The radio was turned down so low Liesel could barely make out what Rick called the “angel vocals” of Carrie Underwood. The morning outside the car was foggy, everything obscured in a veil of grey.

Almost everything. Not glowing eyes, of course. They existed purely to pierce the mist.

Liesel rolled her head to the side. "Patrick?"

"No."

She propped her elbow on the door, chewing a thumbnail as she stared out the front windshield.

Liesel had been able to See for two years. Rick had known about her for two weeks. Liesel still didn't know Rick's full name.

That was probably a good reason to not get in his car, but he had been the first person to see the same things that Liesel could. He'd been watching Mouth in a window reflection, speaking softly to the woman Liesel had been trying so hard to avoid over the past year.

In fact, Mouth was there right now, hiding anything on the road behind them by taking up residence in the rearview mirror.

Mouth of Sassnid, Vassal to the Sovereign of the Realm of Mirror. It was a lengthy, dignified title for a bitch who looked like a transgression on reality. She was pale, the sallow kind of pale that suggested terminal illness. She had greasy strings of black hair that fell to waif-thin shoulders, framing a neck that was stretched out longer than any human.

The worst bits were above the neck. Mouth's face was cut off at the nose. This lower half of her face was glitched several inches to the side, as though someone had taken everything from her cheekbone down and shoved it until her left jaw sat where a set of lips ought to be. Sometimes, the glitch swapped sides, the lower half of her face blinking into existence on the left and right at random.

She was horrifying to look at, but Mouth couldn't hurt her. Liesel had learned that most of the things she could see couldn't hurt her, so long as she followed the rules that Rick set out for her.

"Kendrick? Erick?" Liesel suggested.

Rick flipped off the radio when the song changed to something pop-y. Liesel didn’t recognize the new male singer. "No."

Both of them went back to looking out the front window.

"So similar," Mouth said. Her mouth, ironically, never moved. "So different. But twins."

"Eh?" Rick's eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror for just a moment.

"Steel eyes. Set lips. Hard souls. One grey with a beard, pale and weary. One tan and slim, fresh and cold."

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"What’d I say about the fuckin’ riddles, woman," Rick said. He jerked the turn signal into place and pulled onto the exit ramp.

"She's ready," Mouth said.

"I've only known Rick two weeks," Liesel said. She didn’t want his job. Not now, and maybe never.

"You survived many years on your own. What more can Rick teach you that you cannot teach yourself?" Mouth asked.

"That's not how this works, dammit," Rick said. Liesel liked the way he tacked the dammit onto the end of his sentences.

Mouth's thin little shoulders shrugged in the mirror, her mouth glitching violently into place before sliding away again. "There are no rules."

"She’s got a lot to learn," Rick insisted. He turned into the parking lot of a McDonald's. Liesel's stomach turned at the thought of yet another hamburger. Maybe she'd try chicken nuggets, even if they didn't seem like real chicken to her. "She hasn't even been in America that long. Can’t go back to fucking Dutch-land. Got a lot to learn."

"Why not?" Liesel interrupted. The way he’d said Deutschland almost made her giggle.

"Titania," Rick reminded her gruffly. Everything about him was gruff. Rick's idea of refinement was saying "on the rocks" when ordering his whiskey or trimming his beard a few times a week.

She liked Rick.

She didn’t know if she liked his rules.

"Titania likes me," she said uncertainly.

"Not a matter of like," Rick said. "You're lucky to be alive, alright? I’ll explain later.”

Liesel wondered if Rick cared that she was alive, or if he just didn't want his retirement plan dying on him.

"Titania wanted this one," Mouth said. “Making her Champion now, it would protect her. Are you going to–” There were violent cracking sounds, like glass being shattered with a bat. Mouth’s face darkened, eyes glowing, before returning to normal. “-leave her unprotected?”

Liesel looked at Rick with concern. She didn’t like the sound of being unprotected.

Rick didn't look at Liesel, but he mouthed words anyways. She watched his lips, sounding out the familiar phrase.

Do not feel fear.

If she could not feel fear, she would be safe. Liesel knew that. Somehow, she had known when she found that thing playing with her toys. When she first woke up with Eyes of Titania watching at the foot of her bed. When she'd seen Breath of Thanatos in the corner of her room. Liesel had always known.

Do not feel fear.

Liesel got out of the car and walked into the McDonald's. "Should I be afraid of what chicken nuggets are made of?" she asked.

Rick scratched his chin as he walked in after her, eyes chuckling where his mouth didn’t. He was a bear of a man. She wondered if anyone thought he was her father, even though he was white and she was tiny.

"Y'know, that's probably smart to be afraid of," he admitted, reaching over Liesel's head to push the door open.

Deep down, Liesel wanted to be much more scared of the creature hanging on the ceiling, built skeleton-thin with a head that faced the floor even though its knees and chest faced the vents it clung to. She wanted to let in the shock of fear that she should have felt watching a ghost back into an invisible wall, its stomach being ripped open by an unknown, long-dead assailant. She wanted to shrivel up and grab Rick’s hand and never See again.

She fought back a shiver and ordered chicken nuggets.