Anton doesn't look like he's in any mood to take chances. As soon as Chester surrenders, the rancher hops out of his truck, grabs a length of rope, and wraps Chester in a dozen coils with his hands behind his back. Chester wheezes as Anton loops the rope ends through each other and yanks the knot tight.

He keeps an eye on Anton's colors the whole time. New hues have joined the rancher's initial schadenfreude, dominated by amber greed (the non-enlightened kind). He thinks he stands to benefit from this—is the Holy Mother paying him to bring Chester back? There's also an underlying layer of gloating puce—not dangerous, but possibly an opportunity to nurture overconfidence. And a healthy streak of orange-gray wariness mixed in as Anton binds him, which fades slowly away as Chester makes no move to resist.

"I don't know why you think this is necessary, sir," Chester says once the wariness has fully retreated. (Instinct tells him to retreat into deference rather than trying to leverage the familiarity of "Anton". That ended with the leveled gun.) "I was about to ask you for a ride back to the ashram."

A ripple of lilac passes through Anton. "Were you now."

"Of course!" Chester lies. (He has zero guilt about switching into Chet Land mode right now.) "Do you even know how terrible my day has been? This crazy ex-princess and her delinquent student dosed me with hallucinogens and dumped me in the forest to get eaten by wild animals. I barely escaped with my life. I just want to go home."

Anton doesn't buy it—but his puce ratchets up as he smirks. "Oh, of course," he says. "You were going to ask one of the—what was that catchy phrase you used?—'enemies of enlightenment' for a favor, after selling out your leader and sending investigators to my door." He barks out a bright magenta laugh at the distress Chester has no chance of hiding. "It's a good thing she tapped your phone, you little con artist. If we hadn't compared notes before your little hero squad arrived, they'd be riflin' through my safe right now, tryin' to steal Rancho Longhorn back."

Chester wilts. Anton silently puce-gloats at him some more, then opens the cab's rear door, hauls Chester off the ground with bulging arm muscles, and heaves him onto the truck's back seat. As the door slams, and Anton activates the child locks, Chester picks himself up and takes a moment to triage the revelations.

Fact: The Holy Mother called Anton the instant she hung up with Chester.

That's the only thing which explains the details and his choice of words. This is basically the worst-case scenario. Chryssa-swamini either didn't believe Chester's warning, or Chester's bizarre explanation made the magical unicorns sound like a bigger threat, or… there's probably an innocent explanation for what looks an awful lot like the Holy Mother throwing Chester and his friends to the wolves. There's a lot of really ugly explanations, too.

Fact: Anton is a bad guy, confirmed.

Chester could care less about whatever real-estate theft Anton just gloated about. But it means his villainy goes beyond just a bad temper, and it cements this gunpoint kidnapping as a villain problem rather than a catastrophic misunderstanding.

And unfortunately, this makes Fact One look even worse. The suspicion that Chester might be investigating his shenanigans didn't seem to even cross Anton's mind that day that he showed up with the Holy Mother's name on his lips—and Chester knows that, he'd have seen the colors—even though it was the first thing Anton assumed about the unicorns. Anton and the Holy Mother are, at best, conscious of and indifferent to each other's negative reputations.

Fact: The Holy Mother also lied to Anton's face.

There was no phone tap. He never sold out Swamini-ji. He thinks he understands why she said those things, though: Chester also lied to Anton's face, with the Crystal Prep cover story, and Anton must have gotten suspicious when he realized the truth of that one. Realistically, there was no chance Chryssa-swamini was going to risk her own reputation to cover for him on that—but she certainly went out of her way to paint herself as an innocent victim of Chester's fraud, and dissuade Anton from listening to Chester's defense on the matter.

By itself, that means little: it's the sort of thing she has frequently done to teach devotees lessons about the consequences of their behavior. But it was ugly and unnecessary—exactly the sort of disproportionate magenta retribution that Chester once asked Esau to help him gently confront her about, back during his ill-advised campaign to improve the ashram's retention rate.

Plus, despite the short length of time he's known them, Chester can't imagine Celestia or Holds-the-Fire—both of whom arguably have equal claims to enlightenment—behaving like that.

Fact: …

Today has speedrun Chester through levels of heresy he didn't even realize were possible. And despite that, he's having trouble even thinking the thought.

Deep breath.

…Is Chryssa-swamini, herself, a villain?

* * *

A memory stirs in Chester's mind, one he has tried to keep buried for a very long time. The first time he wondered—however briefly—about Chryssa-swamini's intentions. Those doubts had vanished long ago, but today has forced him to question a lot of things anew.

He and Esau were playing with blocks in Sister Mandy and Brother Bill's room, under the calm cyans and purples of Sister Mandy's gaze. (This was over a decade ago—back before the dormitory's remodeling—when everyone had their own private area, and Chester and Esau slept in small beds at the foot of Bill and Mandy's big one.) Brother Bill had come in and whispered something to her, simmering with pale orange. She had shaded peach—and then glanced over at the children and masked herself in gray.

"Chester," she had quietly gray-said, pulling him aside, "Swamini-ji wants to see you."

"Yes, Sister Mandy," Chester said. (Esau sometimes got her and the Holy Mother confused—he said it was because he remembered things before the ashram—but Chester was a good boy and knew everyone's proper title.) He hesitated at her guarded color, though. "Is everything alright?"

"Of course it is," Sister Mandy said, though the blue she mustered up was weak and unpersuasive. "Just… did you talk to her about the colors?"

"I know you said it was our secret, but swah-meanie-jee said our souls are lighter when we tell the truth. So I told everyone during sharing session." Chester punctuated that with a proud nod, expecting Mandy to react with purple. His face fell as pale orange crept in instead. "… Did I do something wrong?"

"Of course not." She gave him a gray wash of colors that was in the same neighborhood as the muddy green of certainty, and a smile. "It's an honor to get to talk to her. Just"—she hesitated, and dropped her voice—"you know that sometimes people don't understand."

"Mandy." Brother Bill stepped over, a mild rose pink. (It was always a little disorienting seeing them together; he didn't have super-intense colors like Sister Mandy did, or even regular-intense like Brother Esau and the Holy Mother, only the normal kind.) "You're not still having second thoughts about the Holy Mother, are you?"

"No, hon," she said, the pale yellow of resignation. "It's just…" She paused, then shook her head, the color strengthening. "No. It's fine."

It pretty clearly wasn't from the color, but Brother Bill was one of the people who didn't understand. Sister Mandy didn't see colors either, but she at least could make people turn light blue, so she understood what Chester meant when he talked about it. Brother Bill, on the other hand… Chester had tried telling him about the colors that other people were feeling a couple of times, only to have him deny what was plain in front of his face, and then start going pink if Chester pressed the point. So Chester learned to keep his mouth shut.

"You know we agreed this was what was best for them," Brother Bill continued, shading green—no, Chester knew this one. Concern, mixed blue and yellow. "The Holy Mother is renowned for her own powers. She'll help them learn to connect to other kids without their…" He hesitated, glancing at Chester with mild orange. "Gifts."

Sister Mandy glanced at Chester too, dark blue. It had confused Chester when he first realized that both those colors represented worry, until he realized that it was the difference between being worried by someone and being worried for them, which were very different things indeed. He had never seen the Holy Mother worried, and wondered which one she was going to be.

"Get going, Chester," Sister Mandy said. "Let us know how it goes."

The Holy Mother was rummaging in one of her cabinets when Chester let himself into her bedroom. (This was in the early days, long before the second floor was built—even before she took over the prayer hall for audiences.) At the creak of the door, she startled orange—slamming the cabinet shut and whirling around. Her eyes tracked in on Chester. A wave of red overtook the orange.

"I'm sorry, swah-meanie-jee," Chester immediately said. He knew what red led to. Often, apologizing immediately gave him a chance to shift that color back into something more pleasant.

"You should be. Didn't your parents ever teach you to knock?" At Chester's flinch, the Holy Mother stifled her anger with some obvious effort, and crouched down to talk to him face to face. She gave him a gray smile. "But I asked you to be here for something much more important. You said you have special powers. Tell me more about your colors."

At that, her aura shifted, and Chester saw a color he had never seen before.

He startled. "How did you do that?"

The Holy Mother blinked, peach swirling in. "Do what?"

"You're a new color. Kind of yellow and orange. But all shimmery. I've never seen shimmery yellow before, only shimmery blue. How do you feel?"

"Never mind that just now. How can you see… what you're seeing?" She glanced around his body, her peach shifting into a violet against a backdrop of that new sparkly gold.

"I don't know, swah-meanie-jee. I've always been able to. Same as Esau." He fidgeted, barely able to contain himself—there were so few people who understood, and everyone here said the Holy Mother knew more than anyone. "How did you do the gold? Tell me, swah-meanie-jee!"

A ripple of caramel brown passed through her as she smiled—a color which he didn't understand at the time, and wouldn't coin the word spyfeel for until many years later.

"Well, Cheshire," she said, "it sounds like you can see my enlightenment magic. You've…" The caramel shaded briefly into lilac. "Got a terrible curse. Being able to see how far you have to go to reach my level of transcendence. You'll have to work extra hard on your lessons."

Chester hesitated. That superficially sounded like awful news, but he knew what that shade of purple meant when nobody else was laughing. "Are you funning with me, swah-meanie-jee?"

She blossomed bright peach for a moment, and then her colors retreated into pink guarded by gray. "There's nothing funny about this. But you're smart. You catch things other people miss. That means the curse isn't insurmountable."

"Okay," Chester said slowly. He knew what he had seen, but she certainly seemed serious enough now.

Abruptly, the Holy Mother stood and wheeled around, pacing back and forth at the foot of her bed. "What about Brother Bill? Sister Mandy? Do they have the same curse as you two?"

Chester shook his head. "Not Brother Bill. And Sister Mandy just makes people go blue. She can't see colors though."

At that, not even the Holy Mother's wall of gray could hide the return of her transcendental gold. "Well, well," she said. "Yes. This will do. This will do quite nicely."

Chester broke into a wide smile. As weird as this was, it was good to see her be enlightened again. Much better than her being red, or making little jokes at his expense.

The Holy Mother glanced down at her hand, and Chester noticed she had been holding some sort of necklace, with a big obsidian stone in a golden setting matching her increasingly intense aura. With a quick motion, she brought it up to her throat, reaching behind her neck to fiddle with the clasp. The motion sent ripples through her long black hair.

Chester pointed at it. "Your necklace is going all sparkly, too."

"I'm just that enlightened." The Holy Mother crouched down again. "Come here, Cheshire. Take my hand."

He reached out. The instant their hands made contact, Chester's fingers went tingly, and an electric jolt rippled through his arm and down into his body.

Startled, Chester jerked his hand back—or tried to. Her fingers were clamped around his in an iron grip.

Then all her colors started to fade.

The golden aura around the Holy Mother was vanishing, like fog in morning sun—and nothing was replacing it. Even people who weren't feeling anything had a color, a drab gray that washed out their features. This wasn't that. This was like looking at an animal. The only hint of color-sight he got was a weird distortion around the gem in her necklace, turning its once-sparkly black into a yawning hole in his vision.

Chester flailed. His arms and legs felt like noodles, and his body ached to crumple to the floor and sleep. A splitting headache was tearing at his eyes from the inside out, and nausea was stabbing his gut. That earlier electrical sensation had turned into a smoldering fire, as though he were burned up, leaving nothing inside.

"Swamini-ji!" he shouted, feeling tears well up. "Stop! It hurts!"

She didn't answer.

Chester, sinking to his knees, glanced up into her face. Her eyes had gone wide, and her mouth had frozen into a little "o". The most terrifying part was that, without the colors, he had no idea what that meant.

His chest hitched. Then he felt tears spill down his cheeks, and a sob bubble out. "Please," he whimpered.

The noise seemed to break the Holy Mother out of her paralysis. She blinked rapidly several times, eyes flicking around Chester's form. Then she hissed—an inhuman sound, raw and thick—and jerked her hand back from Chester's, with the suddenness and ferocity of having touched a stove. She scrabbled at her neck, making urgent, guttural sounds. A finger caught inside the necklace, jerking its chain taut, and with a soft pop, it dropped away from her throat.

Chester's vision exploded into stars.

With agonizing slowness, the fuzz began to clear, the room resolving into first blobs and then forms. Chester was balled up on the ground, the pounding hammers of his headache quickly receding. There was an orange-red blob—no, wait, that was the Holy Mother. His color-sight was back!

Chester rubbed his eyes, then tried to make out more detail as he pushed himself upright on barely responsive arms. The Holy Mother was similarly balled up, although she had fallen back against the bed and was sprawled in a sitting position. Her chest was heaving with rapid gasps. And her eyes were locked onto his.

Chester's battered brain finally placed her color.

Disgust.

He immediately began stammering out an apology, but the Holy Mother beat him to words. "Useless," she hissed, the red-orange separating out into its components rage and fear. "Worse than useless." The red began to dominate, the color muddying into outrage. "You imbecile, how could you not know what the colors were? I nearly—"

She suddenly gasped and jerked her head from side to side, scanning the room. Then fast-crawled across the carpet, lunging for the fallen necklace. Its clasp had bent open at a sickly angle. She fiddled frantically with it, first to bend the clasp back into usable shape, then with both hands behind her neck. After several seconds of bright orange fumbling, there was a quiet click as the clasp hooked, and the Holy Mother let out a shaky breath.

"I'm so sorry, Holy Mother," Chester said meekly, her disgust seared into his memory.

The hue of her anger blazed back, sharp and vivid. "You should be. Do you know how much damage you almost did? This goes beyond a curse, Cheshire, this is your personal failure. Your pride in your transgressions manifesting into a false power. If I were one level less enlightened I'd pitch you off the mountain and save the world from your sin."

He cringed. "I'm sorry!"

"Lucky for you I'm the world's foremost expert on curses." The Holy Mother stood on shaking legs. "But I can only help you if you want to get better. Step one, never speak of this again. Ever. To anyone."

This was fixable! Chester lunged for that sliver of hope, nodding frantically. "Yes, Swamini-ji!"

The Holy Mother nodded back, rage subsiding and fear bubbling up. She paced back and forth several times, other colors swirling in uncertainly, then seemed to come to a decision, settling down to orange and gold.

"Go sit in the closet and think about what you've done," she said, pointing across the room. "I've got something to sort out."

* * *

Chester's reminiscences are shattered by the opening of the driver door. Anton hoists himself up to the driver's seat, sits down, and sets his handgun down in his lap in order to pull out his phone.

Anton's in a pretty good mood, all things considered. It's mostly magenta and amber, not happiness per se, but there are some streaks of satisfied purple as he relaxes into everything going according to plan.

Chester sneaks in a few more seconds of brooding as Anton taps out a text message he isn't at an angle to see. For a long time, he had believed that that long-ago incident was proof his color vision was an evil the Holy Mother had tried and failed to exorcize. (It certainly hadn't felt evil at the time—what she had done seemed awfully bad—but after seeing her reaction, his certainty had evaporated. And then, just a day later, he had beheld the truth of her siddhis, and the Holy Mother's transcendence was beyond question.) If his vision wasn't evil, then why had she reacted with such revulsion?

On the other hand, if the Holy Mother herself was fighting against evil, why had she never tried to exorcize him again? And why, years later, had she started talking to him about his sight again, and all but encouraged him to use it to recruit converts and police her devotees? Not to mention, she had sworn him to secrecy despite all her lectures on truth being the pathway to enlightenment. Which was far from an isolated incident, now that he thinks of it. The idea of truth as a primary virtue had gone out the window early, once she started focusing specifically on love.

It had always been a foundational fact of Chester's existence that the Holy Mother's enlightened ways were beyond his failed mortal judgment. Her putting his transgressive powers to use, despite the dangers to their collective enlightenment, was something he had committed to trusting her judgment in. But now, the mounting evidence of her own transgressions is starting to tell a very different story.

There's jingling from the front seat. Anton thumbs through his keyring, looking for the ignition key. Chester tries to refocus—he's got more urgent problems.

Like that pistol. His attention strays to it, adrenaline tightening all his muscles. It's ominous enough even without being on the business end of it—it's a massive gun, too big to hold in cupped hands without barrel and grip sticking out the sides. The grip is black faux wood, blunt and heavy and sharply curved, and the gun body is a solid cylinder of metal in a rugged squarish frame, and the entire assembly looks heavy with death. The grooved central cylinder—wait, that's why it looks familiar. It's a Colt Peacemaker, a six-shooter revolver straight out of a Tennessee Walker movie, and that cylinder is where the bullets are loaded.

Have any of them been used today?

Chester's used to being personally in trouble; from that very first day, he was only ever a source of pain and stress for the Holy Mother. But he's not the only one who has faced that gun. He thinks of Celestia's protectiveness and Sunset's trust—and the way his ill-considered phone call led to the Holy Mother warning Anton about them. Even if the Holy Mother's intentions were good, he has definitely caused problems for the villain hunters. Maybe… something worse than problems.

Chester chews his lip for a moment, then risks speaking up.

"What will you do with the other two?" he asks quietly. (That wording is multiply deliberate—extremely Chet Land. Chester has baited out his share of unintentional revelations by exploiting people's need to correct wrong assumptions.)

Anton shoulder-shrugs as he puts the pickup in gear and starts turning the truck around in a multi-point maneuver on the narrow dirt road. "I reckon that depends on what they know," he says, a thin maroon shouldering its way into the color palette. (Good—Sunset and Celestia are still alive, and him accepting the two-count means he doesn't know about Ember.) Anton's suspicion intensifies, and he throws the truck out of gear and glances over his shoulder at Chester. "Why? You plannin' on doing something about it?"

Chester shakes his head, trying to defuse the color and give himself another moment to think. "I'm stupid, sir, not suicidal."

"Well, keep it that way." Anton glares at him for several seconds as the maroon subsides, and turns back around.

Now that he's established nobody has died because of him—yet, some dark voice whispers—he needs a plan. That exchange also established he can't rely on a rescue from the unicorns. He's developing serious doubts about his ability to turn this around himself. That leaves him with one long shot, and not much choice but to take it.

"I plan to, sir," Chester says. "In fact, as a gesture of good faith—you didn't take my smartphone."

Anton's emotions spike into peach. He twists back around again. "What?"

"I wasn't going to use it!" Chester says. "But if I give it to you, then both of us know I'm not doing anything sneaky with it. See, I'm trying to cooperate."

He watches Anton churn through several distinct hues of maroon. "See," Anton says slowly, "I know you got an angle here. Chryssy went through exactly how you manipulated me, and told me 'bout how you did the exact same to her. So I don't believe for a second you just want to hand that over as a gift."

Chester braces himself. Given Chryssa-swamini coaching Anton into maximum suspicion, this sequence of lies is going to be as delicate as walking a tightrope. Being able to see emotional reactions is an awfully thin safety net.

He starts out by tensing up and flicking his eyes side to side. Using deliberately suspicious body language would normally be insane, but he needs Anton to think he's correctly reading the situation here.

"Okay," Chester says with what he hopes sounds like reluctance. "Fine. The truth is I was going to get you to look at the pictures, so you knew I wasn't bluffing about them."

"Pictures?" Anton peach-says.

He's set the hook. Chester only gets one shot at baiting it, but he's got an educated guess from Anton's earlier admission: "The ones Celestia sent before they went to your ranch."

"I knew it!" Anton's aura explodes into fear and rage, and then the red shifts into amber. "She used you as insurance. Gimme that phone right buckin' now."

"I'm trying, sir!" Chester says, wriggling his arms uselessly within his bonds. "It's right here in my—oh."

Anton hefts the revolver and taps it menacingly against the passenger seat, a dangerous thread of red flickering across that focused, intense avarice. "In your what?"

Chester doesn't have to fake the panic that comes along with Anton's threat. "It was in my pocket!" He makes a show of searching the seat and the floor. "Where'd it go!"

"You little shit," Anton says, orange and amber intensifying. He sets down the pistol again, roughly shoves Chester to one side of the bench seat, glances around the back seat, and starts rooting with both hands through the trash on the floor of the cab. "Don't you dare move."

Chester's content to stay frozen, monitoring his captor's emotions. He lets Anton's frustration build up a bit—but speaks up once that maroon again starts to stir. "Maybe it fell out on the road when you started tying me up?"

Anton wordlessly kicks open his door, hops out, and scans the road under the truck. (His frustration is building faster than Chester is comfortable with, but there's no helping that now.) Then he yanks the rear door open and points the revolver at Chester, blazing with amber greed. "Where is it?"

"I-I don't know!" Chester says, his voice involuntarily ratcheting up. "I—" Moment of truth: "Call it or something!"

To Chester's infinite relief, Anton fishes his own phone from his pocket. And then pauses amid a flood of maroon.

"You're tryin' to get me to call one of your friends," he growls, gun still aimed right at Chester's face.

Chester barely holds it together. That is, in fact, exactly what he's trying to do, but he has to double down and hope those tiny threads of doubt in Anton's accusation can be teased to life.

"Sir, you know the number in your contacts is mine," he points out, sweat prickling at his hairline. "I texted you at the end of my first visit."

"Then why're you holdin' out on me?" Anton challenges, chestnut red-brown.

"I don't have my phone!" Chester pleads, hoping that speck of truth carries the earnestness the moment needs. He makes a wild stab at keeping the plan on the rails: "I'm just saying we could find it from the ring. Listen, I know you think this is some switcheroo or something, so I promise you: if you call it and anyone picks up, you can shoot me right now."

Maroon and black war in Anton's stare. Amber slowly overtakes them both.

His eyes not leaving Chester's, Anton raises his phone again, taps Chester's line in his contacts, and taps speakerphone on.

Chester's heart starts hammering as the call dials.

Fact: This will probably work.

The phone is in Holds-the-Fire's hands. She's probably out of reception range in the forest, in which case the call goes to voicemail and she gets a missed call notification later. Even if she does have signal, she probably won't know what the ringing means, and the icons on the screen will probably mean nothing to her. Even if she pulls the phone out and starts poking it at random, whatever she taps will probably just reject the call.

That's way too many "probably"s. But the logic is sound. In virtually every scenario he can imagine, the call fails, and she gets either an immediate or a belated reminder of him. And that should spur her to realize she no longer has the lighter he can feel in his pocket. And maybe, just maybe, she'll come after him to get it.

A droplet of sweat trickles down his temple. This whole thing seemed like a much smarter plan before it involved a gun pointed at his head.

Anton's phone purrs. One ring.

The only problem with Chester's desperate gamble is that his life relies on Holds-the-Fire not exceeding his wildest expectations. Which is pretty much all she's done since he met her.

Two rings.

Please, Chester prays. Let her not have signal right now.

Three rings.

Anton's doubts are growing in tandem with Chester's, and little wiggles of pale orange are coalescing around the black—he's starting to think he got suckered. If the call does connect, Chester's pretty sure he has seconds to live.

Four rings.

Please please please please please—

Five rings, cut short, and Chester's stilted voicemail greeting begins to play. "I am away from my phone, fellow seeker of enlightenment, but have a blessed day and leave a message—"

Anton snorts, thumbing off the call. The pistol doesn't waver.

"Can't help but notice there weren't no ringing around the truck," he says, maroon growing afresh out of the black. It's joined by muddy yellow and muddy orange. Anton is mostly convinced he got played—he's just not certain what to do about it yet.

Chester's focus snaps back to that gun. "I—I had it at the creek," he says meekly. "Do you want to go back and look…?"

Anton considers that for a moment, but the ensuing flare of amber can't dislodge his suspicions. "No," he says, the maroon taking over. "We're getting you to Chryssy before you can pull off any more tricks. You're lucky she asked for you alive." There's an ugly flash of wounded red and Anton thumbs the pistol, which clicks as the hammer cocks. "But you try another con job, son, and I'll show you what happens when you test me."

Chester goes silent, blood draining from his face, and nods vigorously.

Anton stares at him with mixed maroon and brown, then finally nods back. He slams Chester's door shut, hauls himself back into the driver's seat, and puts the truck back into gear.

Two forward-reverse cycles later, the pickup is finally well enough aligned with the dirt road to give Anton a clear driving path. He stomps hard on the accelerator. The truck roars, shudders. There's a loud grinding from below, punctuated by staccato pops as the tires fight for traction on the dirt and kick up a shower of pebbles against the undercarriage. A fresh cloud of dust billows up behind them.

Then there's a flash of color in the corner of Chester's eye. A small, sleek ice-blue form bursts out of the dust, leaping in a graceful arc over the tailgate. The figure lands with a whump, sliding across the mostly-empty bed and underneath the big toolbox mounted just behind the rear window. The sound is barely noticeable over the vehicle peeling out, but the truck briefly rocks with the impact.

Chester's heart swells. It's Holds-the-Fire! Somehow, she must have gotten his call already, and—wait.

He knows two ice-blue beings, and this one is too small to be her. Border collie sized.

… Ember?

Either way, there's no time to celebrate—Anton's maroon is already spiking with indignant muddy yellow. A few seconds later, when they've built up some momentum and the noises of acceleration have died away, the glare he gives Chester in the rear-view mirror has already churned through that color and into fresh red. "Really, son? You kickin' my seat?"

Chester's reflexive denial dies on his lips. Getting blamed for her landing is a genuine stroke of luck. He'll take any help he can get right now, even from her—but the rescue is dead on arrival if Anton realizes Ember hitched a ride.

"Sorry, sir," he says. "I lost my balance when you accelerated."

It's the best lie he's got. And it's not enough. Anton's red crystallizes into an ugly crimson, and then he picks up the pistol with his left hand and points it over his right shoulder, swiveling the barrel toward Chester. Chester's life flashes before his eyes—

A fraction of a second before Anton's trigger finger squeezes, the barrel tilts almost straight downward.

A thunderous crack splits the cab.

Chester flinches—not from fear this time, but the sharp physicality of the shot. At this close range, it's like being slapped in the face. His ears start ringing. A curl of thick smoke rises from the barrel, and its acrid scent is inescapable.

Anton withdraws the gun, setting it back on his lap.

Nothing hurts or feels wet. Chester remembers to breathe.

He angles his head down. There's a hole in the floor of the truck directly between his sneakers, through which he can see the dirt road flashing by. Part of his brain is screaming in relief—it was just a warning shot. And part is screaming in horror—Anton wasn't even looking, and Chester knows the quality of his marksmanship. It's sheer luck he didn't lose a foot.

"One more shenanigan out of you," Anton says in mixed red and brown, "and I aim higher. You got me?"

Chester vigorously nods. "Sir, yes sir!" he squeaks. Then he shuts up, focusing on his breathing as cold sweat prickles his brow and shivers pass through his body.

Author's Note

Chapter 12, "Road Dog," publishes on Sunday, Sept. 1! Probably, anyway. I might be away from the Internet camping. If so, I'll queue it up to go live as soon as I get back in cell phone range.

How is everyone feeling about the twice-a-week schedule? If it seems slow, I can speed it up to three.