The groups of people had rotated around as time went on, everyone still waiting, not sure what to do next. Cinza's group stuck together, while Meg and the FBI guy ended up in another corner. The Silverdales were still sitting up front, and Josh had ended up with them, just listening. Natalie couldn't have handled that. She was impressed he could stay strong around them.

  Instead, Natalie found herself sitting alone in the very last row of benches, staring out into the field past the tall window, wishing she could be out there. Percy seemed to feel the same, ruffling his feathers a bit and nudging her forward.

  "So that's still a thing, huh?"

  Natalie looked up to see Rika standing at the end of the row. Rika didn't have the blue streak in her hair anymore, but she seemed just as annoyed as she always did. The tattoo of entwined flowers on her hand stood out a lot more than it used to, or maybe that was just Natalie's new eyes. Either way, she found it fascinating now.

  "What's that flower?" she asked, pointing at Rika's right hand.

  Rika looked surprised. She took a seat in the row ahead, right in front of her, and dangled her hands over the back. After a second's hesitation, she took off her jacket, showing the full length of the tattoo all the way up her forearm.

  "This is a sakura blossom," she explained, pointing out the light pink flower on the back of her wrist. "Means life and renewal. And then this is a black rose," she added, indicating the thorny flower, "which… you get the idea."

  Natalie nodded. "Don't you hate it though?"

  "Hate what?"

  "Everybody seeing those. The first thing they notice, before they really know you."

  Rika shrugged. "Just means they're shitty people, if that's all they think about."

  Natalie realized something — Rika hadn't even glanced at her scar. Maybe she'd missed it, but the older girl definitely hadn't lingered on it like everyone else.

  "Besides," Rika went on, "I picked these out. All of these are reminders to myself of what's important."

  Natalie's eyes traveled up her arm to the rough Japanese letters on her shoulder, and the bluebird against the sky backdrop on her other arm. "Did they hurt?"

  "Not as much as that probably did."

  Natalie winced. So she had noticed.

  "Did you get the fuckers who did it?"

  She nodded slowly, not daring to voice it aloud.

  Rika didn't smile, didn't really show any emotion at all. She just nodded back. She didn't try to take Natalie's hand, or hug her, or do anything like that. Just a nod. Understanding. "Good."

  Maybe you misjudged her.

  "This is Percy," she added, not sure what else to say.

  Rika glanced at the hawk. "Thanks for saving my life back in Rallsburg, Percy."

  "He did?" she asked, surprised. She hadn't known about that. She looked at Percy.

  Percy shifted his talons slightly, trying to come up with an answer. The question was a bit too abstract for him, and he couldn't exactly explain it. Thankfully, Rika didn't leave her hanging.

  "When we were bailing. That hawk came outta nowhere and distracted… uhh…" She trailed off. "Distracted the guy trying to get us."

  Natalie frowned. "I know."

  "...Know what?"

  "I know it was my dad." Natalie didn't even have trouble saying it anymore, which scared her a little. "I know he was helping Omega."

  Rika hesitated. "You do?"

  "Dad made the golems. I saw him." Natalie shook her head. "I dunno why. But someday I'm gonna go find him and figure it out."

  She smiled. "Damn, Natalie…"

  Natalie wasn't used to warmth from Rika. Every time they'd ever spoken, going all the way back to the early days of the Council when she got into fights with Rachel, Natalie was usually the annoying kid they all tolerated at best—Rika least of all. "Huh?"

  "Well." She reached into her jacket pocket on the bench and pulled out a little bottle of something. She offered it forward. Natalie took it, uncertain. "From one girl chasing down her dad to another, good hunting." Rika waved her hand upward, prompting her.

  Natalie took a sip. It tasted awful, and burned her throat as it went down. She coughed and quickly handed it back. "Ugh. Was that—"

  "Straight whiskey," said Rika, grinning. "And no, you can't have more. Not til you're older."

  "I don't want more," said Natalie. She spat out the rest into her sleeve, trying to clear the taste out of her mouth.

  "Trust me, you will." Rika took a deep gulp with a sigh. "Worth every drop. Kanpai." She took another drink, then settled back onto the bench. "So, men are the fucking worst, right?"

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  Natalie shivered, pulling her coat on tighter and renewing the warming spell she'd left off earlier. The church was colder than she'd expected. "What do you mean?"

  "Your dad. My dad. Viper, Omega, the shit I've heard about Kendra's dad. Sensing a pattern yet, Jane of the Jungle?"

  "I don't…"

  Rika shrugged, and took another sip of her drink. "What I'm saying is, guys are the worst. Pretty simple."

  "Not all guys," she said, thinking about Quinn. She smiled a little, just remembering the last time they hung out.

  Rika caught it. "Oh shit, is that…" She leaned forward a little, smirking. "Natalie, don't tell me you've got a crush."

  "No," Natalie shot back, with a touch of pride. "I have a boyfriend."

  Rika's mouth fell open. A few seconds later, she burst into laughter.

  "It's not a joke," Natalie added indignantly.

  "Oh, I know," said Rika, even while a few of the Greycloaks glanced over in annoyance. She calmed down, remembering where she was. "Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em." She took another swig of the drink. "Fuck, I'd swear off all guys if I could. But I'm an addict."

  "An addict of what?"

  She smirked. "A conversation for when you're older."

  Natalie frowned. "Is this about… sex?"

  Rika gaped at her again. "Oookay, well then. Look, Nat, you—"

  "Natalie."

  She paused. "Okay, Natalie. You're what, thirteen now?" Natalie nodded. "Right. So here's the thing: guys are a bit behind at your age, but when they catch up, they catch up. And you're gonna start looking at them different. They're gonna start looking at you different."

  "I know," she said, uncomfortable. But still, she'd never really gotten a good explanation for all of this. Her dad had gone over the basics, but he never really explained a lot. Maybe he would have when she was older, but… well, they never got that far. The talk with Cinza and Crystal in Seattle had only confused her even more, especially since she was barely able to focus on anything at the time.

  May as well be Rika, right…? At least I know her.

  "So when you're looking at a guy — or especially girls if you're like me at fourteen — and you start to feel like you want them? Like you need them? You shut that shit down."

  "Huh?"

  "Fucking hell, what is it with funerals and sex…" Rika muttered under her breath. She nodded. "Trust me. Nothing good comes out of sex that young. You don't have a clue what you're doing, neither do they, and you're just gonna fuck up any good relationships you have."

  "Is that what you did?"

  She choked on her drink, spluttering a bit. "Shit, right for the jugular Natalie."

  "...Sorry."

  Rika shrugged. "Well, you're right. That's what I did. A lot. And I fucked up every single good friendship I had, from fourteen to twenty one." She leaned forward again, realizing how loud she'd been talking. "I'm not gonna lie. I had fun at the time. It seemed like everything was gonna go great. But that's the trap."

  After another swig of her drink, Rika leaned forward again. "Gotta say, you look fucking intense. How'd you pull off all this?" Rika waved lazily to… well, all of her.

  Natalie hesitated. "...I did some rituals."

  To her relief, though not really a surprise, Rika didn't seem to care. Mostly, she was just curious. "Huh. Guess they don't set off my allergies then. What a relief." She grinned. "Looks damn good though, whatever the hell you were aiming for."

  Rika reached out, her rose-entwined hand coming toward Natalie's shoulder.

  Natalie flinched away.

  "...You okay?"

  "I'm fine," she said — too quickly.

  Rika was smarter than that. "What happened?"

  "I can't," she whispered. Natalie got to her feet and started walking away, Rika staring after her.

  "Natalie, what happened?" Rika asked again, but Natalie ignored her.

  Memories had been slowly coming back throughout the conversation, things she'd tried to avoid thinking about for so long. She'd been asking Rika all those questions to try and understand, without ever getting right to the heart of the problem. She wanted to know why, but Rika was a good person at heart. Natalie couldn't imagine Rika ever doing what he did.

  What he almost did.

  I…

  You got away. You stopped him.

  It didn't help. The voice couldn't get her out of that particular hole. Natalie fled back out the front door as calmly as she could. As soon as she was outside again, with the rain swallowing up the noise of the city in the distance, she found a small space at the end of the front deck. She wedged herself in between the bench and the flower bed, pulled her hood up and hugged herself tight. Percy fluttered out to the railing and took watch, understanding what she needed before she even asked.

  Natalie held very still, hands clasped around her legs, trying to force away the memories of that night. She thought of Quinn, and her friends, and her new home — but the black clouds kept coming, forcing him back into her mind, mixed in with images of lost friends, and her dad, and the gang members in the warehouse, and everything else that had gone so horribly wrong in her world.

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  "What are you doing here?" Jeremy asked, after he finally got her alone for a bit.

  "Oh, like I wasn't friends with her?" snapped Meg, rubbing her wrist. "You didn't have to pull me over here."

  "Thought you weren't getting involved."

  "For your information," she said haughtily, "Hailey invited me. They used to come over to our place all the time. And do you know how hard it was to convince my parents that I had to skip school and come out to the city on a Thursday?"

  "Go home. You shouldn't be here."

  "Why not?"

  Because everybody here is at serious risk of gettin' murdered lately… "You're too young."

  "Oh, puh-leeze." Meg pointed over at the elf-girl with the hawk, talking with Rika in the last row of pews. "She's like twelve. I'm sixteen."

  "She's awakened. She doesn't got a choice."

  "Yeah, and I'm choosing stay." Meg took a step back from him. "Look, Mr. Agent Ashe, I'm here because my brother isn't. He went out with them every night for months and he's not around to say goodbye, so I gotta do it. Okay? So deal with it."

  Well… fuck. Jeremy shook his head, dismayed. "On your own fuckin' head."

  "Yeah, no shit," she grumbled, walking away.

  Jeremy turned around, meaning to go back to his sister, maybe figure out what was taking so long — and found himself face-to-face with Stephanie Winscombe.

  "Uhh…" he started.

  "Mr. Ashe?"

  "Mrs. Winscombe."

  She nodded. "This is my ex-husband, Chris."

  Jeremy shook the offered hands, feeling a bit of whiplash in the shift of conversation. From a fuckin' high schooler to Hailey's upper-class mom. Shit, I'm probably gonna be talkin' to the twelve-year-old here in a minute.

  "I understand you're friends with my daughter now."

  "Somethin' like that, yeah." Jeremy shrugged. "We've helped each other out of a few tight spots."

  "Don't be so modest, Mr. Ashe. You two fought together. You saved her life in October, unless I'm mistaken."

  He blinked a few times. "She told you about that?"

  Stephanie nodded. "I wanted you to know: if you need anything, please call. I can't ever thank you enough."

  "Really," added Chris. "Hailey's very precious to us both. If she…" He choked up slightly.

  Stephanie rubbed his shoulder, glancing back at Jeremy. "As I said. Anything."

  Jeremy nodded. "Thanks." He glanced around. "Honestly, I'm just wonderin' where the hell she is now…"

  Stephanie glanced up, toward the ceiling. "I think she's still trying to figure out what to say." Her voice softened, which was very different from the Stephanie Winscombe Jeremy had dealt with for months. "I can't imagine what she's going through right now…"

  Chris put an arm around her shoulder. "None of us can, Steph."

  Jeremy looked up too, at the empty ceiling above them. "Is she—"

  "She'll come down when she's ready," said Stephanie.