We pull away from the curb in a flurry of double-checks, me reassuring Arabella while Paul lists off anything he thinks will offend us. Trees and houses fade to black glass and power lines, and then those take a backseat to concrete as we glide onto Shoreline. The traffic's still light, mostly bicycles, and the sun is taking its time getting warm.

"So," Arabella asks, subtle as a brick, "what's got your aura in a knot?"

I direct my attention to the skyline, try to keep my eye-rolling on the comedic side. Paul's all snickers in the back. I wish I knew a graceful way to tell two people to shut the fuck up.

"Okay," Arabella says, "let me rephrase that: What's got your aura in a knot besides these questions?" She glances at me once we're safely on the freeway. "Conversation with Dr. Barg go that well?"

The weight of bad news is only heavy when they don't want. Serpentine bliss washes over me as I kick back in the passenger seat and take a hammer to their calm.

"Oh, you know," I drawl. "Spy on Paul and make sure he's not really a traitor, that sort of thing." Moths flutter inside my chest.

Paul's pupils jiggle just an inch; the lack of a retort is all the response I need. He leans back and rolls down the window in pursuit of a quiet cigarette.

Arabella's gone pale. "He said that?"

I shake my head before she's even finished asking. You call it interruption, I call it efficiency.

"No." I look in the rear-view, but Paul's busy mugging out the window. "He just heavily implied it. It's how Dr. Barg works."

I get a tongue-click from Arabella; it probably wanted to be laughter. She's all shut up in iron, nothing doing on the sympathy.

"He probably has a good reason."

"Oh for fuck's sake," Paul sneers.

Arabella glares into the mirror, and snaps out of the conversation long enough to steer us around a mobile home. The car's choking up, our mood careening into the red.

"Excuse me, Paul?" she says, every word Public Speaking-perfect.

"Oh sorry, Granny, I forgot you're a little hard of hearing." He puffs on his cigarette, flicks the ash out the window. "What I was sayin' was, I know Dr. Barg's your teacher and all, but teacher's not here, and you're allowed to call a spade a spade. Don't cover for the guy when he's an ass."

She stiffens. "I—"

"And he was an ass," Paul continues, "tryin' to get Randy here to doubt me. That's not kosher, not after weeks of normal operating procedure, this isn't the KGB. And I'm not a traitor," he says straight at my ear. "If I was a traitor I'd've let that Kincaid shit blow our cover, not risk giving him a coronary wiping his mind."

My brain becomes a pinball game, flashing lights and loud bells where my glands should be. The highway's piling up with commuters and all I want to do is lean out the window and scream.

"You can't blame us if we don't trust you," Arabella says. "You did pull a pretty impressive little maneuver—"

"You ever notice how you can read minds?" Paul shoots back. "I couldn't exactly tell you my big plan and have you play Let's Pretend—"

"You're desires wrapped around urges, Paul, we couldn't count on you to be ratio—"

"'Desires wrapped around urges'? Did Dr. Barg teach you that one or did you steal it from a poetry reade—"

"Dr. Barg is an excellent—"

"I'm not spying," I finally say, loud enough for them to hear.

God adjusts the volume. There are cars full of talking around us, cell phone convos and morning radio. Paul finally puts out his cigarette; Arabella just stares. My nerves are on fire.

"Look, Ara"—I try my best for eye contact—"I know you don't trust Paul. The guy grates on your nerves, and of course he does, because a man's gotta eat. But I know you trust me." Still trying. "However pissed you are, were, whatever, about how things went down at Dr. Bingo's, you know I'm onboard with the best interests of the breathing and three-dimensional, and I want to assure you"—my hand starts shaking—"that Paul is one hundred percent with us.

"And besides that, we're going into a town where one of the peacekeepers went missing like a day ago, so if you don't trust us to have your back, either of us, let me know and we can drop you back at home." My bluster's leaking out. "Really. No joke."

Steel shutters slam down over her thoughts. She looks at me sidelong, an extended, scouring glance. I think about the cars around us, and the sunlight, and the way I love her hair, anything that keeps me from counting those fingers one, two...

She looks away from me, and I feel the slow boil of resignation in her gut. "He really asked you that?"

My stomach kicks. "Indirectly. Wanted me to 'test my hypothesis' about Paul being in our court."

In the back seat, Paul scoffs. I glance at him, and hold my hand out to Arabella. She looks at it like I'm trying to sell her a mouse corpse.

"I'm wide open," I say, finger tapping forehead. "If you want I'll let you see it, clear as day."

She studies the hand some more, and looks away without so much as nodding. Her mouth's a pencil line.

"What'll you tell him when we get back?"

An anvil sloughs off my chest, and I'm smiling. I let myself relax into the seat and try not to spin out too hard.

"I don't know yet," I say. "Probably that there's nothing to report."

"He'll know that's a lie," she replies.

"Gotta second that," mutters Paul.

"Paul." I shoot a look at the mirror. "Then I'll tell him you were onboard here, that you helped out as best you could. And I'll tell him in no uncertain terms I'm not his spy." I make sure we're sharing that look. "I mean, assuming you actually are onboard."

"And if I'm not you kick my ass and mail me in for the Dr. Barg decoder ring?"

"I don't need a decoder ring for Dr. Barg." I give him a grin. "I'm already fluent in Bullshit."

Paul rolls his eyes at that one, but I get an amused sniff from Arabella; good enough for me.

And after that...nothing. Silence reigns as we roll through Palo Alto, Menlo Park; when we hit a four-lane parking lot around San Carlos, Arabella clicks her tongue, and gives me a scan I was completely unready for. I lock my brain up around the subject of my fingers, but it's all I can do before I see her reading over our link-up, the hot orange feedback of me watching her body language and the sounds layered in her voice. She comes out of it wilting.

"You think I'm mad at you?"

There is no way to defend against that; blocking my mind's just a big red Yes. I stare straight ahead and look surprised.

"You've been a flashing neon sign of Mad ever since. Not exactly hard to deduce."

"Ever since?" she prods.

"Since Kincaid."

Her temperature drops. "Ah." I get a glance, and then we're rolling again, all attention forward. "You were kind of an ass."

"That's very true." Sigh on deck. "Very true."

We make it through San Carlos, the traffic streaming toward Foster City. Arabella catches my eye the next time we stop, and fires off the next of her burgeoning questions.

"You really worried we don't need you?"

Sooner or later I have to start answering. "I'm worried about what you and Barg talk about."

"You think it's about you?" Her lip quirks.

I shrug wide. "He wasn't exactly happy with my performance on Kincaid."

She shrugs. "It was reckless. The end."

"Except that wasn't 'the end'." I make a mockery of her tone. "You've been stalking around ever since making sure I know I'm in the doghouse."

"Well a woman's gotta keep her man in line," Paul says from the back.

Her mood ripples, but she isn't biting. "You really think Dr. Barg wants to fire you?" she asks me, not even glancing at Paul.

"He ask you to ask me that?"

Cold air slaps us across the face. There's the tension again from all sides, a neon glow on everyone's brainpan as we process my implications. The traffic stays stopped, thank God, or we'd be looking at a bumper-kiss from behind. Arabella stares at me, eyes wide as she parses my thoughts. With an axe-chop of a sigh, she takes a hand off the wheel and lets it run whisper-soft across my leg.

My lower half stiffens; my hormones stop in for a chat. I feel the polyphonic surge of her brain, all the glares and invectives, the ragged stump of pain they're all springing from; and while I see plenty of Dr. Barg in her memory, nothing in their conversations is about me.

"Oh."

My own voice brings me back into the car; I shake my head, shots of an unfamiliar bedroom locked behind my eyes. I look over at her, and pretend to fix my collar when she tries to look back. She gazes at me, longer than a reasonable driver should, and says a single cottonball of a word:

"Randy."

It's chiding, but affectionate, wide eyes and tight mouth, the ghostly sympathy of a mother when the tantrum starts to crest. She gives me a smile worthy of a soft focus lens, and puts herself back to the task of driving. She doesn't say anything else, but I can see the slideshow of her explanation build up in her head. It's herself, seventeen and lost; Dr. Barg balanced on canes; Paul just human enough to perfect the condescending sneer; and then me, somewhere in the middle of all of them, brain and health and ability all at perfect balance. Her picture of me is maybe a little Herculean, but I seem to recall puberty does that to our idols.

And then I see myself that night at Bingo's, the trick I pulled on her; and I feel the world go black and fractured as she realizes what the people around her must think. It's like a fist straight to the stomach, and all I want to do is do it different.

"Arabella," I mutter, and put my hand on hers. Our connection gutters, shots of anger and hugs in the hallway, the whole past month done in miniature.

"Man," Paul says, sprawled supine in the back seat, "you wonder if Dr. Barg is getting any of this over your link-up?"

We say together, softer this time: "Paul, shut up." And the car goes misty calm.

In a perfect world, the traffic would let up right now. Unfortunately, the world doesn't revolve on the whims of English majors.

Arabella powers us through to Sonoma County, then stops in Santa Rosa for gas and In-N-Out; I hand her cash for my hand-held coronary and stay in the car, letting her waft off into the restaurant while Paul and I stay in the car. We lock eyes in the rear-view the moment she's through the front door.

"Why'd you get involved?" I ask.

He puts a hand to his chest, offended. "Me?"

"I don't see anyone other smartass angle men here." I sit up straight, all serious business. "You ate before we left, I'm ninety percent on that. Why the hell did you toss your hat in the ring while Arabella and I were scuffling?"

Paul shrugs, nonchalant. "Wanted a nightcap. Daycap." He grins with every tooth he has. "Whatever."

I nod, but not at what he's saying. I'm caught under three layers of disbelief. "You jumped in so me and Arabella would gang up on you."

"And you never order a double burger?" He nods toward the restaurant for emphasis.

I scoff, shake my head. "Really, Paul? That your defense today?"

"I'm not defendin' anything," he insists. "Really not."

"Course you aren't." I cross my arms and put on my best Grade-A smirk. "It was just coincidence that you came in and annoyed both of us right when we needed something to remind us we're in this together, right?"

Paul shrugs, hands in the air. "Man, search me." He pours himself back into the seat, reclining as far as the Cavalier will let him. "I don't understand what it is about road trips brings you damn hippies together."

I laugh out loud. "You're feeding right now, aren't you?"

He peeks at me from under folded hands. "And what if I was?" he murmurs, and goes back to pretending he's ignoring me.

I sit there in the front seat, letting the conversation wind around me. I lean around the seat, lightning in my eyes.

"Hey, Paul?"

At the speed he sits up, he must be reading me. "What?"

"You been having any private sessions with Dr. Barg lately?"

Paul blinks. Nobody can do blank quite like a demon's body. "What the hell's that mean?"

"Is he calling you in to talk?" My hands launch into lecture mode, swinging around in front of me. "Asking you any special favors, anything like that?"

"Pff." Paul occupies himself with lighting a cigarette. "To the crip I'm just a bazooka in a coat: point me at the problem and pull the trigger and it'll get done. That I'm not tapped more often is proof he trusts you two to get the job done. I mean, unless it's all part of his secret plan." He wiggles his fingers in mock mystery.

"So yes, then," I say.

"No," Paul responds. "The crip doesn't trust me, man, you can tell that. And he doesn't want you to trust me either. He thinks I've got my own agenda."

"Well, I mean, you do." I give him a shrug. "It's not like you're precisely fathomable, man, you think on a whole different lev—"

Words vanish; I sit up straight, a cat with the scent of a mouse. Paul starts to question it, but his pupils wobble before he can ask me; he feels the same thing I do.

My eyes dart around the parking lot, swing over the highway, but I've got nothing. I'm just starting to tell my neck hairs to relax when my brain screeches again; I catch a spike of volume in the thoughts around us, one mind brighter than the others.

Arabella leans out of the restaurant, ragged and desperate. She feels it too, the spider-whisper at the corner of our brains, the tiny scratching and the sea of foreign images that come when someone reads our thoughts.