Finch had spent about an hour watching over everyone, ready to leap back into action if Tyla’s condition started to go downhill, but mostly Tyla had just seemed exhausted.

Finch was pretty drained, too. Eventually he grabbed a cushion, lay down on the floor, and made no particular effort either to fall asleep or stay awake.

It was fully light out when he woke up.

“He’s fine,” Adin said when Finch quickly sat up to look at Tyla. “I woke him up a few times to check on him. His colour is better and the nausea is gone. He’s just tired now.”

Malyn wasn’t a large man and Tyla was downright petite, but Tyla had still had to lay mostly on top of Malyn to fit them both on the small couch. They were asleep.

Finch rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Adin admitted. “Together we’re strong, though. Don’t forget that.”

“Not so strong that we don’t have to run away and hide to survive this thing.”

“Not all strength is about how good you are at punching things.”

Finch yawned. “I am very good at punching things, though.”

“Unfortunately Katrina may have you beat in that regard, but she has her weaknesses. She’s used to being the absolute, uncontested top of the food chain. She’s smart enough to be cautious, yes, but she’s still extremely arrogant.”

“I’d say my self esteem is kinda mediocre. Never knew that was a strength.”

“Self confidence and arrogance aren’t the same thing. Self confidence doesn’t rely on disregarding others.”

Finch yawned again. “This is too fucking philosophical for my sleepy boy mind.”

Adin offered him a soft smile. “Go back to sleep, Finch.”

Finch nodded and lay back down as another yawn overtook him. “Yeah. I might just do that.”

Finch napped on and off throughout the day, and in between he formulated a plan. Luther had a bus. They needed to leave town. They could hitch a ride with him and get off wherever he ended up when dawn forced him to stop. A full night of driving could get you far enough away that you could stay missing, given the right precautions.

Everything after that, he was still a little fuzzy on. Finch had been more or less homeless for most of his childhood and he’d been fine, but doing that with four adults while trying to run a business was a different matter. They’d need a place to live without their names attached to it and they’d need a way to run their business incognito despite a couple of them being kinda recognisable.

Those were things he didn’t know how to do, and he couldn’t just figure them out by thinking about it enough. They didn’t exactly have time to prepare and research, though, so they’d probably just have to figure things out as they went.

By late that afternoon, they were all awake and Tyla was feeling much better. Whatever had been going on with him seemed to have passed. Maybe it had just been anxiety or shock or whatever. The mind could do some pretty wild shit to the body sometimes.

None of them had eaten all day, but life had given them lemons, so Adin had found an old jar of sugar and made lemonade. Finch had too much on his mind to stomach much more anyway.

Malyn lay in the middle of the living room on the rug, staring up at the ceiling. “Terrance is dead.”

“Terrance?” Finch asked.

“The spider that lived on our windowsill,” Tyla explained from where he sat on the couch, leant forward towards Malyn like he wasn’t quite sure what to do.

“And our fridge is dead,” Malyn added. “We only got it four months ago and we all put in a little extra to get the one with the ice maker, and now it’s dead. And do you know what was in the fridge?”

“A lot of things,” Adin said. “We’d just gotten this week’s groceries delivered.”

“That’s right,” Malyn said. “The mayor’s cake. We only finished half of it, and now it’s dead.”

“I’m just glad that you’re not dead,” Adin said. “That none of us are.”

Malyn rolled his head to look at Adin and offered him a smile. “Yeah. I’m being silly, but I feel like when things like this happen, there are just too many things to care about, and you can’t. You can’t give each thing the amount of sadness it deserves.”

Finch glanced out the window. “It’s almost dark. We should go convince Luther to give us a ride. Shouldn’t be too hard when he owes us as much as he does.”

Malyn reached his arms up and Finch hauled him to his feet on his way past. The four of them headed outside to the bus together.

It was Shadow who came and opened the bus door when they knocked, squinting his strikingly pale blue eyes against the waning light.

“Luther awake?” Finch asked.

“He can be,” Shadow said, leaving the door open as he turned and headed back into the bus. Finch took that as permission to enter.

Luther peered out from one of the bunks at the back. “Is it night time already?”

Finch shrugged. “Close enough.”

“I’m glad I’m not actually relying on you to know when it’s safe to come out,” Luther said. “Come back here if you want to talk.”

They headed towards the back of the bus. Finch, Malyn, and Tyla sat on the bunk across from Luther and Adin, whose antlers were too big for that, stood in the doorway. Shadow ducked past Adin and sat down next to Luther.

Luther seemed preoccupied with smoothing his hair back into place. “How can I help you?”

“Your plan is to get far away from here so that Katrina can’t find you,” Finch said. “Correct?”

“That is what it boils down to, yes.”

“We’d like to go with you,” Finch said. “Malyn can follow on the bike and we’ll stay wherever we end up at the end of the night.”

“That’s what you want to do?”

“She threatened Malyn. We’re low on options right now.”

“I’ve been thinking about options, too,” Luther said. “Mostly for myself, but last night, ones for you as well. I have a few ideas.”

“How many of them are self-serving?”

Luther tilted his head to the side and thought for a moment. “One, at most, but life isn’t a zero sum game. Sometimes things benefit more than one person. Would you like to hear my ideas?”

“‘Like’ is a strong word, but go ahead.”

“The first is that I do as you ask and we travel together tonight. I owe you for everything you’ve done and everything that’s happened, but I’m sure we all understand that with all of us disappearing and a predator on our tails, it’s a little questionable whether there will ever be an opportunity to repay that debt.”

“That was basically what I was expecting at this point,” Finch said. “Are the others any better?”

“Well, maybe,” Luther said. “The second is that I give you my house to make up for the loss of yours.”

Finch leant towards Malyn and murmured, “Did he see our shit house before it burnt down?”

“I won’t be back any time soon, and you’re homeless, so it makes sense,” Luther continued.

“Does he know we were renting?” Finch added to Malyn.

“The issue is, of course, that Katrina very much has that house on her radar. If she wants to hurt you, she will find you there. And I have reason to take her at her word when she says she intends to hurt someone. There was… something I omitted from my story when I asked you to take Shadow, Finch.”

“Of course there fucking was.”

“I wasn’t trying to trick you, Finch. It’s just… painful. I didn’t think it was necessary for me to dig into those old wounds, but I think it’s important for you to understand what you’re dealing with.”

“Okay.”

“I had a family,” Luther said. “A wife and two children. I fully intended to leave my wife for Katrina, but my children… no. My wife wouldn’t have been able to support them on her own, and I did care for them.”

“How noble.”

“There’s nothing noble about the choices I made. I have no interest in defending them. I thought leaving my wife was all Katrina wanted, but when I told her I was going to visit my children after she turned me, she was unhappy to say the least. I didn’t take her seriously, though.”

“What happened?”

“I bought gifts for them. My little boy. Six years old and barely speaking. He was always upset about something, but he loved toys and we had never been a family that could afford many. I bought my little girl dolls and dresses in the hopes that she would like them if they were nice enough, but I bought her books as well. I never did appreciate how smart she was. I was too busy being insecure about an eight year old girl being more clever than I was.” Luther let out a deep sigh. “Katrina beat me there.”

“I’m sorry,” Finch said.

“I’d rather not go into details and I can tell from the fact that you’re not insulting me right now that you have pieced together the gist of what happened. This is all to say that if she makes a threat, I suggest you believe it.”

“Yeah. I think we’ll stick with skipping town unless you have any better ideas.”

“I might, though it also involves skipping town,” Luther said. “Shadow and I intend to keep moving. It’s the safest way to keep her off our trails. You could travel with us.”

“The six of us, on one bus?” Finch asked. “That sounds like a fucking nightmare.”

“I understand. It’s the safest option, but you wouldn’t be in the line of business you’re in if you always chose the safest option.”

“What do you get out of it?”

“To make my plan work, someone has to drive the bus during the day. Shadow can’t drive, and certainly not during the day, so I would have to hire somebody. Somebody trustworthy. That’s not exactly the easiest job to find someone for, especially when accessing my money while staying off the radar isn’t an option. You try calling up a bank and telling them you need to withdraw all of your money late at night without drawing any attention to yourself. You also have the benefit of having a way to make money while travelling. A way you might introduce me to.”

“And what do we get?”

“Mostly just a lower chance of death.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Finch sighed and for just a moment his gaze locked with Shadow’s. “I guess we’ll go back inside and talk it over.”