Jessica was here, and with corpses to keep her company. Several of the wine barrels at the far end of the cellar had burst open. From what Jules could tell, it looked like someone had come down into the cellar to hide, only to die from the Green Death sometime after. Whoever they were, their corpse had… exploded in the far corner of the room, seeding the storage room’s walls and aisles with spores, which had greedily grown, erupting across the floor and walls in a branching menagerie. It looked like the broken casks had been melted through by the spores. The fungal growths spread across the spilled wine like roots of clotted blood. Several other bodies were there, as well, recently added, piled neatly in the middle of the aisle on the left, between the wall and the racks.

Jessica looked even worse than she had in the video. Her legs dead-ended in the middle of her thighs. The way they jutted out from where her torso melted into her tail reminded Jules of the vestigial claspers that some pythons had on their underbellies. Jessica sat against one of the casks in the wall, her head hanging low on her distended neck. Her head was half transformed, with a distended lower jaw and a budding snout. Her hair was mostly gone, leaving clumps strands hanging here and there, like a witch’s locks. Jessica was talking in a low voice, but to whom, Jules couldn’t tell.

There was no one there.

Jules had taken so much flak from Jessica Eigenhat. I recognized Jessica’s personality type the instant I first saw her, during open house. Jessica was the fabled early bloomer. She was “pretty popular” in every sense of the term: popular, and because she was pretty. In the shadow of her presence, girls became groupies or wallflowers, and never the twain would meet. She was a merchant of renown, transactional and manipulative. Her parents had put on a good front, but I could sense a lot of dysfunction wafting off them.

Broken homes made for broken children.

And yet, despite all that—despite all the put-downs and snide remarks—Jules felt sorry for Jessica.

The poor girl was truly alone, now. Her mind was fading as the fungus took control. Her head was barely human anymore.

Fear shivered down Jules’ spine.

It wasn’t safe here.

Whatever information Jessica might have had, it was long gone now.

Jules wanted to cry, but she didn’t dare, not with a mad monster just around the bend.

Tensing her legs, Jules stepped back as stealthily as she could, only to slip and fall forward as she put her weight into her foot when her foot was on the edge of the step immediately behind her. Just as Jules’ life started to flash before her eyes, she suddenly came to a stop as she smacked face-first into an invisible wall. She fell back, landing butt-first on the stairs with a painful thud.

“Ow!” Jules yelled. “Fuck!”

She saw Jessica’s head turn in response to the noise.

“Is someone there?” Jessica said. Her voice sounded… off. Stretched.

The changeling crawled toward the steps along the wall that led up to the entryway.

Jules froze in terror.

Below, Jessica crawled onto the base of the stairs, her tail lolling behind her. “Who’s there!?” she yelled, frightened and desperate. “Who—”

But then her head and neck bobbed back, utterly astonished.

Jessica stared at her for a moment. “What the fuck?” she said, hesitant and confused. “H-Howle?”

Jules was stunned. Though the creature certainly didn’t look like Jessica, it was definitely acting like her.

“J-Jessica?” Jules asked. She honestly didn’t know who was more startled here, her or Jessica.

“Yes?” the changeling replied.

“Are you still… Jessica?”

“Yeah,” Jessica replied, looking down at herself. “Only on the inside, though.”

Fuck, Jules thought, exhaling sharply.

It seemed Jessica was still Jessica.

“This is a lot to take in, you know,” Jules said, quietly.

“Bitch, don’t tell me what’s ‘a lot’. I’m the one turning into a freaking snake. Now, c’mon, tell me why you’re here, or, I’ll… I’ll eat you, or something.”

Jules chuckled softly.

Yeah, this is Jessica, alright.

“You shouldn’t be here, anyway. They’ll be sending someone to check up on me again. They’ll eat you if they catch you down here.”

“I’d like to see them try,” Jules said, rubbing her tailbone as she rose.

It was a bluff, obviously, but Jessica didn’t need to know that.

Jules put her hand on the invisible barrier. It was like a continuous current of air, pushing back at her hand. It was like the push of two opposite magnet poles, only her body was one of the magnets.

“What the hell…?” Jules muttered, shaking her head.

Jules got onto her knees, pleating her skirt over her legs. She leaned into the force field, plastering her hands over it.

There were so many things she could have told Jessica, but Jules decided for the one that was least likely to get them arguing with one another. Unfortunately, Jules had a poor track record. Most of her interactions with Jessica ended… badly.

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“My family is stuck here, and we want to escape. We’ve got my Mom’s car, but…—”

Jessica did her best to sit down on the lower steps. “—Fat chance of that happening.”

“What makes you so sure?” Jules asked.

Jessica pointed at the entryway. Jules saw that her fourth and fifth fingers had crumbled off her hand. Claw tips were beginning to emerge from the remaining three fingers.

It looked really painful.

“These freaks can make magic barriers, Howle,” Jessica replied. “There’s no chance. They’re gonna eat everyone until there’s only Norms left.”

Jules tried to push into the barrier, but it resisted her, responding with equal and opposite force.

“If they made the barrier, can’t you, well… un-make it?”

Jessica lowered her head. She gestured at the corpses piled further down the aisle. “That’s why they sealed me in here with those bodies. Once I eat them, I’ll be changed enough that I can undo the barrier.”

Jules was about to say, “Then why haven’t you?” when she realized that sounded too confrontational, so she switched tactics.

“My grandma Margaret is one of them,” she said. “My mom’s mom.”

“Revenel?” Jessica asked.

Jules nodded. “Yeah, Margaret Revenel. She had my mother out in the Nave with her, watching as the others… fed. She…” Jules looked Jessica in the eyes. “She was there when you got taken away. Mom even made a video of it, on her console. I… I saw it.”

Jessica grimaced. “Is that why you’re here, Howle? To gloat? Here to tell me that your shrink dad was right, and that I’m an early bloomer, and this is my comeuppance?”

“No,” Jules said.

“No?” Jessica asked. Her voice curled up at the end, like an apostrophe. The sound bounced off the wine cellar’s gently arched ceiling. “Then why are you here?”

Jules bit her lip as she tried to think of a good answer.

“Because… my Mom’s a mess and… my brother’s a dork. Like, the biggest dork.”

“Is your Mom one of the cultists? Has she fallen for Verune’s shtick? Or…” Jessica’s expression darkened. “Has she—“

Jules shook her head and sniffled, trying not to cry. “My Mom doesn’t know what to believe anymore. It’s kinda funny, actually. My Dad’s always been like that, but she… she’s lost. It’s broken her. She thinks she’s damned my brother and I to hell. And my brother he…” Jules twiddled her fingers. “He thinks we should get one of the good sneople to help us escape this madhouse.”

Jessica hunched her shoulders in confusion. “Sneople?”

“Snake people,” Jules admitted.

“Oh fuck, he really is a dork,” Jessica replied.

“Yeah.” Jules breathed in deep. Her mask pinned her breath hot and wet against her face. She cleared her throat. “Jessica… what happened? Why did you act up like that? Why are you here?”

“What’s it to you?”

“My Mom doesn’t know what to believe—Scripture, Verune, nothing at all. I… I’m trying to get her out of it, but… it’s not working. She heard you say that Verune and the Last Church were crazy and deluded, and she’s clinging to that, as if it’s the one thing that could convince her that Verune and Grandma are just fucking awful.”

There was a pause.

“It’s not that they’re nuts,” Jessica said. “It’s…” She let out a spore-wisped sigh. “These changes, they mess with our heads. They let us imagine things into being. And I should know. I did it, too. I did it to myself.” She lowered her head. “When I was little, I wanted a pet tiger. A white tiger. Then, one morning, I wake up feeling dead, and there’s a white tiger on the floor, in front of my bed. Exactly like I’d always dreamed. I thought I was in Paradise at first, but when I ran up to pet him, my hand just passed through, like he was a ghost.” She looked up. “It took a while for me to figure out what was going on, but, once I did, it made a hell of a difference. Us changelings can do the craziest things inside our heads. It’s a sandbox in there, we can do whatever we want. If we think it, we can make it real.”

“That sounds… pretty wild,” Jules said, softly.

“Verune,” Jessica said, “he’s doing something. He’s… I think he’s making the others see what he thinks he sees. The songs you hear the Norms sing… they’re messages. The more I change, the more I understand them. It’s like they’re sharing their thoughts. I think Verune is doing that. He might not even be aware of it. But… I was. You saw the video, when he did the thing with the fountain water?”

“Yeah?” Jules said.

“When he did that, I could feel his imagination imposing itself on me. For the briefest moment, I saw myself as what he’s convinced I must look like. And… it was beautiful. Silver and gold, with radiant hair. Angel… I really did look like a divine beast.” She wept. “But it’s not real. Verune has gaslit himself, and now he’s gaslighting all the others.” She looked at the bodies. “That’s why I don’t want to eat. I’ll change if I do.”

“Are you scared of changing?” Jules asked.

“Fuck no,” Jessica said. “I’m still me. I’m still fabulous,” she paused, “after a fashion.”

Jules snorted.

“Laugh all you want, Howle. I know what real fear is.”

“Oh yeah?” Jules said.

“Yeah,” Jessica replied. She nodded, and then lowered her head. “I’m not half as scared of myself as I am of… the others. I don’t want them to put their thoughts into my head. And if holding off the changes will do that, then… that’s what I’m gonna do.”

“Wait,” Jules asked, “why aren’t you concerned about losing your sense of self? How do you know you’ll still be… you?”

“I’ve seen shit, Howle,” Jessica replied. “I’ve seen fully-turned Norms digging graves for the dead. They even made the fucking Bond-sign. They wouldn’t do that if they weren’t themselves.” Jessica turned her head away. “Part of me wishes I would lose my mind.”

“Why?” Jules asked.

“My dad’s dead, Jules. I… I ate him. But, you know what? He’s still here. He’s still fucking here. They’re all here. The dead haven’t gone away; they’ve just moved inside us, now. I’m Hotel Eigenahat now. My dad was my first guest, and I’m pretty sure he’s stuck with me forever. I don’t know whether to laugh or scream.”

“I’m s—”

“—You don’t need to apologize for anything. It’s none of your business, anyhow.” Jessica raised her head.

“Tell your family the Last Church is full of shit. The plague might kill people, but it doesn’t make them disappear. The Norms aren’t mirrors to the soul or whatever-the-fuck Verune says they are. They want to think they’re holy, but they’re man-eating monsters that gobble up souls to put them inside our heads. Everything else is just bullshit people have come up with to explain the unexplainable.”

“What the fuck?” Jules muttered.

“You heard me,” Jessica replied. “You die, then you get uploaded into a Norm. It’s like there’s a zoo inside each and every one of us. We can do whatever we want with you guys, and you’ll get no say.”

“Shit…” Jules muttered.

“Yeah,” Jessica replied, nodding in agreement. “With that in mind, the best thing you can do for yourselves is to find a nice Norm to die around, someone you’ll be okay spending the rest of the eternity with. Shop around. Make sure it’s someone you trust. You have to tell your family, Jules. Your Mom, your Dad, that twerpy little brother of yours. Tell everyone. At this point, it’s a public service.”

Dad… Jules thought.

Her expression fell. “My Dad’s—”

—But at that moment, somewhere deep in Jules’ mind, one of her thought-gears advanced by the turn of a single tooth. A new synapse formed as my daughter’s brain put the last piece of the puzzle in place, and gazed upon the awful truth that Jessica’s words had just detonated inside her soul.

Jules shuddered.

“Dad…” she said, with a croak, tears beginning to pool in her eyes. Scowling, Jules slapped the back of her head. “Stupid! I’m so stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”

“Was it something I said?” Jessica asked.

Jules shook her head. “You… you don’t understand. My Dad… he’s one of you. He’s changing into a wyrm. Angel’s breath. He’s still him. He’ll still be his same, dorky, goody-two-shoes self, wyrm or not. We shouldn’t… we shouldn’t have…”

The only reason Jules’ mother had taken them to her grandmother’s place was because she’d thought her husband was lost to Hell.

Jules started to cry. She’d missed me so much, but that pain had been held at bay by her belief that I was lost to her forever. But now she knew the truth, and it refused to let her

Then, from somewhere behind her—over her weeping—Jules heard the ancient hallways fill with the sound of an approaching wyrm.