***ALEX***

As soon as Annie leads us through the door, I'm struck by how cold it is in the Second Universe. Part of that could be explained by the fact that it's always dark, with the only light being the moon. Annie also adds an explanation of her own - we're at a pretty high altitude here, higher than Bearville, and so the temperature in this area is always cooler.

Still, I should have thought of that. I didn't even bring any of my belongings with me - Russell had said there wasn't time. But looking back, I realize I should have at least brought a hoodie or something. The hairs on my arms are trying to freeze themselves off.

"Did Russell really tell you there was no time to pack your stuff?" Annie asks, shaking her head in exasperation as she listens to my thoughts. "Tsk, tsk. Someone was in a rush. Well, unlike me, he's not an artist. And you know what they say - you can't rush art." She clicks a button on a key fob, unlocking a big nineties-era Dodge Ram van parked nearby. Now that I see it, I look around, as does Juliet, and we realize that the door we've just come out of is attached to what looks like an abandoned gas station on the side of a highway.

"Don't worry," says Kyle, looking at me and Juliet and seeing how grossed out we both are. "That door doesn't go to the bathroom or anything. It's just the loading dock."

"If you say so," Juliet says, shuddering in disgust.

"Do all the Terminal doors appear in random places like that?" I ask. "And why do so many of them show up near bathrooms?"

"The less likely they are to be discovered, the better," says Freddie.

"Come on," Annie says, opening the van's clamshell side doors. "Time's a-wastin', kids. We gotta get to Tahoe right away."

"Tahoe?" Gabe asks, his eyes going wide.

"You mean, like, Paradisian ski resort and A-frame cabins and casinos on the Nevada side?" I ask. "That Tahoe?"

"It's where Russell and Harlan and I grew up," Annie says, getting into the driver's seat.

"Who's Harlan?" asks Juliet.

"My other little brother," Annie says. "You'll meet him when we get there - he's still young enough to live at home. Basically, Tahoe's a free zone, a place where Holly's little policy of fencing off mortals in city-sized ghettos never happened. Mortals and scrivs coexist there pretty peacefully." She fires up the engine as Fionna and I climb through the side door. "Of course, Tahoe's fenced off itself. But that's more for security purposes than anything else. We can't let Holly get in, can we?"

I pile into the backseat with Fionna on one side and Juliet on the other. Gabe gets into the driver's side second-row seat. He watches as Kyle gets into the front passenger seat, a look of disappointment on his face. I can only imagine how hard it must be for him, being with this guy who, for all intents and purposes, is his boyfriend in guardian-spirit form. But this Kyle isn't the angel he dated for six months or more before he died. He's not the fire-elemental angel with whom he's made one of the strongest connections he's ever had, or will ever have.

And meanwhile, here I am, once again reunited with my dead girlfriend. I almost want to say God had something to do with this, but teenage love isn't really in His wheelhouse - He's got much more important stuff to deal with. So if any deity is involved with what happens to me and Fionna, I imagine they'd be Roman or Greek or something. Aphrodite really must not want to see us apart. So if that's the case, what did Gabe do to get on her bad side, then? At least she didn't curse him with a gnarly skunk stench or anything. I think she did that to someone in at least one of the myths.

In any case, when we set off up the highway and Fionna reaches to take my hand, I'm reluctant to respond in kind. I don't want Gabe to look around and feel jealous of me. But at the same time, I can't resist the warmth of her hand. So I curl my fingers around hers, and our hands rest in the small gap between us.

You know, Fionna thinks, I was just starting to miss calling you Feathers again. She looks up at me. And I still miss the hair you used to have all over your head.

The hair I spent months not cutting? I ask.

Short hair just isn't you, she says with a crooked smile. I can barely remember long-haired you anymore.

I never had long hair, though.

Fionna pinches what little of my hair she can. The brief flash of pain causes me to suck air through my teeth. Compared to this, what you had before is hella long. It's like...it's like... She taps her fingers against the back of the seat. It's like Harry Potter between the Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix movies. That kind of long and short.

Oh really? I always thought I looked more like Percy Jackson.

Your eyes aren't blue enough, Fionna snickers, almost doing so out loud as well. Besides, you're about as Greek as an IKEA chair.

"What's so funny?" Gabe asks as I fail to hold in my own laugh.

"Fionna thinks I'm built like an IKEA chair," I say.

"Maybe when we started out as teenagers, we were," Gabe laughs, reaching around to try and tweak Fionna's nose - but she keeps leaning out of his fingers' range. "But now, puberty's been much kinder to us."

"That, and the gym at Balthazar," Juliet points out with a smile as she grabs my arm and holds it up for everyone to see. "It's really worked wonders on him."

"Hey, hands off my Feathers," Fionna hisses at her, making a kitty-scratch gesture with her fingers curled like claws.

"Stop it," I laugh, grabbing said clawed hand and lowering it away from Juliet. "I know you're just kidding, but seriously, I don't want girls fighting over me. I'm not worth it."

"Clearly you've never seen the ways girls would compete just to ask me to set you up with them," Gabe says. This leads to Freddie, who's sitting right behind him, biting his lip to stop himself from laughing his ass off.

I look at Fionna in disbelief. "Is he serious?"

"Why do you think it took so long for me to get to date you?" she laughs, pinching my cheek. "I was just trying to avoid the worst of the cattiness."

"I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear any of this," I say, sinking back into my seat. I let go of Fionna's hand so I can use both of mine to hide my blushing face.

It seems like no time at all passes by the time Annie drives up to a massive, well-lit electric fence, which reminds me of the one that surrounds Wayward Pines. We have to go through no less than three checkpoints before we're finally admitted to the other side. Once inside, Annie keeps driving deeper into town. The place seems just as empty as the forest outside the fence - at least, at first. But then we reach what has to be the center of town, which looks like a giant, bustling flea market gathered around a roughly Y-shaped intersection.

Annie takes us past the marketplace about a mile or so, eventually reaching a cluster of vacation condos. "Home sweet home," she says, navigating this giant land ferry into a parking space. "My dad's the landlord here, so one of the condos is our current base of operations. We have some that are empty right now - tourism's really down on account of Holly rounding up everyone who usually comes here." She turns the engine off. "Okay, so Freddie, you'll probably be staying in our condo. Penny's already there too - we managed to get her out of Bearville before the place got really overrun with Holly's forces. Everyone else, you'll be living in the condo next to ours."

"Everyone else meaning...?" I ask.

"You, Juliet, Kyle, Gabe, and Fionna," Annie says. "Can we trust you all to behave? My dad does charge a pretty substantial smoking fee."

"No need to worry about that," I laugh, winking at Gabe.

Annie leads us into the nearest condo to the parking lot. Inside, on the second floor, we're met by a guy whom I assume to be her dad. He doesn't look much like her, though, or like Russell. Not with his curly hair and blue-gray eyes. "How you doing, kids?" he says as we reach the top of the stairs. "Name's Troijen. But since that's a bitch both to say and to spell - not to mention it sounds a little too much like a certain brand of condoms" - he laughs at his own joke - "you can call me Jensen."

"Jensen, as in Ackles?" Gabe asks.

"Who now?"

"The guy who plays Dean Winchester," I say. "On Supernatural?"

Jensen shakes his head with a cheesy grin. "Oh, that show the boys like so much. There's this other one they like too, one I always get confused with Supernatural. Can't remember what it's called, but it's named after some fairy tale, I think." He walks into the kitchen, opens a drawer, and extracts a key from within. "No offense, though, but all those Prime 'Verse shows, especially the ones involving the paranormal, they tend to look the same to this old man."

"You look old enough to be our dad, but that doesn't make you old," I say.

"I predate television," Jensen says, handing Annie the key. "Let's just leave it at that."

Annie goes down the stairs. "All right, guys," she says, heading out the door of this condo and unlocking that of the one next door. "Here's your place to stay...as long as we don't have any missions to undertake, that is. And trust me, there are gonna be quite a few. Missions, that is."

The inside of this condo looks almost identical to Jensen's. Similar white walls, lined with similar abstract-type paintings. Three-story layout, with a few bedrooms on the first floor, most of the living space on the second, and an upstairs loft. It reminds me of Paul Smythe's place, actually, but with higher ceilings and a prettier view of the moonlit lake.

In the kitchen, there's a dude walking up to the fridge. He stretches his arms and his wings, allowing us to see how shiny and black his feathers are. I wonder if he uses some kind of gel to keep them that glossy, or if it's just natural for him because he's a scriv. They do make feather products in Heaven, the same way they make hair products, but those are mostly used by models and people who spend their days on the beach and show off their wings, the better to impress their preferred gender.

"Hey, Harlan!" Annie calls out. He doesn't hear her, probably because of the music he's got blasting through his headphones. It sounds like one of those hip-hop-slash-red-zone acts I've heard tell about. Basically, rap-metal. Whatever it is, it's so loud that Annie's forced to tug the earbuds off him in order to get his attention.

"Whoa, not cool," Harlan says, whirling around and glaring at her through owlish eyes. Blue-gray, like his dad's. Then he spots the rest of us. "Oh, are these the Primers? Some of which are still live?"

"Got that right," Kyle says, "except I'm one of you guys. Light, though. Not dark."

"Oh, sorry," Annie says. "I forgot, Harlan hasn't met you yet." She looks around at us - me and Gideon in particular - and says, "Harlan, I have to help Dad out with mission planning. Could you take these guys down to the marketplace and find them some new threads? We, uh, didn't have-"

"Time to pack, I get it," Harlan says, waving his hands impatiently. "Well, okay. Only 'cause I got nothing else to do but go outside and smoke."

"I just hope you haven't blown all your money on smokes and weed again," Annie says with a long-suffering sigh through her nose.

"I stopped smoking cigarettes months ago," Harlan says, giving an "I'm so bloody butthurt" pout. "And I only get high on the weekends." He looks us all up and down. "So, a hoodie for you" - he nods at me - "at least one more T-shirt and pair of jeans for everyone, enough underwear to last you all a week...oh, and swimsuits. You guys have to try our pool at least once before you leave. It's to die for. Literally, in some of you guys' cases."

"Maybe after the first mission," Annie says.

"Which is where?" I ask.

"For now, consider that classified," Annie says, laughing lightly as she descends the staircase. "See you later!"

Harlan looks around, then claps his hands. "Okay. Just let me get this iPod off me and I'll be ready to go." He goes downstairs as well, and we follow him out the door just in time to see him disappear into his dad's place. Once he's had time to put away his iPod - and, presumably, grab his wallet - we set off for the marketplace.

Despite its flea-market appearance, the marketplace is actually very well-stocked. There are at least three different stalls full of various types of clothing. According to Harlan, most of these were bought from shopping malls in the Prime 'Verse, or from some of the trendier cities in the Second. "If anyone from a Free City like Tahoe gets their hands on something," he says as Gabe and I select two multipacks of underwear each, "it'll find its way to a Free City, someplace, somewhere."

Gabe gasps in shock. "Are you trying to tell me these have all been shoplifted?"

"No," Harlan says in an amusingly flat tone.

After we're done piling packages of underwear into Harlan's arms so he can go buy them, Gabe and I make tracks for the jeans. We get here at the same time as Kyle, who's busy searching through the pile for a pair in his size. "I've only found one so far," he says, "and it's torn at the knees. Look, see?" He sticks his arm up the leg of those pants and waggles his fingers through the hole in the knee.

Gabe frowns at the sight. "I know a guy who loves wearing holey pants."

"I wouldn't mind, if they weren't so...how should I put it...fragile," Kyle says. "I mean, whenever they're gonna make us join in their fight, I don't want my only battle armor to be denim that can fall apart as soon as you sneeze at it."

"I'll help you look, then," Gabe says.

"No, no, I don't need-"

"Nonsense!" Gabe starts turning the pile of jeans upside down - literally.

"Did you really memorize my size just from dating my angel?" Kyle asks, looking flabbergasted.

"Uh...well, I didn't mean to," Gabe says. "But the morning after prom night, I put his pants on by mistake..."

This, of course, is my cue to tune him out, and I walk away, looking through the pile on my own. Being shorter and skinnier than Kyle, I have less trouble finding pants in my size. Most of them, however, are a looser fit than what I'm used to. It takes me a long time to find a good pair of slim jeans, the way I like them. They might not be a color I particularly like, but beggars can't be choosers, so I remove these slightly-threadbare light-blue Levi's from the pile and move on.

Then I move on to the T-shirts - Gabe's still chatting up Kyle at the jeans pile - and find myself a Walking Dead tee. Considering where it's being sold, I find it pleasantly ironic, so I pick it out. Then, I get to the box of hoodies near the door. Most of these depict a variety of sports-team logos, which I'm not all that interested in, but I do find one that's oddly appealing - it has one of those starry-night-sky prints on the front, and a translucent image of a wolf superimposed over that.

As I try it on, Fionna and Juliet walk on by. The former carries a similar hoodie in her hand, but with lightning instead of stars and a fox instead of a wolf. The latter's choice of hoodie has a flaming panther on the chest.

"Looking good, Feathers," Juliet says, giving me the thumbs-up.

"Same to you, ladies," I say with a click of my tongue.

She smiles, then moves on over to the T-shirts, leaving Fionna and me alone together. I take the wolf hoodie off, sling it over my arm, and drape my other arm over her shoulders. She responds by wrapping her arm around my waist. "I didn't realize you'd gotten so tall in the last few months," she says, looking up at me. It's true - the height difference between us was maybe four inches at most in November, but now I've widened that gap to about six or seven inches. I'm not sure of her exact height - my guess has always been five-six - but now I'm a shade over six feet. Gabe's gotten about as tall too, if not more so - he's almost caught up to Kyle, who used to dwarf him just a tad bit when they were first together.

"I promise, that's the last growth spurt I have in me," I laugh, handing the Walking Dead shirt and wolf hoodie off to Harlan. Fionna does the same with her fox hoodie.

"It better be," Fionna says, reaching up to dig her finger into my cheek. "'Cause the less you intimidate girls back home with your size, the better."

"Yeah," I say, looking away from her. "When I get back home." I squeeze her shoulder. I know we're not going to be able to stay together for long. But I'd really rather not be reminded of that unwelcome fact. Especially not by her. At least she doesn't drive me to tears the way she did before she left for the Second 'Verse for the first time. The knowledge that Fionna's supreme adorability was going to be out of my life forever was just too painful.

On the day of her memorial service, I'd wondered if perhaps I'd fallen in love with her too fast, especially considering we'd only been together for a couple of weeks. To be fair, though, we'd hit it off pretty quickly despite our initial bumpy start, and she did tell me she'd been dying to date me without having even met me, because Gabe was just that good at talking me up.

But now, it once again hits me just how much Fionna and I belong together. Maybe it's the obscure but sweet Coldplay song playing on the overhead speakers - "Prospekt's March," I believe - but right now, I just want to be with her forever.

My first question is, when did I turn into such a sap?

My second is, why should I analyze my feelings so much? Analysis, as I know it, is cold and detached. The idea of being cold and detached is pretty foreign to me, and I say that as someone with the ability to freeze water. Of course, letting my emotions take the wheel sometimes leads to nasty results - I still can't believe how close I came to killing Gideon's mom the other day. I would have done something in cold blood that I could never take back.

But I can't think about that now. The only thing I want, or need, to think about now is how much longer I'll be able to stay this close to Fionna. How long her presence can keep my mind off what troubles me.

And then I catch Juliet's eye. That gets me to let go of Fionna as slowly and smoothly as possible. But still, not smooth enough. I feel so right with her...and with Juliet too, and I can't betray my girlfriend.

Feeling guilty as sin, I stay away from both girls all the way back to the condo. There, Harlan outlines the sleeping arrangements. He'll take the living room couch, with Freddie and Kyle sharing the downstairs bedroom. (That way, there'll be two adults in this place - if you can count Harlan as an adult in any sense but legal, he being eighteen.) Upstairs, in the loft, there are two bedrooms - one will be for me and Gabe, the other for Juliet and Fionna.

We also set up an order for who gets to use the showers (there's one on each of the first two floors.) For the second-floor shower, it's girl-boy-girl-boy, with Fionna first, followed by me. When she's done, she calls me down from the second-floor landing. As I sidestep my way around her, new clothes in hand (no need for me to have to walk past the girls' room wearing nothing but a towel when I'm done), Fionna grabs my shoulder and spins me around. "This might be the last time I see you tonight, so...good night, Feathers."

"Good night, Fionna," I say, smiling up at her. Well, not exactly up - she's on the first step up, but that makes her eyes roughly level with mine.

"Is that really what you're gonna call me?" she asks, grinning. "Not something more imaginative, like what I have for you?"

I don't answer her question. Instead, all I do is wave goodbye to her and call up the stairs, "See you in my dreams!"