I stumbled out onto the street and nearly slipped on the cobbles as they span around and around. Had I gotten worse in the last… how long it was since I’d talked to Jodie? I’d walked out of the bathroom, shuffled through the crowd at the bar, and left. It can’t have been more than a minute, and I could barely remember what she looked like. I rubbed my eyes and tilted my head back. The sky was white with stars but still black. Where did I live? I looked down and tried to get at my keys. My hands weren’t working as they should have. When I pulled my right hand out of my jeans the skin on the back of it scraped off as if it were tissue, and feathers stuck out.

I looked at it for a second, missing the obvious question, and tried to decipher what kind of feathers they were. They were dark and small, and when I pulled them out they flitted off into the air, a small bundle of feathers with no discernible shape leaving behind smooth, clear skin.

I didn’t know what to do, so I walked. Was I going towards home? Where was my flat? The street signs melted like Rorschach tests. In some recess of my mind I knew that I wasn’t this drunk, but the dream logic of the real world caught me.

I hit the cobblestone and they scattered like marbles beneath me and I fell into the void below. I looked back up, the stones were going back to their positions and cutting me off from the sky, still white with stars, still unnaturally black. I was left in the dark, floating, soft pressure enveloping me. I tried to scream but there was no air, when I inhaled whatever was pressing on me flowed into my lungs, but I didn’t choke. I stayed there, curled up, breathing thick nothingness, compressed like a foetus until I lost consciousness, out of boredom more than anything. As sleep got to me I felt gravity shift inside of me, lifting a space inside of me along the only sensible vector in this world.

“Chloe? Chloe, are you dead?” A voice exploded in my head. Was someone using magic on me? “Oh good, you’re alive.” No, it was just the hangover. I opened my eyes and saw Katrine crouching over me, silver-rimmed glasses magnifying a concerned look on her face. “Coffee?”

“Where are we?” I asked, after she’d propped me up on the wall and stood back up.

“About a mile away from your little hidey-hole.” She said, “You gave Jodie quite the cut, you’re lucky it didn’t have time to scar.”

“I don’t think I was that lucky.” I showed her my palm, a few tufts of tissue were stuck to it but it was still open, and stung when I moved my hand.

“That looks pretty bad, give it here.” I did, and she produced some antiseptic from her purse. “Never leave the house without it.” I tried not to wince when she cleaned it up.

“What’s the time?” I asked, Katrine didn’t look up.

“It’s about seven in the morning, you’ve been out six hours, or so,” she replied. “Yeah this needs stitches.” She produced something that looked like a medical test kit and tore the top off a sealed packet. “I don’t have gloves on me but the alternative is taking you on the tube with that and I don’t want you dying of sepsis before we reach the shop.”

“Wait, hold on,” I interrupted, “You’re going to sew me up right here?” she shrugged, “no anaesthetic, nothing?”

“I didn’t bring anaesthetic, besides you’re a big girl. Anyway, chances are I’ll be suturing far worse wounds in far worse conditions” I didn’t reply to that, and let her sew my palm up, giving up on trying not to wince. I took a drink from my coffee with my free hand, there was a strange rash on it I hadn't noticed it before.

“I had the weirdest dream last night.” I said, trying to make conversation.

“Oh? Go on then” she replied, politely intrigued.

“I… can’t actually remember. It felt real, like, really real, it felt like it happened when I was awake, but I can’t remember what happened.”

“Waking dreams that you can’t remember?”

“Yeah. And weird ones, I think I was drowning or something.”

“Magic weakens the barrier between this world and the fae world,” Katrine tied off one suture, “It isn’t enough to travel across, I don't think any human even could. But your mind, if sufficiently… addled, could dream of it. And if what Jodie says was right, you were very addled.”

“But it didn’t feel like a dream, I don't remember ever falling asleep. Are you sure it wasn’t anything more?”

“I’m sure. Humans can’t exist in the fae realm, I'm not even sure if physics works there like it does here, who can tell what would happen to physical atoms in a dimension that just isn’t physical?”

“But if it’s the fae realm,” I loosely remembered fairy tales of, well, fairies, “how come everyone in stories can always go there and come back safe?” I sounded like an idiot to myself, but Katrine had mentioned folklore.

“It isn’t an exact parallel. Calling it the fae is something of a misnomer, it doesn’t really map that well to gaelic or welsh mythology. When I started researching them I tried to fit them into that box, but it didn’t last. The name did, though. I suppose the Otherworld would be a better name for it, but ‘fae’ seems to have stuck.” She tied the next stitch. “Of course, you could have just had a bad bit of seafood somewhere.”

“There, all done,” Katrine put a bandage on my hand, “Clean it every day and replace the bandaging when you do. Sid will have hidden some medical supplies in your flat.” I thought back to the day we’d moved in. Dotty had tried to move all the dressings and bandages into a drawer somewhere to make room for her makeup, and they’d all fallen out and onto her. We’d both laughed then. I mumbled a thanks, and pulled myself up. My head pounded when I moved. I looked down, Katrine had done well.

“I thought you weren’t that kind of doctor?” I wiggled my fingers to check that I could

“I’m not, but in our line of work I end up cleaning up a lot of messes.”

“Your.” I mumbled again.

“Hm?” Katrine packed everything back in her purse.

“Your line of work. I’m out of all this.”

Katrine stood up and dusted herself off. “I’m sorry, Chloe but that’s-”

“I don’t care. I’m leaving. I’m taking Dotty and I'm leaving London, and I’m never looking back.”

“They’ll find you.”

“No they won’t, we both have family spread around the country. We’ve been talking about it for a while.” We hadn’t, I didn't realise I wanted to leave till after I'd said the words.

“I killed someone, Katrine. I took a person, a real-life person, and I broke his neck.”

“He would have killed you first. And if you leave London, more people will try to kill you”

“And what if they should?” a cold wind shook me, I wasn’t wearing my hoodie. “I killed someone on a reflex. If I can commit murder just like that, maybe it’s safer for everyone that I don’t have that option.” I was thankful that nobody was around to hear me.

“The last person who had that thought tried to commit genocide, Chloe. That’s what this is, that’s what they’re doing. You defended yourself against someone that, given the opportunity, would have murdered tens, hundreds of people like you, most of which would never even know how to do half of what you can.” Katrine’s voice was soft, flippant. “We’re keeping innocent people safe, Chloe. This is what being the good guys means. It isn’t pretty, but what we do saves lives.”

I slid back down onto the ground, and Katrine sat next to me. “You’ve been through a lot, and you haven’t had anywhere to cope and recover. Well, nowhere healthy.”

“No shit.”

“Here.” She held out a business card, “My therapist. He’s good at keeping his mouth shut if you need to talk.”

“Thanks.” The two of us sat together in silence for a while as I tried to make sense of the world.

“If nothing else, Jodie seems to be warming to you nicely.” Katrine finally said.

“How do you know?” my hand stung just a bit harder thinking back

“She didn’t break your nose.”