“This is our stop.”

Sarah picked up her head from where it had been laying against the frigid glass, and with a flick of her eyes up to the digital sign, grunted, “Far Rockaway.”

“Southern part of Queens,” Elena offered as she stood.

Sarah rose as well, and together, they made their way towards the exit of the train. Nothing further was said as they waited on the vehicle to come to a stop and the doors to open. Sarah briefly noted the crispness of the air as a breeze blew past but otherwise paid it no mind as she trailed behind Elena, who adjusted the thick red scarf wrapped around her neck as she exited.

The streets were much busier here than they had been before their ride into the city, and Sarah idly wondered why as they made their way through the crowds. Everyone was bundled up, and more than a few people looked askance at Sarah’s clothes—more her black camisole and fishnet shirt than her faded and stained jeans, though all of them bore more than a few rips in them. None of them looked at Elena, who by contrast wore a turtleneck under a leather jacket over her own, actually clean and whole, jeans.

Even amongst a pack of people that surrounded her on all sides, she still felt alone. It was a simultaneously familiar and alien feeling. An oxymoron wrapped in a paradox. That wasn’t quite right—she knew it wasn’t—but it was close enough and, more importantly, apt.

The wail of a horn cut through Sarah’s ruminations, and a hand fell on her shoulder, tugging her back.

A taxi screeched to a halt in front of her, and the window rolled down as a man leaned over into the passenger seat. “You not see this green?! Watch where you’re going!”

Sarah noted Elena’s hand tightening on her shoulder as she firmly but without yelling told him, “Apologize.”

“Fuck off, you crazy puta!” he yelled right back, flipping the bird as he took off and pulled back into traffic, his tires protesting the rapid acceleration.

Sarah made to step forward across the street, but when neither Elena nor her hand moved, she stopped. A passing breeze caught the older woman’s long blond hair, and as some of the strands passed in front of Sarah’s eyes, the taxi’s tires all simultaneously burst. The sound of multiple vehicles’ horns mixed with the sparks in the air further down the street as the yellow, abruptly tireless vehicle ground to a halt on the asphalt, but Elena was moving again, so she turned her attention back to her and fell in step.

“Was that…?”

“Me? Yes.”

“Okay.”

Together they crossed the street, leaving the area at a normal walking pace while a cacophony of car horns filled the air behind them. It was an unpleasant, grating noise, and Sarah was more than happy to quit the scene.

“Where are we going?” she asked, hoping to drown out the dissonant keening of automobiles.

“The Jaw.”

Sarah frowned. “Like a—”

“Safe haven,” Elena smoothly interrupted without quite sounding like she had interrupted. “An establishment that serves villains. Common criminals as well.”

She gave the older woman a sidelong glance. “And we’re going there because…?”

“Birds of a feather, dear.”

“If you say so.” Sarah’s stomach rumbled, so she glanced around for some food. There were quite a few food carts and restaurants, both traditional and chain establishments, and the deluge of choice proved somewhat overwhelming. “Anywhere good you recommend to eat? I’m a bit hungry.”

“There’s food where we’re going, and we’re nearly there,” Elena replied. “You quite enjoy the chili.”

Her eyebrows rose. The chili? It wasn’t that she had never had chili before or didn’t like it, but it wasn’t the sort of food she would normally choose herself. That made it interesting, if nothing else, so she resolved to try some when they arrived and patiently followed her guide’s lead as they traversed the streets.

A few minutes later, Elena announced, “And we’re here.”

Sarah dubiously eyed the large teeth affixed over and around the door in an arc that came close to, but didn’t quite touch, the wooden frame. The peeling paint, dirty windows, and presence of surly men and women loitering around an entryway guarded by a very rough looking bouncer did nothing to improve Sarah’s opinion of The Jaw.

Elena stepped right up to the bouncer, and Sarah hustled a bit to keep close to her, staying one step back and to her right. The looming man let them pass unimpeded, and she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. It was silly when she thought about it, honestly. Elena was clearly someone of importance here with the way she was holding herself, and it was equally obvious Sarah was with her. Of course, it also helped that if the bouncer had tried to stop them… well, he wouldn’t have been able to.

The inside of The Jaw was just as unimpressive as its exterior—perhaps more so. The lighting was dismal, owed in part to the dim or outright failing bulbs and the lack of natural light coming through the bordering on opaque windows. Despite the lackluster lighting, the hardwood floor and tables they passed were at a level of cleanliness falling well short of even the worst dive bar, and that was after Sarah turned a blind eye to the several dark stains the size of puddles in view. The surly atmosphere of its patrons was fitting for the establishment, but that wasn’t a mark in its favor so much as an acknowledgment of fact. A handful of men—and more than a few women and androgynous individuals—leered at her as they passed only for their eyes to hastily divert after a brief glance at Elena.

“Hev, good to see ya,” the bartender, a man with a thick frame and beard, greeted them when they reached the bar. “You as well, Del.”

Hev? Del?

“The same to you, Alastair,” Elena replied.

Her lips may have curled up at the corners, but it could just as easily have been a trick of the poor light. Was Sarah supposed to be Hev or Del? Had she met this man before? She wasn’t sure. He seemed vaguely familiar.

Her companion pressed on, either ignorant of Sarah’s confusion or not concerned by it. “Are they here?”

“Yeah,” Alastair grunted. “Sent ‘em up to one of the private rooms. Down at the end on the right.”

“Excellent. I’ll have my usual.”

Alastair grabbed a stein and began deftly pouring her something from the tap. “And you, Del? Your usual coffee, or would you prefer something harder for once?”

Del then. Which made Elena ‘Hev.’ What did those names mean? It was on the tip of her tongue, but just out of reach. “Coffee is good. What roa—”

“We have your favorite. Black?”

“Yes.” She almost tacked on ‘please’ but thought better of it. The word felt like it didn’t belong in such a place. More importantly, this man clearly knew her to speak with such confidence about her tastes. She felt like the situation ought to be rubbing her the wrong way, but she just felt… weary felt closest, but she wasn’t sure it quite fit.

“We’ll be eating before we leave.”

“Chili and a steak, I imagine? After your meeting.”

“Naturally.”

It took a minute for Alastair to brew the coffee, and in that time Elena finished her stein, which he promptly refilled and set down alongside Sarah’s tall, steaming mug. Without so much as a word of goodbye to Alastair, Elena grabbed her stein and turned away from the bar, and Sarah took her cue to grab her own drink and follow. The smell of the brew was good—very good. She had little doubt she would like the taste as well. Elena led her towards a back hallway and up two flights of switchback stairs to a hallway with a door immediately on their left that extended further down to their right. Sarah could plainly see the door at the end on the right was ajar, but instead of proceeding directly there, Elena diverted into the door on the left.

The room was much larger than expected, both in depth and height, with a number of large lockers and a couple of small tables on the left and the super majority of the room left empty. No, empty wasn’t the right word—it was empty insofar as there was no furniture or decoration, but the floor of the expansive space was absolutely littered with stains, three or perhaps even four times as many as there had been downstairs. More worrying was that the stains up here were more obviously blood stains. It should have been worrying.

It wasn’t.

Elena set her drink on one of the tables and moved to one of the lockers without hesitation. “Yours is right here, dear. Suit up.”

Sarah frowned minutely but began to mirror her older companion, setting her drink down near the stein after briefly sampling the flavor. It was good—very good. And also quite hot, she noted. In hindsight, the steam ought to have motivated her to wait until it was cool enough to drink without scalding her on the way down.

“You’ve reset, I take it?”

Sarah shook herself from her musing and looked up to find Elena watching her. Her casual clothes were gone, replaced with a costume. Blue cloth so dark it bordered on black was draped her torso and legs, adorned with a variety of bones held fast with strips of cloth that may have once been white but were now just as sullied as the floors of The Jaw. Sarah couldn’t determine the origins of most of the bones, but she got the distinct impression that at least some of them belonged to humans. Twin trails of dark red carved their way down her face from her eyes, passing by the bottom of a headpiece that abandoned the primal theme altogether in favor of something distinct. Sleek, dark metal sat atop her head in the unmistakable form of a crown of sharp spikes, and two bars jutted down from its sides, extending behind her ears before wrapping inward around her cheeks and ending in two points that covered the corners of her mouth.

Sarah had already known Elena was a cape, but the transformation was nevertheless a bit jarring. She also noticed something the costume left exposed that her scarf had hidden earlier—a thick scar over her jugular. A battle scar? Something else?

She had a more pressing question. “Reset?”

“You were worrying about the temperature. I’ve seen that expression on you before.”

“It was scalding hot.”

“And you needn’t worry about such a trivial matter.”

Why? “Reset. You said I reset.”

Elena closed the gap, her metal boots clinking against the wooden floor as she stepped towards her. Sarah knew her attire was objectively intimidating, but she couldn’t find it in herself to worry that this dangerous woman was approaching her. Elena laid a hand on her shoulder, and Sarah’s eyes briefly flicked to the twin blades jutting forward from the metal plate affixed to the cloth wrapped around said hand. The tines were plainly sharp enough to easily slice into someone, but the sense of calm safety wouldn’t abate.

“It is your choice of terminology. Some of the others believe it is trauma, but I believe it is a side effect of your power.”

Her power. Elena said it with such authority that Sarah unequivocally believed her. Actually, it was more than that. Now that attention had been called to it, she felt it as keenly as she could her hand. She reached up and pressed her palm into the blade on the back of Elena’s hand. Hard. It cut into her, but not as deeply as it should have. Only a tiny trickle of blood crept out, and when she removed her hand, she watched the blood seep back into her and the wound seal itself.

“You should get dressed, dear. A lady may keep her guests waiting, but she knows when it’s time to make her entry.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Elena took her by the hand and led her over to the locker next to her own, and Sarah pulled it open. She eyed the costume for a moment before beginning to tug off her clothes. The main body of it fit her well, which wasn’t terribly surprising. She knew the purple color of the cloth would look nice next to her pale skin, having worn tops of a matching shade in the past. She could distinctly recall begging her older brother to buy her one at the mall once, back in… happier times. But this outfit wasn’t fashion, as the bone fixtures she and Elena began to tie into place on her made sure of. Had she been the one to decide on strapping femurs to her hips, or had that been someone else’s idea? She’d never been one for dark humor, but as she pulled on her own crown, this one forged from teeth rather than steel, she couldn’t help but muse on that word…

Reset. It tasted bitter on her tongue, and her lips readily mouthed it like a wheel rolling down a well worn dirt road. Her wounds reset. Why wouldn’t her memories?

She turned and moved back to the table, scooping up her coffee. It had cooled some, but she could tell it was still hot. The flavor was a bit more bitter than it had been earlier.

Elena crossed the room to her and fixed a tooth secured in a band of leather around Sarah’s neck before retrieving her own stein. Sarah noted with some surprise this wasn’t a beast’s fang, or if it was, it was small enough and similar enough to a human’s that she couldn’t distinguish the difference.

“We’re Teeth.”

“We are,” Elena confirmed as she stepped towards the door. Sarah joined her, and together they slipped back into the hallway and moved towards the open room at the end.

“And our names are…?” she quietly asked. Elena had said downstairs that they were meeting some people, and she didn’t want them to hear. She could recall quite well the kind of people the Teeth were supposed to be, and if she was one of them… Well, with the way her parents had been, she was used to putting up an act, though this wasn’t the kind of role she had ever expected to play.

“Heavensword and Delible.”

Delible cocked her head in thought. The name was vaguely familiar, and the meaning was on the tip of her tongue, but it refused to come to mind. Now that Heavensword had brought up her own name, however, she recognized her all too well. She had never been a cape junkie, but she was well aware of the Teeth because her family had lived within the swath of the East Coast the group traversed. Raiders and murderers, most of their members generally weren’t all well known because of the group’s high mortality rate, but some were. The Butcher, for example. Their leader was infamous because of the nature of their power; whoever killed the previous Butcher always became the next one. Some of the kids in her school had said the voices of the previous Butchers lived on in the new one’s head just like their powers and that was why they inevitably became insane and bloodthirsty, but she wasn’t sure if that was just gossip.

Heavensword was the only other name Delible could recall, and you didn’t get to be the Butcher’s right hand by being nice.

“Gentlemen,” Heavensword said as she pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped into the room. “I trust we haven’t kept you waiting too long?”

One of the men at the table, a portly man in a suit, rose at her entry and jovially replied, “Ah, my lady! No, no. A little wait is good in this hustle and bustle day and age we live in, don’t you think, Watcher?”

“I guess,” the still seated man grunted. Seated may have been too generous of a description. Slumped was more apt.

“Quite,” Heavensword drawled, fixing her gaze on Watcher. Delible had little doubt she would have cut him down on the spot in another circumstance. Something else was going on, some reason why he—or they—were needed.

“Yes, well, I…” the portly man fumbled as Heavensword swept towards the table. Delible followed, taking a seat a hair’s breadth of a second after her. He sat as well before continuing, “Ahem, and who might your associate be, Ms. Heavensword?”

“Mrs.,” Heavensword answered, and Delible swiftly crushed her surprise before it could show on her face. Another skill she was versed in courtesy of her upbringing. “And this lovely flower you may call Delible, my good Watson.”

Watcher’s eyes minutely squinted as Watson pressed on, admirably moving past any lingering nerves. “Very good. A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Delible.” His attention shifted back to Heavensword. “We’ve prepared the information you sought, if you would like to begin?”

“I do like a man who gets right to business,” she replied. The extensions of her crown covered some of her expression, but Delible could hear the anticipation in her voice nevertheless. “What have you found?”

Watson looked to Watcher, who picked himself up out of his slouch and pulled his hands out of his hoodie’s front pocket only to lean forward onto the table with both arms. “The names you gave us were a dead-end, but you knew that. If they could’ve been found that way, you wouldn’t’ve bothered with us in the first place. They were part of the puzzle though, of course. The time frame of their disappearance lined up neatly with your public debut as a member of the Teeth, and when you couple that with your interest in them, that smacks of a witness protection situation.

“Now the PRT, they’re thorough, but they’ve got enough holes in them to sink a ship if it weren’t being kept afloat by powers. Once again, that’s something someone like you would have thought of and already tried, hence us, hence moving on. So, you’ve got a lady and her kid, and you’ve gotta hide them. The smart thing to do if you want to hide someone is to toss them somewhere they’d fit in so well ain’t nobody would find ‘em. So what do we, and consequently the PRT, know about them? First thing’s obvious: they’re both Asian-American. CUI’s a perfect candidate, right? Other side of the goddamn planet, difficult as fuck to go in and get someone out, yadda yadda.

“Whoopsie, mommy dearest is Japanese, and so’s the kid. Don’t look that different to your average American, but the folks over in the CUI, they wouldn’t be fooled for a second. Doesn’t help that the CUI ain’t exactly humanitarian and we’ve got the side goal of keeping our two people safe from their surroundings on top of keeping them safe from the person after them—aka you.

“Okay, so nuts to the CUI. There’s plenty of other countries in the world too, except now we have to ask ourselves can good ol’ mom hide the American half of ‘Japanese-American.’ Kid’ll probably adapt, no big deal after a bit, but the mom might stick out like a sore, identifiable thumb to someone with the right power or a normie with a lot of persistence. As you so helpfully provided, our mom is from Brockton Bay. Already a mark against her success because the good people of Brockton Bay are generally not the sort you’d describe as worldly, but ‘maybe’ isn’t good enough, so we dug into it. Contacts who knew ‘er affirmed she is one-hundred percent stick-out-like-a-sore-thumb material, so okay, foreign countries are out of the running.

“Good news! The United States is big as fuck. Damn near as big as Europe—fun fact, not as big as Europe. Anyway. Surely somewhere in one of our fifty states fits the bill? How about insert-suburb-here? Okay, stuff ‘em in a suburb, but wait a tick. They’re Japanese-American, remember? Can’t just put ‘em anywhere, or we run headlong into the whole foreign country problem we had before. Double-trouble: There aren’t exactly a ton of predominantly Japanese and/or Japanese-American suburbs in the US. Okay, throw ‘em in a place full of Asian-Americans. After all, we already covered how most Americans can’t distinguish a Taiwanese dude from a Chinese man.

“Well guess what! You know who can? The Taiwanese and Chinese guys. Shocking, I know. So okay, the PRT’s in a bit of a pickle now. Best option isn’t gonna be a suburb. It’s a city, preferably a big one that’s a real melting-pot, people-of-the-world-come-together sort of place. Not gonna get much traction throwing ‘em in Dallas, right? Only a few percent of the population are Asian-American. Okay, how about D.C.? All sorts down there. We’re getting down to brass tacks now. See, the PRT’s got Thinkers coming out its non-existent wazoo, and they definitely employ them in witness protection situations. That means they’re definitely aware you want to find these two, and you want to find them badly enough that you’re still looking for them fifteen goddamn years later.

“What does that even mean? It means they can’t just throw these two saps into some city and hope you won’t find them. They need to bury them. Here’s where we get speculative, but we have to keep our eyes on the prize because we don’t have infinite time to search. If the PRT’s gonna hide someone so thoroughly that someone with your devotion ain’t gonna find them, they need a big ass city. The US has a handful of cities with over a million people in them based on the most recent census at the time, so let’s start there.

“Right away we can cross several of these places off our list because they just don’t have a large enough Asian-American population. Seven percent of a million people is seventy-thousand people, and sure, that sounds like a lot, but let’s compare that with our biggest contenders, shall we? Take LA. Damn near four million people, and courtesy of its position on the West Coast, there’s a fuck ton of Asian people there—somewhere between fourteen to fifteen percent, to be exact. I’ll save you the trouble of doing the math, we’re looking at well over five hundred thousand people. Suddenly that seventy-thousand doesn’t look as appealing right?

“But here’s the real kicker. New York Fuckin’ City. Now I know what you’re thinking, ‘But Watcher! They were put into witness protection from the Big Apple!’ But hang on a minute, roll with me. The population is over eight million here. Let’s hear that number again: Eight million. Okay, but what percentage of the population are Asian-American? Surely less than LA, since it’s on the East Coast? Wrong! Roughly thirteen percent, aka over one million people. You know, that number we started with when we went down this whole bunny trail?

“Now, I’m not saying the PRT didn’t go with another city. They could be thinking the same thing we are and trying to fake us out. Couple that with the fact we’re searching for two people among a goddamn million, and we’re talking about searching for a needle in a haystack but might be looking in the wrong fucking haystack. Not a good situation is what I’m trying to express. But no, this has too much going for it. We aren’t talking about the PRT trying to hide these two from you in a city of one million like ‘em. We’re talking about hiding ‘em in a city of eight times that. AKA, buried. AKA, what the PRT wants. AKA, we’ve got the right haystack—it’s just a big as fuck haystack.

“Okay, so we’re searching New York for our people. Where do we start? Again, we gotta dig into the mindset of the PRT witness protection program. If I’m trying to hide some lady and her kid in the Big Apple, where do I do it? For starters, not where they were. Duh. Okay, what else? Take that thought to the next level—not with the same class of people. Take some middle class bitch and move her to somewhere else in the city but keep her middle class, and there’s a chance, however small, she might manage to rub elbows with the same people she was before. Last thing the PRT wants is for her to run into someone she already knows who might get interested in why she’s sporting a fancy new name, job, you get the picture.

“We took that thought and ran with it. Wats ‘n’ I looked at the info you gave us, and the mom you’re looking for was lower middle class based on her place of residence at the time, even if you throw in a few roommates. Now the PRT could go up from there, but the funny thing about the middle class is it’s wider than you think, and let’s face it, no matter how badly they want to hide these two, the PRT aren’t made of infinite money. No, no, no—they went down. Far easier. So lower class, probably the lowest rung because remember, they’re trying to bury them, and let’s be honest, the cheaper they can pull this off while still getting the job done, the better our PRT office-worker is going to look come promotion time, if you catch my drift.

“So a lower class area that’s predominantly Asian-American and preferably a bit further away from here. Wouldn’t do to have mommy dearest out walking her tot only to walk right into you, right? That narrowed our focus to a few areas of the city. Now what the fuck to do with that info? The smart thing for the PRT to do here is to not move these people straight away. If they move them out of the old place on Thursday and into the new place on Friday, well, they’re just making it easy to find ‘em, ain’t they? No, they stashed them away somewhere else for a bit. Some hole in the wall motel or maybe even the PRT HQ in Manhattan. Doesn’t matter though because no matter where they put ‘em, it’s gonna cost some money, and what did we already say about the PRT and how much money they’re inclined to spend on this situation? Not an ironclad rule, but again, it helped us narrow down our focus.

“Lo and behold, we got us a handful of contenders. But Wats ‘n’ I are professionals. You paid us to find your people, not to find you a list of maybes. Name changes like this, they’re gonna be sealed so nobody goes nosin’ around in there. Thing is, remember all those holes that would sink the PRT? Well, they aren’t the only government organization around that needs plugging, and by this level of depth point, our PRT Thinkers ain’t gonna be worried about whether you’re going to use some leverage on poor Peggy in Records at the local courthouse to get some dirt on that hush hush case from a decade ‘n’ a half back.”

Watcher looked to Watson, who pulled a wad of folded paper out of the inner pocket of his suit and laid it on the table in front of Heavensword. “And so Alexia Kubo and little William Anderson became Riko and Jacob Fujiwara, residents of a hole-in-the-wall apartment on Avenue U in Homecrest for damn near fifteen years on the nose right up until Alexia, Riko, Alexiko, whatever dies from OD’ing on, what the medical records we scrounged up assure us was, a literal stomach full of pills featuring all the classics: tranquilizers, opioids, Tylenol—the works. Willcob was shipped off to live with his dear half-sister Masuyo up in Brockton Bay because a story just isn’t good unless it comes full circle to where it began. Last known address is right there in the paperwork, but it’s not gonna do you much good on account of it no longer existing after a bomb Tinker up in the Bay turned it into glass.”

He grinned and leaned in further. “Here’s the thing though—kid’s alive. Super of the building said Masuyo packed up shop and left before the top chunk of the building became better suited for windows and that he ain’t even seen no Jakiam kid before. No, no, no. He did, however, see a girl once. We went back from there to the kid’s old school and sure enough, he came out as transgender, changed her name to June. Same story checks out at the school in the Bay, where she didn’t even make it a full week before falling off the map.

“So where do we go from there? Well, do you remember that mad bomber who blew half of that apartment building into a different form of fucking matter? Sounds like a dose of cape revenge right? Wats ‘n’ I, we asked ourselves why that might be and looked into the local cape scene. And wouldn’t you know it, but a young, female cape showed up in the Bay that very week, disappeared for just a bit, then popped back up in a local mercenary outfit run by a cape called Faultline. All that talk about not moving out on Thursday and in on Friday? Yeah, her boss might’ve tried to muddy the waters, but our intrepid fanboys ‘n’ girls on PHO didn’t let a little thing like a new cape fighting and winning against one of the city’s big bads just fade away.

“June Fujiwara, Anderson, whatever is none other than Meteor of Faultline’s Crew, and you’re in luck because they just hit a local casino called Queen’s Gambit last night. Didn’t steal a dime—just ruined it all by drowning the vault in water. Now maybe they were paid to do just that, but my gut’s telling me, and you oughtta listen to it on account of it being super-powered right now by old Wats here, that it’s a load of smoke. They’re still here in the city doing something else.”

Watcher jabbed his finger at the paperwork. “On top of the proof for everything I just outlined for you, you’ll be pleased to find we’ve put together a list of little miss June’s known aliases, affiliates, and frequented locales here in the city. Just the sort of thing a murderous villain like yourself might appreciate when hunting down someone who’s eluded her for a decade and a half.”

He paused for the first time in his entire monologue, looked unsure for a moment, then shrugged and slumped back in his chair again, shoving his hands in his hoodie. “That’s all she wrote or… whatever.”

Watson cleared his throat and looked to Heavensword. “You’ll find everything is in order, Ms.—excuse me, Mrs. Heavensword. We appreciate your business and your advance payment. Very kind of you, that.”

Delible eyed Heavensword as she carefully reached forward and drew the bundle of paper to her past her untouched stein. The air was thick with tension that had been ratcheting up since the two of them had entered the room. Judging by the sweat on their cheeks under their stylized domino masks, Watson and Watcher could feel it too, at least now that the two of them weren’t swept up in Watcher’s rambling for damn near half-an-hour when a simple, “Alexia is dead, Jacob is June now, June’s a cape, she’s here in the city, here’s what you need to find her,” would have sufficed.

Damn know-it-alls.

Heavensword paged through the first couple of pages of the bundle for a minute in silence, either ignorant of the fit-to-burst pressure or more likely uncaring in the face of something that had been plaguing her for so many years.

“Word to the wise, Watcher, nobody here calls New York ‘the Big Apple,’” she quietly drawled. “It’s ‘The City.’”

The cape across the table started at the sudden statement then awkwardly laughed. He thought whatever the situation was, it had been defused. Delible was not as ignorant. She could see the tautness of the muscles in her companion’s neck that made the scar there stretch. “Oh, uh, okay. Noted.”

Heavensword hummed. This was the moment. “Something else you should be aware of, in case you were not already: The Unwritten Rules.”

The two men’s eyes flicked to one another before returning to her. Watcher opened his mouth as if to say something but faltered, and Watson filled the vacuum. “You… you quite expressly paid us to do so, Mrs. Heavensword. A king’s ransom.”

“Indeed. And what assurances do I have that the information you have shared will not leave this room?”

Watcher fidgeted. “You’re aware of my power.”

Delible’s eyes narrowed. It was obvious why he had mentioned his power. She didn’t know what it was precisely, but the only powers worth bringing up in this sort of situation would be those presenting either an incredible offense or an equally strong defense. Something that would serve as a guarantee of safety when interacting with the Teeth.

It seemed they were nervous now that the hypothetical was on the doorstep of reality.

“I am, and that is not an answer, Watcher.”

He gulped, and Watson hastily interjected, “You know how we do business, Mrs. Heavensword. We are consummate professionals. Why, the very thought of betraying a client—it’s inconceivable!”

“I’m so very glad to hear that, my good Watson,” she informed him. Delible’s eyes flicked to the air over the table as it began to harden, for lack of a better descriptor. “You see, I have a vested interest in this matter, more so now that I am aware of my dear Meteor’s cape career. If anything about Meteor’s identity were to slip, why, I think my hand might just slip too.”

She reached forward and gripped the sword of pure metal in the air hovering over the table but made no further move with it.

“I’m sure two smart gentlemen like yourselves don’t need me to spell out how badly things might go for you, hm?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Watcher squeaked as Watson fiercely nodded his own agreement.

Delible smirked. To think the former had thought to make threats with his power not a minute prior. His faith was clearly easy to shake.

“Excellent!” Heavensword declared as she abruptly released the sword, which dissipated back into the air it had formed from. “It sounds like we have an understanding. You’ve done fine work, gentlemen. I may need your services again in the future, and I trust you’ll take my call?”

“W-W-Without a doubt…” Watson stammered.

“Superb. I’m sure you know where the door is? See Thomas, our barkeep, on the way down—I’ve arranged for a tidy sum as a bonus for your hard work and your silence on this matter.”

The men left in a hurry after that. Funny what a threat and the promise of more money could compel a man to do. It reminded Delible of the time she dragged Reggie bra shopping with her at the mall to get under his skin, a memory that elicited a sad smile at the thought of her deceased older brother.

Thomas brought up their food, and as Delible quietly ate her chili—which was delicious, as promised—she watched her companion read through the paperwork multiple times, ignoring both her steak and her stein. All the while, Heavensword’s muscles remained taut, as if an invisible foe might strike out at any moment.

She finally spoke up after Heavensword reached the end for the sixth time and flipped back to begin a seventh. “Is something wrong?”

She looked up from the paperwork and met Delible’s eyes. To her surprise, they were wet. “It’s a strange feeling, coming to the end of a journey,” she softly replied. “I’ve been searching for them for so long, and now that I have answers, I find I cannot… Oh Alexia…”

The lady next to her at the table shuddered with repressed sobs, and while Sarah hesitated at the sight of her attire, she found she couldn’t help reaching out to lay a hand on her forearm. She made sure to avoid the metal blades attached to the woman’s hands. “There there? I’m sure it will be just fine, ma’am.”

The lady wetly chuckled and patted her hand. “Such a kind soul under that ruthlessness, even now after you’ve reset… Is it any wonder I like you so much, my dear Sarah?”

“I’m… sorry? I don’t understand.” A sense of déjà vu was creeping over her, but she couldn’t fathom how on earth she might find a situation involving a crying woman dressed like a murderer for Halloween familiar.

“My name is Elena, or Heavensword for the moment, if you please. We are after all still in costume.”

Sarah looked down and blinked in vague surprise at her attire. When…?

The woman reached over and gently touched the tooth hanging from Sarah’s neck by a band of leather. “Would you like to hear the story of how you struck this tooth from the mouth of the Butcher, Delible?”

Sarah stared. Delible? Everything about this was so familiar it ached, but it was just out of reach. But not out of hers. “Please.”

“Very well. And when we’re done, I would very much like your assistance with finding my… my daughter.”