We drove to the hotel in silence. I had to give the incubus credit, he followed instructions well. Inside, I booked a room. Fortunately, it was a slow period, so they had plenty of vacancies. We took the stairs up to the 3rd floor.

“So, we are staying here for the night?” Simon asked.

“Nope. And it isn’t really night anymore. Early morning, really.”

“Ok, but if we aren’t staying, why are we here?”

“We are trying to look like we are staying here.”

I opened my bag, pulled out a few things.

“Change your bandage,” I tossed him a first aid kit. “Leave the bloody one where someone will find it.”

He gave me a questioning look, but did what he was told. I went about staging the room. Pulled down the bed, left a toothbrush in the bathroom, put one of my fake passports and some money in the room safe, a change of clothes in one of the drawers. I would prefer that anyone who searched the room think that I was coming back. I wasn’t, but they didn’t have to know that. Time spent staking out this place was time spent not coming after us. I took the rest of my gear and slung it over my shoulder.

“You done?”

He tossed the bloody bandages in the trash and nodded.

“Then let’s go.”

“You are surprisingly good at this, for someone who finished most of a bottle of whisky before I showed up.”

“I may have done this a time or two before,” I shrugged. “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“To find a store that is open where we can buy you some clothes. You can’t keep walking around with blood all over yourself. The sun’s coming up and it is going to be noticeable soon.”

“Then where are we going?”

“Patience.”

We slipped out through the parking garage into the city. Dawn was painting the horizon a dusky pink and shops were beginning to open up for the morning. We walked down the street in silence until I spotted an open discount store. It was jammed to the rafters with knick-knacks, off brand candy and toys. Fortunately, it also had cheap, touristy clothing, which was exactly what I was looking for. I grabbed an “I heart Toronto” sweatshirt in a hideous shade of off brown, a pair of black sweatpants and a flimsy baseball cap. I shoved them into Simon’s arms and headed for the till. I wasn’t sure if the fact that the cashier didn’t even glance at the incubus’ bloody clothing was more of a testament to his indifference or his self-preservation instincts. The fact that he had barely glanced at us the entire time suggested the former. Still, I paid for the clothing and left quickly, before the guy accidentally noticed something. A few doors down, we passed a coffee shop and I pushed him inside and sent him to the bathroom to change. I bought the largest coffee they sold, while I waited. He returned, clean and blood free, but looking like a tourist from Kansas. One with really bad taste.

“Could you have picked uglier clothing?”

“I hope not. That was kind of the point,” I sipped my coffee, burned my tongue and decided to wait for it to cool.

“What?”

“You are pretty, incubus. People like looking at pretty things. People looking at you is not something we want right now. So, try to look… boring. Unremarkable.”

I pulled the cap down tighter over his hair, hiding his face a little better.

“Hard to do in this shirt.”

“It was the worst color they had.”

“Where to, now?”

I checked my watch,

“Now we walk to Union Station. We have a train to catch.”

“And where is the train going?”

“It doesn’t really matter.”

I sped up, he took the hint and stopped asking questions. We hit Union in time for the morning rush. People flooded the station, making their way to the office. I checked the schedule, found the train I was looking for and bought two tickets. Simon trailed behind me, watching, but finally having given up on asking what my plan was. I would tell him when he needed to know. We wound our way through the station and made the train just before it was about to depart. I found seats near the back of the car, it was quiet, not many people on this route right now. Simon sat down next to me.

“Why are we going to Kingston?”

“God, I thought you were finally done with the questions,” I was tired and by this point I could feel a nice hangover coming on. I didn’t have the patience.

“I just want to know what is happening.”

“We are trying super hard to not get killed,” I draped my hand over my eyes to block out the light and leaned my head against the window. “Get some rest, you look like you need it.”

“Not until you tell me what is going on.”

“Fine. If I tell you, will you shut up for a couple of hours?”

He nodded.

“Ok, this is really simple. We need a few things here. A cell signal is very important, because I need to know when James checks back. Cell phones can be traced, and if they really have control of the agency, they can probably track mine. So, we also need to keep moving. And finally, what we both really need is sleep, because I need to sober up and you look like you are about to collapse. So having one of us drive around for hours is out of the question. Instead, we sit here, on this nice, cozy train. We get a nap, we wait for a call. When we get to Kingston, we take another train right back again. That gives us about…” I checked my watch, “5 hours, ignoring the time it takes to change trains. If I still haven’t heard from James by the time we get back in town, I will ditch my phone, and we will come up with a new plan then. Satisfied?”

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Simon considered this for a moment,

“I really get to sleep now?”

“I would greatly prefer it if you did.”

“Then it sounds like a fantastic plan to me.”

“Awesome. So glad to have your approval. Wake me if anyone starts killing you, but do not wake me for anything else, or…”

I was asleep before I could even finish the threat.

The screech of train breaks jarred me awake. I blinked at the morning sun reflecting into my eyes from the window across from me. I stretched without thinking and, all of my muscles screamed in protest. The strains and pulls that I had finally managed to relax yesterday had all seized up again as I slept, awkwardly perched in a train seat. That, on top of a pretty solid hangover, was making for an unpleasant morning. I futilely massaged my neck with one hand while the other reached into my bag and pulled out some painkillers. I dry-swallowed a couple of Advil, before remembering I had water in my bag, then I took a few sips just to taunt my esophagus with that knowledge. The incubus was still asleep and feeling no pain, he would probably ride the two pills I had given him, back at my apartment, all day. Lucky bastard. I reached over and shook him by the shoulder. He blinked awake and startled in his seat, momentarily disoriented.

“Where are we?”

“Kingston. Get up, we need to get off and get tickets for the train back.”

He struggled to his feet, stumbled on his bad leg, then pushed himself back up. We got off the train and headed into the station. Kingston was quieter than the city, but that might have been the time of day. It was too late in the morning for most of the workers headed in to work in Toronto. As we passed a public washroom, I took the incubus by the shoulder and pulled him inside.

“This is the women’s washroom,” he hissed in my ear.

I dragged him in anyway,

“Then we should be quick.”

He frowned at me, but didn’t try to leave. I pushed him into the handicap stall.

“Take off your pants.”

“Well, this is kind of sudden, but I’m game.”

I smacked him in the shoulder,

“I need to see your injury, dipshit.”

“I know,” he laughed. “Just messing with you.”

He stripped to his boxers and pulled the bandage off the gunshot. It didn’t look great. It was still oozing blood at a rate I found unsettling, so long after the injury.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

“I feel great. A bit thirsty.”

I grimaced slightly, that wasn’t a great sign. I grabbed his wrist and checked his pulse. His skin was warm and dry, his pulse was strong, if a bit fast. Not too serious yet, but I didn’t want him losing any more blood. I passed him a bottle of water,

“Drink. You need to stay hydrated. And try not to move that leg too much. I am going to wrap it up tight, try to stop the bleeding.”

“I know all that,” he rolled his eyes. “I’m not an idiot. I think I might need to go to a hospital. I definitely need stitches for this, at the very least.”

“Probably. But we can’t afford to risk that. For one thing, they will be checking the hospitals for you. For another, doctors are required to report gunshot wounds, which we do not want.”

“I don’t want to bleed to death, either. If I could get a few things, I could treat this better. Maybe we could stop by a pharmacy, with some supplies I could probably…”

“We can’t do it here, or on the train. All we can do is bandage it tightly and If it is still bleeding when we get back to the city, we’ll find a secure location to stitch it up.”

“Alright…” he didn’t sound 100% convinced.

I pulled out the antiseptic from my first aid kit.

“This might sting a little.”

The incubus sucked his breath in through his teeth as I dumped the liquid on his skin. Then I tightly bound the injury again. We were almost out of time.

“Let’s get going, we need to catch a train.”

Simon put his pants back on and we rushed to buy tickets and board. The was almost empty this time, so we had plenty of space. He dropped back off to sleep almost immediately, but I found myself distracted. I checked my phone. I had a signal, but no word from James. Hopefully, he was alright. I signed into the train’s Wi-Fi and checked my email. Most of it was junk, but one caught my eye. The email address wasn’t one I had seen before, but the name was familiar. Henry Carpenter. My fictional lothario. It had to be Tom, no one else even knew who Carpenter was. Hopefully. I stared at the email, but hesitated to open it. There was every possibility that they were using Tom to track me down. He could be compromised, maybe by Suzette and her donuts. But if that was true, why use the pseudonym we invented? It looked like he was trying to contact me in secret. Still, there was no real way for me to tell where his loyalties lay at the moment, it could be a trick. On the other hand, just reading the message couldn’t hurt. I held my breath and opened it. The subject line was blank. The message read: What the hell is going on? The Organization is on lock down. All the Partials are gone. I need to hear from you. Contact me at this address.

Short and sweet. It didn’t tell me much, other than confirm what I already expected. The Domini had proceeded with their plans, probably somewhat ahead of schedule. Interesting. What were they going to do, now that they were essentially in charge of the Organization? I suspected that it wouldn’t be good, but I needed more details. If Tom could feed me information from inside, it could help. But that all depended on whose side he was really on, at the moment. I looked up at Simon, sleeping across from me. I should question him further on what he knew of their future plans, but I would let him sleep for now. Hopefully, once we met up with James, Simon could tell everything to both of us at the same time. More efficient. If we ever did meet up with James, that is. I stared at the phone, willing it to ring. To my surprise, it did. But the caller ID indicated that the call was coming from headquarters. If Tom’s email was accurate, headquarters was not a safe place. And knowing what my suspicions were, James would not call me from there. I silenced the ringing and ignored it. If they were looking for me, no reason to confirm that I still had my phone. I settled back, tried to rest, failed. I checked the news, looking for anything out of the ordinary. No luck there either. The world turned on, as if nothing had changed. The Organization was very good at keeping these things quiet, and that likely wouldn’t change. There had just been a small transfer of ownership. Then again, why was I taking the lack of evidence as proof that something was wrong? I scowled, couldn’t it be that I was overreacting, reading too much into this? I stopped to consider that. Tom’s email didn’t really say that anything specific was wrong, just that there was a lockdown and the Partials were not there. That could all have been my fault, theoretically. It could be how James had responded to my concerns, lock down to keep the ubarae out, send the Partials to ground, and sort out the rest later. That was possible. I took a breath, calmed my frayed nerves. I really had no evidence that anything was wrong at all. Why was I so convinced that Simon was telling me the truth? I didn’t know him. Had no reason to believe him. The problem was, I did. Maybe it was because I knew people, knew how to read them. I had done it professionally for my entire adult life and doing it well was all that had kept me alive. I had looked the incubus straight in the eyes. I had seen his fear, his shame, his guilt. When he said he had been a part of this and now wanted to step away, I believed it. But, I had skipped over a very valid possibility in hurry: just because he truly thought that he was part of a vast and deadly conspiracy didn’t objectively make it true. These conspiracy leaders tend to exaggerate their importance and influence, especially when recruiting young members. It was possible that the Domini and this ‘Omega’ were just a bunch of blowhards, sitting in some guy’s basement, telling big tales about being the rulers of the world someday. It happened all the time. And killing someone who betrayed them was not necessarily out of the ordinary for people like that. It didn’t make them all that dangerous, except to their own. Just a silly little pseudo army raging impotently against their circumstances. Humans did it all the time, too. Simon was probably still in danger, so I still needed to keep him safe, but it was possible I had jumped the gun on the rest. I bit my lower lip, yeah, that could easily be it. I hadn’t been thinking that clearly last night, obviously. I overreacted, read too much into unreliable testimony from a scared civilian, who genuinely thought he had been part of some big, bad conspiracy. It would be a little bit embarrassing when James got back to me to tell me that my concerns were unfounded, but that was better than the alternative. I would apologize for wasting his time, we would relocate Simon to another ubarae enclave, away from the people who wanted him dead, shut down the Domini and everything would be fine. I just needed to wait for the call. Everything was probably fine.