Page 35 of Branding the Bat

"He wanted to know if you were okay. And he wanted to tell me something." Amani reached under the counter and produced a folded piece of paper. "He left this for you. Said to give it to you when you came in, if you came in. I've been carrying it around for a week."

Sero took the paper. It was a single sheet, folded in thirds, Trevor's handwriting, precise, angular, the penmanship of someone who cared about how things looked even when the content was ugly.

He unfolded it.

Sero,

I've been cooperating with enforcement. Agent Vasquez says the case against the Grizzly is strong, he won't be operating again. The sharks are in custody. The Playground is closed permanently.

I've also been working with the task force to notify the other men I used the machine on. Twenty-three so far, out of an estimated forty or more. Some of them were angry. Some didn't care. Two of them thanked me for telling them, which was worse than the anger. One of them cried. I sat with him while he cried and I thought about you.

I destroyed everything in my workshop. The burner, the magic circles, the refining equipment. I kept the alchemy. I can't destroy a gift I was born with, but I'll never use it to take from someone again. I'm looking into legitimate applications. There are healing practices in the shifter community that use alchemical principles. Salves for shift injuries. Remedies for transformation pain. Things that help people instead of exploiting them. I don't know if I'm good enough to do that work, but I'm going to try.

I got a job. It's not impressive, I'm stocking shelves at a hardware store off Boulder Highway. Twelve dollars an hour.The apartment is going to be a problem soon, but the bathtub is worth eating ramen for.

I'm not writing this to ask for anything. I'm writing because you said "don't contact me" and I'm respecting that, but I also don't want you to think I disappeared. I'm here. I'm not hiding. When you're ready, if you're ready, I'll be wherever you want me to be.

What you found in those sessions belongs to you. It always did.

Trevor

Sero read the letter twice. Three times. The handwriting blurred on the third reading because his eyes were wet, and he folded the paper and put it in his pocket and drank his Shirley Temple and said nothing for a long time.

Amani didn't ask. Amani polished glasses and served other customers and let the silence be what it was, not empty but full, the way silence was full when it held something that was growing.

"I miss him," Sero said eventually.

Amani set a glass down. "I know."

"Do you think that's stupid?"

"I think missing someone who hurt you is the most normal thing in the world. The question isn't whether you miss him." Amani leaned on the bar, his voice losing the teasing edge it carried with everyone else. "Do you want to trust him again?"

"I don't trust him."

"That's not what I asked."

Sero ate the cherry from his Shirley Temple. Then he fished out the second cherry that Amani had dropped in without being asked.

"Yeah," Sero said. "I want to."

"Then that's your starting point. Whether you can forgive him, that's a decision, and you'll make it or you won't. But thewanting to try is where it starts. Everything after that is just showing up and seeing what happens."

Sero looked at him. "You keep being right about things and it's starting to get annoying."

"It's a gift. I don't question it." Amani picked up the glass and shelved it. "Also, I've been watching people try to figure out trust and desire at this bar since I was sixteen. You pick things up."

"I want to see him," Sero said.

"When?"

"Not tonight. But soon. Can you set something up? Here, at the club. During the day, when it's quiet."

"I can do that." Amani set a glass down and looked at him. "Sero. What are you hoping for?"

It was a real question. Not a challenge, not a warning, a genuine inquiry from someone who cared about the answer.

"I'm hoping that the man who wrote this letter is the real one," Sero said. "And that the man who built the machine is the one who's gone."