Part Five

Thursy was beginning to understand that she had fallen in with the monsters.

Osprey was dangerous. He had powers she didn’t understand, some sort of psychic ability. She had felt it when he lifted her out of the tub – that flash of an alleyway where he lived eternally – and then again when she had touched his arm in the plane. She thought she saw him clearly now, although she couldn’t specify how or why.

He was lonely. He had no one, not really Elomi, who hated him behind her smile, or Reka, who never moved. He had no idea how intimidating he was and blamed his solitude on...

She didn’t know. Something. Something in his life had kept him away from others and convinced him that he would always be truly alone. Maybe it was guilt; he had killed, and he would kill again. She got the feeling that maybe he would kill for her.

He hadn’t wanted to bring her here, but more than anything, he was terrified of her rejection.

He didn’t know how to speak to her as they walked down the street in a residential section of Kensey, Oregon. She didn’t know, either. Part of her elbow had come off while he was in the bathroom and she was trying to hide the fact that she had bled all over Elomi’s sweater.

"This one," he said quietly, and nodded to a large Victorian house. It had been nicely restored and painted sky blue with lavender trim. Most of the windows were open to the morning breeze.

Finding the strange human girl’s house had been simple. Thursy had remembered that Scotch and the girl were heading for the highway. A number of newspapers had covered her rescue from the mountains, along with a local station which filmed the entire thing.

Thursy had no idea why a news crew had happened to be standing around when Scotch came out of the woods, but it was just one of a hundred questions she had.

"Over there." Osprey guided her toward a low bay window open a few inches.

"This is her room?"

"No, it’s a music room. We’ll go from there."

Osprey had somehow obtained a floor plan of the house. Thursy thought he must have "people," nameless, faceless grunts who slipped between the scenes making adjustments.

He pushed the window up further and climbed gracefully through. Thursy followed, part of her palm slide off as she put pressure on it. She hoped Osprey didn’t notice, but then saw him swipe up the bits of skin with his handkerchief.

He didn’t say anything, just led her across the hallway – skirting voices and the gurgle of a coffee maker – to the stairwell.

Osprey knew the floor plan, but he didn’t know how the rooms had been divvied up. On the second floor were four bedrooms, any of which might have been the girl’s.

"Not the master," he said, speaking softly, and walked to the first door on the left. Thursy noticed he was able to move without making any sort of sound, even on floorboards that were inherently squeaky.

He opened the door a crack and ducked his head inside. Thursy crossed the hall and opened another door. Inside was an adultish bedroom set with a television on the dresser and a recliner with a sports jacket thrown over the arm. It appeared to be empty.

"Not hers," Thursy whispered, meeting Osprey back in the middle of the hall.

"That one is her brother’s. The master is the last door, so this one must be hers."

Thursy swallowed and watched him press the door inward. Over his shoulder she could see a brightly decorated nursery full of sunlight and toy trains. A toddler wearing a full-body romper was standing up in his crib, both chubby hands wrapped tightly around the headboard for support. He had brown curls of hair that bounced when he caught sight of Osprey and began jumping up and down.

"Ow-doo!" he called, grinning at them. He held out his arms to be picked up. "Kush-ee pox-ul-mum!"

Osprey jerked the door shut at the same moment a woman called from downstairs, "Hold on, babe, I’m coming."

Wordlessly, Osprey grabbed Thursy’s arm and they dashed through the last door in the hallway. The woman’s footsteps led into the room where her son continued to call good morning, unaware that they had ever been to see him.

Thursy leaned against the bedroom door, breathing quickly. Across the room, a scraggly girl with her arm bound to her chest sat up in bed and stared sleepily at them.

This bedroom was larger than the others had been, but its abundance of furniture made the space feel smaller. A captain’s bed was covered in mismatching blankets and sheets, an assortment of oddly shaped books covered the two desks – one roll-top, one modern black pressed wood – and a tasseled silk reading lamp hung from the ceiling. The white walls were covered in various posters, photographs, and art prints, none of which came from the same period or style.

Just navigating the room took a lot of concentration, and Thursy felt again how overwhelming everything was. She could never survive in the world if each room she walked into took this much effort.

The girl sat up further, rubbed her eyes with her unbound hand, and her jaw dropped open. "Thursy?" she gasped.

Thursy hadn’t paid much attention to the twiggy little human during the hours they had spent chained in the basement together, but she recognized her light brown hair and bow-shaped mouth. She was small and weak even by human standards, sort of endearing in a pixie-ish way, no use on a hunt.

Especially with her arm bound to her chest by a complicated network of Velcro straps, though they didn’t seem to hinder her when she scrambled out of bed wearing flannel pants and a white tee-shirt.

Thursy looked at Osprey, who took the hint that she was speechless and said, "Coalise Edison?"

Coalise nodded, her eyes still on Thursy. "You’re okay."

Thursy shrugged. She didn’t know how to talk to this girl, what it was appropriate to say, what she wanted to say.

"How did you get in?" Coalise asked.

"Through a window downstairs. We weren’t expecting you to be in the master bedroom."

She half-smiled. "It was a sort of consolation prize when my mom got remarried, moved to another state, and how two more kids. But what happened after-"

There was a knock on the door, and Thursy jumped. "Coalise?" the woman who had come upstairs to tend to her son called.

Coalise’s eyes widened. "The bathroom," she hissed, pointing to a door. "Just a second, Mom," she said more loudly, "I’m kind of naked."

As the woman began talking about winter coming and sleeping with more clothes on, Thursy and Osprey slipped into the bathroom.

Osprey flipped the light switch, revealing a marble-topped counter and a free-standing tub hidden by a dark purple shower curtain. On the other side of the door, Coalise and her mother began talking.

The bathroom was tidy if somewhat cluttered by design. A wooden rhino head had been hung over the toilet and the floor was covered by an Oriental rug that was too large and bunched at the edges of the room. Homemade clay bath accessories were held by a wicker shelf on the wall.

Osprey had his head tilted toward the door, listening. Thursy waited with him until her nose caught…

She turned to the tub, and slowly reached out to push the purple curtain away.

On a pile of brightly colored blankets at the bottom of the porcelain scoop, a steel-gray puma was staring up at her.

Thursy put one hand over her mouth. With the other, she grabbed Osprey’s shirtsleeve.

Scotch’s blue eyes met hers and they both froze. Then Scotch shook himself and leapt out of the tub. By the time he landed on two feet on the rug, he was human.

"What was that?" Coalise’s mother asked, hearing the thump as he landed.

"Oh," she said quickly, "probably just the rhino falling down again. I should ask Dave for a bigger nail to keep it up with."

Scotch opened his mouth and no sound came out. Thursy saw him, standing in front of her, the boy she’d always known, but at the same time…he was here, in this bathroom that looked nothing like the bathrooms she’d seen on television, while strangers conversed not six feet away.

They were both here, in the real world. The inescapable real world where she was in constant danger.

She had made a mistake, thinking that seeing him would be finding part of her home again. Instead he was just another refugee, like her.

He barely seemed to notice Osprey. "You’re alive," he said, and he smiled.

He meant it, too, she could tell. He really was happy to see her. But there was something in his face, some tension, that hadn’t been there before. They had both been through things apart from each other.

"How?"

Thursy shook her head. Her throat had tightened up and she couldn’t speak.

Scotch closed the space between them, hesitating as if waiting to see how she would respond, and then put his arms around her. She closed her eyes, exhaling deeply, her hand finally letting go of Osprey’s sleeve.

Scotch held her tightly. She knew that if her knees suddenly buckled he would catch her, that she could shut out the world and he would keep her safe. The loneliness, and terror, and hurt that had been her constant companions the last two days hit her all over again and she felt herself begin crying uncontrollably.

Scotch gave a fond laugh, saying, "Oh, Thursy," and sat down on the rim on the bathtub with her. His neck was warm against her forehead.

"Who are you?" she heard him ask. Osprey’s voice was cool and distant when he replied, so strange to her ears, so foreign when Scotch’s familiar words were floating around her.

Scotch smiled at her again when she looked at him, and the world around them vanished. She was right where she needed to be as long as he held her. "It’s going to be all right," he told her. "Whatever happened, we’ll be okay from here."

She nodded. She still hadn’t managed to say a word, but it didn’t matter because Scotch kissed her a moment later. His mouth was a sanctuary.

He touched her face, rubbing his thumb over her cheekbone, and then he frowned and pulled away, and his expression registered the beginnings of horror…

Thursy felt the dampness, the sting of air on new skin and scrambled away from him so quickly she fell down on the floor. Her legs kicked at the Oriental carpet until she was crammed into the corner behind the toilet, and only then did she have the courage to touch her cheek.

Her fingers came away smeared with blood and bits of skin.

Scotch was gazing at his own fingers in shock. He didn’t understand what was happening to her, and how could she tell him? How could she explain that she had felt herself be dismembered and painstakingly pieced back together, that she would never truly be herself again?

Coalise pulled the bathroom door open, and Thursy saw Scotch look to her as if she had the answers.

She remembered how he had kissed Coalise. Thursy would never understand about him and the human. He would never understand her resurrection. They would never be able to make sense of each other again.

She realized that Osprey was kneeling in front of her with a hand towel. He wasn’t speaking, only wiping her face with concentration. He didn’t see her, but he saw what was happening to her and he recognized it.

"It’s getting faster," he said, keeping his voice down so that Coalise and Scotch couldn’t hear him. "You should take a shower and wash as much skin off as you can. You’ll be more comfortable afterward."

She nodded limply, allowing him to help her to her feet. "Excuse us," Osprey said, "Thursy’s not feeling well. If you could give us a few minutes…"

"We’ll be in my room," Coalise told him. Thursy didn’t meet Scotch eyes as he left, but she saw Coalise take his hand.

She had started shaking again. Her lifeline to the past had just been severed without so much as a goodbye, and she was drifting now in this giant ocean with its storms and murky, dangerous depths.

She forgot Osprey was even in the room with her until he tugged her sweater over her head and folded it loosely. While she had been standing like a statue, he had removed the blankets from the tub and turned on the water. Steam was beginning to waft around them in warm pockets.

He turned back to her and stopped. She had a thin blue shirt on under the sweater but still felt entirely naked. "You can probably get it from here," Osprey said.

She nodded, blushing.

"Don’t scrub too hard," he warned. "I’ll be right outside if you need me."

She nodded again and he put his hand on the doorknob. "Don’t be embarrassed," he said, and quickly added, "I went through it, too," before slipping outside.

And Thursy realized that he understood her now better than she did.