As soon as possible, Trixie and I slipped away from Father Brent's impromptu house party. We stopped at the market for a frozen pizza and some cookies. We avoided making eye contact with people and studiously ignored the bewildering variety of blechths we glimpsed. With a sense of relief, we slipped into our apartment and locked the door.

We whiled away the evening with the shades of Mom and Dad, happy as honey bees loaded with pollen. Neither of us felt like analyzing events much, though we did aim a few fruitless queries at our parent spirits. We reminisced. We played 'I spy' and 'twenty questions.' Mom and Dad tried to explain what 'eating' was like in Photropolis (as they called it) but Trixie and I couldn't figure out how it was different than going to a concert or attending an art show.

Finally, we got tucked in, and basked in pure joy and perfect security as consciousness faded into frothy dreamscapes.

And while we slept in bliss, sure that we alone were affected, the virus spread. As near as Dr. Friel could later reconstruct, she and her colleagues did not contract the virus during the initial spill at the lab. Had the university president kept his mouth shut about the spending rate, we might have ridden out a full ten days of quarantine and the number of victims would be precisely two: Trixie and I. But upon early release, Trixie and I spread it to them, and a few other people at the hospital. Doubtless, we spread it at the university cafeteria. Father Brown got a dose, no doubt, as well as some of his neighbors.

And so, the clock began ticking. As Trixie or Dr. Friel could explain better than I, the transmissibility of an epidemic is measured by R0, pronounced 'arr-not.' It's the average number of people that catch the virus from one infected person. The epidemic dies when R0 is less than one, and grows otherwise. The higher the number, the virulent the epidemic. The angel virus's R0 was eventually estimated to land upwards of thirty.

Dotted around Delphia, therefore, quite a few people began to experience brief, mild fevers, and they got their first glimpses at Photropolis, the realm of living light. The Outbreak cracked loose of its shell and began to thrive.

"School's gonna be weird," Trixie said between mouthfuls of raisin bran.

I imagined what a full classroom might look like and shuddered. "Yeah. Blechth Central Station. And you're going to get a lot of attention, Trixie, unless you pretend to limp for the occasion."

"If somebody asks me how or why, I won't have an answer." She dropped her bowl and spoon into the sink. I handed her a sack lunch, this time with cookies.

"Cultivate a clueless shrug, like mine. I perfected the gesture." I grinned.

She patted my cheek before skipping off, making a show of bouncing down the stairs. Her joyful body language made my eyes go just a little watery.

I clicked the door shut and headed for bed, but only for a second. It struck me that I had slept. I wasn't tired. Then I slapped myself on the forehead, "Dummy. You missed work last night."

I had also missed visiting Charlie's Music. Every workday, I stopped into the shop, sat myself at a piano and tested out new melodies and harmonies. Charlie harassed me a fair amount ("You gonna buy that piano, kid?") but he stopped short of banning me. Regarding work, there had been extenuating circumstances, such as Father Brent's rather emphatic attempted creature slaying. But I did feel it my duty to go confess my sin. The trouble was, I had only the vaguest notion who my boss was, or where their office might be.

I eventually found where, and it was an obscure second-story cubicle in the Facilities and Operations building on campus. No one had noticed my absence. A gum-chewing accountant (his toad-colored, four-handed blechth looked like greed to me) encouraged me to note my absence on my next time card. I shook my head over it all the way to the grocery store.

Bag of food in my arms, I approached my apartment. A sour-faced woman in a trench coat with frizzy brown hair watched me from the shadow of the front door. Call me skittish, but my hackles rose, and I studied her narrowly as I approached. But she seemed pretty ordinary. Her blechth stayed mostly hidden, but it was a lean thing streaked with reds and oranges, smaller than a pound of hamburger.

Her nasal voice cut through the noon air like Ethel Merman overpowering a pit orchestra. "Five-six. Nineteen, dark hair, clean shaven. You Rik Fernandez?"

"Uh." There appeared nowhere to hide. Besides, I was just a little bit curious. "Yeah?"

"Flo Peracles, beat reporter for the Daily. Nice to meetcha, Rik. Could you answer a coupla questions for me?"

No shadows collected around her, or her wild hair. I concluded she wasn't another Kezzias. The trench coat threw me. Hadn't those died out along with Humphrey Bogart? But maybe it was her trademark quirk or something. "I suppose so. What can I help you with?"

"I've been talking to Dr. Friel. I guess you know her." She didn't wait for an answer. "She says you were exposed to an experimental virus. She furthermore says the virus was a dud. So, first question: how do you feel?"

"Uh. Good."

"So the virus was a dud, then?"

"I wouldn't say that." The words were out of my mouth before I examined them. I need to start thinking before speaking. I really do.

"What would you say, then?" She narrowed her eyes at me, teetering between bored and interested.

I grinned. "Well, it was kind of a feel-good thing." Her eyes narrowed more. My face fell. "Well, I mean, I think I had a fever for a short time. But, seriously, mostly I felt great."

Her face grew sourer. "Do you feel that the hospital acted correctly, releasing you so soon?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, I'm not sick, so, sure."

She sighed morosely and slapped her notepad shut. "All right, kid. Got to admit, you don't look sick to me."

"That's all the questions, then?" I pointedly shifted my bag of groceries from one arm to the other.

"Yeah, that's all. I was smelling cover-up, but maybe I'm getting twitchy in my old age." She was maybe thirty.

"No cover-up. Dr. Friel shoots a straight arrow. Nice to meet you, Flo. B-bye."

"Bye, kid."

So, maybe I didn't reveal everything to the nice lady reporter, but a lot I had experienced over the last day or two I couldn't even explain in English words. Plus, it all seemed pretty personal.

Back in the apartment, I primped for my date. That's one thing I did not forget about. Just thinking about Resa's charms made me suck in my breath, and then sigh like a lovesick romantic. What did worry me was her blechth. What if things went very right with the date and I got ... something. Like a kiss. Could I really enjoy it with the beady eyes of a devil inches away, staring at me with black hatred and red-hot spite? I doubted it. Resa would feel my hesitation, and draw the wrong conclusion.

I didn't have a plan to deal with her blechth, so ...I guess my plan B would be to play it cool, and not let it get heated.

Ha! As if. Resa wasn't that kind of girl.

I hoped, anyway.

My bedroom mirror showed me my new jaw, now overbite-corrected and slightly enlarged. I stroked its smoothness speculatively. My lanky hair seemed fuller, and had a wave to it. The weirdness of it began to sink in, and I felt just a little disconnected from my own body. I peeled my shirt off my shoulder and looked at the claw divots. They were healing, and fast. I unbuttoned down my shirt front and stared down. My forehead creased and I grimaced. Let me be honest. Two days ago, I had love handles. My belly button was invisible down a drain-hole of pudge. But not now. Now, I had ripples of belly muscles I had never beheld before.

What was happening to me? Suddenly, I felt an urgent need to wise up.

The front door banged. I called, "Hey, sis! How'd it go?"

"Ugh," came the soft reply. As soon as I could button up my shirt I went out to the kitchen where Trixie was fishing out a soda cracker to munch on. Having not seen her for hours punched it home: she had changed. She looked like a prizewinning boxer crossed with a supermodel.

I didn't push. I just sat backwards on a kitchen chair while she inhaled a few calories. Eventually she heaved a sigh. "I dang near caused a riot. You know Nathan, the human computer?"

I nodded. Nathan and Trixie shared an obsession with science and science fiction.

"Joe the jock started hitting on me and Nathan blew a gasket. Next thing you know, fists are flying and Nathan's bleeding from the nose. I stepped into the middle of it without thinking ..."

I grimaced and looked at her for damage. She looked pristine.

She wrinkled her forehead at me. "Rik, I am ... really strong, now. And fast. You've seen Joe. He towers over me. Well, I snagged his arm and twisted it behind his back. Next second, I had him pressed against the wall and he was whimpering."

"Whoa."

"Yeah, whoa. Well, it gets worse. The next second, Joe's blechth attacked me. It was a kind of cat-spider thing, and bobcat-sized. I channeled you, bro. I grabbed a couple of its legs and splatted it against the floor."

My tight face pulled back over my teeth as I imagined the carnage and Trixie's mortification. "Did, um, did ..."

Trixie giggled at my expression. "Are you asking if everyone saw it, or if they just saw me doing an interpretive dance? Well, after it was dead and smoking, they saw it. I have never, never, heard it get so quiet in the hallway during passing period."

I blew air into my cheeks. Then I blinked. "Hey, how did Joe take it?"

Trixie wagged her head up and down, apparently expecting the question. "A few seconds of blank shock, a few more seconds of what had to be joy and relief, and then his face fell and started apologizing. He apologized to me, to Nathan, to everybody. Then he put his arm around Nathan and escorted him to the nurse's office."

"The wolfie went sheepy. What did you do, then?"

"I gave up on class, that's for sure. I followed 'em to the nurse's office, then the vice principal and a counselor tried to figure out what happened. Oh, and one more little shocker. I don't think Nathan has a blechth, or if he does, it's bug-sized."

I snuck a soda cracker and mulled that over for a little while. "Maybe he's a nice guy. Free of wrath and greed and pride and all that."

"Good theory."

"But." I pointed a finger at Trix and wiggled it. "I got a different question. Did you know you started shining when you chased Kezzias?"

"Did I?" She reclaimed the crackers. "Well, I'm not too surprised. I went into an interesting zone, just then. I felt no shred of fear, just a blanket of peace. But at the same time, I was all about action."

"And generally looking angelic." My smile was lopsided and wistful. "Trixie, this whole thing. I'm getting worried. I think we're in awfully deep. Mom and Dad aren't much help, and neither was Father Brown. How can we find out, like, the basic rules?"

Trixie slowly curled up the plastic sleeve around the crackers and slid it back into the box. She drawled, "I can suggest a thing."

"Why do I get the feeling I'm not going to like it? But suggest away."

"I've never heard a blechth speak, but Kezzias did. Maybe we can sort of put the squeeze on one of these devils. Assuming they have a sense of self-preservation, they might tell us some things if they're in pain."

"So," I waved my hands in circles, trying to encompass the idea. "Torture one. With our bare hands?"

Trixie's nose wrinkled. "Yeah, I don't think we have the moxie for that, either. No offense, bro, but you're not exactly mean. I can't imagine you mutilating a creature on purpose, not even one those."

"They probably want to torture us, and would probably enjoy it."

"Definitely. So creepy."

I couldn't make light of it anymore. "Trixie, I don't want to be tortured to death. Or, even worse, have you tortured to death."

Our eyes met. Her faceted irises quietlyaccepted my sincerity, and her pupils were like steel rimmed windows toinfinity.