Connor wasn’t even sure he was pressing down the gas pedal anymore. It felt like the car was, not quite rolling downhill, but rather being pulled towards something. The fact that the road was still perfectly maintained was incredibly suspicious. He couldn’t see anything beyond the wall of trees, and the road between them. Fortunately he had gotten used to the smell by now.

  “You need to take a left turn when an off-ramp comes up.” Sera said, leaning back in the back.

  Connor gave her a look through the rear-view mirror. “What? There is nothing but trees here. “

  She nodded “Exactly.”

  He continued driving, his focus only on the road, ignoring the trees as well as the sensation of unending hunger that emanated from everywhere around him.

  Incredibly, absurdly there was an off-ramp. It looked odd. The pristine surface of the freeway terminating immediately into a dirt road. There was a single road sign, a wooden post planted into the ground. It read Granny’s House. Of course, it did.

  “Oh this feels good.” Kellan said, looking around as they drove toward their destination.

  Sera nodded. Connor, didn’t agree, but it wouldn’t do to say anything contradictory.

  “Like the opposite of homesickness” Sera said “ Is there a word for that? “

  Kellan shrugged. Connor looked at the recorder. Apparently he had not turned it off. The air here smelled like wood, smoke and wild mint. The buzzing of billions and billions of insects filled every space outside. Since the Seventies, the amount of wildlife on earth had decreased by almost fifty percent. Maybe they all came here. The headlights cast their spotlight on the house. The house is quiet. Bigger than it should be. Older.

  The grass was freshly cut. Someone had left a laundry basket on the steps, still warm with towels. Connor panicked, how was he able to know that they were warm from his current position. A radio played faint old music somewhere inside. Connor put the car next to another, turning of the recorder. He left the car.

  Normal.

  Deceptively, terrifyingly normal. The trees were trees. Nothing more.

  Kellan came up beside her, Seraph trailing behind, already waving toward the porch where people had begun to gather.

  “Yeah,” Kellan muttered. “It’s like that.”

  Connor’s eyes swept across the area, noting the people emerging from the dusk dark they’d just stepped out of the backfields.

  A man in a feed cap.

  A woman with a baby on one hip and a beer in the other hand.

  Two teens playing cards on the porch swing.

  A shaggy old hound with mismatched eyes lying on the steps.

  Faces like poems carved in stone.

  He really has been driving for too long if his thoughts have degraded to this level.

  A tall man who never speaks, just watches.

  A woman with white hair and calloused fingers who grips Connor’s hand like she’s checking his pulse through his skin.

  A pair of twins, not quite identical, who speak in rounds and vanish when no one’s looking.

  He doesn’t know what their names are, or how many times he introduced himself.

  As far as he could tell, none of them were enchanted. Or cloaked. Or glamoured.

  But all of them were off.

  Not dangerously.

  Not grotesquely.

  Just off in the way that people sometimes are when they’ve lived too long in a place the world forgot.

  But right now, Connor can’t exactly trust his own judgment. The tall man had a raspy voice and Connors immediate conclusion had been to declare that this was a man that never speaks, and only watches.

  Kellan chuckled. “Told you.”

  He paused “Just folks.”

  Connor didn’t answer.

  One of the aunts waved them in, the porch light glowing just a little brighter.

  The house was old, sprawling in that way that suggested additions made across generations, none of them by professionals. The porch light flickered once and then steadied, as if blinking at their arrival. The front porch sagged just a little. Wind chimes made of cutlery clinked gently in the breeze.

  Next to the stairs there was a boy, barefoot, even in the gravel. His shadow flickered in the wrong direction.

  Someone had painted protection runes, or just really flaky paint, along the porch railings. Connor hoped they were written with rust. Not blood.

  The door was open, and Sera has pulled the buzzing aunties away for a conversation.

  Inside, it smelled like citrus, sage, and something that doesn’t have a name.

  Granny Cross didn’t look up when they entered the house. She just keeps peeling. She is calm, practiced, perfectly still except for her hands and the rhythmic shh, shh, shh of the blade.

  The knife never stops moving. Long, unbroken curls of red apple skin fall into a chipped ceramic bowl.

  Slow down Connor, he thought to himself, let’s take this slowly.

  Granny Cross sat in a rocking chair peeling an apple. Connor looked at her carefully. If grandmother was a species, this would be the prime specimen. The platonic ideal of the grandmother. She's definitely a grandmother, but Connor wasn’t sure if that implied, she was also human.

  She was dressed in layers, an old cardigan that’s been patched over so many times it might count as its own bibliography, a dress patterned with small wildflowers, slippers with worn soles. Her hair’s braided and coiled like a crown. The lines in her face could be mistaken for age.

  This woman was not just old.

  She was engraved. Face like a poem, carved in stone.

  Kellan paused beside Connor, but he doesn’t speak. There was something in his posture, respect, sure. But something else, too. A slight edge of caution.

  Connor stepped closer, slowly, keeping his breathing even. His senses prickled. Not because of what he felt from Granny Cross, but because of what he doesn’t.

  No aura.

  No magical field.

  No pressure or scent of power.

  Nothing that would indicate her abnormality, or even her existence in the same space as Connor.

  Just absence.

  She cut the apple, a singular practiced motion. She held up the slices. Kellan took his without thought or worry. She held her hand out to Connor.

  Connor blinked. “I-excuse me?”

  Granny just waved her hand. “Paranoid little soldier aren’t you. “Her voice is, well its exactly like a grandmother would sound like.

  Connor doesn’t answer.

  Kellan wasn’t next to him anymore.

  Connor’s chair scraped back hard enough to rattle the old floorboards beneath him.

  “Where did he go?!” he snapped, voice sharp and low.

  But Granny Cross didn’t flinch.

  She didn’t rise.

  She just looked at Connor with one eye that burned green like new growth in spring, terrible, wild, ancient and the other clouded with centuries of unsaid truths.

  “Don’t be so short-tempered, legionary,” she said, voice calm, cutting. “You’re not in a pit anymore. You’re in my house. Sit yourself down, before you spark something older than either of us wants to deal with.”

  Connor’s nostrils flared.

  Because there was no threat in Granny’s voice. Just certainty.

  “What did you do to him?” he asked again, more measured now. Kellan, despite being an acquaintance at best, was still the closest tether he had to normalcy at the moment.

  Granny placed the apple, whole, in the bowl beside the spirals of skin. She folded her hands on her lap.

  “I raised that boy, or tried to at least. When he wasn’t with his father. ” she said, gaze unyielding but not unkind. “ I don’t waste good fruit. He’s safe. He’s not gone. He’s elsewhere. Having a long-overdue conversation with that mother of his.”

  Connor’s eyes narrowed. “His mother is dead.”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Granny’s smile was cold and knowing.

  “So? There are a lot of things that still speak in this house.”

  Silence hung for a moment like fog that wouldn’t lift.

  “You summoned her?” he asked.

  “No.” Granny’s voice dipped. “They’ve been waiting. I just opened the door and let them in. It’s his choice whether to speak.”

  Connor’s fists clenched. He didn’t say anything.

  Granny’s eyes pinned him. The green burned brighter.

  “I’m not testing you, child. I’m giving him a truth he’s owed. You walked into a house.”

  Connor stood there for a long moment.

  Granny’s smile returned, light and approving.

  She continues. “We’ll talk. After supper.”

  Kellan returned. Angry and not at all satisfied. He refused to explain anything, just sat down at the table. Kellan smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

  “I was raised by people who loved me. That’s more than most.”

  Connor leaned closer, silently asking him to elaborate.

  Kellan hesitated.

  Granny’s voice floated from the head of the table. Something inane and happy, like one talked to family. Connor turned. Granny was watching. Always watching.

  Connor didn’t say anything. Just watched the window. Watched Granny.

  He ate the lamb. It tasted like rosemary, and lamb.

  They didn’t talk. Unsurprisingly.

  Connor tried to sleep, but when he closed his eyes, all he could see was that damn mound. So clearly sleep was not a good idea.

  Connor doesn’t sleep that night.

  Kellan does.

  Something was off.

  It’s the house. The people. The way everyone moves like they’re waiting for a curtain to drop on a stage Connor didn’t realize he’d stepped onto.

  They asked questions. They told stories. They used metaphors like bricks. For walls and windows. Everything was almost, everything was enough, but not quite. He was used to power games, to social cues, to reading weakness and dominance. He was used to pointless personal politicking, in the office and under suppressing fire. This wasn’t that.

  Kellan fit into it perfectly. So possibly, it was just a family thing, and Connor was not part of this family.

  He slipped out of bed around three. The air in the hall was cool. Still. He was dressed lightly, following that feeling that itched at the base of his skull.

  Downstairs, the house was dim. Lamps low, Fire flickering in the hearth, even though no one had touched it in hours. He found Granny in the kitchen, steeping something in a chipped porcelain mug. She looked up, unsurprised.

  “Saw you coming three minutes ago.”

  Connor swallows. “How?”

  Granny didn’t answer. Just pushes the mug toward him. It smelled like honey, dirt, and something else. “For the chill.”

  Connor doesn’t touch it.

  Granny doesn’t blink. Just says, “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Granny took a sip from her own cup. Then, slowly she said “His mother was lovely. Beautiful. Too soft, I think. For this world or any other. His father I don’t know very well.”

  Connor’s lips tightened.

  Granny’s eyes didn’t flicker. “Maybe he made a bargain. Didn’t read the terms. Paid the wrong way. Flowers die in autumn.”

  “Kellan?”

  “Collateral.”

  The words landed like ice.

  Connor didn’t respond. Then he asked

  “Does he know?”

  Granny’s face softened. Just slightly. “He’s collateral. But I’m not sure if his mother was a price” Connor wasn’t sure if she had said prize or price. She continued to speak “at all. Its much more likely that it was simply the fragility of human minds. The boy was loved, is loved. Because if he knew, or worse if I tell him and I’m wrong... you can’t fix ancient things, child. You can only survive them.”

  Connor looked away.

  Granny nodded. “He’s starting to see the seams. You’re part of that.”

  A beat.

  “You’re accelerating it.”

  Connor’s jaw clenches. “What does that mean?”

  “Lightning strike, Hairdryer, death. Heartbeat. No-name. Apotheosis. A shelf full of boxes in place without a name.”

  Silence.

  How does she know

  “You’re not kind,” Granny continued,

  Connor couldn’t decide if he felt seen or flayed.

  “Don’t pull her into this. Whatever this is.”

  Granny snorted. “I am not the one pulling. You and yours are.”

  Connor was silent. He took a breath and asked “What’s the mound? Who made it?”

  Granny looked at him. “All empires are the same, and so are their dogs.”

  Connor didn’t retort. Staying seated.

  Granny said, “If our neighbors would rather not be known by your kind, then I will not betray their trust.”

  “My kind?!” Connor hissed.

  “Americans. Soldiers. Dogs of the empire. The arms of the institutions. “She told him calmly.

  “People like you always say these things. What would you have me do? Where else could I do what I do?” Connor spoke, his tone clipped, voice filled with anger.

  Granny cackled. Her voice was weathered, paper-thin yet indomitable “I’m an old woman. I don’t need to offer solutions. My duty is to complain. “She stood up from the rocking chair, and the house tilted into her direction. She reached him.

  She tapped his chest, with claw-like fingernails. He could feel her bones. “You, you are a young man. Your duty is to breed and then die for the gain of your elders and your betters. Leaving your women alone, and your sons fatherless. So they can grow up to be,” she tapped his chest punctuating her statements “just.” Tap. “Like.” Tap. “You. “Tap.

  Connor felt exhausted suddenly. “Is that what you think? That it’s just that? “He asked, voice small.

  “Think?!” She stepped back, eyes blazing. “You think people were meant to have thoughts? Ideas “She shook her head. “Consciousness was, is a mistake. Ideas are nothing more than parasites.”

  She sat down in her chair, “Delusions that make people think they aren’t animals.”

  Connor couldn’t find a voice to answer with.

  “People should be we, and us. But here its only me, me, me.” She finishes.

  They sat in silence for a while. The mug in front of him on the table cools.

  Finally, Granny said, “There’s going to be a time when something tries to take him.”

  Connor looked up, asking a silent question.

  Granny shrugged. “Could be a person. Could be a story. Could be his own guilt. But it’ll come.”

  Connor didn’t flinch.

  Granny smiled.

  “Now drink the tea, sweetheart.”

  Connor takes the cup.

  He sat it back down. Didn’t drink anything.

  And the fire crackled, like it heard everything.

  They sat longer in silence. But whenever sleep came near, he saw the mound again and didn’t dare go further into sleep.

  Connor only noticed that there was another person when they started talking.

  The voice cut through the quiet like a blade across silk. It was thin, sharp, and entirely unexpected.

  Connor turned, instinctively reaching for his weapon.

  No footsteps. No door. No flicker of movement in his peripheral. Just... there.

  A figure in the far corner of the kitchen, tucked into shadow like they were born in it.

  Young, or possibly just timeless.

  Hood up, clothes loose, gender not applicable. Smile very obvious. All crooked teeth and the kind of casual malice that didn’t need volume to feel dangerous.

  “Like seriously, ” the stranger said, dragging their words like gum over gravel, “you’re such a piece of shit.”

  Connor didn’t respond at first. Just stared. Then, calmly“You going to explain who the fuck you are before or after I break your jaw?”

  Granny didn’t blink. Didn’t warn. Didn’t intervene.

  The stranger laughed. “Oh don’t bother. I heal fast.”

  Connor stepped forward, standing up from the table, slow, deliberate. “Are you one of the 'others'? The family?”

  They tilted their head. “Something like that.”

  Connor, usually wasn’t glad to experience hostility. But at least this was something he was familiar with.

  “You don’t like me,” Connor said, tone flat. It wasn’t a question.

  “Oh no, I do,” they said, hopping up to sit on the edge of the counter like they belonged there. “I like you so much.” They gaged “it makes me gag.” They dry heaved “You’re a horrible little goblin. Self-obsessed. Craves power like its sugar. Calls love a game just so you don’t have to lose it.”

  Connor’s mouth twitched, there seems to be a huge misunderstanding.

  “And you like hurting him,” the stranger continued. “You do it intellectually. You push him with words, with silence, with knowing exactly when to look away and when to stare too long. You’re not toxic. That’s boring. You’re... spoiled.”

  Connor’s jaw ticks. Projection. Dangerous.

  “But.” They raise a finger.

  “Unlike the others who shared Julie’s bed,”

  Connor, didn’t know anyone named Julie. Or at least not anyone who he is involved with in that way. He originally thought that this was about Kellan again, and he would have to clear up another misunderstanding. The person (?) continued their tirade

  “and believe me, I know the others, you don’t want to break him and leave. You want to ruin him. Over and over. “

  They took a deep breath “And Over and Over and Over and Over and Over and Over and “

  They were screaming now, voice odd. “You want to break him into your shape but keep him just enough himself that he’s still fascinating.”

  They leaned forward, voice dropping to a hush: “Which is better, I guess. More honest.”

  Connor crossed his arms, cold and unshaken.

  The stranger grinned again. “Nah. I Just thought someone should say it. He won’t. He loves you.”

  Silence. A thick, moist silence.

  “You’re the first person he brought here.” The grin faded, just a fraction. “And the first one who’s looked even slightly better since knowing him.”

  Connor stepped forward, voice low, deadly.

  “I don’t know who or what the fuck you are, I don’t know who Julien” The stranger gasped “Is.”

  “I won’t.” The stranger said.

  Won’t what, Connor asked himself.

  The words of the stranger were quick.

  Final.

  Certain.

  “Because I can’t. Not unless he asks me to.”

  That made him stop.

  “He’s marked,” the stranger added. “Not by me. Not by anyone you’ve met. But it means I can’t touch him, and no one who matters can either. He’s been claimed. Not possessed. Protected.”

  Connor ’s voice was flat. “By whom?”

  They grinned.

  “Ask Granny.”

  And then they were gone.

  Not walk-away gone.

  Not out-the-door gone.

  Just not there anymore.

  Granny still hadn’t moved. She was sipping her tea like it was the last good thing in the world.

  Connor turned, breath hot, heart rattling behind his ribs. “What the fuck was that?”

  Granny didn’t look at him.

  She just murmurs:

  “Someone who didn’t get to keep him.”

  “Who is Julien? Or Julie?” Connor demanded.

  Granny gave him a look “ I do not see how that is any of your business. “

  “If this person is in danger, then its very much my business. Its my job!” Connor said.

  Granny sighed “There is nothing anyone can do. Julie, has been dead for a long time. That poor thing is just not comfortable in linear time.”

  Connor, didn’t know what to say to that.