So it had come to this. Had there been no other way?

 Riose could never identify the moment when he had decided to leave the Furies, but he could recall the frequent periods of uncertainty when he saw the ugliness of what he was and what he had yet to become, like flashes of grisly scenes in a haunted house.

 It began, he sometimes thought, so far back he had hardly been aware of it. Back when he'd pushed over a shapeshifter in kindergarten, and she'd sat on the floor and wailed.

 He'd been about to scarper, when someone shoved him, and he wound up on the ground with both knees grazed.

 "Don't you push my friend!" some girl had shouted at him, and he'd found himself facing an exceedingly angry Celia Slone. His first instinct had been to lunge at her, fists raised; her first had been to scream so loudly the whole playground turned to look.

 Confronted by such potentially hostile attention, Riose had dropped onto the ground and howled even more loudly. "She hit me!" he screeched to the approaching teacher.

 "Did not," Celia had said meekly, tucking her hands behind her back and raising an angelic countenance to the teacher bending over the three of them. "He hit Phi."

 "Riose, is this true?" He'd peered through a film of crocodile tears at the teacher, who was patting Phi absently. She was a vampire, which meant if he lied, she might ask to read his thoughts, and he'd never get away with it then...

 "Didn't mean to," he mumbled, adding a loud sniff to emphasise his pitiable condition. He pointed at Celia. "An' she pushed me!"

 "Celia?"

 "He started it."

 "Well, it can finish here," said the teacher firmly. "I want you both to say sorry."

 Brown eyes met blue eyes, full of mutual dislike. "'ry," they both muttered.

 As soon as the teacher's back was turned, Celia stuck out her tongue.

 Furious, Riose decided to really scare the stupid human. After a sneaky glance to make sure no one else was watching, he bared his fangs at her and hissed.

 To his mortification, she leaned forward, squinting at his mouth. "You have freaky teeth," she finally informed him.

 Deflated, Riose had only been able to stare. This was not the reaction he'd been led to expect. "Well, you have freaky...freaky..." He couldn't see anything weird about her though. She was human. And the gleam in her eyes said that she wouldn't hesitate to push him over again if he annoyed her.

 Defeated, Riose gave up.

 For an instant, regal as a lioness, she surveyed her victory, then stuck out a grubby hand. "Wanna be friends?"

 He eyed her. "Maybe."

 "I have cookies," she offered. That sealed it.

~*~

 He hadn't known it at the time, but that meeting had changed the way he saw the world. Unlike so many of the Furies' lofty initiates, he grew up among those he was supposed to consider little more than prey. He never learned to distance himself from them; and he didn't want to.

They filled his life with colour and animation as no one else could.

 His mother did her best, but whatever had caused her to leave his father, it had left her damaged. Gentle and loving as she was, she could never quite hide her sadness from him. Not when he could read her mind so easily, not when Therese would throw it at her in any argument she wanted to win.

 With other families to compare them to, it became clear to him that his own lacked something. They didn't possess the easy cheerfulness of the Farriers, who were always the ones to holds barbecues and invite the neighbours around for drinks and gossip. His family never laughed together like that, never played board games or had rowdy debates that raged for hours with no sensible conclusion.

 Nor did they have the quiet love of the Thetis family; once, before Marie Thetis was confined to her bed, too weak to leave her castle of pillows and blankets, he'd seen Phi's parents walking home in the evening. From his window, he'd been inconspicuous as a moth, his gaze trailing them with just a little wistfulness. And then Phi's father had stopped, and kissed his wife on the corner of the street, the pair of them dizzy as teenagers after their first date.

 Most of all, his own family didn't have the closeness of the Slones, who pretended to hate their mother's strict regime, but thrived under it; all were, in their own way, just as honest and incisive and determined. Jodie Slone never hesitated to scold him or tell him how to live; her rigid sense of right and wrong bordered his life just as it did over Celia's.

 He knew that she would never have condoned the fluid ethics of the Furies. In fact, he half-suspected that if she ever discovered such groups existed, she would march straight up to their door and bulldozer the lot of them into healthier lifestyles. And if she'd known he was involved, Jodie Slone would have lacerated him with her disapproval, scolding, berating, and demanding until he gave in.

 His own mother would never do that. She might ask, or cajole, but never demand. She was too afraid of him. Riose had only realised that after he came back one summer, his imagination still playing out games of death - it was all a game, then - to see a strange hesitancy in the way she spoke to him.

He didn't sleep well that night.

~*~

 Gradually, the exotic thrill of the Furies palled. More and more, Riose found himself wondering when his future and his present would clash. He knew something of his employers; knew that if they uncovered his attachment to the people he claimed were only camouflage, his friends would suffer. And they would suffer by his hand: the Furies believed in hard lessons.

 "We've come a long way, you know," Finn had remarked one lunchtime in response to a comment from Celia. "We're not as backwards as you think."

 "Sure about that?" Celia had replied around a mouthful of cake.

 "Not here," argued Finn. "Other places, even different species don't really mix. Witches are friends with witches, vampires are all snobby together, and shapeshifters hardly talk to anyone who doesn't have a second skin handy at the full moon."

 "You know what my mom thinks of you all," put in Phi, bitterness shrouding the words. "Except you, Cee."

 "How come she likes you so much?" Finn said indignantly. "I mean, let's face it, if you're going to be all high and mighty about who you associate with, humans are even lower on the list than scum like me and Riose."

 "Why am I getting lumped into the scum category?" he'd asked, mildly amused.

 "Probably because of that Y chromosome," supplied Celia. "Anyway, Mrs Thetis likes me because I'm just wonderful. And because she met my mother."

 "Ah. That explains it."

 "Huh," muttered Finn. "Anyway, all that segregation stuff...it's old-fashioned. No one around here cares who your friends are."

 Not around here, he remembered thinking,  the thought discolouring his mood like a drop of ink falling into a bowl of water. But out there, where people place a price on you based on the purity of your blood...?

 Friends are a liability. I can't afford to have any. But I do, and I care, I care far too much.

 Despite the warmth of the day, he felt a chill.

~*~

And so it went. Time passed, and he found himself unwilling to abandon his friends. Indeed, every night, Riose found himself spinning excuses in his mind, lying even to himself; they were necessary, they were part of his elaborate smokescreen, the background into which he faded, sly as a chameleon.

 And yes, they were necessary. But not to keep him safe: to keep him happy.

 There was no one moment when he realised it; only memories strung together, antitheses to those moments of uncertainty. Among his friends, laughing at Finn's tricks, chattering with Phi about Nightworld politics, he was comfortable. He loved to argue with Jo, tussling over minutiae that no one else cared about, needling her until he got the reaction he wanted; flash of her eyes, quick glare, and the argument was a raging war that tested his wit and his reflexes.

 And Celia.

 Celia. Sometimes, he didn't know quite what he felt for her. Her candour startled him as much as it made him despair; she didn't fear the Nightworld, and he was afraid that one day she'd unleash that ferocious honesty on someone who would hurt her for it. She'd seen only the tender side of their society, and had no real knowledge of the brutality beneath the elegant veneer.

 Riose suspected she knew that they shepherded her away from danger, and she tolerated it, just as she tolerated her mother's fussing from time to time. It warmed him to be considered family, if irritating and overprotective family.

 And yet...

 And yet there were these feelings which weren't so brotherly. The ones that made him hesitate a little under her eyes, which were shrewd and bright, the clear gold of a hawk's glare. The ones which made him fumble his words occasionally, shame curling up inside him like a dead leaf as he lied to her and lied to them all.

 If the Furies knew of those feelings, she would die.

 He couldn't allow that. Not to her; not to any of his friends. When they sent him to Hades, to drink of the Acheron and learn despair, Riose didn't think he would survive it. He didn't want to. He didn't want the lonely life held out to him, hemmed in by death and pain, his future reduced to bureaucracy and butchery.

 He didn't want to be part of that. Not anymore.

 ~*~

 And that decision brought him here: to a house deep in the woods, already the centre of a dozen ghost stories like a plump spider at the centre of a web, the trap spun, the bait set, waiting with the patience of Arcahne herself.

 To a room in the house, and to the owner of the house, who sat on the floor as if the building were a temple and not a ramshackle residence. Cross-legged, he was a mockery of the Buddha, his back straight and his expression smooth and blank.

 Riose had known Bane Malefici for a long time, and still he could not read anything in those startling blue eyes except a cool and malevolent intelligence. He stifled his fear, because Blue would pick up on that in a trice and turn it against him.

 "Malefici," he said coolly. Not many were brash enough to address Blue so informally, but Riose knew that deference would get him nowhere today.

 "Riose. This isn't entirely unexpected."

 Probably not. "Then you know why I'm here."

 "Does it go something along the lines of 'After considerable thought, insert tedious lies designed to hide your attachment to your cosy life, I wish to terminate my employment with you'?"
 
 He had known this wouldn't be easy. "Basically."

 "And why should I allow you to leave?" The words were shot at him like bullets. "Nightfire has invested time and money in you, and not so you can dance off into the sunset to live a cheap imitation of a happy ending."

 "And Nightfire has been repaid," he said, schooling his face into polite attention. "I've spent three summers recruiting for you, and doubled your intake of initiates. We've both gained."

 "You gain nothing by choosing a sham of humanity."

 Riose eyed him, wondering if he dared. What the hell. "Yeah. You would think that."

 All the warning he had was the sudden unfurling of power in the room, cold and crackling-

 Pain blindsided him, jabbing into his stomach. Wheezing, Riose doubled over, forcing down his urge to retch as he tried to breathe through the relentless agony.

 It's a test, he told himself over and over, his words shrunk down to that one gritted thought within the sharp and insistent onslaught. He wants to know if you're serious, if you'll pay the price...whatever that's going to be.
 
 But the time was stretching out, and Riose was heaving down air in an effort not to heave up his lunch...

 Quick as the crack of a whip, the pain vanished. Only the twinge of strained muscles remained, the air filled with his sawing breaths.

 "What I think, or not, is none of your business," commented Blue. "Very well. As you aren't officially a part of Nightfire, I'm not obliged to execute you."

 But that doesn't mean you won't do it anyway, thought Riose, pulse picking up.

 "But whatever you may think, you owe a debt to Nightfire. And so you may leave - but conditionally."

 This spelt trouble. "What condition?" he said cautiously.

 "You will owe us a death. One death only, at a time of my choosing." The blue eyes were hard to meet, drenched in an impersonal bloodlust that Riose no longer understood. "This is non-negotiable. If you don't accept these terms, then I will throw you into Hades as rations for those who have the courage to enter it."

 Riose stared at him. "No. You could ask me to kill Therese, or-" He caught himself before another name skidded past his lips.

 "I'm willing to compromise on this," murmured Blue, which came as something of a surprise to Riose. Why was he so important to Nightfire? Or was it just that killing him would-

 Ah yes. If Blue killed him he'd have Therese to deal with, and Riose knew from long experience that brightly psychotic as his sister was, her loyalty to her family was unwavering. "Compromise how?"

 "I ask you to kill someone. You must agree to do so, and agreement must be given willingly, without coercion or torture."

 Riose searched the words for the catch. But at the end of the day, Blue could not afford to alienate Therese, who was his closest ally and could potentially be his most tenacious enemy. "Done."

 "Then you may consider yourself free." That lizard's gaze flicked up and down him. "But I suspect you may find freedom is not all you expected."

 "What's that supposed to mean?"

 He didn't like the hauteur in Blue's voice. "Fools like you have a way of forging their own chains."

 I am no fool, he thought determinedly. And I am no longer a Fury.