The world was supposed to end in 2012, at least according to an interpretation of the Mayan calendar. The year came and went without the extinction of mankind. Striker’s world ended— as far as he was concerned— when Zoey disappeared, kicking off a series of events that now forced him to lay low. January was barely half over and he’d seen three people die over her journal, each one a person whose body had been overtaken by a force Striker couldn’t comprehend.

  He needed, somehow, to remain a step ahead.

  He stepped into a cheap North Beach hostel, just after ten in the evening. It had the exterior of a modern, upscale kind of place, but the inside proved only the facade had ever seen any renovation. The interior, kitschy and encrusted in dust, was unimpressive. He stood in a small alcove that opened into a larger room. Beyond that, he could see hallways from which people entered and retired to various rooms. A chic spiral staircase— the newest fixture in sight— led to a second floor. Dust flew in the air when the young man behind the counter opened and closed his laptop during Striker’s check-in. The place felt almost forgotten to time with mediocre hotel art slapped on as a bandage. The clientèle, in contrast, was mostly a group of foreign tourists, seemingly fresh from high school.

  He was given a tag with his name and told to find an open bed in any room. The doors to each were open and would remain so until eleven-thirty. Each room had three bunk beds and two desks. They were spacious, at least. He found an unclaimed bottom bunk in a room toward the center of the hall on the first floor. There were two lockers underneath: one for himself and his bunkmate. He sat on the edge of the mattress and stared at his phone until he decided to type a message:

  ‘What are you up to?’

  After some debate, he sent it to Cecilia. He worked on translating Zoey’s journal while he waited for a response. It was laborious, even with the resources he’d found and received over the last week. While he was getting better at withstanding the side effects of touching the book’s power sigils, he put his deeper explorations on hold, careful to touch only the edges of those pages. The information he uncovered was sparse and disjointed. There were scattered mentions of power outages, alchemy, the 2006 event, and his own name in a few places. It didn’t amount to anything he could call progress. He still had no context for most of it and couldn’t find the characters that would provide such context in the journal Case had given him. He resigned himself to rest when the first of his roommates returned. He put the journal he received from Case into his assigned locker, under his bed. Zoey’s journal remained with him, in his coat pocket. He fell asleep and woke up to his phone ringing. Cecilia was calling.

  “Hey?” he asked, groggily.

  “I need help with something tomorrow. Like the party. I'll text you. My phone minutes are low. Bye.” She hung up. He received another text seconds after, with cross streets. Esmeralda & Elsie. She would meet him at 9.

  The next day felt remarkably calm. He slept through most of it. There was no word from Case. Even before he purchased his handle, he felt a particular malaise. He let his exploration of the book rest as he elected to drift in and out of consciousness until he forced himself out of bed to call a cab.

  He was dropped off where Esmeralda street dead-ended before Bernal Heights Park. He could hear the sound of a party somewhere nearby in the brisk January evening. Ahead of him were stairs, shrouded in foliage and darkness that led upward. Cecilia was seated at the bottom.

  “Hey,” she said, “Sorry for being so short on the call. I have to save my phone minutes. We’re gonna have to go up,” she said. “What's been up with you?"

  “Uhh,” Striker mumbled, trying to keep up with her as she stood and began to ascend the stairs. “They came back.”

  “Yeah,” she said, through gritted teeth. “I saw you getting arrested. Or put in the car. I knew they had something to do with it."

  Striker paused. “Hold on, you just— you knew that and you didn’t say anything? Why were you even there?”

  “I wanted to ask you to do this in person.” She paused and looked back, at Striker’s feet, lowering her voice, “And you’re still wearing those fucking shoes. You’re lucky they don’t have any connection between you and those girls yet.”

  Striker shrugged. "What are we doing out here?”

  “I need you to help me hold something down.” She paused and started again, “It’s more dangerous than it sounds. Do you believe in God?”

  “Weird question, but no.”

  “I don’t either, but my family is religious. Or, spiritual, I guess. My dad used to tell this story every year around Halloween about when my tío was trying to heal a sick man. My tío was a uh… medicine man, sort of. People would come from a long way to talk to him when they felt wrong. When they felt like they were acting like… I dunno, out of themselves?”

  “So what, he was a therapist or something?”

  She shook her head. “Therapists don’t have what my tío had. What he dealt with wasn’t,” she sighed and her shoulders dropped as she searched for words, “He helped with spiritual problems. He lived in a pretty… I dunno, rural place. Some of the people can be pretty superstitious. So one day, the cops bring in this guy they wrapped in chains. He broke into someone’s house and got stabbed a lot of times but… he was fine. He just begging everybody for acid.”

  “Like… uh… burning acid?”

  “The drug. He told my tío it helps him ‘transition easier’. My tío found out what he meant was it makes it easier to leave the body he was in to take over a new one. The man… the thing told him that the body he was in belonged to someone else. That some man gave up his body for him. My tío saw through it. He did a ritual”

  “I’m sorry, where are you going with this?”

  “Your stalkers… I think they’re demons. My parents have been saying that but I don’t… I didn’t believe in that.” She took a deep breath. “If they’re right, I think I found a way to make the demon and the person come apart. And trap the demon too.”

  She pulled a paper from her pocket, about three by six inches, covered in a script he didn’t recognize. “Demon stickers,” she said.

  “You’ve gotta be fucking joking me.”

  “You know symbols are powerful by now, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “I’m still trying to come to grips with this whole ‘fantasy is real’ thing.”

  “It’s not fantasy. Your life isn’t a story. You can die. And you keep almost doing that.”

  Striker paused again, “Why are you so intense right now?”

  She turned and leaned down, holding onto the railing. Her face was inches away from his as she whispered, “Because you’re treating this like some book you’re in.”

  “It’s just hard for me to conceptualize what you’re saying as a real thing, you know? An old man jumped off my fucking balcony— I get that reality. Why it happened, though… Not so much.”

  “I get it,” she said, relaxing as she took a step down. “I need your help if this is going to work. And it’ll help you. If these things are real, I can get more. But we need to find out first.”

  They stared at each other for a moment.

  “It’s up there,” she said, ascending the stairs again. Striker struggled to keep up. They reached the top of the stairs and she began to trek straight up the hill to the top, where an old facility sat in disrepair.

  Striker crawled up on all fours and reached the top a couple minutes after her. She silently shushed him as he approached.

  “It’s inside,” she whispered. “I need you to hold it down. Just like you did with the banners the other day: draw the symbol and hold what I tell you where I tell you to. It can’t see the light from your hand so don’t worry about that.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She extended her finger as a pen to draw a sigil in the air. He could almost feel the repelling force of the warped shape before she snapped her fingers and it disappeared. The mark on her hand glowed. “You can still do it, right?”

  Striker got against the wall with her and drew the sigil he called the Pusher in front of himself. He looked all around as he saw the bright trail from his fingertips, sure someone in a home below would see and investigate.

  “It’s okay,” she said, “If anyone shows up, we’ll have bigger problems. No one can see the light but us."

  She also cast a wide glance around. He finished the sigil waved it off. The mark on his hand glowed. “You’re really sure no one’s gonna see this?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Come on.”

  She crouched and leapt, vaulting clear over the wall that stood several feet taller than either of them. Striker took a running start, but his fingertips still couldn’t reach the top. His second and third attempts had diminishing returns.

  Cecilia perched atop the wall for his fourth attempt and grasped his wrist when he fell short. She was on the balls of her feet, yet her balance was unwavering. She pulled him over the wall and let go. He tumbled to the ground, rolling on a soft patch of dirt. She dropped onto her feet, offering him a hand as he struggled with soil in his eyes.

  “Are you done?” she asked, under her breath. “This isn’t going to be like last time. I really need you here. If things go bad, I’ll try to keep you alive, but… That’s on you. You are sober, right?”

  He nodded as he looked at the glowing symbol on the back of his left hand. She pulled him down into a crouch as they approached the door of the decrepit building in the center of the walled space. He stayed on her heels as she approached a door and put her finger against its old lock, rotating her hand. The resulting thunk startled them both. Neither made a sound, frozen in place until they were satisfied they were unheard. She pushed the door open and crept inside. Striker followed.

  Sparse skylights made the interior just barely visible enough to navigate. The ceiling tiles, once pristine and uniform, now littered the floor. The wiring was ripped out from above and strewn about. All of the light bulbs were broken. Nearly every shelf, cabinet, and drawer that could be opened or emptied had been. A thick layer of dust encrusted everything. Striker held back sneezes as he closed the door behind them. The crunch of debris under their feet already put him on edge, especially knowing they were not alone. Ahead of him was a wide hallway with four closed doors on each side.

  Cecilia approached the first door on the left, with Striker just behind. She nodded toward it as she opened her pocket knife. She put a hand on the knob, but shook her head after a careful attempt to open it. The next door’s handle turned freely. She pushed it open with her knife ready. The room beyond was nearly pitch-black. The light from their marks on the back of their hands did nothing to illuminate the area. Striker took out his phone, shining its light over her shoulder. The room was large, bare, and caked in years of dust.

  She looked back at him and nodded to the next door in the hallway. It and the last on that side were locked. When they turned to check the other side, two of the doors they had yet to touch stood ajar.

  Striker shot her a glance. She shook her head.

  “I think we were checking the wrong doors,” said Striker.

  “You weren’t looking behind us,” said Cecilia, “just keep the light pointed this way. And watch our back.”

  He remained close behind her with his light over her shoulder as he glanced over his own every few moments. Cecilia checked the open third and first doors from the front on that side. Both were empty. Striker spun around when he saw a figure behind them.

  The light settled on an unfamiliar man. He was unkempt, dressed in ragged clothes. There were fresh tracks of blood on his face, like he’d ripped at it with his fingernails. His hands were bloody. His smile was unsettling. Striker reeled backward, trying to yell Cecilia’s name, but shouted something unintelligible.

  He could hear his heart pounding in his ears as the man leapt toward him. In a blur, the man landed, sliding on debris between Striker and Cecelia.

  “I’m guessing you’re not Cecilia,” he said, grinning, before turning his attention from Striker to her. “You, though— I just gotta to get this right, you are Cecilia Gonzales?”

  “You don’t look like one of Borchart’s ‘business associates’,” she said, gripping the knife in her hand tightly.

  “He sends sends his regards,” he said, before surging toward her. She threw her left hand up, fingers splayed and palm toward him. He froze, mid-dash.

  “Help me!” she yelled, through gritted teeth.

  It took Striker a moment to process what she’d said, and another to remember the glowing mark on his hand. He made a fist, imagining a tether between himself and the man, who struggled to move forward.

  The strain was instant, like he was holding the leash of a dog larger than any other, that wanted nothing else but to run. Unlike holding a leash, the pull on the other end was against his whole body and the thing on the other had more force than he had weight or strength.

  He began to slide forward before he felt a cosmic snap and fell backward. The man surged toward Cecilia again, freezing after another single step. Cecilia began to slide backward.

  “Get your shit together!” she shouted.

  Striker stumbled to his feet and pulled Zoey’s journal out of his pocket. He flipped it open, placing his hand on a page without looking to see which one he’d landed on. His mark flashed, and a blinding light bathed the room. A loud crash broke the silence. He shut his eyes swearing, ‘Fuck’, over and over again. Cecilia was swearing in Spanish. Dust was still in the air when he was able to take in the room again. There was a gaping hole in the wall behind him, with the man nowhere in sight.

  “I said just hold him down!” she yelled. “How did—”

  The man burst back through the hole in the wall, in a flash. Cecilia lifted her hands, again.

  She was too slow.

  Her knife clattered onto the floor as he collided with her, sending them both into a tumble. Striker could see a light— a symbol piercing the darkness in front of Cecilia’s hands as she and the man rose. She snapped her fingers and punched him in the chest as he lunged toward her. His body stopped, but his arms and legs continued moving forward. He fell to his back and quickly jumped back up, only to sway a moment after raising his fists. He staggered backward, struggling to keep his footing. Cecilia made two more motions.

  The first spun him around to face away from her.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The second tripped his legs out from under him, forcing him into a face plant.

  “Hold him!” she said.

  Striker heard her, but stood with his jaw agape. The man on the floor rolled over onto his back, bones cracking, before he jumped to his feet and leapt at Striker. Cecilia grabbed his ankle and was also pulled momentarily airborne before she and the stranger fell to the ground in another face plant. Striker flipped through Zoey’s journal and stopped when he felt something that resonated— the page he needed— the Pusher. He palmed it and the man shouted threats and curses at them in different languages, utterly frozen.

  “Okay,” said Cecilia, “Here we go.” She pulled the paper from her pocket and placed it on his back, with the symbols facing up. The man opened his mouth and made a low, inhuman humming sound. The paper on his back began to rustle, gently at first, then violently, as it darkened to a pitch black.

  Striker pulled his hand from the journal’s page as the paper settled into stillness. Cecilia picked up that blackened scrap and put it in her pocket. She shaped another spell, one Striker didn’t know, and put her hand on the man’s chest. Striker heard a loud pop. She smiled.

  “Did you just…” his eyes were wide.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I can heal people. If they’re not too far gone, at least. I broke some of his chest bones when I hit him, but they should be fixed now. We should go.”

  “That’s it?”

  “For now. Let’s get out of here,” she said, looking down at the man who was groaning, unconscious.

  Taking their time on the way out, they found the gate open, with the lock ripped off and discarded nearby. They descended the hill by way of the path this time. Cecilia was relaxed now, humming to herself as she pulled her phone from her pocket. “Are you hungry?”

  “Uh…” He wasn’t, but he knew he would be when the adrenaline finally wore off, which would probably be when he was no longer a stone’s throw from the park. “I guess,” he said.

  She put her phone to her ear and had a brief exchange that flipped between Spanish and English. “We’re taking the bus, love you,” she said, before putting the phone back in her pocket.

  Striker shrugged, not keen on disagreeing. He was keeping an eye out for his own pursuers, sure he would see their shadows just off in the distance. There was peace, however, as they waited for the bus, climbed on, and rode to Excelsior. They walked the rest of the way to her house on Athens, just past Russia.

  The house was as unassuming as the rest on the block, painted what looked like pink that had long since faded. There were plants hanging in the windows above, and an iron gate in front of the short set of stairs that led to the front door. He could hear a dog barking inside the house as they approached. She opened the gate and held it for Striker. “Give me a minute,” she said. “I’ll tell you when to come up.”

  She ascended the stairs and the barking grew louder.

  “Shhhh, Pulgoso,” she said, slotting her key. Pulgoso continued barking as she did. She entered and closed the door, reemerging after a couple of minutes. “Sorry. He’s nice, he’s just blind and gets upset sometimes. I put him in the back.”

  Striker ascended the stairs and stepped into the house. There were many things in boxes, and the house was much more ‘fresh’ on the inside than one might expect. It was like the place was just deeply cleaned. The half-moved-out, half-moved-in state gave him the feeling of a space in flux. He wasn’t sure whether the family was staying or going.

  He followed Cecilia to the kitchen, where Pulgoso barked beyond the door to the back yard. Cecilia’s mother stood over the stove, stirring something in a large pot that gave off a spicy aroma. She turned and smiled, acknowledging Striker as he walked in, before returning her attention to the pot. Her father sat at the kitchen table, reading a thick book. He stood when he saw Striker, reaching to shake his hand.

  “Saul,” he said. “Are you friends? I haven’t met you before.”

  “His name is Striker. He helped me with the high school banners,” she said. “He’s like me.”

  “Oh,” he heard both parents say. Her mother's attention was now split between him and the pot.

  “My mom’s name is Guadalupe,” she said aside to Striker, then turned to her mother, “He’s a slow learner, but he managed to outlive another of Borchart’s goons.”

  Saul looked at her quizzically. He said something in Spanish that turned into a back and forth between them, the excitement increasing with each exchange. Her mother covered her mouth and gasped, excited before she broke into tears and Saul grasped Striker’s hand again.

  “,” he said. “You don’t know what you’ve done for us.”

  “Not that much,” interrupted Cecilia.

  Striker and her father shot her a glance.

  “What? I’m trying to help him. I don’t think he knows what danger he’s really in.”

  Striker shrugged. “I…” He looked around the room, “I really don’t,” he said.

  “Hungry?” asked Guadalupe. She was filling soup into bowls, and filled a fourth for him before he could respond.

  “Sure,” he said, as she placed it on the table with the others.

  “She doesn’t speak much English, but she understands,” said Cecilia, taking a seat at the table. Striker took the one across from her, and her parents sat across from one another. The parents asked him a flurry of questions during the meal.

  Why did he leave LA?

  Why didn’t he want to talk to his parents anymore?

  Why didn’t he get a therapist to talk about his missing girlfriend with?

  Guadalupe was particularly adamant about that, over Saul’s protests, all translated by Cecilia.

  She rescued him from the table once they were finished eating and led him to her room, where she pulled in a chair for him to sit on.

  “Okay,” she said as he sat, “My problem’s dealt with, but I still don’t know much about yours. I can keep teaching you what I know, but… I need to know what I’m dealing with if I’m really going to help you. Starting with whatever that book is.”

  “It’s something I found from my girlfriend, it’s just—”

  “--Come on, you can tell me the truth. You met my parents. And it doesn’t look like you have anybody else to help you.”

  Striker sighed and pulled the journal from his coat pocket. He paused a moment before handing it to her. She skimmed through a few pages, before opening it fully and cocking her head. Her expression was confounded as she turned the book and her head, trying to make sense of what she saw. She ran her finger along one of the pages.

  The power went out and the temperature in the room shot up. Cecilia’s head lolled and she slumped forward off of the bed. Striker jumped to his feet as she began to flail, regaining consciousness. She crawled away from the journal when she regained her composure.

  She shook her head vehemently, and then snapped her attention to Striker. “Where did you get that?”

  “I wasn’t lying about the girlfriend part… It was hers. It just showed up at my apartment.”

  “That shouldn’t be possible. You can’t write down the symbols on paper— not the real ones.”

  “I know, I tried.”

  “What the fuck is that, then? She did that? She made that?”

  Striker shrugged. “I think so? It’s like a regular journal in the back, uh, except it’s coded. But she started writing about people following her a few weeks before she disappeared. There's a bookcase of hers too; it was just in the corner of my room for months and I couldn't see it. I had no idea she was capable of any of this, or involved in… whatever the fuck happened.”

  “Hiding things isn’t hard if you know how,” she said. Her attention drifted back to the journal. “Can you take that back? I don’t want to touch it.”

  Striker did. She gave him a wide berth on her way to sit back on the bed.

  “Why are you afraid of this book?” he asked.

  She looked at the floor, deep in thought, then back to him. “I’m not. I just don’t want anything to do with it.”

  “Isn’t this useful for you? Can’t you use it and be like… a super hero or something?”

  “It’s too much. It’s like,” she paused, “It’s like a shotgun or something. No, bigger. It’s like a— a— a bomb.”

  “What exactly do you mean ‘like a bomb’?”

  “It’s so much power— I just touched that page and… It’s still burning up in here,” she said, standing to open her window. “You threw that pendejo through a wall on the hill. You shouldn’t have been able to do that. Not this fast.”

  He shrugged. “It was an old building. It probably didn’t need much to give.”

  “You’re just telling yourself that.”

  Striker scoffed. “I’m being realistic.”

  “No, you’re lying to yourself. You’re probably lying to yourself about whatever’s happening with your girlfriend and your stalkers.”

  Striker crossed his arms over his chest with a grimace. “What do I do, then?”

  “Practice. You’ll need it. It’ll take me a minute to set up. If you need to use the bathroom, it’s down the hall to the right.”

  Striker figured it was a good time to do that after the night’s ordeals and returned to Cecilia plugging in a fan. Looking around the room, eight more were placed and plugged in to various outlets, pointing in no particular direction. She plugged in one more and tasked him with helping her turn them all on. They set them low, so they wouldn’t have to shout.

  Not that it was easy to talk in a small room with ten fans running at the same time, either way.

  “Why do we need these?” Striker half-yelled.

  She smirked and cleared a spot for the two of them to sit amidst all of the fans.

  She stopped Striker before he sat. “Put your jacket in the closet and close the door.” Her face was sour and her eyes locked on his pocket. He did as he was told and sat down on the floor.

  position “There are different… How do you say it… Techniques? Different powers we can use because of our marks,” she said. “I call the one you know Los Manos.”

  “The men?”

  She groaned, rolling her eyes. “Manos means hands. You can move your body beyond your body.”

  "And have sight beyond sight?" he said, laughing.

  “Look, you can keep acting like this is a tattoo you got too drunk to remember, but you just fought a demon whether you want to believe that or not. You probably have two following you for that…” she paused and spit out the next word, “book. And they know where you live, right?”

  “I’m at a hostel right now. I’m not sure when I’m going home. I told my friend I’d catch up with her when this is all done, and I’m not going back to any of my usual haunts. They’re going to have a hard time finding me.”

  “No,” she said, “Your shotgun has a flashlight.”

  “I thought you said it was a bomb?”

  She rolled her eyes and groaned. “You know what I mean. Every time I’ve seen you, you were weak. When we were working on the banners, you were struggling. Your mark was dim. I don’t know how to say this without sounding like I’m insulting you, but you don’t have power. You don’t know how to build it. Then you show up tonight like this… light. Like you’re glowing. I think I get it now— I was feeling something wrong with the energy on New Year’s Eve, and it was split between you and your stalkers. There was energy surrounding you then, but it was gone when I saw you the next time. I…” she paused and sighed heavily, staring into his eyes. “Yeah,” she said, “I’ve been feeling it in flashes, some afternoons. My mark starts to itch.”

  “You’re losing me here, I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I mean I feel the symbol of Los Manos like I’m creating it right then, but it goes on and on. Sometimes for hours.”

  “Fuck,” Striker muttered, thinking about his journal explorations and related loss of time. “Usually just a bit after dark, right?”

  She nodded slowly. “What were you doing?”

  “Testing pages in the journal.”

  Cecilia groaned. “And then, let me guess, they just happened to figure out where you live after that.”

  “That took a few days! And they were in the bodies of some old folks that—” He paused, noticing she was staring at him, deadpan, with her arms crossed.

  “More bodies,” she said.

  Striker shrugged. “They… The old man— the demon or whatever— he jumped off my balcony. His wife went to the hospital.”

  “She’s probably dead,” she said.

  Striker felt his stomach drop, thinking of Zoey and how the end of their pursuit of her may have ended.

  Cecilia put her hand in front of her face with her index finger straight up. Striker took the cue and posed as though he were ready to start work on a blank canvas. She nodded and they began drawing the sigil he knew— Los Manos, the Pusher— opposite of each other. Striker, observed her pattern while drawing his own. They were different shapes, but their intrinsic meaning was identical. Striker closed his eyes to keep the distraction of the discrepancy out of his mind as he forged the spell he would hold.

  “Good. Keep going,” she said, starting the pattern again from the beginning. Striker paused, confused for a moment and rejoined in gesturing the sigil.

  The fans in the room began to slow. The light slowly dimmed above them. The hair on Striker’s body stood on end. He began to make his motion of intent but Cecilia stopped him.

  “Wait. Don’t just use it. It’s like clay,” she said. “Watch."

  She snapped her fingers and spread her hands horizontally, as though wiping a table with them. Her mark flashed and glowed as she closed her eyes. First, a fan began to lift from the floor. Then another. Then more. Soon, her bed began to float, inches off of the ground. Everything on the floor in the room, except for them, began to levitate as the blades of the fans slowed to a complete stop. Striker looked around as he took in the scene, confused and intrigued, as she too began to levitate.

  The rug she sat on slid out from under her, traveling up the side of her body, before drifting upward toward the ceiling. He stared at it, while it flattened itself on what became its floor. She opened her eyes and looked at him. “You can have a lot more control when you focus,” she said, as the items began to drift back downward toward their resting places. She grabbed the rug from above her head.

  Striker looked at his glowing mark and back at her. “I… Have no idea how to do that.”

  She shrugged. “Are you sure? You held down that demon. It’s the same thing, just the other way.”

  He shook his head. She sighed.

  “How about this, then,” she scooted closer to him and put her hands up as though ready for a game of patty-cake. “You push and I push.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a game me and Rosalina played to help me understand.”

  She remained with her hands up and her palms toward him.

  He shrugged and put his hands up as well.

  “Mark it,” she said, snapping her fingers again.

  His arm vibrated as his mark flashed, glowing brighter.

  “Now, push,” said Cecilia, holding her hands out.

  He put his palms on hers, as the two stared into each other’s eyes. He felt that increasingly familiar magnetic repulsion between their palms at first. The feeling washed over his entire body. He closed his eyes to focus and felt himself moving backward. When he opened his eyes, the pair were sitting nearly across the room from each other.

  “Cool, yeah?” she asked.

  Striker nodded, a shit-eating grin forming on his lips.

  She put her hands back up. “Pull?”

  They slid toward each other this time, until their palms were barely touching.

  “Now try to lift two things,” she said.

  Striker looked around the room, unsure of what to lift— afraid to break anything or choose something out of his league— as the fan blades resumed their regular speed.

  “Why did the fans speed up? Actually, why'd they slow to begin with?”

  “Our power doesn’t come from nothing. Rosalina said it was kind of like science, ummm,” She scratched her chin, deep in thought. “We have to conserve things? No, it’s a law of conserving? Law of conservation!” she settled upon. “We need to take one thing to make another. Or use the same kind of energy from thing one for another… If that makes sense.”

  “Uh… I don’t think the law of conservation works like that.”

  “That’s how she explained it. I just know you can use some things to power other things— Los Manos needs movement. I plugged in the fans so we can use that. If we didn’t have that, we’d use other energy. Like the electricity.”

  “Shit,” mumbled Striker. The post-journal power outs at his apartment suddenly clicked. “How were we able to make things happen on the hill? There weren't fans running or anything. Was there electricity up there?”

  “We can draw from ourselves and whatever else is around. There’s probably still electricity running near the building. I was tired when we left, though, I don’t know about you.”

  Striker felt energetic, aside from the earlier adrenaline rush leaving him feeling a bit slow. He shrugged. She grimaced.

  “It probably has something to do with that book. Are you even sure—”

  There was a knock at her door. Saul was on the other side. His face held a grave expression. He and Cecilia had another exchange in Spanish.

  This one was tense.

  Though Striker couldn’t understand what they were saying, there was palpable fear in Saul’s voice. Cecilia’s, in contrast, was excited. Guadalupe soon joined the exchange and it seemed as though whatever they were talking about was a two-on-one debate. Her parents were shaking their heads while she nodded, pleading some counter-case to whatever it was they were presenting.

  They all tightly embraced each other in a family hug. was crying. She and Cecilia broke off from Saul, continuing their conversation, both grasping one another’s faces in their hands. Saul interjected every now and again. Cecilia hugged her mother tightly and then her father. She pulled out her phone and took a number from him. Saul and Guadalupe looked at Striker, having forgotten he was there at all.

  Saul forced a smile and nodded his head as he disappeared from the doorway. Guadalupe looked long into her daughter’s eyes, and then into Striker’s.

  “You are a very good boy,” she said, before following Saul, wiping a tear from her eye.

  Cecilia turned, her smile fading as she leaned against the door frame.

  “What just happened?” asked Striker.

  “Borchart— That monster— He just called my dad. He knows what we did. He’s pissed.”

  “How is that possible?”

  She shook her head and pulled out the blackened paper that was still folded in her pocket. “We need to destroy this,” she said.

  “What, like, burn it? I have a lighter.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not that easy. The sticker is just a trap. We need someone who knows what they’re doing to get rid of what’s inside it.”

  “Wait, it’s in there? It’s in that fucking piece of paper?”

  She nodded and shrugged. “As long as we don’t break the paper, it’s not going anywhere. But… yeah.”

  “You’ve been on my ass about this journal and you’re carrying a fucking demon in your pocket? We just ate with that thing!”

  “We just ate with your bomb, too! I don’t even want that book in my house, I—” She stopped. “Nevermind. You need to go somewhere right now.”

  “What did I do?”

  “Nothing! It’s not about you! I told you, Borchart’s mad and I don’t know what he’s going to do.”

  “We put one of his demons away,” said Striker. “He probably doesn’t even know about me.”

  She paused, nodding. “Yeah, you’re right,” she trailed off, looked at the closet. She swore in Spanish. “We might need that… bomb, if you’re going to stay. His ‘associates’ are coming.”

  There’s danger that you know is coming on a timeline, and danger that remains outside of your peripheral, waiting for the right moment to overtake you. Striker knew the latter was what stalked him. They would be back, sometime, somewhere, in some bodies he didn’t recognize. The present danger would be coming tonight if he stayed. Soon. Far fewer questions, far less bullshit.

  He could leave.

  He wanted to leave, so badly.

  It horrified the shit out of him.

  He took a deep breath. “You’re probably going to give me shit for this but—”

  “We only have tequila and you get one shot.”

  “I’m going to need two.”

  She groaned.

  Striker stood. “Can I smoke a cigarette?”

  “I guess.”

  Striker followed her to the kitchen and she pulled three shot glasses from the cupboard. She filled each, pausing before grabbing hers. She pulled a lime from the refrigerator and salt from the counter.

  “We’re not half-assing it,” she said, slicing the lime with a knife from the counter, handing him two wedges. “I hope this isn’t a bad idea,” she said, taking her shot.

  Striker took his as well, before making his way out to the front door for his cigarette. He decided to step onto the sidewalk, half-in-and-out of the gate as stagnant air made his cigarette smoke a cloud. He regretted leaving his flask at home, grimacing from the salty taste of tequila that remained on his tongue.

  He was zoning out when a car door slammed, knocking him back into the moment. He flicked his cigarette and looked over as he heard two more car doors closing. Three men approached the house.

  They were dressed like real estate agents ready for a showing.

  Striker stepped backward into the gate, and up the stairs in front of the door to the house.

  The three gathered at the bottom of the stairs, on the sidewalk.

  One pushed the doorbell.

  One looked at Striker.

  One smiled with his hand in his jacket.