That left Riordan standing awkwardly in the kitchen. He’d missed the breakfast rush, though not by much. None of the pack was hanging around today. Word had probably gotten around about the guests staying here. He wondered if this was one of the packs that told everyone everything that was happening, one of the packs that hid everything from the average member unless required, or some in-between state. Before Riordan could get himself worked up into a fuss, Norris appeared in front of him and pressed a plate piled high with food into his hands.

“Sit,” Norris ordered kindly. “Agent Ahlgren said you volunteered to enter the notes into an organized digital format. I’ll show you to a computer you can use for that, but not until you eat enough. You are looking under the weather, though not nearly as badly as poor Agent Morrish.”

Riordan knew better than to argue with the uncontested master of this kitchen and took his plate over to the dining table. He set it down and fetched a drink to go with it, saying, “Magic often has unanticipated consequences. Quinn’s magic just has even more than most.”

Like insanity or death. Riordan didn’t say that aloud, but he didn’t need to.

Norris nodded with a sad sigh. “I’ve seen a lot of things in my life. The worst are always atrocities committed by otherwise good people. I lived in the South during Jim Crow. Hell, I fought in the American Civil war, though that was long enough ago that I was barely an adult by any standards then. The human capacity to be selective in their empathy is the greatest evil I know. To be able to reduce a human being to worth less than an object. To delight in pain. And all of that is possible even without the corruption of death magic. That young man is impressive in his fortitude, hanging onto his goodness under that pressure.”

Even knowing how old shifters could live, it was always strange to have evidence of what that age meant put in front of Riordan. Norris was old enough to have seen slavery in the US and all the ways it had evolved over the years. He’d also seen the shifts in women’s rights. Riordan wondered how long the man had been married to Vera. The pack leader was clearly in some sort of relationship with Frankie now, but Norris wasn’t upset about it. Indeed, he seemed to think the pair of women were adorable in their romance and just wished them well. Riordan hadn’t met a man who had lived through such cultural changes and pressures and come out so… unrepressed, he guessed.

Riordan had felt the pressure from his own family to comply with gender standards. They expected him to marry a nice Jewish girl and start breeding a large family, even if the natures of most of their shifter animals meant the grown members of the family had a tendency to be independent. Still, his mother had made a secure home for them all to leave and return to, one that was already brimming with her grandchildren when Riordan left. He hadn’t thought of his birth home and family in a long time. Or rather, when he did think of them, Riordan never thought of them past the point that he exited their lives.

Now he wondered how many nieces and nephews and even new siblings he had that he’d never met. He wondered what his parents told them about him or if he was never mentioned. Riordan had been young and headstrong when he left and the parting was loud and argumentative. He hadn’t kept in contact and they hadn’t reached out either, a fact made even more difficult by the lack of internet at the time. Even phone systems weren’t as well developed and he’d been nomadic enough to have no number of his own. He could have written them a letter, but was too stubborn. He made it hard for them to find him and then blamed them for not reaching out first.

Riordan wondered if they knew about his exile. The internet had existed by then, though most people were still using dial-up modems and social media hadn’t taken off yet. That happened a few years later and by then, he was a homeless drifter that everyone treated like a ghost, for all that he was still alive. Did his family speak about him at all or had they written Riordan out of the family for his sins?

It wouldn’t be anything he didn’t deserve, but the thought still stung, piercing deep in a place that had never questioned that he could go home at any time. Maybe that was why he’d never let himself think about it too deeply, because if he looked at what returning home would take, Riordan was afraid that home would no longer exist for him.

That was another quiet blow to his self-identity, coming from an unexpected quarter. Riordan set it aside, not letting himself dwell on it. It might not be that bad after all. Yes, he had a lot to apologize and make up for, but maybe he’d still be welcomed. He resolved to look for any of his relatives on the internet later. They wouldn’t be using the same names, but he might be able to find a family tree or something to help him figure out either more recent members or new identities.

Before he could spiral further down that mental rabbit hole, Norris cleared his throat, jabbing one wrinkly finger at the plate in front of Riordan. He realized that he’d been staring off into space and not eating. A blush of embarrassment colored his cheeks as Riordan dutifully began to eat.

He paused long enough, swallowing fully, to return to their conversation. “There’s been a lot of hurt done by this death mage we’re fighting here. Do you have advice for how to approach those left behind?”

“Informing any loved ones of the deaths of the victims will likely be the job of the police,” Norris answered once he was sure Riordan was eating again. “If you have to speak with them, the key is to remember to be respectful and patient. They are going to be overwhelmed and shocked. They might lash out or be confused, but you just stand solid, letting them wear themselves out against you or repeating things if needed. Being calm, quiet, steady, and present goes a long way in those moments.”

Norris looked thoughtful and concerned as he continued, leaning on the edge of the counter. “As rough as those conversations might be, I’m more worried about the death mage’s other victims. The survivors will need a lot of help to recover.”

“Survivors?” Riordan asked, confused himself. He was the only one he knew who had survived being hung on the tree.

“The people who are following her, like that young woman you mentioned,” Norris explained. “If she truly believes in this death mage, whether via magical manipulation or just plain old cult brainwashing, it’s going to mess her up to have that ripped away and her leader revealed as a user and fraud. Even the ones who are more in the know, helping with the kidnappings and killings, may believe their actions are justified. It’s hard to live with yourself after doing something horrible and then being told that all your reasons were based on lies.”

Gods, that one hit home hard. Riordan had to stop eating as his stomach tied in queasy knots. He’d been that loyal follower before, trusting the wrong person up until he was holding a gun pointed at a shifter child and wondering how the hell he’d ended up there, doing that. Yet, every step of the way had felt like it made sense at the time, if he worked on the assumption that his team were the good guys and everything they did was for a good reason. Only, he’d stopped questioning those reasons. It would have only taken one more moment of not questioning for Riordan to have done the irredeemable, likely joining the rest of his team in their executions.

Or worse. They could have succeeded if Riordan hadn’t turned on them mid-mission. They could have all gone on to do more. To do worse, though he wasn’t sure what worse would look like.

“Oh,” Riordan said quietly. “Yes.”

“You understand,” Norris nodded. “A fight never ends at the moment the villain loses, not outside of fiction stories. And that’s even when you have an actual villain and not just a bunch of morally ambiguous people who all think they are in the right.”

Riordan was reminded once more of the wars Norris had lived through. He was an American who knew what it was like to experience war in his homeland. He also had lived through every major war since then as well and probably fought in a number of them. Norris didn’t seem like someone who would have dodged his duty as a soldier just to let some other young human go off to die in his place. He’d seen all sorts of things justified in the name of the greater good and the devastation left in its wake.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Riordan assured him. He meant it. He already had managed to be compassionate towards the ghosts, even when they were sometimes horrible people. Even when it was Jimmy. He would have to try to bring that mindfulness with him, though he wouldn’t let himself hesitate to choose his own allies over his enemies, if it came to it. He just would do his best not to let it come to it.

Norris seemed content to leave Riordan to finish his meal with that thought weighing heavily on him, moving off to finish cleaning up the kitchen. Riordan tried to help after he’d eaten his fill, but Norris wasn’t having any of that, quickly shuffling Riordan off to another part of the pack house. This was a less public section, less for the casual community access and more for the actual work of managing the pack.

He saw several signs saying “Sleeping Bear Christian Camp” near a few of the rooms. He’d heard that name before, when he’d stopped in Empire with the apprentices. It was clearly the mundane cover for the existence of the pack lands, hiding in plain sight. Riordan felt a twinge of discomfort at the Christian aspect of it. For all his mixed religious background and the prevalence of Christianity, he’d never been introduced to that faith except from the outside. When combined with his skin color and the attitude of Americans towards anyone of Arabian origin, he’d never had anyone try to teach him the good sides of its tenants. Most ignored him, but the ones who did approach him were most likely those who wanted to tell him why their religion said he was going to hell.

Riordan wasn’t sure he believed in hell. He knew that ghosts were real and that they passed beyond the Veil to some sort of afterlife, but no one really knew what that afterlife was. If anything, Riordan was inclined to believe that one’s own expectations likely shaped at least part of it. After all, belief was one of the strongest underpinnings of reality. Belief could bring spirits into existence. Belief manipulated magic, casting spells with intention. Belief re-wrote reality itself, over and over. Some scholars argued that gods must exist, because there were too many people who believed in them for it to be otherwise, though none could say what would come first in that case: the belief or the god.

Being an atheist was easier. Riordan only had himself to answer to. He set his own code of morality, not because of any outside pressure, but because that was how he wanted to live. He’d slipped, both with the events leading up to his exile and with his despondent wandering afterwards, though some of that could be excused with the way he lost absolutely everything aside from his life and magic all at once. It had left him unmoored and he’d drifted in more ways than one.

Whatever else this disaster resulted in, it had shaken Riordan out of his apathy and inertia. He wouldn’t have returned to his old life, even if he’d still been marked as an exile and hadn’t been granted spirit magic. He wasn’t sure what he would have chosen then, but it would have been something more active. Riordan wasn’t content to let himself not fight for a life worth living anymore.

He was a survivor, Riordan realized, just as much as he was a fighter. That felt important. He’d have to think about it more.