Sazwa stares at me as I stand in the doorway, stinking, exhausted, bleeding, maybe delirious.

  “Hey,” I say, squinting and holding the syllable too long. “I’m looking for Ali?”

  “He’s working. Come in,” she says. “Would you like to take a shower?”

  “I don’t want to impose,” I say.

  “You’re imposing. Go take a shower.”

  I wake up sitting in the shower, under the water, soap still clutched in my right hand, my injured left hand hanging outside the shower, gone numb and tingly. My toes are pruney, but the water hasn’t turned cold. Maybe it just won’t, this place is warded. I turn off the shower, crawl onto dry land, wrap myself in a towel. My only clothes are filthy, grass and blood and sweat and puke. I wrap the towel around my waist as firmly as possible, and step out. Ali has a hand poised to knock on the door which he sheepishly lowers. “I heard the shower when I got in, but it’s been so long I was worried.”

  The cold stings my fingers and toes, which are a concerning bright red. Better than black or blue, I guess. “I fell asleep,” I say. “What time is it?”

  He’s nervously avoiding looking at me. “Three. Did you walk here after we drove off?”

  “I met Rose Roach,” I say. “And lived to the tell the tale.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know who that is,” he says, always polite.

  “The elder witch I was looking for. She’s sending someone to the next ball to back me up.”

  “When is the next ball?”

  I shrug, sit down on the couch. “How’s you and Sazwa?”

  “Struggling. But better. Time apart and all. You and Vern?”

  “I don’t know, man,” I lay down melodramatically, then my eyelids start to sink. “He said the nicest thing about me he’s ever said. He helped me with the strike stuff. But he’s just- so- ugh-” I flail my arms, turn and look at Ali, who is really doing his best to look away. “Do you have a phone charger?”

  “I do. I also have some night clothes you could wear.”

  “Pants would be good.”

  “A shirt would be good too.”

  “Oh yeah, gotta cover my- Oh you’re not fucking with me,” I say, and laugh.

  “You’re a woman.”

  “I’ve got three days of beard and no tits, Ali, I don’t think it counts.”

  He continues to look elsewhere.

  “You and Sazwa are taking this trans thing way more seriously than I am, but fine, let’s get a shirt.”

  “You should take a shirt, and a warm meal, and a long night’s rest, and let me look at that bandage, to decide if we need Sazwa to look at that bandage, to decide if we need Arleen to look at that bandage.”

  “I don’t have time to sleep,” I say, and it’s just acting tough. I can never sleep half as well as when someone tells me to. “Got work to do.”

  “It can wait till tomorrow. You were- Heidi you were kidnapped and tortured.” He holds my hand, takes off the wet bandage.

  “Barely. I’m fine.”

  “I don’t think it’s- barely- Heidi. I think if this happened to most people they would be justified in spending the next decade talking about its effect on them in therapy. And while you are not most people, Heidi, you have to have limits too.”

  “I don’t want to think about it or talk about it, Ali,” I say. What I want is a distraction. I look at him, really look at him. Dark shaggy hair, golden brown skin, a little overweight, in a cute way. Once I put his borrowed shirt on he takes my hand, looks over the cut I made with the steak knife, applies disinfectant and wraps it with warm, steady hands and kind eyes.

  “Sazwa’s a lucky woman,” I tell him, when he’s done patching me up.

  “Pardon me?” he asks, but I’m already fading back to sleep.

  I wake up to the sound of my phone buzzing. I open my eyes, see bright white walls and think I’m in the freezer. I flail out of the blankets Ali tucked me into. Nope. Not there. Safe. I grab the phone. Vern’s calling.

  I text him “I don’t have my microphone with me.” There’s a wall of texts from the last three days.

  “Pick up the phone,” he replies.

  I pick up the phone.

  “Motherfucker!” he yells. “Where the fuck have you been- your work friends have been calling asking about you, Sazwa’s murder-crow was looking in my windows, who were you with, what were you doing, where the fuck are you right now?”

  I put the phone down on the table, sigh, half listen while I rummage around Ali’s kitchen and fix up a sandwich.

  I hang up the phone, text him “I’ll be over today,” and set the phone to silent. I stuff my face with my sandwich and sulk.

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  “Heidi?” Ali calls from the mad science room.

  “Good morning.”

  “Come here for a minute, would you?”

  I come into the room. The man with antlers on his head is still laying in bed here, sensors on his head, and this time it’s Sazwa who’s sitting unconscious in a chair with the matching electrodes. He wears the same clothes, has the same muscle definition, like a month hasn’t passed. The difference is in his antlers, once modest, foot long protrusions, now sprawl to cover the entire back wall of the room, their confined growth has turned them into an asymmetrical nest twice the size of his body, covered in moss and leaves.

  “I’m told you saw mister freeman before, yes?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t- didn’t really- what is this?”

  “He was a borrower, wolf seed, worked for mister Abraham, and the pack. He was beginning to grow too monstrous, his wolf form had antlers, stilted legs, like some kind of moose-wolf-forest god-thing. They were planning on pulling the seed, but-” Ali looks at the man’s face, then back to me. “He was too far gone, refused. Didn’t want to go back, couldn’t see it as anything but being robbed of his power.”

  I stare at those antlers, bursting through his skin, the entire wall of the room is covered, they wrap around the bed, are questing towards the windows and doors.

  “Abraham’s lot planned to hunt him, kill him before he succumbed. We got help from mister Vern, and his coven, to weaken him, bring him to sleep. We lost Randy in the process. And curing him is- a challenge”

  I don’t want to remember picking Randy’s shattered fingers out of Vern’s arm. Don’t want to think about a pack of werewolves descending on their former friend either.

  “Sazwa and her coven do what’s called Redemption. Track. Tranq. Capture. And then dream dive. Attempt to find the monstrosity, cut the person free of it.”

  “That sounds dangerous.”

  “It is. Sazwa, Arleen, Helle, and two of the other borrowers are sandmen, and even still it’s tough to bring monsters to sleep before they kill us. But the alternative is the cull or the pack butchering them. The witch hunt burning them. Borrowers have to trust their witch to pull out the seed at the right time, we don’t get a lot of say, don’t understand the risks, not the first time around, at least. We don’t deserve that.”

  “We deserve so much more.”

  He stares at the sleeping man again. “Sazwa is not good at dream diving. She’s... she can be very literal, at times, and that’s an amazing skill to have, but symbology, empathy, psychology and ideology, those are my skills, not hers. I spent three weeks attempting to fix him, and have had limited success. And now, I can’t finish what was started. She has to take over my work, and put herself at risk each time she does.”

  “You can help her,” I scoff.

  “Not as long as we are on strike, Heidi. That’s the pact. I want to help borrowers, but this is helping borrowers too. This is the issue, Heidi. Witches might be taking us for granted- but the work they do is good. It’s important. It’s been two days, and the work left undone is already scaring me. I should be helping.”

  “Come on, Ali, you’re telling me to pack it up? You’re the only one who believed in this from the jump, don’t do that.”

  “I want both,” he says, smiling, fully aware how immature that is to ask. “To improve our station while still doing witches' work. I don’t mind self sacrifice, I don’t mind the risk, I don’t even mind if Sazwa hates me. As long as I know what I’m doing is right.” He shakes his head. “I’m sitting in a room, watching my wife risk her sanity to save a stranger- and I can’t even make her a tea because she accidentally asked me to.”

  He is wrong. I see it, in that smile, that naive dream, that future where the world brightens without dimming first. We are in a game of chicken, our seeds consuming us, the witches power in the world waning, the collision is distant but approaching fast, and he wants to tap the brakes and hope they’ll budge anyways.

  “This is the problem,” I tell him. “Power will always go to assholes because nice people like you don’t want to fight dirty.”

  “This is not fighting dirty,” he says. “This is neglect.”

  “Neglect she chose, Ali. She sat at that table and refused to so much as bargain. None of them even made a fucking offer that included Kerrigan. Of all the witches in the world, she’s one of the six most directly responsible. You’re making her tea and helping her fix it? She should feel sickened, isolated, powerless, you should be making her hurt.”

  “And that’s what you want? To hurt the people who wronged you? To be the asshole in charge?”

  “I won’t be an asshole once I’m in charge, Ali.”

  He takes his eyes off of his wife, leverages those big brown-gold irises against me, puts on his most professorial expression.

  “I’ll have you to hold me back, won’t I?” I clap him on the shoulder. “I hear what you’re saying. If you or Sazwa can reach out to Henrietta, I’ll see if we can bargain to end the strike as soon as possible. Any capitulation, if it’s better than it was, then fuck it, if they’re willing to recognize us enough to negotiate, that’s a start.”

  “They may want to punish you afterwards,” he says. “There have been borrowers in the past who- ran wild. Taken and then executed so they wouldn’t become monsters, the witches said, but that could easily be said about you.”

  “Sure, while I’m at it I’ll ask them to sign a ‘no assassinations’ pact,” I laugh. Ali doesn’t. “Thanks for the rescue. For letting me stay tonight. I’ll be out of your hair soon.”

  “It was Sazwa’s plan. And this is Sazwa’s home, now. I’ve got a bunk in a tower.”

  I stare at her, in the chair, that beaky little face, wires weaving in and out of her hair. She looks mean even asleep. “I’m sorry she kicked you out,” I say.

  Vern’s car isn’t in the driveway. I text “I’m here!” before I find the spare key under a rock in the garden and let myself in. His home is in a state, the smell of stale urine greats me just a moment before a guilty looking Vivi does. “Boy, are you okay?” I ask. He looks up at me with those shining yellow spotlight eyes, thumps his tail against the wall, looks to his leash.

  So I take him for a walk. Along the way Vivi starts barking, and I see Henrietta's rabbit, which stops in front of us and lays down a piece of card stock.

  Heidi Aitkins, you are hereby invited by I, Henrietta, on behalf of the court keepers of Boston, to attend a formal gathering of the seat holders to negotiate an end to the borrowers strike. Verbally accept this invitation at 2:15 PM to gain safe passage. As you do not have a familiar, nor the guidance of a witch, my own familiar will act as your guide.

  It’s barely noon. More warning than last time, at least.

  When I get back in the mess Vivi’s made is apparent, so I quickly mop it. His food bowl is empty, which is normal, but his water bowl being empty most certainly is not. “That goddamn piece of shit,” I say, before filling both bowls.

  There’s no food in the fridge, a sink piled with dishes, beer cans overflowing the recycling can. I get a text back: “Be home in an hour.”

  I fume. Everything is a mess, and Vivi deserves better than this. I look through all of Vern’s texts. I can’t deal with this stress. I miss you. I need you. Are you okay? I can’t deal with this. This strike is bad for me. Vivi misses you. I need your help. Are you ignoring me?

  There’s three are you okay’s in a wall of texts about him. About Vivi. About the consequences my choices have on him.

  This hour is for me to clean his goddamn messes. I want to be strong, to refuse, but I already caved, I already took care of Vivi, I already cleaned the piss off the floor. Cause if I don’t do the work, it’s my fault it didn’t get done.

  “You could take care of Vivi before me, you can take care of him after,” I type.

  I grab my bag, give Vivi a long kiss goodbye. “I promise I’ll check in a day or two, if he’s not taking care of you, I’ll steal you, get you to a shelter, okay?”

  Vivi’s tail thumps against his flanks. I kiss him once more and stand in the entrance, pat my pocket to make sure I still have the spare key.

  I pull out the card. “Fuck your timetable, old lady, I accept your invitation now.”

  The card disintegrates in a flash of white light, and the neighbourhood beyond the doorway goes quiet and blurry, the sun a ring around the world. Her rabbit isn’t here to guide me, but I know the way.