The Bastiat was a good-sized music bar that once hosted prestigious country acts like Johnny Cash and Bill Monroe. Then the '08 housing market crashed and suddenly they had to get a lot less choosy about who they billed to play to keep their property paid up, and then the prestige drained away until it took on the permanent smell of stale beer, the tables got sticky and the decor came to clash heavily with the acts that actually played the venue, and of course, while it was a charity show to raise money for cancer research they did take a cut from the ticket sales to keep the lights on.

  Still though it was almost a full house thanks to local slam legends Stale Piss Vomit Machine advertising on Facebook that they were going to have gay sex in the parking lot for a new music video. Why that worked as promo? I had no idea, but Stale Piss Vomit Machine also was more a meme page than an actual band these days.

  I sat back at a table as I watched their vocalist call for a wall of death for the third time, worked the first two times, but now the audience looked more interested in pelting him with change until he shut up and started making more human toilet bowl noises. Their final song of the night. Salem sat beside me in a Nine Inch Nails shirt from 1990, vintage stuff, her stompy platform boots on the table as she looked through a book on developmental psychology, though the rhythmic tilting of her head from side to side betrayed she actually was enjoying the music, the book was psychological warfare. Warfare did come to an end though as a final snare hit marked the end of the set and relative quiet settled in the venue.

  Demonia sat across from us, gripping her third whiskey neat like it was the only stable thing in her universe. Her purple hair hung in her face as she hunched forward, scanning the crowd with suspicious eyes. Every time the door opened, she flinched slightly.

  "Statistically improbable that cult members frequent death metal shows," Salem observed without looking up from her book.

  "Tell that to Norway," Demonia muttered into her drink. "Besides, it feels like everyone's watching me."

  "Black metal, that Norse cult stuff with the church burnings was the black metal scene, not death metal." I followed her gaze around the venue. Most patrons were focused on the band, but there was one guy at the bar who kept glancing our way. Probably just checking out the purple-haired goth girl, but after everything we'd seen, paranoia felt justified, I tried to ease her mind. "They're just checking you out, you don't come to shows, you're hot and you're with a couple. They're trying to figure out if you're available."

  "Yeah well after the breeding cult shit I'm not exactly in a dating mood." She paused. "I'm hot?"

  I could feel Salem's eyes shoot up to me, after Salem said not to make Demonia uncomfortable her reaction to being called hot was going to determine if I slept in bed with Salem tonight or in a guest bedroom and so I just didn't say anything at all allowing Demonia's question to hang.

  Another 5 song set by another band called Necrophile, Demonia frequently leaving us to hit the bar and then the PA continued switching songs abruptly as the DJ tried to find something fitting, until he landed on Aqua's Barbie song that suddenly everyone was singing along to enthusiastically.

  Reggie the drummer and Kyle the bassist approached me. Reggie spoke up, "Hey man, we're almost up, we should probably sound check now."

  I sighed and looked at Salem who paid the interaction no mind. "Shouldn't we wait for Keili and Blake."

  "Uhhh so… Keili is passed out in the bathroom cuz she can't hold her Jack and Blake quit this morning."

  My eyes widened, "we're not going on short a guitarist and 'singer'"

  Reggie avoided eye contact. "Well you can do the growly screamy thing while you play guitar and then we're only short Keili's guitar and we can just run a backing track for that."

  Kyle cut in, "yeah man just go 'grrrrrr breee ough', it's not hard."

  "Then why don't you do it?"

  Kyle's gaze dropped to the floor, "I can't, I have bad eye hand coordination. It will mess me up."

  "I haven't practiced the vocals in months it'll mess-" I paused as that statement sank in. "Is that why your dumbass is always staring at your bass when we play instead of trying to do audience engagement?"

  Kyle got defensive. "Yeah well audience engagement is Keili's thing, she's the one that belly dances during her guitar solos."

  I rubbed my temples irritably. "I hate you both so much." I sighed, this was likely the last chance I had to get on stage before Marissa Chen threw me through a wall while talking about breeding. The absurdity of the situation hit me—just yesterday I was a getaway driver for Salem's organ harvest, now I was about to growl into a microphone for cancer research. The cognitive dissonance was almost dizzying.

  "Fiiiiiine, let's go."

  Salem finally looked up, her book snapping closed as she pulled her feet off the table and scanned around to see Demonia already headed for the bar yet again. "Venue acoustics suboptimal. Demonia intoxicated, high probability to relieve stress."

  She looked at me, and for just a moment I saw something almost like concern in those usually clinical eyes. She knew how surreal this was for me—pretending everything was normal when we'd seen horrors most people couldn't comprehend.

  She touched my arm lightly and began leaving. "I'll make your set pop. Tune your guitar."

  *******

  As I was tuning my guitar and adjusting the mic stand, a familiar voice cut through the venue noise.

  "Well that's fucking typical," came from behind me. I turned to see Raven approaching the stage, her long black hair and dark eyes as striking as ever. Of course my ex-girlfriend was here tonight of all nights. She was flanked by two other women I recognized from the local scene—the brunette who went by BodyBag, wearing ragged Motorhead shirt and denim vest covered in band patches and tattoos coloring her arms. BodyBag gave a short unusually friendly wave to Salem, which Salem reciprocated back to her before crossing her arms to do a tough pose like some mob movie extra.

  Next to her was Qira, blonde, slight points to her ears, almost no makeup and unusually tall, like an elf queen, if elf queens wore Metallica shirts and about 63 rubber bracelets with edgy impact font quotes on them, "Die Without Hope" and "Hell Chose Me" were the two easiest to read in the overlapping piles. Even when we were together catching Raven alone was rare; she was obsessed with keeping at least two of her five friends with her like a trio act.

  Raven herself though, her hair done up in fancy Victorian braids that she never picked up until after I had started dating Salem, red contacts, a Paradise Lost shirt and skin tight black jeans. She used to go full Siouxsie and the Banshees when she came to my shows but I guessed she'd fallen into just "goth influenced metalhead" vibes to fit in better with her friends.

  "Hey Raven," I managed, trying to keep things casual while continuing to tune. "Didn't expect to see you here."

  "Charity show, figured I'd support the cause." Her eyes flicked toward Salem, who'd moved from being perched on the drum seat to leaning around to watch the interaction. "Besides, someone needs to make sure you don't completely embarrass yourself without a proper frontman. Heard Blake quit."

  "Well you probably heard about that before I did." I tried to ignore her, but she continued.

  "I see you brought a new friend with you." Raven gestured towards Demonia at the bar. "Between her and Keili it seems women can't stand being around you unless they're drunk."

  "Keili just does whiddily whoodily stuff on that Ibanez of hers," I tested a chord progression. "We'll manage."

  "Sure you will." Raven's smirk was both familiar and uncomfortable. "Try not to forget the lyrics to your own songs." She turned to Salem and smirked. "And try not to drive her into alcoholism, I'm still hoping she realizes she's too pretty for you."

  I plucked my E string before looking at her. "She is too pretty for me, she was an upgrade over you after all."

  Raven turned red. Something sharp lanced through my chest—not quite pain, but close. Like heartburn, except centered higher and more immediate. I almost winced before it dissipated.

  Raven started leaving back to her little corner, pausing to make a comment to Salem. "Can you please step up and smack the audacity out of him for me?"

  Salem didn't even acknowledge the comment, instead pretending to shake out her shirt. But I caught her eyes flick to me for just a microsecond, analytical. Assessing. Raven began storming away, Qira shot BodyBag a shrug before turning and following, BodyBag waved another awkward wave to Salem before leaving.

  I finished tuning, rubbing absently at my sternum where that weird sensation had hit. Guilt maybe, it was a mean comment. Maybe just shitty venue beer hitting me wrong. Who knew.

  Finally Salem stopped playing with her shirt, "Upgrade comment, unnecessarily cruel."

  "Yeah well... it got rid of her, which was what I wanted."

  "Temporarily. She still attempts direct engagement at every show." Salem turned and eyed down Raven's table, then glanced at me again with that same assessing look. "Her other two friends have arrived."

  "Great." I did one last strum, "now I get to have my vocals judged by the whole squad."

  *******

  10 minutes later we were on stage. I scanned the crowd one last time to get a read on things. Our table was vacated with Salem moving towards the barrier, Demonia still at the bar slamming down another shot. I gripped the neck of the guitar hard in my hand as we started, I always hated doing the frontman routine. "This first one is called Shatter the Sun. I wanna see someone leave in a body bag."

  The irony of those words wasn't lost on me. How many bodies had Salem and I left in our wake? How many more might follow before this cult business was over? I pushed the thought away and let the music take over. There was something almost meditative about the thundering chords and screaming vocals—a world away from the precise, clinical horror of Salem's laboratory.

  And with that the song started as I started strumming my guitar, the heavy part hit when Kyle's bass entered and then came that awkward moment in the first song where you got to find out how much an audience cared for you. Would they mosh? Stand around looking unimpressed? Pelt you with change?

  The answer tonight looked like it would be a mix of the first two. There was the usual mosh crew in the center, BodyBag was with them slamming herself into anyone she could, mosher or bystander, but beyond them the vibe of the room was very much "I'm only here for the headliner".

  Another glance around as the song finished. Salem circling the pit, Demonia still drinking, Raven on the barrier staring at me with an unimpressed expression and Qira leaned over the fence for the sound booth watching the sound guy intently, I used to think she did that to hit on him but apparently she was actually just a nerd that liked audio engineering, though she glanced around sporadically for… something. The table the trio had staked for themselves now held down by Maggot and TrendKill.

  Our second song followed my scan, and the situation remained the same. I didn't call its name out, I didn't remember its name and I definitely didn't remember its lyrics, not that anyone would notice. Just another edgy song with edgy lyrics in a night full of edge, if you wanted to stand out in this scene your best shot would be by announcing your next song was called the Blooming Tulip of Happiness or something.

  I spotted Demonia at the bar, arguing with the bartender. She was gesturing wildly, her face flushed with alcohol and fear. The bartender looked concerned—not angry, but worried. He said something to her that made her slam her hand on the bar in frustration.

  Our third song started, a very janky cover of Wish by Nine Inch Nails. I wouldn't ever play it live if it was up to me, that song did not translate well to death metal but Keili loved doing it so we'd already rehearsed it for weeks. That was the song where hell broke loose though.

  Down at the edge of the pit Salem had started doing a dance, flowy elegant movements that ended abruptly as she wound up a roundhouse kick and landed it on some poor guy's face, clearly a middle-aged man but much taller than her. Kind of a shame, she was a really beautiful dancer but so rarely actually danced.

  Before he could even process the hit, she'd already melted back into the crowd, her face a perfect mask of wide-eyed, innocent concern as she pointed accusingly at the man standing next to him. The kicked man went for the framed man, another attendee jumped in to save the framed man and another to intervene from that attendee fist fighting the man that was kicked and within about 30 seconds the left side of the pit had devolved into a drunk bar brawl while Salem slunk away to the right side, her face was as expressionless as ever but she looked at me as she went, she'd be expecting me to thank her for energizing the crowd later.

  Kyle turned uncertainly, pausing waiting to gauge my reaction, my reaction was to keep playing and let security sort it out, we were only on a five song setlist anyways. Behind the chaos of the pit Demonia was at the bar visibly trying to yell another drink order into the bartender's ear while he tried yelling something back at her, not that the yelling would actually allow them to hear each other over the music, besides going off the stack of glass cups in front of Demonia he was probably telling her the bar was cutting her off for the night.

  Salem materialized beside her, saying something in her ear. Demonia's eyes widened, and she turned to scan the crowd with new urgency. Salem pointed subtly toward the exit, where one of the men she'd been watching stood observing the bar fight with unnatural stillness. Turned out that when Salem said it was unlikely cult members would be watching us here that didn't mean the odds were 0%.

  The weirdest part though, Raven turned and watched as Salem left the floor for the bar, like the exact second Salem had left the floor, and the second Salem pointed out that guy she, BodyBag, Qira and the two at the table all immediately in perfect sync made their way for the same door.

  *******

  Suspect had had eyes on her for at least six minutes, suspicious, but with Demonia informed this should be much easier.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Salem tracked him through the crowd—thirty-something male, leather jacket, too-clean boots for someone actually part of the scene. He nursed the same beer, eyes returning to her every forty-three seconds on average. Not casual observation. Surveillance and doing a bad job of hiding it.

  She calculated variables. Nuka had two songs left in the set. Approximately 9 minutes. If the suspect really was surveilling her then he would follow if she moved, to make sure she didn't leave and to report her activities.

  Exploitable.

  Salem slipped through the crowd toward the back exit, moving with deliberate visibility. A glance over her shoulder confirmed it—the suspect set down his beer and followed, maintaining a fifteen-foot distance.

  Perfect.

  The alley behind the Bastiat smelled like stale beer and rotting garbage. Three people clustered near the dumpster, the familiar transaction postures of the local drug economy. Salem identified her target immediately—ratty Cannibal Corpse shirt, pupils too dilated, hands that couldn't stay still.

  She approached directly. "Heroin. Lots of it."

  He squinted at her, then shrugged. Business was business. "Quantity?"

  "As much as you want to sell, I have cash." Old time habit, always carrying cash, and with her wealth, a lot of it. She pulled out multiple hundred dollar bills, as she tried to think of how to phrase this. "I need it cut with China White?"

  "I sell a good pure product."

  "I'll pay extra for cross cut."

  His eyebrows raised but he looked down at the money and shrugged again. "Seen you around, never took you for a user, this for your boyfriend?"

  "Husband." She corrected. "And it's for pain."

  "Quite the headache you've got." He fumbled around in his pockets, slower than she'd like. "You sure about this? China White don't fuck around."

  "Aware. First-time user, need all paraphernalia."

  He hesitated, glancing past her toward the venue entrance like he was weighing whether this was worth the heat. Then the cash won. Always did. "If you're killing yourself with this, lemme know so I can be gone before the cops show up."

  "Not for me. No." She paused as she took the balloon from him. "But cops will be en route before the show ends."

  He went still for half a second—processing that—then shook his head and started providing the materials. Metal spoon and cotton swab before grabbing the bills out of her hand. She wasn't going to haggle; he could take the money and make this faster.

  Salem slid the spoon into her boot and turned back toward the venue's service entrance. She popped the balloon and swab between her breasts burying it between them and reentered the bar, the ticket guy patted her down, but didn't dare try patting down her assets, no one wanted to get fired for sexually harassing clientele. From there it was a simple glance back at the stage to gauge how long she had before people would rush the bathroom before the actual headliner hit the stage and then a quick dive into the bathroom hallway.

  Salem entered the women's restroom. Two stalls, two sinks empty except for Keili with her pink hair and combat boots, sinking into the trashcan like she had been perched upon it when she blacked out. Unconscious, not dead—her back rose and fell with shallow breaths.

  Salem checked her pulse. Steady. Estimated time until consciousness: approximately three hours, margin of error plus or minus forty minutes depending on alcohol tolerance and body weight. Hard to diagnose accurately without equipment, but acceptable risk. Keili wouldn't wake before the body was discovered, and even if she did, retrograde amnesia from blackout drinking made her a non-credible witness.

  Salem tried pulling Keili's arm to extract her from the trashcan—

  Footsteps in the hallway. Heavy and slow.

  No time for Keili she needed to start cooking: lighter out, spoon , water from the sink, the start of a process that should take 45 seconds. She'd need to slow him down, she glanced around, best bet would be to try making it sound like she had company.

  "Anyways so I was telling him that I'm just really sick of him always leaving me behind so he can go be a dumbass in the pit and he just tells me he needs the release. He moshes like he has free fucking healthcare–" she continued on rambling about an imaginary adrenaline junkie boyfriend.

  The steps paused, 5 seconds, then 10. Then 15. At about 40 seconds the footsteps continued, he must have realized there wasn't a second person in her conversation.

  Salem straightened, moved to the left stall. Locked herself in and extracted the syringe from her inner jacket pocket.

  The door creaked open.

  She filled the syringe with as much heroin as could fit.

  She heard a gentle knock, was certain he could see her boots under the stall.

  Salem waited. Let him commit.

  "Hey," he called after a second louder knock, voice trying for casual and landing on threatening. "Janitor, anyone in here?"

  Salem flushed the toilet, buying time. Unlocked the stall door and emerged, syringe palmed against her thigh, capped needle pointing down.

  The suspect stood blocking the exit. Up close: faint purple marks on his wrists, same symbols as Thorne's. Approximately 6'1", 190 pounds, leather jacket bulking his frame. His smile was practiced. Empty.

  "Probably shouldn't wander off alone," he said, taking a step closer. "Dangerous neighborhood."

  Salem calculated angles. Door behind him. Stall to her left. Sink to her right. No other exits. Had to go through him.

  "Acknowledged." Salem moved toward the sink, putting him at her side. Watched him in the mirror as she washed her. "Threat assessment is accurate."

  He stepped closer letting the door close behind him. "So you come here often? Place seems beneath someone of your status. You know how much you're worth to us?"

  "Monetarily? Unknown variable." Salem turned, flicking water from her fingers. "However, current transaction value is zero."

  His hand moved to his pocket. Gun? Knife? Phone? She didn't wait to find out.

  Salem moved back to the stall facing him, a guarded retreat still hiding her weapon. He moved to follow as he pulled a taser, it crackled to life with a sickening hum. Cramped tight space, no room to maneuver, she was at a complete disadvantage in here against someone twice her size, all she could do was act fast before he realized he was also in danger.

  "You think a stall door is gonna save you?" He moved in before smiling.

  One more step until he passed through the stall doorway and she struck, syringe uncapped and driving into the same arm that held the taser. The shot was risky even for her, veins were easy to miss, she didn't have time to ensure she hit the vein. It happened in a snap. Syringe slid in.

  Taser crackled.

  She pushed the heroin in.

  He pushed her back. "Oh you think a fuckin needle is gonna scare me?"

  He lifted the taser and for a second it seemed she'd overplayed her hand. Needed a way to restrain him long enough to get a reliable hit on his vein.

  But then his eyes widened. He tried to speak, but the injection was already racing toward his heart. His free hand reached out grabbing his wrist. "What did you–"

  Salem stepped back, letting him stumble forward. She caught his head before it hit the toilet—anything to avoid obvious trauma that would raise questions.

  His body went limp. Dead weight collapsing onto the tile. His breathing stopped.

  Salem knelt beside him, checking his pulse. Faint. Fading. One hit should have been enough. Fentanyl and heroin, a deadly combination in high doses.

  Now the staging. The difficult part—moving someone practically twice her size. The downside of being a short, petite girl.

  She braced her back against the stall divider and shoved him with both legs until he was fully inside the stall. Her boots slipped twice on the tile but she managed. She arranged his legs, propped his torso against the toilet base, let his head loll back. Positioned him as if he'd slid off the seat mid-injection.

  She worked efficiently: rolled up his left sleeve, tied off his arm with his own belt, left the needle hanging from the injection site she'd used. Dropped the empty balloon on the floor beside him. Smudged some of the powder residue on his fingers—addicts weren't careful.

  She pulled a wad of toilet paper and wiped down the stall door handle, the lock, the top of the toilet tank. Anywhere she'd touched.

  Salem checked her reflection, cringing as she took in her reflection, always an unwanted reminder that her body was someone else's body. Makeup intact. Shirt clean. No blood transfer. She washed her hands again, disposed of the syringe wrapper in the sanitary bin—it would be emptied tonight—and exited the bathroom.

  The hallway was starting to get crowded as people dispersed away from the stage. Just in time to disappear into the crowd where she was just one of dozens of alternative chicks in black and just in time to wait for me at our booth.

  *******

  Demonia's form was slouched over Salem as she tried helping the hopeless drunk back to the car, which might have been more effort than me wheeling a dolly of amps and gear towards the trunk.

  Apparently Demonia was a rambler when she was drunk, a rambler that tore off into tangents frequently. She started with talking about cells in animals, then slurred her way into prison cells, from prison to dog cages and then into her ex boyfriend. I could only imagine the mental connection between her ex and a dog cage that made her drift deftly from one topic to the other. Each tangent caused Salem's left eyebrow to rise a bit farther as she tried to untangle and make sense of the rambling.

  —and THAT'S why I don't trust anyone who says they love me after two weeks because love isn't real it's just chemicals, it's just—" hiccup "—just oxytocin and bonding and brain chemicals lying to you because that's what they do, molecules hic lie, you can't trust molecules they're fucking liars—

  Salem nodded in agreement and yet she glanced at me, a very rare look of confusion etched on her face.

  I closed the trunk as I finished putting things away and started approaching the driver's seat only to find Salem sitting there when I opened it. "Don't I usually drive?"

  "Correct."

  "So why the switch?"

  "Equal contributions. I drive you clean."

  It was then that the smell hit me and I saw the repulsive pile of liquid and… beans? Had she eaten beans? The chunky puddle was spread across the backseat like a topographical map of disaster, right next to where Demonia sat in the back seat, now slumped against the door and snoring softly, blissfully unaware of her creation.

  "Oh fuck no, I'm not cleaning that."

  Salem pulled the door closed with deliberate finality as she repeated herself. "Equal contributions."

  The car door closed and I heard the click of her locking it before she looked at me through the window and mouthed the words "My condolences."

  I tilted back and exhaled with frustration before walking around to the opposite side of the car and opening the backseat door there and looking at the pile of vomit on my cheap plastic seats. At least I was too cheap for actual upholstery, which made cleaning up easier. I reached under the seats and found a package of bleach wipes that Salem usually used for harvests and wiped up the vomit, before tossing the spoiled wipes aimlessly into the parking lot.

  As I got in the passenger side seat Salem shifted in the driver seat. "Skills rusty, but I'm sober. Only 14% chance of collision."

  I rubbed my temples irritably. "Oh yay, I get to clean up vomit and play Russian Roulette going home."

  "We can switch." She offered.

  "Oh so we're past equal contributions now?"

  "Yes." She stated plainly her eyes drifting up to the rear view mirror and adjusting it.

  "You planned this whole thing just to avoid cleaning up vomit, didn't you?"

  Salem's pause was telling. "Hypothesis unproven."

  I sighed, "fine, just drive, brat. You need practice anyways."

  "Acknowledged." Salem turned the keys, her hands positioned at precisely ten and two on the steering wheel, posture as mathematically perfect as when she operated lab equipment. "And agreed, driving is a necessary skill." She checked each mirror in sequence before pulling out, the process so methodical I could practically see her running through a mental checklist. "Especially with cult members potentially tracking our movements. Evasive driving capabilities are currently suboptimal."

  Great. Now I was cleaning vomit AND contemplating high-speed getaways from eldritch cultists. The universe really did have a sick sense of humor.

  Demonia mumbled something incomprehensible from the backseat, then resumed snoring. Hard to believe that just hours ago she'd been analyzing cellular anomalies. Now she was drooling slightly, her purple hair stuck to one side of her face, the other world of cosmic horror temporarily forgotten in alcoholic oblivion.

  After pulling out I finally struck up a conversation. "You feeling important lately?"

  "Yes." Salem replied bluntly as she checked a blind spot to merge.

  "Lucky you, huh? Most important person in the world now."

  "I do not share that enthusiasm." She merged, her eyes glued to the road, hands on the wheel like she'd get a traffic ticket just for moving them. "I find it disturbing."

  "Yeah, I don't particularly feel like knowing what they want with you either." I glanced back at Demonia's unconscious form. "Though I'm starting to think we should've asked that guy at the venue."

  Salem's eyebrow raised slightly. "Observation skills improving. However he will not be answering questions."

  Oh, so she killed him already. Of course she did.

  "Don't sound so surprised. Anyway, this whole 'perfect vessel' thing has me thinking about my Warhammer phase."

  "The three thousand dollars in models I purchased for you that you never finished assembling." Her eyes shifted to me for a brief second.

  "Hey, I assembled half. And yeah, those. So there's this faction called Genestealer Cults—"

  "Multi-generational breeding program to create pure strain organisms," Salem interrupted. "Your lore is extensive but likely irrelevant."

  "Wow, okay. But what if it's not generational? What if they're trying to birth something in one go?"

  Salem considered this, checking her mirrors mechanically. "Marissa was not becoming something. She was prepared to carry something."

  "The cultists prepare the population, weaken defenses, identify the best... breeding stock." The words tasted wrong in my mouth, it sounded much worse when you were applying the idea to real women instead of Warhammer's vague notion of women. "Then when the hive fleet arrives, they birth the monsters using the prepared vessels. Days, not generations."

  "Accelerated gestation would require extreme biological resilience in the carrier," Salem said quietly. "Most humans would not survive."

  "Yeah but you've survived quite a bit." Oh I was definitely not liking thinking about this now. "So from their point of view you might be the deluxe model. They ran you over with a truck three months ago and the next day you were upright and walking again like nothing happened."

  "Accurate assessment. Reasonable to extrapolate that they believe my durability suggests I could survive what would kill most carriers." Her clinical tone wavered slightly. "However, the cult may be operating under incorrect assumptions about my capabilities."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning I'm not actually immortal, just very good at cheating death. And if they're wrong about what I can handle..." She trailed off, then added dryly "Equal contributions would become significantly unequal."

  I couldn't help but snort. "Leave it to you to make cosmic horror breeding programs about household chores."

  "Consistency is important in a relationship." Salem glanced at the rearview mirror, her eyes narrowing and her foot hovering over the acceleration pedal until a car behind us pulled a left turn.

  The streets were nearly empty at this hour, streetlights casting orange pools across wet pavement from earlier rain I hadn't noticed. The city at 1 AM had that liminal quality—too late for normal people, too early for anything good. Just drunks, cops, and whatever the fuck we were now.

  Her eyes relaxed as the other car was safely out of distance and continued. "The cult likely has noticed that despite how badly they injure me that I have a tendency to come back in perfect health and at unprecedented speeds. If they believe that is an inherent quality I possess–"

  "Then they'll try putting you through something that'll kill you because they don't know your immortality comes from a machine."

  "Correct. Their intel on us is limited, we can only assume that their understanding of us carries factual inaccuracies."

  She took a turn carefully, and for a few seconds the only sound was Demonia's soft snoring and the hum of the engine.

  "However," Salem added quietly, "we also operate under potentially incorrect assumptions about them. Mutual uncertainty. Strategically suboptimal."

  "Great. So we're both guessing."

  "Educated guessing. But yes." She glanced at the rearview mirror again. "Hope neither party guesses incorrectly. Consequences would be severe."

  Yeah. That's what I was afraid of.

  A vibration in my pocket following by the chirp of an incoming text. Salem's eyes darted to me for a second. "Your partner?"

  I checked my phone. Notification from Jo reading: Portland is getting cold, but my case is heating up. Come visit sometime?

  I nodded. "Yeah, it's Jo."

  Salem didn't physically react, you'd think the side chick would warrant a reaction from the wife, but instead she checked a blind spot. Apathy. Utter apathy.

  "It's a shame she isn't here. She could be helpful you know."

  Salem rolled her eyes. "Amateur paranormal hunter with a baseball bat. Far from a useful asset."

  "She's got good instincts." I shifted getting closer to Salem.

  "Her best instinct was getting to the other side of the country before cultists started kidnapping people for forced breeding." She paused and turned to me, her eyes finally off the road. "Attractive girl. Arrogant with an attitude. Dangerous town. You may miss her but she's objectively better off very far away."