The agent pushes an envelope across the wooden picnic table at her. Simple, manila, overstuffed with pages: Tiff knows exactly what it contains.

The agent looks at her expectantly. He's nondescript, the kind of man who blends in perfectly: brown hair, brown eyes, a suit in-between well-tailored and off-the-rack, government-regulation wristwatch. Tiff supposes she could also blend in if she would tone it down a little— but not like him. It's like he was made to do this. Five-foot-eleven and naturally-forgettable.

"How do I know it's all in there?" she tests.

He keeps his voice level. It's pissing her off. Gesturing to the envelope, he welcomes her to, "Go ahead. Take a look. It's all there."

More than anything else, she's upset that this is the only channel she could think to go through. They're supposed to owe her a favor, given what she did for them back in November, and yet—

And yet, here she is, with her notebook sitting next to her on the bench and her hands flicking through the papers on the folder. At the outset, all she can think to say is, "Caroline? Why Caroline? Again, I mean."

"Caroline Black is a very normal and respectable name. You said the only stipulation was that your soon-to-be-ex-husband wanted to keep their old initials and plausibly still be called 'Carrie,' correct?"

"I hate how reasonable you're being. It makes my blood boil."

"From what I hear, everything does that. Didn't you threaten to kill your friend's dog?"

She keeps looking through the documents to check the birthdate on the fake birth certificate and the driver's license match— December 21st, 2003. It's perfectly-made. She can't tell the difference between the manufacture of this card and her own (June 9th, 2004). "Percy doesn't have a dog. It was an empty threat."

"All those threats, those major arrests— I think it's a wonder, and I have to wonder how you still have friends."

"Wow. You're a dick." She tries not to let on that she's constantly wondering the same thing, though it's more out of delight than self-loathing these days.

"They don't pay me to be polite."

"Jesus. Shut up." She can't think of anything to say that isn't just another way of calling him an asshole. Instead, she slides the folder closer to herself, closes it, and tries to stand.

He makes a noise of error when he grabs her wrist in the way her mother used to— full fist looped around like a threat. He makes the buzzer noise again. "You'll owe us for this favor, and we do expect payment to be discussed immediately. So, tell me— did you bring anything worth trading?"

"First of all, you already owe me a favor for what I did in November."

"You did that for the good of the world."

"Maybe the government shouldn't be involved in matters of the universe if they're not going to pay us and their apologies suck ass like a vacuum." She tugs her hand away, but he doesn't budge.

"Does the universe pay you, Miss Sheridan?"

She hesitates. Having failed at freeing her wrist by tugging on it, she sits back down and raises her fingers until the agent gets the hint that she isn't going to bolt and relinquishes his grip.

"I suppose your lack of an answer is answer enough. So, tell me, Miss Sheridan: what are you willing to do for our division? What will you do for us so that your pal Bloodsaw can live their life?"

"They'll live their life whether they have documentation or not."

"And they'll keep living in that illegal shithole apartment?"

He raises his eyebrows like a challenge, like a way of reminding her that he's the law and, now that she has changed her major, she isn't even close. Existing on the edge of the supernatural often means that you're teetering on the edge of legality, and they both know it. Didn't she carry around an illegal firearm for years? Didn't she kill a wizard and kill the Nightmare King twice? Didn't she pull a gun on a federal agent because they were taking her rat? Nothing about this is normal and only half of this existence is legal.

"Fine." She tries to keep the frustration behind her teeth. "What are my options?"

"It's simple. Infiltration or information."

"Meaning? I can infiltrate something pretty easily, but—" She doesn't want to give him information on anything, but she also doesn't want him to know that she doesn't want to tip her hand and give him information.

"No, no, you misunderstand me. You would be allowing us to place somebody near you. Your presence would validate their existence in spaces adjacent to you."

She can feel her lip curl in disgust before she can register that it's what she's feeling. "Nice try. No. What's the other option?"

"Information, then."

"About what? If you're asking me to rat on people close to me or let the government in on things that only my fellow guardians and I know, then it's a no-go."

"Oh, Miss Sheridan." Faux pity bleeds from every word like cheap permanent marker. (She wants to bite his ear off. Bloodsaw would tell her to.) "We know what we need to know about them. No, no, we aren't interested in the workings of Bigfoot families or your Cosmigoblin extended family members—"

"She's my stepmother. She's not extended."

"That doesn't matter."

"It does, though. If you're going to invoke my family to try to get me to give things up, you should at least do it correctly." she puts her elbows on the table and leans in closer, like her heart isn't running a mile a minute. "My aunt adopted me as a way to celebrate getting out of the hospital months ago, and that's that. It was legal and everything. I'm sure you know that."

"This still doesn't matter to the topic at hand."

"It does if your threats are inaccurate. If I threatened to turn your father into Gilear, but you didn't have a father, there would be no weight to it."

"My parents are divorced."

"Good."

"Even so, we know everything we need to know about..." He raises those eyebrows again, like shitty fucking caterpillars on the world's most mediocrely-tanned leaves. "Zabrina and Jebediah DaWich?"

"You know, I really don't think you do." She bites back a rant about how many UFOs have crashed here, about how many aliens have just come to visit, about how Lake Wonder certainly has things more alien than foo fighters, Roswell, or the Phoenix lights. He doesn't need to know. If he already does, she doesn't need to confirm it. "What would you want from me? Stop being weird about it and just tell me or I'm going to leave and find a different way to do this."

"Of course, if you're not willing, we could always just... disregard the papers and pretend that this little meeting never happened. Part ways. It would be easy, of course. None of what either of us do is on the books, per se."

"Everything I do is on the books."

"Ah, a bookstore pun. Delightful."

"I meant it more about the morgue, but yes."

"Ah. I heard about your little promotion. Brava."

"Do you always talk like a villain in a shitty musical?"

"I suppose we can be done here, then." He stands, sliding the manila folder across the table with him, backed by the sun like the Lord retreating from Earth.

Tiff has always been one to scramble for a saving grace. She grabs at his hand the way he grabbed at hers. "Wait, wait, wait— I need those. I can't— I need them, I can't leave here without them."

"No," he says, his grin like rows and rows of bleached tombstones in the middle of the day. "No, I suppose you can't."

"You suppose everything." She rolls her eyes and taps his wrist. "I just— they're not for me, you know. I'm normal."

"You, Miss Sheridan, are far from normal. Normal young women may dedicate their time to studying fairy tales about the Nightmare King in a localized sense or blueprint odd little machines, but they certainly don't map out the woods in search of Bigfoot colonies."

"Just— just sit down." As the agent complies with her desperate wishes, she sighs, "I didn't forget that you federal asshats took my notebook. I've done more than enough for you cucks, willingly and unwillingly."

"Of course," the agent says, like he didn't hear her at all, "normal girls also don't dream about being adopted by said Bigfoot colonies after running away from home."

"That was just a fantasy, and it's barely an embarrassing one." She swallows, but tries to make it seem like she's just breathing in. "You're going to have to try something else, because everyone knows about my mommy issues, alright?"

"It's probably a little more than mommy issues."

"That's not your business." She takes her hand off of his wrist (finally. She forgets why she kept it there for so long) and takes her phone out of her back pocket. She had intended to use this video for a disinformation campaign meant to draw attention away from actual Woodland Crafters in the surrounding area. Shunting the searchers over to a different county entirely has been her modus operandi for a while now. She pulls the video up anyway. "I have something I could show you, if it's Bigfoot you want."

He raises his eyebrows into a jarringly-normal wrinkled forehead. "You would sell out those who you proclaim to love? How ruthless, Miss Sheridan. How very, very cold."

"You have no idea."

He doesn't. There's no way in hell that the Black Robes Division knows about the clown massacre (which was necessary) or all those pseudo-Yeerk eggs she destroyed (which was also necessary), or how she dug a grave for her aunt in the rain with a broken arm (which was, oddly enough, also necessary).

She sets her phone on the table to let it play. She dragged Dr. Ted Theodore into this. He's a storyteller as a matter of tradition, but she managed to convince that particular mentor of hers that this was a fantastic way to protect his family even further. It took a lot of makeup, some box hair dye, and about a week and a half of not shaving on his part, but they were able to create a rather convincing video of a younger-seeming Woodland Crafter by the side of the road hundreds of miles away from here, in a part of the woods that they don't actually live in. It's their very own Patterson-Gimlin film; call it a Sheridan-Theodore.

The agent watches it with blank eyes: footage from the passenger's side of a moving car. (Kepler was holding the camera, but the agent doesn't need to know that.) He watches it like he's a character in a show about pawning. When it's over— when it has replayed three times— he looks back up at her.

It's time for the pitch, then. It's time to act like she's in control and her heart isn't beating a mile a minute. "Here's the thing. I will give you a choice, since I have a few things I could offer you: the video, some information on a squashed invasion of extraterrestrial parasites, or some information on Ivan Cunningham."

"Local politicians mean nothing to us—"

"They should, considering Chip Winger was one."

"—and you could have easily faked the video."

"I didn't fake the video," she lies.

"You could have made up the parasites."

"Oh, trust me. I didn't make up the parasites. There was a different one inside me at the time."

He raises his eyebrows like a campaign of consideration and concern. "In what way?"

"I wasn't pregnant, if that's the question you're asking. I mean a literal extraterrestrial parasite."

"Is it still in there? That could be useful."

"No, it's out. We unhooked it."

Again, interest piqued. "We?"

"I'm not telling you who."

"Then how am I supposed to know you're not lying?"

Because she's fed up and it's the only thing she can think of, Tiff grabs the hem of her tank top and yanks it up. It's not flashing if it's your stomach, right? He just needs him to see what's there: the incision stretching up to her sternum.

"Don't flash me." Annoyance flits across his voice. "I don't want to see your weird abdominal scar."

"It's on my chest, too, but— Sorry, Aggie, I'm not showing you my tits. I don't like you that way."

His nose wrinkles imperceptibly. "Classy."

"The C stands for class."

"The C stands for Cain, I believe."

"It can be both." An idea comes to her mind and it's out of her mouth before she can stop herself. "And what if I told you there was a man who was steadily exterminating supernatural creatures and regular people associated with magic or suspected to be associated with magic? A man who calls himself a witch hunter? A religious man, in fact?"

"If he existed, then certainly. A lead on him would be more than appreciated."

Tiff slides the folder closer to herself. This is going to implode her family. This is going to implicate her. The only thought she has left is: good. "Well, agent. I think we have a deal."