We eat burgers. We eat fries. We talk about things that aren't missing people.

And I drink.

Alcohol grabs your sleep rhythm and shakes it, keeps you in the air until it's sure you're listening. All your dreams turn into brown smears of action, and your whole body feels like a sack of Jell-O. I lost track of my vodka consumption around shot seven.

I wake up to my head throbbing and the smell of sweat. I hold back a groan as I roll over, which lasts about until I detach my head from the arm of the couch. Someone's been filling my neck with boulders. It's still dark, the carded-up windows glossy with moonlight; within seconds I've got pentacles on the brain.

A voice coughs in from outside, half-audible through the front door. I freeze half-risen, my arms coiled; then Paul's pea soup English rolls in to accompany the first voice, and I relax. The other voice comes clear right after: Kelly, still flat as ever, explaining something that actually gets Paul to shut up for long stretches. Lightning strikes my nerves.

The book. I roll up to my feet, ducked low in case there's a peephole somewhere in that mess of cards, and take a look around the room. The book's still on the end table, big, red, and obvious. A man stricken with sobriety might consider that a cause for concern.

Kelly's speechifying lulls, and I go stock still in the middle of the room. I think about my mouth, about the urge for a drink of water; but Paul comes back at her with a question, surprisingly light on the affect, and I'm left alone with a deep need to lower the temperature of my throat. I swallow against the parch, and drop my hand down on the book.

Tarot cards slam into my head, a thousand mouths all hungry to talk to me. I shut them all out, fight the sun's warmth and the smell of old blood, and drop myself whole into the scan.

I get loss, and confusion, and a stacking exhaustion of the sort that makes me smile. I see the house repeated a dozen times, the Tarot in my head echoed on the walls. My hands flash between thick and slender. I ride the memories around the bend, and let it dump me into the part that's most vivid.

It's light outside, the wrong side of the sun, the warmth there to remind me I've been sweating for hours. I'm young, but I'm weary, heavy blackness stuck to my chest. I've got questions. Someone's lecturing me over my shoulder, a female someone with a drone I can't help but enjoy; the word that sticks in my memory is "strays". We disagree. I know that I'm right, but I don't like it.

The voice says something that pushes my buttons, and the camera of my mind jerks left and right. I get up and start shouting back at her, disgust already sprouting as I do it, and I say what we've been dancing around for an hour.

"If we don't, we're both dead."

I pull my hand back, stumble into the present-tense room. I'm Randall, normal hands, no anger in me except for an echo. My chest is heaving.

The conversation outside starts to go quiet, the words resolving as both voices come closer to the house. I slide back down onto the couch, one hand over my thudding heart, and breathe as deep as I can manage as Paul and Kelly come back into the house.

"Why do you insist on smoking?" That's Kelly, some vague annoyance actually present in her voice.

"Something about it just feels right," Paul murmurs. "I'm guessing the guy who used this skin before me was an addict. Plus it makes you look cool for the ladies."

"You are incorrigible."

"Big word for a two-year old." There's some rustling off to my left; Paul must've left his jacket inside.

Kelly lets the quip hang there. Paul finds his cigarettes, gives the pack a couple good slaps. The mood of the room is sliding into the black.

"I find it hard to believe he's harmless," Kelly says, bullet-quick.

Paul takes a turn letting things hang. "He really is, whatever Barg told you. Totally behind the agreement, totally a valuable asset."

They're talking about me.

"If you say so." They're headed back outside now, cold wind coming through the door. "I personally can't believe—"

I lose the rest of what they're saying behind the door. I consider the source, decide Paul's jerking my chain in preparation for breakfast, but that decision lasts me all of three seconds. My spine fills up with ice.

I slip my shoes on, fan my t-shirt in a vain attempt to work off the sweat. I slide my jacket on over this uncomfortable mess, pat the pockets to make sure I've got both wallet and keys. Mundane things handled, I drift back to the book.

My finger hovers just over it, the borrowed memory bulking out in my thoughts. I flip it over, get a flash of anger as I check the title. The Complete Sherlock Holmes. No notes inside, date's recent but not immediately significant. Holmes; if this is a clue I want my money back.

I breeze out the door at speed, and catch absolutely no-one by surprise. Paul is grinning like a hyena, an example Kelly can't follow. She looks like a little girl pretending to be a clown.

"We woke you," she says, already certain.

"Drink woke him," Paul chuckles in response. He's all lit up.

"Six of one..." I say, and shoulder on past them. "Safeway's twenty-four hours here, right?"

"Yes," Kelly says, and, "it's two in the morning." She sounds mystified.

I shrug as I duck into the Cav. "I need Midol."

That one shuts her up. Paul's laughing to the stars as I pull away from the house, his smarm bleeding peach-gold into our link-up. I watch the Tarot signs disappear from my mirror, and focus on the dome of terrain lit up in front of me, navigating back roads and driveways as I try to find my way to Fort Bragg. I drift back to the words in the memory, loud and clear in my brain even with all that distance from the book.

Nothing's ever easy.

I hit Fort Bragg a little faster than I mean to, my eyes on the mirrors as I watch for the two-step of police lights. Nobody seems to have noticed me, so I opt for the quick right into the Denny's parking lot and take a moment to bask in the astral bleedoff from the sign.

The restaurant's atomic with fluorescent lights; I feel like I'm hallucinating when I walk in the door. I'm served by a wasp-waisted Hispanic girl with bags at the corners of her eyes, either thirty or a really well-worn sixteen. She walks me to a table at the back of the room and sets me up with water and a menu, all business as she goes off to flirt with a pair of truckers. My opinion of this town defies physics.

I order coffee, black, and some fancy variation on a burger that looks on the menu like it's hewn from the Original Cow. When the waitress shuffles off I busy myself with picking my nails and sifting through the thoughts in the room. One of the truckers is on speed, his thoughts gibbering like an overclocked processor; the other one is considering breaking up with his girlfriend, for some reason that has red hair and a great laugh. My mind drifts out to sea about the time my food arrives—the burger looks like someone sat on it; the lettuce is as crisp as a handkerchief—and ranges over arguments and sleep as it tiptoes through the minds of Fort Bragg. I take a bite of my hamburger, and slam my teeth together as my frontal lobe lights up with pentagrams.

Someone's screaming.

I spit out the bite of burger; I think I wipe my mouth. I toss myself back out there, scan as deep as I can go through the Denny's sign. I've got a drunk outside what might be the bowling alley, a woman with a crucifix driving north out of town—

I jump up, embarrassment already dialing in; I toss a wad of bills that might be twenties onto the table and shoot out the front door, whatever I say nothing like English as I dash across the lot.

No-one's coming on either side of the street; I sprint across against the red light, stop for breath on that thin strip of street. There's no-one next to the bowling alley, so I'm already doubting

But I don't have much time to decide. I lope low up the street to the corner, swing right as soon as I clear the building on that side. I don't see anyone outside the warehouses, but there's tension in the air, a cold sweat.

I keep moving, keep low, run up to the next intersection. I hunker down behind a car near where we met Kelly, glance back and confirm the "OGRE" tag is still there. I don't see anyone, don't even hear any cars.

There's a noise to my left. I duck out from behind the car and peer down a short patch of road. I see tall gates, a thick tree to their right, and from behind the tree someone running—a girl.

"Help!"

Her voice is ragged with panic. Clothes are ripped but still fully on, which puts the worst parts of my psyche to rest, and I don't see any blood. She comes toward me at a sprint, but I don't see me in my scan of her thoughts; she's running toward the car and the warehouse, toward the rest of the city. She's running away.

And she trips.

Broken glass washes out from her, red-and-black prints of what she thinks will come next. My gorge heaves. I stand up, and duck down again as two more figures sprint away from the tree. There's a stocky man with a scrap of dark beard, and a younger woman with hair down to her knees. They come galloping around the tree, making noises like insects as they go. I think they're laughing.

I feel the girl's panic flash again; and in the midst of it I hear inner cries about what's possible, a note of denial that begs a hard look at the other pair.

They're both demons.

I stare for a second, caught up in the swirl of green nestling in the bearded man's stomach; but the girl howls again and I snap out of it, snap back to the world of hard facts where there are two angle men bearing down on some poor girl coming home from work. I look at the "OGRE" tag, look both ways down an empty street; and as she howls again I say "Fuck it", possibly out loud.

I sprint. Arms out, fists swinging, shouting as loud as I can. I let adrenalin carry me forward, let my legs eat up the ground like a cracked-out cheetah. The main word on my mind is "funeral".

The demons stop what they're doing, both faces dead as they try to figure out why this random man has come careening out of the dark. The male is the first to find sense; he stretches his mouth in a grin, and his mind balloons out apocalypse-huge as he vomits up a tide of vertigo, sounds and images too fast for the mind to process, the same stuff that put the girl on her ass a couple seconds before.

I resist. His face defaults again at this new predicament, too concerned for reflexive emotion. The long-haired woman tries herself, and gets the same wall of iron in response; I'm still coming. I wonder which part of me will get the warts.

The demons curse, their auras leaking out as their whole plan falls apart in front of them. They look at me with blank eyes, hands flexing to themselves as they watch. When I'm about twenty feet away, they run.

I shoot past the girl, keep moving in the demons' direction. I stop once I think they'll continue, watch after them with my mind sewn tight until they whip around a corner and keep going. Their footsteps echo down the empty street, their minds snags in the mental fabric, traveling quickly away from here.

Holy shit, that worked.

I turn around, and offer my hand to a girl who's already stood up. She's half-stooped in front of me, a hand clutched to a stomach clearly in pain; I don't need superpowers to see she's well past shaken. I step back from her, give her some distance, and that gives her about one quantum of relaxation. Her eyes are platter-wide.

"Are—" I catch the stupid question on its way out. My face scrunches. "What can I do to help?"

The woman steps back from me, shakes her head. Her mouth is surrounded by wrinkles, and her brain is spinning like an epileptic top. I avert my eyes, scan the scene for tire marks or weapons, anything to make myself useful. While I'm looking around, she speaks.

"Call my mom?"

My attention zeroes locks onto her. "Your mom?"

She quivers a second, nods. "I was...headed home. She'll be wondering why I'm late."

I finally notice the word stitched on her workshirt—she's a Safeway employee, which puts her all the way across town from where she works. Good show, Randall, way to play detective.

"I don't have a cell phone," I say. Reflex makes me pat my pockets. "Oh, but there's one in the—"

"I fell." She says it like it's a crime, her composure shattering away again. "I tried to run twice and I fell, it was like I was dizzy or having a seizure or..." She takes a breath that sounds more like being strangled, and mashes her face into her hand.

"I..."

My hands lock up. I can already imagine what'll happen when I touch this girl.

I don't care.

Sorrow hits me like a truck full of bricks, a total loss of control that turns my muscles into sacks of cold noodles. I hug her as close as I can, suck it in, let her sorrow and anger fill me to the brim. She's still tense despite all that, half her brain focused on whether I'll be attacking her too; I run a hand along the small of her back and just stand with her in the middle of the street, trying to glue what I can back together.

"I fell..."

My eyes are closed tight, my jaw locked against the tears. This woman is broken. I'm thinking about crosses and bonfires full of heathen souls, when I see the light quality outside my eyelids change. I open my eyes, and see the warehouse behind us bathed red and blue, colors swimming in perfect synch across the white wall.

"Oh, shit."

The cruiser stops a good fifty feet away; its passenger is out before the thing's even come to a stop. He's a tall guy, one hand on his holster; I can't make anything else out through the backlighting coming off his car. He sets himself rigid, poised to move, and says a word I really didn't want to hear.

"Police."

Nothing. Is ever. Easy.