Iman sat in an empty car. It was parked on the shoulder; a busy road hummed beside her, the car shaking as an eighteen-wheeler prattled by. Iman waited until her stomach stopped swirling and her mind stopped spinning to glance around; the driver's seat was empty, the backseat was empty. The engine was off and it still smelled like rot. It was another moment of eerie silence before she heard a voice from outside the car:

"No, I didn't stalk you. I got it off Iman's phone. It was left on the seat when she—when she—yes, when she vanished!" A pause. "Why are you laughing? It was—this is very traumatic!"

Beck. God, Beck. Iman shoved open the door and stepped out onto the shoulder, wincing as the sunlight glinted in her eyes. Beck was standing a few feet away, straddling the grass and the asphalt, his phone lifted to his ear. He tore an anxious hand back through his hair, mussing his curls. "Don't—don't tell me to calm down—"

"Beck!"

His gaze shot up towards her; he nearly dropped the phone to the grass. The next moments seemed to Iman as though they skipped seconds; one moment, Beck was there, gaping at her from across the way, and the next his arms were around her, his hands tilting her face back and rubbing her shoulders and moving her hair behind her ear.

"Are you okay?" he asked, adorning her face with kisses: along her jaw, her eyebrows, her eyelids, her mouth. "Are you hurt? What happened? Where did you go? Did anything—oh, you look sad. You look sad, Im. Is it something you saw?"

Until then, Iman hadn't been aware she was sad. Though now it made sense to her to call the rolling, dark something that welled in her throat and pressed at the back of her eyes sadness. She grabbed Beck's hand, pressing a kiss to his palm before returning his hand to him. "It's just—Julien. It was Julien, but he was...different."

Iman saw Beck's eyes skirt towards the phone in his hand, which was flashing a bright call ended screen. He shoved the phone back into his pocket. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Iman hesitated, and shook her head. "How far are we?" she asked, kicking at a pebble on the edge of the road and pivoting to head back towards the car. "From the lab, I mean."

Beck, falling into step beside her, only shrugged. "Less than ten minutes."

Iman gripped the door handle, turning a quiet grin in her boyfriend's direction. "Then let's get going," she said. "I promise I won't go 'abra cadabra' again."

Beck shuddered, the car beeping excitedly as he unlocked it. "Please don't."

Iman wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but it certainly hadn't been something so...plain. Maybe some sort of bright hazard or keep out sign, people milling about in lab coats, security guards standing stock-still at massive gates. She'd expected some place that oozed science, discovery, the secrecy that came along with discovery.

But what faced her was a red-bricked building, squat and square.

Beck was on his phone again, taking Iman by the arm and gently leading her out of the way of pedestrian traffic. They weren't far from the city; Iman could still see the Washington Monument above the emerald treetops.

"Yup. See you in a second," said Beck, clicking the phone off and putting it away again. He nudged Iman with his elbow. "You have the...the squirrel, right?"

Iman patted the pocket of her jacket, the sandwich bag crinkling as she did. At this point, she was less excited about the results of the lab and more excited about not having to carry around a squirrel corpse much longer.

They were here because one of Beck's friends could help them, or so Beck had claimed back at the library. Beck's friend was a scruffy white guy with a scruffy white guy name that Iman forgot almost the second it came out of his mouth. He was a friend of Beck's from high school, he said. Did you know Beck was the football team's water boy? he asked. Beck glared at him then, and he shut up.

The halls were well-lit, almost too well-lit. The glare was strobing in Iman's eyes; she blinked the discomfort away and patted her jacket pocket again. Her mind was in places other than here. She still hadn't talked to Julien, not Present Julien—though judging from the overheard conversation, Beck and finally gotten a hold of him. That meant he had to be okay, right? But she didn't know. Her last interaction with Past Julien colored all her thoughts about Any Julien Ever; there was a ceaseless knot of uncertainty in the pit of her stomach.

She shook her head. Answers, she thought. I'll find out why his food supply is dying off, and then everything will be fine.

They entered what looked like a morgue, though it was not for human bodies, as far as Iman could tell. Beck's friend put on gloves and goggles and a jacket. He took the squirrel deftly from the bag, stationed it underneath a lamp, and slid a scalpel down its middle.

The rest of it Iman did not watch. It wasn't that she was squeamish; it was just that there was something innately strange to her about performing or even observing a squirrel autopsy.
Then again, much of her life was innately strange.

Beck's friend probed, prodded, poked. He removed tiny organs and examined them; he took a blood sample and peered at it through a microscope. Finally, he tore off his gloves, disposing of them with a swift bank shot into the nearest trash bin.

"Well?" Beck asked. His eyes were luminous, even in the dark of the squirrel morgue.

Beck's friend shook his head. It was the worst thing he could have done. The worst thing he could have said.

"I'm stumped," he told them. "Bless the little guy's heart, but I just can't figure out what killed him."

I'm stumped.

Iman thanked him, though it was so quiet he may not have heard it. Then she turned and left.

When she was at the car, Beck caught up with her. "Iman! Wait, Iman! Jesus, do you have to walk so fast?"

She didn't turn. She merely slid her hand around the car handle as she had maybe an hour before and said, "Just unlock the car, Beck."

He was out of breath; she could hear him huffing and puffing like he'd just sprinted a mile. "Immy, I know you're upset. Trust me, I do. But it's going to be okay. Just because we ran into a roadblock this time doesn't mean—"

"You don't get it," Iman said, "do you?"

Only then did she face him. Though his posture was calm, there was a quiet distress in his face. His eyebrows were slightly furrowed, a wrinkle of skin forming between them, and his mouth was parted in a small frown. When he spoke, his voice was a fraction of the volume it had been before. "I don't get what?"

"This is life or death for Julien," Iman said, folding her arms across her chest. "You saw how much it disgusted him to have to feed off you; he won't touch a human, not like that. So if his only other option for sustenance is dying off, Julien's gonna die, too."

Beck scoffed. "Of course I get that, Iman. That's basic ecology."

But Iman shook her head. "It's more than that. Julien's always been there for me, Beck; he's like—like a brother to me, sort of. I just don't know what I would do if I lost him."

"That doesn't matter, because you're not going to lose him."

Iman fell back against the car's side, exhaustion seeping into her muscles. She was tired of worrying, tired of pondering, tired of searching. She just wanted peace. The less and less she got of it, the more and more she craved it.

She saw Julien chained to the post in the field, his skin scabbed, cracking like cooling lava. The crimson tinge to his eyes, the color of pain. If I told you I was ready to die just now?

That was the problem with Julien. He welcomed the end of things far too easily.

"Nevermind," snapped Iman. She whipped around again. "Please just unlock the car. I want to go home; I'm tired."

"Hang on, Im," said Beck. His voice was closer; a moment later she felt his fingers around her wrist. "Hang on. Look at me, okay? Would you look at me?"

The two of them were chest to chest, Beck's face only inches from hers. Iman lifted her gaze, gnawing at her lip. There was something building within her, ugly and simmering, cousin to frustration, bitter brother to love.

"Beck," she warned.

"I'm not saying that you shouldn't do all you can to save Julien," he began, and she saw the hesitation in his face, the beat of thought before his next words came out: "But he isn't the only one who's always there for you, you know."

Iman blinked at him. Waited for him to backtrack, to clarify, to do anything but leave what he had just said hanging in the air.

Only the chirping and fluttering of birds hung in their silence.

She shoved him away. Hard. Enough that he staggered, nearly tripping over the curb. "I'm getting a cab."

Beck called after her, "Iman! Wait. Iman?"

"I said I'm getting a cab!" Iman said, and that's precisely what she did. She walked down the street until she reached a busier section and hailed herself a cab, never thinking about it, never regretting it.

In the back of the cab as the tires hummed underneath her, she pulled out her phone. Julien had texted her back. 2:30 p.m. Two words.

sorry. busy.