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thought pricked at Sarik as Alysia was answeringquestions about her past, a subject most members of SingleEarth tried to avoid.
    “I spent most of my life getting into trouble,” she freely admitted. “I’m good at figuring out how things work, and when I was fourteen or so, I didn’t care that sometimes it was illegal to make something work—like a car or someone else’s computer.” The rueful acknowledgment made Diana, Lynzi, and Jason nod sympathetically. “I enrolled in university to study psychology when I realized that people are even more interesting than machines. I discovered that I am good in a role where I can talk to people and help them understand what is going on.”
    “And manipulate them,” Sarik interjected.
    Diana shot Sarik a warning look, but Alysia just gave a half shrug. “Sometimes,” she answered, meeting Sarik’s gaze squarely. “I mean, yes,” she continued, her voice rising slightly as she continued. “When I walk in looking for a coffee and there’s a guy with a gun, a round of explosives, and a filet knife who plans to keep slicing people up until he gets his way, then yes, I pray to whatever powers might exist that I can manipulate him so we can all walk out of there alive. And I did, and then I got every person who had been in that room into SingleEarth’s care within hours so they could decide if they wanted to become shifters and could get the post-trauma therapy one tends to need after spending six hours as a hostage. That’s why I’m
here
, isn’t it?”
    “Indeed,” Diana said. “You and Sarik are both right. Sometimes in this organization, it is our job to educate openly,and sometimes it is our job to manipulate in any way possible to ensure the safety of our people.”
    Alysia nodded.
    “You should know,” Lynzi said, “that Haven Number Four isn’t the type of place that normally deals with things like hostage situations. While we do act as point people in times of crisis, your day-to-day job here is more likely to be spent doing paperwork or getting on the phone to coordinate with hospitals, therapists, and law enforcement within and beyond SingleEarth.”
    Haven #4 was one of the smallest of SingleEarth’s properties, and mostly housed individuals who just needed a safe place to stay. The Haven had a therapist on staff but did not even have fighters; unlike some of the other Havens, they didn’t work with the types of individuals who drew violence or caused it. Sarik had chosen #4 for that very reason. She wanted to stay far,
far
away from the other side of SingleEarth, which dealt with supposedly reformed mercenaries and killers and with violently unstable survivors of magical mishaps or of uneducated upbringings that made them unable to control their own bodies and minds.
    Alysia smiled modestly. But to Sarik, her expression seemed fake.
    “I function well in a crisis,” Alysia replied, “but I don’t need or want to spend every waking hour living one.”
    Does she remind me of myself?
Sarik wondered as Diana thanked Alysia for her time. The human made her round of polite goodbyes and left.
    Everything Alysia had said had been right. Sarik couldn’t fault her if it seemed
too
right; she was applying for a job that would require knowing how to say the right thing in the right way. Sarik had walked into her own interview with significantly less experience and far more questionable moments in her own background.
    “I like her,” she said to the others after Alysia was gone and the door was closed.
    It wasn’t true, really, but it
should
have been, because Sarik had no valid excuse to feel otherwise. Nothing except a vague sense of familiarity and the ever-present anxiety that someday the demons of her past would catch up to her.

C HAPTER 2
    B ARELY FORTY-EIGHT HOURS later, Alysia stood in the parking lot, leaning against the bumper of her one-year-old Subaru and wondering what on earth had possessed her to accept this job.
    For the last two years,