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"You're wearing a hoodie," he said, incredulity evident in his tone and slack jaw.

"It's fashionably outdoorsy."

"You hate everything outdoorsy."

"I've been doing a lot of things I hate lately." My voice came out wrong. "How the hell did you find me, Davon?"

He glanced past me at River, who had come up on my left and stopped exactly far enough away to be polite about it. Whatever conversation those two had with their eyebrows lasted about a second and ended in a draw. That was my guess.

"There are fourteen motels inside forty miles of Cleveland that'll take cash without a card on file," Davon said. "I know because I've arrested people in nine of them. This is the ninth one I sat outside of."

The bottom of my stomach dropped out for the second time in two days.

"You're joking."

"I started at six this morning."

"Davon."

"Twelve hours." He shrugged one shoulder, and it was such a tired, ordinary gesture that it hurt to look at. "I had a thermos and a bag of those pretzels you like. It wasn't police work, Hazel, it was just a list and a tank of gas."

And that's the part that got in under my ribs and stayed there.

A Fae emissary found me because every root in northern Ohio had been gossiping about me for three days. Fine. Terrifying, but fine. That's the world I live in.

A tired human with a thermos found me because he made a list of motels.

"Anybody could have done that," I said.

"Anybody could have. Nobody did." He looked at me steadily. "That's usually how it goes with you people, isn't it."

I had no rebuttal for that, although the part with "you people" smarted, I must admit.

He wouldn't come inside.

I offered, and he looked at the green door of unit seven for about two seconds, glanced between it and River once and said he'd rather not. I understood exactly what he meant and didn't make him say it out loud. The last time Davon was in an enclosed space with people like me, somebody put tape over his mouth and used him as leverage against me. Before that, we slept in the same bed. I couldn't say I blamed him.

So we sat on the tailgate of the beater truck instead, the three of us in a row like the world's worst little league bench, with the pop machine humming behind us and the highway doing its long tearing sound out past the ramp.

River fetched coffee from the truck stop without being asked, and handed the cop the largest cup. Davon took it, mumbled a thanks and looked at him for a beat too long.

"You're different," Davon said.

"Didn't know you paid much attention to me, human." River glanced at him sideways before parking his butt next to me.

"I pay attention to everything, unfortunately," Davon muttered under his breath, narrowing his eyes in suspicion. "But you come off different, honestly. If you didn't have the same face I'd have thought you were a different person."

"Yes, well…" River was getting uncomfortable and I should've said something but I didn't.

"Is that a thing I'm allowed to ask about?" The cop turned to me but I didn't get a chance to answer.

"No," said River pleasantly, and Davon nodded once and let it go, which is more grace than I'd have shown.

Then he put the folder on the tailgate between us.

"Okay," he said. "So you gave me a symbol, a year, and a city."

"I'm aware of how useless that is." With a huff I scrubbed a hand over my face. A headache was developing in my eye sockets.