Eve sat at the kitchen table and stared at her hands resting on the wood. Her first coffee sat cooling and forgotten in front of her. Her fingers curled up toward her palms. They were shiny where Chelsea had ghost-touched them the night before, pink and painful like a burn.

Chelsea was quiet as Eve got ready to pick up the guys and finally drank her coffee with a towel wrapped around the mug to protect her fingers. The air in the apartment felt subdued, like Chelsea had used too much energy and needed to rest. Or maybe that was just Eve, feeling a depth of exhaustion she hadn’t known she could feel. Even walking out to her car felt like too much effort, and if she hadn’t promised to pick Ezra and Jon up from the Cliff Henge, she would have gone back to sleep.

But the coffee helped—a little—and Eve pulled up to the henge feeling semi-human again. Ezra and Jon sat on a bench overlooking the cliff, close enough together that Ezra jumped and scooted away when he heard Eve’s car crunch into the gravel parking lot.

“Did you sleep at all?” he asked as he climbed into the back seat.

“I could ask you the same,” Eve said. She lifted her head from where it had been resting against the window. Ezra looked drained, the bags under his eyes as heavy as Eve felt.

“Are you okay?” Jon slid into the passenger seat looking like he’d just returned from a weekend at a spa. “Did you hurt your hands?”

Eve scowled at his well-rested face and nodded. “It was a long night.” She drove back in the direction of Blackwood. “But I’m not talking about it until we get to WaffleHenge, because I’m about to actually die if I don’t have more coffee.”

***

Donna the waitress was as nosy as ever when Eve, Ezra, and Jon walked in, paying particular attention to the too-big pajamas Ezra wore. He was too busy being tired to notice, but Eve frowned at Donna, and she pursed her lips and ambled back to the kitchen for Eve’s personal pot of coffee.

Eve waited until they’d all ordered and she’d gotten her bandaged hands around her second cup of coffee for the day to interrupt the flirting—shy from Ezra, shameless from Jon—going on across from her.

“Someone else start talking about last night,” she said. “I’ll go later.”

Ezra’s face dropped from its tender little smile into a milder version of the guilty look he’d worn the night before. “I’m so, so sorry you guys,” he said. He twisted his hands together on the peeling table. “I never wanted to put you in danger; I was going to stay home and lock myself in my garage, the way I normally do.”

“So what happened?” Eve asked. She let out a deep breath as she relaxed into the booth cushion.

Ezra blinked rapidly as he started to tear up. “Yesterday after I got home, I was getting my chains ready when someone knocked on my door. When I opened it, you were there,” he said, looking at Jon.

Donna arrived with the food just then, and Eve rolled her eyes at the exaggerated interest on her face.

Jon frowned. “I definitely wasn’t,” he said, glancing at Eve. She narrowed her eyes.

“I know, but it didn’t even occur to me to wonder how you knew my address or why you weren’t with Eve. I let fake-Jon in, and he asked about the investigation, about our plan for last night.” Ezra hesitated. He looked down. “And then he told me I didn’t need to lock myself up. He told me I should find you and…” he couldn’t continue, voice lost in tears. Jon hugged him, turning in his seat to get a better angle.

“You didn’t hurt us,” Eve said. She crossed her arms. How wonderful, some kind of weird shape-shifting or illusion business added to the mess of paranormal bullshit. That was exactly what she needed.

Ezra sniffed and looked over at her, still pressing his face into Jon’s broad, leather-clad shoulders. His eyes were red-rimmed and watery, but he lifted the corners of his mouth in an approximation of a smile.

“Was it like the other day when Kyle tried to figure out what we know?” Eve asked.

Ezra lifted his head and blinked. He thought for a moment and then his eyes widened. “It was exactly like that.”

“But how did he look like me?” Jon asked.

Donna appeared beside the table, and Eve jumped, sloshing her coffee nearly out of her mug. “Here’s a refill for your coffee,” Donna said, switching out Eve’s empty pot with a full one. Then she looked over the three of them with a secretive smile on her face. Winking at Eve, she said, “You know what, good for you, young lady.”

Eve blinked. “What?”

Donna tapped the side of her nose with a blue-nailed finger. “When I was your age, I never would have had the confidence to do something like this,” she said. “Good on you for taking advantage of your youth.” She sighed and shook her head, curls bouncing. “I never did, and now I’m too old to try all the things I wanted to.”

‘Literally what the fuck are you talking about,’ Eve didn’t say. What she did say was, “There’s no time limit for living your life the way you want to.” She managed it with only a small amount of “what the fuck” in her voice.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Donna’s eyes widened, and she looked past Eve and out the window. “You’re right. I’m sure I can find something; you can find anything online.” Then she drifted away with the empty coffee pot.

“Okay,” Eve said. “Let’s pretend that didn’t happen.” She took a bite of her food intending to do just that, but Jon laughed, ruining everything.

Ezra frowned and wiped his face. “I don’t understand what that was about,” he said.

Eve shook her head at him. “Nah.” She made a cutting motion with her hand. “Stop right there, we’re not talking about this.” At least it had made Ezra stop crying, though the relief Eve felt at that was swiftly being outweighed by her horror.

“She thinks we're,” Jon said—Eve glared at him, but it was not an effective deterrent—“you know.” He raised his eyebrows suggestively and made some kind of vague gesture at the three of them.

Ezra stared at him for a second, and then he flushed and shrank back into the bench. “What, all three of us?” he asked, looking as horrified as Eve felt. Jon tilted his head at him, taking a bite of his eggs. Ezra opened his mouth to ask another question but Eve simply could not take any more.

“God forbid I have friends,” she snapped. “You’re both way too old for me, anyway. In age,” she pointed at Jon, “and in spirit,” she finished, pointing at Ezra. “Anyway,” she added pointedly, “let’s talk about what we came here to talk about.”

Jon, to his credit, took a deep breath and focused. “Do you think it was Kyle, then?” he asked.

“It has to be. He’s the only person in town who has that kind of effect,” Ezra said. He pulled out his notepad and flipped through the pages. “But how?”

“Shapeshifting?” Jon suggested. “If he’s a fairy or demon, that’s a possibility.”

“And how are we supposed to deal with that?” Eve asked. She pressed her heavy head into her hand and closed her eyes for a second. “I mean, should we even be investigating this, still? He sent a werewolf after us. He can apparently change the way he looks. He’s already a murderer once over, maybe we should leave it alone?”

“I don’t know if we have a choice at this point,” Jon said. “If he thinks we’re a threat to him, he might not stop, even if we do.” Eve closed her eyes again. “But we can stop him. Especially now that we’re finding out all sorts of abilities we have.” He looked at Eve, who sighed.

Ezra tilted his head. “Abilities?”

“How much do you remember from last night?” Eve asked.

“Not much until I turned back; it’s mostly images and sensations.” He shuddered. “I remember the cat, though.”

“Eve consecrated the spot we were on to cats, and then the cat-sith showed up and fought you,” Jon said since Eve was stalling with her coffee mug.

“What is that?” Ezra asked.

“Cat-sith is a Celtic fairy cat, also known as the king of cats,” Eve said. “Unfortunately, I know more about that than I would like to. Ugh,” she sighed, “I’m going to have to go back there with some treats later to thank him.”

“I thought for a place to become holy, thousands of people had to believe it was?” Ezra picked at his food.

“Normally, yeah,” Jon said, “a lot of people need to believe. But Eve is a more powerful witch than we thought.”

“Not a witch,” Eve said out of habit, though it lacked the conviction she used to have. “I didn’t cast a spell or anything. I just insisted.”

“You ‘insisted’?” Ezra said. “What does that mean?”

Eve paused. She had said it and meant it. She’d “believed in herself” —barf—and it had happened. “I said ‘no dogs allowed,’ and I was stubborn about it.”

“Kind of like when a toddler insists that it’s not dinner time, it’s dessert time, and they won’t take no for an answer?” Jon said.

“You bullied the land into being holy.” Ezra laughed and leaned forward. “Well if anyone could, it’d be you.”

Eve gave him a look and pursed her lips. “I guess you could call it bullying. I prefer to call it tenacity.”

“You tenaciously bullied something into being,” Jon said. “I’d call that witch behavior.”

Eve stuck her tongue out at him. “Shut up or I’m going to tenaciously bully you into fucking off.” Jon laughed, Ezra smiled, and Eve took a vicious bite of pancakes.

“That wasn’t even the end of the shit that went down last night,” she continued. “When I got home Chelsea was having another tantrum. I was pissed, so I said, ‘Chelsea, use your words’.” She swallowed and looked down at her hands, the pancakes sticking in her throat. “I think I gave her the ability to speak using my breath.” Her mind went back to that feeling, of breathing in and having it snatched from her throat, of gasping and getting nothing. Jon and Ezra’s eyebrows shot up in matching surprise. Eve swallowed again, reaching up to touch her neck. “She spoke—said stuff about wanting help, about being betrayed—and I couldn’t breathe. Harvey saved me.”

The table was silent for a moment. Eve cleared her throat. “So, you know, two near-death experiences in one night: do not recommend.”

Jon hummed and furrowed his brow. “She took your breath? We already knew she was linked to your energy, so it makes sense she’d need to draw from you to speak.”

“Do we need to worry about Chelsea accidentally taking too much?” Ezra said. His mouth and brow were pinched in worry, and he twisted his pen in his hands.

Eve stared at him and took a long drink. “I haven’t thought about that,” she lied once she was sure her voice wouldn’t do anything weird.

She hadn’t entertained the thought of what would happen if Chelsea used too much of her energy. It had flitted briefly through her mind the night before, but she’d been avoiding allowing it to sink in. And even though time and experience had proved she couldn’t actually ignore things and make them not exist, fuck it, she was still going to try.

But Chelsea could have killed Eve the night before, and it was only thanks to Harvey that she’d stopped when she did.

Jon glanced between them and smiled brightly. “We’ll figure this out and have Chelsea moved on before it’s an issue,” he chirped. Like a cheerful little animated bird.

“I’m not gonna get taken out by a ghost,” Eve said. “Let alone one named Chelsea. How fucking lame. Only beings named some shit like, ‘Slayer of Time’ or ‘Calamity the Obliterator’ are allowed to kill me.”

Ezra leaned forward. “Jon is right,” he said, all earnest. He touched her hand softly. “We’re going to solve this and detach Chelsea from you before anything bad happens.”

“Yeah,” Jon said. “It’s great, we’ve already learned so much. You, Eve, have a cat protecting you from the dead. You can make things happen by ‘aggressively believing’ they will—“

“Debatable,” Eve interrupted. Jon raised his eyebrows at her.

“—Ezra is a werewolf, and Kyle is trying to frame him for murder. There is someone, probably Kyle, running around looking like me. We still don’t know how he does that or the persuasion thing.” Jon paused and looked thoughtfully at Eve. “Or why Eve isn’t affected by it.”

“I have a very strong will,” Eve said.

Ezra snorted. “You could say that.”

“He’s a fairy, a vampire, or a demon,” Jon continued. “And he knows we suspect him.”

“Damn, when you lay it all out like that it doesn’t sound great,” Eve said.

“No, no,” he said. “This is still within the realm of possibility! We just need to test him to figure out which he is and find out what can be used to stop him. I don’t think traditional legal justice is going to work out for this one, but if we can send him back to Hell or…put him in fairy jail, we’ll have succeeded.”

Fairy jail. Eve sighed.