I lay atop Molly's huge, grassy head, face up looking at the stars. Lir was on my chest. We listened to the night birds, crickets and apparently infinite number of courting frogs. The breeze ruffled my hair and his fur.

I was reading aloud. "Wherever she went, she searched for her people, but she found no trace of them, and in all the tongues she heard spoken along the road there was not even a word for them anymore."

UNICORN

"That's right, good girl, the Unicorn is looking for other Unicorns. But they're gone!

REDBULL!

"Oh, you think the Red Bull is going to show up? Oh man, he's a big monster, you sure you want that?

MORE!

"All right, if you're sure…but I need you to look out for me if I get scared, okay?"

OKAY!

A tiny glowing white figure shivered into being on my chest next to Lir. It wasn't a Magical construct I'd made. "Lir, is that yours?"

He shook his long head. The glowing thing was flickering like a blue candle flame. As I watched, it sprouted four stiff legs. It was a Winnie. And as we stared at it, the little glowing Winnie sprouted a single horn from its forehead.

UNICORN!

"Wow," I said. Genuinely impressed. Lir and I had been teaching her Magic, but this was the first thing we'd seen her do on her own. I reached and touched the horn on the tiny Winnie. It was sharp and warm, and it blew away like smoke after a moment.

I kept reading to Molly from my phone. Eventually she stopped asking for more chapters and I got a break.

"You think those frogs are speaking a language?" Lir asked.

"I don't know what happened with frogs on Sliceday."

"Dogs are gone."

I sat up, sending him rolling. "What? How?"

"Transcended yesterday. The heavyside layer got 'em. I always thought dogs would stay with us instead of escaping to heaven, but here we are."

SAD

"I know, pretty girl," I said. "The Humans who visited today made us sad."

FIGHT

"Yes. Are you in?"

FIGHT!

"I'm glad. We're going to keep you safe, Molly. We'll fix you up so nobody can ever hurt you again."

I remembered what I'd wanted when I was first sprung from that jail. I'd wanted to go surfing, preferably with a naked woman, but you have to work up to these things. I'd wanted to be left alone above all.

Just to see if I could be a person. Just to see what kind of person I was. Instead, I'd collected responsibilities and things to protect.

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"Ready for the stress test on endoskeletal circulation," Mabruk said, buzzing down with his wrist propeller. He had running lights enabled, so he was like a flying scoop of Cherry Garcia in the blue night sky. "Runes are running, good job, Rebound."

I fist-bumped him. "Thank you. I'd tested and tested and … man, Runes are hard. Thought I was gonna pass out."

"She'll be okay. She's super tough, right Molly?

BADASS!

"Thank you, everyone," I said. My voice cracked a little. "Thank you for helping and …staying."

"Are you kidding?" Ruhk said. "Me and my crew are having a blast."

Noises of affirmation from everyone. These guys were good guys.

"Lir, have you ever heard of a Winnie who can do Magic?"

"No clue. I bet Adaobi knows–"

"Forget it, then."

His ears drooped. "Right, right." His ears went up again, and his needly head rose on its long neck. "Okay, I am about to assert myself."

"Stand back!" shouted Mabruk.

"I don't think you're being fair to her, dude. She didn't know Piscator would want to ah…" He tilted an ear downward at Molly. "You think she'd have brought that guy if she'd known?"

I sighed. "No." I hadn't been thinking straight for a while, and now the fog of angry betrayal was clearing. "No I don't think that."

His long, nonhuman face was largely expressionless. But the ears, rotating and twitching? And the impatient thumping of the tail on the grass?

I called Adaobi.

She picked up. Fast. "Hey."

"You didn't know."

"I'm so sorry. I didn't know he was going to do that. Why would he? All the way back in the car he was blaming you for everything. Blaming you for the deaths, for the damage and pain. He yelled at me for trying to defend you, kicked me out of his car and drove off."

"He's not wrong."

She said nothing. Then: "You did try to help Todd. You didn't like Todd but you tried to help him. I knew he was messed up but I wanted to help him too. If you were wrong, so was I. Mentioning that was what got me kicked out of the car."

Anger and outrage boiled up in me. For Piscator, of all people, to treat someone as cool as Adaobi that way… "Dude needs his ass kicked."

"Not your fault. And I'm still a mahout of the Tourist Winnie. They can't do anything about that."

"They can do something about me being a mahout. It was the point of his visit."

"His whole argument was bullshit, you know that?" She was fuming. "Molly's looking great. This isn't about her."

"I knew they'd get around to me eventually. The face of the disaster. And … they're not wrong. If I didn't have to … I mean, I'd be gone. Just out of everyone's hair. But as things are, I have responsibilities. To Molly and…to Molly."

"Can I come over?"

"No."

"All right," she said. "Do you remember me asking you and Lir what he was talking about? He said he'd be there when it happened, remember? And you wouldn't explain. This is what you meant. What happened with Piscator."

None of the Walshes responded.

"Am I part of that?"

We thought. I looked at Lir, into the many eyes of Mabruk. Was Adaobi part of it?

NO said Molly.

I smiled. "Molly says no."

Lir looked relieved. His ears did, anyway. Mabruk's arms did weird stuff.

A smile in her voice. "I want to watch Star Trek."

How long was I going to sulk? Soon we'd be able to just book it, if we wanted to. Just head into the forest, abandoning all of this. Did I want that?

Right now, I did not. "Come watch Star Trek."

Approval flooding from Lir, Mabruk, Ruhk and Amalthea. Relief. From Molly as well.

Adaobi sounded excited. "I hear this week they meet a sort of Medusa."

"Bring snacks please," said Lir.

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