I smiled despite myself. “And these guys are okay with taking the risk involved there?”

“I’m not scared,” Ashley said.

“I’m breaking my vow of silence again,” Tristan said. “But I think I’m doing it for the right reasons here. I like, respect, and/or trust each of these guys who would be my teammates. But in particular, I consider Rain a friend. I’m already willing to throw my helmet into the ring and do what it takes to help save his life. We’ve got some similar garbage going on with… people we can’t get away from, and he’s had my back in the past when it came to my issue.”

“Yes,” Rain said. He gestured vaguely toward his head.

“People?” I asked.

“Speaking for myself, I’m part of a multitrigger cluster,” Rain said.

“Oh,” I said. I paused, taking stock of that. “I can see where that warrants playing the ‘complicated’ card.”

Kenzie spoke up, “Before you got in, Ashley, Victoria was saying we should all get a card saying ‘it’s complicated’ on the one side, and ‘handle with care’ on the other. I wanted to make sure you got what they were talking about.”

“I like that,” Ashley said. “It could use rewording. ‘Do not fuck with’, instead of handling with care.”

“Reminds me of the old wiki entries,” Capricorn said. “The red warning boxes for the scary capes.”

“Did I have one?” Ashley asked.

“You did,” I said.

Ashley nodded. “Good.”

Was it? I decided to leave it alone.

“You were motioning toward your head before,” I said, to Rain. “Are you referring to bleed-over, kiss and kill? That sort of thing?”

“Huh,” Rain said. “You weren’t lying when you were saying you’d studied up.”

I’d pulled my hand away from Sveta’s at one point, and I only realized it because she reached out and took my hand again, placing her hand over mine and giving it a congratulatory squeeze.

“Is it part of it?” I asked.

“I don’t know, honest to God,” Rain said. “When I’m vague and I’m saying it’s complicated, it’s really because I can’t give a one hundred percent clear answer. I’m still figuring out the rules this works by. I’ve wondered about the bleeding through. My personality changed after, but I don’t know how much of that is them and how much is how a trigger event is a wake-up call.”

“We like to give things hard labels, but sometimes they’re blurry around the edges,” I said.

Rain nodded.

“If your own cluster is coming after you, I’d say you could chalk it up to kiss and kill. Again, blurry, might as well throw it in that bucket.”

“I won’t object,” Rain said.

“And while I’m on that subject, I’d feel compelled to stress that the term uses the word ‘kill’ for a reason.”