I didn’t want to give the impression I was running, so I asked, “See you in a couple of days, then?”

“Yeah.”

I flew skyward, at the speed and angle that made even my stomach do that overly light flip-flop at the distance between myself and solid earth. I came to a stop when I couldn’t see the library anymore.

I didn’t fly home. I had too many thoughts in my head, and after seeing the others, seeing personalities and outbursts from Tristan’s comments for Byron to Ashley’s more dire threats, the powers, the secrets that were being kept or barely suppressed…

I remained in the air, the ground a blur beneath me, the clouds not all that far above me. The city was painted in its golds, its concrete and pavement with yellow paint, its grassy patches, its fields of wheat and corn.

Just me up here, the wind in my ears.

I believed Ashley. It wasn’t that she was honest, she wasn’t. She bluffed and she bluffed often. I suspected the bluffs were because she’d been telling me the truth when she’d remarked on the common thread between us: we’d seen some of the worst the world had to offer and we had reason to be afraid.

I believed her when she said there were people on the team who she saw as more ‘messed up’ than herself. I had my suspicions about who.

Something was up with Chris. Mentally and emotionally he was compromised. Physically, compromised. Socially, in terms of where he fit into the world, again, he was compromised. He’d almost revealed the least of himself of anyone present.

Rain was another issue.

The team supported and insulated its members, they protected one another from the interlopers and the outside stresses. There were times and places that could be good, but I could just as easily see things go in a direction where outsiders weren’t sufficiently protected from the group, while the group carried on like this.

My job, in a way.

I’d keep an eye on all of them, of course. Kenzie could be a danger, and I could see even Sveta going to a bad place, however much I liked her. Tristan was strong, and he spent half of his life locked away in a lightless, motionless prison, only a window that looked out through his brother’s eyes and listened through his brother’s ears. It would be so easy for him to go off the deep end. Ashley was unpredictable and dangerous, pure and simple.

Chris I could only keep an eye on. Rain—

I didn’t fly back to Crystal’s.

I flew to the train station, and I held a position where I couldn’t make out the people, but I could make out the train.