't he? But he's the Chief of Police. Mahogany is his town. And if this is what it takes, then this is what he will do.

"It is home," she says, voice guarded. "So you know …"

"Not just for you. Doc Ishihara. Byrne Winter. Gabriella. Your own father, Alex. People come here, and something about it catches them."

"My dad stayed because of Mum―"

"And what made her special?" asks Con. "Nobody can leave this place. Nick and Sam were told never to come back, and look at them. They just couldn't stay away."

Nick came back for his family, protests Tacoma. It's not … how does he not see that? How do any of them believe this shit?

"The beast must be fed," says Deb. She says it with such conviction, such confidence, that for a moment Jodi catches herself thinking duh, of course and has to concentrate again on driving Deb's mind out of hers. "Now more than ever. We can't let what luck is left dry up now."

"We've still got the mill," says Dick, and the note of desperation in his voice makes Jodi's breath catch. "They lost the mines in Blackthorn, but we've got the mill."

It can't be real, can it?

You of all people don't need telling that people do terrible things when they're afraid, said Nick.

Yes. Yes, it absolutely could be real.

"That's your excuse," she mutters, disbelieving. "That's your … That's why you killed all those people? Mae and everyone? To feed this poor thing you have trapped here because you think it can – what, buck up the economy?"

"I don't expect you to understand." Con still refuses to react. Almost everyone else is glaring mutinously at her now, but as far as Jodi can tell his self-control hasn't even wavered once. "The mill, it― you have to be able to see the bigger picture. You're young. You don't―"

"Care," finishes Jodi. "I don't care, Con. Even if you're right, even if this thing is lucky somehow, you can't murder people. That's all you are. Murderers."

"That's enough," snaps Dick. "Con, how long are we supposed to stand there and listen to this horseshit?"

"Yeah." Deb narrows her eyes. "We do this town a service, Alex. We take care of things that don't belong here, and we keep the mill afloat. If you don't have sense enough to be grateful …"

The mill, the mill, the mill. They keep saying it like it means anything, as if the fact that it isn't out of business just yet is some kind of signal from the divine. As if they really believe that luck can be bought with blood.

Deb shakes her head.

"We all know how this is going to end," she says. "Let's get it over with."

"Fine, then," says Jodi coldly, as Lothian slaps his tail angrily against the ground and sets the beast moaning in its hole. "Let's cut to the chase, then. Was it you who killed Tacoma, Con, or was it Harry?"

A reaction at last: Con seizes up, very nearly takes a step back; at his side, Moira blinks and rubs up against his leg, but he barely seems to notice.

Jodi knows then, even before he speaks. She can feel it gushing from him like blood from an unhealed wound. But when he finally says it, she still finds herself frozen with shock.

"It … was an accident," he says softly. "I told Moira to stun, but she – she's getting old, and she …"

It's like someone screaming in her ear, wordless fury that does not admit any response but stunned silence. An accident. It was Con, and his senile raichu misinterpreted his command. Thunder wave, thunderbolt, what's the difference? Nine thousand volts, give or take. And a dead girl carrying a stone that just needed one last soul to come back to life.

Tacoma's mind is dizzyingly empty. Jodi reaches out, tentative, and gets a one-word response:

Motherfucker.

"Yeah," she murmurs, too taken aback for telepathy. "Yeah …"

"It was never meant to happen," Con says desperately. "Don't you see? Tacoma was a good kid. She had prospects."

Jodi isn't listening. She's caught up in the working of her thoughts, this new piece of information slithering in to take its place alongside the others.

"You needed to hide the body," she says. "And you knew Nick was working against you again …"

"I found the cabin." Max this time. "It's my cousin who rented it to him. We knew all along. His rock, his schemes. When Tacoma died―"

"When Con killed her," Jodi corrects, and as Con flinches she senses a sudden vicious delight catch fire in Tacoma's mind.

"―Con got her back here, and we came up with a plan," Max continues, as if she hadn't spoken. "Feeding Tacoma to the beast seemed inappropriate."

"Her family, you know," says Harry, and his sympathy is so genuine that Jodi almost screams. "She was very well loved. It would have been barbaric to keep the body from them."

Con still hasn't spoken. He stands there, back ramrod-straight, face pale.

"None of us wanted to see her gone," says Sarah. "She was such a promising young thing. We aren't monsters. We only take those who won't be missed."

How can they say these things? How can they stand there and say this to her face like that? She tries to protest, to point out that Sam missed Mae, but her voice is so weak with shock that nobody even seems to notice that she's spoken.

"We made the best of a bad situation," says Harry, shrugging. "The Spearings got a funeral―"

"―and Nick's project was shut down," finishes Sarah. "We planted Tacoma's bag near his cabin, and Con guided the police towards it. Except that you got there first, didn't you? And stole his little toys, it seems. Naughty boy."

"Yeah," mutters Con, unfreezing at last. "Yeah, that's – that's right. We did what we could. None of us wanted this to happen. Alex, you have to believe―"

"Why do I have to believe you?" cries Jodi, finding her voice. "Can you even hear anything you're saying? You―"

"That's enough." Con swallows, squares his shoulders. "I don't know what I expected from you. Maybe I thought you'd understand – psychic and all. But you're just a bloody child."

"What …"

Con raises his gun, holding it carefully in both hands, and Jodi's voice dies in her throat.

"I don't think we can come to an agreement," he tells her. His voice sounds strange, but she can't look at his face to see why; she can't even take her eyes off the little black eye of the gun. "Toss your poké balls over here, Alex. Now."

"You think you're faster than Lothian?"

Her voice comes from somewhere outside her. It doesn't sound anything like she remembers it.

"I think that you're not stupid enough to put that to the test," says Con. "Not with so many others here to get involved." His gun never moves, like the carved revolver of the soldier on the Goldenrod war memorial. "Poké balls. Now."

Lothian recognises the words, shrills his protest. Nobody seems intimidated; they can see which way the wind is blowing.

"You're just going to kill me anyway."

God knows why she says it, but it comes out like a threat, like it's something she can hit him with. Behind the gun, Con's mouth compresses down to a short, dark line.

"Yes," he says. "I am."

His voice is quiet, but the starkness of his words rings horribly in the air. Jodi hears a weird noise, like something small drowning alone in the dark, and a second later realises that she is the one who made it.

And then, out of nowhere, Tacoma speaks.

Jodi. Calm as unbroken ice. Do you trust me?

Yes …?

Do what he says.

Jodi does not question her. She wants to – but she wasn't lying, she does trust her, and so she does not question her and just puts Nick's machine in her pocket so she can take out the balls instead.

"That's it," says Con. "Over here."

She throws them. Nikki and Lothian follow the balls with their eyes, and for one awful endless second she can feel the panic roaring off them – and then Deb and Victor scoop them up and the two of them vanish in the same flash of light.

Tacoma's rock hits the floor with a crack. Behind her, the beast growls at the sudden noise.

"In my pocket," says Con, without taking his eyes off Jodi. "Clamps."

A poké ball can't hold an unwilling pokémon for long, especially strong ones like these two – but there are ways and means. The clamps cops use on your partners when they arrest you will keep anything short of a berserk gyarados trapped for a couple of hours, at least. Jodi watches Deb and Victor attach them to the balls, and hopes that Tacoma knows what she's doing.

Con's expression never changes.

"Bring me the rock and the machine," he says.

Jodi starts.

"It's on the floor," she begins, but nobody answers, and she doesn't finish. She can't fight. She just has to trust Tacoma. Because Tacoma said to do what Con says, and Tacoma is the smart one, and …

You're doing great, she tells her. Her voice is not quite level, not any more, but she's trying. C'mon, Jodi. I need you to put me in his hand.

That black eye stares, unblinking. Con clears his throat.

Jodi swallows.

Okay, she says, forcing herself to take a step towards him. I trust you.

It's so hard, walking towards these people, that gun. What if he just shoots her now? What if Tacoma has miscalculated? What if his finger slips and the gun goes off and it ends, right here, right now, all that effort and all those sleepless nights obliterated in a single concussive instant, and they feed her to their idol because she's not like Tacoma, not an asset to the town, and her parents and her sister don't even have the comfort of a funeral – what if that? What if that right this moment?

"We don't have all night," says Deb. "Get on with it."

Forget it. She trusts Tacoma. And Tacoma said to do it, so Jodi plants her cane and bends down as far as she can, straining to reach. It is slow, and it is inelegant, but there is a gun pointed at her head and a raichu and a donphan and an electivire, and at any moment there could be an explosion and her mutant brain could turn to crumbs of meatloaf―

It's okay, Jodi. Something pushing at her mind: a feeling, some clumsy effort on Tacoma's part at mimicking Jodi's soothing vibe. It's mostly just a non-verbal I'm here, but the effort itself is touching, encouraging. Just give me to him. And be ready.

I trust you. For some reason, Jodi can't seem to say anything else. I trust you …

A few terrible seconds of straining and grasping. She does manage to pick it up, but it slips through her fingers almost immediately and she looks up apologetically into the barrel of the gun.

"I'm sorry," she says, hating herself for conceding. "It's on the floor …"

Nobody answers. She looks at them a moment longer, at all those faces staring at her weakness, and feels the snarl of Tacoma's anger swell into a roar.

Keep going, she says, struggling now to keep the soothing tone. You're nearly there.

Jodi isn't. It takes her a long time to get the rock off the ground, and then longer still to unbend herself with its weight hanging from her hand. She leans heavily on her cane for a moment, gasping for breath, then at a sharp word from Con starts to limp slowly towards him.

"Here," she says, sullenly. "Have it."

She holds out the rock. Con looks at it for a moment, then takes it.

"Okay," he says. "Now the―"

Showtime, growls Tacoma, and the shadows in the room begin to move.

How she's doing this Jodi has no idea. The lights go out one by one, from the exit down to the pit: one two three four five, the darkness racing closer and closer as the cultists turn and stare and swear – and then it swallows them all and in that moment, as everything descends into a sightless shouting panic, green light blossoms in the dark and Tacoma lurches straight into Con's face.

"Hey, Con!" she yells, and his terror explodes out of him so hard it almost knocks Jodi off her feet. "Bet you thought you'd seen the last of me."

He cries out, and Jodi sees Tacoma move as he thrusts her away – but she refuses to be dropped, keeps pushing herself towards him with a caustic fury that seems to singe the world where it touches, and then something cracks like a whip and Con's panicked mind lurches several feet upwards into the air.

"You're dead," he jabbers. "I saw them burn you, you're―"

"I got better." Tacoma's voice is huge, deep. The voice of a giant. What's happening to her? Jodi stares as hard as she can through the dark and sees nothing but the vague movement of some huge shape that cannot possibly be Tacoma's disc. "I could kill you," she tells him. "But you know what? I think I'd rather testify."

The thump of someone hitting the ground, hard, and then the skittering rattle of an object – a gun? – being kicked away.

"Nah," says Tacoma. "Don't think so."

An impact. Con wheezes, breathless, and somewhere about twelve feet up Jodi sees the light of Tacoma's eyes as she turns.

"I'll have our partners back, too," she says. Someone – Deb? – shrieks; the dark shifts, like deep water disturbed by carnivorous fish, and Tacoma turns her blazing eyes on Jodi.

"Red button, blue button," she says. "You wanna do the honours?"

Jodi's face feels odd. It takes her a moment to push through the shock and realise that she's smiling.

"Yeah," she replies. "Yeah, I actually kinda would."

"Hold tight, then."

"Wait, what are you gonna― oh my God!"

Jodi has never been swept off her feet before, and she really wasn't expecting it to happen any time soon, but there it is: she's in Tacoma's arms (arms?) now, a little dizzy and a lot startled. That's a body she's being held against. When did Tacoma get a body? How, for that matter?

"Hold tight," says Tacoma, half sick, half exultant, and as Jodi clutches desperately at her neck the two of them surge towards the pit without touching the ground. Jodi shrieks – but almost before she has opened her mouth they are already there, staring down through the faint glimmering of the crystal maze into that horrifying mouth.

There is just enough light trapped in the broken spacetime to see the beast staring back, tugging fruitlessly at its trapped hands. Its tongues slap wetly against the edges of the wormhole, unable to quite reach the morsel there at the top.

Jodi watches it for a second, fumbling in her pocket for Nick's machine. It really is just an animal, isn't it? Or something like one, anyway. Not a god, not a monster – just some poor starving creature, far from home. Maybe it doesn't make sense to her, but it probably does to whoever lives in the universe it came from.

She holds the machine out over the pit, fighting the pain in her bones, and the forks of the beast's tongue strain upwards, desperate.

"You're free," she calls, thumbing the buttons. "Get home safe, you hear?"

She lets go, and the device starts to fall – fast at first, then slower, and slower still, the air growing thick and treacly around it. The beast reaches out hungrily with its tongue-pincers, but something about the uncanny aura seems to repel it; it tries to touch it, pulls back sharply, tries and fails again. Jodi watches, mesmerised, and then―

The lights come back on.

Is it that Tacoma's concentration slips? Her anger runs out? Jodi has no idea. But she looks up, startled, and as the dark disappears she sees the hulking creature holding her start to shrink. The shadows bleed from Tacoma in gouts, fleeing back to the walls; she gasps, dwindles, and a moment later is something like her old self again, a vague humanoid shape in purple fog.

Jodi's eyes are so wide it almost hurts. That's Tacoma. That's actually her. A little more purple and a little softer around the edges than Jodi remembers, but it's not a swirling disc, it's her, almost exactly as she appeared inside the tower.

It's just so sudden, and she's just so cool. Jodi stares up into her face, and Tacoma stares down into hers, and then without either of them having to say anything they both turn to look down the hall at the cultists.

They are scattered all around the room, depending on which direction they thought the exit was in when the lights went out. But now they're turning, looking at them, and Jodi has a horrible feeling that without the dark and the surprise and the being twelve feet tall, Tacoma is nowhere near as scary as she was thirty seconds ago.

Con is hunched against the wall behind Moira, white and shaking. He isn't getting up again any time soon, judging by the blank pain resonating through his mind. But Max is scratching his head, his lips forming the word ghost, and Sarah is letting go of Harry's arm, and Victor is soothing his donphan, eyes locked on Jodi's face.

"Tacoma?" she asks. "I don't think they're gonna stay shocked for long …"

"Yeah," says Tacoma. Her voice is normal again now, the booming echo gone with the dark. "I gotcha."

She shoves the two clamped poké balls into Jodi's pocket, then tightens her grip and breaks into an awkward run, weaving between the scattered cultists like a cyclist through traffic. Behind them they leave silence, and then murmuring – and then, when the floor starts to tremble and the wormhole to crackle and whine, shouting and footsteps.

Jodi loops both arms firmly around Tacoma's neck.

"I think they're coming," she whispers, all too aware that this is not a helpful thing to say. "I think …"

"I know," says Tacoma, without looking at her. She doesn't sound breathless at all. Maybe she never will again. "I don't know if it matters. They know where you live."

Jodi hadn't even thought of that. Where are they going to hide? Where can they even hide, that these people won't find them? She imagines skipping town, heading back to her flat in Goldenrod and never seeing her parents again. Or Ella. Or Charlie.

The beast's pain spikes inside her suddenly, and then disappears. The whining of the wormhole goes with it.

"I think the portal just closed," she says.

Tacoma just keeps running.

Jodi supposes that there probably isn't much else she can do.

They pick up speed further along, where the lighting is worse; there the dark answers Tacoma's call, buoys her up and lets her for a fleeting second here or there fly rather than run, before her power runs out and she is dropped back down on the stones. The first time, Jodi gasps and clings to her tighter, but after two or three more it becomes commonplace, just something Tacoma can do now, and she starts worrying about what happens next again.

Tacoma never takes her eyes off the passage ahead, but in her arms, Jodi has all too many opportunities to look back. Max and Victor are the fastest, the pounding of their footsteps steadily inching towards them – but the real threat is the pokémon. Victor's donphan trumpets loudly and flings itself forward, curling up into a huge rubbery wheel that rumbles towards them far faster than seems possible for a creature of its size. Jodi watches its tusks spinning, winking in the fitful light, and as it bears down upon them cries out on the left―

The shadows gather around them and Tacoma swoops to the right in the blink of an eye, leaving the donphan to shoot past and smash heavily into a column, sending clouds of dust rolling across the room and making Jodi duck behind Tacoma's shoulder to protect her eyes from flying chips of stone. When she looks up again he is back on his feet, lumbering out of the dust cloud in search of his target, and as his piggy eyes meet hers Jodi flinches. He really wants them dead. It's so rare for a partnered pokémon to actually be willing to kill a human but he really really wants them―

"Left again!" she hears herself yell, and Tacoma shadow sneaks them out of harm's way a second time, cutting it so fine that Jodi feels the wind of the donphan's passage ruffle her hair. Her hand moves of its own accord, searching her pocket for the poké balls – but of course there's no help to be had there. You need a special key to get those clamps off. Until their partners manage to smash their way out, it's all on Tacoma.

"Nearly there!" says Tacoma, and Jodi tears her eyes away from the recovering donphan to see the exit to the staircase, up ahead on the right. When did they even turn the corner? Jodi could have sworn they hadn't reached the crossroads yet, but apparently they're nearly out – except that Deb's pidgey is here now, twittering and beating his wings, and blades of air slice viciously into Tacoma's back, pulling her fog apart in misty shreds. She gasps, stumbles, but Jodi concentrates, reaches out, and a second later grits her teeth as her own back explodes in a riot of pain.

"I got you," she mutters. "Let me take the pain, you just – ngh – get us outta here."

Tacoma looks like she wants to argue, but doesn't; she nods, keeps going, and as the pidgey screams his fury again and fires another gust into her shoulder Jodi steals the pain once more, the muscles of her arm shrieking in protest. She cries out – grips Tacoma tighter – the donphan springs forward out of the settling dust―

Tacoma flings herself into the stairwell, and the donphan crashes into the door jamb hard enough to send cracks racing across the stone. He uncurls again, trumpeting irately, but he can't manage the stairs and now Victor is here, fumbling for a ball to get him out the way―

"Tacoma!" yells Jodi. "Go!"

It's dark in here: again, Tacoma can kind of fly, each stride taking her up three steps or more. But she's still struggling under Jodi's weight and trying not to crash into the walls, and Victor is much fitter and has no one to slow him down, and he is right there and the pidgey keeps striking, turning Jodi's back into a painful mess with empathetic vibration, and that's Victor's hand swiping through Tacoma's substance, reaching for Jodi – but there's the exit, there's the greyish square that marks the end, and with a sudden burst of energy Tacoma shadow sneaks the last yard and a half, right the way through the stockroom to the door. But who's―?

"Someone's here!" cries Jodi. "Tacoma, look out―!"

A sudden dazzling light, blasting the shadow-strength out of her in an instant; Tacoma staggers heavily back against a shelf, cans tumbling all around her, and someone grabs Jodi's arm.

"Let go of her," the stranger snarls. "You―!"

"No!" Jodi clings to Tacoma as tight as she can. "No, it's―"

"Tacoma?"

The light fades away, dies back down into an upraised paw. Through the watering of her eyes, Jodi sees something pink and fluffy – and at its side, a brawny woman with her hand on Jodi's arm.

"What the," begins Sam, and then as Deb's pidgey flutters out of the stairway shakes her head. "Never mind. You two – out, now. Morgan, deal with this."

Tacoma needs no encouragement. She's out of the room even before Sam's done talking; behind them, Jodi hears Morgan jingle and then a sudden sharp whoosh that makes the pidgey scream and fall. A chime – a crash – the bellowing of the donphan―

Out into the night, ducking around the side of the building towards the front. Something pale and ghostly dives past them, and from inside the store Jodi hears the ululating scream of a wingull given free rein to indulge his violent tendencies.

"Sam," she gasps, staring over Tacoma's shoulder at the doorway. "Are those two―?"

"Other bastards need to worry, not them," she replies tersely. "Into the car. Now. Before they figure out what's goin' on. Gabs!"

"On it!" calls another familiar voice, and without quite knowing where she came from Jodi sees Gabriella diving through a car door, scrambling for keys.

"Quickly!" yells Sam, wrenching open the back door. "In!"

Tacoma thrusts Jodi along the far seat, jumps in after her. Her cane gets dropped in the process, but Tacoma snatches it up and shoves it into Jodi's lap.

"Lothian?" asks Gabriella. "Where?"

"Ball," cries Jodi. "He's right here."

Sam whistles sharply. White light explodes out of the doorway, followed by Victor's donphan and what looks like a small tsunami; the donphan hits the wall of the hardware store, bricks smashing all around him, and does not get back up. Morgan skips cheerfully out after him, Jack fluttering above her head, and the second they jump in onto Sam's lap Gabriella guns the engine and the chase fades away behind them into the silent dark of a Mahogany night.

So quiet. Four hearts racing in unison at the back of Jodi's head. It feels like the world has ended, but of course it's only the pursuit.

Tacoma looks at her. She is dark and her hair swirls around her head in spiralling curls and she is so bloody beautiful.

"Jodi," she says.

"Yeah?" says Jodi.

"Is it okay if I―?"

"Absolutely," says Jodi, eager, embarrassed, and as their lips meet she feels like she is flying, her love and Tacoma's colliding in her head and fusing with a blast that shakes her skull to its foundations. It pours out of her in nuclear torrents, flooding the car, the street, the town, the world; as the wave breaks over Sam, she laughs and slaps the dashboard, too caught up in the rush to care that Tacoma is meant to be dead.

"Told you," she says triumphantly.

Gabriella sighs.

"Yes, all right," she says, though she can't keep herself from smiling. "Honestly, Miss Spade. Sometimes you're just insufferable."

It comes out, as they drive through town. When she heard about Nick's arrest, Gabriella knew something must have gone wrong with his plan, and she went up to the station that afternoon to bat her eyelashes at Con and extract from him a few minutes alone with his prisoner on the pretext of concern for Annie. That was when she learned what Nick had said to Jodi, and so after she was done asking him what the hell he thought he was playing at sending children to the chapter house, she came back home and spoke to Sam – who, by fortunate coincidence, was just finishing up work on Janine Williams' car.

"So we had a way in and a getaway vehicle that they wouldn't know was ours," says Gabriella, glancing back at them in the rear-view mirror. "And a pretty strong suspicion you wouldn't wait for a better night. You wanted to save Nick, right? You and … and Tacoma."

Neither of them have asked about her yet. Jodi is grateful – as is Tacoma, by the feel of it. Tacoma would probably also feel bad about it, but given that they kissed just five minutes ago and are now holding hands, Jodi is pretty confident that Tacoma's mood will hold for a while.

"Yeah," she says, a little awkwardly. "We, um, we did. But we did do it, though. His plan? I don't know if he told you about the wormhole …"

"Yes, he did." Gabriella sighs. "I can't believe he asked you to do that."

"It worked. I think. The monster is gone. And …" Jodi sighs. "And I think Con will confess. If me and Tacoma go down to the station―"

"Wait, Con?" asks Sam, incredulous. "Are you kiddin' me?"

"No. It's – it's a long story."

"Which we will leave for now," says Gabriella firmly. "Tonight, we're just going home."

"Thank you," says Jodi. "I think seeing Tacoma destroyed him, honestly. If we tell the other cops … well, I just hope it's enough to take the others down with him."

"I hope so." Gabriella's eyes meet hers in the rear-view mirror, checking again that she's okay, that nobody hurt her. Which in the end nobody did, apart from herself. Taking Tacoma's pain will have triggered a psychosomatic response and by morning Jodi's back will be covered in bruises, but it's okay. Everything is, right now. She is holding Tacoma's hand and everything is so okay it almost hurts.

"Hang on," she says, glancing out of the window. "My house was that way?"

"You just pissed off a bunch of murderers," says Sam, trying unconvincingly to give the impression that she isn't curious to know more about Con. "And they all know where you live. Better not, eh?"

"Where …?"

"Petrol station," says Gabriella. "Stay with us tonight, and in the morning we'll call your parents and do some investigating of our own."

"See what the mood is like," agrees Sam. "I ain't sending you home if you're just gonna get killed."

"Oh." Of course. No story ever just ends, does it? There's no such thing as a final confrontation. Turn the page, and all you find is the start of another chapter. "Um … thanks."

"We should be the ones thanking you." Gabriella shakes her head. "I can't believe you did it."

"It was Nick really," says Jodi. "He made the machine. And then Tacoma got us out of there―"

"Wouldn't have been able to do it without you," says Tacoma, and something in Jodi's chest flutters to hear it. "Kind of embarrassing. Big scary ghost pokémon and I almost get killed by a dumb pidgey."

Pause. Sam and Gabriella exchange a brief look, over the heads of their partners. There are questions here, but they are too kind to ask them right now.

"I'm sorry, I never said," Gabriella tells her. "But it's good to see you again, Tacoma."

Much to everyone's surprise, Tacoma smiles.

"It's good to be back," she says. "It's so goddamn good to be back."

"Here you go," says Gabriella, setting two cups of coffee down on the kitchen table. "Obviously hot chocolate would be better, but we don't have any, I'm afraid. We do have brandy, though. So if you'd like …"

"Oh God, yes," says Jodi. "Um, sorry, but d'you have a cigarette, too?"

Gabriella laughs.

"Sam lives here," she says, pouring a generous slug of brandy into each cup. "So yes, I think we might just about be able to find one somewhere. Hang on a moment."

She goes off in search of Sam, leaving Jodi and Tacoma at the table. Lothian glances after her, then up at Jodi, in case Gabriella's absence means he's allowed to climb on the table and get closer to his partner; Jodi tells him no, and he returns his head to her lap instead. He and Nikki are back now, after Sam applied a little ingenuity and several power tools to the clamps on their balls, and both seem much more concerned about making sure their partners are safe and unhurt than they are about the way Tacoma has suddenly acquired a body. Lothian almost screamed Sam unconscious after she released him, not realising the fight was over, and Nikki hasn't let go of Tacoma's arm since she figured out she had an arm to hold.

"Do you think you can drink this?" Jodi asks, looking across at the two of them.

"Dunno," says Tacoma, picking up her mug. The fog of her hand is splattered with green light, dripping from her smashed knuckles. Jodi hopes they heal. How do physical injuries even work for ghosts? "Let's find out."

She takes a sip. Jodi watches the dark stain of the coffee spread inside her face, dissolve into her fog, and as Tacoma lowers her cup the two of them smile in unison.

"Nice," says Jodi. "That's so good."

It's meaningless, happy little words that come out without anything behind them except the effervescent delight of being here, safe, with Tacoma and their partners and the future that they glimpsed there in the back of that semi-stolen car.

"Yeah," says Tacoma. "It really is."

"Here you are." Gabriella is back, holding a pack of cigarettes; she offers them to Jodi and Tacoma and then takes one herself. Lothian withdraws reluctantly from Jodi's lap, aware that this is a signal his human is about to make the smoke he hates again, and a moment later Nikki follows suit, flaring her nostrils in distaste. "Let me get a match – Sam normally has Morgan light hers, so―"

"It's fine." Tacoma snaps her fingers, and watches Gabriella jump as purple flames erupt at the tip of each cigarette. "'M a spooky-ass ghost, so you know."

"Huh." Gabriella inspects the cigarette, smouldering violet between her fingers, then takes a tentative drag on it. "Okay," she says, emboldened. "I bet that comes in handy."

"Yeah," says Tacoma. "It does."

Three plumes of smoke. Sips of brandy-laced coffee. Jack on the counter, feathers fluffed up and single eye closed.

Jodi could cry at how lovely it is, she really could. But instead she just blows a smoke ring, and watches Jack start up into wakefulness to snap at it and see if it can be murdered.

"Heya, cats and kittens," says Sam, coming back in with Morgan. "Did the sheets, so Gabs' room is ready for you. She's graciously lettin' you have it for tonigh―"

"Oh, save it, handsome," says Gabriella, sounding tired. "I really don't think we need to fake it right now."

Sam shrugs.

"Fair enough," she says. "In which case, you two have the room where we keep Gabs' shit. Watch out for the bucket. There's a leak."

"Charming as ever," says Gabriella drily, putting her arm around Sam's waist. "Come here, you."

It's hard not to stare. Jodi has only in the last couple of weeks become aware that she likes girls as well as boys, but she's known about Sam and Gabriella for years and years, and of course she's dipped her toes in Goldenrod's gay scene. Still, here's something strange and arresting about seeing these affections on display in Mahogany, in the yellow light of a small-town kitchen after midnight, something that makes her heart swell even larger than it was before.

This really could work, couldn't it? It works for Sam and Gabbi, so it could work for them too. This ridiculous, impractical thing that has been growing inside her all this time could actually – and they could really―

The future is too huge and scary to think about right now, after the night she's had. She pushes it away and reaches out for Tacoma's hand instead.

"Thank you," she says, as Tacoma reaches back and grips tight. "Seriously, I don't even know how to―"

Sam holds up a hand for peace.

"Forget about it," she says. "We're just glad you're not dead."

"We haven't even explained …"

"It's fine," says Gabriella. "It can wait until morning. Really." She stubs her cigarette out on a saucer, and as if sensing Jodi's wonder reaches up to smooth the collar of Sam's shirt and prove that this really is something that can exist in the world. "Go on. You must be even more tired than I am."

She is, honestly, and so is Tacoma. It takes a while to get Lothian and Nikki to let go of them, but after a while they seem to work out that their partners want to go to bed and move out of the way long enough for them to make it over to the room. It's small, and cold, and most of it is taken up by a crumbling shelving unit full of the detritus of someone else's life, but it's clean, and the bed looks comfortable, if narrow.

"No, Lothi," says Jodi, as he immediately decides to stick his head in the bucket to see what's in there. "Leave that alone." He sneezes, pulls his head out, and sits down next to the bed, yawning widely.

"Nice to see they've calmed down a bit," says Sam from the doorway, watching Nikki lean back on her tail to look around the room. "Right. We'll leave you to it."

"Goodnight," says Gabriella. "Bathroom's just opposite."

"Okay," says Jodi. "Um … do you have a razor or anything? For tomorrow?"

"Ah." Gabriella blinks the slow blink of a woman realising something she feels like she should have known already. "I'll find one first thing in the morning," she says. "I think we have some of those little travel shaving kits in the store."

"Thank you. Sorry to be a bother."

"No bother at all, Jodi. Sleep well."

"Thanks, Gabbi. See you tomorrow."

"Night, kids," says Sam, her voice hovering deliciously between mockery and affection, and then at last the door is closed and the two of them are alone.

The bed is kind of low. Tacoma holds out her arm without being asked, and Jodi uses it to lower herself carefully onto the mattress. A moment later, Tacoma joins her, a huge comforting mass of seething fog.

It must feel strange for her, having this new body. Maybe Jodi can help with that. Without hesitation, she leans in close and rests her head on Tacoma's shoulder.

"I haven't said thank you yet," she says. "You saved my life. Again."

"Again?"

"You called the ranger."

"Oh. Right." Ouch. That might not have been the best thing to mention. "Well, uh … you're welcome. You're cool. You know?"

"Says the coolest kid in town."

"Hmph," says Tacoma, clearly unable to decide whether to be pleased or upset. "Dunno about that. Don't even know what I am, now." She nods at the mirror across the room, on one of the shelves. Her mirror-self looks back at them: a human head on an almost-human body, its edges soft and ill-defined. The face is right, though; it looks exactly like Tacoma's did in life. Her hair has a mind of its own, its curls shifting and twisting like her disc did before, but even so, it's definitely her. "Not sure how I did … this."

"About that," says Jodi. "I kinda have a theory."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Jodi is sort of surprised Tacoma hasn't worked it out herself already; the study of pokémon is her thing, after all. She fidgets with her cane, considering where to start, and says: "You remember what the Pokédex said? Spiritomb hate people, 'cause of how they're made. But – and correct me if I'm wrong here – I think that maybe you actually kind of like at least one person?"

It comes out more hesitant than she wanted, but maybe that's okay, because it makes Tacoma smile and put a nervous arm around Jodi's waist.

"Yeah," she says. "You, uh, might be onto something there."

"Right," says Jodi, pretending not to care about how much she's blushing. "And there are some pokémon that evolve when they get close to their partners, right?"

Tacoma starts.

"So you think …?"

"I think that nobody has ever made friends with a spiritomb before," says Jodi. "So nobody has ever found this out. But now …" She gestures at Tacoma's chest. Through the translucence of the fog, she can see the rock hanging where her heart would be, its surface riven with innumerable cracks. "Your rock is in there," she says. "I don't know if you can see. But it looks like it's broken, and I'm willing to bet it can't really hold you back any more."

Tacoma touches her chest, peering into the mirror to see.

"I heard something," she murmurs. "I pushed and pushed and I heard these voices … Didn't know all the languages. Someone said 'at last' in Johtoni, I think. I thought – I don't know what I thought, I wasn't really paying attention. But I know I heard it."

"You think it was the other people in the tower?"

"Yeah. Maybe." Tacoma sighs. "I think they might be gone now. I guess the only reason I didn't was 'cause of Con and the others."

There is a question that has to be asked here. Jodi is a little afraid of the kind of answer she might get, but there's no getting around it.

"Did you want to go too?" she asks.

Long silence. Tacoma withdraws her hand from Jodi's waist; Lothian stands up suddenly, sensing a change in the air, and climbs up onto the bed at Jodi's side. Standing by in case of sorrow.

"There's some money hidden in my room," says Tacoma. "Found it in a park. I should've handed it in to the police, but I didn't. I kept it 'cause I had this plan, right?"

Jodi doesn't say anything. She's fairly sure that this is not one of those questions that require an answer of the listener.

"So I take it," continues Tacoma, "and I buy a train ticket to New Bark, or to Pallet, I guess. I haven't checked the ferry listings yet, so I'm not sure which. Then when I get there, I buy some tape and I get on a boat out to Cinnabar Island."

She has so far been talking straight ahead of her, at the shelves, but now she steals a quick sidelong look at Jodi, too fast for Jodi to tell what she finds in her face.

"The trip takes a few days, right? So in the middle of the second night, when we're as far away as we can be from both the mainland and the island, I go out on the deck, check nobody's around. Then I put some tape over my mouth and round my wrists so I can't swim or call for help and I climb over the railing and go."

Jodi breathes in, once, sharply. Lothian starts to hum to her, but somehow the vibe gets lost inside her, its warmth cancelled out by the growing chill in her bones.

"Nobody knows where I went," says Tacoma, her voice as quiet and empty as a gutted library. "Nobody ever finds out. And there's no mess left for anyone to clean up. I'm just … gone."

Another long silence. Nikki lurches upright and stomps over to make what Jodi assumes are consolatory kangaskhan faces.

What can be said? Jodi could tell her about the early days in Goldenrod, when the exhaustion tore at her like eagles' talons, when she looked at the girls on her course and hated them for being so pretty, when her tutor called her in because the bile in her was making empaths cry from two classrooms away. When she thought that this was it. That this was just how life was, and everyone had lied to her about it throughout her entire childhood.

But Jodi was lucky: she figured it out in the end, after Carmine took her to that bar on Honey Street because she thought that that Alex Ortega guy was gay and needed to figure it out, and accidentally made her figure out that she was a girl instead. Sure, that created a whole new mess to clean up, but at least she realised she didn't have to stick to the life she was handed at birth, and that helped a lot, for her.

Thing is, Jodi is pretty sure Tacoma's had that moment too, and that it hasn't helped her at all. And if that's the case, talking about how it gets better isn't going to make a blind bit of difference.

"You didn't go," she says, tentatively. "You stayed."

"Because you needed me. They were gonna kill you."

"But you didn't go before, either. You didn't get on a boat to Cinnabar, and you didn't jump in the ocean." Jodi puts her arms around her, and though Tacoma's mind is thick with loathing for her own desperation she immediately leans into the embrace. "You stayed then, too."

"Because I'm a fucking coward," mutters Tacoma, into Jodi's hair. "Nikki – and Everett and my parents …"

Now Jodi gets it. Why has Tacoma been so angry at herself all this time? Why has she acted like it's her fault she's dead? Because it's what she wanted. And now that it's come to pass, it's as if she did it all herself.

Jodi really didn't think they were ever going to have a conversation as painful as that one about who caused the avalanche, but apparently this is it.

"I'm sorry if I hurt you," whispers Tacoma, sniffing. "But I needed to tell you, Jodi. 'Cause I am not okay, and if you want to do this, if you want to … to stay with me, then you need to know what you're letting yourself in for."

Jodi hugs her a little tighter.

"You can't ditch me that easily," she says. "It's okay to be messed-up, Tacoma. It won't last forever."

"Won't it?" Tacoma pulls away suddenly, gesturing at the mirror. "Look at me, Jodi. Maybe I have arms now, but I'm still a monster."

"So am I," Jodi tells her, and something of her conviction must show in her voice because Tacoma freezes like a deer caught in headlights. "And I'm sorry, Tacoma, I don't have any answers, but we can be monsters together, if you like. Maybe one day we'll figure out how to be people again, maybe not. But we can try."

Tacoma shudders, her body rippling in misty rolls, and now she definitely is crying, wiping angrily at her eyes with the back of one hand.

"I'm sorry," says Jodi. "I didn't mean to upset you."

"No. 'S fine." Nikki holds out her claws, gripping Tacoma's hand clumsily between them. "Thanks," mumbles Tacoma, trying to smile for her. "Yeah, Jodi. I think I'd like that. I just … I didn't think I was gonna still be here. I don't even know what I'm gonna do now that I am."

"Want me to tell you?"

Tacoma hesitates, afraid of what she might say, then nods.

"You're gonna go home," says Jodi. "You're gonna get Nick out of jail, and you're gonna testify against Con and his asshole friends, and you're gonna come to my birthday party, you're gonna enjoy Christmas, you're gonna get drunk with me on New Year's Eve. And you're gonna go back to uni and become the best bloody pokémon doctor on the peninsula, and then … then I guess we're gonna have to figure a lot of things out, but not tonight, okay?"

Jodi can sense the thoughts churning behind her eyes. It's so hard to believe – but they just saw Sam and Gabriella, didn't they? Saw them standing in the kitchen with their arms around each other, saw them throw themselves headlong into trouble in the middle of the night to rescue a couple of idiot kids from a murder cult. And in a world in which even something as unlikely as this is possible, maybe there's room for a couple more scraps of good luck yet.

"No," agrees Tacoma. "Not tonight." She sighs. "Sorry. I guess I'm just tired."

"That's fine. I mean, it was kind of a full night, right? We sent the monster home, we broke up the cult, we solved your murder and discovered a new species of pokémon, all in about an hour."

Tacoma makes a noise halfway to a laugh.

"Yeah," she says. "Pretty good going, huh?"

"Yep. Pretty good going." Jodi nudges her gently with an elbow. "D'you wanna go to bed? I don't even know what time it is, but I don't think we're gonna get anything done now that we can't do better in the morning."

Tacoma nods.

"Yeah," she murmurs. "You're probably right."

They put out the light. The mattress is narrow, and Tacoma is slightly bulkier than she was in life, but Jodi is small, and between them they just about fit. It's good – Jodi is sure of that – but strange; she's never done this before, and she isn't sure Tacoma has either. Their partners seem to feel the weirdness too. Nikki reaches out for a moment as if to separate them, then seems to think better of it and lies down to rest; Lothian puts his foreclaws on the edge of the bed, peers carefully at each of them in turn, then squeaks some kind of cryptic approval and pulls back to curl up nearby, apparently satisfied.

Jodi chuckles quietly to herself.

"Well, that was the hardest part," she whispers, glancing at Tacoma. "If they're happy with this, then I guess it's all gonna work out fine."

Tacoma's eyes glow green in the dark, wide and serious.

"Yeah," she says, and in the movement of her mind Jodi can tell that she is trying hard to mean it. "All gonna work out fine."

Tiny night noises fill the room: the ceiling dripping slowly into the bucket, Lothian snuffling at dreams of fruit, Nikki's breathing as she waits for her parter to fall asleep. Jodi looks up, feeling the happiness brimming over within her the way it did on the drive out here, and sees behind Tacoma's eyes the slow realisation that this is actually happening.

"I know," whispers Jodi, looking up into her face. "I can't believe it either."

Tacoma smiles, hesitant, uncertain.

"I don't even know what comes next," she says.

There's a world out there, full of spite and fear. There are people who would kill you if they think they could get away with it, and know that they probably could; there are families who need to be told about Tacoma, and about what she shares with Jodi; there is a boy called Charlie who is going to need more help than Jodi even knows how to give. There is the darkness in Tacoma, waiting for a quiet moment to wrap its clammy fingers around her wrist and drag her back down into its lair. There are battles to be fought. There are hard conversations to be had. There is so much lurking out there, and all of it will crash down upon them the moment dawn comes.

Jodi sees it all, and shrugs, and tilts her head up to plant a kiss on Tacoma's lips.

"Me either," she says, as Tacoma's nervous joy sings in her veins. "But I'm real excited to find out."