As we opehe doors of his trud stepped out into the restaurant's parking lot, Greg asked his question, “So, when you said I should have seen the sky before, you really meant…?”

  “Yep,” I said. “Precambrian. All the stars were different.”

  “Damn! You remember that?”

  “Sort of,” I replied. “I remember remembering it.”

  “Ah, kind of like how human brains work,” he said.

  “No.”

  Felicity was leaning, arms crossed, against the front doorframe of the establishment, watg us. She was inhabiting her primary host, whose name I was hoping I’d soon learn. The lights in the building behind her were dark, and the wooden ‘open’ sign on the door was hung upside down. There aper taped to the door above that.

  “They didn’t survive COVID,” she said, once we were in earshot. “The business, I mean. I don’t know about the owners.”

  “Hey, Felicity,” I said. “Are you OK?”

  “No,” she said. Then she poi Greg, “You been filling him in?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You kind of left me with no choice.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I remember you using me like a puppet,” Greg growled.

  “Really? Amber doesn’t ever remember me,” she frowned. “Bcks out every time I front. Weird.”

  So, it’s Amber. Niame.

  “I’m not Amber,” Greg said.

  “Neurodiversity,” I said. “Amber must be freaking out about all the bckouts, though.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Felicity said. “I’m careful. She never seems to notice them. The hing about amnesia is you often don’t remember having it. Takes another person to point it out.”

  “She’ll probably notice today’s bckout,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah,” she sighed.

  If Felicity had been fronting sihe attack, that was a long time. A lot of missing day that would be hard to hide. And she’d had a witness with Josephine, who’d ask questions. And I guessed that if she didn’t trive to have Amber wake up in her own bed in the m, or Josephine’s bed or couch, somepce familiar, that’d be to for her mind to expin away.

  Her agreement seemed to firm that.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  Felicity Greg’s truck, “We go somewhere else. Your choice. Preferably further away. Make that thing work to track me down.”

  I looked at Greg, “You good with that?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  As we squeezed into the cab of the vehicle, Felicity said, “You’re probably going to want to move your domain.”

  “Pretend for the duration of the drive that I bme you and hate you,” I told her.

  “I don’t even really know who you are,” she said.

  We ended up driving into Portnd and finding this awful diner ssh bar called the Ran that en 24/7 and proud of it. And when I say ‘diner ssh bar’, I mean it was like two establishments that knew each other ally. Just like in a fanfic.

  Not really my favorite choice of pce to pn serious things, because of the alcohol and the people drinking it, but I insisted our table stay sober and that helped a lot.

  Sitting in a far er of the diner area, away from all the drunks also helped. And every caffeine and nie infused wait staff that came to che us also served to clear my head a bit, bstih their work frustrations juiced up with stimunts.

  So, we had a big mound of garlic fries until early in the m, and then ordered french toast for Felicity and Greg.

  I mostly stuck to water. I didn’t , but it was a nice sensory experience while sitting in the dingy pce.

  Aalked through the whole night, filling both Greg and Felicity in on who I really was and what I could do. As much as I wao share, anyway. And trying to figure out a real pn for how to deal with Croc-face.

  In the process, I learned how much Felicity had lost iheater attack, and why Croc-faew things she used to knorobably why it was so fiercely trag her down.

  Or, at least, that was Felicity’s theory.

  But, when I’d been ooilet iheater, Croc-face hadn’t attacked me. It had waited for one of Felicity’s hosts.

  I didn’t tell Felicity that I’d noticed that. Nor did I question her.

  I decided that I o wait until I had a little more on her before I pushed that avenue of analysis. I figured that without enough leverage, she might get really cagey about it, if she wasn’t volunteering the informatiht away as it was.

  Knowing the real reason Croc-face was after her was not only a matter of safety for everyone involved, but it might be the key to trapping it, etting it off of Felicity’s tail. Or, keeping it from going after me with the same tenacity.

  If she was in denial about it, then she was in denial about it. But if she urposefully withholding that informatioe how important it was, she’d be determio tinue doing so.

  I o find out enough about her to determine which it was, and what to do about it.

  For his part, Greg was a good sport about fag an uping work day without any sleep.

  But then, Greg and I got text messages a couple hours before opening inf us that the store would be closed until further notice, and that ma would keep us informed.

  No expnation as to why.

  I had a fear about it. And so did Greg.

  But that meant Greg could catch up on his sleep.

  It’d be iing to see if he still believed all of this when he woke up.

  “I o eat,” Felicity said, after Greg dropped us off at 13th and Wallu, near anreenway I could use to pce my domain.

  I gestured at what would be my new home, “ you wait until I’m doh this? Or… what? How do we find you food?”

  “I wait a bit longer, but I’m starting to feel weak and shaky.”

  “Alright. I’ll make this as quick as I while you fill me in on the pn,” I said.

  We crossed the street with the light, headed toward the rge wooded area. It had a public trail through it, so it was less ideal for me. So much traffic made me nervous. But it was the closest pce to work I could use that wasn’t my old lot. My lot that Croc-faow associated with Felicity.

  Finding an unofficial side trail I could walk down until I was out of sight of strangers wasn’t too hard. And then, ohere, it was a matter of withdrawing myself from my old lot, and putting that portion of myself into this space.

  And I didn’t o do much. I just needed enough that I had a pce to disappear into. I could eborate on it ter that night. Or whenever I found myself using it.

  Not all monsters have domains. It’s a natural adaptation that some of us have figured out. And, a domain is a part of the monster who created it. It’s like if you took a small, hidden part of your subscious psyche and ied it into a pocket of the outer world, to describe it badly. And then tur into a hiding pce where you have nearly full trol of what happens in there.

  Domains are not perfectly invulnerable. As I mentioned before, some monsters have learned how to take over a domain and use it to eat its owner. So, you do have to hide yours pretty well. Or move it around a lot. But, if anybody mao enter my domain, no matter where I am, I se.

  Anyway, I don’t put any of my personality or memories into my domain, or nothing vital, at least. So if a carpedominator ate it, I wouldn’t lose muyself. Every time I’ve created a domain, I’ve basically just used my memory of the pce I utting it in as the core part of it. It’s a pretty good way of making the domain hard tnize as a domain, and also if I fet where it is, obviously it’s been promised and I just o make a new one.

  Not a perfect system, but at least that wasn’t what was drivio do it that time.

  So, as I worked, Felicity told me what we o do.

  “Obviously, I o use you as bait, which I assume is what happe the theater,” she said. “I don’t want to repeat the same mistakes we made there, though.”

  “So, no sitting on toilets,” I said.

  “Yeah, no.”

  “I have a question,” I told her.

  “Go ahead.”

  “’t you just eat a mohat g one of yraffiti eyes?” I asked.

  “No, those only work with humans,” she replied. “Not even with other animals. Other animals don’t have the symbolic memetiake the e. Yet. I have to work within the framework of the species I use as a host. I might even have to use a slightly different symbolism in another try.”

  “Ah.”

  “Anyway, emanants don’t have the neural pathways to make it work at all. I have to make direct eye tact to start feeding,” she said. “And Croc-face doesn’t have eyes, so with it I have to use another means.”

  “You didn’t go into this much detail the st time,” I said, stomping through the rough side trail, looking for just the right spot.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I robably being overly cautious with you.”

  “Uood.”

  “Anyway, if we rule out restrooms, or any pce that might have a drain, or plumbing, this gets much harder,” she sighed. “I think I’m at a loss. This isn’t my usual way of feeding, so I don’t know what to do.”

  “Couldn’t you just switch hosts?” I asked.

  She grimaced, then said, “Yes. And that will help in the long run. But I’m starving. I ’t wait for another predator to decide my new host’s parasites are worth trying to eat. I need something now.”

  I could not help but feel really nervous hearing her emphasize her hunger, but I said, “Got it.” And then I turo her, and observed, “You know. One of the things I like about my Latin and Greek names for our kind is that they don’t have the social stigmas that words like ‘predator’ and ‘parasite’ carry.”

  “Huh,” she responded. As if she’d hought of that.

  “I guess I spend more time examining the emotions of humans than most of us do,” I admitted. “So when it es to the things I don’t say to provoke their emotions, I lean toward the unprovocative.” I pushed my lower lip into my upper one and o myself. “Iing.”

  “I’ll think about that,” she said.

  “How often do you have to eat?” I asked.

  “If I’m not very active, once every couple of months,” she said. “A single emanant is pretty rich with energy.”

  I’d found my ideal spot. It would do.

  While I worked on it, I sidered what she’d said.

  Depending orength of my source of food, I have to be eating for most of a day, every day. If sources are scarce, I could get enough emotion from one individual to survive, but I’d o feed off of them stantly, and it’s really unfortable. Which meant that I was also eager to go out and feed, and helping Felicity would help me do that, too.

  Not for the first time in my existence, I sidered the bes of being a teratovore.

  I could adapt myself to do it, but the idea still repulsed me.

  Felicity’s methods, as she’d described them, were the reason I could bring myself to work with her in the first pce. Eating other teratovores did appeal to me in the abstract, at least. But I was gd I wasn’t doing it myself.

  Was I als with her because I was afraid that she’d try to eat me if I didn’t? Sure. That absolutely also factored into this.

  “I supposed it’s been a lot lohan that since your st meal,” I said.

  “Yep.”

  “OK, I’m done here,” I said, ing up the establishment of my new domain. “Let’s figure this out.”

  theInmara