After the bright, blue-white light of Gideon's ink, the lamp in the laundry room seems a weak, sickly yellow. My reflection in the mirror reveals I look as bad as I feel, clumps of ash and half-burned gristle stuck in my hair and clothes. The floor under my feet hums from the water pipes. Gideon must be in the shower; I waved him in the direction of the bathroom with my blessings, and came here instead to wipe the gunk off Gran's purse.

It's still stained. I think I should be upset about that, but the only thing I feel while ducking my head under the faucet is the cool stream of water. I stay that way for a few minutes, washing everything out of my hair, and then strip down to my underwear to work on the rest of me.

It's weird. Shouldn't I be hysterical? I'm scrubbing off the remains of my former best friend. Someone who used to be more like a sister than my actual one. Someone I just brutally killed. Losing Gran made me cry until I couldn't breathe, but I can't dredge up anything for this. As dirtied water swirls down the drain, I frown at my hands. Maybe I'm becoming a monster in more ways than one.

I wait for emotion to flare up at the thought. Panic, or denial, or maybe even something twisted like excitement.  But there's only a dull throb of uncertainty over how true that might be. Everything in my mind went dim and flat. I can't even figure out how I feel physically. Tender? Shaky? Like my bones are vibrating, I think.

The dirty laundry hamper is overflowing, and that's where all my clothes are. I get a load going, but I'm still fucked for now. The one thing in this room that would cover me is a button-down men's shirt Gran wore for gardening work in the early days here. I brush one sleeve, remembering the smell of upturned earth mixed with the sharp tang of metal tools. When I put it on, though, it only smells like old denim.

The shirt hangs past my thighs, and right now, that's good enough. My hair already feels half-dry from the heat as I make it back to my bedroom, but the shivering in my bones gets worse. Crawling into bed seems too difficult; easier to curl up with the crocheted blanket spread over the top, instead. I'm still shuddering, and eventually, I realize it's from trying to hitch in breaths while my eyes burn. I am crying.

I don't know how long it is before the water pipes rattle as the shower turns off. But only a little later, Gideon quietly knocks on the door.

"You can come in." The tears stopped leaking out, but I still hear them in my voice. I pick at a stray piece of yarn on the blanket while he sits on the other side of the bed, concern mixing with the exhaustion on his face. He's dressed only in a pair of jeans and an undershirt, and his hair is still wet, slick strands falling into his eyes as he looks at me. "Are you badly hurt? You were trapped in that cell for fifteen minutes with the creature."

"Most of the blood on me was from it. It did slash my arm, but..." I pull it free of the blanket long enough to show him the fresh scar. "I'm fine now. Guess I have more wolf witch in me than I thought."

He nods, but the ugly things that happened in the hidden room still hang between us. I don't want to talk about them yet, not by a long fucking shot, but when I see him rubbing the bridge of his nose like he's got a blistering headache, something finally drifts through the grey fog in my head. Worry. "Are you going to be okay?"

For once, he gives me a straight answer. "Not immediately. I've burnt myself out and bruised myself up besides."

"You mean Laci did," I say, flatly. When he hesitates, I add, "You don't have to sugarcoat things. I know what she did, and I know what I did, too."

"Yes, well, I've left myself enough energy to find a safe spot before dropping out. With that in mind, I think it's better if you found someone to stay with tonight while I make arrangements with a hotel," he says, quietly.

It feels like he slapped me. That means he doesn't think he's safe when I'm around. Suddenly, I'm back at my first school dance, thirteen years old, Dewey Fodera backing off just after asking me for a dance because I'm smiling at him and all he sees are my teeth.

At first, I can't find any words, and when I do, they're idiotic. "There aren't any around here. Just motels."

"One of those would work as well." When I don't respond, he adds, "Ms. Belmonte?"

"Phoenix." My voice cracks, and suddenly, my control wavers. "Don't treat me like some weird thing you have to tiptoe around. If you're scared because you saw me kill someone, then fuck you. It's not like it was easy for me, either. But I had to make a choice, and—and I'm not going to feel shame for it. "

As the memory of Laci's agonized face flashes across my mind, I know that's not entirely true, and quickly push on. "Not for being violent like that, anyway."

He stares at me, obviously stunned. "It's nothing to do with fear. I've judged you fully capable of killing since our conversation early this morning."

"Then why make plans to leave? Why go back to calling me Ms. Belmonte, which I fucking hate, by the way." The blanket puddles around me as I sit up, wanting the words to carry enough force to shake a solid answer out of him. But they only come out tired and dull.

He's still stung, though, because his own voice loses its neutral tone. "I'll be bloody useless for hours. Unable to be woken. What if I'm asleep in this house and your Elliot visits and finds me? What if I don't wake up before night and you're left to look after the both of us?"

My fingers worry at the stray piece of yarn again. What he says makes sense, but every instinct in me screams against this. "I can deal with Elliot. And Valentine, too."

"I fully believe that. Yet, you don't need another burden. For God's sake, you had to kill your friend to save my life." He smooths back his hair with a sharp swipe, and behind his glasses, his eyes look bright and angry.

So, that's it. He thinks I find him worthless now that I know he's not invincible. He thinks he's worthless to me. "I made a choice, and it was you. It makes me sick whenever I think about what that means, but when I imagine choosing the other way, I really do almost throw up. She would've fed off you like one of those hearts. She would've hurt you. The look on her face..."

My hands are strangling the blanket, and I force them to relax before adding, "So you're way off-base, thinking I resent you for it. And you're no burden. Not to me."

His gaze is intent on my face. With the anger gone from the lines of his mouth and jaw, his vibe shifted from determined to something just as intense, in its own way. Right now, I see a glimpse of what this guy could be if he tossed aside his too-careful words and repressed Kingdom manners. It's missing the sleaze of Desmond Healy's suggestiveness, and the threat of Valentine's capability. And it doesn't have the earnest concentration that makes me look away whenever Elliot is over me in bed.

But it's there, and damn if I don't feel something in me rising to meet it.

His head tilts a little, like when someone moves in for a kiss, and something hot flashes through me as my gaze drops to his lips. For one moment, I feel like Frankie could call me all the names in the world, and I'd sit there and agree with him if it meant leaning forward and finding Gideon's mouth with mine. Losing myself in him.

But only for a moment. Then I see the clotted-over cut under his eye, now visible from the way he angled his head toward me. As if in response to this realization, a sharp ache shoots down my spine from where I landed against the cell wall. We're both beat to shit, and I don't know about him, but the last thing my body wants to go through is a fuck.

My sigh says it all. Gideon gives an almost imperceptible nod, the heat in his gaze fading. Suddenly, his ink spasms, leaving him shaking and swearing under his breath.

Without thinking, I reach for him, helping him ease back onto the bed as his ink flickers erratically, lines scrambling out of their patterns. "Shit. What's wrong?"

"It's a warning," he grits out between clenched teeth. "I pushed myself past the ink's core energy levels for—for basic performances. Either I ease into a sleep cycle, or I keep pushing until I shut down."

"Shut down?" I hover over him, trying to figure out if that means a heart attack or something else equally bad. Christ, don't die on me.

"Pass out." His voice sounds a little steadier as he lets his head fall back against the pillow, but his hand still shakes while taking off his glasses. He rubs his face and adds, "I didn't expect it to come on so soon."

I settle beside him, watching closely. The light from his ink dims to nothing in between unsteady flickers.

He gives me an apologetic glance. "It's hardly fair to ask you for more, but I doubt I can get up from this bed for now."

I shrug, trying to look calmer than I feel. "If you don't mind sharing a narrow space, it's no problem."

"Of course not." He sounds offended. "I'm not about to boot you out of your own bed. Simply because I'm half-conscious doesn't mean I've lost all conduct."

After that, neither of us says anything for awhile. I wrap the blanket around me again, settling on my side to face him. He remains on his back with his eyes closed, motionless except for breathing. His ink isn't flickering anymore, instead pulsing slowly, only the faintest trace of blue visible in its weak light.

I try coaxing myself to sleep, but even though my body feels bone-tired, my mind can't stop turning thoughts over and over, polishing each one with a new layer of unease. Absently, I pull at a chunk of my hair, now fully dry, twisting until it's wound around my fingers before letting go and starting over. It makes the bed move a little, doing this, and suddenly I realize Gideon picked up on it, head turned just enough to let him watch me.

He doesn't say anything, but I still answer as if he asked. "I was wondering what color he'd change it to."

"Pardon?" Now his head is fully turned.

"My hair. See, Laci's never looked like that. She never dressed that way, either. Valentine just completely changed her. I know from Zoe what he does before turning you, but seeing Laci like that..." Vaguely, I'm aware of my hands trembling again. "I don't know why the hair is the part I can't get out of my head, but it is. How he takes even the smallest choice away. So, I keep wondering what he'll do with mine. If I'll even care by that point."

I'm still twisting strands around my fingers, tightly enough that I can feel my circulation being cut off. But I don't stop until Gideon's hand brushes mine. Despite the lines of pain creasing his forehead, his eyes are intent on mine. "What he would do. He doesn't have you, yet."

It's the only reassurance he can give without lying, which is why it's pretty shitty reassurance at that, but his touch settles me a little. I let my fingers unwind from my hair to reach for his ink, still so dim it's nearly invisible.

At first, he goes tense from my touch, but then his head relaxes back on the pillow. His other hand finds the crook of my elbow in that now-familiar gesture. Still watching me, he adds, "Nothing is sure. Not even for him."

After a few breaths, his eyes close again, but our arms stay entwined. There are two pulses under my fingertips, one from his heart, and one from the ink.

"What are you?" I say, quietly.

His eyes open at that, though they look a little unfocused. "It's a complicated story, and I have merely minutes to explain anything before shutting down for hours."

"Try me."

For a few breaths, I think he won't answer at all. Then he clears his throat. "Gideon Glass was an INKtech agent who died two years ago. His body was chosen to host me."

"Me?" I repeat, feeling the small hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

His gaze drops to the flickering ink on his arm, dragging my own with it. The lines shift very slowly, as if it takes great effort to do anything at all. I watch the ink merge into one underlined word, faint as moonlight against Gideon's skin. Me.

Then, like an exhausted swimmer collapsing onto shore, the ink falls loose, spreading back into faint patterns.

"You're the ink?" My voice rises despite myself. I don't snatch my arm away from his, but the next time the ink pulses, I flinch, reducing our contact to the merest brush of skin.

Something flickers in his eyes, but when he continues, he sounds even enough. "I warned you it was complicated. Have you heard of information-theoretic death?"

I blink at him. "No."

"What about mind uploading?"

"Gideon, I'm failing high school-level biology. You have to speak to me in very small words with anything technical, and even then, I don't give a fuck about details. Just, what happened?"

"All right." He thinks for a moment. "Like all INKtech employees, Agent Glass had the content and workings of his brain copied through his ink and uploaded to a special database. It's a safety precaution and a way to transfer information without going through a second-hand source like a telepath. Still with me?"

I nod.

"When Agent Glass died, INKtech placed him as an ideal candidate for an experimental project in which ink is installed into a human body that experienced information-theoretic death—that is, the brain being damaged to the point original memories and personality are impossible to recover. I know, I know, smaller words." He breaks off to run a hand over his hair, and only then does it occur to me that he uses these technical details as a buffer zone for his own feelings on what he's explaining.

"Instead of a working human brain controlling ink set to be a secondary system, the ink is installed as the primary system in a human body. This allows it to remain intact no matter what happens to the brain or body.  Do you remember what I discussed in your biology class about ink being lost with the death of the human? I'm the attempt to work around that."

I swallow hard, trying to absorb it all. "So you were never really Gideon? You just took over his body?"

He takes a deep breath. "There's only one presence in this body. Me. The problem is, I don't know who me is. When the Glass family gave INKtech permission to use the body, they retained the right to choose which copied memories were transferred back once the brain was repaired. Yet, something went wrong. Those memories are here, yet I've been finding more. Or perhaps remembering them. Having a body blends everything together. It's difficult separating what is ink finding hidden memories unknowingly added by engineers, and what is the man recalling his past as his repaired brain recovers itself. Perhaps it's even a mixture of both. All I know for certain is that if I'm not Gideon, then I've at least partially become him."

After that, he falls quiet, waiting for me to respond.

I don't know how to. I'm stunned, but at the same time, not surprised. So many things that seemed odd now make much more sense. And when I apply his words to how I already feel about him, my response is the mental equivalent of a shrug. So he's thaumaturgy bound to a body. In a way, I am, too. What's so great about being human, anyway? But it's impossible to put all that into words without sounding dismissive of what he scrounged up a lot of trust and guts to reveal to me.

My silence makes him worry; I can see it in his grim expression. And his arm feels tense against mine, shaking like he fights at the edge of consciousness, determined to find out how I'll react before he finally drops out. Determined to know what I think of him, now.

My fingertips brush against his—the?—ink, stroking along the faint lines to prove my lack of revulsion. "Well, then we're both something better than human."

His eyes jump to my face, their vivid blue almost too much to take as he searches for sincerity. I glance down at the ink, feeling it pulse as a hot, shivery feeling goes through me, the one that's always there in some amount when I'm around him.

When he murmurs my name, I look up. But the word was a last act, because his eyes are closed again, and he's completely still. Time's up, and he's out. His face looks more relaxed, though, enough to make me decide not to pull away to my own side of the bed. With our arms still locked together, I settle into a comfortable position, feeling ink ripple against my skin, slow and steady.

I'm dozing when my phone vibrates with an incoming call, the sound of it rattling against the dresser impossible to ignore. With a groan, I push myself up enough to reach the phone, fingers blindly punching for the silencing button. When it finally stops, I throw it back onto the dresser. Then, it dawns on me that it might have been an important call. Maybe hospice with information about Gran's body. Or Elliot. Shit. He'll think I'm avoiding him.

But my limbs feel slack, heavy, and instead of calling back, I only sink onto the bed again. The mattress shifts with my weight as I settle in, but Gideon doesn't move. His face is still turned toward me, though, and for a moment the glow from his ink brightens. When I settle my arm against his, the lines of light pulse against my skin stronger than before. As I watch the patterns, the thought occurs to me that maybe Elliot is right to worry.

Because I'm lying here, inches away from Gideon and fighting not to brush back hair that fell into his eyes. He looks really young right now, even vulnerable. It reminds me there's only six years between us, and that behind the stuffy suits and agent's poise, there's a lot of uncertainty still in him. Strangely, I like that. Inflexible people like Agent Slake or Detective Tanner drive me up the wall.

My hand untangles from his long enough to smooth the hair back from his face. Love isn't something I'm even close to figuring out, so I don't know if that's what I feel. But I like being around Gideon. I like getting through an argument without feeling worse afterward. I like how I can trust him to lie on a bed with me without pushing to see if sex is also on the menu, or even making a suggestive quip about it. Maybe he thinks filthy thoughts, but that's okay. Those are his. What screws me up are the thoughts that turn into talk, because it's always talk that expects me to do something, whether it's feeling flattered or ending up on my back and pretending to enjoy myself.

But even though I have feelings for Gideon, who knows if they're the right ones to follow. I sure as hell believed running away from Laci and her talk about vampires was a good thing to do, and look what happened. If I'd stuck with her and worked out the bad patches between us, things would have been different. She was right. I have no problem fighting with fists and claws, but when it comes to grappling with hard emotions, I always turn tail. Dumping Elliot just because I'm conflicted would be a gutless move. I can't do that to him.

Taking a deep breath, I pull my arm back before turning away, putting as much space between me and Gideon as the narrow bed will allow. Something flickers through me, gone before I can figure it out. I tell myself it's a sign of doing the right thing.

After that, I must fall asleep, because suddenly I'm waking up, the insistent buzzing of my phone cutting through thin, grey dreams. The nearest clock reads five in the afternoon, and the sun pours into the room hot and low.

As I blink, still bleary despite the noise from the phone, I realize I migrated to Gideon's side of the bed, and that we're together in a tangle of limbs. I shift a little, just enough to figure out that each time he breathes, the muscles in his stomach and chest brush against my back. He changed position, too; his arm now wraps around me, the weight against my ribs solid but comfortable. An anchor, one I hold in place with my own arm, my hand over his as the ink ripples between us.

When I murmur his name, he only stretches like a sleeping cat, nose brushing the back of my neck in a way that sends a warm shiver down my spine. Fuck me. My resolution is already going really well.

He feels so good that the next round of buzzing from my phone makes me jerk up and reach for it in a fit of guilt. I try to keep the muddled feelings out of my voice as I answer, so sure it's Elliot that I don't even look at the screen. "Hello?"

But an unfamiliar voice drifts through, the words low and rasping. "About fucking time. This Phoenix Belmonte?"

"Um. Yeah." I push hair out of my face and settle back on the bed, relaxing as I realize it's a total stranger who won't give a fuck about what I'm doing at this very moment. When the person on the other end makes a sound like a growl, though, I freeze up, belatedly aware of who this might be. Gideon shifts again, and when his head settles into the hollow of my shoulder, I lean against him. I'll need some kind of support through this, even if it's unconscious. "Yeah, this is Phoenix."

"I'm returning your call to the Red Devil Mountain pack. Name's Maya. Your mother was my sister."