Page 35 of His Human Believer

“Oh, that’s the one.”

She beams and runs off to say it at her father.

Avery comes down the stairs with Sela on her hip.

The baby is dressed as a very small fire beast. She’s so cute I can’t handle the cute. There are felt horns, a felt hump and a stubby felt tail sewn onto the back of a onesie. The whole thing is objectively ridiculous, and yet absolutely perfect at the same time.

Avery bounces her. “Say hi to Aunt Margaret.”

Sela regards me from her mother’s hip with Avery’s exact expression and then puts her whole fist in her drooling mouth.

Dagr comes down last, with a fourteen-year-old’s swagger.

He is technically much too old for this trick-or-treating nonsense and has said so twice. But he is going anyway, because his sister asked him to walk with her, and because he has been grounded for eight diurnals and for tonight only, he is allowed freedom.

He’s wearing a length of pale cloth wrapped around him with a hood, and his face is powdered a chalky gray-white.

“Okay,” I say. “What are you dressed as?”

“A human.”

I stare at him.

“Kari and Loge are going as humans too,” he says. “It’s the scariest thing we could think of.”

A laugh-snort escapes my lips. “Dagr. Are you kidding me with this?”

“No fangs, horns, claws, or flame.” He shrugs, entirely straight-faced. “You come out at night, you take offspring away and nobody sees you coming because you don’t glow in the dark.”

I put my hands on my hips. “That’s genuinely upsetting.”

“Thank you.”

Hannibal stomps in from the vehicle bay in tactical gear.

No costume. A comm unit is at his shoulder and a Molten Lava field tablet in one claw. He’s still bare-chested but with dark belts attaching his gear. He stops in the middle of his own kitchen, looks at his four-year-old in a pumpkin costume and over at his infant dressed as a fire beast and smiles wide and toothy. “You are magnificent,” he tells Mitry.

“Trick or treat?”

“That is exactly correct.”

“Okay,” Avery says, turning toward me. “Margaret. Time for your costume.”

I give a curt nod and retire to my room for a moment for a quick change. I’m still wearing my Tarvos uniform, which is the tube top, shorts and flip flops. I love how, on this planet, I can wear these clothes morning, noon and night. Yes, to perfect this costume I should be wearing a suit and high heels, but who has time for that nonsense? My short hair is styled a little more serious and less poofy. I apply more makeup to be seen at night.

Then I slide my arms into the dark trench coat and check myself in the mirror.

It’s not a great costume. It’s a trench coat and a notepad and a pin I made with a borrowed marker that has the word Believe on it.

But if you know, you know.

“Okay,” I say, coming back out. “Guess.”

Avery looks at me for exactly one second. “What the heck?” She actually has to hand the baby to Hannibal. “Margaret. Are you a⁠—”

“I’m an FBI agent,” I confirm, “from that very old, black market New Earth show we used to watch, The X-Files. Remember how it was about a male who believed in absolutely everything and a female who was the scientific skeptic who believed in absolutely nothing? They worked every single case together for eleven years and never once agreed about anything.”

“You’re Mulder? You’re the believer one?”