Aron apparently is not, in fact, capable of cooking pizza rolls properly, so Paul is forced to bail him out before he sets the cabin on fire.

Not really, though. But the stench of burning chemically-created delicious savory treats gets everywhere, so Aron might as well have burned the place down for all the good he's done. We're all forced to retreat to the basement or the upper level, because the main floor is almost uninhabitable at this point, even with the kitchen vents going full blast.

In the basement, Steve challenges Aron to a game of pool while I sit and watch Gabe and Fionna face off at Wii Sports. They sling all sorts of playful insults at each other in the heat of their virtual tennis match - Gabe gets in a number of "you play like a girl" jokes, while Fionna counters with cracks about the remotes not working well with Gabe's limp wrists. (Hint: he doesn't have any. Limp wrists, that is.)

"Dude, are you just gonna let her keep making a mockery of my people?" Gabe yells at me after about ten minutes of this.

I pretend not to hear him, instead turning towards the basement steps and making exaggerated sniffs. Sure enough, the burning-pizza-roll smell is vanishing, to be replaced with something a bit fishy. I personally don't mind, but I'm not sure if it'll go over so well with everyone else.

"Come on, be a cheeky bastard and help your bro out!" Gabe complains.

"I take no sides in this matter!" I say, holding up my hands. "And why would you say 'your people?' You're about the most un-gay gay dude in existence."

"True," says Gabe. He really does pride himself on not conforming to campy stereotypes.

"You gotta take a side, Feathers," Fionna says.

"Hmm," I say, nibbling my thumb. "My twin brother, or my girlfriend? Decisions, decisions. Love or blood? Uh...no, I can't pick! I'm sorry!"

I raise my hands to protect myself as Gabe and Fionna take the remotes off their wrists and throw them at my face.

"What's happening?" Jeanne Darknell asks, coming down the stairs just in time to see Gabe running up and Gibbs-slapping me.

"This is so very much not what it looks like," I'm quick to say, pushing Gabe away.

"I figured as much," Jeanne says. "Lunch is ready, by the way. We have tuna sandwiches, or we could do grilled-cheese if you're a vegetarian."

"Any vegetarians here?" Aron asks. Everyone else in the room shakes their heads. "No grilled cheese, then."

"Good to know," Jeanne says. "Paul was threatening to crack the frying pan on the head of the next one who asked for it."

Fionna laughs as she climbs the stairs. "I don't think so."

"Yeah, you're right." Jeanne sighs, her bluff called. "I suck at jokes. I really do."

"You're pretty good with memes, though," I say. "Remember when I bought Cinder, and you did the River Song 'spoilers' thing?"

"That was just a random stroke of luck," Jeanne says. "Ask Paul. He can tell you stories about how much I've got no comic timing."

"I do believe we will," I say as I reach the top of the stairs, right behind Fionna.

"Please don't," Jeanne says moodily. "I'm sorry I said that. Truly, I am."

"Don't be," Gabe says, following me into the kitchen. "You don't seem to be too bad. If it's any consolation, I thought the frying-pan joke was funny. Weird, but funny."

Jeanne chuckles as she takes a sandwich on a plate and carries it into the dining room.

"So what's gonna happen now?" I ask as I take my seat. "Have the adults decided how they're gonna stop Elijah yet?"

"Our dads are gonna discuss plans today," Jeanne says, gesturing to herself and Paul. "Then tonight, we're gonna find out what they've decided."

"And until then we're just gonna keep sitting here?" Freddie asks, scoffing. "Wonderful. I dunno about the rest of you, but I'm starting to get sick of sitting on my ass and feeling useless."

"I know," Penny says. "I'm starting to feel like we're all in some kind of prison."

Paul sighs. "I'm sure we're all going stir-crazy - some more so than others," he says, pointing to Freddie and Penny in particular - and Dani as well, for some reason. Maybe she'd expressed a similar feeling to him earlier. I don't blame her. I just want this all to end as soon as possible.

"But it's only temporary," Paul continues. "The Aqua Killer can't hide forever. And nobody else is gonna die. Or get maimed," he adds, pointing to his still-red eye.

"I sure hope so," says Steve, rubbing his neck. The scar is still there; he says that even with the advanced healing in the Terminal, they weren't able to prevent it from forming.

"I'll just have to count on the Second Universe having even better technology," he'd said earlier this morning when I'd asked about it while he was waiting for Freddie to make a move during their game of pool.

"Whatever happened to chicks digging scars?" I asked.

"Not these kinds of scars, guy." Steve chuckled, then took his shot.

"What I'd like to know more than anything," says Gabe, bringing me back to the present, "is that if this guy is so powerful, why couldn't they just kill him like the book said they did?"

Paul's eyes widen a bit. "Sounds harsh, doesn't it? Saying that sort of thing against your own flesh and blood?"

"He'd probably want to kill us, too, if he knew who we were." Gabe looks at me meaningfully.

I put down my sandwich. "He's really cunning. I wouldn't be surprised if he figured it out from looking at me last night."

"You mean, looking you in the eye and seeing a bit of himself reflected back at him?"

I avert my gaze from Gabe's. "Exactly. God, that's really disturbing. Every time I think about it, it just seems worse."

Fionna puts down her sandwich too and pats my hand. Both our hands are covered in dust from the French bread, something I don't mind as much as I think I should. "But you're still the same old Feathers, and don't anybody forget it!" she says.

"Thanks, Fionna."

Aron rolls his eyes. "Again with the PDA. You guys are disgusting."

"Just 'cause you're the youngest out of all of us doesn't mean you gotta be a baby," Paul says.

Everyone laughs - more with Aron than at him, though. We've all been the little guy in the room at some point. Unless you're not a guy, in which case, you might have been the little girl.

More random socializing happens for the next several hours until Mr. Smythe comes back home a little after seven. His first order of business upon calling us all into the dining room while the missus stacks frozen entrees in the freezer is to discuss the revised sleeping arrangements - Aron gets his bunk with Paul again, while Jeanne gets the upstairs guest room, Dani and Fionna each get a loveseat, and Gabe and I are to sleep in the basement, with our choice of the reclining chair or the futon.

"Now that that's settled, back to dealing with Elijah," Mr. Smythe says. "Now, Jack and I originally came up with a plan to smoke Elijah out by placing an open letter in the Bearville Courier, Heaven-side and Hell-side - unfortunately, we still have no idea exactly where he's hiding. We were gonna say that you were all being hidden in a cabin near Balthazar -"

"Hold the phone," Paul says. "You're gonna lure the guy here? Really? What if your traps don't work?"

"Let me finish, son. We finished the draft of that letter today, and we specifically wrote down the address of the old Huggins cabin."

"You mean where that old hunter guy used to live?" Aron asks. "That's been abandoned since-"

"Since before you were born, yes," Mr. Smythe says. "Now, Elijah is relatively new to this area, as far as we're aware, so Jack and I were hoping he'd be gullible enough to not know that address."

I can't help but chortle at this. "Seriously? That's the best you could come up with after so many hours of planning?"

Mr. Smythe lets my disrespect slide. "I understand where you're coming from. Jack and I were never the best tacticians - that's why we were scientists, not soldiers. But it's a moot point, anyway, the open letter. Elijah actually sent a letter to us himself, and it arrived today."

"Really?" Steve asks. "That's odd. Communication doesn't seem to be his strong suit."

"That's exactly what Jack said," says Mr. Smythe. "Elijah says he would like to meet us - that is, Jack and myself - face to face on Saturday morning at our café."

"And talk about what?" asks Dani.

"That we don't know yet," Mr. Smythe says. "And to be perfectly honest, it's not my primary concern. What I'm more worried about is, how was Elijah able to contact us directly?"

"You mean, who gave him your work address so he could write you a letter?" I ask.

"That's right," Mr. Smythe says, pacing the floor a bit. "Clearly someone supplied Elijah with that information, because we haven't met with him once since Red Rain, and we didn't open the bookstore until after all that business was taken care of, so he wouldn't have been aware of us working together when he escaped."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Jeanne says, holding up her hands. "Back up there, Robert. Are you saying my dad is working with this Elijah guy?"

I barely stifle a chuckle. Jeanne being on first-name terms with her dad's business partner reminds me strangely of Mrs. Smythe's insistence that I do the same with her.

"I never said anything of the sort," Mr. Smythe says. "To be fair, though, I do have some level of suspicion about Jack, but that's more healthy paranoia than anything else. Elijah's source could just as easily be one of the men who bring deliveries to us." He looks around towards the kitchen, then adds in an undertone, "Hell, it could be my wife."

We laugh, grateful for a moment to defuse the tension.

"However, I see no reason why Elijah would want to attack either Jack or myself, especially not in a public place," says Mr. Smythe. "And in any case, we'll be able to trap him there. We could figure out a way to set the mud trap inside the café, and we'll have the police station plainclothes officers outside in case things get out of hand."

"What's this about a mud trap inside my café?" Mrs. Smythe asks, poking her head into the dining room.

"I promise I'll clean up after myself, dear," Mr. Smythe says, a shit-eating grin on his face.

"That's what you said last time you used the wood chipper," Mrs. Smythe says. "I'm still finding pine needles in the carpet downstairs."

"Do you really have to dig that up again?" Mr. Smythe groans. "Lana, that was over a year ago."

Mrs. Smythe merely laughs and disappears back into the kitchen.

"Yes, well..." Mr. Smythe chuckles, then claps his hands. "Who's hungry?"

After dinner - a chaotic period during which everyone lines up to cook various Marie Callender's meals - we all get ready for bed.

When he grabs his overnight bag, Gabe makes it a point of checking the rec room floor for pine needles. He doesn't find any, but as he heads upstairs to take a shower, he says, "They're in there somewhere, I'm sure."

While I sit and wait, the souls troop back in and make tracks for the closet, which is right next to the futon on which I'm sitting. "How do you know you're gonna go into the halfway house or Terminal or whatever instead of just walking into the closet?" I ask.

"You gotta turn the knob counterclockwise," Steve says, demonstrating. He opens the door this way, and beyond it, I can see a long, plain, well-lit hallway, not unlike something you would find in a hospital.

"Hey!" I'm startled to hear a female voice, which I figure out is coming from a desk to the left of the doorway. A severe-looking gray-haired woman stands up from this desk, glaring at me. "No live Primers! Am I clear?"

"Crystal, Grace!" Steve says, shutting the door. "That Grace...what a hardass, but she bakes a mean chocolate peanut-butter-chip cookie. I'll see about scrounging some up for everybody sometime."

I step forward and try to open the door to the Terminal myself, but it just lands me in the closet. "All right, what's the secret?" I ask.

"Oh, they hold you down when you first arrive and they inject a little electronic pill into your hand," Freddie says. "The doorknob scans for the pill when you touch it."

"Don't BS me," I say.

"It's true," Freddie insists.

"If that's the case, show me your scars."

All three souls laugh their heads off at this one. "Well, the truth is, we don't actually know how it works," Penny says. "It just does."

"Fair enough," I say, resigned to not knowing. "See you tomorrow, guys."

Half an hour later, Gabe and I are both showered and ready for bed. We flip a coin to decide who gets to sleep where; I call heads for the reclining chair, and lose.

"Scared of the dead guys coming to haunt you in your sleep?" Gabe teases as he unfolds the chair.

I flip him off before settling under the sheets. Probably for that reason, I get the divine punishment of having my dreams haunted once again by Elijah. Naturally, I wake up cold and sweaty several times.

I'm not the only one feeling apprehensive on Friday. Knowing that we still have over 24 hours until Mr. Smythe's planned meeting with Elijah, everyone's just waiting in nervous anticipation. Nobody wants to play any games, or talk about anything but the possibility that Elijah is gonna trap Mr. Smythe and Mr. Darknell, not the other way around. Their kids especially are very much concerned about that.

Tension seems to be at an all-time high by the time dinner comes along. Even with the Smythe parentals cooking up some delicious spinach ravioli, the pasta is determined not to go down anyone's throats, we're coiled up so tight.

While I wait for Gabe to get out of the shower again, I sit in the basement and say good night to the souls. It's cold - the temperature outside is now in the teens - but I feel hot and feverish anyway. My shoulders hurt a lot too, for some reason, so I rub them, hoping to get rid of whatever nervous tension I've got.

"You done touching yourself, Feathers?" Fionna cracks. I jump, having just noticed she's standing at the foot of the stairs.

I frown at her. "For now, yeah. Way to kill my buzz, Fi."

"Since when have you called me 'Fi?'" Fionna asks, crossing the rec room and sitting next to me on the futon.

"Good point. What's up?"

She stretches her arms and lays one on my shoulders. "Just hoping for it to all be over soon."

"I know what you mean," I say, copying her gesture. "I just wanna see them take this guy down, and then I can go up to him and spit in his face for being my biological father."

"No love lost, huh?"

"Man, that's a stupid expression," I say. "Wasn't any there to begin with. And hey, turns out being out of school for a few days isn't nearly as much fun as we thought." I shrug my shoulders and wings both. "And we're not gonna get to do our double date with Gabe and Kyle tomorrow, either."

"What date?"

"We were gonna see The Cemetery Boys, remember?"

"Oh yeah, that really sucks." Fionna then laughs lightly and uses her free hand to take hold of my chin and turn my face to hers. "That little freshman isn't here," she says. "Hell, there's nobody to say we can't have another kiss."

I blink slowly as I gaze into her eyes. "I feel you, Fionna."

I lean down and kiss her softly on the lips, relishing her cinnamon taste again. I've read The Emerald Chronicles too many times, I think, because I've long wanted to imitate Jack's way of wrapping his wings around Thea while making out with her. I don't copy it completely - I keep my shirt on, as does Fionna - but when my wings sneak out of my shirt, I run with it, enveloping us both.

This kiss comes close to short-circuiting me completely, but I still have one thought in the back of my mind. It occurs to me that I've wanted this for a long time, and now it's happening, and my brain is gloriously geeking out because I never thought I'd kiss a girl before graduating, and, well, look at me now, huh?

My hand moves behind her hair so I can touch the back of her neck. In the process, my fingers brush a leather cord, clearly that of a necklace. I end up accidentally-on-purpose pulling the necklace out from under Fionna's shirt as I hook my thumb around the cord, revealing a stylized blue heart on her pendant. I recognize it as the logo for Kingdom Hearts.

Fionna pulls away from me, looks down, then laughs sheepishly. "I almost forgot about this," she says. "I've made it a habit of wearing this for so long, I don't even notice it anymore."

"I like it," I say. "I didn't know you played that game."

"I haven't, actually," Fionna admits, tucking the pendant back under her shirt. "A friend of mine won it at Reno Space-Con, but she already had a similar one of her own, so she let me have this one."

"She sounds like an awesome friend."

"Tell me about it. Ash rocks out loud."

I pull my wings in and scoot backwards a bit so my back's against the wall. Fionna does the same, resting her head on my shoulder.

"Can I ask you something, Feathers?"

I pull some strands of hair out of Fionna's face, then say, "Yeah. Shoot. Not literally, of course."

Fionna giggles madly for a moment - maybe a little too madly. She sounds nervous, for some reason. She looks up at me, blinks a couple of times, then finally asks me her question. "Can you tell me a secret?"

"Depends," I say. "Has Gabe told you all of mine?"

"A few." She bites her lip. "God, I need to stop doing that."

"No, it's okay," I say. "Unlike Bella Swan, you make it look cute."

Fionna rubs her cheek against my collarbone and purrs like a cat. Unable to resist her charms, I show her my scars and ask, "Did Gabe tell you about these?"

"Yeah, he did."

"Oh, good. I didn't wanna have to tell the story again and cry my eyes out." I roll my sleeve down. "Your turn."

Fionna smiles hugely, dimples forming in her cheeks. "Before he came out, Gabe was my first kiss."

"Is that so?" I ask. "Who's the better kisser? Me or him?"

"Would you believe it's-"

I burst out laughing. "I knew you'd go there!" I kiss the top of her head. "Wanna know my dream job? Professional Netflix product tester. Just sit in a comfy chair all day."

She gapes at me. "Oh my God, and my parents think my dreams of being a writer are stupid!"

Rather than take offense to what she's said, I nuzzle her neck, making her giggle again as my breath tickles her skin. "Then someday, we could be stupid together. As writers and lovers."

"Oh, please." But she doesn't say it in the eye-rolling way usually attached to those words. "All right, I have a serious question for you now." I watch the muscles in her neck twitch as she swallows, then she asks, "Do you love me?"

Okay...I wasn't expecting her to ask me that. I try to deflect her line of questioning a tad bit with one of my own. "Uh...well, are you sure it's not too soon to start reflecting on our feelings about each other?"

"You said the other day, and I quote, 'You have no idea how much I love you right now.'" Fionna pauses, then adds, "It was when we were talking to Steve and Freddie and Penny for the first time."

"Wow. Good memory. And hey, doesn't that answer your question right there?"

"Feathers...Alex." Fionna's eyes harden, gleaming darkly as she switches to my real name. She's not kidding - she really wants an answer from me, right now.

I rub the back of my head, hating to be put on the spot like this. "You want it straight?"

"Please."

I move my arm so it's between the two of us, then take Fionna's hand, my thumb pressing against her knuckles one by one. "Honestly, I'm not sure I can say I love you just yet. All I know for sure is that I really like you. A lot. And...and I've liked you for a long time, even if I didn't wanna admit it to myself. But love you? I'd love to say we'll get to that point in our relationship someday soon, but I don't think we've gotten there yet."

It's the honest truth, but I don't think that's the answer she was looking for. Fionna and I look at each other for a few minutes, not talking, only a few random thoughts passing through our heads.

Finally, she lets go of my hand and vaguely gestures at the stairs, saying, "I think I should, uh, go to bed now. Good night, Alex."

I want to ask her to come back. I want to ask her how she feels, if she's offended that I didn't just tell her I loved her - because that's the distinct impression I'm getting, and it's making my stomach churn just thinking about it.

But the only thing I say before Fionna climbs the stairs and leaves me alone in the basement is "Good night." And, even worse, my tongue refuses to work properly, so it comes out sounding all slurred and drunken. Not so much "Good night" as "Guuuhnet."

This would be a perfect time to pull a page from Dani's playbook and pound the futon furiously, declaring myself "fucking stupid." I do both, but save the language for my internal monologue. God, but I really am stupid, though. Why couldn't I just tell her what she wanted to hear? Or what I thought she wanted to hear?

This is what happens whenyou're seemingly among the last teens in your generation to start dating, Iguess. My lack of experience is really showing, and to put it politely, itsucks balls.