12

I’m Still Here
Fucking 12, I guess
Lady Yate-xel

He never would have expected that Tess could stand in the same room with him without something breaking.

He never thought he’d see Banshee acting her true age and crying constantly.

He really did think he’d be able to destroy Tess. Instead, he was watching Edgar give her tea and a few bandages.

Tess glanced nervously at Johnny every few seconds. She seemed just as wary of him as he had previously been of her.

“Nny, take this.” Edgar was standing in front of him, offering a steaming mug. God, they were drinking so much tea lately. How fucking Victorian. Johnny took the mug and continued his examination of Tess’ movements. He heard Banshee crying softly from the staircase. From the jingle of bracelets that accompanied the sniffling, he suspected she was shaking.

Tess took several jittery sips of her tea, apparently afraid of everything and everyone in the house but Banshee... who was not offering any comfort.

“What happened to it?” Tess asked, looking up at Edgar.

“Apparently,” Edgar sighed, “it’s in Nny now.”

Tess looked alarmed and Banshee sobbed a little harder from behind the wall.

“Is he…” Tess turned slowly to look at Johnny. “Are …you okay?”

Johnny shrugged. “I feel better than I have since you first showed up.”

“I just… It wasn’t fair. You guys didn’t even see me, and I fucking stopped existing in your house! You killed Edgar and everyone else and they love you! You effectively spared me and look at this!”

Johnny flinched when the images to match Tess’ words flashed in his head. Tess still reminded him so much of dying. She made him want to stay inside for the rest of his life and never again risk meeting someone who was unhappy that he hadn’t quite gotten around to killing them. He felt things when he looked at Tess that he didn’t like. He had feelings that were probably good and healthy and normal, but he hated those as much as he hated the whispers in his head telling him that he should bring serious injury to everyone in the immediate vicinity.

“It’s not my fault that you’re not the same brand of invisible as I am.”

Tess looked lost and frustrated and like she might smash the mug in her hands. “It’s not your fault that I’m even here? That they reset everyone who had any kind of fucked up contact with you?”

“I didn’t ask them to do it,” Johnny said, taking a sip of tea. Too hot. Always too hot.

“Hell,” Edgar said, still standing between them, “I didn’t even ask them to do that.”

Johnny felt Tess' conflict and her betrayal and her anger and almost found himself reflecting the feelings back at her. Banshee sniffed from the stairs and Tess softened immediately.

“Is she okay?” she asked Edgar.

“She thinks something bad is going to happen with the thing that was in you being in Johnny instead. You’re here to tell me what it’s going to do to him.”

Tess shook her head, but kept her gaze fixed in Banshee’s direction. “I can’t say.”

“Don’t give me that shit again,” Edgar threatened.

Tess flailed an arm defensively. “No, no, I don’t mean that I won’t or even that I can’t, just that I don’t know. When it had me, it wanted him so badly that why didn’t really matter to me. I wanted to get back at him for what he’d done to me and to get to you. It wanted to get to him with you out of the way. So it seemed to work out as a relationship.”

“That is incredibly fucked up,” Johnny said.

“Says lord of the dead over there,” Tess shot back.

“Easy, easy, both of you.” Edgar had been standing all this time ...in case things came to blows or something, Johnny thought. Sweet and angry man still feeling protective of Johnny and Tess but unsure of who was more dangerous. Edgar turned to Tess and tried a simple diplomatic approach. “Where did you find it? When did you find it?”

“I found it when I followed you,” Tess admitted, looking down into her tea and swirling the cup gently. “I could see it, but it was like no one else could. I knew what it was as soon as I saw it, but I was terrified that maybe it was the only thing on the same plane of visible as I was, so I ran from it just like you guys did.”

“When did you stop being you?” Edgar was putting on his 'gentle but firm' voice. He used it sometimes when Johnny fell asleep in places Edgar disapproved of.

“I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I was me when I scared Johnny at that concert, and I’m pretty sure I was me when we met at the library. But after that, I just don’t know. It felt so gradual I didn’t notice until it started taking over… I sort of recommend getting rid of it.”

“I’ve got it under control,” Johnny said. He took a casual sip of his tea and noted that there was not enough sugar. Fuck this tea.

Tess protested immediately. “No, you don’t understand. It’ll make you think that,but-”

“I’ve got it.”

“I-okay.”

Banshee wailed again from the stairs and Tess gripped her tea tightly.

“Should we say something to her?”

“She’ll be alright for now,” Edgar said. He attempted to shift his stance to block Banshee and the stairs from view. “I’m still waiting to hear more about this thing that’s in Johnny.”

“I’ve already told you what I know, really.”

Edgar nodded, but Johnny felt that he wasn’t buying it and laughed a soft puff of air into his mug.

“Do you have somewhere to stay, Tess?” Edgar asked suddenly.

“I’m… not sure.”

“I’m going to call Devi and Jimmy and see if one of them wants to take you for a while. Call me paranoid but even if I don’t want you in my house, I also don’t want you disappearing.”

Tess nodded sadly and continued sipping her tea as Edgar stepped into the next room.

“How do you feel?” Johnny asked. It wasn’t completely out of concern for Tess, but it wasn’t entirely selfish either.

“Terrified,” she answered. “And maybe tired. I feel like I’ve been asleep for weeks.”

Johnny scoffed and reclined in his seat. “You? Don’t make me laugh. I have been sleeping for weeks.”

“That’s not my fault.” Tess watched him intently as he ran his finger over the rim of his mug.

“Actually, I think it is. What do you know about Banshee?”

“Nothing? She’s a girl who lives here who grows too much?” Tess sounded genuinely confused.

“She’s grown like that every time you’ve done something to my head,” Johnny said, poking his temple.

“I wasn’t trying to do anything to her, I don’t know why it did that.”

“Did you know she was supposed to be me?”

Tess blinked rapidly and leaned closer to Johnny. “She what?”

Edgar returned then, and Johnny felt something twinge as he passed Banshee.

“Devi and Tenna can take you,” he said. “Jimmy’s apparently sort of afraid of the whole thing and I’d like to leave his place open for Banshee if she needs it anyway.”

“Thanks, I think,” Tess replied.

“Did you know?” Johnny continued pressing as though Edgar hadn‘t been there at all.

“Uh, no. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Nny, leave it. We’ll talk to her tomorrow. I think we’ve all had enough of everything today.”

Edgar led Tess to the door, made Johnny promise that he wouldn’t kill Banshee or vice versa and then set off to walk Tess to Devi’s.

The house grew quiet but for the sounds of Banshee’s soft cries and the blood in Johnny’s veins. He couldn’t move, could hardly blink, could not stop thinking. The rush of blood and the wet sobs combined together in his head to form overwhelming and disgusting splashes of sound.

“Banshee,” he growled with some difficulty, “stop it.”

“Fff-fuck you, Nny!” Banshee sniffled.

“Really, stop it.”

“I’m u-upset! Leaff me alonge!”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m not upset about you, you prick.”

“I love you too.”

She sniffed and made a few more gasping sounds before Johnny heard her stand and enter the room properly. She stood shakily at the far end of the coffee table. It was the first time she’d been on her feet alone since she’d collapsed hysterically against Edgar on the school roof.

“You know what I’m upset about?”

“Do tell.”

“I had something to do, Nny.” Her voice still thick with restrained tears and the skin around her her eyes was puffy, red and shiny. “I was made for something and I was going to do it.”

“Gee, where have I heard that before?” Johnny rolled his eyes.

Banshee took several angry stomps forward, so she was hovering just at the end of the table closest to Johnny. “And you took it from me! Now what do I do? Now I’m an extra! I would have been better off if you had just STAYED DEAD!”

“You had to be big enough to take that thing in. That’s why you were growing.” Johnny set his mug aside.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“If I hadn’t been here, you still would have needed to get bigger. The memories in the closet and all the stuff that got sucked out of me and Tess when she made me crazy - that’s what made you bigger. If I’d been dead…”

“Everything you are would have been added to the closet,” Banshee said quickly. She clamped her hand over her mouth almost immediately, her eyes wide and threatening tears.

Johnny lowered his head and glared accusingly, his ability to move suddenly quite functional again. “You knew.”

“No! No, I didn’t know anything! It just came back! Just now!”

“You’re lying.” He rose from the chair and took a step toward her.

“No!” Banshee backed away from Johnny, panicked.

“What’s in the closet now?”

“The thing that was in Tess,” Banshee said through a new bout of tears. Johnny felt terror in her, though the fear was not of him, or even of the thing in the closet, but that she knew about it.

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know!” Banshee cried. Her trembling hands were still held over her mouth.

“Don’t lie.”

“I’m not lying!”

Johnny’s song grew angry and loud and was then interrupted with a disaster of notes that nearly knocked him backwards. There were words and blaring sounds that didn’t fit scattered throughout his song and they most definitely didn’t belong there.

“What are you doing to it?!” Johnny yelled.

Banshee switched from fear to lashing out in a second. “What are you talking about?! You’re always fucking screaming! You’re fucking insane, Nny!”

“My song! You’re putting words in it again!”

“No I’m not!”

“Is it yours? Can you hear that?”

Banshee was shaking, her face wet and smeared with eye make-up. There had been a white star on her cheek, a red bindi on her forehead and black circles around her eyes, but now she resembled a drowned homeless clown.

“I don’t hear anything,” she whispered shakily.

“Stop that.” Johnny touched her shoulder to quiet her and make sure she was real. “I’m not going to hurt you. Calm down and listen.”

“I hate you,” Banshee answered, her voice trembling.

“That’s great, now shut up and listen.”

“Nny, I don’t hear anything, I’m going up-”

“Then tell me what you were going to do. On the roof. How did you know?”

Banshee tried to even out her breathing, though Johnny could still feel how anxious she was. “I… just knew. You and Edgar left, and I thought I could feel it in my bones that you’d find Tess. That I would need to be there.”

“To do what?”

“To get the moose out of her.”

“The what?”

“The thing, the – fuck, did I say moose? You know, the Wall Thing.”

“‘Moose’? Where the fuck did that come from?”

“That’s just what I call it when … yeah. I don’t know. Um.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I just had to get it out.”

Johnny slowly sank into the couch and Banshee did the same, easing the tension between them in waves.

“How did you know how to do it?” he asked.

“It just happened.” She tucked a piece of tangled hair behind her ear and poked at the earrings that had survived the encounter. “I know it sounds like bullshit, but it just came to me.”

“You knew where we’d be going?”

“Edgar mentioned it to me before he took you.” Banshee's eyes flicked between Johnny the floor. She gave him a strained grin. “He was really scared you were going to wither away in here.”

Johnny felt a spark of a connection, though whether it was between himself and Banshee or between himself and Edgar he didn’t know.

“So what did you do? Why did you want the wall monster?”

“Because that was what they sent me for.”

“They sent you to fix something that hadn’t even happened yet?”

Banshee looked at Johnny, and her eyes pleaded with him. Edgar’s green eyes behind glasses and asking for a favor, but attached to some of Johnny’s features. Creepy.

“It happened before you died,” Banshee said quietly. “Tess was its eyes long before she even knew it existed. Connected to it and you because of how her universe ended.”

“And you were just magically granted this knowledge too?”

“No. The red star told me.”

Johnny heard the door open, and he and Banshee turned to watch Edgar close it behind him. Edgar waved awkwardly when he saw he was being stared at. “Tess is at Devi’s,” he said.

“Good,” Banshee said.

Johnny listened as Edgar asked Banshee how she felt, and if she needed to hide with Jimmy, and they talked for far too long about dumb shit that was not of any importance at all and was just the proper scripted shit that people say when they’re ignoring elephants in the room or maybe sexual tension. Johnny laughed and meant to launch into a discussion of how pointless these little rituals were, but he managed just “Banshee” instead.

“Please not now,” she said weakly.

For some reason he couldn’t quite grasp, Johnny obeyed.

****

“It was good to see you walking around normally again.” Edgar was putting on his best reassuring smile despite being worried out of his mind. Johnny admired his effort and suspected it was much better than what he’d be able to manage himself.

“Yeah.”

“This all seems to have worked out pretty well. No one died this time, and we didn’t even have to involve Pepito.”

“Yeah.”

“Nny.”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, come on.” Edgar shook Johnny’s shoulder gently, still trying to smile.

Johnny shook his head and the pattern on the blanket over his legs stopped pulsing and trying to reach for him. “Sorry, I was…” Not sure how to finish that sentence.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“With Banshee?”

“She’s f-” No. “She told me that her life would have been easier if I’d died.”

“She’s just angry, I’m sure she’ll-”

“I don’t care. She can say whatever she wants.”

“Oh.”

“She says she knows about Tess because a red star told her things.”

Edgar bit his lip.

“She also said… that the thing we took out of Tess isn’t in me.”

“Then wh-”

“The closet.”

Johnny felt Edgar shudder as he cautiously eyed the handle on the closet door.

“It’s… just sitting in there?” Edgar had lowered his voice, as though hoping Banshee’s ‘Moose’ wouldn’t hear him.

“It’s what she said.”

“You’re not thinking of…”

“No.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“I don’t think he has anything to do with it, but sure.”

“Can we brick it up or something?” Edgar asked. “I’m really … not comfortable with thinking it’s just lurking in there.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?”

Johnny didn’t answer.

****

Banshee was a wreck. She screamed half the time she was awake, and cried the other half. She tried to escape outside a few times, but always returned home crying that people were following her. She had apparently stopped growing in spurts, either because it had been turned off or because Johnny had a brand new Tess filter. She spent all night wailing about losing everything, and when Edgar tried to console her, she practically attacked him.

In the midst of one particular night of Edgar trying to be comforting from the foot of her bed, she picked her head up from her pillow to try to explain. “You were born to make Nny happy, weren’t you?”

“Not in so many words, but I suppose something like that.”

“When he died, how did you feel?”

“I was… devastated. But, Banshee, I lost a person, not-”

“Your whole purpose was gone! Don’t tell me you didn’t think about it like that. You had to. What am I supposed to do now? I was supposed to replace Nny and I didn’t even get to do the thing I was made to do.”

Edgar sat on the bed next to her. “What were you made to do?”

“To get that thing out of Tess and get it into me.”

“Why into you?”

“I told you already: I was made in 'Heaven'.” She put a sarcastic emphasis on the word. “You were there once, right? There was nothing in me at all… The white closet and everything, I was just Johnny-like bait… I was going to neutralize it. Nothing to feed on, so it would just… stop.”

“And when you did that, what were you going to do after that?”

“Just be.”

“Why can’t you do that now?”

Banshee glared at him. “Were you going to just be when he died? Were you?”

“Sorry. I get it. Let me know if I can help somehow.”

He stood up to leave, closed the door behind him and was met outside Banshee’s room by Johnny staring at him from the top step of the staircase.

“You think she’ll try to kill herself?” Johnny asked, nodding toward Banshee’s door. “That’d be a pretty me and you thing to do.”

“Don’t say that.”

“That’s what she meant, you know.”

“Stop. I’m trying to help her.”

“Do we need to get her to scream in front of some people again?”

“Call me crazy, but I can’t help but question the motives behind any suggestion you make about her.”

Johnny shrugged. Edgar watched him walk down the staircase scratching at his cast.

****

When Edgar walked into the bedroom hours later, Johnny had his forehead pressed against the closet.

“Nny, what are you doing?”

“Thinking.”

“About the thing in there?”

“Yes.” Johnny picked his head up, and just blankly looked at Edgar.

“I really don’t want to test the theory of it being in there. You’d end up like what you were before and I … can’t be okay with that.”

“I’m not going to test anything. I’m just going to take a chance.”

“On?”

“You said you’d come with me, right?”

All the air left Edgar’s lungs and he thought his heart might give out. Johnny's face betrayed no hint that he noticed Edgar's distress. He may as well have asked if Edgar was coming with him to pick up groceries.

“Um-”

“Banshee was supposed to neutralize it somehow, by being all special and from Heaven and shit. If it’s in the closet because the closet is holding what’s in our heads… If I die, I take it with me.”

“Don’t you think that’s a bit drastic?”

“But plausible.”

“If we’re both gone…” Edgar said slowly.

“Banshee, right?” Johnny had a hint of laughter in his voice. “I figured.”

“We can’t just leave her here alone. What would happen to her?”

“She’d take over the world like a proper me-clone.”

“But not like this!” Edgar protested. “She’s so devastated about this purpose that she doesn’t think she has anymore! With no one here, she’d … I don’t know. Nothing good.”

“And again, I suggest we have her scream for an audience again.”

“You’re really serious about this.”

“So are you.”

“I-”

“It’s your turn, Edgar.”

“Nny, I-”

“Don’t. I know.”

****

He’d been sitting there next to her for what felt like hours.

“What do you want to sing?”

“Go away, Nny.”

“Nothing?”

“Go away, Nny.”

“You come find me when you have an answer.”

Just like that, Johnny had disappeared into the other room and Banshee longed to break his leg to match his arm. Instead, she was going to see Tess. Banshee had some ideas, and she had some things she wanted to do and Tess was rooted in both of them.

Edgar had had no objections to her leaving and he wouldn’t have been able to stop her anyway. He didn’t know where she was going, but he would probably guess. The walk to Devi’s infuriated her and excited her and got into her every nerve... but at least it was quick. The turn off to the school tempted her, but she resisted and kept toward the Homicides' van that she could just see poking out from behind Devi's building down the street. She threw a rock at Jimmy's trailer as she passed by it, but missed and decided to spare him a broken window by not trying again.

Banshee called to Devi when she arrived at her door, not so much knocking as beating her fists against the door.

Devi looked surprised to see Banshee standing there when she answered. “What are you doing?”

“I came to talk to Tess.”

“Do they know you’re here?”

“Does it matter? Does she have a bomb or something?”

Tess was sitting on the couch with Tenna as they watched television. She jumped when she saw Banshee but calmed considerably when she realized Banshee was alone.

“I’m… glad to see you’re okay,” Tess said slowly.

“I don’t know how okay I am, but thanks.”

“If they sent you to ask what I know about you, there’s nothing.”

“They didn’t. They probably don’t want me to talk to you.”

Banshee sat next to Tess on the couch and Tenna said something loudly to herself about people finding better places to have heart-to-heart conversations.

“If they didn’t send you here, then what…?”

“Do you know when that monster first found you?” Banshee asked.

Tess shook her head. “It’s still pretty blurry, I can’t be sure.”

“How long have you been invisible?”

“My whole life, until Johnny saw me.”

“And how long is that?”

Tess jumped as though something had stabbed her in the back and stared back at Banshee, her eyes empty of everything.

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“How much older are you than me?”

“I don’t know how old you are!”

“Do you think it’s possible that you started existing at the same time as that monster?”

“No! I watched them, all of them, grow up the same way I did! I was there!”

“Are you sure?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Tess demanded. “Why are you even asking me this?”

“Can you sing?” Banshee asked.

“What does-?”

“Can you do anything? Play something? Dance?”

“I don’t think so…”

“You have to do something! You have to!”

“No, I don’t!” Tess shouted.

“Hey!” Tenna yelled. “You want to freak out, do it in the other room. I’m watching this.”

“Sorry,” Banshee said. “I’ll get going soon. I just need to… Tess, what were you doing all that time?”

“Just trying to even the score a little.”

“I broke his arm.”

“Yeah… I saw that. I think I was aiming a little higher than that, but uh, good job?”

Banshee leaned close, excited. “I mean you don’t have to! He’s breakable, but Edgar really likes him – he loves Johnny! It’s completely fucked up, but Johnny loves him too, ask these guys!” She gestured dramatically to Devi and Tenna, even though Tenna was glaring. “And since I… well, since…” This was coming out wrong. Hell, it was hardly coming out at all.

Tess shook her head, clearly trying to understand. “I know Edgar likes him, that’s what I was trying to stop. I still don‘t understand, Banshee.”

“But Johnny likes him back and – fuck.” Banshee threw up her hands and then reached over and grabbed one of Tess’. “The red star.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re the red one. You’ve gotta do something with us.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You’re the red star! You’re what I was trying to get to under all that monster! You’re-!”

“Ooooookay, kiddo.” Devi’s hands settled on Banshee’s shoulders, startling her. “I think we should get you home. You’re getting a little more psycho than I generally allow my visitors to be.”

“Devi, no, I know what I’m doing! I’ve seen them together, Tess, not like you have! Edgar would trade me in to the pound to be with Nny! You’ve gotta play with us!”

“Come on, I’ll walk you out.”

Banshee smacked Devi’s hands away. “NO! I’m not a little kid! Why can Johnny say whatever he wants and get away with it, and I get carted off like a mental patient?! I’m HIM!”

“He wasn’t making that up?” Tess asked from the couch.

Devi stepped between them, but Banshee just leaned around her waist to answer. “No! I was sent to get that thing out of you! Johnny took it by accident! He was supposed to be dead by then!“ Devi continued trying to steer her out, but Banshee fought back. “Tess, come play with us!”

“What does this have to do with Johnny being un-dead and liking Edgar? I don’t-”

“GUYS!” Tenna screamed. “I don’t care what you do, okay? I’ll play the mother fucking kazoo with you for fuck’s sake, but I need to finish this show!”

Banshee threw Devi’s hands off of her once again. “It’s okay, Tenna. I’m going. Sorry.”

As she stormed out, Banshee heard Devi say that she was calling Edgar.

****

“I want to sing. And I want Tess with me.”

“Does Tess even sing?”

“I don’t care. She’s the red star.”

“I see.”

“Please?”

Johnny laughed. “Oh, really?” He held a hand up to his face, fluttered his eyelids, and put on his best innocent girl voice, “I hate you, Nny! Please let me take your spot in the group along with a woman who tried to break into your head and steal Edgar from you!”

“You asked me what I wanted to sing, I’m telling you.”

“Fine. I’ll let the others know.”

****

Judging by the sound of the knocking, Edgar guessed that he had just barely made it to the door before it was broken in. When he opened it, Tess and Devi were standing on the porch.

“Oh, hi,” Edgar said, looking Tess over quickly. “Look, I’m sorry I haven’t gotten everything settled with you, I just have a lot on my plate over here and-”

“Banshee wants me to sing with her,” Tess interrupted.

“You… sing?”

“I don’t think so. But I’m going to do it. She says I’m the-”

“Red star,” Edgar finished. “Yeah, we’ve been hearing a lot about that. I’d have to check with everyone else, but-”

“It’s fine,” Devi interrupted. “Tenna and I don’t really know what happened with this Banshee business, but if it’ll settle all of this crap so we can just keep living again, Tenna said she’d play the damn kazoo. And Jimmy is always on board as long as Nny and that kid want to do it. Just give Tenna time to throw something together for Mistress of MindBending here to wear.”

“Can I come in?” Tess asked.

Devi held her hands up in front of her. “She’s all yours, Edgar. I’m out of here.”

“Yeah, thanks Devi. Come on in, Tess, we’ll… figure something out.” He wasn’t sure if Tess had really wanted to come or if Devi just wanted to get rid of her.

“Are you here alone?” Tess leaned around Edgar to glance up the stairs.

“For the moment, yes.”

“Do you think we could talk?”

“He’s not brainwashing me, and I’m not leaving.”

“I know. I just… wanted to apologize. I think things… got a little out of hand.”

Edgar folded his arms over his chest. “Oh, you think?”

“Edgar, I’m really sorry. I wasn’t even me the whole time.”

“Just be thankful for Banshee.”

Tess sat in the pink recliner and Edgar brought her a glass of water. She thanked him for it, but looked a little surprised to see it.

“I don’t think I can talk to you without one of us drinking something,” he explained sheepishly.

Tess laughed and took a drink. She opened her mouth to say something, but Edgar stopped her.

“He lets Banshee stay here because I wanted her to stay.”

“Um, what?”

“He wants me to be happy, and he does things specifically to make me happy.”

“Edgar, I-”

“I just wanted to get that in before you told me how sad my life is again.” He rocked back on his heels, put his hands in his pockets and offered a half-smile. “What did you want to say?”

“Nothing. It was nothing. Tell me about him instead.”

Considering everything that had happened, Edgar didn’t know what there was to tell. That Johnny had grown meaner and bitchier in the time Edgar had been talking to Tess? That he and Banshee nearly killed each other a few times? That they still might be doing that?

“I’m not saying anything about him if you’re just going to turn it on me,” he warned.

“I’m not.”

“Well, as much as I’d like to tell you how I feel… I wonder, since it’s an option now, if you shouldn’t just talk to him about all this instead.”

Tess shivered. “The last time I talked to him… He’s a little scary.”

“He can have that effect on people. Still, we’ve all been saying you just have to know him, right? And if you’re going to sing with Banshee, you’re going to sing with him too, so…”

“So I don’t have a choice.”

“No. No you really don’t.”

Johnny and Banshee returned thirty minutes later to find Tess and Edgar discussing movies and food and bad special effects in advertising. Banshee was thrilled to see Tess, heaped gratitude all over Johnny and Edgar for letting Tess in the house, and then even more onto Tess for coming over. Edgar managed to pry her away with some effort, explaining that he and Johnny were going to prepare Tess for being on stage and after a small argument about treating Banshee like a child, she stormed upstairs in a minor huff.

Tess turned to Johnny and managed a smile. “I think it’s still weird to me that I’m not killing you,” she joked.

“Funny, I could say the same to you.”

“And on that note,” Edgar said, “I think I’ll go up with Banshee. Kindly keep the house intact if you need to murder each other, I just vacuumed in here.”

****

“Going to sing with Banshee, huh?”

“I guess so. I feel like I have to, after all this. I’ve never done it before. I don’t even think I can.”

“No one will notice.”

Johnny was calm, and he was in control and he was in one piece and it scared the hell out of Tess.

“Do you… feel anything?”

“Tired,” Johnny answered.

“That’s not what I meant, I-”

“I know. I just don’t know why you should give a fuck.”

“I can be angry about what happened to us and still have a conversation!”

“So start asking me what you really want to.” Johnny leaned back against the arm of the couch.

“Why do you have all of this?” It wasn’t the question she really wanted to ask, but it was the one that came out.

“Because Edgar wanted me to.”

“Are you taking advantage of him?”

“Like any answer I give you would change your mind.”

“So that’s a ‘no’, then.”

“No, I’m keeping him here against his will, and I definitely needed him too, because Jimmy and Devi weren’t enough.”

Tess adjusted her glasses. “Are you manipulating them too?”

“Yes, absolutely. I must have depraved sex with all of them. Yesterday.” He picked at a loose string on the couch, then suddenly turned his attention to his cast.

“What does he see in you?”

“Fuck if I know,” Johnny replied, poking at a piece of his cast near his elbow. “I’d say ask him, but, you know, conspiracy batshit is a pretty thick filter to try to see through.”

“What could I do to get you to tell me the truth?”

“Nothing.” Johnny inspected his nails and picked off some black polish.

Tess sat up angrily. “That isn’t fair!”

“It’s exactly what I can do to get you to believe me. We’re even.” Johnny barely glanced at her, reducing her back to a slump in her chair.

“Okay, well, then-”

“Why do you even need to know?” He still refused her eye-contact, but he sounded suddenly interested.

Tess gave it her all, fingers trembling and tightening around her glass of water. “Because I want to think there are more than shitheads out there! That night I was stuck in your house, I’d walked out of a world diluted with assholes and into pure dickhead concentrate and when I came here, you of all people are collecting friends who will die for you and fans who are sacrificing goats in parking lots at your shows!”

“Heh, yeah. Those kids were great.” Johnny reclined casually. “They were pretty surprised to see Pepito when he showed up, though...”

“Don’t change the subject! Do you understand?” Tess challenged. “Are you even listening? Sure, my exes weren’t great guys, but they weren’t killing anyone, and I don’t see any of them lurking around this world with someone devoted to their every move and a kid.”

“I seem to be repeating myself lately. I think we’ve already covered that Edgar did this. My involvement consisted of a nod and thinking, somewhere at the back of my recently-expired head, “Fuck, I wonder if Edgar got us Freezies today.””

“Okay, okay. Say you are abusing him-”

“No.”

“I wasn’t done. Say you’re abusing him, and I ask you if you are. Is there any reality in which you would actually admit this to me?”

Johnny shrugged. “This one is as good as any other. Well, no, okay, I guess this one is an improvement on the last...”

“Would you?”

“Would I tell you, Fucking Crazy Woman Who Tried To Blow My Head Up, that I was molding Edgar’s brain to do my evil bidding if, in fact, that was what I was doing? Hmm. Let’s see. Edgar denies everything, right?” He began counting on his fingers.

“Yes…”

“And you can’t be seen by anyone but us.”

Tess’ chest tightened. “Yes…”

“The only person in the house who has any sympathy for you is Banshee, everyone I know will believe anything I say, and the Anti-Christ owes me a favor.”

“Um.”

“So yes, Fucking Crazy Woman etcetera, yes. If I was killing him slowly and feeding off of his myopic life-energy to fuel my demonic forces of destruction, I would tell you.” He grinned devilishly and Tess had to fight away some left over horror from a life that was already over. “I would tell you,” he continued, reaching out to poke her in the chest for emphasis, “because there would be nothing you could do if it were true.”

Tess’ breath stuck in her throat for the few seconds Johnny’s fingertip pushed against her chest. When he leaned back, still grinning and far more threatening than a man with a rainbow-marked cast should ever be, she tried to let the breath out slowly. She felt her body quiver, betraying her brief fear.

“Well?” she asked, her voice cracking.

“I do think our past few moments were loaded a little too heavily with discourse, Fucking Crazy Woman, and I may have lost track of the original question. Ask me again.”

“I want to know because I care about him.” Tess nodded toward the ceiling to indicate Edgar. “But I also want to know because I should have been in on this, and since I’m not... Well, if you got a happy extra life with all the people you killed, I want to at least live in a world where it’s faked and you’re actually manipulating these people so I can feel like I exist to do more than be a glorified incubator for that … thing.”

“So then ask me.”

“Do you love him? Do you really care about him?” The moment she heard it spoken outside of her own head, Tess could think of a million ways that Johnny could answer her by telling half-truths or asking his own questions that actually lead nowhere. She couldn’t be sure that ‘Are you manipulating him?’ was a better question, but what she asked seemed to encompass it, at least.

Johnny’s expression changed subtly as he stared at her. She stared back, slightly uncomfortable, but determined to live through the conversation. Johnny laughed suddenly and broke the gaze.

“Yes,” he said. The smirk on his face carried through his voice.

“You’re making fun of me.”

“No.”

“Then what was-”

“So you can’t sing, huh?”

A second later, Tess heard Edgar coming down the stairs.

****

Tess, or the thing in her, had been trying to destroy Johnny by making him remember what Edgar had sworn to help stay forgotten. The more Tess destroyed Johnny, the stronger and bigger Banshee grew. Edgar had hoped that someone would understand the connection. Johnny seemed content to say that the monster from the hotel television had done it, and Tess agreed with a shrug and an uncomfortable smile.

“It’s that girl again, isn’t it?” Pepito asked when Edgar stepped onto his porch steps.

“Sort of?”

“I didn’t do her.”

Edgar’s face contorted into nothing short of horror at Pepito’s words and Pepito actually disappeared into the house to laugh at himself before emerging a few moments later.

“And I’m not responsible for her, either,” he said sweetly, offering Edgar one of his eternal cookies.

“It’s not about who made her,” Edgar said, taking the crumbling snack. “We figured that bit out. It’s just… you don’t even know Tess, do you?”

“Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure of her standing moronically on my steps, no.”

“She’s connected… somehow. She was trying to make Johnny remember everything, and that made Banshee grow, and that’s connected to that thing from… you weren’t there for that either.”

“The moose, right?”

“‘Moose’?”

“It’s just easier to call it something monosyllabic. The thing that followed you people home back before Psycho-Face kicked it.”

“You practice saying this stuff, don’t you?”

Pepito said something silken and smooth about it being spontaneous and part of his natural charm but was contradicted by Todd’s voice screaming “All the time!” from somewhere in the house.

“That aside,” Pepito said, sliding onto the porch with Edgar and shutting the door behind him, “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You just described the thing perfectly.”

“That thing is a by-product of all of you,” Pepito replied, waving his hand dismissively.

Edgar crossed his arms. “I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t make something like that.”

“Not consciously, no. It’s part of the system they’re trying to work with on the other side. The one that got you here in the first place. It’s kind of … leftovers.”

“So they’re trying to get rid of it up there? That’s what Banshee was talking about with neutralizing it and everything.”

“She did that?”

“No,” Edgar answered. “She was apparently supposed to. Johnny did something with it instead.”

“You guys are adorable.”

“What?”

“So it’s still out there, right? Or is it hanging out in your house?”

Edgar sighed. “I think it’s in our closet.”

“Hang on,” Pepito said quickly, and he disappeared into the house.

Edgar waited and gnawed on his cookie until Pepito returned, with an annoyed Todd in tow.

“Okay,” Pepito instructed, pointing at Edgar, “say that again.”

“Pepito, I’m not here to-”

“Come on, come on, just say it again.”

“I think it’s in our closet,” Edgar mumbled.

“The Moose?” Todd asked, leaning closer.

“Yes, I think the Moose is in my closet!” Edgar shouted, flailing his hands above his head. “Are we happy now?”

Todd smiled, part in pity, part in amusement, and it may have been the first time Edgar had ever seen him look anything but scared or concerned. “That really is adorable. Sorry about that, though.”

“What is it?” Edgar asked.

“I told you,” Pepito said, preoccupied with something in one of his pockets. “Leftovers.”

“What I’m getting at here is that leftovers being in Johnny is kind of concerning me. What will it do to him?”

“I thought you said it was in your closet,” Todd said.

“It’s kind of both? I don’t know.”

“It’ll make him crazy if it hangs around, you know,” Pepito said casually.

“How do I get rid of it?”

Todd looked vaguely uncomfortable, which, while usual for Todd, was sort of unsettling given the question. “He’ll have to go with it.”

“To die again.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Pepito nodded, counting the bottle caps in his pockets.

Johnny had been talking about dying since Banshee showed up. Since before then, maybe.

“Fuck. He knew. He knew and was just letting me look like an idiot.” The rest of Edgar’s cookie fell to the warped boards of Pepito’s porch and crumbled to stale dust.

Pepito laughed in a kind of snort. “That’s not the reaction I expected at all.”

“I’ll be back,” Edgar said, springing down Pepito’s steps. “This is sort of important.”

“Indeed it is,” Pepito replied. Edgar saw him wave out of the corner of his eye.

****

Edgar burst into the house, scaring Banshee, who was gutting a cassette tape on the couch.

“Where’s Johnny?”

Banshee shrugged. “Upstairs, I guess. I haven’t seen him.”

Edgar made a move for the stairs, but stopped abruptly and considered Banshee.

“That thing you took out of Tess. Tell me about it.”

Banshee’s eyes immediately teared up and she crinkled some of the cassette ribbon at the mention of her failed purpose. “It had her and now it has Nny.”

“And it’s in the closet.”

“Uh-huh.” She looked at the shining strands in her lap.

“How would you go about getting rid of it now?”

She looked up at him, her eyes circled in black, her hair dyed within an inch of its life, and her expression part fear and part boiling anger.

“That’s what I thought,” Edgar replied. “He told me this idea before and I just thought it was him being dramatic. And now it’s going to make him crazy or something.”

“Unless he-”

“I know!” Edgar shouted, and then more calmly, “I know.”

Banshee blinked at him. Stared through him. Seemed to see every stitch in every hem of his clothing and every hair on his head.

“What were you going to do as him?” Edgar asked, trying to shake the feeling of her gaze from his skin.

“Get rid of it. That’s all.”

“But all of him was in that closet. The stuff he wanted to forget, the stuff he couldn’t have remembered if he’d tried. What would you have done as a guy who ran around killing people?”

“I’d have been a girl who ran around killing people, I guess.”

“And you’re upset that you didn’t get to do this.”

“Yeah.”

“It would be a kid who lived in our van who wanted to grow up to be a homicidal maniac…” Which explained why she’d been dropped off with them in the first place, Edgar thought bitterly.

“He didn’t know,” Banshee said suddenly. “He just guessed.”

“And you know this?”

“I do.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. But if he had been dead, everything in his part of the closet – everything he knows and remembers right now - would have gone to me in the first place. I would have been him, mostly, I guess, and taken the Moose out of Tess and-”

“Pepito called it that too, where the hell did that come from?”

“It’s just a good name for it.” She wound some of the cassette tape around her wrist. “Johnny has already died once, and Hell wanted him. Nothing in that closet can leave and enter him, because you guys promised or something. Tess didn’t know, but she was breaking off bits of him, giving them to me… making me big enough to do all this in time. If Johnny had been dead, I wouldn’t have been technically him and all Johnny’s mental stuff would have been in me. I would have been new, someone no one had promised anything to, and I would have been enough Johnny to attract the Moose, and then it would have nothing when it got to me – no ties to Hell, no crazy, at least not yet. It would have just died. Neutralized. I‘m a loophole.”

“And then you…?”

“Might have gone nuts from knowing that someone I only partly was had killed someone you were once, maybe.”

Edgar paused on a very gentle theory. “Did Johnny try to save you?”

“That would have been pretty fucking noble of me.” Edgar startled at the sound of Johnny’s voice. Johnny strolled into the room still very much alive and showing no signs of his recent deterioration save for the cast on his arm.

“So that’s a ‘no’ then,” Edgar said as Johnny draped himself over the recliner.

“Yeah, no.”

“What’s all this about dying, anyway?” Banshee asked. Brief flashes of light caught on the strips of cassette tape in her hair.

“Nothing,” Edgar answered quickly.

Johnny stretched and grinned from the recliner. “It’s how I’m going to get rid of this thing.”

Edgar frowned, but let Johnny talk when Banshee looked intrigued.

“You were supposed to get rid of it or some shit like that, so it’s apparently a threat to more than just me. Since I was planning on heading out of here anyway, I’ll just take it with me. It makes sense.”

“So… you did do that to spare Banshee?” Edgar asked.

“I just told you no. She was all ready to suck it up and go crazy with it. Fine with me.”

“Fuck off,” Banshee spat.

Johnny ignored her. “I think I was the more complete version of me, even all fucked up and Tess-ified, so it wanted me when it realized I was there.”

“That doesn’t explain the dying,” Banshee said. “Are you killing yourself next week or something?”

Something tightened in Edgar’s chest.

“No,” Johnny said casually. “Not next week, anyway.”

“Why is it that you two suddenly just know everything?” Edgar asked.

Johnny and Banshee looked at each other and Edgar watched them apparently mentally comparing notes.

“I just know,” Banshee said softly. Though she was answering Edgar, her eyes were still locked onto Johnny. “Because it knew, and part of it went through me.”

“How long did it have Tess?” Edgar asked suddenly, breaking Banshee and Johnny’s mutual stare. Banshee turned to Edgar, blinking as though he’d only just appeared there.

“Almost as long as she existed,” Banshee said sadly. “It let her do things on her own, but… I think it always had her.”

“So did I ever actually talk to Tess?” Edgar asked.

Banshee posed a question in return. “Did you ever see the red star?”

“No.” He considered that it would have been appropriate to ask what she was even talking about, and what kind of hallucinogenic stuff she’d been into lately, but only that single word made it out.

“Then maybe not. When I saw the red star, it told me about Tess. It is Tess. The bits of her that the Moose didn’t get. That’s why I wanted her to play, she-”

“The metaphors in your world are disturbingly literal, Banshee,” Johnny commented, flipping through some stray paper near the base of the pink chair.

“Can’t say I’ve ever seen stars when talking to Tess, no,” Edgar said. He glanced every few moments at Johnny, but aside from fidgeting with his cast, Johnny didn’t seem to be up to anything suspicious.

“It’s not all the time,” Banshee said, untangling the tape. “It’s just sometimes.”

“Riiight. Well, okay then. So there’s nothing I can do right now but play with Tess on stage and then wait for Johnny to kill himself, yes?”

Johnny and Banshee both replied, though neither of them had made eye-contact with him or each other.

“Yeah.”

****

It was the first time he’d seen Banshee happy about something that was not causing someone physical harm in months. She had practically floated from place to place and talked incessantly of how great it would be to do something with Tess. When the time came to actually do something, Banshee performed constant maintenance on Tess’ makeup. Edgar asked her a few times if she thought the red star was going to disappear. She either ignored him or took the implications to be extremely serious. She laughed only when he specifically mentioned that he meant the star on Tess' cheek and not the weird abstract one Banshee had reported seeing before.

Devi and Jimmy approached Johnny, and were met with an eyebrow raise.

“We were just worried that she was doing things to your head,” Devi said, as she mimed the 'crazy' motion near her temple. Jimmy nodded furiously.

Johnny denied there was any problem. “My brains are fine, she isn't bothering me.”

Jimmy looked at Edgar to be some sort of voice of reason. “Is it going to be okay?”

Edgar spread his hands and shrugged. “If it makes Banshee happy, and Johnny's okay, I'm okay too.”

Tenna, prepared to go on stage and kazoo for all she was worth, didn't bother to ask about Tess, or how anyone was feeling.

“I feel a little like I'm in drag,” Tess mumbled as Banshee adjusted her outfit again.

“Dead people drag,” Jimmy laughed to himself.

Tess’ body had been painted black in random streaks in a response to her description of what it felt like to disappear in Johnny’s old house. Her eyes were blacked out with lenses and a long bar of the black paint covered her jaw and bottom lip. The red star that had so entranced Banshee was planted in the center of her forehead.

Banshee had insisted on the placement, saying, “Like a third eye!”

Devi took Edgar aside while Banshee fussed over Tess and Jimmy was distracted.

“Okay, now that stupid isn't attached to me, tell me for real: Is this going to be okay?” Devi asked.

“I told you, this makes them happy, so it’s fine.”

“And you're really okay with it?”

“Yes.”

“And what if Banshee wants her to stay?”

“She can’t live with me, and I’m not asking her to live with you, if that’s what you-”

Devi shook her head. “No, I mean what if she wants to stay here. In the band. Singing and whatever. When it’s all of us, it’s not really that bad, but it’s not like Tess should really even be here, you know, music-wise.”

Edgar laughed. “I don’t think any of us should really be here, music-wise.”

“Don’t say that,” Devi said, poking his side. “We’re awesome.”

“I know, I just… something. I don’t really know what I ‘just,’ but I’ll let you know when I do. It’ll be okay. We're fine.”

Devi smiled and slipped away to talk to Johnny again, who was more alive for this show than he’d been in months. His arm was still in a cast, but they’d pry it off of him soon and then he could go back to wearing gloves and long sleeves during performances. Edgar watched Johnny give Devi some sort of sly comment that made her laugh. She walked away from his satisfied smirk shaking her head. When Tess stepped in to talk to Johnny, habit made Edgar twitch to prevent her from getting too close.

Johnny joked with her, even going so far as to poke the black on her face. Tess said something that made Johnny point to Tenna, and the conversation seemed to stall from there.

Banshee threw herself against Edgar suddenly, tearing his attention away from Tess and Johnny. She wrapped her arms around him in an awkward kind of hug, and didn’t bother to wait for him to reciprocate before letting go and twirling a few times in front of him. The streams of her costume trailed after her and rippled in waves while she babbled excitedly at him.

“We’re gonna do this, Edgar! It’s going to be amazing! You’re going to love this, I know it! She belongs here, don’t you think? I think Johnny even sorta likes her, and hey, if he can like me after I break his arm, he can like her too, you know?”

“I’m not… yes.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She shrugged and danced off to the other side of the room again, this time to poke at Johnny’s cast. Edgar could hear Johnny promise to bash Banshee’s skull open with it when he got it removed and it took Edgar a few moments to realize that ‘relief’ was not the appropriate reaction to have when hearing two people he cared about threaten each other.

Jimmy announced that there was a small scuffle in the audience and that someone had brought another goat to attempt to sacrifice.

“Oh,” Johnny said, “we need to watch this.”

“We’re actually the ones who are supposed to be watched,” Devi reminded him.

Johnny dismissed her with a wave of his hand and a hiss. He stepped beyond the curtain to the stage and was soon heard polling the applauding audience about goats. Devi rolled her eyes, grabbed a few extra drum sticks and followed him. Tenna trailed after her, blowing horrible noises out of her kazoo. Jimmy poked Edgar and motioned for him to get moving.

“Come on, the dramatic entrance is sorta shot anyway.”

Edgar looked back to Banshee and Tess.

“Will you two be okay?”

“We’re coming,” Banshee replied, tugging Tess’ wrist. “Goat sacrifice is a pretty good distraction.”

“How often does this happen?” Tess asked. “I… sort of thought we were joking when this came up before.”

“Just the one time,” Edgar reassured her. “I’ll be surprised if they pull it off again.”

When they stepped out, Johnny was already conversing with a large part of the audience.

“So do you have a farm or what? Yeah? And they’re cool with you killing it way out here?”

A faint bleating sound was heard under the noise of excited fans.

The lights were the same always, and the stitches on Edgar’s skin just as prone to melting in them. He at least had the advantage over Tess, who was sweating from nerves as much as heat. Even with her there, the atmosphere was familiar and wonderfully so. Despite his broken arm, Johnny appeared to be thriving, and his conversation with the audience, about beheading goats or not, was quite welcome.

Someone in the audience screamed, “Take the knife! Do it!”

“I’m not doing it,” Johnny told the guy. “I’m wearing a cast.”

“Is that all that’s stopping you?” Edgar asked from behind the keyboard. Thanks to the mic, his voice was heard over the screaming below. A patch of screams distinctly teenage-girl in nature erupted when Edgar finished speaking, and Edgar was sure he heard some of them yelling requests along the lines of ‘Make out!’ and ‘Grope him!’

“Absolutely,” Johnny answered, flashing a grin both at Edgar and the audience. “It’s my killing arm.”

“You only use one?” Jimmy asked. “I'm pretty sure I remember it being an ambidextrous sort of experience.”

Johnny shrugged. “I’ve evolved a little. You were killed in my impressionistic period.”

The audience cheered yet again, some of them still calling for Johnny to make out with someone. Who he kissed didn’t seem to matter because the chants continued even while he talked to Devi and Tenna. Johnny ignored the requests and happily conversed with the chunks of the audience not invested in make outs and goat killing.

When the others had set up and Johnny's traditional chatter was over, Johnny turned to look at Banshee and Tess as they hovered near Devi and her drums.

“Well?” he asked them.

“Maybe we should work up to it,” Banshee said.

“Wimp,” Tenna called from the front. She was perched on the edge of the stage, kazooing merrily at the fans who grasped at her feet.

Johnny turned back to the audience. “Our demon is afraid to sing to you losers!” he shouted.

“Am not!” Banshee countered, though she was almost drowned out by the sounds of the fans.

Johnny pointed at Jimmy, though he didn’t look at him. “You. Play something.”

“What, you want me to pick what we’re doing first?”

“If you don’t, I will,” Devi threatened.

A dramatic riff of “dun dun DUN” erupted from Edgar’s keyboard.

“Fuck off,” Jimmy muttered, though the mic picked up his voice anyway. He picked at a few things while the others stared at him, waiting.

“Any day now, Jimmy.”

“Hey, I’m thinking! You put me on the spot! I thought we were just going to do it like normal...”

Tenna began to kazoo a song, and when a few audience members tried to hum it with her, Jimmy picked it up. Devi tapped along softly and Edgar adjusted his keys accordingly. When it started full-swing Johnny laughed genuinely and honestly, taking some of the audience off guard. When it was Jimmy who sang the shaky lyrics instead of Johnny, there was an appreciable increase in the noise from the crowd. Tenna kazooed for all she was worth, Devi sang some ridiculous back-up and Edgar was humming along to keep from laughing.

Johnny, unneeded for this particular act of silliness, strolled back to Tess and a gleeful Banshee. Banshee was already into the song, and piping up with Devi when the back-up parts called for it. She and Johnny both poked Tess to sing along. Tess protested, mouthing that she didn’t know the words.

“Bullshit,” Johnny said. “Just listen to it.”

“Chicken’s got a kickstand,” Jimmy chanted.

Devi, Banshee and Tenna doo-wopped in return.

“Cheese in a spray can.”

And another doo-wop back.

“You too,” Johnny insisted. “Don’t go denying the request of a poor crippled guy.”

“You’re not crippled, you bastard.”

Johnny shushed her and he and Banshee cued Tess for the next round of doo-wopping back up. She sang along, and actually began to smile. Satisfied, Johnny coaxed them out of the back, and stepped off to the side to slide onto Edgar’s bench at the keyboard. Some very vocal parts of the crowd erupted into shrieks while Johnny poked at the keyboard and earned a few half-hearted and well-timed swats from Edgar.

Edgar enjoyed the attention. He knew he couldn’t sing, and Johnny was hardly making an effort to counter Jimmy being wacky, but performing with Johnny even if they were both essentially making it up thrilled Edgar in a way that few things could. A performance was more fun when the people performing were enjoying it.

Jimmy repeated the song long enough that the audience knew the words by the time he finally choked out the final notes. Johnny stayed on the bench behind the keyboard with Edgar, and poked a few keys until he found a note he seemed to enjoy.

“Do you mind?” Edgar said.

“No,” Johnny laughed. “I think we’ll go with this one.”

The audience grew shrill once again to hear Johnny and Edgar talking, even about nothing. Johnny suggested a song, and Edgar stared at him, waiting for him to move.

“Show me how it starts,” Johnny said, trailing his fingertips over the keys.

“What, you mean the notes?”

“Nny,” Devi growled from behind the drums, “stop fucking around and let’s go.”

“Wait, I’m not done,” Johnny shot back. He turned back to Edgar as though the conflict had been resolved. “So anyway, show me.”

Edgar shrugged and touched a few keys, playing a very soft and slow intro. Johnny took in the notes like a sponge, practically breathing them in the moment they hit the air.

“Okay,” he said, “we’ll do that one. Like the start again, eh?” Johnny rose sharply from the bench, twirled away, and a brush of tattered, striped fabric brushed Edgar’s face. The costume had barely settled back on to Johnny’s body before he was in place and demanding a quick start from the others. He turned to Banshee and Tess for a quick second, pointed at them, and then spun back to the audience.

The song pulled at Edgar’s hands and practically played itself. They’d practiced it so many times before anyone could see them, and played it so often afterward that it existed beyond them. It wasn’t their song; they’d borrowed it from the depths of the music in their minds, but it still held as sentimental a meaning as the Homicides could be bothered to feel.

“Welcome to the lower berth
The greatest show unearthed
We appear without a sound
The darkest show around
We will leave you in a daze
Madness, murder, dismay
We will disappear at night
With blood on the concrete”

Banshee had always enjoyed the song and Edgar watched her encouraging Tess to get into it. Tenna’s painting on Tess had ensured that even when Tess looked unsure, she was at worst unreadable and at best terrifying. Banshee had been right about her, though. It did feel right to play with Tess there. As soon as they discovered what Tess could truly contribute, Edgar felt certain the others would want her to stay too. Johnny, Jimmy and Devi sang the song with the same enthusiasm that had made them visible for the first time, and Banshee joined them, eagerly dragging Tess with her.

“I will be your ticket taker
Come inside it's a dream
Enter the fun house of mirrors
No one can hear you scream
We can supply anything
That your heart desires
But the consequences
Will surely be dire”

Banshee tried to steal Johnny’s mic a few times, despite having her own. She played it off as part of her stage persona, but the spark in Johnny’s eyes said he’d read her otherwise. She twirled around him and swept her arms through the outstretched palms of the audience during an instrumental bit while Tess did the same, slowly warming to the idea of being something terrifying to other people and not to herself. The audience didn’t know who she was, or what she was doing there, but they were just as eager to reach out to her as they were to touch Banshee.

“Come inside
For the ride
Your deepest darkest fears

The best night
Of your life
You're never leaving here

The unknown
The unseen
Is what you're gonna find

Witness this
Witness that
Until you lose your mind “

Unsuprisingly, Tess enjoyed the 'la, lalala' parts of the song the best. Edgar couldn't blame her. He thought maybe that was his favorite too. Banshee was very serious about the 'la la la' bit, and treated it like a tribal dance. Johnny indulged her, if only to the extent that he consented to being the one worshiped.

The song ended, the crowd attempted to deafen the band, and Johnny began to speak. He was quickly interrupted, however, by Banshee humming into a mic held near her throat. Johnny would have pushed onward and ignored her if not for Tenna starting a kazoo accompaniment. She was clearly intrigued, and had an expression on her face Edgar had never seen before. Tess seemed terrified at this unplanned turn of events, but her desperate glances to Edgar and Jimmy were met with no response as the two of them slowly began to try something they’d never done before. It was clunky and rough at first as they organized who was taking what part and when, but soon, the song fleshed itself out and began to build properly.

Devi stood in the back, trembling a little in spite of her death-white stage persona. “Guys, seriously?”

Johnny motioned for Tess to follow him as he walked back to Devi and offered her his mic. “I don’t think I should be the one to do this one.”

“You know I don't really sing this stuff.”

“I don't think that's going to matter for this one.”

Devi took the mic, and slowly, hesitantly and entirely unlike her drumming, began to sing.

“And she’s pretty sure it’s you
and you’re pretty sure it’s her
but no one will say a word
because it’s all a work in progress.”

Her confidence grew with every word and soon it was as if the song had always been meant to be heard aloud. Johnny sang with her, though not to overpower, or even to duet. He kept himself in the background with Banshee while Tess remained confused between them.

“There was that time at the King Buffet
And the other in the drive thru,
When she said, ‘I can take him’
And you were pretty sure it wasn’t you.

And the idiots surround her
And she tells them all to go to hell
Because they’re in her space now
And they can’t even fucking know.

Cry ‘blasphemy’, cry ‘fuck you’
But don’t bother to change
Because it’s all a work in progress, dear
And we’re all bound to be a little strange.”

The song faded away awkwardly, as not one of the group on stage had ever heard Devi’s song actually end before. Devi saved them by humming the same way Banshee had and with those notes, the audience became irrelevant. Tenna attempted protest from the front of the stage where she’d been happily kazooing to Devi’s song, but was not prepared for her own. Devi sang the first few words alone, before Banshee joined her, both of them eagerly motioning for Tenna to join them.

“She's got technicolor shoes
Untied, laces trailing
But that's okay, I'm with the band, baby
I'll follow you anyway.”

They laughed through most of the rest of the song, and didn’t even make it to the end before Tenna grew too flustered at singing her own song and brought out her kazoo to buzz out another tune entirely.

As though he had thought about it at considerable length before, Jimmy picked up his own song and felt no need to wait for the band to catch up with him before he was playing and singing the tune with everything in him. Edgar rushed to catch up to him, and Devi hurridly returned to her drums to help them keep some kind of beat.

“When I was twelve
I sold my soul
to Lucifer
for a sack of coal”

Edgar watched Johnny talking hurriedly, almost angrily, to Tess. She looked alarmed and angry right back and shook her head as Johnny spoke.

“cuz I never been hot enough
but I aim to start”

Jimmy was not designed to sing, but something about being the source of the song made it sound right only if Jimmy sang it. It had been the same with Devi, and Tenna’s song had only sounded like itself once she joined in. It was with some great fear that Edgar realized he’d be next, and for the song to work, it would need to be him singing it. Jimmy ended his song on a note that sounded more like agony than singing, and let the pain in his voice transition into words that stitched themselves into every shred of Edgar’s life.

“Sticks and stones could break my bones
if they were really there
as it is now, I’m immortal
cuz until I find happy”

Edgar joined him on the next line.

“I have nothing to fear.”

The rest of Edgar’s song simply flowed out of him, and his reservations about singing it vanished, replaced by the elation of being able to let the song out. The others knew the song, sang and played it with him. When the moment came that it felt right to let the song go, Edgar transitioned from his own song to playing Johnny’s. He could feel Devi, Tenna and Jimmy flinch as they joined in. Johnny stood quietly with Banshee and Tess, transfixed at the sound of the song, but clearly bitter that it wasn’t something he could sing.

Several measures into the tune, Banshee danced out to the middle of the stage and began what Johnny was always accusing her of - putting words into his song.

“history coming from your speakers

and your soul frosted on the glass

concerned about the future

distracted by the past”

Johnny twitched as he watched Banshee, and Edgar hoped he'd save throttling her for when a few hundred people weren't watching. The words Banshee sang fit the song as though they had always been there, and she sang them with such confidence, that Edgar imagined that she had sung them hundreds of times.

'fresh fortune cookie

and an ancient dance

you uproot Heaven and Hell

if ever you get the chance'

Banshee stopped singing two verses in and turned to the others, away from the audience. She motioned to Tess, who started to hum Edgar's song into a previously-concealed microphone. Jimmy and Devi faltered, unsure of whether to go with Tess, or drown her out.

“Keep going!” Banshee shouted. She turned a second later to Tenna and had her kazoo along with Tess. She continued using Tess and Tenna to switch which songs to fuse with Johnny's while the others exchanged occasional uneasy glances. Devi kept a steady beat, and Edgar and Jimmy kept faithfully to Johnny's song, though they both played like it burned them. Johnny was not amused, and looked quite threatening when he finally gave into his rage and crossed the stage to stop Banshee.

Banshee saw him, stopped abruptly, and freed the others to do the same. The audience cheered and threw a few things in celebration. Apparently, Banshee's stunt hadn't ruined the show entirely.

“That's what my song sounds like,” Banshee announced, spreading her arms wide. Johnny tried to grab her arm, but Jimmy stopped him.

“Nny, it's cool. Just wait.”

Johnny growled, and the noise popped over the speakers.

“My song isn't real,” Banshee continued. “They put it together pretty badly, because it only had to be functional a little while. It's just Nny's song, with ugly patches of the others, and some shoddy lyrics that belong to me, but it was always there, just like the others. I didn't know until recently. I'll sing you something else now.”

Edgar shared a clueless expression with Jimmy and Devi. A moment later, he heard a ping, and saw Tess standing by with a triangle. Someone in the audience laughed, and Tess flinched, though the audience probably didn't notice thanks to her make-up.

Banshee started a soft chant, and Tess followed her.

“Naina naina, nanana naina”

Banshee and Tess repeated the single syllable in a looping rhythm until Devi began to tap it out with them. Banshee grinned, Tess seemed to relax, and Jimmy let go of Johnny. Johnny appeared slightly less murderous now that his song wasn't being slaughtered all around him, but he still did not look pleased.

“Naina naina, nanana naina”

Jimmy played something very gentle when he released Johnny. 'Gentle' was a strange sound coming from him. It drove Edgar back to his keys, where he found the song Banshee was chanting sitting in his head. He'd never heard it before, but he was able to play just enough of it for Banshee to use. Softly, Edgar played his way into a song he didn't know, but that Banshee had conjured into his head.

“Naina naina, nanana naina”

“Nokva so senki pak zboruvam
Moram od sebe da pobegnam”

Banshee began to sing, but in a language Edgar didn't know. He played for her, just like Jimmy and Devi, but he did it as though he was being guided on strings. Banshee obviously knew the words, but Edgar wondered if she was being manipulated by something outside too.

“Tri angeli me čuvaat
Odam po vistinski pat”

Edgar thought he saw swirling colors or maybe giant hands out of the corner of his eye when Banshee stood on her toes to sing the chorus. She sang it like they were the most important words she was ever going to convey to anyone.

“Mojot svet se vika muzika!”

Maybe it wasn't even singing so much as declaring.

“Nema vera nitu granica!”

Whatever Edgar has seen was gone. Banshee held her arms out and sang to the sky, calling in a language she didn't know with incredible sincerity.

“Mojot svet se osum noti
Edna duša balkanska”

Johnny slid next to Edgar on his bench and surprised him, though Edgar didn't falter with the strange notes.

“I know the words,” Johnny whispered.

Edgar almost laughed. “I know the notes.”

“Mojot svet se vika muzika
Nema vera nitu granica
Mojot svet se osum noti
Edna duša balkanska!”

Banshee glanced around her when she finished the chorus, and though she continued into the next verse, she looked momentarily confused as to where she was.

“Sonce me budi vo postela
Pesna me gali vo dušata

She held her hands in the air in front of her face, caressing empty space. Johnny hummed with her, studying her movements.

Tri spomeni što bolea
Večno gi izbrišav jas”

The chorus surged back again, with Banshee just as enthusiastic, if not more so. Johnny sang with her, and elbowed Edgar as he did.

“Mojot svet se vika muzika
Nema vera nitu granica
Mojot svet se osum noti
Edna duša balkanska!”

Edgar refused to sing, but intensified what he played. Judging from his grin, it seemed that was what Johnny wanted anyway. Banshee turned to look at Johnny and Edgar for brief moment. The corners of her mouth twitched into a smile and she stomped the floor as she screamed out the chorus once again.

“Mojot svet se vika muzika!
Nema vera nitu granica!
Mojot svet se osum noti
Edna duša balkanska!”

She and Tess transitioned into more of the rhythmic syllables from the opening as Banshee stomped on the stage along to them.

“Naina naina, nanana naina
Naina naina, nanana naina”

Tenna sat off to the side, clapping in time, and Edgar felt Johnny's muscles tense with every beat.

“Naina naina, nanana naina”

The beats grew more and more intense and climaxed in Banshee releasing a joyous cry. When she did, the song continued without her, primarily in voices Edgar didn't recognize as belonging to the band. Banshee glowed and reached skyward for something that was busy matching her glow near the ceiling.

The final note of the song burst over the audience, who applauded and cheered. Johnny laughed and leaned close to Edgar. “I'm surprised the usual crowd liked something like that.” Only Edgar heard him, and he was nearly drowned out by a cracking sound from the roof of the auditorium.

The glow from the ceiling intensified and widened until it let out another crack and a long slick claw slid from the center of it. Johnny shuddered, covered one of his ears with his hand and braced himself against Edgar. Devi swore loudly and called to Tenna, while Tess backed away, dropped her triangle to the floor and positioned Jimmy between herself and the thing slowly stretching its way out of a glow in the air.

People in the audience screamed and cheered in equal measure, most of them sure it was part of the show. When the grotesque shape of the thing finally manifested completely, Edgar saw the tiniest flash of the huge smoke-like hands from a few minutes prior filling the air. They were wrapped around Banshee or waving at the newly emerged creature above them. When Edgar blinked, they vanished. He clutched Johnny's arm, unable to move from his seat.

“What was she singing?” he asked.

For once, Johnny skipped mocking that Edgar didn't know something. “She sang about music. Couldn't you feel that?”

“No.”

The creature in the ceiling opened its mouth, revealing rows upon rows of sharp teeth. It raised a clawed hand, but before Edgar could call out a warning to run, it simply waved.

“Hi there,” the creature said. His voice was squeaky and awkward, despite his terrifying appearance. He waved at the audience a little and added, “Hey guys, yeah, sorry, I'll just be a few minutes. Sorry about this.”

Tess – at least Edgar thought it was Tess - made a gagging sound from behind Jimmy.

“So,” the monster continued, turning to the Homicides, “I'm a bit new at this, so I hope it's okay if I just read this. You guys don't mind, do you?”

Jimmy wordlessly shook his head with his eyes wide, and the others followed suit after the creature waited expectantly for confirmation from the rest of the people on stage.

“Okay, great,” the monster said, pulling out a folded letter. He coughed once, and read dramatically from the paper. “Dear Sir or Madam, it has come to our attention that we've made an error in processing and sent you a superfluous person. It was our understanding the that the original subject was to be terminated at a certain time and that a replacement would later be needed. We are genuinely surprised to see that it is otherwise.”

Banshee screamed incoherently at the creature while he read, but he continued over her.

“Our systems are undergoing an overhaul and will soon be under new management. Any previous contact, contracts, relationships, roles, or affiliations you have had with us will be terminated upon the transfer of ownership of reality. Please return the superfluous element with the attached envelope, and we will be in contact regarding the next steps should you wish to continue your association with us. Again we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused and we look forward to working with you in the future. Sincerely, The Management.”

“Superfluous person?!” Banshee shrieked.

“Um, yes,” the creature replied, checking the wording on his document. “That's you, yes? That's easy enough then. You're taking up more space than you're allowed, and it's making the transition difficult.”

“Fuck you!”

“Oh, please don't do this. It's my first time.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Devi demanded.

“I'm the envelope,” the creature answered. “I just read that part.”

Banshee flung her arms wide and stomped her foot.“I'm not going anywhere!”

“Well, the original is still alive, isn't he? Sitting right over there.” The creature pointed at Johnny, who glared sourly in response.

“So then take him!” Banshee yelled. “I'm the new one! The improvement! He's the obsolete one! If anyone is superfluous, he is!”

Jimmy stormed forward and grabbed Banshee's arm, wrenching her back toward him. “What the fuck do you think you're saying?!”

“What, Uncle Jimmy? You want to trade me in to keep him?” She turned back to face Edgar and Johnny, trying to wrench her arm free. “You too, right? I'm not a nice little girl, so send me away?”

Edgar's throat was dry as he tried to defend himself. “No, no, that's not it at all, I-”

Banshee turned back to the monster in the ceiling, finally smacking Jimmy's hand away. “What happens if I go with you, huh?”

“Well, we're still busy cleaning,” he admitted. “So, you'll probably have to wait in the closet with everyone else for a while.”

“And then?”

“Oh, oh, I know this!” He flailed his claw hands in excitement and began apparently reciting. “They, um, process you and decide if you'll be useful to the new system they're implementing, and if you are, then you'll be reassigned somewhere. If not, you get composted!” He was clearly delighted with himself and made a schlopping noise that Edgar assumed to be laughter.

Banshee looked at Jimmy, who was poised to grab her again. “Am I useful?” she asked him. He hesitated, and she screamed in his face, letting the sound screech and crack over the speakers.

She pointed angrily to the back of the stage where Devi, Tess, and Tenna stood near the drum set and demanded again, “Am I useful?!”

“Yes,” Tess managed to choke out.

Banshee narrowed her eyes, but didn't scream this time. Instead, she walked over to Edgar's keyboard. She asked the same question of him and Johnny, poking a note on the keys with every word, “Am. I. Useful?”

“Yes,” Edgar said at the same moment as Johnny's “No.”

Edgar elbowed Johnny, but Banshee had already heard.

“No,” Johnny repeated, shoving Edgar's elbow away. “Just like me.”

“Johnny, stop,” Edgar said. He was braced for an incoming scream from Banshee, but was surprised when it didn't come.

“Did you know,” Banshee said, fondly running a finger over the keyboard, “that no one will ever hear your song ever again? Did you know that hearing those songs connected you to the system that got you all killed over and over?”

Johnny blinked and just then Edgar realized that aside from the sound of Banshee's voice and the crowd below, he couldn't hear anything. Johnny's song, the tune that used to sit comfortably woven into Edgar's thoughts, was gone, along with Edgar's own song. His fingers itched to reproduce the notes of both songs, but as Banshee continued talking the notes began to fade from his mind.

“They were never going to let go of you,” Banshee said. “You have a song with no words. You can't get the song out the same way they all can. You're stuck with it all, alone.”

Johnny glared at her. “You tricked them into this.”

“It was a suggestion.” She shrugged. “They liked it. And I think it brought him here.”

“So... what's going on here?” Ceiling Monster asked when Banshee nodded to him. “I think they're going to wonder why I've been gone so long and I'd just like to not be in trouble. I know this is super awkward, but um, if you guys could help me out, that'd be really great.”

“I'm useful,” Banshee told him, marching purposefully back toward the monster. “I know things they don't. I see things they don't. And I'm not trapped. You go ahead and take me and see what I do.”

Banshee began to glow the moment the last word left her lips.

Tess and Edgar ran out after her screaming “No!” and shared a a moment of surprise at their joint outburst before Edgar continued alone, “If you're just going to put her in a closet then at least let her wait here!”

The Ceiling Monster nervously shuffled his claws. “I can't, there's two people taking up space when there should only be one...”

“That's not fair!” Tess said.

“Just seems like good math to me,” Johnny said.

The Ceiling Monster clapped with relief. “Oh, thank you!”

“What would happen if you took both of us?” Johnny asked casually. He stepped out from behind Edgar's keyboard. Someone in the audience cheered and an egg smashed and splattered across the stage floor.

“Oh, oh, I couldn't do that. That's two people in once space again, you see... Very awkward.”

“I once belonged to you people!” Edgar cried. “You had a book, you watched everything I did and gave me everything in my house! I watched over Johnny and you used me to affect him! Doesn't that have some bearing on Banshee?”

“They're canceling everything, Edgar,” Devi said. “Fucking listen to the thing. It doesn't mean anything now.”

“You can't just be okay with this!” he protested.

“I didn't say I was!” she snapped.

“You can all stand around talking about this, or you could let me make my own decisions!” Banshee screamed. “I'm going! They'll never destroy me!” She stomped her boot on the stage once and threw her arms up, angrily yelling to the monster in the ceiling. “You won't even fucking know what hit you! Let's go!”

She was lifted into the air once again. Edgar tried to run forward and stop her, but Tess and Johnny held him back. Pulling against their grip, Edgar called to Banshee, but his voice was lost in the sound of the audience, his bandmates, and the ceiling monster's polite thank you speech. Banshee waved – Edgar hoped it was at him, though he couldn't rule out Tess who was standing right beside him – and then she happily saluted.

The song Banshee had sung crept out over all the other sound in the room. Banshee screamed her chorus out once more.

“Mojot svet se vika muzika!
Nema vera nitu granica!
Mojot svet se osum noti
Edna duša balkanska!”

“Naina naina, nanana naina...”

Replacing the songs that had once been so comfortable, the deliberate 'nai na nai na' of Banshee's song swirled through Edgar's head, and in a brilliant flash of light and a scream that sounded nothing less than joyous, Banshee vanished.

“We'll be in contact,” the monster said when Banshee had gone. “Thanks for your cooperation, this makes things so much easier for me, wow. You guys are great.” He waved his giant claw at the cheering audience. “Sorry for the interruption, folks. Have a nice day!”

There was a sloppy, wet, sucking sound and then he was gone. Edgar assumed that the audience was cheering, but he couldn't hear them. Tess was talking, apparently, though Edgar couldn't hear her either.

Johnny elbowed him. “She'll be back,” he said.

“You think so?” His voice betrayed a little hope, even after all Banshee had done.

“They just took her because she is me. She's coming back.”

Devi called to them over the sound of the audience. “Guys, we need to do something!”

“Like what?!” Tenna screamed, “A séance?”

“They'd love that!” Jimmy cheered. “You want to resurrect the goat!?”

“It's a little cruel to the goat, don't you think?” Devi asked.

Edgar said nothing and stared, baffled by the others while they continued this conversation around him. Hadn't they been attached to the girl who was just sucked into the ceiling? Even if she had made a mess of things at the end, they'd still given her nicknames and made her weird clothes and chopped her hair off. He tried to say something, tried to ask if they were feeling well, tried to make sense of anything. Johnny stopped him with another elbow to the ribs. Edgar watched him switch his microphone off.

“One more song, Edgar.”

“Nny, they're just-” Johnny pressed a finger to Edgar's lips.

“One. More. We get these people and their goat carcass out of here, and then you do whatever you need to.” He nodded toward Jimmy and Tenna's spirited conversation about goat hauntings. “They're picking up your slack here, come on.”

“I can hardly think! What if she isn't okay? What-”

“I told you. She'll be fine, and she'll be back.”

Edgar looked at the teeming mass of people cheering for Jimmy and Tenna's mangled ode to Devi's purple hair, and swallowed. “How can they even...”

“Am I ever wrong?” Johnny asked, diverting his attention away.

“Johnny, this really isn't the time to be relying on your own supernatural favors when that monster just said they were getting rid of all that!”

Johnny shoved Edgar's shoulder playfully. “Trust me.”

Resigned, Edgar nodded, pulled his shoulders back up, and tried to compose his brain.

“One song,” Johnny reminded him, holding up a single finger. “And it would be good if we made it look like that's what we were discussing over here. What do you want to play? Make it good.”

Edgar's head spun and the blurry audience around him made it difficult to focus on Johnny. “Um, I- jeez. Okay. Okay.” What Edgar needed now was something ridiculous. He needed something baffling, he needed something that made as much sense as what as just happened. “You remember what we played in that garage before that old guy got angry at us? The time Tenna threw paint everywhere?”

Johnny laughed. “For real?”

“Yeah. Let's do that.”

Johnny switched his mic back on. “You can't wimp out on me. You're all yelling with me, or no one does and then I'm not responsible for what the hounds do to us.” He nodded toward the audience, who responded enthusiastically to Johnny's name calling, as always. Edgar nodded, retreated to his bench, and began adjusting some settings on his keyboard.

Johnny motioned to Tess, who had been attempting to hide behind Tenna. “Come 'ere. I've got a question for you.”

Tess glanced apprehensively at Tenna, and Tenna shoved her toward Johnny. “Go on, go on! This'll be the fun part!”

Johnny threw an arm over Tess's shoulders and grinned. “This is an important question, do you think you can handle this?”

Devi dropped a drumstick behind them. “Is he serious?” she hissed at Edgar. Of course the whole room heard her. Edgar nodded, smiling, while Johnny continued to make Tess nervous.

“That... probably depends on the question,” Tess answered.

“Guys...” Johnny paused, searching for words that amused him more. “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Blood-sucking maggots, this is Tess. She has no musical talent to speak of yet, so we're setting her up in a trial by fire. Do you think she can answer this question?”

Jimmy dramatically shook his head 'no' behind Johnny, which the audience was happy to mimic.

“It's not looking good for you, Tess,” Johnny reported with an exaggerated frown. “Can you prove them wrong?”

Tess shot a worried look at Edgar, who only shrugged in response. “Ye-es,” Tess replied shakily.

Johnny leaned in close to Tess. “Didn't quite catch that.”

“Yes!”

“Okay, here's the question. It's the most important question you ever be asked, and it will probably change your life. Brace yourself.”

“Just ask already!” she snapped.

He smiled at her, genuinely, and brought his face in close to hers until they were nose to nose. “Tess. How much is the fish?”

Tess jumped in alarm when the start of the song blasted from Edgar's keyboard. Johnny cackled at her throughout the intro and in fact through most of the song. Jimmy jumped in with him to chant or sing or whatever it was that this song required.

“We're breaking the rules
Ignore the machine
You won't ever stop this
The chase is better than the catch!”

There was nothing profound about these lyrics, nothing appropriate or that even required much effort on Johnny's (and Jimmy's) part to execute. There was a lot in it for Edgar and Devi, but Edgar didn't mind. Distraction, mindless but plentiful, was exactly what he wanted.

“I want you back for the rhythm attack
Coming down on the floor like a maniac
I want you back for the rhythm attack
Get down in full effect!”

Johnny sent a threatening look to Edgar and the others as he ran through all the words, and Edgar wanted to be telepathic for even those few seconds. Of course he wasn't going to miss it.

“I want you back for the rhythm attack
Coming down on the floor like a maniac
I want you back, so clean up the dish”

Edgar and the others joined in.

“By the way, how much is the fish?”

Johnny was absolutely beaming. He gestured to the audience and to Tess to scream again with them.

“How much is the fish?”

“Here we go, here we go
Here we go again!”

Tess was clearly baffled, but she smiled for the first time during the show, which actually made her face scarier thanks to the make-up from Tenna. Jimmy continued on with vocals alongside Johnny, who was holding onto Tess' wrist and trying to make her dance.

“Yeah!
Sunshine in the air!

We're breaking the rules
Ignore the machine
You won't ever stop this
The chase is better than the catch!”

Edgar was not completely sure those were the real lyrics. By this point in the night, however, he didn't care. Johnny, Jimmy and now Tenna rambled though another run of 'I want you back's before the three of them, Edgar, Devi, Tess and the entire audience burst out again.

“By the way
How much is the fish?!”

Perhaps the audience needed something that very purposely didn't make sense after seeing Banshee vanish too. They were excited about this song, and about the chanting lyrics Jimmy and Johnny were improv-screaming at each other. They wanted the party atmosphere of repetitive 'na-na-na' as much as Edgar did.

Out of the corner of his eye and to his pleasant surprise, Edgar saw Tess dancing and openly enjoying a tambourine. She noticed and gave an awkward grin. An echo of 'na-na-nana-na' floated in the background still, and Edgar joined in, prompting Tess to do the same. Tenna twirled along the edge of the stage, squeezing a squeak toy in time with the music. It was genuinely fun, despite everything that had just happened. Johnny still had a broken arm, Tess was still with them; the echoes of Banshee hadn't vanished along with her.

Plus, Johnny had sworn she'd be back.

Jimmy howled into his microphone, and then he and Tenna cried out 'Resurrection!' A few feet away, a laughing Johnny and Tess took a bow to be appreciated for their tambourine dance. Edgar smiled at Devi, who was snickering behind her drums.

“We will see you fuckers on the road!” Johnny called to the audience. “Until then, please keep our names out of any and all barnyard sacrifices, eat your vegetables, and one day, you too can hope to have cookies with Satan!”

The audience countered with “And by the way! How much is the fish?!” which had Johnny laughing all the way off stage and out to the van.

It was cold, dark, and just at the end of a rain shower. The ground was slick and shiny and the air smelled of wet asphalt and damp cardboard. Edgar hesitated to start packing. “Should we... be doing this? I mean, what if she comes back to right here?”

Johnny was helping Devi hold a large box while she made room for it in the back of the van. “She knows where to find us,” he said.

“Aren't you worried even a little?”

“No.” And with that, Johnny retreated to the van.

Tenna stood nearby and poked Edgar's arm with her squeak-toy. “Hey.”

“What the hell are you-?”

“It's okay. She's gonna make it out. And even if she doesn't, didn't you see how excited she looked to be going? This is going to sound like some regular Hallmark shit, but I think she's in a better place.”

Edgar couldn't argue that fighting monsters in the afterlife really was a better place than the Homicides' van. Tenna clapped him on the back, squeezed the toy at him once, and strolled toward the front of the van. Edgar heard her take out her keys, and the van started a minute later. When he looked back at the venue to be sure Banshee wasn't there, Tess stood where Banshee should have been.

“It wasn't me,” she said. “I hope you know that.”

Edgar coughed, though he'd meant to laugh. “I know. If you'd done it, Johnny would know.”

“You're worried about her, huh?”

“Of course! She was sucked into the ceiling with a slimy, clawed... thing!”

Tess grinned. “You don't trust Johnny?”

“Tess, that's not even a little bit funny.”

She brushed by him to help the others with the last of their packing. “I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.”

“Are we good?” Tenna called back. “Everyone but supernaturally abducted teenager accounted for?”

Edgar looked around him, once more at the building behind him, and to the sky. “Sure. Yeah. We're good.”

Later, Edgar tried to erase his own thoughts while he watched the telephone poles zip by along the highway. The wet lines between them glittered in the lights from the highway. Johnny settled in close beside him, juice box in hand.

“What do you hear?” Johnny asked.

Edgar looked back at him quizzically. “Hear?”

“In your head. Songs.”

Around him sat his friends, engaged in driving, bickering, sleeping, snacking, but there was no trace of souls sold for coal, works in progress, happiness or technicolor shoes. He'd taken so long to notice them and so long to adjust to them and now, just when they became the most beautiful, Edgar had taken them for granted and now they were gone.

“I don't hear any of them,” Edgar sighed.

“I used to think it was funny that you couldn't hear them when we met,” Johnny said quietly. “I didn't know that performing them would make them go away.”

“I didn't either.”

“I didn't know they were keeping us all connected to that system.” He shook his head. “No one up there ever meant to let go of me. Hell, I probably made you all hear them. Kept you all roped in with me.”

“How did Banshee know?”

“She probably came knowing. 'Your Moppet In The Ditch sings in ten languages! Batteries and knowledge of the afterlife included! Mythology and arm-breaking karate chop action sold separately!'”

Edgar smiled and hugged Johnny close. Johnny sniffed and made a fuss about looking grumpy while he drained his juice box. “Aren't you free of it now, though?” Edgar asked.

“Just because they don't want anything to do with a system they set up doesn't mean the ruins of said system just disappears. I'm a supernatural Roman aqueduct. But I'll take care of that.” He threw the empty juice box at Jimmy's head, but it bounced off of the back of Jimmy's chair instead.

Edgar sighed and nodded. The rain outside intensified and he heard Devi offer to take over driving.

“You guys!” Tenna shouted. “Hold the fucking phone, I think someone in this vehicle just offered to be a decent human being! Don't be alarmed, the situation is not critical! I repeat: Not Critical!”

Devi snapped at her, “See if I consider your feelings ever again, Tenna! Jesus.”

Tess laughed, and Jimmy leaned over and said something to her that made her laugh even more.

Suddenly, Edgar thought of Banshee's red star. “Johnny, does Tess have a song?”

“She had the Moose.”

“Oh. And the Moose...?” He hoped he could fish the rest of this explanation out with enough repetition.

“Is words. Thoughts, actions, feelings. All that awful shit that makes people really people. Lyrics.”

“...Your lyrics. Trying to get to your song, or fill in Banshee's.”

Johnny laughed against Edgar's shoulder. “And now they're in a closet. I never thought that damn brat would tell me anything I didn't know.”

****

The colors were beautiful, and the way they moved even more so. Banshee could see everything at once, which was, she reflected, the best Heaven she could have hoped for. The colors wouldn't allow her to be harmed, if only because she could see them and it had been so long since they could be seen.

And when the administrators realized that Banshee could see the colors, they gave her up without a fight.

Disappointing, she thought, though she knew the colors would be how she'd escape, or she wouldn't have demanded to be taken. She'd wanted to throw some punches, break some limbs, or at least challenge an angel to an arm wrestling match before they admitted to her superior supernatural skill.

There was no more connection to Johnny, nor to Tess. No more rapid growth, and no more invisibility if she didn't want it. Nothing but colors if that was all she desired. What she thought, though, was that maybe she could use music. No religions, no borders, just the world in a few notes, and Banshee pulled into every fold of it by the colors she saw and the people she could feel everywhere.

Maybe she didn't belong with people who weren't like her Homicides family. Maybe she'd not only touched but crossed several borders that normal people didn't even know existed. Maybe she'd be lonely, and maybe she'd be strange and maybe she'd often have only her own head for company.

But she could take the colors with her, and maybe they'd let her sing.

“I'm coming back,” she told the colors. “Let's see what we can do.”

“Naina naina na na naina...”

***

There was a squeak from somewhere in the apartment, and Devi was going to hunt it down and bludgeon it to death, regardless of whether Tenna was still attached to it. Armed with the leg that had fallen off of the table in the living room, Devi crept around the doorway to her bedroom.

Tenna burst out of the closet squeaking her damn skeleton toy as though the toy was begging for it. “DEVI!”

Her resolve now startled out of her and crashed somewhere near the floor, Devi did not cave Tenna's skull in with a painted chunk of wood. “Christ, Tenna!”

“Devi, I have decided-”

“That I need Chinese again?”

“That I am going to make out with you.”

Devi re-gripped her table leg.”You're going to what?”

“Fair warning!” Tenna cried, leaping forward.

“Tenna, no!” Devi scrambled out of the way, dropping the table leg in favor of trying to claw her way out of the window.

“Would you rather I mope about it like Edgar?!” Tenna shouted gleefully. “I can sigh and follow you around for a few years, or we can just get this over with!” She squeaked the toy again to make some sort of point.

“Stop it with the toy!” Devi yelled, digging her nails into the wallpaper. Tenna was now latched around her waist.

“Only if you stop running!”

“Fine!” Devi stopped flailing and Tenna rose to her feet.

“Good,” Tenna said, brushing herself off. “This will be a lot easier from this angle.” She leaned in, but Devi pushed back against her shoulders. Tenna frowned. “Devi, you said if I stopped.”

“I did. I just don't trust you.” With that, Devi snatched the toy from Tenna's hands, and chucked it out the nearest window.

Tenna kissed Devi the first time to the sound of her squeak-toy hitting the pavement.

****

“I really don't think I can sing.”

Jimmy laughed and passed her a bottle. “Tess, I can't tell you how much that doesn't even matter.”

“I don't know why I'm here now. Without this antagonistic thing with Johnny, I'm not sure what I'm doing.” She took the bottle, but was in no hurry to drink.

“You know what we all have in common?” Jimmy took a long drink. “None of us know what to do without him. I've seen it, and I've felt it, and I have the tattoos and t-shirts to prove it. We don't have a fucking clue. You just keep doing what you do, and eventually things make sense.”

“Do you think everything is done now?”

Jimmy waved his bottle at her dramatically. “Don't ask me stuff like that. Johnny's the one who knows everything.”

Tess smiled and took a sip of the drink. “Humor me. Do you think it's done now?”

“You know something about Johnny? Nothing's ever done with him. Death doesn't even get in his way – Death steps off to one side so he can get through.”

“If I didn't know any better, I'd say that's some hero worship.”

“You don't know any better. Drink up.”

***

“You still want to?” Johnny asked.

Edgar stared at Johnny, tried to take in everything about him, and in doing so, reflected that Johnny looked as though he hadn’t aged at all since the first time they were on television. They'd returned from long, black, rainy nights, and with no pressing emergency from outside, Edgar was confronted with Johnny's ending – the thing stuck on the inside.

“I promised you,” Edgar said.

“Did you?”

“I promised myself I would promise you.”

“You don’t even know how I’ll do it. You don't even know that I have the guts to do it.”

Edgar smiled. “You’re not going to hurt me.”

“No. No, I’m not.”

Edgar still found him intriguing. He’d never told Johnny exactly to what degree, never expressed that he’d been looking at something he found quite beautiful when he looked at the person who slept at his side and gleefully broke his things. He’d been willing to die for this incredible person since the idea had been presented to him, even though it terrified him.

“I wish I had known just when it was coming before now,” Edgar said softly. “I’d liked to have…” He traced Johnny’s jaw and saw no need to finish his sentence.

“I’m in no hurry,” Johnny replied, eyes closed. He breathed deeply for a few moments before he let out a few more words. “Just take into account…” His voice trailed away when Edgar traced a circle around his ear.

“It’s not important,” Edgar whispered. “This is better.”

“Are you ready?”

“I have been since this all started.”

Johnny smiled and ran his fingernails through the short hair above Edgar’s ear and over the scar on his hairline. The very familiar burning sensation that Edgar felt at that moment nearly drowned out what Johnny said next.

“What if I told you we were just going to sleep?”

“Drugged, and not dead? Is that...?”

“What if I said I didn't know? What if I said I'm taking a chance?”

“I can't believe you don't have a plan for every outcome.”

“So you trust me?”

“Yes. Always yes.”

Edgar's eyes closed as Johnny's fingertips began tracing patterns on the back of his neck. He felt breath that he realized would soon be slowing to a stop on his neck, on his jaw, across his lips. Would he die taken by surprise? Would Johnny stab him at the last second? Bite him, having been a vampire all this time?

A kiss, and a passionate and forceful one at that. Something slipped by his lips, and he pulled away, startled. Johnny would not let him go far, and pulled him back. Part of a pill fit under his tongue and Johnny spoke against his lips. “Keep it there.”

“Will we go somewhere together? If we're going to... I mean...”

“Of course. I just can’t guarantee where.”

“And... your closet monster?”

“This is the way to do it.”

“I think… I think I’m a little scared,” Edgar confessed. He thought he already felt heavy.

“Don’t be. You trust me.”

They settled close together on the bed, surrounded by posters, a possessed closet, a ring of keys, some tacky paperweights, a book that once recorded everything they did and equal possibilities of waking up or never seeing any of it again.

Though he felt a bit foolish, there was no reason to risk holding it in, and Edgar asked, “Can you… sing something?”

Johnny laughed, but without insult or joke, pulled his face close to Edgar’s ear.

“take me as I am, ‘cause you know I’ll never change
I was born to stare, at who stares back at me.”

“If I make it up to that big show in the sky
all I really want…”

Edgar smiled, settling into a pillow and an amazing feeling of calm. Johnny was not singing so much anymore as just breathing.

“…is my TV and you.”