Jane-Anne Pearce

"So if Lena gets here in a few hours..."

"Stop, Finn," I warned.

"I'm just saying. If you have any ideas about where you want to start over, now's the time to start brainstorming," said Finn. "What about Canada?"

"Canada?" I asked. "Isn't it cold there?"

"I thought you didn't get cold," said Finn.

"Well, I..." Something felt off. I felt like I had been cold recently, but I couldn't put my finger on why. Even with Makaya gone, I couldn't remember anything correctly.

"Let me know when you figure it out, Elsa," said Finn casually.

I gasped, offended. "I am not a Disney Princess!" I exclaimed. "And put a shirt on!" I added. I grabbed one of the pillows and threw it at him from across the motel room. Finn turned away for to protect himself, an ugly scar on his back suddenly becoming visible. I paused.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Finn asked.

"Nothing." I clarified quickly.

"Okay." Finn surrendered, opening a drawer for a shirt.

"So, what are we supposed to be doing?" I stared at the confusing board on the wall, but I still couldn't figure any of it out.

"It's going to be super quick, I promise," said Finn. "I just have to go over the details of the case so far with the Sheriff. Obviously, he doesn't suspect anything supernatural is going on, but an outsider's perspective can help. And I'm going to get two today."

"Who's the other person?" I asked.

"It's you. That is, if you want to come with me," said Finn. "I've been over this stuff a million times, and I can't figure it out. Maybe when you hear it for the first time you'll pick up on something I can't."

"And then what?" I asked. It was naïve, but I wanted to believe that the Agency would spare a Forbidden who hasn't done anything except healing some victims of a car crash.

"When I figure out what and who the Forbidden is, I'm supposed to kill them," Finn answered.

"Are you actually going to do that?" I asked.

"I don't want to."

"How many missions have you done so far?"

"This is my second," Finn replied.

I knew that Lena had been on edge earlier, and I was starting to see why. There was a weird window of time when Finn had magically vanished, and it didn't feel right.

"So what were you doing before then?" I continued.

"It's complicated," Finn replied shortly. "Are you ready to go?"

"Sure," I responded nervously. "I just have to listen to you talk to the sheriff for a few minutes, right?"

"Right." Finn agreed. "And please don't tell Lena I took you with me for a mission. She'd lose her mind."

"Uh..."

"Just try not to tell Lena." Finn amended.

"Got it." I agreed. I couldn't promise to keep a full secret. Maybe I was getting better at lying, but I still didn't trust myself with anything. Finn seemed to know that he wouldn't get full clemency from me either and didn't argue about it on the ride to the station.

"This is Grayson road." I suddenly realized, reading the thin white print on the green sign above us.

"Yep." Finn agreed. "There's nothing special about this place as far as I can tell, though."

I looked around, finding nothing but a large hospital, another motel, and a large tent.

"What would you call that?" I asked Finn, pointing towards the gargantuan structure.

"Okay, that's new," Finn admitted.

"Maybe we can go," I suggested. "They never had circuses in Atalka."

"I mean, Lena's probably going to get here before the performance will start. So you'll either be in New York or wherever else by then." Finn pointed out.

"Oh yeah." I sunk back in my seat, allowing the circus tent to melt out of my view.

The moment we reached the parking lot of the Sheriff's Station, it started to rain. I watched the raindrops splatter across the crowded lot and stared at the several yards that separated us from the station. I opened the glovebox to find an umbrella, but slammed it shut immediately.

"Why is there a gun in your glovebox?" I squeaked.

"There is?" Finn asked. "It's probably just in case."

"In case what?" I asked.

"I don't know," said Finn. "Maybe an agent is going to figure out I'm a quarter Forbidden or that I literally sabotaged my last mission."

"Well do you have an umbrella?" I asked.

"I don't think so," Finn admitted.

"So you have a gun, just not an umbr-"

"Count of three." Finn interrupted. "We'll run."

"Fine."

"One, two.." At three, it was a mad dash back to the station, trying to keep the raindrops from piercing my vision.

"Jane-Anne!" Finn yelled.

I turned and realized that I had left the car door wide open. Before I could react, Finn had sprinted back to the car door and shut it. "Go!" Finn exclaimed, realizing that I had been staring at him from the middle of the parking lot. I quickly ran to the station, hugging the wall so that the awning could cover me.

Finn landed next to me, breathless from the sprint. He tried to shake some of the water out of his suit, but it just ended up getting water on me.

"Finn!" I complained, shoving him. Finn just laughed, but suddenly stood upright, his focus on something else.

I spun quickly, realizing that the sheriff had just opened the door for us.

"Rough day, huh?" the sheriff asked, looking us up and down. I glanced at his badge, which read, "Sheriff Tanaka". A Japanese surname.

"Gomen. Kasa ga wasureta." I explained. "Hajimemashite. Jane-Anne desu." I bowed quickly.

"Nice to meet you, Jane-Anne," said Sheriff Tanaka. "I'm a sansei, so my Japanese isn't all that great."

"Oh, that's okay," I said. "I think I'm a nisei, but I might be a sansei. My mom never told me where she was born." Japanese-Americans liked to keep track of their generation within the States, but I never knew if I was first or second since my mom never spoke about her past.

"Really?" Sheriff Tanaka asked. "You should ask your mom to tell you which one you are."

"I will," I said, trying to keep a fake smile on my face.

"Will Jane-Anne be joining us, Agent Matthews?" Sheriff Tanaka asked.

Finn nodded. "She's just here to observe, if you don't mind."

"Sure." Sheriff Tanaka agreed. "This shouldn't take too long, anyway." Sheriff Tanaka held the door open and guided us through a crowded maze of cubicles.

"What's going on?" I asked, looking at hurried employees carrying flyers. There was a man seated at one of the cubicles with raven black hair and a goatee that made him look like either a Bond villain or a cartoon character. When we caught eye contact, he tipped his hat to me. I instantly turned away.

"Circus came to town at the last minute, and they managed to get set up before all of the permits were in order. We're trying to take care of it now." Sherriff Tanaka explained, opening the door to his office.

"You weren't expecting them?" Finn asked.

"Not this time of year, no." Sheriff Tanaka explained. "Please, sit down." He gestured to the two chairs in front of a wooden desk littered with several photos. Right across from me, I could see a photo of Sheriff Tanaka carrying a kid on his shoulders. As I inspected the room, I could find pictures of that same kid everywhere, often accompanied by Sheriff Tanaka or the slender woman I assumed to be his mother.

"Is that your family?" I asked, pointing to a picture of the three of them smiling together. In all of the other pictures, the kid seemed a lot younger, like there had been a significant gap between the other photos and the last one.

"Yuko and Hiro." Sheriff Tanaka explained, pointing to his wife and son in turn.

"They seem nice." I offered politely. They actually did, even if Hiro's smile seemed a little forced in the only recent photo of him.

"Yeah, well Hiro's been working over some shyness since getting discharged, but he's doing great. Even went to a birthday party a couple weeks back," said Sheriff Tanaka.

"The accident - wasn't that from someone coming home from that party?" Finn asked.

Sheriff Tanaka nodded, leaning back in his chair. "Drunk driver collided with Sheila's minivan. She had a couple of kids in there. The car was completely totaled, but everyone was fine. It was a miracle."

"Or that white phantom thing." I pointed out.

"Or that," said Sheriff Tanaka in a tone that told us he didn't believe it.

"Well, you were informed that I was dispatched to further investigate this phenomenon. I'm just doing my job," said Finn.

"Do you chase ghost stories all over the country?" Sheriff Tanaka asked, pulling a thin manila file from his desk drawer.

"Can't discuss it. The Agency sent you everything you need to know before I got here," said Finn. "Now, would you mind reviewing what we have so far?"

Now that everyone looked like they were down to business, I swiped the notepad and a pen off of Sheriff Tanaka's desk so I could look like I was doing something important too.

"September 22, 8:42 p.m. We had our first sighting reported by..."

"Hiro Tanaka." Finn finished. "But when we pulled him aside to ask him about it, he barely said anything."

"To be fair, he hasn't talked much since getting discharged." Sheriff Tanaka explained. "So you don't have to take it personally."

"But Daniel Martin, the second person to see the phenomenon, was pretty talkative," said Finn. "He described the 'white phantom' outside his hospital window as a bear. He also proceeded to tell me about the 3 species of bear that lived in North America, and how he was going to buy one when he turned 18 because he saw someone do it on YouTube once."

"The third sighting that we have reported was actually from one of the traffic lights on Grayson road. Same intersection of the crash." Sheriff Tanaka opened the file and pulled out a black and white photo that showed an empty intersection. I could see weak concentrations of light where the streetlights were reflecting against the asphalt and another unnatural aggregation of light.

"Do you mind?" I asked, pulling the photo closer. The light in the center of the photo looked like it was glitching, with streaks of darkness cutting through it.

"The fourth sighting was the one that alerted us. The crash on the interaction of Grayson and Montgomery." Finn continued as I stared at the photo.

"No one was harmed, thankfully," said Sheriff Tanaka.

"During Sheila's interview, she retracted the statement at the scene that a white angel healed everyone's injuries miraculously," said Finn. "She claimed that it was something she said due to shock."

"People have said stranger things after a traumatic incident." Sheriff Tanaka explained.

"But her kids Daniel and Grant were both solid on the animal theory. Daniel said it was the same bear he saw before, but Grant thought that it was a lion," said Finn.

Lions and tigers and bears, I wrote on the notepad. I realized that the only thing I had written so far was a Wizard of Oz reference. I glanced back at the photo and the fragmented white light it displayed. Maybe not fragmented. Striped. I added a new note.

We're looking for a Forbidden tiger.

"And that's everything so far. The only witness we haven't been able to call in is Mrs. Yang, Hiro's nurse, who Hiro initially told about the white phantom. Everyone else has their full statements completed and recorded here." said Sheriff Tanaka, closing his file and handing it to Finn. "Good luck with whatever you're doing, and be sure to keep me updated on when your assignment is completed."

"Of course." Finn agreed. "Thank you for all of your help."

"And it was nice to meet you, Jane-Anne," said Sheriff Tanaka.

"It was nice to meet you too." I smiled, closing the notepad. "Do you mind if I keep this?"

"Dozou," said Sheriff Tanaka.

"Thanks." I was already excited to show Finn that I may have made a breakthrough in our case. His case. This was just for the day.

Now I was stuck making a decision.

"So?"

Lena and I were sitting together in the courtyard outside, huddled closely to protect Lena from the cold. I wasn't really feeling the effects yet, and Lena refused to go back inside even when I offered.

"I don't know." my breath sparkled in the air around me.

"You have to make a choice." Lena reminded me. "That was the deal."

"I'm not good at doing that," I confessed.

"Yeah." Lena agreed. "But maybe it's because you haven't had a lot of practice."

"So you want me to start now?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. "Because this isn't exactly the easiest one to start with."

"Things aren't easy for us," said Lena. "They don't get to be."

Lena was unfortunately correct.

"Listen, Jane-Anne," said Lena. "Whatever it is, just tell me."

"I don't know." I insisted. "I just don't want to be wrong."

"You can always change your mind. I get it if..." Lena shifted uncomfortably, her tone getting more serious. "You deserved to trust your own decisions, and I know all of that got messed up and I'm sorry."

"It's fine," I whispered.

"Things will get a lot easier when you accept that you deserved a lot better," said Lena. She took my hand and squeezed it comfortingly. "All you have to do is tell me where you want to go, and I'll make it happen."

"Promise not to be mad?" I asked.

Lena held up her pinky. "Yubi kiri whatever."

"Yubi kiri genman."

"Yeah, that's what I said."

"Okay." I agreed, even if Lena's memory of the chant wasn't great. "I don't want to go to New York." I caught Lena slump a little bit, but continued. "I don't think it's right for me to be there. But I also don't think I want to be alone. So I'm asking Finn if I can stay here, at least until the mission's done."

I watched Lena's expression carefully, but she was refusing to show me anything.

"I know that you're worried about him, so I can keep an eye on him. And since he seems to be able to handle her, then he can watch me." I didn't mention that this situation was basically the blind leading the blind. "Fire and snow. We'll balance each other out."

Or possibly kill each other.

"That's what you want?" Lena asked.

"It's my decision." I agreed.

"Good for you," said Lena.

"You're mad, aren't you?"

"Maybe a little," Lena admitted. "But I'll get over it."

"I'll miss you." I offered.

"I'll miss you too, Jane-Anne."

A/N: I still have one more final, but I've been procrastinating studying for it. Enjoy this chapter instead. I am pretty excited about having more Jane-Anne and Finn scenes, mostly because they were two characters with a distinct purpose in the first novel (Finn was just there for Lena to bounce her thoughts off of, and I think Jane-Anne's purpose was pretty obvious), and now they don't have a distinct role anymore. So, I ended up combining their storylines in this book, and it's been a lot of fun. I hope you guys enjoy getting to know their dynamic, but until then, we are jumping back to Lena in NYC.

QOTD: What do you about seeing Jane-Anne and Finn interacting more?