It was a few days before Felicity resurfaced.

  During that time, she slowly became aware of the outworld, and what her host was doing and experieng in it. It was the usual stuff, the routines of ing house, making food aing it, going to work, visiting with friends, and sleeping.

  But threaded throughout those experiences were mentions of the Gresham Theater massacre that had happe Tuesday night. The moment when Felicity’s pain began.

  The very first reports, spread via social media, were that as many as 20 people had died in a bloodbath.

  There’d been a horrific photo taken via cellphone of the women’s restroom in the northern wing of the theater, blood c a good half of the facilities, spttered and spread about by absent bodies having been dragged to and fro. And that photo still existed, enshrined in tless social media ats.

  That was ground zero, and people were certain others had died while running for the front doors, and in some of the theaters themselves.

  But then the police released their own photo and statement.

  The police photo showed the destru of a stall door, the ventition duct, and one of the sinks, but there was hardly any blood at all. If any, it was hidden in the accessibility stall, out of sight of the camera. It didn’t match the first photo at all, except for the pt of the door, duct, and sink fragments. Which people found to be very spooky. And there were immediately arguments about which photo had been faked.

  There was one supposed digital image expert who demonstrated an analysis of both photos, who cimed her showed signs of being faked. But his report was mbasted as ridiculous by nearly every other expert.

  The police statement listed that there were no casualties, and only one missing person. They described the i as ‘a fight’ that had occurred when only a couple people were ihroom.

  There was no expnation for the simultaneous and blood curdling screams of multiple people throughout the building. her the polior the press eveiohat part of the event, but the eions of the articles repeated it as a point of tention frequently.

  And then, as the days progressed, some people reported having seen a huge lizard or an elk iheater during the event. One person said it was an impossibly giant frog. All of these reports were dismissed by most people as fanciful and ridiculous. But, apparently, the evident mystery of the blood gave other people who cimed to have beehe ce to e out about seeing some sort of animal or monster.

  Felicity, of course, could guess the truth of it.

  But her host was amongst the skeptics, ahoughts and doubts dominated Felicity’s mind as she slowly woke up.

  And on Saturday night, Amber was arguing loudly with her friend Josephine about it while st through the grocery store for their evening meal.

  Waving a package of boneless chi thighs wildly before stuffing it into her basket, Felicity could feel Amber’s words shape her mouth, “e on. Predator v.s. the Thi out just half a minute before the attack. And you know how that movie ends. People were already high on adrenaline and ready to see monsters.”

  “I mean, OK,” Josephine said. “I’m just sayin –”

  “It was a clear case of groupthink and hysteria.”

  “Sure, maybe. And I’m not saying there was an animal there,” her friend protested. “But weird shit’s been happening around that theater since I was a little kid, Amber. You ’t dist decades of stories.”

  “Of course I !” Amber dismissed her. “But I’m not doing that, either. I’m just saying the animal wasn’t there. There were no photos of it. Nobody could get their story straight. And they waited until three days after the io start talking about it. The rest of the stuff? I just don’t know. OK?”

  “OK.”

  After grabbing the meat, they were wandering down the pasta aisle, looking for the right kind of noodles, and fag the question of whether they wao go for an Asian or an Italian profile for the dish. They hadn’t even resolved that discussion by the time they’d ehe store, and an overheard ent by another er had derailed it.

  So then they paused in front of the little ‘ethnic’ se, which was right o the ‘Asiaion and had everything for taco fixings except the tortils. Tortils were, illogically, somewhere else iore.

  “Ooh, we could do fajitas!” Amber excimed.

  “Not pasta?” Josephine asked.

  Amber shrugged, aured with her hand, “Mexi pasta.”

  “I really ’t with you,” Josephine shook her head, but relented. “But yeah, fajitas sound perfect. Let’s do those!”

  “I got lots of tortils at home,” Amber decred, reag for the fajita mix. “But we’re gono swing by the veggies again for the peppers and onions.”

  “Margarita mix?”

  “Ooh, yes!”

  “We got this.”

  And then they were walking down the aisle again, toward the front of the store to take a left for the produce se.

  The lightly speckled and marbled vinyl fl regressed uheir sneakered feet as boxes of differently figured carbohydrates and s of beans and tomatoes passed by them. And the overhead aisle sign grew ever closer, looming above like an omen, green in the fluorest luminesce of the store lighting.

  It read, “PASTA, ETHNIC, ASIAN.”

  Josephine sighed audibly while looking up at it.

  In the brief lull of their version, Amber had been re her thoughts and trying to remember if there was something she’d meant to say about the Gresham Theater massacre. Something was nagging her about it, but she couldn’t put her finger on it, couldn’t remember if there was even a single word she’d almost said.

  But then as they stepped out of the aisle and faced the produce se, where the rest of their fajita ingredients y, she caught a glimpse of her favorite clerk. That goofy, mousy single-mom moonlighting as a student named Synthia. Well, she didn’t actually know what Synthia did when not at work, but those were the vibes she gave off.

  Synthia gri her with reition, but they weren’t ready to check out yet.

  “Yonna love Nope,” Josephine said. “Jean Jacket is the best, but also Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer both carry so much weight. Like it’s nothin’. Fajitas are such a good choice for this movie, too. I don’t know why, it just feels right.”

  “Cool,” Amber absently said, finding herself staring at Synthia lohan she’d intended as they walked by.

  I wi Felicity when I saw her during my Saturday shift.

  Or, I wi her host. She seemed tnize me, but I couldn’t tell whether Felicity was fronting or even watg from behind. But I hoped that the wink would bring her forward if she came around to my ter for checkout.

  She was headed toward another part of the store with her friend, though, so I had to occupy myself with a few other ers before she came into sight again.

  She seemed a little startled by the wink, and then was out of my line of vision.

  And with the strikes happening across the try, Greg was talking union stuff, while Cass, who was oher side of him from me, was trying to shush him. But the ers were absolutely totally having it, enthusiastically encing us to unionize, or even fbbergasted we weren’t already a union store.

  That versation could have goher way. It was totally the luck of ere serving at the moment.

  Not drawing a paycheck, I stayed out of it, but basked in the radiaions it triggered.

  I was quickly distracted from my Felicity sighting, and fog on serving up the usual cheerful scripts of a front-fag business exge with the public.

  “Hi! How are you? Did you find everything OK?”

  “Yep, thank you.”

  “How many bags do you need?”

  “Got my own!”

  “Fantastic.”

  “What about you?”

  “What? Oh, I have bags of my own, too! See?”

  “No, what do you think of all this union talk?”

  “Well, I…” I paused to sider my words. “I support my coworkers in whatever they want to do. But it does feel like we get treated pretty well here –”

  Greg g me over his shoulder with a grave wide eyed expression, and shook his head quickly and shortly.

  “Mm,” I said. “In any case, there’s always strength in numbers. And that’s important for whatever may e.”

  Greg nodded.

  And so did my er.

  I quickly finished loading the groceries in the er’s provided bags, and hit enter on the register ahe total.

  “I’m not very knowledgeable about unions,” I said. “But it’s definitely a better versation than Tuesday’s i.”

  “Ah, yeah, the ‘massacre’,” the er held up both sets of fio mime quotes around the word.

  I got no particurly stroion from them for that. Just a hint of dismissal and amusement.

  Someone behind me radiated shod fear, however, and I turned and looked at them before they spoke from Ayden’s line.

  “I was there,” a small woman with a tight bck hair bun and a multicolored dress said, pulling her small child closer. She fixed my eyes with a heavy and meaningful gaze.

  “Dang,” Ayden said, but she didn’t break her gaze age with him in any way.

  “Oh?” my own er prompted, lifting themselves up on their feet to look over at her through thick bck rimmed gsses.

  “It may not have been a true massacre,” the woman said. “But I will never fet the screams. Something happehere.”

  “You screamed too,” her child said in Urdu. And she shushed them.

  But it was clear that there were other ers waiting in all three lines, and I just nodded my head in aowledgement, and we all tinued our routines in a momentary wave of silence or quiet.

  But before the woma with her groceries and child, she reached over and touched me on the shoulder to tell me, not Ayden who was her clerk, “I remember the eyes. Markings on the walls. Where you see the monster’s eye, it might happen again. They look like eyes with teeth. In marker on the wall.”

  And then she left.

  Well, I khe actual truth of that. But that was the first I’d heard someoion Felicity’s marks.

  It was obvious she’d spoken to me because I’d brought up the subject, and to her I was a skeptic for ahat she’d experienced first hand. She had no idea that I’d beeoo, and I gave no indication of it. But she’d spoken to me with nothing but for my health and well being. She’d seen my disi in the subject as a sign I might stumble into danger. And she tried to fix that fw by inf me of what she thought was a crucial detail.

  And I appreciated that quite a bit.

  Hers were good emotions to eat, too, but it helped me to feel briefly like I was amongst peers. Accepted for the disguise I’d devised. A human.

  And then there were two more ers before I found myself looking up at Felicity’s host and her friend.

  “Hey, Synthia, how’s it going?” she asked in a voice I didn’t reize.

  Felicity realized that Amber clearly didn’t uand that this clerk, Synthia, didn’t know her. It wasn’t so much a matter of putting two and two together as it was listening to Amber’s thoughts while watg Synthia’s facial expressions.

  Synthia was su open book, that moment where she took a mental step backward in to see. She clearly paused at the appropriate time in the versation to say Amber’s name, in order to try to remember it. And she didn’t. She mumbled a hesitant greeting sans name, aioned something about it being a hectic week.

  The fact that Amber spoke with different iions than Felicity did, and a somewhat different tone, might have been a factor, too, if Synthia somehow knew Felicity. But Felicity was unsure of that.

  With Josephihere, Felicity couldn’t bring herself to take the front. But also, she wasn’t quite sure who Synthia was, herself. So she just watched.

  But it was obvious that Synthia had been expeg something else from Amber and had been taken aback.

  And Felicity had some kind of hunch that Synthia was an emanant like herself, but couldn’t figure out how or why. There were no obvious signs without a thh examination. But, if Synthia was an emanant, she’d most likely be ohat feeds oions, just by the fact that she was here in this pce pretending to be human. Most likely.

  And when that thought crossed her mind, Amber hesitated and stumbled, gng at Josephine.

  Josephine quirked her head and raised her eyebrow, but didn’t seem to make anything of the moment.

  And Felicity felt like something was missing from the whole se, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  She knew she reized Synthia from somewhere, probably this very store, but she couldn’t remember how or why, or what they may have ever talked about. Something profound was missing, and she couldn’t dredge it up no matter how often Amber kept gng at the clerk’s face.

  It wasn’t until they were walking out the doors of the building, bags in hand, that it hit her.

  If she couldn’t remember Synthia, it was because the part of her that had had those memories had been torn out of her at the theater.

  Synthia had been her friend in the restroom! Which meant that she was an emanant!

  She thought. Maybe. Hopefully.

  Hopefully that emotioer in that store wasn’t something more dangerous.

  Amber turned and looked back at the clerk through the door.

  Synthia was staring at them with a thoughtful expression.

  theInmara