REINCARNATE

reincarnation, n. 1, the belief that the soul reappears after death in another and different bodily form; 2, the rebirth of the soul in a new body.- v.t. re'in-car'nate
-from the Winston Canadian Dictionary for Schools

BOOK ONE: STRANGE DAYS

Prologue
Florida, 1967

They had been there in the sky for hundreds of years, undetected, waiting, readying. Generations of them were born and generations of them died on the great ships, waiting for the planet below them to ripen.

They had a home, but not like this one. Yes, when they first found it, it was crude and undeveloped, but all the right things were there. They gave it time and, eventually, it did become what they had known it had the potential to be.

And so, finally, they began preparations to take it.

Joseph Reuben knew all this. He was professor of astronomy at a small Florida university, and had been obsessed with the skies ever since he had seen one of them kill his parents when he was five years old. Despite his youth at the time, he remembered every detail: the way its seemingly human form had broken apart to reveal a different being- grey-skinned without hair, eyes black and bulging, hands four-fingered, too large, and bony. He knew that it had snapped his parents' necks, although it never touched him, and he remembered how he had felt it intrude into his mind for a moment before it had climbed into a small saucer parked in his Ontario soybean field and disappeared.

The three men with him had similar experiences to share. Halloway was a tall, broad-shouldered, heavy man in his mid-30s, fair-haired, who never smiled. John Michael was only twenty-four, confined to a wheelchair because of how badly "they" had mangled his legs. He was thin, pale, and quiet, peering at everything through thick glasses. Raynor, 36, was the only black man among the four and was in the habit of talking too quickly and chain smoking. Lastly, there was Joseph, tall, thin, and nearly forty, with greying hair, an unkempt beard, and a passion for tweed. Even that summer night, while the men built a fire in the empty field, he was wearing tweed pants.

The small town of Ruskin, then only a gathering of six houses, lay a mile away, but it was oblivious to the events of that night.

"John, did you write it all down?" Joseph asked.

John Michael clutched a hardcover composition book. "Yes, sir."

"You shouldn't have let the kid do it," Raynor said through a cigarrette.

"I did it fine."

"Why'd you let the kid do it?"

"I did it fine," repeated John Michael, sweat visible on his brow.

"Good," Joseph said in a calm voice. "Give it here." John Michael somewhat reluctantly handed the book over. "Halloway, do you have the stones?"

Halloway silently handed him a leather bag. Joseph loosened its drawstring and carefully removed five translucent gems, each perfectly circular. One was green, one was blue, one was red, one was yellow, and one was orange.

"Why can't we do it ourselves?" John Michael asked softly.

"Because we're too old and out of shape, and you... well..." Joseph trailed off, and John Michael stared at his useless legs.

"I ain't too sure about this," Raynor said quickly, while his gaze shifted from Halloway to Joseph and back. "This is crazy shit. You can get locked up in the crazy bin for this kind of shit."

"We can't beat them with science. This is all we have."

"So we gotta' try some sort of crazy mumblin' and abracadabra? This is fucked. You guys are all fucked."

"Shut your mouth," Halloway snarled.

"Fuck you," Raynor retorted.

The two men glared at each other until Raynor looked away and lit another cigarrette.

"It worked last time with the opal," Joseph said, only to break the silence.

"You don't know that. No one's found it yet," contested Halloway.

"When it's time, someone will. You don't know someone hasn't found it."

They watched from a distance, silent and undisguised, low to the ground to keep their grey skin from contrasting with the black sky. Exactly what the group of men were doing was not clear, but each of the four had known for too long and they could not be allowed to create any trouble. The men were huddled close around a fire, speaking quietly in a language their observers did not understand. They could see something glittering in the open palm of the eldest one. After half an hour, the men moved away from the fire.

Halloway, Raynor and Joseph dug a hole with shovels while John Michael watched, holding the bag of stones and the composition book, which he was wrapping in plastic to preserve it.

"Do you think the spell worked?" he asked. He felt very uneasy, although he didn't know the reason.

"I think so. We cast it correctly, in the same way as I did with the opal in '65. You saw the stones glow." Their eyes met and John Michael nodded.

"But what if the wrong people find it? That much power-"

"They can't," Joseph said, grunting with the exertion of digging. "The spell ensures it. Don't worry."

John Michael decided that it was only the near-playing God that was making him uncomfortable. Minutes later, he gave the book and bag to Raynor, who baried them while the other two put out the fire.

"I still think you guys are fucked in the head," mumbled Raynor.

Part One
Florida, 1999

"Three points! Yes! Who's the man?"

"You are so full of it. There's no way that was outside the line."

Nick Carter stopped his somewhat demented victory dance. "What you talkin' 'bout, fool? That was out!"

"No way," repeated A.J. McLean.

Nick sighed in exasperation. "Brian, tell him. It was out, wasn't it?"

Brian Littrell crossed his arms. "He's right. You're full of it."

"Kevin, Howie-"

"Didn't see it," they chorused. They weren't participating in the game of pickup basketball and were instead sitting on the sidelines of the basketball court at Nick's house while his visiting brother Aaron attempted to engage their attention by telling them about his new video game.

"It was out!" Aaron exclaimed.

"You didn't see it either. You were talking to us," Kevin pointed out. Aaron pouted.

Nick groaned dramatically and walked off the court to get his water bottle.

"Who's the man? Who's the man?" A.J. mimicked in a falsetto.

"Shut up," Nick mumbled, seconds before he went flying rather spectacularly into the air.

"What the heck was that?" asked Brian.

"I tribbed," Nick said through a mouthful of dirt. He spat it out and removed the rest of it from his tongue with his shirt collar.

"Dumbass," said Brian. "There's not even anything there to trip over."

"Yes there is," he responded automatically. He stood up and grimaced with the momentary pain. "It's right, it's right.." Nick was about to give up the search when he saw something black and white protruding out of the slope from the raised basketball court to the ground. "There." He pointed with his large foot. "Like, a rock or something."

"It's not a rock. It's in Saran Wrap," Howie said.

"It's in Saran Wrap," Nick echoed. He knelt and started to dig around it with his hands, then abruptly stopped.

"You break a nail, or what?" Brian joked.

Nick looked up at him. "It's a book."

"What?"

He didn't answer, simply resumed digging around it while the rest of them gathered around, silent. When a little less than half the book was visible, he felt something soft beside it. He more carefully removed the dirt around it to reveal a small, decaying bag that appeared to be made of leather.

"Don't touch it," Kevin warned.

Nick nodded and returned to the book, loosening enough soil to let him simply pull it out. Its black and white speckled cover named it as a "200 Page Hilroy Compositon Book", and the font used was not modern. The notebook was, indeed, tightly enclosed in Saran Wrap. He handed it to Kevin and dug out beneath the bag so that it fell into his hand, then gently pried it open, some of the top edges crumbling away at his touch.

"Shit," he said.

"Hey! There are little ears present!" exclaimed Aaron. Everyone completely ignored him as they leaned forward to see what Nick had found.

Five coloured, translucent stones glittered in the summer afternoon sunlight: green, blue, red, yellow, and orange. They were perfectly circular. Nick carefully removed the green one and held it up to the light.

"Jesus!" he exclaimed, and dropped it as if he'd been burned.

"What the hell?" Brian said.

"It glowed!" His voice cracked and went up an octave. "And it felt warm all of a sudden! The thing is fucking radioactive!"

"Such language," chided Aaron. He was again ignored.

"Just put it back in the bag," Howie advised.

At Nick's touch, it glowed again, and all of them saw it. He quickly dropped the stone back in the bag and looked at his friends and brother.

"Uh..." He laughed nervously. "Y'all wanna go inside or something?"

"Yeah, I feel cold," A.J. said.

All six walked towards the house, leaving the water bottle untouched on the grass.

* * *

When they entered Nick's living room, Nick plopped down on the sofa, looking stunned, and gingerly placed the bag on the coffee table. He grabbed the remote and turned on the TV to a football game at low volume. Kevin put the book in front of him. They all stared at it, then looked expectantly at Nick.

"I ain't touchin' it," he said.

A.J. made a disgusted noice, sat down next to Nick, and began to rip the clear plastic sheeting off of the book while the others seated themselves around the room.

When a pile of torn Saran Wrap has settled around A.J.'s legs, he opened the front cover.

"July sixteenth, 1967." He read the date written in neat cursive, then fell silent as he skimmed further down.

After several moments, Brian cleared his throat. When that had no effect, he said, "We're waiting."

"Dude," A.J. said without looking away from the page. "This is pretty fucked up right here."

Aaron said nothing. He was becoming rapidly desensitized.

"Listen to this," A.J. said, and started to read from the notebook. "If you have found this notebook, a great responsibility now rests on your shoulders: the responsibility to protect this planet, and the life and freedom of each person on it."

"This sounds like something from a really bad comic book," remarked Nick.

"This sounds like something from your really bad comic book," Brian corrected.

"Oh, shut up."

"You're still mad about that make-believe three-pointer, aren't you?"

"Quiet," said Kevin. Nick stuck his tongue out at him, but he didn't see it.

"If you have not found a bag containing five translucent stones of assorted colours, you should immediately begin to look for it in the place where you discovered this book. It is imperative that you find it," A.J. continued. "For several years there has been speculation that we are not alone in the universe. We most certainly are not. I am confined to a wheelchair because beings not of this earth mangled my legs beyond repair and killed my parents when I was young. I didn't mention them when I had to give my statement to the police; I knew they would think I was crazy.

"Doubtless, you too think I'm insane, and I always thought I was, until I met three other men who told me about their own similar experiences, some of them recent."

"That's enough," Kevin sighed, and leaned forward to take the book away.

"It's funny if nothing else." A.J. carried on. "We are not alone, and our neighbours are not friendly. They are waiting, in the sky, in great ships, somehow hidden, to take our planet away from us. There are also some already here who have the ability to tamper with human perception and therefore appear as one of us. They understand our speech and can themselves speak all of our languages.

"Their science is far more sophisticated than any we could develop in the neck few hundred years. The only way that we can ever hope to equal or defeat them is to use an art that has long been seen as the antithesis to science, and was eventually supplanted by it.

"Within the five stones that you should have by now discoved lie powers beyond the realm of normal men. They will allow you to identify the impostors and fight them. Another stone is hidden in a country farther north that will give the person who eventually finds it identical powers.

"I know that you must think that I am paranoid and mentally lacking to believe in what you've just read. But if you have read this far, perhaps there is hope.

"Whatever you do, whatever your age or line of work, it is your duty to take on this responsibility.

"You may not believe me. All I ask is that you find four other people, one for each of the stones, press them to the center of your chests, and close your eyes. And if what happens then is possible, isn't anything?

"John Michael Andrews, 1967." A.J. closed the book.

"The truth is out there," Brian said in a dramatic voice, and the others laughed nervously with the exception of Kevin, who just kept shaking his head.

"Hey, Aaron?" Nick said, fidgeting.

"Yeah?"

"Leave."

"What?"

Nick inclined his head toward the back door.

Aaron glared at him, then stormed out of the living room and slammed the screen door to the enormous lot behind him.

There were several awkward moments of throat-clearing and quiet coughing while they looked at anything but each other. The atmosphere was suddenly eerie. Nick stared at his feet, Brian stared into space and bit his nails, A.J. picked at the sofa, Howie looked blankly at the T.V., and Kevin snuck looks under the couch to check for dustballs.

"So," A.J. said.

They all stopped fidgeting and looked at him expectantly.

"So, uh, what are we going to do?"

They continued to simply look at him.

"You know, about the thing... from the book... that I read...out loud.."

They just stared.

"Jesus, guys! Non-funny Independence Day! Remember?"

"Oh, yeah."

"I thought you meant something else."

"Hey, man, sorry."

"I didn't quite know where you were going with that."

A.J. sighed laboriously.

"It's just a load of shit- pardon my French- anyway," said Kevin. "You might as well toss it now."

"But how do we know for sure that it's not true?" Nick said very quietly.

Kevin laughed. "You were stupid enough to fall for that?"

"I'm not stupid."

Kevin snorted. Nick was about to say something when Howie cut him off.

"Come on, guys, chill. I figure we don't have anything to lose."

"Yeah. Worst case scenario, nothing happens and we feel like idiots," said Brian. "But what if- and just work with me here- what if it is true, and, say, ten years from now New York is a pile of rocks, and it's all on our heads because we didn't do anything when we could have. Do you always want to wonder if that guy was right?"

"Whatever happens, happens," A.J. shrugged.

The rest of them nodded, although Kevin muttered something no one understood.

"Well, then, let's do it," Nick said in a falsely jovial voice. "Everyone take one." He pulled the green one from the bag again, felt it warm and saw it glow softly. As Brian took the blue one, A.J. the yellow one, Howie the orange, and Kevin the red, each stone glowed and warmed at their touch. They all stared at each other in stunned disbelief.

"Maybe we should all do it at the same time," Howie said. "Maybe that makes a difference."

Nick shrugged. "Why the hell not?"

"Okay, then, on three. One, two..." The last number stuck in his throat. "Three."

Nick took a deep, shuddering breath, closed his eyes, and pressed the green stone to his chest, flat side down. For a second, nothing happened, and he almost laughed. But then a warmth enveloped him, spreading from the stone across and up to his shoulders and arms, and down his torso to his legs. Despite the fact that it was already a warm summer day, this warmth was not unpleasant.

He couldn't have said how long it was around him before it slowly faded to be replaced by a refreshing coolness, then nothing.

"Can we open our eyes now?" he asked.

"Yeah," Brian and Howie chorused.

"On three again?"

"Sure," said Howie. "One... two... three."

Nick opened his eyes and blinked several times before he had the courage to look down at himself.

The stone was still in the center of his chest when he took his hand away. His body from the neck down seemed to be encased in dark green plastic, but it was soft to the touch and supple. There were no seams, only lighter green ribbing that ran from the stone up over his left shoulder and up over the right shoulder, and then two more strips of it that went from the stone on a diagonal to his hips before disappearing from view to his back. There were shoulder plates, epaulettes that jutted out just past his shoulders on either side. His knees were padded and in place of his sneakers were pale green boots that ended above his shins and could be removed by a zipper near his instep. He hoped nothing had happened to his Nikes.

With his right hand, he followed the top right seam over his shoulder and felt his hand touch something cold and hard, then something softer. He gripped the softer part, which felt like a handle, and pulled up and to the right.

The grip he held was made of crisscrossing leather strips and ended in a round, flat circle of something that looked golden- a pommel, he remembered from his studies of the Middle Ages. Above the grip was a hand guard in the shape of a rectangular prism made of the same gold-looking stuff as the pommel. From the center of the hand guard rose a gleaming three-foot long steel blade whose sides were parallel until they came together to a precise and very sharp point. He knew that the longsword should have felt heavy in his hand, but it was nearly weightless.

He finally looked at the others. Each was wearing the same thing that Nick was, but in the colour of the stone that they had chosen: Kevin red, Howie orange, A.J. yellow and Brian blue. However, the weapons they were examining were all different. Brian held a small dagger with a blade of diamond that could have eventually sliced Nick's longsword apart, given enough scratches. A.J. was experimentally fitting an arrow into a large and very powerful crossbow. Kevin continuously turned over an impressive two-handed battle axe while Howie was afraid to fiddle with a small silver gun-like contraption in case he killed somebody.

"Dude, this is pretty fucked up right here," A.J. breathed.

No one even noticed that it was the second time he'd said it. They looked at each other in silence, trying to process the implications of what had just happened. It didn't make sense that everything had changed so much and the Buccaneers were still getting their asses kicked by Green Bay.

Suddenly, the door opened, and they froze. Thankfully, it was only Aaron, who was pissed off at them and had decided to return from exile. He only stood stunned for a moment.

"You know," he said, "the first thing that comes to mind is Power Rangers."

Part Two
England, 1275

The night wind was bitterly cold and blew fine sheets of rain into Edana's face. She drew her ragged clothes more tightly around her, but the wind passed right through them and they were already saturated with the fine but persistent rain. It made pale streaks through the darker dirt and dust on her face.

Each step was painful. Her father had beaten her again earlier that night for not coming home with enough money from begging in the streets. Her arms were bruised and her back was laced with an intricate pattern of fresh welts. One eye was beginning to swell shut, but she thanked God that he hadn't broken her nose.

Even when she wasn't bruised and her scars were healed, Edana wasn't beautiful. Her nose was too wide for her face, and her worst physical flaw was her canine teeth, which started too far up and jutted out too far forward. She did have attractive features, like her long chestnut hair, usually shiny but currently matted to her back and causing her extreme discomfort. Her only true claim to beauty was her eyes. They were long-lashed and expressive and their colour changed from blue to green to grey and every shade inbetween, like a stormy ocean.

Despite the cold and wet misery of the walk down the shoulder of the dark dirt road, she was happy. Jonathan was waiting less than a mile away, kind and gentle and strong, and after the bruises she had faded, there would never be any more. She smiled, and forgot the rain.

"Come, Richard." Jonathan clucked to the gelding whose rains he was holding. The horse has hesitated at a sudden sheet of rain. "I am sorry for the rain, but I cannot change it," he sighed. His own mount, a grey mare, shifted under him. "Come now." He clucked again.

He urged the horses into a canter, anxious not to keep Edana waiting. She wouldn't have a cloak like he did, and he was worried that the combined cold and wet might make her sick later.

Jonathan was a good-looking boy nearing his twenties, with longish black hair and large, clear blue eyes. He was tall with broad shoulders and a kind, open smile. Many women of his own rich class would have jumped at the chance to be with him, but he had fallen in love with a poor beggar girl instead. It was strictly against mediaeval convention for them to be together so they had met many nights in the last year in secret, although their love would remain unconsummated until they were married.

They were going to run away together; the other horse was for her to ride, and there was food and money and clothes for both of them in the saddlebags. As his father's youngest son, there was nothing that Jonathan could inherit- and there was nothing for Edana in the city except starvation, pain, and a bleak future of beatings, eventual marraige, and near-constant pregnancy. Jonathan swore to God that he would never hurt her.

"Goddamn it," Rowena muttered as she saw Jonathan's horse break into a canter. Her mother would have slapped her for being so unladylike.

Rowena was not the type to care what her mother would do.

She eased her own mount into a trot. She had to stay well back of him and make sure he didn't notice her. The rain was fortunate: it made the path muddy, and the mud muffled the sounds of her horse's hoofs.

He was going to see the street girl again, and she knew something was happening because of all the saddlebags and the extra horse. She had to stifle a laugh. How romantic and gallant of him... how stupid.

She was sixteen, as Edana was, and very beautiful, all golden curls, innocent brown eyes, and a figure that was the envy of every woman she knew. She had tried to get Jonathan's romantic attentions many a time, but it had never worked. Now she knew why: he was hopelessly in love, or felt a pity he mistook for love, with an awkward peasant girl- a dirty, lice-infested, common, ungentlewomanly peasant girl- who could never even pass for beautiful. She moved completely without grace, wearing old, filthy rags. Rowena could have any man she wanted except for Jonathan, because he loved that disgusting... thing.

She had never been able to bring herself to cast a love spell on him so he would want her. She told herself she was above using such artificial means to inspire love in a man. The option had slipped her mind as she conceived a far more damaging one.

It was Edana who would suffer with all Rowena's pain over Jonathan's indifference to her. For as long as time continued.

She saw him dismount at his uncle's stables. Rowena too dismounted, tied her horse to a tree, and followed his figure as best she could through the darkness.

Edana thought she could see him standing by the stables and walked faster. She could see the breath of the horses in the stalls drift into the colder air. She'd always liked horses. Jonathan had promised her as many horses as she wanted. She stopped to touch one- a big Clydesdale, a work horse. It nickered softly, searching for food in her outstretched hand. "Sorry, love, you'll 'ave to wait for the morning." She kissed its snout and walked quickly toward the dark, nearly invisible figure standing at the end of the third row of stalls.

Jonathan wrapped a thick cloak around her shoulders and then looked down into her face, cupping one side gently with his hand. "He's hit you again, hasn't he?" She nodded, and he put his arms around her and held her awhile while she looked ridiculously small, only up to his shoulder if that. "Everything will be better now," he whispered. "I have brought you fine clothes, ladies' clothes, and we'll find a priest to have us married, and I'll take care of you, and no one will ever hurt you again."

She laid her head trustingly on his chest. He was warm and beautiful and kind, and she knew she was safe with him. She loved the smell of him too; it was a mixture of sweat and horse and fireplace smoke. "And we'll 'ave horses?" she murmured, her accent much rougher and stronger than his.

"Oh yes. Lots and lots of horses."

Edana looked up into his soft, smiling blue eyes. "But how am I supposed to ride in all these fancy dresses?"

He laughed. "Sidesaddle. I will teach you."

They were quiet for a moment.

"Are you sure you want to leave this? Everything you 'ave here?" she asked.

"I am certain. It means nothing to me if I cannot be with you."

She flushed with embarrassment; no one had ever talked to her like this before or said such wonderful things. "I'm ashamed that I have nothing to give you."

"You have everything to give me," he whispered.

Rowena thought this all sickening as she hid behind the next row of stalls, but her opinion would have been different if it had been her with Jonathan. A flash of moonlight through the rainclouds made the blade of the small dagger she was holding gleam, and she quickly hid it in the folds of her skirt so that it wouldn't give her away. She decided to wait a few moments longer- after all, this was the last time Jonathan and Edana would be together, and he did lo- no, she wouldn't even think it.

"We'll have to leave before dawn breaks," he said. "My family will be looking for me."

"Mine won't."

He brushed her forehead with his lips. "They do not matter to us anymore."

He suddenly let go of her to flatten himself against the wall, and at first she assumed he'd let go of her because she'd done something wrong. It was then she saw his eyes were full of panic. "I cannot move," he said, his voice strained. "I can't move."

Edana frantically looked around her and saw a strange woman with long golden hair wearing an extravagant dark green dress. She was very beautiful. "G-g-good evening," Edana stammered, trying to remember what Jonathan had told her about manners in his class of society.

"Be quiet," hissed Rowena in a very unmannerly way. She said something in a language Jonathan recognized as Latin, and Edana too was thrown to the wall and paralysed but for blinking, breathing and speaking. Although she couldn't turn her head towards Jonathan, their eyes met, and what scared her the most was the genuine fear in his.

"I apologize that I've interrupted your secret tryst with... this." spat Rowena.

"What in the name of God are you doing out here?" Jonathan retorted.

"You know her?" Edana said.

"Close your mouth!" Rowena yelled. As she turned her attention to Jonathan, her expression changed to one of desperate vulnerability. "Why don't you love me?"

"Because you are a cruel, selfish, dishonest, manipulative cunt, and I would rather die than be with you."

She laughed hysterically. "That is ironic, Jonathan, very ironic." She collected herself. "Do you love him?" she asked Edana.

"W-well, yes." Her eyes met Jonathan's again.

"Will you always?"

"Yes."

"Well of course you will," she giggled. "Especially if you are cursed."

"What?" Jonathan was confused.

"First, with immortality: your body will not physically age, and you may die someday, but you cannot kill yourself intentionally. Second, with your own love: you will recognize and love his soul in each of it's lives- it's reincarnations- but you will never again be with him."

She started to speak in Latin again.

"Rowena, no. Do not do this. Do not hurt her. Please, don't. I will do anything you wish. Rowena, no. No!" Jonathan screamed.

His cries were ignored by Rowena, who was concentrating feverishly on the curse. Soon, her words were finished. There was no visible sign that the spell was finished, but Edana felt a burden of pain and longing and sorrow settle over her.

Rowena moved very close to Jonathan, the dagger still hidden in her skirt. "If I cannot be with you, then neither can she." She plunged the dagger up to the hilt into him with mechanical precision, on an upward angle from just below the left side of his ribcage. She stared at him for a long moment. Then she vanished.

He collapsed to the ground, released, and Edana, similarly freed, dropped to her knees beside him. She covered the wound with her hand, but scarlet still leaked out around her fingers and ran from beneath her palm down to the grass. They both started to cry. She carressed his face and neck, gentle but frantic, needing to know his body as well as she could before he left it empty.

"Please, don't leave me," she begged, knowing it was as useless as covering the gash with her hand. "Does it... hurt much?"

"Yes, but it's numbing." He actually preferred the pain, because that had told him he was still alive. "I'm so sorry." He reached up to touch her face, surprised by how hard it was just to raise his hand. "I love you."

"I love you too." For a moment, she believed that the exchange of and promise in those words would make God heal him, but God would never be that merciful to her in the next seven hundred and twenty-four years.

"Don't I get a goodnight kiss?" He smiled, lopsidedly.

Her crying turned to sobs. She had always said that before they parted and he would kiss her cheek lightly, leaving them both wondering what a kiss on the mouth would be like all the way home.

Edana slid one hand around to the back of his neck and felt the small, tangled strands of hair there. Then she kissed his mouth and he kissed her back, feeling her hot tears fall on his face.

Suddenly his lips stopped moving and she drew away from him in both wonder and sorrow. His eyes were closed but he was smiling softly to himself, lopsided. She tried to smile, but it was a sad smile. "Goodbye," she said hoarsely. "Thank you."

It hit her that his soul and hers would never be together again, and at first she touched his body as if it would bring him back to her until she realized that he was very finally gone. She slowly lifted her head to the sky. The rain had stopped and the clouds had retreated to show thousands of brilliant white stars. "I'll always love you. I promise."

Edana sat, face upturned to the stars, holding his body until she couldn't cry anymore. She set him down tenderly, mounted the horse he'd brought for her, and rode clumsily into the dark horizon.

-Richard Marx, "Waiting For You"

*DISCLAIMER: The above scene is historically inaccurate, and no disrespect was meant towards the practitioners of witchcraft/the Wiccan religion, etc.

Part Three
Florida, 1999

Aaron's attempt at humour was by five less-than-amused glares. "So you can't make a Megazord? That's a pretty cheap deal, guys." They ignored him. He just wasn't feeling the love in the room.

"You know what this means," said Kevin.

"What are we gonna' do?" Brian asked. They looked at him, hoping he'd elaborate. "I mean, do we leave what we're doin', or do we wait, or do we try to pass this on, or.."

"We can't give it away. Like, maybe we found it for a reason. It was baried under my basketball court," Nick said. "And maybe it only works for us."

"And we can't leave our careers without knowing more," Howie said. "We need to know how bad things are, if they even exist, and if we can still do both."

"Exactly. We don't even know if this alien thing even exists. I think we wait, we watch, on tour, and then decide what to do. We don't know anything, really," added Kevin. The others nodded.

"So we wait and see, then," confirmed AJ. "We leave in like a week anyway."

"But how do we get out of these dumb outfits?" Nick wondered. Larger Than Life was one thing, but..

Howie pulled the stone out of where it was held and the plastic-looking suit vanished to be replaced by what he'd been wearing before. The rest of them did the same. Nick was relieved to see his Nikes again.

"Hey, AC, let's see if it works on you," he said, and tossed the stone to his little brother.

"Really? Wow!" Aaron pressed it to his chest and closed his eyes, and waited. And waited.

"So I guess we can't get anyone else to do it. Give it back."

"No."

Nick grabbed it back.

"Hey," Aaron whined. They all ignored him again. He was getting really sick of it.

Part Four
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1999

"Would you like to Supersize that?" she said for what seemed to be the millionth time that day.

"Sure, Wiener Dog," her customer taunted. He was about seventeen and surrounded by a group of slack-jawed, football player-type friends.

"Supersize that," she yelled back to Stuart, the dry-skinned kid working at the deep-fryer. She pressed a button on the cash register. "That'll be thirteen dollars and seventy-nine cents."

The boy handed over a wad of bills and change, and she busied herself with sorting it into the tray. "How much you charge, a nickel?" she heard him ask. They laughed while she ignored them. She was used to this kind of thing- not so much at work, but other places.

She silently handed back his change, then handed his order to him when it came on the tray.

"What? No smile? No 'have a nice day'? I wouldn't want to have to tell the manager of this fine establishment that I'm disappointed in customer service."

She didn't really smile, just moved her lips to show her teeth. "Have a great fucking day," she hissed. The boys laughed loudly, then walked away to a distant table.

"They giving you a hard time?" Stuart asked. She waved her hand in dismissal. "Hey, break!" he added.

"Can you do the counter?" she asked Trina, a pretty blond. Trina nodded enthusiastically. Trina did everything enthusiastically.

She and Stuart went through the kitchen to the employee exit of the Toronto McDonald's; he liked fresh air, and she just needed to get the fuck out of there sometimes.

The ID in her purse proclaimed her as Josephine Stevenson, 18, owner of an insured rustbucket Civic compact. She also carried her community college card; once a week, she had a creative writing class. There were no pictures of friends or family in her wallet- just a picture of her three year-old Golden Retriever Nicky, and a picture of Nick Carter, who the dog was named after. Even she thought it was a little bit pathetic.

"This job blows," Stuart said. He was an awkward, intelligent, tall, thin seventeen year-old whose ears stuck out perpendicular to his head. She'd always suspected him of having a crush on her, and under different circumstances, she knew she it would have been mutual.

She shrugged. "It pays the rent, anyway."

"You got your own place?"

"Yeah. I moved out a couple years ago. It's just an apartment. Got some money saved, too- I'm doing alright."

"Finished school?"

"Graduated with honours this year."

"I wish I was done. Only one more year!" He was ahead a grade.

"OAC's brutal, man, watch out." She watched a teenage couple walking down the sidewalk holding hands and laughing, then frowned and looked away.

They stood there silently for the rest of their fifteen-minute break.

The drive home didn't bother her, even though she got stuck in a traffic jam downtown. She just popped a Backstreet Boys tape in the stereo system (the only truly reliable feature of her car) and sang along loudly, windows down, until the guy in the pickup truck next to her became sufficiently annoyed to roll his up.

She took the stairs up to her one-bedroom apartment instead of the elevator, fiddled with the key until the door opened, and was greeted enthusiastically by seventy pounds of slobbering dog.

"Nicky, down," she said firmly. "Down, boy."

Nicky sat, tail swishing from side to side frantically.

She knelt down and hugged him, and he responded by licking her ear. "Aww, kisses for the mommy. I love you too. Stop drooling in my ear. You wanna' go for a walk?"

He barked.

She took off her shoes and stood up. "We will later. Mommy's feet hurt right now."

She refilled his water dish and, while he drank from it, she went into her bedroom and collasped onto the bed.

The apartment was pretty bare. The living room housed a couch, a TV, VCR, two lamps, a coffee table and a big stereo system. There was nothing on the white walls. The kitchen had a refrigerator, stove, microwave, toaster, telephone, and two chairs, although the second chair was just for the look and the phone rarely rang. The fridge was decorated with comic strips cut out of the newspaper held there with plain black magnets. The only things on the counter were a knife holder, the toaster and microwave, and a steel wool pad behind the sink.

Her bedroom was the only decorated part of the apartment. Backstreet Boys posters were everywhere, wall to wall and beginning to creep onto the ceiling. An acoustic guitar in its case leaned against the wall. There was a desk with South Park dolls and a computer, a wooden dresser, a wooden chest, a bookcase topped by a globe, and a utility cart beside the bed that held multitudes of disorganized magazines and binders on its shelves, a camera, several diaries, and looseleaf paper. On the floor in front of it was an AM/FM radio with two tape decks and a CD player. Assorted junk lay around the perimeter of the room (she cleaned it every Sunday; it was Friday).

Nicky followed her into the bedroom, jumped on the bed and laid down on top of her chest.

She wiggled out from under him towards the wall and looked up at a poster of Nick Carter, who was equally handsome upside-down. "You know what, Nicky," she said, addressing both him and the dog, "I think I'll go clubbing tonight. I mean, the only time I ever see anyone else is at work, and maybe at the convenience store, and my writing class Mondays." She turned to the dog. "No offense, sweetie, but you're no substitute for a healthy social life."

She remembered her first and only date, in highschool. He'd tried to feel her up. She hadn't let him, and there had never been a second date by silent mutual agreement.

"Don't worry. I'll feed me, then I'll feed you, and then we'll go walkies before I leave, okay?"

He licked her.

"Oh, what a nice boy."

A heavy bass assaulted her ears when she entered the nightclub. She felt very strange going there alone. Everywhere there were couples or groups of friends talking and dancing. She felt both invisible and conspicuous.

She started to dance. She knew she could dance, and she knew she looked pretty good too. She was wearing jeans embroidered with dragons and a ribbed white tank top with a blue star on it. Her long, chestnut hair was curled into corkscrews and she was wearing body glitter around her eyes.

After about an hour, a good-looking, slightly older guy in a gold shirt approached her and asked if he could buy her a beer.

"I don't drink," she yelled over the music, "but I'd like a Sprite."

He grinned, displaying straight white teeth, and they walked to the bar together.

They engaged in light conversation. He told her he was a business major at the University of Toronto, and she told him about her academic achievements in highschool.

He looked impressed. "So, what university did you choose?" "None. I can't afford it, and I couldn't get any scholarships or grants. And a student loan- it would take forever to pay back, and when a degree doesn't even guarantee you a job..."

"What would you major in, if you could go?"

"Music. Arts. Literature."

He laughed. "You'd waste a university education learning that?"

"It's what I love."

"Instead of engineering or business or computers or something practical like that you'd take music? The last thing the world needs is another Bachelor of Arts flipping burgers."

"I already flip burgers."

There was an awkward pause.

He shifted uncomfortably. "So, how about those Jays?"

"'How about' them? Are you insane? They're awful!"

The conversation continued to switch subjects from politics to music to television to books.

"Are you single?"

"Yeah."

He checked his watch, pretending to be casual. "Well, it's getting late. Do you want to come over to my place or something?" He flashed a dazzling plastic grin. She imagined he had a high success rate with that question.

"No, thanks."

"What? Why?"

"I hardly even know you. I don't even know your name."

"Sean."

"Very nice, but no."

He stood up. "It's not like you get asked often."

"Is that what this is? Your good and charitable deed for the day?"

"This is a nightclub. People come here to fuck someone somewhere else later. I figured you were the same."

"You know what? Maybe I'm not."

"The way you were leading me on-"

"I was just talking to you. Maybe I just came here to dance and talk to someone."

He snorted in disgust and walked away.

"Can I have another Sprite?" she asked the bartender.

"ID, please."

"It's a Sprite. Last time I checked, that wasn't an alcoholic beverage."

"Sorry, we're busy!"

She finished the drink and danced alone for another hour before deciding to go home, turning off the music in her car because she had a headache.

Nicky greeted her at the door. She took him down the stairs and outside to do his business, then they went back inside and she changed into her summer nightgown. It had been stupid to go to the nightclub looking for a friend. She couldn't really have one, anyway- she'd have to move again soon, where she wasn't sure; probably across the border to Detroit or Buffalo.

She sat down on her bed and leaned against a poster of Nick, laying her head on his paper shoulder. She wished he was there with her. She hadn't been held, kissed or loved in so long. Of course, Nick would never know her, never mind love her.

She laid down on the bed and stared at his picture. He and Nick look so much alike around the eyes, she thought. She closed her eyes and remembered how he'd said he loved her.

Her eyes felt hot with tears. She forced them back and gave herself up to a night of dreams about Nick that she would hate waking from.

Good morning, don't cop out

-Matthew Good Band, "Strange Days"

Part Five
Las Vegas, Nevada

For the Backstreet Boys, the next week was a blur of squeezing in family and friends during their one-week break before the tour resumed. It was during the first week back on the road, in Las Vegas, that the first encounter happened.

Nick groaned. It was 3:00 in the morning, he'd had, like, one hour of sleep, and now he'd woken up with the vague feeling that he had to go somewhere.

He was too tired to question it and grabbed the clothes he'd worn that day off the floor, where they lay in a crumpled pile with the stone in his jeans pocket. He only bothered to splash some cold water on his face before stumbling groggily out into the hall.

He thought he saw someone else stumbling down the hall and eventually recognized him as Brian. Moments later, AJ, Kevin and Howie joined them.

"Dude, this is pretty fucked up right here," yawned AJ.

They clambered into the elevator and Kevin squinted at the buttons before determining which one would take them to the ground floor. All of them were half-awake in rumpled clothes, hair uncombed and faces unshaven, but they just had to go somewhere- although they didn't know where, or why.

The security guard looked at them quizzically as they passed. They grinned and waved, still not quite conscious, and walked out onto the brightly-lit street.

The five of them walked about two miles until they arrived at a main street of the city. At three A.M., Las Vegas was still going. Casinos lined each side of the road with huge neon signs and the sidewalks were filled with less-than-savoury, drunk characters. While the boys weren't drunk, extreme sleepiness wasn't helping their coordination and their rumpled, un-groomed look made them fit in perfectly with the gambling addicts and alcoholics roaming the streets at that hour.

Nick saw it first. An attractive blond woman, too well-dressed and maintained to belong to the late-night Las Vegas crowd, was walking towards them, but she seemed almost transparent, like a ghost. He examined her more closely and was able to see a short grey form within her.

Completely on instinct, without even realizing what he was doing, he pulled the stone out of his pocket, closed his eyes and pressed it to the center of his chest. The warmth enveloped him again, this time awakening him from his former stupor to an unusual alertness. Seconds later, the coolness came, and then nothing. He shot a glance at the others to make sure they had done the same. They had, and were now in the strange plastic-y outfits.

The woman was now very clearly not human, and the details of the alien figure were more apparent; small, grey and humanoid, with no hair, bulging, large black eyes, and four long, bony fingers, a regular X-Files special effect.

It began to run away from them, shoving people on the street out of its way. The boys exchanged looks and started to run after it.

It was scared. It didn't quite understand what these strangely-garbed humans were and it couldn't probe their thoughts. This was very wrong. As its panic grew, it neglected the maintenance of its illusion, and for a few seconds at a time, passerby saw its true alien form.

The run didn't tire Nick; he felt as if he could continue on for miles and miles without even feeling exhausted. They were all closing in on it, too focussed to notice the stunned and curious looks the surrounding drunkards gave them. The fact that they were actually chasing an alien mercifully did not cross their minds at the time.

It was only a matter of feet between them and the creature. Some men tried to hold them back, but they were knocked aside without ever being noticed.

Finally Kevin grabbed its shoulder, his hand plunging through its illusory disguise, and pushed it to the ground. They heard it grunt in a very human way when it fell to the sidewalk. Nick pulled the longsword from its scabbard and was about to plunge the blade into the alien when a sudden, incredibly strong pressure surrounded his neck and constricted, trying to crush the bones there, preventing him from breathing. His vision began to cloud and he couldn't think, not even to have his life flash before his eyes. He started to fall down. The fall seemed very slow.

He was seconds from dying of either suffocation or a broken neck when the pressure suddenly stopped. He gasped for air and it burned his lungs with a pain that meant he was at least still alive. For several moments he didn't think or see, just breathed.

When Nick looked at where the alien had been, there was only the prostate corpse of the blond woman, which showed absolutely no signs of superficial wounds. It was just dead.

"What?" His voice came out as a whisper. Only Brian heard him but he didn't answer, staring at the dagger in his hand that was coated in not red, but black blood- at least, he thought it was blood.

Howie shook off his own shock and grabbed Nick's shoulder roughly. "We have to go," he hissed. The crowd that had gathered around had held back only for a moment after the corpse appeared before becoming an angry, drunken mob that was closing in around them.

All five of the guys ran, pushing through the crowd that hit and grabbed at them. After they were clear, they pulled the stones from their chests and their weapons and strange near-uniforms vanished to be replaced by their own wrinkled clothes.

Brian wondered if, the next time they used the stones, the dagger would still have blood on it.

No one slept any more that night.

Brian sat awake on his bed in the darkness of the hotel room. He was tired but nervous, and that made him hyper; his right foot continually tapped the floor in a frantic rhythm.

What had he killed? Was it an innocent woman, an alien? Not a woman; not a human- the blood had been black. But had it ever intended to hurt someone? All he knew was from the composition book. What if it had been an alien, but not a hostile one? It had almost killed Nick, but Nick had intended to kill it. It had only been self-defense.

How had he killed it? He knew the physical portion of the how- he had plunged the dagger into the middle of its torso, blood spurted from the wound, it twitched and then was still and no longer alive. But mentally, how could he have killed something? "Thou shalt not kill". There was probably a Bible in the nightstand drawer saying the same thing. What did he think that had made him do it? He didn't remember any thought at the time, just seeing Nick not breathing- dying- and then automatically stabbing the thing on the ground. A physical thought... no, that didn't make sense. His mind had been silent and separate, observing and committing the event to memory, but not thinking.

He had killed something. It wasn't human, but it had breathed and moved and thought- and obviously done a lot more than that- and he had stopped it from ever doing any of those things again.

Maybe it had had a soul, and maybe it hadn't wanted to hurt anyone. Maybe it was one of God's creatures, too. And he had killed it. His own hands had done it.

Brian stared unseeing into the dark.

I almost died, Nick kept thinking. I almost died. Just like that, on the street.

He shuddered. He'd been shaking involuntarily, but had stopped half an hour ago, emerging from a state without thought or feeling.

Nick stared at his hands and moved each finger separately to reassure himself that he was still alive. The air still tasted very sweet to him.

It had been very strange. He'd always expected death to be painful and panicked. But it had not been. Chaos had surrounded him but he was separate from it, an onlooker without much interest in the proceedings. He hadn't prayed, or felt sad. He hadn't even thought. He'd just accepted the fact that he was going to die and there had followed a peaceful oblivion to everything around him. That had been all.

That was the unbelieveable part, how unceremonious and fast it was when it had come. Boom, you're dying, buddy, so sorry, you're all out of quarters, buh-bye. Next!... No drawn-out movie-style suffering, the pain quickly vanishing into the oblivion instead, all of it in seconds without a warning. It could have been over.

There were so many things that he would never have done. Sure, he had it better than those dying kids they visited. He was depressed for days after they saw them, at the ages when they should have been full of life- but instead, they were all dying of terminal illnesses, and had the look in their eyes of someone old and wise who, though they'd lived their lives to the fullest, had been forced too early to accept the burden of everything they'd never have. He could recall the faces of each and every one of them, if he tried.

He wanted to get married, he wanted to father a child, he wanted to be artistically respected, he wanted... there was an aching want he couldn't place for everything he didn't yet know the value and joy of.

Right then he really wanted to get laid, and he wanted his mother. Of course, it would be hard to explain that he'd almost died. But he wanted his mommy, one of the most ancient and time-honoured desires in the history of near-death experiences. That and boys wanting to get some. That could wait. Of more immediate concern was how likely it was that this whole alien thing would get him killed.

He shuddered again.

Howie, AJ, and Kevin were all awake too; AJ looking out the window of his hotel room at the bright lights below, Kevin still lying stubbornly in bed, and Howie staring blankly at a muted television. Their thoughts and feelings of disbelief, fear and shock were similar. The contents of the composition book had been at least partly right. These things existed and they could kill- Nick had almost died. Kevin felt guilty for all the times he'd snapped at him. He was still just a kid.

Everything any and all of them knew had been shaken. They had taken their general safety and the safety of everyone else on Earth for granted; not anymore. They knew for certain that they couldn't ignore the extraterrestrial threat and would have to fight.

They also knew that they could die in the process.

Cause power's just another one of those things baby
It's pointless if you ain't gonna use it
Goddamn, it's deafening
Wish you'd shut up about everything
The future is X-rated

-Matthew Good Band, "The Future Is X-Rated"

'BACKSTREET BOYS TURN INTO SUPERHEROES AND KILL EVIL ALIENS', Josephine read from the cover of a tabloid while waiting in line at the grocery store checkout. There was an obviously doctored picture and the subtitle, 'Las Vegas witness tells all!'

She snorted and started putting her items on the conveyor belt.

*** *** *** *** ***

"Mmm," Nick grunted the next morning while looking in the bathroom mirror. The left side of his face was purple and bruised all along his cheekbone. It must have happened when he fell, although he didn't remember any pain in his face. But how would he explain it?

"Ran into a door" was the first thing to cross his mind.

He grunted again.

After he appeared in a Detroit concert with the bruise, which couldn't be covered by makeup, a persistent rumour that he'd been in a drunken brawl started. Jay Leno asked him how it had really happened.

"I actually managed to run into a door," he said, and then grinned. "But really, I got it fighting those evil aliens in Las Vegas. Almost died," he added gravely.

The talk show audience dissolved into laughter.

*** *** *** *** ***

"Jo?"

"Yeah?"

She was outside on break with Stuart. It was 7:15 in the morning and cold.

"How come I never hear about your friends? Or your family, or a boyfriend?"

She didn't let herself say 'I don't have any'. That would win her his sympathy and when she had to leave without warning, he'd get hurt, although she was sure he'd be hurt now. She wasn't going to do that to anyone. And it would make him ask too many questions.

"You mean I haven't said anything about them?" She forced a convincing laugh. She had become far too good at lying, but only out of necessity. "I don't get along too well with my parents, so that's why I moved out. My best friend is Jessica, and my boyfriend is"- she paused almost imperceptibly- "Nick. He's really nice." I'm sorry, Stuart, I really am. You'll never know how sorry.

"Are you guys serious?"

"You mean like gonna' get married?"

"Yeah."

She furrowed her brow. "I don't know. We've never talked about that."

"How long have you been seeing him?"

"Feels like I've known him for a thousand years."

*** *** *** *** ***

"Kevin," Nick whispered.

"What?" Kevin responded, sounding irritated. They were backstage with fans that had won radio station contests.

"Don't you think that girl over there looks kind of weird?" He pointed when he thought no one was looking.

"That is so rude- oh, you mean weird like that." She was not entirely transparent like the Las Vegas woman, and blended in much better, but every now and then her body seemed to shimmer like a hologram. Her nervous smile was a perfect match to those around her.

"We can't do anything," Nick said. "Not here. Not with everyone around."

Kevin frowned.

"Oh my God," a thirteen year-old said to her friend. "Kevin's so dark and brooding and... AAHHH!"

The boys were rather uneasy while talking to their fans, their eyes flicking back to the strange girl.

"Ugh," one girl said. "Look at them drooling over that slutty girl over there."

"Those are so not possibly real."

Brian saw the girl approach him, eyes shining with joy. And it was all fake.

I wonder how many of our fans are aliens. He grinned. Maybe hardly any humans actually like us.

Whatever their fan base, he knew he couldn't do anything about her prescence there, and he let her hug him enthusiastically, nearly breaking his ribs.

"Omigod, omigod, omigod! Hi! You are so fine! How are you?"

"I'm. . . fine. How are you?"

"Oh God, I am incredible. It is so great to meet you. Could you sign this?"

"Sure. What's your name?"

"Umm...Alina!"

"That's a pretty name." He scrawled a personalized signature on the poster she'd handed him.

"Oh, you're so sweet! How's your girlfriend?" she asked, referring to Leighanne.

"Good, thanks." Actually, he wasn't sure how things were between them. Leighanne had been so quiet lately. He couldn't think of anything he'd done wrong.

"You have the absolutely bestest voice I have ever heard!"

Brian blushed. "Well, thank you-"

"And you're so modest... eek!" She threw her arms around him again before kissing his cheek, exclaiming "Bye! I love you!", and bouncing off to find the next available Backstreet Boy.

Maybe some of them were trying to fit in and not take over. Either way, this was not the time or the place to do anything about it.

*** *** *** *** ***

Alina's question had prompted Brian to think about Leighanne. After their concert he made a point of visiting her hotel room. He was afraid that she had someone else, but when she opened the door she was alone, in a nightgown.

"Hi." She hugged him close. He hugged her back and smelled her blond hair. The shampoo she used made it smell like kiwi. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to talk to you."

Her face darkened. Those weren't usually promising words.

"May I come in?"

"Oh, yes, of course! I'm sorry."

He stepped inside, walked over to the bed and sat down on the edge. She followed him and sat down a foot (a thousand miles) away from him.

"You've been quiet lately and... I don't know... withdrawn? Yeah, that's the word, withdrawn. Is anything wrong? Did I do anything wrong?"

She smiled and to him, it was like the sun rising. "No, you didn't. No one did. I've just felt a little distracted lately, although I'm not sure by what."

"So everything's okay?"

"Yeah."

He hugged her, then kissed her softly on the mouth before he stood. "I have to go. Goodnight."

"'Night. I love you."

He smiled at her. "I love you too, Leighanne." Then he was gone.

"No, man, I'm serious, you have to come in and see her."

"You’re losing it."

"Fuck you. I mean it Dave, you have to."

"I’m a vegetarian. I don’t go to McDonald’s on principle, and the fact that they gave you a job doesn’t encourage me."

"They have veggie burgers."

"Cooked on the same grill as the hamburgers?"

"Uh, I think so."

"I’m not going. As much as your obsession with this chick intrigues me."

"I’m not obsessed."

"Sorry, whipped."

"Fuck you."

"Stu, you are so whipped. You’d let her put a leash on you and drag you across a lineoleum floor."

"Where did you come up with that?"

"I read it somewhere. Doesn’t she have a boyfriend anyway?"

"Yeah, but-"

"Look in the mirror. Why would she dump him for you?"

"Why are you such an asshole?"

"I’m a nihilist."

"So you don’t believe in anything, right?"

"Right."

"Then why do you believe in vegetarianism?"

"Fuck you, dumbass."

"Just come see her. She’s the most beautiful thing on earth."

"You really want to fuck her, don’t you?"

"I’d never ‘fuck’ her."

"So what would you do, like, ‘make love’?"

"Well, yeah."

"Jesus H. Roosevelt Chr-"

"I thought you were a nihilist."

"I’ll come in, okay? I’ll get fries or something. What’s she look like again? Ditzy blonde?"

"No! She’s got long brown hair, nice eyes, doesn’t usually smile."

"She’s a goth?"

"No, just the saddest person I’ve ever met."

"That’s ‘cause she has to work with you."

"Fuck off."

"I have to go. Baywatch is on."

"Why do you watch that shit?"

"‘Cause I think V.I.P.’s gonna’ get canceled."

"You’re sick."

"Ever seen ‘Nikita’?"

"Bye, Dave."

* * *

"Hey, that’s Dave." Stuart nudged Josephine at the deep fryer.

"Letterman? I’m not a Letterman fan."

"No, my friend. Can you go serve him?"

"What did they frost your corn flakes with?"

"Please?"

"Fine. Trina, I’ve got the counter."

Stuart started nodding vigorously at his friend.

"Stuart. What the hell are you doing?"

"Um... my neck is... cramping."

"Right." She walked up to the counter where a rodent-like teenager was waiting. "Welcome to McDonald’s. May I take your order?"

"Large fries."

"Would you like to supersize that?"

"No thanks."

"Okay, that comes to $1.39."

Dave shook his head.

"No, really, it does."

"Sorry, something else."

"Like neck cramps?"

"Yeah."

She nodded sagely as he gave her his money. Stuart whistled and she picked up Dave’s order and handed it to him. "Have a nice day."

"You too." He exited with his fries casting confused looks over his shoulder.

"Hey Stu?" she said.

"Yeah?"

"Your friend’s got neck cramps too."

"Maybe the flu’s going around... in the summer..."

"Welcome to McDonald’s. May I take your order?"

* * *

"She’s not hot."

"I never said she was hot, she’s beautiful. Those are two different things."

"Either way... no."

"What’s your problem?"

"She’s... well... ugly."

"She is not. She’s, like, timeless."

"Yeah, she’d be considered nasty by the standards of most time periods."

"Fuck off."

"Hey, all that matters is that you like her. You’ve got less competition that way."

"I’ve already got too much competition."

"Young love is fleeting."

"That’s supposed to be comforting?"

"Either they’ll break up or you’ll get over it."

"I can’t just ‘get over it’."

"So now you’re gonna’ tell me what, that you’re in love with her?"

"Um... yeah. I think I am."

Dave was struck temporarily silent.

"How did I know this was gonna’ happen to you?" he sighed. "Oh yeah, you’re not an asshole."

"And you are?"

"Hell yes."

Stuart shrugged. They were quiet for a moment. "Yeah, so..."

"Yeah, Baywatch."

"Yeah, okay, ‘bye."

"‘Bye."

He hung up the phone and started bleakly out the kitchen window. The summer sun pounded on the pavement outside, turning the city into a sauna.

"I love her."

He whispered the words. They hung limply in the still air, unaware of their own importance.

Nothing he had ever said had ever felt so right, and nothing he had ever said had ever felt so wrong.

Stuart and Josephine slipped out the back door to the rear parking lot. It was inhumanly hot; heat shimmered as it rose from the tarmac. Neither was sure what the point of taking breaks outside was when there was an air-conditioned staff room. Still, they voluntarily sat outside boiling in pools of their own sweat. Conversation seemed as slow and laborious as movement.

"Jo?"

"Uh-huh."

"Does Nick ever come by here?"

"You mean like here at work?"

"Yeah."

"No, he's usually working during my shifts."

"What does he do?"

"He works at a recording studio. Hooks up gear and stuff."

"Worked with anyone I'd know?"

"Nah. He usually works with, like, underground urban artists."

"You should get him to come in sometime."

"I can try..." She shrugged. "What about you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Your girlfriend."

"I don't have one."

"Not high on the highschool totem pole?"

"Yeah, you could say that."

"Dating in highschool is pretty horrendous. Highschool is pretty horrendous."

"Truer words were never spoken. Did you meet Nick in highschool?"

"No, after I graduated. I couldn't get anyone to go out with me in highschool."

He shifted to lean back against the wall and scraped his sneakers against the pavement. "Hey." She didn't say anything, just turned to look at him. "Have you ever been in love?"

"Yeah. I am."

He squirmed again and averted his eyes from hers. "What's it like?"

"The most beautiful, estastic, excruciatingly painful feeling you can imagine."

Stuart nodded. "I'm in love too," he said softly. Josephine glanced quizzically at him while he stared purposefully at his shoelaces, feeling like a moron for having said anything.

She looked at her watch. "Time to go back." She smiled a little too brightly.

They stood slowly, feeling the warmth of the city press aggressively against their skin. The sky was a hard, crayoned blue and clear far into the distance. The city desperately needed a storm.

"You look kinda' rough," Stuart ventured the next morning. Josephine had dark bags under her eyes and a sad, distant look.

"I know, I had trouble sleeping last night. Okay, flip. Yeah, that's good." She was training him on the grill- all he knew how to do was fries. Some of his co-workers would only refer to him as "Fry Guy".

"This looks really disgusting."

"Yeah." She was staring at a point a million miles past the front window.

"Are you okay?"

"Um, yeah, I'm fine."

"Are these done?"

"If you're planning to kill some people, yes."

"Oh."

"And the manager said you didn't need to be trained."

"I'm better at fries."

"I'd say so."

"Remember when I just started here a couple months ago and you were teaching me fries, and I burned myself?"

"Do you have a scar from that?"

Stuart nodded. "Just a little one." He showed her the underside of his wrist where there was a small, irregularly shaped splotch on his pale skin.

"What, do you want me to kiss it better?"

"Yes." He grinned at her. He had suddenly known that she knew. That had been an okay thing to say.

She grinned back. "Okay, they're done."

The parking lot was simply too unbearable, so they sat together in a corner of the staff room, drinking water in cone-shaped cups.

"So how come your friends haven't been by?"

"You ask too many damn questions."

"What?"

She looked at him, her shoulders slumped. Her eyes were sad and old, and her distant look was replaced by one of exhaustion. She had tried but she couldn't hold it in forever. And Stuart was different. But not different enough. "There are some things that I can't tell you. That I can't tell anyone. I've had to lie to you, and I'm sorry."

"Your friends?"

"Don't exist."

"Nick?"

"Not my boyfriend. A Backstreet Boy."

He looked into her eyes and saw the deepest sadness he could ever have imagined. "Why did you lie to me?"

"I didn't want you to worry..."

"You can tell me."

"No. You can't imagine."

Stuart looked at her again and understood. He took her small hand under the table and stroked it with his thumb.

"You know I can't do... this."

He nodded. "I know. It's okay. Doesn't matter." I love you... He didn't let go of her hand.

"Just as long as you know." She closed her eyes and leaned her head on her arm, just feeling him touch her. Her hair fell over her face and he gently brushed it back with his other hand, staring at her and leaving the obvious unsaid.

"Hey, Trina. Where's Jo?"

"I think she called in sick."

"She's never ben sick before."

Trina shrugged. "What are you gonna' take?"

"Um, fries."

"I thought you learned hamburgers yesterday."

"Jo says I'm a public health hazard if left unsupervised."

"She's kind of weird."

"She's great." Stuart decided to look her address up and go see her after he got off work at nine, just to make sure she was okay. Josephine needed him. If not him, she needed someone.

He went outside at break for a minute. The air settled too heavily on his shoulders, though, and he went back into the staff room feeling awkward and alone like a friendless kid at recess. He stared out the window at the sky, whose blue was being encroached upon by thick black clouds. They'd have a storm, at least.

Her apartment was in an area of university housing, a neighbourhood that wasn't well maintained, but not seedy. It was a basic building, no buzz service or even security system. He checked the piece of paper crumpled in his sweaty hand and got on the elevator to the fourth floor. It made ominous noises as it rose. The 'ding' as the doors opened was off-key.

Stuart turned left, them realized that it was the wrong way with the numbers decreasing. He turned back again, looking at the doors. 414, 416, 418, 420. He stood and stared at the black steel number.

"Jo?" he called softly, his voice cracking. There was no answer, which was understandable, since she probably couldn't hear him through a closed door.

He knocked and the door opened.

"Holy shit. Jo?"

The walls were bare, adorned only by a few pieces of wire. The only furniture he could see was a table in the kitchen. He pushed the door all the way open and stepped inside.

The apartment was empty, showing few signs of having ever been lived in. He went down a hall into the bathroom and opened the cupboards. Their only contents were a few stray Q-Tips. There was still a roll of toilet paper sitting on the back of the toilet. He grinned. He hated hanging it on the thingy too.

Stuart was starting to cry. He accepted it rather than fought it. Her leaving seemed so logical to him now that he should have expected it.

He walked across the hall into the bedroom and flicked the light switch. A naked bulb illuminated white walls dotted with sticky tack remnants. He turned around, disbelieving that she could have left so little physical trace of herself. He could somehow feel her there, though, all around him; he could feel that she was sorry.

As he turned, he saw a piece of lined paper taped to the wall. He pulled it off, taking some paint with it, and read.

Stuart:
If you find this, then I want you to know I'm sorry. I can't explain this and I know you understand that. I couldn't stay any longer than I have- it doesn't have anything to do with you. If you're worried, don't be. I've done this before, I'll do it again, and I'll be fine. You won't be able to find me and I won't be coming back. If I'd been able to fall in love with you, I would have.
I wish you every heaven on this earth.

Yours truly,

'Jo'

"Stay yourself and nothing less/stay fearless" -MGB

With a crack of thunder, a thousand angels finally started to cry.

*** *** *** ***

But I don't bleed, Josephine thought. Not enough.

The windshield wipers swished a steady rhythm, silver trickles of rain sliding off the glass only to be replaced in a steady downpour, as she clumsily wiped tears off her face with the same futility. She almost always left during storms. The rain washed away her recent past and made her clean and new again, but she wasn't sure if it could absolve her this time. It had been years since anyone had come as close to her as Stuart. Poor angel. I'm so sorry. I know you'll forgive me, and I wish you wouldn't.

Nicky slept in the backseat of the car, snoring softly as the U-Haul trailer rumbled behind the Civic. She liked her car, but she'd trade it in soon, when she got settled in Buffalo. After that... another stretch of numb existence, then a new city, then the same thing, over and over. She'd start staying on the west coast soon. Vancouver and Seattle sounded nice: it was supposed to rain a lot. She didn't know how long she could keep doing this, but it didn't matter. You were right, Stuart- 'doesn't matter'. It doesn't fucking matter, because I have to. Doesn't matter.

She couldn't love Stuart because of him. He was everything to her. She almost resented him for it, but she knew it wasn't his fault, or hers. He didn't even know. He had no idea that his soul was the completion of hers; no inkling that he walked as if whole while she existed as a half of something that couldn't be fitted together again. She wondered if he ever laid awake next to a lover and questioned if he was with the right person, but there was no way he could know that he wasn't. What he felt for the girl lying next to him he would call love, and it was love because it was all he knew. It was deep and true and faithful but not eternal; he owed that debt to Josephine. He would 'settle'. It seemed like everyone settled now, so what was the difference? If she'd been able to, she would have. With Stuart. I wouldn't have hurt him- but I had to. And somebody else will too, because that's just how it is, and of all people I wish he could be the one that never finds that out.

A river of blurry white lights flowed towards her while she was part of the red stream that extended to the horizon. Headlights in the dark and rain were always beautiful- a glowing chain to guide her away, and never home. What was home? There was no place, only him, and without him she was homeless. You can't go home again. She almost laughed at the double meaning the statement carried for her.

There is something more than this, I just can't have it. This is existing. It's not living. If I could end this I would. If I could have stayed with you, I would have. If I could be with him, I would. Doesn't matter, doesn't matter, doesn't matter. My God, do you know how right you were about that? There was so much beauty, everywhere, but it wasn't hers to share- only to see. She couldn't touch anyone or be touched, only watch. But every now and then she almost bridged the gap. Like with you... Stuart, God, I'm sorry...

A few hundred more miles following the red river and she would start over again. Stuart, please be okay. Please stay fearless. Because I didn't.

There was always the chance that everything would suddenly be okay in the next city. A glow of hope emanated from it with the glow of its lights. It would always turn out just the same, but Josephine could convince herself otherwise for the moment. For a few hours, she could pretend that everything was going to be okay.

She turned up the stereo, forced herself to stop thinking, and drove.

-Kid Rock, "Only God Knows Why"

there will forever be a part of me standing underneath your window

- Meghan Harrison, "The Way You Say Goodbye"

"What do you mean she’s gone?"

"She’s gone, Dave. She just left. You don’t believe me? Do you want me to take you to her apartment?"

"Calm down, man, stop crying." Dave wasn’t sure what to do with the wreck of his friend that had showed up at his door bawling.

"No."

"What do you mean, ‘no’?"

Stuart looked up at him, roughly rubbing his cheeks dry. "You don’t get it. You don’t understand."

"No, I don’t."

"How could she just. . . leave? I don’t understand. . ."

"Maybe she’s an internationally wanted criminal."

He managed a wan smile. "Yeah, Dave, I’m sure that’s it."

"I don’t know, it’s kind of sexy. Very ‘Nikita’. But how do you know she’s gone?"

Stuart reluctantly opened his hand and gave the folded piece of paper in it to his friend. Dave slowly read it, then looked at Stuart, who was in a disheveled wet heap on the loveseat.

"I’m really sorry. Are you okay?"

"What the fuck do you think?"

"Oh."

He pushed himself up with an elbow into something like a sitting position and scrunched his forehead. "Dave?"

"Yeah?"

"Do. . . do you believe in angels?"

"No. I’m a nihilist, remember? Do you?" "I. . . think so, now." He blinked twice and looked around the living room. "Um, I’m gonna’ go now. Tell your mom I’m sorry I got her upholstery wet."

"If you need to call me-"

"Yeah, I know." Stuart stood up and walked down the stairs to the entranceway. "I’ll see you around."

"Okay."

He absently tied his sneakers and stepped outside into the rain. It was cold now, and he was shivering in the T-shirt that had plastered itself to his skinny frame. He walked slowly down the street, scuffing his feet on the pavement and watching the worms writhe on the sidewalk in their dying moments. She was gone. Why? That’s the only thing I want to know. I’d never ask you for anything more if you would tell me why.

Stuart remembered some old song about walking in the rain so no one could tell that you were crying. It sounded like a good idea. He couldn’t explain what had happened to his parents- they’d call the police or something, and she obviously didn’t want that. She wanted- no, needed- to get the hell out of there. But why? I don’t get it, angel, I don’t. This doesn’t make any fucking sense. You were the only thing that ever really made sense. I know you’re sorry. . .

He kept walking, staring up at the sky, where the moon showed its face every few moments before being obscured again. Stuart was sure he’d never figure out why she was gone, or what had made her leave, or where she was now. He kept thinking of their last day together, trying to find a clue. There was certainly something not quite right about her. Not in a bad way, but he’d never met anyone like her.

So he walked home slowly in the rain, looking at the sky for an answer that wouldn’t come, forgetting that his car was still parked at Dave’s.

I don’t wanna’ feel the way that I do
I just wanna’ be right here with you
I don’t wanna’ see, see us apart
I just wanna’ say it straight from my heart
I miss you

- Westlife, "Miss You"

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

- Matthew Good Band, "Native Son"

She needed some money, now. Cold, hard, cash. She had money- she had a lot of money, she had a shitload of money- but no cash.

Josephine looked around the apartment that she’d rented before she arrived. There were three rooms: the bedroom, the kitchen, and the bathroom. It wasn’t as nice as her previous apartment, but it would have to do. She was pretty sure Nicky hated it. He kept smelling the corners of the kitchen and then looking at her like she was insane. She guessed that maybe there were cockroaches.

She considered going to an ATM, but remembered that she’d had to destroy her old card. Tomorrow she’d have to go downtown and buy a new identity. But tonight she needed food, so she needed cash, and she didn’t have any.

She sighed and opened the wooden chest in the corner, full of old relics and valuables, many of them useless to her now. A glimmer caught her eye and she picked up a perfectly circular, flawless white opal from where it lay on an old dress. Jo had just found it one day when she’d caught Nicky digging on the apartment lawn. For some reason, it had always given her the creeps.

Nicky started barking at her.

"Quiet! That’s enough!"

He wouldn’t stop.

"What is it? Is it this?" She held out the opal in her hand.

He barked louder.

"Okay, okay. I’m going to get rid of it now anyway. Relax." She pulled on her black jacket and sneakers, suddenly remembering that Americans left their shoes on in the house. Oh well, old habits die hard. She took the stairs down to the main floor (there was no elevator) and looked in the phone book yellow pages for a pawn shop that was still open. Eventually she found one that, according to her map, was only three streets over.

It was still raining, and now foggy. The weather suited her melancholy mood. Josephine walked more slowly than normal, head down, staring at the slick grey sidewalk under her feet. She wondered if Stuart was okay, if he’d been to her old apartment or not, if he’d found the note. If he would miss her.

She suddenly looked up and glanced at a street sign. The name on it didn’t belong to a street she was supposed to be near. She tried to stop walking but couldn’t, her legs bent on taking her to a destination she wasn’t aware of. Jo began to panic. Her stomach heaved and she nearly threw up. Not this shit again. . . What did I ever do to deserve this? She took her hand out of her coat pocket and unfolded it to look at the opal. She couldn’t be sure if it was just a trick of the streetlights or the way they were filtered through the rain and fog, but it appeared to be glowing.

Fuck me.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Nick hated Buffalo. He hated it. It was cold and it was raining, and he didn’t like cold or rain, especially since he felt restless tonight. After tomorrow night’s show, he would be extremely glad to get the hell out of there.

A knock came on his door.

"Yeah?"

"We have to go." Brian’s voice was somewhat muffled.

"Where?"

"I don’t know."

"Why?"

"You know why. I can feel it. Let’s go."

"Where’s everyone else?"

"Right behind me."

"Get your ass out here," AJ said.

"But it’s raining. . ." he complained half-heartedly as he found a jacket to wear. He was the least perceptive when it came to sensing that they needed to go; Brian was very sensitive to it. Now that Nick had been reminded, he could feel the familiar tug at his legs.

He opened the door and stepped into the hall with the rest of them. "Okay."

They walked down a flight of stairs and out the back exit of the hotel. He shivered as the rain hit the back of his neck. "It’s not far, is it?"

"No, not this time," Brian answered curtly, his mind focused elsewhere.

Nick grinned. "Are we there yet?"

"Shut up," Kevin said.

They ran across a busy street towards a large park. The twisted limbs of the old trees were grotesque and frightening in the dark and fog.

"At least there’s not anyone else around," Howie said.

"Doesn’t look like it," Brian confirmed.

"No, there is, over there." Nick pointed to a path at their left, where a small figure in a black jacket was briskly walking.

"That’s where the. . . thing is," Brian said.

"Yeah, but that person, they’re not the thing."

"But the thing is over there. . ."

"Shit." They removed the stones from their pockets, pressed them to their chests, and started to run towards the shape, which was now evidently female. It hadn’t seen them yet.

Before they could get there, they heard her scream.

I'm indestructible, how
I'm indestructible, how

-Matthew Good Band, "Indestructible"

Something was trying to strangle her. She screamed. But why fight? If I can die- if this can kill me- then please let me die. I’m sure I’ve paid my dues by now. She fought to stay silent and turned her head, looking at the creature perched on her back with mild interest. It seemed human, but not quite- every now and then it would flicker and she could glimpse something smaller and paler. Maybe I’m just hallucinating.

It started hitting her, clawing at her, trying to grab what was in her hand. If I do one last thing, it’ll be piss you off. She wouldn’t let go of it. The opal felt warm. The thing ripped her jacket off. Josephine looked down and saw a cut on her arm that looked deep enough to do it. The blood trickled down her skin over her fingers and onto the dirt. She didn’t let go of the opal.

As everything slowed down, she heard a pounding that didn’t match her heartbeat. Someone was yelling. More than one voice- ten, a hundred, a kaleidoscope of distorted sound pressing against her. She suddenly felt more alert and looked down. The cut was gone. If I want to die I can’t, if I want to live I’ll die. The chorus of noise collapsed itself into five voices. The creature was hitting her in the head, hard. This could take a while. She supposed it looked almost funny, although the people didn’t sound amused. She didn’t know what they were saying. She looked up for a moment.

Someone was close to her, twenty feet away, now ten. He was blurry- the blood loss was still wreaking havoc with her vision- and she couldn’t quite make out his face. His three mouths moved but she didn’t understand him. Josephine could understand someone in the background yelling "Nick, she’ll die! Fucking DO something!"

I’ll die. . . that’s a good one. "I don’t need your help," she slurred. She didn’t think he heard her. He reached her, grabbed her hand, and she nearly stumbled backwards. Between them was a force of repulsion, like trying to hold two north ends of a magnet together. Something stirred in her brain. But he can’t. That’s impossible.

He didn’t let go, hanging desperately onto her hand. "Don’t let go." She understood him that time. He brought their hands to her chest and held them there, removing his hand after a moment. She felt very warm, and for a moment his face was in focus.

The warmth washed over her completely. He disappeared and everything went white. Am I dead? Then she was cold, but not unpleasantly, and then he was there again. She tried to say something but she couldn’t speak.

A sort of laser blasted just over her head, narrowly missing his ear. The creature fell off her back and thumped soundly into a tree trunk. She didn’t turn around. She couldn’t stop looking at him. The only way this could. . . He’s going to die. I’m going to have to watch him die.

There was a weight against her leg. She looked down. There was a broadsword in a white scabbard. Everything on her was white and made of some flexible moving plastic. She looked at him. He was wearing something the same, in green.

"It’s the other one. Like in the book," a man with nearly fluorescent blond hair, wearing yellow, said. She knew who he was. She couldn’t place it at the moment. He was irrelevant compared to the other one.

The man in yellow ran past her, with three other figures wearing red, orange, and blue. The person in red had something that looked like a gun. She guessed that it had been him that "saved" her. The one in green stayed by her for a moment, staring at her, before he ran after them to the tree.

She saw a laser blast, and then another, and then a final one. they drew back from their tight cluster around the tree’s base and she saw something lying on the ground in front of them.

The man in red nodded to her. He was tall and handsome but she didn’t like his eyes. They were too flinty and intense and they made her feel naked. She knew who he was, just like she knew who the man in yellow was. She slowly walked towards them, avoiding their eyes and staring intensely at what she supposed was the corpse. It was small and grey, and curled into a fetal position.

"That’s not human, is it?" she said softly.

"Not exactly," one of them answered.

They stared as it flickered twice and shaped itself into the body of a homeless man clutching a brown bag. She raised an eyebrow but didn’t look up.

"We probably need to talk." Josephine lifted her eyes to meet soft blue ones that looked apologetic. She started to back away.

"No, don’t do that. I swear to God we aren’t going to hurt you. You can’t just run from this. Look, we can explain."

She ran back in the direction she’d come from, pulling the opal out of its holder and reverting to a nearly invisible figure all in black.

Nick started after her, but Brian put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. "Let her go. She’s not going to get rid of the stone. And we’ll see her next time. You know that."

"No, I don’t know that. She’s scared shitless."

"Of what?"

"Of this." Nick gestured to the corpse, and then to the rest of them.

"No, she’s not," Kevin said.

"Then what is she so scared of?"

Brian looked at him. "She’s scared of you."

"What?"

"I don’t know why, but she is." Brian shrugged.

They were quiet for a moment until Nick broke the silence.

"Hey Kev, thanks for saving our asses."

"No problem." They started to walk away.

"Wait- she had a cut on her arm, right? When we were running for her, it cut her arm, right?"

"Right." Howie nodded. "It looked fatal. Through a major artery." The rest of them nodded in agreement. "There should be blood on the ground right over there. And her jacket."

Sure enough, the path was stained with pools of scarlet that were still running off into the grass. Nick picked up her jacket and stretched out the sleeve so that they could all see the enormous tear in it, stained with still more blood.

"When I got to her," Nick said, "the cut was gone. There was nothing on her arm at all. Did you guys see it?"

"You mean the cut?"

"Yeah, when you got here, did you see it?"

"I was looking for it when I passed her, and it wasn’t there. It was gone," AJ said.

"It wasn’t there," Kevin agreed. "I remember wondering what happened to it."

"So what the hell happened to it?" Nick asked. He dropped the jacket and stared at it.

Howie looked down. "If you lose that much blood, you die. And she evidently didn’t."

"How do you know this stuff?"

"I watch ER with my mom. Sometimes that ‘Trauma’ show on TLC too. And ‘Operation’."

"You need to move out of your parents’ house."

"So technically, she should be dead from blood loss," Kevin summarized.

"Short of a genuine, church-certifiable miracle, yes," Howie said.

"But she’s not."

"Doesn’t exactly look like it."

"And she hates Nick," Brian added.

"Hey!"

"I just tell it like it is. She literally ran away from you, man."

Nick drew his eyebrows together. "When I saw her, I mean, when I looked into her eyes- "

"A thousand symphonies began to play?"

"No. Shut up. It felt, like- there were two things happening. One was that this was supposed to happen. Like it was totally planned. Like I was supposed to be standing there with her. And it was, I don’t know, kind of nice. But then there was this other thing like I wasn’t supposed to be there, like we were never supposed to be in the same place at the same time, that was pushing against the other thing. When I touched her hand it was like, you know, the same ends of two magnets? That thing?"

"Wow, did you ever pay attention in physics."

"Shut up. You know what I mean. And I held onto her hand anyway, but. . . I don’t know, it was weird. And the two different things were like fighting, and I thought I was gonna’ be sick, but then I wasn’t."

"That’s messed," AJ said.

"I know."

Kevin shook his head quickly as if to clear it of the conversation that had just happened. "We should go back now."

"But it was so weird."

"We know."

"But it was really really weird."

"You’re annoying, did you know that?"

"As a matter of fact, yes, you’ve told me before."

"Is it just me," AJ interrupted, "or are we getting, I don’t know, more used to this?"

"Like desensitized? Yeah, I think so."

"Wow, Nicky, you know a big word."

"Shut up. They use it when they’re talking about TV and video games and stuff. It’s on the news and shit."

"Wait a minute- you watched the news?"

"Yeah, like four times."

I'm gonna take a little time, a little time to look around me
I've got nowhere left to hide, it looks like love has finally found me

-Foreigner, "I Wanna’ Know What Love Is"

Nicky looked up from his water bowl when Josephine ran into the apartment and collapsed on the floor, shaking. He nudged her arm with his nose; she only kept shaking and did not respond. There was some dried blood, but no cut, just a thin scar. He started licking it off, grimacing at the metallic taste. She finally lifted her head from the floor and looked at him, her pupils dilated wildly. Something about her scared him. He stepped back and looked at her from a safer distance.

She shifted her gaze from him to some point on the wall. "It can’t, we can’t. . ." she whispered. She lay there, nearly catatonic, for a long time, while the rain sang a dim song against the windows that eventually faded into a grey, still dawn, and Nicky fell asleep in a furry pile next to her.

When the sun pierced sharply through the windows into her eyes, she sat up, the sudden movement giving her a dull headache. She looked around at the walls and wondered where she was, and then remembered, and then remembered what had made her lie shuddering on the floor for hours. She’d been faced with her own immortality a few times before, and the reaction was always something like this; worse now, with him, who she was never supposed to see again, who might die if he was with her because she couldn’t; worse now with a shrunken grey corpse and an opal; worse now with two magnetic norths, and an untouchable heaven seen through blue screens.

She stood and walked to the window, looking out over the street below. It all looked the same. She thought it had no right to, not after that. The creature was not what she found unacceptable- surprising, perhaps, but considering everything else she’d seen, not unacceptable. No, it was him. She didn’t know how it could have happened. She didn’t know why it scared her so much when it had been all she wanted for so long.

There was a box against the wall labelled ‘Pictures’ in steady, black ink. She pulled off the tape sealing it shut, bent the flaps back, and saw him looking up at her in a frozen approximation of a smile, with a camera flash reflected in his eyes. She knelt and took the poster out of the box and tentatively reached out her hand. It trembled uncertainly in the air. She put it gently on his cheek, and carressed the picture, feeling the smoothness and cool of the glossy paper instead of warm, soft skin.

This is all I have, this is all I can have. I’ve learned to live without it, and I don’t know if I can learn to live with it. And now. . . you can’t show me heaven and never let me in. But it’ll have to be like that. This is all I have. This is all I can have.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Nick was irrationally, stupidly, compulsively hoping he’d see her in the audience that night. He was a wreck backstage, vibrating with unfocused energy, pacing relentlessly back and forth, back and forth. If he walked far enough maybe she’d be there, just one more length, two more, three and she was there. . . if he could just believe that that would work.

He jumped when Brian put a hand on his shoulder.

Brian did not skirt the subject. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Nick shrugged. "I’m just hyper, I guess."

"You’re always hyper. It’s not that. It’s. . ." He looked at Nick. "It’s the girl."

"Speaking of girls, where’s Leighanne?"

"She said she had to go somewhere else tonight. It’s not like she needs to be at every show. Stop changing the subject. It’s the girl."

Nick sighed. "It’s the girl. I want her to be here, tonight, I want her here so much, and she’s not even so beautiful, hardly even pretty, but there’s this something in her eyes, like home. But I don’t mean like my house home-"

"Now I’m sure they based the stupid guy from 2GE+HER on you."

"Brian!" Nick looked pleading.

Brian rolled his eyes. "I know what you meant, Nick."

"But what’s up with her? She like hates me, and she’s not dead when she should be." He looked panicked for a moment. "Not that I want her to be. And what if I never see her again?"

"You will though. The stones, the opal- she can’t run from this any more than we can. She’s only running from you, and I don’t know why she’s so scared. She doesn’t hate you though."

"How do you know that?"

"She would have had more contempt for you."

"You mean like Kevin?"

"He doesn’t hate you."

"But he has contempt for me."

"Sometimes. And she would have been revulsed."

"Like Kevin when he sees my hotel room?" Nick grinned, for the first time in hours. He really did find genuine pleasure in annoying people- well, at least certain people.

Brian grinned back. "Yeah. Look, you’ll see her again. I doubt tonight though."

"But she could be here."

"Let it go."

"Hey, Leighanne hasn’t come to any shows for a while. And she stayed home for a couple weeks."

"She’s probably sick of the travelling, and the stage show. Why, do you think something’s wrong?"

"No. Just everything’s weird right now, you know?"

"Oh, you noticed?"

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Josephine bought a ticket outside from a well-dressed man with beady eyes. She reminded herself that she wasn’t Josephine anymore, but Chloe Armstrong. Ugh. At least she had liked her previous name a little bit; she’d been able to choose it. The men downtown hadn’t allowed her to, and she was sure she could have found someone who would, but she didn’t want to wait.

It wasn’t a good seat. That was quite intentional. She didn’t want to be too close to him, in case she reacted too strongly, and she didn’t want to throw him off. She’d left her jacket in the park, covered with her blood, enough blood for a fatal injury, and then she’d been fine. She wondered if he was scared of her, or if they’d even noticed.

When she was inside, the other girls assessed her threat to them. Most just smirked, the ones in tight pants and scant black tanktops. She was nearly lost inside a mammoth Tampa Bay Lightning jersey. The bunch of twelve-year olds wearing glow-necklaces she was sitting next to whispered, a little too loudly, that she was weird.

It was her turn to smirk. You have no idea.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

A cascade of lights and fireworks accompanied their landing on the stage. As he sang, he scanned the rows for her face. He didn’t see her. There were pretty girls there, beautiful, the kind of faces that men had died for and men would die for. He didn’t want them. He realized that he never really had.

Nick looked and looked for her. He made eye contact with many other girls in the process and they screamed when he looked at them or anywhere near them. Fan concert reviews would mention how intimate he was with the audience, but he had rarely felt so detached.

He heard the beginning of ‘As Long As You Love Me’ sound clear and pure through the hot air and the frantic screams that filled it. At the appropriate time, he turned around to face the audience, and began to sing.

"Although loneliness has always been a friend of mine,
I’m leaving my life in your hands
People say I’m crazy and that I am blind
Risking it all in a glance

"And how you’ve got me blind is still a mystery
I can’t get you out of my head
Don’t care what is written in your history
As long as you’re here with me"

Suddenly, he knew she was there. He couldn’t see her, but she was there, way up- where, he wasn’t quite sure, but she was in the building, and she was watching him. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did, and as if to confirm his suspicions, he felt the magnets, but weakly.

You can’t show me heaven and then never let me in. . .

"I don’t care who you are, where you’re from, what you did
As long as you love me
Who you are, where you’re from, don’t care what you did
As long as you love me"

Somewhere, he felt her smile.