The night grew colder as we talked, until pops suggested to head inside the house. None of us would be bothered by the cold, but I knew pops' real reason for going inside. No one would be keen to lose their temper inside pops' house, and not just out of respect for him.

The Fourfold remained outside.

Pops' bedroom was fairly small: a stove, a chair, a table with a TV and the bed. Between them, you hardly had space to move around.

'I think we should have a game night,' pops said bluntly after everyone had sat down. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I raised an eyebrow at him.

'To clear the air,' he answered my unasked question. Or do you want to fight it out, right here? He asked me silently.

'Sure,' I said. 'Got anything prepared?'

Apparently, he did. Soon enough, we had formed pairs. Pops and I attempted to dissect a mythology crossword, with the clue for each word written in another language, while Andrei played chess with Alex, who sat cross-legged across him. In midair. Luci beat a rhythm on his knees as he sat on the floor between the bed and the stove, waiting for Bianca with the game they had agreed on.

The iela entered gracefully. That was the only graceful thing she did.

The floor of pops' bedroom is bare earth. It used to have floorboards, then a zmeu smashed through his window while he was asleep and tried to strangle him. This way, it absorbed blood easier. It was also covered in bumps, over one of which Bianca stumbled.

'Dammit,' she said. 'I dropped the Scrabble box.''

'That could spell disaster,' I muttered, leaning over the crossword. She obviously still heard, given the box that flew at my head.

'Now, Bianca,' Pops said, after catching it. 'This is quite a wordy complaint for a pun.'

The iela threw her hands up. 'They're multiplying...' she took one look at Lucian's broad grin, and pointed a warning finger at him. 'Don't you start as well.'

Somehow, he didn't.

It was Sunday tomorrow, so pops went to sleep early, to make sure he was rested. Keys in my hand, I guided the others to their rooms. Lucian was the last.

'Sorry, man,' I told him. 'We don't really have beds your size...or shaped for your wings.'

'It's aright,' he said, speech a little slurred from dinner earlier. None of the drinks Mihai had conjured had so much as made him tipsy. Instead, the zmeu had taken out a huge metal keg-don't ask me from where- filled with a bubbling, steaming, dark green liquid. He'd called it "the homebrew", and I hadn't been eager to sample.

'Aaaalriiiight,' he dragged the word out. 'I'll just...sleep on my gut. Stomach. You...' he let out a jaw-cracking yawn. 'You know what I mean.'

And he did sleep on his stomach. On the barn's roof. I found him in the morning.

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I had no damn idea how my lumbering friend evaded my senses, or how he avoided wrecking the roof in his sleep. I guess booze turned him into a ninja surgeon, or something.

But don't tell him I said that. He'd start drinking more, and the world doesn't deserve that.

After seeing pops to the gate, I walked the courtyard for a bit, played with the dogs. They still didn't know quite how they should react to my presence. I was still David, but I smelled like old meat and moved like nothing human. As such, they regarded me with a kind of fond confusion.

I was sure it would get better in time. If I had managed to overcome my self-loathing, why wouldn't other things improve?

Eventually, the others woke up, or simply came outside, if they didn't sleep. Mihai was the first, followed by Bianca, whom he offered to teleport back home.

'Thank you, but I think I'd rather meet my sisters alone. There are some things that can only be said between us. Besides,' her eyes glinted with amusement at the solomonar. 'What would your wife say if she saw you alone with so many women?'

'I dunno,' he said. 'Ask to join in?'

Leaving them to their rich imaginations, I saw Alex sink into the ground, nodding good-bye at me. Andrei left without a word, which I was glad for. Neither of us had ever been good with words. At least now, I knew who I got it from.

Standing up on the barn's roof, arms and wings stretching and cracking, Luci yawned. With a jaunty wave at me, he leapt into the sky, and was gone.

Bianca and Mihai had left as well, so I was alone when the Fourfold appeared out of somewhere.

'Remember the offer, Mr. Silva,' she said, walking to the gate. On some level, it vaguely annoyed me that she could somehow evade my senses when appearing, but chose to leave openly.

No matter. I'd find out how she was doing it, sooner or later.

'What offer?' I called after her when she was a dozen paces away, on the road. 'I though you weren't an agent at the time?'

I both heard and felt her smile. Then, she was gone from my sight.

I blinked, slowly, to make sure my eyes weren't playing tricks on me. No. She hadn't moved faster than I could see, or the ground would have been turned to dust as a side effect of the speed. This was something else.

I shrugged. Women had to have their secrets, and all that. It wasn't like we were close, either. I doubted anyone was, to her.

What a miserable existence. I knew all about being an unnatural abomination, but at least I wasn't alone, with three monsters from hell inside me, wary colleagues and paranoid superiors.

I had my friends, and my father-my real father, no matter the fact that we didn't share blood.

And I knew I would never lose them.