When I get back into the main hall, Wing is speaking quietly to Sutherland. I wonder how they know each other.

  I tell myself that I don’t care, that it doesn’t matter. I approach them anyways.

  “Jane,” Sutherland says at my approach. “Thank you for the warning. There are more tables in the room back there,” he says with a point toward the alcove where I had originally been standing. “Would you be so kind to help Wing add some more reinforcements to the doors?”

  The man knows my name now. I’m not sure how I feel about that. But I nod, because what else can I do, and I head into the little closet. We, along with another two men brought in for the help, put up a few other folding tables and therefore block out all the natural light filtering in from the hallway.

  I can hear the casual collection of voices back in the main hall, I know the meeting is going on. I’m not totally upset that I’m missing it. At the end of the day, I learned what I had hoped to learn—a bit of an idea of the numbers, the people remaining, the plans of the town, and, most importantly, a smattering of examples of other people’s magic.

  Wing and I come back into the main hall to find Sutherland standing by the back wall, my backpack in hand. Someone new is on the risers at the other end of the room. We approach him.

  “You might want to wrap this up,” I tell Sutherland, twirling a finger in the air to indicate the Town Hall as a whole. “These surges are being weirder than I’m used to, and I’m not sure you want all these people here if they keep going that way.”

  Sutherland looks down at me. He’s a tall man, and both Wing and I are short, so we must look like children next to him. He tilts his head, consideration in his eyes, and then says, “You’ve spent most of the last few days alone.”

  I’m a little taken back by his assessment. “How do you—”

  “I live in an apartment building. Plenty of others still live in the building. And this is how it’s always been, to me.” Sutherland pauses. His gaze flickers to Wing, but it doesn’t linger. He turns back to me and when he speaks again, his voice is lower. “This is how the magic has always acted.”

  He knows. Somehow, he knows that I’m not talking about the monster surges. That’s when the pieces click. The weird surges, here in the middle of a large group of people. The little girl who died, and the Game’s offer to harvest her magical core. “The magic surges are attracted to large crowds of people.”

  Maybe Sutherland and Wing already know this. Maybe they have no idea what I’m talking about. But Sutherland doesn’t say anything to my revelation. He simply holds out my backpack. “I look forward to when we see each other next, Jane,” he says.

  I’m fairly certain I’m being dismissed. I take my bag back.

  “And thank you for your help today.”

  “The Town Hall isn’t over,” I say.

  “Jane,” Sutherland says. “You were never really here for the Town Hall.” And then he heads back towards the front of the room, leaving me with Wing.

  “Is he always that cryptic?” I ask.

  She chuckles. “Yes. That’s an exit, there,” she says, pointing to the door at the top of the three steps.

  “Good luck. And be careful,” I say to her, because what else can I say? She just smiles and nods, and gestures again to the door.

  So with a sigh, I go. It opens directly onto a side street outside, and she pulls the emergency exit closed behind her softly.

  I go to throw my backpack back over my shoulder, when I realize I didn’t collect any of my extra sports equipment back. I turn back to the door, but there’s no way to open the emergency exit door from the outside. I groan, letting my head fall back in frustration, and consider just knocking. I quickly squash the idea. I still have a few bats in my weapons storage, and I guess that’ll have to do. Maybe I’ll swing back here tomorrow, pick up anything left behind.

  With that, there’s nothing else to do but go home and relay all of this information to the rest of my Party. I start walking as I stick my hand into the front zippered pocket of my backpack, to pull out the key to the Volvo, and find a folded piece of lined paper in there, ripped out of a small notebook.

  Sutherland must have put this in here, I guess, since he was the one who handed me back my bag. Whatever he wanted to tell me, he could have just told me to my face, but I unfold it anyways as I head back to the parking lot.

  Jane—

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  I could have told you, yes, but I thought you’d need to see it to believe it.

  When you’re ready to start, come find me. And don’t worry about your sports equipment; you’ll be getting an upgrade soon and won’t be needing it anymore.

  Bon appetit!

  —Sutherland

  At the bottom, there’s an address.

  Two things are suddenly very clear to me: One, Sutherland is psychic, to some degree. And two, he wants to join whatever community I build with Nancy and Ryder, not whatever community he’s helping to create in that Town Hall.

  That, or he’s just a little crazy. Bon appetit!?

  I head back to the car in sort of a daze, thinking about the implications of everything I’ve learned, and I practically have my hand on the driver’s door when I realize someone’s shouting. I look up to see a woman jogging toward me, but it’s only when I see the man trailing her that I realize they’re the couple that stood up, back at the beginning of the meeting. Did they end up leaving? I don’t remember. Or else, were they waiting outside this whole time?

  The woman stops and leans over, rests her hands on her thighs, and pants. She lifts a hand, holding up one finger in a universal sign of hang on a second, and I watch with a barely contained grin.

  She’s cute, in a dorky kind of way, with blunt brown bangs and a blunt long lob that frames her heart-shaped face well. She’s tall, which I can tell despite her being bent over and still a few feet away from me. She stands up, having caught her breath, and I take in her black leggings, chunky boots, and windbreaker. It’s a cute, trendy blend of 90’s chic and current fashion trends, and it makes me like her on sight.

  “Sorry. Thanks, you know, for waiting.”

  “S’all good,” I reply. I wait a small pause. “What can I do for you?”

  “Beak wanted to return your bat,” she says, throwing a thumb over her shoulder at the man who finally catches up. He’s grinning, amusement in his features, one of my baseball bats resting on his shoulder. Now that he’s closer, I can see his henley is actually grey heather covered in splotches of blood. I thought it was maroon, at first. My bat’s clean, though.

  “Did you wipe it down with your shirt?” I ask incredulously, but then something else snags my attention: “Wait, Beak?”

  The guy’s smile turns sheepish. He reaches up with his free hand and scratches the back of his head. “Yeah, like Beaker? The Muppet? People thought I looked like him as a kid so they called me that and, well. It kinda stuck.”

  Please note that this man is the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome: olive skin, dark hair, eyes that are so light and green that they strike me nearly dumb on the spot. “I was never a huge Muppets fan,” I say slowly, my eyes clearly raking over this guy. “But wasn’t Beaker the one who talked in squeaks with orange hair?”

  Beaker—this Beaker, the hot Beaker—seems to relax a little. “Yeah,” he admits. “It was more the expression I always used to have on my face.” And he drops his mouth open, bugs his eyes out a little, and you know what? I can see it.

  I laugh, already absurdly comfortable around these guys. Good looking and a sense of humour? I can vibe with that. “Well, Mister Beaker, thank you for the return.” I give him a grin and he hands the bat back. I pause, fighting my initial instinct to pull it into my inventory.

  “We saw you pull it out of nowhere,” the woman says, her words in a rush. “I kinda want to see you… put it away, back into nowhere.” She reaches out and snags Beaker’s hand, now that it’s empty.

  I sigh. And I pull the bat into my weapons storage.

  “Cool,” Beaker says. The woman squeals.

  There’s something nice, about being perceived in the way these two are perceiving me. With wonder and support and excitement. “So, Beaker,” I say, looking at the man. My eyes move over to his girlfriend. “And…?”

  “Oh!” she says, red blossoming on her cheeks and across her neck. “Savannah.”

  “I’m Jane.”

  “Jane,” Beaker echoes, like he’s committing it to memory. “It was cool how you kicked ass in there, Jane.”

  I smile, almost with a laugh, but it comes out a little more like a scoff. “Someone has to, right?”

  “Did you really set that Marvin guy on fire?” Savannah asks, taking another step toward me and lowering her voice. Beaker gets pulled along.

  Why not? “Yeah, I kinda really did.”

  Savannah yanks at Beaker’s hand a few times. “I told you!”

  “In my defence, he was ready to kidnap my friend!”

  “Because she has a magical inventory thing too, right?” Savannah says, her eyes shining as she relays my story back to me.

  I’ve already committed. “Yeah, basically.”

  “That’s such a cooler power than what we got,” Savannah laments.

  And I’m instantly riveted. “Oh, I’m sure yours are plenty cool,” I say. “What… what did you get?” It’s such a strange thing to ask. It feels like it’s an invasive, personal question.

  “It’s this weird cooking power,” Savannah says, sounding like it’s the worst thing in the world. My eyes have widened, like a cartoon dude when he sees someone super sexy and they turn into giant pink hearts. “I can be holding ingredients and think about what I’d want them to turn into and it sort of poofs into being.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me!?” I burst out. “That is literally the coolest thing someone can have during the apocalypse!” I remember the way Marvin’s gaze raked over Nancy at the gas station when he realized what she could do. I lower my voice, lean towards the pair. “Actually, don’t tell people that you can do that. There are people who will make Marvin look like a saint, to get at that kind of power.”

  Savannah nods, having tucked her chin into her jacket’s neckline in a show of embarrassment. I don’t think she fully realizes how valuable that kind of ability is.

  I wonder what sort of Marvin-esque thing I’d do to get access to that sort of power.

  But I slather a friendly smile on my face and turn to Beaker. “And what are you, like a walking fridge?” I try to make it a joke, but being buddy-buddy has never been my strength. The man looks between me and Savannah, trying to decide if he wants to tell me.

  But Savannah meets his gaze and nods. I think she’s not nearly as ditzy as she’s been leading me to believe.

  “I can do something sort of similar,” he starts. I’m enrapt, giving this man 150% of my attention. “But with odds and ends. Turn them into… contraptions, I guess.”

  I stare down the two of them. I think of Sutherland’s note, the weird send-off. His surety that my community is going to happen.

  Beaker and Savannah give each other quick looks, either at my silence of my stares. Or both.

  And then I have only one thing left to ask: “Can I offer you two a ride?”