Below the morgue, there was an empty lot that no one ever used and no one ever developed. The aura of death hung too strongly about it, perhaps, or Usher had bought it for a planned laboratory that never materialized. A pair of twisted street signs were stacked in the corner, pointing nowhere, and pebbles swirled in the vortex of wind that gusted through the alleys. Nothing had changed in twenty years; not even a handful of people had even stepped foot in here. That made it perfect, in the same way it had always been perfect.

The silhouettes on the wall were flaking and misshapen—but they were close enough. Six of them, lined up along the wall, with pits and cracks in the walls from those twenty years before. I ran my hands along them, along the names I’d given them back when that was all I’d had to worry about. Rotten cops and Luna bullies, small fry who were long since dead and passed on.

Nostalgia was a dangerous thing to have. Made you think that the worst was as good as it ever got, stopped you moving forward. I patted the wall where I’d painted them, black flakes coming away on my fingers. Then I counted out twenty steps away from the wall—it had once been thirty, but my stride had gotten longer in the intervening years, and thirty would have taken me out to the barbed fence near the street. My shoes scratched against the ground as I settled into the old familiar position, the faint grooves that long hours standing here had worn in the pavement.

Baiting Fletcher out was a dangerous undertaking. She’d be better prepared this time than last—she’d know she couldn’t rely on her nightmare to cripple me. So I needed to be just as dangerous as she was.

I checked Bella’s grip, her safety, her cylinder. I flicked the safety off and aimed down the sights. The figures on the wall were short, almost young-looking—they’d been painted by my sixteen-year-old hand, seeing enemies her own age and stretching up only as far as her wingspan would allow. Here I was, practicing with childish relics because I had nothing else, and all to protect another child.

First shot. It clipped the bricks just to the left of the central figure. I grimaced and adjusted my grip, bracing my feet against the recoil.

Second shot. This one slammed into its chest, sending chips of stone flying back.

Third and fourth shots, aimed for the knees of the silhouette to the right. It’d send them to the ground, incapacitate them, without killing them.

Fifth shot. This one skimmed the shoulder of the furthest-right figure.

Sixth shot. Final shot. I took a breath, swung the revolver around, and buried it between the eyes of the furthest-left figure.

The overlapping ringing hung in the air for a few seconds. As it faded, there was the faint rattling of a spent bullet, half-buried in the brick wall, prying itself free and landing on the ground. I lowered Bella, searching for the spare bullets I had in my pocket. Reloading quickly as something I’d never mastered—I preferred to avoid situations where I’d ever need more than six bullets at a time. Although, maybe, if I was walking into the path of some unstoppable, bloody-toothed monster...maybe, I thought, it was something I could stand to practice.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I heard footsteps behind me. When I turned, I saw Robin slowly removing her hands from her ears. “I thought,” she said, speaking a little louder than she needed to, “I thought you said that was dangerous.”

“Dangerous when you don’t know how to use it. I don’t mean to kill anyone—but if I need to, I mean to see it done.”

“Have you? I know—I know you said Bella’s never killed a nightmare.” Her lip still curled a little at the name. A dog’s name, given to a weapon—and why not? Bella was a hell of a lot more loyal than a dog, and more vicious when she needed to be, too. “You said you didn’t grow up with a gun. But you didn’t tell me that you never killed anybody, Starling.”

I stared down at her for a second. “No,” I said finally. “No, I never told you that.”

“Can you?”

“Ideally,” I said, “there’ll be no shooting when we catch up to Fletcher. We need her, and we need her intact. If I have to use Bella, it’ll be as a deterrent and as nothing else, something to wave around to show I’m serious and not messing around. But she’s dangerous and she’s onto us.”

She might have pressed the point. She had every right to press it, just as I had every right to stonewall her about it. “And then what?” she said instead. “What will I see, then? You’re going to give me something made for nightmares, something that makes them feel tall and powerful. Starling, I’m—worried. I’m worried that it won’t just be those memories, that it’ll be—worse.”

“Oh, really, you think there might be unintended consequences to a vial of Jabberwock that screws with your head and was never designed for a mind like yours? You think it might be a hell of a trip and who knows where you’ll end up?” She blanched at that. “What am I supposed to do, Robin? Lie to you? It’s going to be bad. You might feel like you’re dying. You’re going to see bad memories and I don’t know that they’ll all be in the right order. But there’s no better option. There’s no way to retrieve those memories without also putting you through the wringer.”

“And I’ll still be…me afterwards?”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re different from the nightmares here. Jabberwock doesn’t work on us, right? But what if it makes me like them? What if it’s not me that comes out the other end at all because Jabberwock is meant for nightmares so it forces me into that shape.”

“It…won’t do that,” I said weakly.

“How do you know? You and Carrion and Usher all say it’s new, it’s better for nightmares…”

“I won’t let it. I’m gonna be right there with you by your side. I’ll keep you here, I’ll keep you grounded, and I’ll keep you yourself,” I said. Not that I had any idea what I’d be able to do, besides ensure Robin wasn’t able to hurt herself in her addled state. That would have to be enough. “That’s what I can promise on my end. I think you’re tough enough to handle it.”

She blinked. “Really?”

“You’ve held out against a city trying to kill you.” I thought for a moment, then flipped Bella around in my hand, so I could offer her the grip. “Why don’t I show you the first things about shooting, too?”

Robin accepted with a grin that I didn’t quite like. Even without the help of Jabberwock, she was doing—well, exactly what I’d told her to. Growing a thick skin, a callous manner, and a calculating eye for what would keep her alive. The Outscape required it. But as I showed her how to grip the gun properly, how to plant her feet and brace her shoulder, I couldn’t help but feel that I was helping her lose something irreplaceable. When we found Fletcher again, would she even recognize the scared girl she’d threatened just a bare week ago?