“I ’t stay, either,” Felicity said with Greg’s mouth. “It’ll e out if we stay here talking, and it’ll follow us if we both walk away. If your friend drives, make a break for his vehicle. Drive somewhere I’ll meet you. Uh. ese pce up north from here. Open to 7 in the m. Go!”

  And then she left.

  Greg found himself with his hand on my shoulder, blinking. I watched his Thor’s hammer glint on its cord beh his beard as he took in a big breath and withdrew his arm.

  “I’m sorry, Synthia,” he said in his own voice. “I think I o go.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  He took a step away from me with his left foot, half turning, but looked back at me and furrowed his brow. “I don’t know. I just. I mean. I don’t think I’m doing very well.”

  “ you tell me what just happened from your point of view?” I asked softly, as much like a therapist as I could muster.

  “Well, you heard me, right?” He looked worried. “I just watched myself say something really weird to you. And I was thinking about that monster from the videos. But it didn’t feel like me thinking.”

  I sighed. I was a little irritated with Felicity for doing things this way, leaving Greg uled and with questions he couldn’t answer. But it would make the step easier, if Greg could ha.

  “You’re fine,” I said. “I’m fih you. I’ve seen weirder. The human brain is pretty strange, and we live in a strange world. And she’s right. You’re safe while she’s not with you.”

  “What?”

  “e on,” I said. “Let’s head for your truck. I assume you left it at work?” My pce, Shady’s, and Hayward Grocery were in sort of a tight triangle of a few blocks to a side. We’d walked to Shady’s to talk along the way, ahe exercise, and to my pce because it was so close and I wahe time to prepare my domain. “I’ll answer any questions you have on the way. I know more than I let on.”

  I watched him process that. His eyes twitched bad forth between me and my trail, and he worked his lips, wetting them with his tongue. I watched his breath billow ireetlight. I was taking a bit of a gamble, but the way he’d respond would tell me the actic to take.

  He swallowed some saliva and stuck his meaty hands into his hoodie pocket, then looked at the ground and said, “The monster’s real, isn’t it?”

  Ooh, he’d jumped to that one pretty quick. That happened sometimes. It said a lot about his skeptical veneer, and the depths of his is.

  “How much do you know about urban legends?” I asked.

  He let out a siressed ugh, almost a bark. “Been reading about them since sixth grade.”

  Yeah. No wonder he’d made quick friends with Cassy.

  “OK,” I said. “We’d better walk up that street over there.” I pointed. “And I’m going to avoid all storm drains, sewer covers, and the like. Which means we’ll be walking through people’s yards. OK?”

  “Sure,” he said, gng nervously at my lot.

  “We should be fine,” I said. “The thing’s hunting my friend, not you or me. I just want to be extra careful.”

  I had to lead the ulling on his shoulder to get him to follow. But once we’d taken a few steps, he was keeping up. Quietly. So I started expining.

  “So, you know my favorite er?” I asked. I waited for him to respond. But when he didn’t, I tinued. “Well, I don’t know her name, but she’s pying host to my new friend, Felicity. And you just got visited by Felicity. She had to warn us about that thing.”

  Greg worked his mouth silently for a bit, and then mao ask, “What is Felicity? How did she do that?”

  “She’s a monster,” I said matter-of-factly. “A friendly one. Well, friendly to people like you.”

  “And you? How do you know this?”

  I stopped us oher side of the street we’d just crossed, and turo stand in front of him, looking back over his shoulder at my domain. Then I looked him in the eyes and said, “I’m a mooo. Even more friendly than her. I eat emotions.”

  “What?” He blinked and shook his head as he pulled back. Then he huffed and looked at the ground, grinning a little, “I suppose that makes sense. You’re alrovoking everyoh the silliest crap. If that’s what you think you are, you might as well py it –”

  “Greg,” I said. “Look at me. I’m going to scare you, but it’s safe. Look at my hand.” I held my hand up, gng periodically at my lot.

  He obeyed, fixing my hand with an easy gaze, and a bit of a giggle on his breath. “OK, sure. I’m watg.”

  I merged my fingers so that I had two of them and my thumb, and then refigured them to more closely resemble the digits of a gigantic gecko, plete with heavily textured pads.

  Greg’s jaw dropped open.

  “Holy shit!” he excimed. “I k! I fug k!”

  I tilted my head, “What do you mean?”

  He rexed, took a step back, and gnced around at the neighborhood to see if we were alone, and then he fixed me with a fierce grin, “Synthia. You fake it so badly!”

  It was my turn to frown. I hadn’t expected that rea at all. “I do not,” I said quietly, but firmly, in denial.

  “Listen, Sweetie,” he said. “Let’s keep walking. Get away from that thing. I fu’ k.”

  “ you expin?” I asked, this time following his lead as we started crossing grassy wns and stepping over short hedges and other ndsg. It wasly easy going, but we both uood why we had to do it, apparently.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Look. I’m not faceblind.”

  “Prosopagnosia,” I said.

  “Yeah, that,” he waved his hand, looking where he was going. “I never fet a face. I always reize people, even if I see ‘em just once. Except you. And I’ve been w about that.”

  “Really.”

  “Are you some kind of alien or something?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “I’m a monster, Greg. Felicity calls us emanants.”

  “Yeah, OK,” he grunted. “Every time I spend more than a few minutes away from you, I don’t reize you when I look at you again. Especially if you’ve been talking to other people, which is, like, your job.”

  “Other people reize me,” I pointed out.

  “No, I mean. It’s subtle. It takes a sed,” he expined. “And it feels like it’s beeing worse, actually. Like I didn’t notice it two years ago. But, you don’t ge anything obvious. It’s like small muscle movements, microexpressions, the way you hold yourself, but more so. There’s something moing on there, I ’t expin it. But you’re always wearing your ag, and the same kind of clothes, and the same hair, so after a moment of thought I know it’s you. I’m sure that’s how other people do it, too.”

  “Huh.”

  “I think my brain is just too fixated oails. And when those details are off even just a little, it says I’m looking at a new person,” he shrugged. “But it feels like you shapeshift. And you just did it right in front of me!”

  I wasn’t looking at him, but I could still sense his expressions and movements, because that’s how I work.

  “That… makes sense,” I said. So I was slipping.

  “Then there’s that other thing,” he said.

  “What other thing?”

  “I thought it was just me. Like an halluation or something,” he said, huffing with exertion. “But sometimes you have sort of an aura.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “What?” he asked.

  “That’s not good.”

  “Why not?”

  “I o get a handle on that, or I’m dead meat,” I told him. Then I started p things out loud, “My defenses are slipping. I wonder what’s happening to me. Am I getting too old?”

  “I’m starting to ask myself that a lot tely, too,” he muttered.

  We crossed areet. The houses on this side had raised properties with walls and fences, but fortunately, the sidewalk was a couple yards away from the street, with a nice big grassy strip with periodic trees there.

  “Sidewalk’s fine, here,” I said. It was really the ers that we had to worry about most, as that’s where most of the storm drains were. We gave them as wide a berth as we could.

  “Cool,” he said.

  I sighed again.

  “What?” he asked.

  “We tell Ayden and Cassy about all this,” I said. “But I’m going to need you all to remain quiet about it. Like, don’t go writing about it on social media ing to friends and family, OK?”

  “You don’t eople finding out?”

  “Not that,” I said. “I don’t want other morag me down.”

  “Huh.”

  “We don’t hide from humanity, Greg. We’re not afraid of you. Not in the long run. We’ve been sharing this p with you this whole time. There’ve beey of monster hunts and we’re still here.”

  “So… it’s not like that role pying game Cassy pys.”

  “Nope. We hide from each other.”

  “Ah. Because of how that thing is chasing Felicity?”

  “Exactly. We call monsters like it teratovores. Monster eaters,” I expined.

  “So, you have a whole ecosystem, and because you eat humaions you hide from the monster eaters,” he said, nodding.

  “Sihe Precambrian,” I said. Precambrian is such a broad period of time, it's kind of funny to use it as a starting point. The vast majority of Earth's past was the Precambrian era. But I liked the word a saying it anyway. “Maybe the enthalpiphages created life as we know it. But I’m not one of them, and I don’t know if those ones are alive anymore.”

  After a few steps of quiet, he said, “I feel so funky.”

  “Dissociation?” I asked.

  “Yeah, probably,” he said. “Head’s swimming a bit. I keep looking at your hand. And I still feel like I’m pying pretend with you.”

  “I feel that,” I said. “Kinda makes me feel the same way.”

  “Would I feel it worse if you stopped feeding off me?” he asked, with a sudden shaky caution in his voice. I could feel his rising unease.

  “No,” I said. “I only feed off of radiaion. I don’t drain it out of you.”

  “Radiant,” he said. “I didn’t think it worked like that. But I think I like it. Less predatory. Less invasive.”

  “I’m kind of like pnkton basking in the sun. The lowest spot in the food ,” I said.

  “You’re quite a bit more plicated than pnkton, Hon,” he said.

  “True,” I agreed. “Anyway, the real reason I don’t go drinking with you all is because I get drunk off of other people drinking. And it adds up.”

  “Oh, that sounds dangerous.”

  “It really is.”

  “The more we talk about this in reasoohe easier it gets,” he observed.

  “That’s how it usually goes,” I say. “After the initial shock, anyway.”

  “Guess you’ve had a lot of experience feeling the emotions of other people,” he said.

  “I’m not a people,” I told him.

  “Right. But a lot of experience feeling like them,” he repeated.

  “A lot a lot, yes.”

  “How old are you?”

  I turned and just gri him, waiting for him to prompt me further. It had the desired result, and I got a boost of energy from him as he reacted to that.

  I could tell he inteo tease me before he said it, but he went right ahead and suggested, “Precambrian?”

  “You’re astute,” I said, turning away and tinuing our trek to his truck.

  “What?” he asked, radiating disbelief. “How the fuck is that even possible?”

  “I don’t really know, and I’ve experienced my owence,” I said. “The teratovores keep missing me.”

  “You’re g to be some sort of a god,” he accused me.

  “No. And there’s no way I prove to you that I’m that old, anyway. There’s no way you go bad look. And I’ve ged a lot over the years.”

  “‘Over the years’,” he openly mocked me. Rightly so. It’s been eons. Then, after a few breaths he asked, “Are there monster eaters that eat other monster eaters?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Most will, given the ce, but some specialize in it. Felicity is one of them.”

  “Oh.” He thought some more, then asked, “So that Croc-face is really risking its life to go after Felicity, being so brazen and open about it?”

  “Yep,” I firmed. “Unless it’s got some gnarly defenses, it’s risking a feeding frenzy. Its behavior is really unusual, and all we have to do, Felicity and I, is stay away from it and live lohan it does.”

  “You gonna leave town or something?”

  “I hope not.”

  “I’ll miss you at work, if you do.”

  “It’s a good gig for me.”

  We were finally ing within eyesight of where his truck arked, the back of the grocery store. It looked safe enough. Ued. No storm drains near it.

  “There’re a lot of things that are making more seo me now. You said I could ask you anything, right?” he asked me, looking over at me.

  “No. I don’t think I actually said that. But I meant it,” I said. “Go ahead.”

  “How much do you make, anyway?” he asked.

  theInmara