Schmendrick made a noise like glaagh! as I grabbed her, pulling her from her Schmendrick-only nest. Husband circled my feet, yapping in alarm, shouting at me in Cazador, English and Spanish. I knelt and scooped him up, holding both of them, crushing them, burying my face in their fur.

“Was asleep,” Schmendrick said crossly. She squirmed in my arms to glare and bare her fangs, ears back. Then her eyes widened, her ears went up as she tilted her head, sniffing rapidly at my face.

She started yowling, yapping, crying at the ceiling. So did Husband. They both howled, heads tilted back, rubbed their faces against mine.

The rest of the pack came charging in, quickly casing the room, looking for trouble, but all they found was me. They began crying as well. It sounded like a dog pound.

I sat on the floor so I could gather them all, embrace them all at once. They kept hollering, kept rubbing against me, trying to comfort.

Cassie stood in the doorway, eyes wide. “Oh my god, what happened? Is Schmendrick okay? Are the babies?”

“Yes!” screamed Schmendrick, and started crying again. The pack kept it up.

I didn’t say anything to anyone about my discussion with Harrigan. I didn’t know if I ever would.

Eventually I let Husband and Schmendrick go. Things got weird for a little while:

1. I found myself sitting on the floor in Sean’s containment room, his demon-summoning circle, whatever it was. I didn’t say anything that I remember. I just leaned against the stone wall. Watching the nothingness that the circle contained. Sean kept saying my name over and over, Owen? Hello? Owen? Like he’d lost a phone connection. Owen? Hello?

2. I listened to the Radio, sitting right in front of it, outside on the beach. It played its usual music and advertisements with the occasional incomprehensible news report. I did it for hours. It's speaker buzzed against the back of my neck where I leaned. I could hear the occasional Huntspeak whisper from someone keeping an eye on me from the jungle.

3. The alien bed, the one that was like a big leathery cocoon. I spent a lot of time in there. I didn’t eat or do any work. Gary complained at me through the Radio, hovering around outside my window. Eventually he went away.

“I got here as quick as I could,” said Mandy. “The Radio told me you’re scaring everyone here.”

Ordinarily I’d have been drooling with delight over a visit by the adorable Mandy Nakahara. Today I wanted her to leave me alone.

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“He got to you,” she said. “I don’t know what it was, but he got to you, and if I’m reading you right, it’s not something you’re going to tell me about.”

“I just need some sleep,” I said.

“What?”

I repeated myself, too loudly. Angrily.

Her cold hand stroked the top of my head. “Not your fault,” she said.

“I know.”

“Still hurts, though.”

I nodded. “I’ll be okay,” I said.

She took that as a dismissal, which I suppose it was.

I heard the distant Radio, outside, blaring its old-timey music into the cloudless blue sky: “Can't go on, everything I have is gone…stormy weather…”

“He does nothing,” said Gary through the Radio, conversing with someone down there. “No. Ordinarily he is useful in a bumbling way, no longer. He is a fool. No. I don’t have any ideas about that. Ghastly monster from the sea, begone.”

Now see here, I should have said. Don’t you talk to her that way, you inflatable shithead. But Mandy could take care of herself. I hoped she didn’t damage him permanently.

The Cazador pack visited me. They climbed in, joining me in the nest. I was glad of the company, but miserable anyway. They did their best, talking to me, telling me they loved me, falling asleep, snoring, smelling like Cool Ranch Doritos. I watched the square of sunlight crawl across the floor as the day went on.

As the sun finally went down, I heard a terrible buzzing. It was a frightening sound, filling the room. I poked my head from the alien bed.

Three of the Big Smart Bees were in here, droning in place, sounding like airplane engines. Fearfully loud. Each one had its weapons and tools, the tiny knapsacks. One carried a miniscule lantern made of wire and a single bead of golden glass. It filled the room with warm light but created huge, terrifying shadows of the Bees on the walls.

“Ladies,” I said. They’d never done this before; usually they were all in their hive by sundown. The unusual visit was beginning to pull me from my funk. From my mope. Some of it was adrenaline; I didn’t think they would attack me, but we did have a little bit of history, the Bees and I…

The central Bee came forward. She was really quite intimidating; a fist-sized jewel of horror hovering in midair, quite pretty in her way, but still something that got one’s attention good and quick.

She reached into her knapsack and pulled out a little pale cylinder of something, then with a gesture that was quite familiar, unrolled a tiny scroll, like a town crier about to read a proclamation: Hear ye, hear ye.

She slowly approached, holding the scroll out. I carefully took it, turned it over, saw the words there, written in smeared charcoal. Loops and flourishes, all caps.

BURN& KIL

BAD MAN

I swallowed. “You know what?” I said. “Okay.”

Okay.