The french fry came shooting right back out. “Excuse me?” I choked.

Tina laughed. A genuine laugh. It was a high, barking thing. “Listen Cash. I am broke. With a capital B. I wasn’t the best with money before my parents died. They spend a ton of money keeping themselves hidden. I inherited more debt than anything else. I got a payout, but that just got me out from under water. I have their house, but I am a single mother with a deadbeat co-parent. I also,” she hesitated. “I have Felicity’s father some money last year.”

I groaned.

“They were going to kill him!”

I held up my hands “Questionable investments aside, what does this have to do with marrying you?”

“Well, you’re widowed right? No family. I heard. Sad story. But it’s like we talked about on your first day. You get great benefits, but they all stop when you die.”

“Unless I have beneficiaries. You want an army marriage. That’s really morbid Tina.”

I expected her to look contrite, but she just glared at me.

“You’ve been here how long? Three days? How many times have you almost died?”

I didn’t say anything.

“What did you do last night? I have no idea, but I bet you almost died. Didn’t you?”

That ceiling sure was interesting.

“What are you and Teddy planning for tomorrow? I bet it’s dangerous as fuck. Isn’t it?”

Man, it’s like she was a psychic.

“I could spend months trying to get you to fall in love with me. But you asked for the direct approach. Here it is. I am not asking you to live your life any different. No one would even have to know. It’s just paper work!”

I was shaking my head, “Love is not a transaction, Tina”

“I would be accommodating. We could end it if you ever found someone for real. I could be extremely accommodating if you know what I mean.” She was smiling now.

“Tina,” I warned.

Her face fell. “It’s not just for me. If I have learned anything about this shitty world that we live in, it’s that you can go at any time and that no one gives a fuck. If something happens to me, Felicity will have no one except her deadbeat father. He’s more likely to get her killed than anything, I’d rather have her go into foster care. I don’t even know if she will have magic or not.”

That set me back. I thought about my own daughter. They would be about the same age.

“Just promise me you will think about it. That’s all I ask.” Tina concluded her sales pitch.

“I will, Tina, I promise.”

“And even if you don’t want to do the marriage thing, we can still…”

“Tina,” I cut her off.

“Come on Cash! I’m horny! What’s the point of being known as the office bicycle if you aren’t even getting laid? It’s been,” I could see her doing the math in her head before she gave up. “It’s been a long time.” she finished. She was talking a little too loudly and people at the next table looked over.

She noticed and lowered the volume a bit, “You’re not gay are you?”

“What? Tina? No.” I flashed back to my own conversation with Teddy. Just an innocent question, right?

“Then what’s the problem? You’re a good looking guy and the metas are different. Alicia wants a taste and when the other lady agents come back to the office, they will be sniffing around too. You’re gonna get tired of saying ‘no’ real fast.”

“Why is my love life such a big deal to you Tina?”

“It’s your wife, isn’t it? You haven’t been with anyone since she passed.” She checked her watch and started gathering her things. “Just promise you’ll think about that too, Cash. Think about what your wife would want. If she were looking down on you. Would she want you to give up sex? Forever?” She stood and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for lunch, handsome. See you back at the office.”

I sat at the table and wiped lipstick off my face with a cloth napkin before paying for a $30 hamburger and a $35 salad, which seemed like a culinary impossibility. As I calculated the tip, I thought about what Tina had said about Sarah. She had extremely sex positive and had only gotten more randy as we had gotten older. It would probably be killing ghost Sarah to see me cellibate. Was it time to get back on the horse?

I drove back to the office and resumed my boring study. I had made it through a disappointingly small fraction of the manual. Teddy spent the day alternating between animated conversations on the phone and furiously typing on his computer. I was fighting back the sleep monster around three in the afternoon when he came by to catch me up.

“I’ve got it all arranged. The Pasadillo police will have two cars watching the 141 all day. We will meet up here and drive over together. It’s about a two-hour ride. We’ll wait in a staging area nearby until they stop the truck. Then we’ll take over and the locals will withdraw.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. Like I figured, they are probably being paid to look the other way. They were hesitant to help until I told them they didn’t need to be involved past stopping the truck.”

“Then what?”

Teddy sighed. “Depends on the Black Mesa pack at that point. Best case, they just agree to release the migrants and we all go our separate ways.”

“And worst case?”

Agent Ruthersford took a bite of an apple that had come from his lunch and chewed thoughtfully. “We kill them all and let whoever’s left alive go to start their new lives.”

“That’s pretty harsh Teddy.”

“They are being taken to their deaths. If we do nothing, thirty people all die. We’ll avoid violence if we can, but I have a feeling there will be blood.”

I felt in my bones it would come to lead. And I was strangely comfortable with it. I was only concerned about collateral damage. Teddy was right, if we didn’t intervene, the Mexicans were worm food. If there was killing to be done, I’d do my share.

“There’s something else, Cash. I found some information related to your father.”

“You did? That’s awesome, Teddy, what did you find out.” I felt excitement flush through me, but a bit of it died when I saw the look on my partner's face.

“It’s not all flattering,” he said apologetically.

“What do you mean?”

“What I have been able to find is later stuff. Close to when he and your mother died. He was regarded as something of a loose cannon. There’s mention of using him less and less and only against the most powerful ‘problems’”.

“Oh,” was all I could manage.

“There’s more. Toward the end, he seemed to do more and more ‘freelance’ work, without being paid by the government. There was concern that he was being employed by third parties or was self-interested.”

“He went vigilante?”

“Maybe,” Teddy admitted. “It’s not clear. The file mentions the ‘Scissors of Severing’. Very powerful. The tone is almost fearful, but it doesn’t detail what they did.”

I swallowed and nodded. I saw the rage in my dream doppelganger's eye. The madness. Is that what had become of my father? Is that what would become of me?

“The last mention I found was employing him to ‘resolve’ a problem referred to as the Dreamer”.

“Any relation to the Sleeper?”

Teddy shrugged. “It ends there. I can do some more research about the Dreamer, but that’s all about your dad. A lot of it looks scrubbed.”

I stared out the window at the ashen sky. The rain looked cold.

My partner stood and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Go home and get some sleep Cash. You look like shit.”

I stood and stretched. Teddy returned to his desk. “But bring your full kit tomorrow. We are going to war with the Black Mesa pack.”

I packed up my things and trooped down to the gym. Nothing like a little sweat to clear your head. As I warmed up on the treadmill, I thought about my father. I was so young when he and my mother died, what could I trust from my memory? He had always seemed kind. I had memories of him and my mother together and they had both been happy. Idyllic. Could he have been a hired gun for the magic mafia? Or a solo vigilante, taking out those that he considered ‘too dangerous’, decided on by him alone? Which of those was worse? It was hard to reconcile either of those images with the sweater wearing dad from my recollection.

I started on my first set of pull-ups. And what about Chief Northcutt? I was convinced that he was stealing from the Agency. My problem was the motive. Why would he do that? Was Director Barnum involved? And more importantly, what relation did Northcutt have with the Sleeper? Had the Sleeper found out about Northcutt’s theft and was he using it as leverage to blackmail him into influencing our investigations? Or did they have a more intimate connection? Or maybe it was all just a coincidence and the two things were unrelated. And what about the raid that Tina had told me about? Was he involved with that? Did he sell her parents out, or was it just a coincidence?

I started alternating between weighted dips and squats. I tried to run each scenario through my mind and see what my intuition bit on. Northcutt was bad, that was clear. I didn’t feel like Barnum was involved in this, but something was troubling about her. I got the sense that Northcutt was involved with the Sleeper, but I couldn’t divine how close the two were.

I was really sweating now and it spurred me to work harder. I tried to focus my sense on my father and was surprised by a feeling of neutrality. He rang as neither good nor bad in my head. An image came to mind. Lady Justice. Unseeing, but with her scales perfectly balanced, sword ready. The very symbol of impartiality. That felt closer, but not quite there.

I put on some weighted gloves and started on the heavy bag. What would we find tomorrow? Despite my certainty, it would come to violence, I hoped that we could keep at least one of the pack alive. We needed answers about the Sleeper. What was he trying to accomplish? Who was he working with?

Jump rope now. Sweat poured off my body in rivulets. My vintage Foo Fighters concert t-shirt was soaked through, so I peeled it off. I started jumping, slowly at first, then increasing the pace. My heart thudded in my chest. Pounding. What about Tina? Had what she proposed made sense? If I were to die, I would want someone to benefit. Was I above a sham marriage to make sure that Tina and Felicity didn’t have to worry about money?

The corded rope blurred around me, cutting through the air. I discovered so much in the past few days, but so much remained a mystery. I quickened my pace until the steady “whump-whump” of the rope became almost a continuous sound. I kept it up as long as I could, but finally, my body faltered, and the rope caught my foot. I collapsed in a heap, legs too weary to hold me up. I was gasping for air, like a freshly caught trout desperately trying to move water over its gills.

I rolled around like a turtle for a few moments trying to free myself from the tangled rope. My arms and legs refused to obey my commands. My brain eventually reoxygenated and I was able to stand. Taken down by a jump rope, pitiful.

I skipped the shower and drove home. I fired up the gas grill and threw on some chicken breasts I had marinating in the fridge and some sweet potato wedges. I pulled it all off to cool and grabbed a beer from the fridge before I jumped in the shower. Shower beers are the best. The Newcastle Brown Ale was gone before I knew it and I threw on some gym shorts and another t-shirt. This one featured a cute cartoon ghost holding a beer in each hand with the tagline “I’m only here for the boos.” Appropriate for the season, I figured.

I had just sat down to eat when there was a knock at my door. Shit, I was so hungry. I grabbed one of my Rugers and peeked out of the blinds near the front door. There was a bright yellow Jeep Wrangler parked in my driveway. It had quite a few aftermarket parts and I whistled low at the black powder-coated front bumper and winch. I angled the blinds toward the door and I saw a familiar-looking woman with deep chestnut hair. It was Alicia. Double shit.

I ran my fingers through my hair and cupped a hand in front of my face to check my breath. All I could smell was beer. Great. I decocked my pistol and opened the door. Alicia was wearing a pair of distressed jeans, a white tank top, and a dark brown, double-breasted jacket that was cut at three-quarter length with extra material that flowed around her. She smiled at me with a bright white mouth that held too many teeth. “Good evening, Cash. May I come in?”

I tucked my pistol behind my back and held the door open for her. “It’s not like vampires where I have to invite you in or anything?”

“No,” she said seriously as she stepped past me. I was shooting for funny, but I had apparently missed the mark. Her voluminous hair smelled like oak leaves and lilac and my knees went a bit weak, although it was probably from low blood sugar.

“I was just about to eat,” I called after her. I put my Ruger back on my pistol belt. “Can I get you anything?”

She pulled a chair out from my dining room table and turned it around before she sat, arms over the back. “I’d love a beer. Please eat, I didn’t mean to interrupt your dinner.”

I angled through the kitchen and grabbed two more Newcastles from the fridge. I opened them both and handed her one before sitting back down before my meal. She took several long swallows from her beer while I finally dug into my chicken. We eyed one another and waited for the other to speak. It was honestly a comfortable silence and I made my way through an entire breast and half my potatoes before I felt compelled to speak. Alicia worked on her beer and looked around my home with an appraising eye.

“So, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I didn’t make it by the office today. I wanted to check on you after.” She paused. “Last night.”

I swallowed and washed it down with some beer. “Yeah, that was quite a time. Thank you for saving us. That big fucker was gonna gut us for sure. Why didn’t you stick around? I was worried that I was going to run into more on the way back to the car.”

Alicia’s face cracked into a broad grin. “Oh Cash, I was making sure that you wouldn’t encounter any more of the Black Mesa Putos. Afterward you left the park?.” She waved a hand. “Well, let’s just say that I have certain urges that are hard to control if I shift during a full moon. It makes it difficult to be around polite company.”

I finished my meal and pushed the plate aside. “I’m polite company now? Another beer?” I noticed she was empty.

Alicia eyed the empty beer bottle. “Do you have any tequila?

I stood. “Sure. Ice?”

She shook her head, so I returned to the table with a glass tumbler and a bottle of Don Julio 1942. Her eyes lit up, “I see you are a gentleman of quality,” she cooed. Alicia popped the cork and poured while I bussed the table and grabbed another beer for myself. I sat back down across from her as she took a sip from the tumbler. She closed her eyes and rolled it around in her mouth, before swallowing.

We stared at each other again and I was determined not to crack this time. Several sips of my expensive tequila later, she cracked. “I wanted to tell you that you did a good job. Both in the alley and in the park. Killing weres is not an easy thing. Both doing it and living with it.”

“Uh, thanks.” The third beer was finally catching up with me. My head swam a bit. Did I really have a werewolf in my house? “But, as I said, if you hadn’t shown up, I’m pretty sure Agent Ruthersford and I would have been pushing up daisies.”

Alicia’s brown eyes flared with intensity. “I’m not so sure about that. There’s something special about you, Cash. Something extra. You shouldn’t underestimate yourself.”

I wondered if I should tell her about the Archetype or if I was supposed to keep that a secret. I felt like we still hadn’t broached the reason for her visit. “Surely, you didn’t drive all the way out here to tell me what a badass I am.”

A cloud passed over her fierce gaze. “That’s true.” She emptied her glass and refilled it. “Seeing me in my altered form can be jarring.” She spoke haltingly, lacking her usual confidence. She was picking her words. She paused and changed tact, “What did you think of me? As a wolf?”

I sat back and took a long pull of beer to give myself a moment to think. This seemed like a potential minefield, and I missed monster etiquette day in school. I realized I had no idea if I would offend her or not. I had really fucked things up at the Smokey Oak. But, I just went for it. At the end of the day I am a straight ahead kind of guy, I don’t think I know any other way. And those Newcastles were making my tongue feel honest, and a bit poetic. “You were amazing. Magnificent. You came into that park like a force of nature, a lightning strike. You made that grey coyote look like a cute, tiny puppy.``

She smiled at the praise until I got to the last statement about her size.

“And my appearance, didn’t scare you? Repulse you?”

At last, we came to it. She was afraid that now that I had seen her, I was going to treat her differently. Be scared. Not be attracted to her. “Honestly Alicia, you fucking terrified me. You were a giant werewolf that could tear the head from my body with a single swipe. I am just a man that didn’t know monsters existed a month ago. How could I not be scared?”

She visibly deflated, so I continued. “But you asked two different questions. Was I scared? Yes, that’s a normal human reaction. Was I repulsed? No. You were majestic. Regal. And your eyes. Your eyes were still Alicia. I could tell it was still you.

She stood up and looked out the window. It was getting dark now, the setting sun covered the landscape in a soft orange blanket. “It’s hard,” she started. “For me to connect to people since the change. I wonder. Am I a woman that wears the mask of a wolf? Or, have I become a wolf disguised as a woman?”

I was smart enough to know that I was in no way qualified to answer that question. And years of marriage taught me that she didn’t want me to. Alicia continued to look outside and we shared another comfortable silence. She drained her glass again and began to stalk toward me.

“You know Cash, my kind typically only consorts with other weres.”

The prey instinct in my lizard brain flared to life. I was being hunted. I stood from my chair and began to inch away from her. “That makes sense, I guess.”

“We generally only fuck humans once in a while.” She licked her lips and desire shone in her eyes. “For fun. More than once or twice and there tends to be. Injuries.” She had closed the distance between us and my back was now against the wall. Her jacket had fluttered open and she pressed her barely-contained breasts against my chest. Her sizable nipples distended the thin fabric of her shirt. The lilac scent of her hair had been replaced by another, more savory, smell. She placed a palm against the wall next to my head.

I tried like hell to keep my breathing steady. My mouth was salivating profusely. I was in full on fight or flight. “That sounds painful,” I heaved.

She gave me a predatory smile. Fun fact. Wolves have forty-two teeth. Ten more than people. I looked it up. “Oh, it is. I promise,” she purred. And then our mouths were together. She pressed me bodily against the wall and I was aware of just how strong she was, even as a human. She roughly seized me by the side of my neck and forced her tongue into my mouth. My tequila tasted delicious. Just as my lust was overcoming my fear, she broke the kiss and held my chin in her hand.

“That’s what I wanted from you. At first. Just to fuck you.” She turned my head to the side a bit as if to inspect me. The Latina accent was out in full force and way she said ‘fuck’ made my spine tingle.

“But now?” My mouth was wet from her saliva, but I didn’t wipe it away. I was having trouble catching my breath.

“But now.” Her brow wrinkled. The self-assured predator was gone and I saw the indecision and discomfort return. “But now, I have to go. Goodnight Cash.” She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and went to the door. She moved quickly, as if she was afraid she would lose her resolve and give into her animal impulses. I tried to follow but my enormous erection made it difficult to hurry. She paused at the door and closed her coat against the chill. She gave me a final, quick smile with her too many teeth, and then she was gone.

I hunched over my dining room table and took slow deep breaths to relieve the tension in my groin. I am pretty sure this is how men my age suffered strokes. It wasn’t healthy to move that much blood around so quickly.

There was another knock. Urgent. Thank Christ. I hurried over and flung the door open only to get smashed across the jaw. The world went light then dark as my brain bounced off my skull.

I came to only a few moments later to find a finely shaped woman dragging me back into my own house, feet first. But when she turned around, it wasn’t Alicia. I stared into the slit eyes of Fu Zhang Long. She slapped me across the face, way harder than I felt was strictly necessary.

“I believe you have some things of mine,” she hissed.