Content warnings for some strong language, depression, death, self-harm and transphobia. If, in the course of completing the story, I end up needing to warn for anything else, I'll do so before the chapter in question.

ONE: THE HOMECOMING
JODI

Jodi is coming home for Christmas. When she figures out how to feel about this, she'll let you know.

It's not that there's anything wrong with home. Home is great: a house heated with someone else's money, her mother's cooking, a few weeks of safety during which all her responsibilities are gone. All right, she's supposed to do some reading and produce an essay ahead of next term, but come on. She has a month, more or less. That can wait.

And yet, sitting here on the train, watching the snow come down in thick, silent flurries on the fields as they race by, she can't help but feel a little uneasy about it. Bluntly? Mahogany is a small town. Everyone there knows everyone else; given a pad of paper and a few hours, she could probably write out the name of pretty much everyone in town, and a healthy number of their addresses too. Everyone knows everyone else, which means that everyone has their noses in everyone else's business, which means …

Which means that, about fifteen minutes after Jodi has the talk with her parents, everyone in town is going to know too.

This is fine, she tells herself. It has to happen; she's not going to spend the whole winter break indoors, not even if the snow gets deep enough that people tell her that maybe she should. (Thanks, she'll say, bright and cheerful. Great advice! I'm going out now.) (She won't say this.) But even so, she's spent this past term keeping things so carefully secret that the idea of the information spreading out of her control is more than a little bit frightening.

She feels a hum in her bones, some ultrasonic frequency plucking at her nerves, and turns to see Lothian looking at her with his head on one side.

"I'm okay," says Jodi, reaching out to bury her hand in the thick fur of his mane. "Don't worry, Lothi. This is all gonna work out fine."

He pushes his head against her arm and the rumble in her bones changes timbre, growing rich with near-inaudible sentiment. Between his finesse and her expertise, the message is just about translatable: questioning, concerned, anxious. Lothian can tell she's worried, and is worried in his turn.

"You got me there," she says, scratching his neck. "But it'll be fine. You'll see."

She leans back, and he climbs up onto the seat next to hers, all limbs and vanes. He just about fits – highland noivern run to maybe the size of a big dog, smaller and greyer than the huge Kalois bluewings – and she has to smile at the sight of him, crouched on the cushion like a gargoyle that got lost on the way to its cathedral.

"Dork," she says. "Cannot believe you're meant to be a dragon."

His humming shifts again inside her, now a low growl in her belly, and she laughs.

"Okay, Lothian," she says. "Okay."

Jodi returns her attention to the window, one hand still resting on Lothian's furry shoulder, and sees flashes of countryside that seem familiar. Something about the shape of that field, the branches of that dead tree. She blinks, and a moment later sees the old ruined temple sticking out from among the wind-tossed branches of a coppice. Site of countless field trips since the foundation of Mahogany Elementary. Jodi remembers going there herself, back when she was in Ms Pemberley's class. How old? Eight, maybe nine. Before her journey, for sure.

"Nearly there," she says aloud, seeing the forest thickening, slowly pushing the fields further and further away from the railway line. She's still thinking of the field trip, of the clipboards and pencils that everyone got: mark off the distinguishing features, class, and do a drawing in the space at the bottom. She'd never held a clipboard before, she remembers. It felt special. She said as much to Tacoma, forgetting who it was she was speaking to, and Tacoma laughed and called her a nerd. And Jodi laughed too and said yeah, probably.

It's still a fair assessment, even now. Jodi has an alphabetised tape collection and an academic interest in the intersection of acoustics and psionics. Sounds pretty nerdy to her.

The first of the buildings are just starting to become visible now through the branches. Only a few minutes to go, she thinks, and starts to wind her scarf around her neck.

"Okay, Lothi," she says, reaching for her cane. "Go get my rucksack, would you?"

The doors slide open: cold blast of winter air, platform crunchy with salt and meltwater. Little brick building that does the job of a ticket office, underneath the shadow of the pines. And Harry Jeffries, same as ever, hurrying up to help her with her bags.

"Alex Ortega, as I live and breathe." He smiles genially and lifts her case down from the carriage to the platform. Jodi smiles back, unforced. Harry is as much a part of the station as the platform; he's been here, taking tickets and blowing whistles, for longer than Jodi has even been alive. She likes him; every trip between home and uni, he's there, refusing to let the train depart till he's helped her and Lothian get their stuff on or off. He likes her, too. Hopefully he'll still like her, after the news gets out. "And Lothian too," he adds, as the noivern butts his head against his hand. "How are you both? Goldenrod treating you well?"

"Yeah, fine. Good to see you too, Harry." Jodi glances across the platform, to the quiet bend of street beyond the office. She sees her dad's toffee-coloured car parked there, knows he must have seen her by now. "So what interesting stuff's been going on in Mahogany while I was away?"

"One moment." Harry beckons her across the line painted on the platform, then blows his whistle sharply. A moment later, the train rushes out of the platform and disappears among the trees.

"As I was saying," he continues, "I couldn't possibly comment." He's moving now, wheeling her case across the platform while she follows, Lothian crawling hunched and batlike at her heels. "But, oh, Janine and Steven have broken up, I believe, about four weeks ago, and Keisha Simmons – you remember? Her chikorita destroyed Sarah Lutyen's curtains? – she's back from her trainer journey now. She says just for the winter, but we'll see."

"Right," says Jodi, letting the sea of familiar names and old stories wash over her in a warm, dense wave. There's something to be said for Mahogany, there really is. Everyone at university is surprised to hear her defend it, but there's a comfort in all this shared history, all this wonderfully boring gossip. "That's sad about Janine and Steven."

"It is," agrees Harry. "How's the weather compare to Goldenrod?"

He's grinning, and she grins back. Some rituals never die.

"You know what they're like in the city, Harry. Don't know the meaning of the word cold."

He chuckles his acknowledgement and brings her case to a halt.

"Well, here you are, my lad," he says. "León?" (Getting the emphasis all wrong.) "Got something here I think you're waiting for."

The car door cracks open and disgorges a tall, broad-shouldered man in a thick winter coat and hat. Jodi's face twitches into a smile without her noticing, and Harry steps back to let the two embrace.

"Hey, kiddo," says her father. They hold the position for a while, dissolving the ache of her extended absence in the warmth of human contact. "You took your time."

"Love you too, Dad." Lothian springs up onto the car bonnet, neck curving around her father's arm, insinuating itself into the folds of his coat. His ears swivel and his nose vibrates, and Jodi feels one of his deeper hums echoing through her ribs: a purr, or something very like it. "I think Lothian does too," she says, and her father laughs, scratches ineffectually at the noivern's head with gloved hands.

"All right," he says, lifting her suitcase into the boot. "Get him down there, let's get you both home. Been too long since I saw you."

"Sure." She swings her rucksack off her shoulder and directs a smile at Harry. "Thanks, Harry! See you around."

"You know where to find me," he says, and turns to walk back to the office while she and her father go through the rigmarole of getting her, Lothian and their assorted pieces of luggage into the car. Once Lothian has been lured into the back seat – he has never really liked cars – Jodi gets into the front, and her dad begins to drive.

A moment of silence, as he pulls out from the kerb. Jodi's starting to feel nervous now, although she knows she shouldn't. She is almost entirely certain that the conversation, when it comes, is going to go okay. It's hard to tell whether or not her parents even know that people like her are something that exists – you can't be certain about these things, especially not in isolated Mahogany; she didn't know it herself till she moved to Goldenrod – but she is moderately confident that their love for her is not so easy to shake.

It's 1976, after all. Modern times, even if modern times sometimes seem to have given up on converting Johto. And her parents are connected, clued-in people, right? Her father still gets the international papers, decades after settling down here in the back end of nowhere. He and her mother read about the Soviets and the Americans, the OPEC embargo and the looming threat of nuclear armageddon. They're open to new ideas. New daughters, even.

Or at least, she really hopes they are.

"The train all right?" asks her dad.

"Yeah," Jodi replies, fiddling with the handle of her cane. "Fine." A pause. Past the petrol station, and the tiny cluster of houses around it. Come on, Jodi, she thinks. Put some effort in. Show him that everything's fine. "How's Ella? Is she off yet?"

"One more week of school, then it's out." Her dad hesitates. "How's uni?"

"Fine, Dad. I'm doing good." She shrugs. "Be nice to switch my brain off for a month, honestly. Practicals this term have been kinda intense."

A left onto Park Street. Mahogany is starting to gather around them now, little houses beginning to push back the forest on all sides. It opens out a little from here, although not much. Wherever you go in this town, you can't get away from the towering darkness of the woods.

"What kind of thing have you been doing?" he asks.

Jodi pauses for a moment, trying to think how best to explain it. Acoustic empathy is a niche field, even in the context of the already esoteric field she studies.

"Sympathetic vibrations," she says. "My mind plus Lothian's vibes equals enhanced empathy. So we've got to do interviews with people who are trying to hide things and figure out what they're lying about and why, but we're only allowed to ask like five questions. That kind of thing."

"Like―"

"Nope."

"I didn't even say it," he protests, although his eyes are twinkling and his mouth turning up at the corners.

"You don't have to," she says. "I hope you know I'm not planning on training to be a psy officer after I graduate. You're gonna have to shelve that goal of pointing at Real Psychic Detectives on TV and going 'that's my son'."

Her voice almost catches on that last word, but she wrestles it back under control just in time. Lothian's humming flares up again, tingling at the base of her neck: a message of comfort. It's okay, he's saying. You're doing okay.

She concentrates for a moment, making her mind twist at a strange angle to her thoughts, and feels her response tremble through the aether towards Lothian's head:

Thanks.

"A man can dream, can't he?" Her father shakes his head. "Anyway, let's get you home. Your mother's been frantic."

Jodi frowns. That does not sound like her in the slightest. Busy, she can buy; her mother works four days a week, and spends the other three making sure Ella and her father don't starve or sink into a pit of their own decaying laundry. There's a reason why it's always her dad who picks her up, after all. But frantic?

"Why's that?"

"Huh?" Her dad glances at her as if he hasn't heard what she just asked. It is not particularly convincing. Even Lothian shifts suspiciously on the back seat, though a warning thought from Jodi makes him settle down again.

"Why's Mum frantic?"

"Oh, right." Her dad says it lightly, implausibly. "Just feels like a long time since we last saw you, is all. Even Ella's been asking when you're getting back."

Jodie snorts.

"Pfft. I'll believe that when I see it," she says. She's about to ask what's really eating her mother, but something – call it intuition, call it four terms of Applied Psionics – makes her hold back. "How's … how's everything else?" she asks. "Harry told me all the gossip I've missed out on."

Her calculation is perfect. He looks at her, far too fast. As fast as a man with a secret to keep.

"Yeah?" he says. "Like what?"

"Uh, Dad – turning."

"What? Oh. Damn it." He turns the car around and takes the right he missed, onto Long Street. They're deep in Mahogany now, the forest just a dark backdrop to the rows of houses, walls bleached by the weak winter sunlight. "Like what?" he asks again.

"Like Stephen and Janine breaking up, Keisha Simmons coming back from her trainer journey. You know, the usual stuff."

He hides it well, but come on. His daughter (a shiver at the word) is psychic. Not the cool kind of psychic, she can't levitate poké balls like Marcia of the Elite Four, but she is psychic. Even before she started studying to be an empath, she could always tell when her parents were being economical with the truth. And honestly, she's vaguely insulted that he's even trying, but okay, she's keeping secrets too, so she hardly feels like she can judge.

Lothian's nostrils clamp shut with an audible plap: he's not buying this either.

We'll get it, she thinks at him. Be patient.

Lothian responds with a symphony of internal hums and groans that express, in no uncertain terms, that he is patient, thank you very much, and is quite possibly actually the most patient noivern in the world, as Jodi would surely know if she'd bothered to check her facts before speaking.

It's pretty eloquent, for a vibration – but then, they've been doing this for years, and Jodi is psychic, after all. She suppresses a laugh and returns her attention to her father, who is currently looking slightly too relieved.

"Oh, right," he says. "Yeah, it's sad about Stephen and Janine. They were good together."

"I mean, something must have been wrong. Otherwise they wouldn't have broken up."

"I guess so," he agrees. "Didn't think of it that way. Guess that's why you're the empath and I sell wood."

Left at the junction with Foster Road. The house on the corner is still shrouded in scaffolding, but the workers are gone; the skip in its yard is full of snow. Elsie Lockwood is hurrying along over the icy pavement in front of it, head down, her ponyta clearing a path for her with superheated hooves. Jodi watches her dad's eyes rest on her for a long moment, before she falls behind them as they drive on.

"How is work, anyway?" she asks, feeling vaguely ashamed for not having asked earlier, and her dad shrugs.

"All right," he replies. "Not as good as it used to be."

Nothing is, these days. The sense of the recession hangs between them for a few minutes, heavy and stifling, and then they pull into the driveway and it's time for everything to be unpacked again, with all the ceremony and interrogation that requires. Did she remember Lothian's pills? Yes, obviously, Dad, that was one time six years ago. This is heavy. Full of Christmas presents? Lead weights for all of you, you deserve nothing less.

It's so easy to slip back into this, into the old routines of family. Of father and son. Jodi tries to resist, to remind herself of who and what she is, but for a moment there she forgets. Her dad says come on Alex, let's get in now, and she says okay sure without remembering her name is Jodi.

And then the moment passes and she goes inside, her gut tangled with guilt and a creeping terror that maybe she isn't what she thinks she is after all.

But she has to swallow it, so fast and hard she nearly chokes, because almost before she's even through the door her mother sweeps her into a crushing hug.

"Oh," she says, surprised, nervous. "Uh, hey, Mum. Nice to see you too."

"More than you know, chickadee." Jodi's face is full of her hair, rich with the smell of cooking, of rose-scented shampoo, of home. She blinks back a tear and tightens her grip. "How long do we have you for?"

"A month, give or take. You know that. Lothian!"

Jodi pulls away a little, but she's too slow; he's already galloped off into the kitchen, claws skittering on the linoleum.

"Lothian!" she calls again. Then, telepathically: Lothian!

"Oh, let him go," says her mother. "It's in the oven. He can't get to it."

She hears claws scratching on glass, and then the low rumble of noivern disappointment echoes through her gut. All right then. Dinner is safe. For now.

"Anyway," says her mother. "It's good to have you back, Alex. How's uni?"

"Good. Demanding. Fulfilling. All that stuff. How's work?"

"Work's work, darling." Her mother glances at her father, who has paused halfway through putting his hat back on the peg. "León?" (Getting the emphasis just right.) "Did you …?"

"I didn't say a word," he replies, exasperated. "I asked Harry not to, either."

Okay. This has gone far enough. Jodi leans back a little, looks from one to the other. Two careworn faces. A lot of obvious lies.

"Look," she says. "I wasn't gonna say, but … I am psychic, if you remember?"

Her father gives her mother an I told you so sort of look. She sighs and takes Jodi's hand.

"I just … wanted to tell you here, at home," she says, and at the back of Jodi's head something that is not Lothian starts to screech.

"What?" she asks, heart slamming into her ribs like an axe into wood. "What is it?" And unasked, in her head: who is it?

"Aaron Lockwood pulled a body out of the river this morning." Her mother falters. Some distant part of Jodi that remembers her training tells her to flex her mind, to call Lothian over to generate soothing vibrations from the pattern of her psionics, but she does not. She does not do anything at all, just stares, until her mother gathers herself and continues: "It's, um … it's Tacoma Spearing."

There is a roaring in Jodi's ears, but when she listens closely she can't hear anything at all.

How long has it been? Five years, probably. Five years since Jodi and Tacoma last exchanged so much as a hello. Best friends almost since birth, since their mothers were part of the same post-natal group, and then – silence.

When Jodi came home from her trainer journey, back when she was twelve, Tacoma came too. She insisted. You'll be back out there before you know it, she said, so I'll come with you, and then we can get going again. But Jodi didn't get back out there. And, after a couple of weeks, she managed to persuade Tacoma to leave without her, because there was no need for her to throw her journey in just because Jodi was quitting hers, and so Tacoma left to go on adventures all over again.

Jodi got letters from her. She did get that, at least. Hi Alex! Made it over the border into Kanto. So weird to see all these signs using the new alphabet. Hi Alex! Saffron's freaking huge, did you know? I spent an hour just trying to find the Pokémon Centre.

The letters got less frequent as time went on – simpler, too, and shorter. Jodi let it happen. She could sense that there were other people taking up Tacoma's attention; it would be better, she figured, not to waste her friend's time. Eventually there were no more letters at all, and that was that. By the time Tacoma got back, a year later, neither of them had anything left to say to one another.

So they let it drop. Tacoma went her way, Jodi went hers. And it was okay, really; Jodi had been diagnosed as psychic by then, and Tacoma had started her tuition, been identified as someone who should probably be applying for scholarships. Both of them had so much work to do. There wasn't time for regrets.

Except that now Tacoma's dead. Pulled out of the river with bruises round her throat by the town's resident misanthrope. She's dead, and now there is all the time in the world to regret everything.

Jodi sits there on the couch, hands cupped around a mug of untouched coffee. Lothian is perched on the back of the seat, his head on her shoulder and his best peaceful vibrations purring through her gut, but she barely notices. Tacoma is dead. Murdered, even.

Her mother explains, in a low, uneven voice. No, nobody knows anything yet. The police are still looking into it. Tacoma came back from university yesterday, never made it to her house. They only found the body this morning. Still haven't located her luggage.

Jodi listens with difficulty, trying to make herself believe it. Tacoma is younger than her, by six days. How can someone younger than her be dead? How is that possible? And Tacoma, of all people? Tacoma Spearing?

"Are you okay?" her mother asks, looking at her. "Alex, are you okay?"

Jodi stares. Her mind seems to be entirely disconnected from her face.

"I'm not Alex," she hears herself saying. A voice in her head asks her what the hell she's doing, this isn't the time, shut up, but somehow she keeps saying it anyway. "My name is Jodi. I'm a girl."

None of this has gone like it was supposed to. No one was supposed to be dead, for a start. Everyone was meant to be relaxed, happy to see her, open to new ideas. Perfect circumstances for a dramatic personal revelation.

But no. Because Tacoma Waters is dead and Jodi was so shocked she didn't have the self-control to swallow her thoughts.

Some moments have passed. Jodi has clarified what she meant by that last statement. Her parents have still not responded. She sits there, Lothian's wing-claws resting on her shoulders and his ultrasonics thrumming through her nervous system, and watches their faces slowly deforming with their surprise.

"Jesus Christ," says her father, at last. "I … Jesus Christ."

Jodi does not need to hear the tone of his voice to know how he feels. Even if she was in the right frame of mind to control her ESP, the raw emotion swirling around the room is too powerful to be resisted; she feels her parents' shock as if it were her own, brutal, paralysing.

She detects no hostility. She didn't think she would, but even so. It's still a relief.

"How long?" he asks suddenly, and Jodi sighs. Okay. Less explaining to do than she feared.

"Almost a year," she says. "I'm sorry."

"You didn't say," says her mother.

Jodi nods. No. She didn't.

"Christ." Her mother still hasn't tried to tell him off for his language; she really is floored. "Alex, I― sorry. Jodi, was it?"

Something unclenches in her chest. Lothian senses it, grips her shoulders a little tighter in his claws.

"Yeah," she says. "Jodi."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

She shrugs.

"Fear. I guess."

"But you know that we …"

"Yeah," she says. "I know. I was afraid anyway."

Another pause, and then quite suddenly the two of them are there, both reaching out to hug her, unable to decide who should go first. Lothian shoves her forward into their arms, his voice buzzing at the base of her spine, and in the end her mother gets there first and somehow, strangely, it's all turning out okay.

Tacoma Spearing is dead. Nothing is going to change that. But at least she can mourn her with her real face now.

It doesn't feel like that should be much comfort, but somehow it is.

By the time her sister gets home from school, Jodi has changed and put on make-up. She stands there in the hallway as Ella kicks her shoes off in the porch, and then braces for the impact of her eyes as she comes out into the hall.

"Hey, you're home," she says, and then her brain catches up with her vision and she stops, dead.

Neither of them say anything for a while. Jodi feels like it's probably on her to make the first move here.

"Yeah," she says. "I am."

Seconds pass. Ella keeps on staring.

"You're wearing eyeshadow," she says.

"Yes," agrees Jodi.

"And a dress."

"Also yes."

"So …"

Ella turns her palm upwards in an I'm not getting it kind of way, and Jodi sighs.

"It turns out I'm a girl," she says.

Ella frowns.

"Is that a thing? You can just do that?"

"Yeah," says Jodi. "You can."

"Huh." Ella scratches her head, confused. "That's … okay, sorry, I need a minute."

"Sure," says Jodi. "Sure, take your time."

For a long moment, Ella just stands there, still staring as if she might be able to make sense of this if she only looks hard enough, and then she sighs and drops her bag.

"Guess I shoulda known," she says, coming over just a fraction too fast to be nonchalant. "C'mere, you big dork."

She's trying to hide her concern, but Jodi can feel it anyway, in the tightness of her embrace and the emotion radiating from her mind.

"What d'you mean, you shoulda known?" she asks, hugging back.

"You're such a girl," Ella tells her, and Jodi laughs.

"I guess I'll take that as a compliment," she says. "My name's Jodi, by the way."

"Jodi," repeats Ella. "Cool." She hesitates, like she isn't sure that's an appropriate response; Jodi tightens her grip a little, to let her know it's okay. "How are … how are Mum and Dad?"

"Fine. Surprised, but fine."

They step away from one another, Jodi transferring her weight from her sister to her cane. Ella looks good, she thinks, but then, she always does. Jodi has their mother's pallor, but Ella has the same golden skin as their father, the thick dark hair and mobile lips. She's six years younger than Jodi, but those who see them together tend to assume they're much closer in age than that.

She also looks worried. Jodi doesn't need to be an empath to guess what the next words out of her mouth will be.

"You heard about Tacoma?" she asks, and Jodi twists the corner of her mouth into something that isn't quite a smile.

"Yeah," she says. "I … yeah, I have."

The silence falls between them again. Out of the corner of her eye, Jodi sees Lothian crouched in the doorway to the living-room, head snaking around the door to watch.

"You okay?" asks Ella, tentatively. "Like really?"

Jodi sighs.

"I dunno, Ella," she says. "I really wasn't planning on … any of this." She still can't believe she just came out with it like that, at the worst possible time. They hadn't even finished talking about Tacoma yet. Still haven't, even. Her news swept theirs aside, left no space for dead friends or young lives cut tragically short. They sat there in the silence that it left, and then Jodi asked if her dad would help her get her case up to her room so she could get changed, and he said yes, and then when she came back down in the clothes her Goldenrod friends helped her buy they stared at her and tried unsuccessfully to hide it. She was glad to hear Ella's key in the front door; it gave her an excuse to get out of there.

"Yeah," says Ella. "I guess nobody was, huh."

The hall clock ticks. Jodi hears low voices from the living-room, and wonders if her parents are worrying about how this meeting is going.

"Your hair suits you better like this," says Ella. It sounds like someone casting around desperately for something to say. Like what it is. "It was too long for a guy. Like one of those hippy Americans."

"I know. I … I've been being Jodi for a while in Goldenrod."

Ella sucks in a breath.

"How long?"

Jodi shrugs.

"I've known for nearly a year. I've been … doing this, I guess you'd say, since summer term."

Now Ella's concern is almost overpowering. Jodi takes a moment to breathe, to try and dial back her ESP, and takes her hand.

"Still me," she reassures her. "Just being honest about it now."

"Honest," repeats Ella. "Right, right."

They keep looking at each other. What else can she say, Jodi wonders. Something banal, maybe. To settle the mood.

"How's Virgo?" she asks. It's all she's got.

"Hibernating."

"Oh," says Jodi. "Right."

Ariados can't take the cold. Virgo, the one partner Ella kept with her after her journey, spends every winter silent and motionless on the top shelf of Ella's wardrobe, among the dried-up marker pens and tubes of old paint. Sometimes if they have the heating on for longer than usual she'll crawl out for a day or two, surprised and disoriented, before giving up and retreating back to her sanctuary to sleep through to spring.

"Um … well, d'you wanna come inside?" offers Jodi, trying to move on. "I'm feeling kinda outnumbered in there."

"Sure," says Ella, shrugging off her coat. "Right behind you, sis."

She only stumbles a little on the word. It goes in Jodi's ears and lodges somewhere deep inside her chest, bright and warm as a summer afternoon. She is completely unprepared for it; her cheeks flame and she lowers her eyes to her mismatched feet.

"Um," she says, blinking quickly to try and stave off tears. "Okay. Let's … go."

They go inside, and there's Lothian, climbing on the sofa; there are their parents, doing their best to look like everything is normal. There's Lucille, her mother's old graveler, stumping in from the kitchen on her short little legs.

Tacoma Spearing is dead. Jodi is going to have to deal with this, some time very soon. But right now, in this moment, home at last with her sister and her partner and her parents, with the snow starting to fall outside the windows and the smell of dinner in the air, she is almost certain that she's okay.

Late that night, in the midst of an unpleasant dream, Jodi wakes. For a moment, she isn't sure where she is, and then the shadows fall into an arrangement that makes sense: her room, her real room, at home in Mahogany. Wardrobe, desk, chest of drawers. Moonlight around the edges of the curtains. Lothian, curled up in a nest of his own wings, ears twitching as he dreams of echolocation.

She lies there for a moment, letting her heart slow. Her dream was of the Silverblack Mountains, far to the north. For some reason she was there again, walking the trainers' trail through the pass to Hawthorn with Tacoma, except that Tacoma was just staring at her and whispering help me, over and over.

Kind of ominous. Jodi is used to ominous dreams – she's not the kind of psychic that can see the future, but she is the kind of psychic who picks up vibrations from other sleeping people and unintentionally synthesises them into spooky dream visions – but this one is worse than usual. She doesn't want to dream of Tacoma. Not tonight, maybe not ever.

She still doesn't know what to think about it all. What can you think, when your childhood best friend gets brutally murdered, three weeks shy of Christmas? She asked her parents about it again, once everyone had got over the initial shock of Jodi being Jodi, but they really didn't know a thing. Tacoma is dead. That's all: nothing more, nothing less. Tacoma is dead, and somehow, everything else is going on just the same as ever.

That night, she went to bed early, feigning tiredness but in reality just wanting to give everyone a chance to sleep on her news – the after-dinner conversation was starting to dry up in an awkward kind of way – and for some reason, when she walked into her room and saw all her childhood things laid out there she just started to cry. It wasn't for her, wasn't for any of the strangeness she had brought to this house today. It was for Tacoma, and the fact that she was never going to bring anything to any house ever again.

Afterwards, she felt a little better. Not that much better, but good enough to sleep. At least until she started dreaming about dead people.

Help me.

Jodi freezes.

Help me.

Is that …?

Someone. Please. Help me!

It's faint, crackly, like a voice from a badly-tuned radio, and Jodi can hear other voices chattering underneath it, too quietly for her to distinguish the words. It could be a dream. She could be asleep. But if that's what this is, then it's much more realistic than her subconscious usually manages. The distortion, the interference speakers – this all feels like a real message.

Help me …

But who? As far as she knows, Jodi's the only psychic in town. And if she's honest, she's not that good at it, either, not without Lothian's help. Her usual range is only a few yards; she picks up vibes from within the room, but no further. So unless Lothian's suddenly got a whole lot more articulate, or someone else has suddenly developed the kind of telepathic chops that would ordinarily get you a scholarship to brain school, then this can't be real.

Maybe it is a dream. Jodi pinches herself, and feels real pain.

Well. Crap.

Please! I don't know – where am I?

She chews her lip, telling herself that it's nothing, that she should close her eyes and go back to sleep, and then she throws off the covers and eases herself out of bed.

"Lothi?" she murmurs. Noivern can hear a pin drop from a mile off; for Lothian, a whisper is as good as a shout. "Lothi, wake up."

He tenses, and then with a sudden swift motion looks up, as alert as if he'd been awake all along. The folds of his nose quiver, and a little coded hum ripples through Jodi's nerves: what's wrong?

She reaches out and touches his mind with her own. A moment later, when the voice comes again, she can tell from the way his ears twitch that it's travelling through the connection to reach him too.

Please, someone help!

She gives him a look. Lothian flares his nostrils and uncurls, stalking over to push his head against her good leg.

He communicates that they should go, and there it is, decision made. Just as Jodi was hoping. And he's right, isn't he? Someone's lost in a sub-zero night somewhere nearby, and Jodi can (a) sense their pain and (b) find her way around town blindfolded, if she has to. She's got to do something. She just has to.

Someone …

The emotion is starting to bleed through now, along with the words. Whoever it is, they're panicking – really panicking, the kind that feels like your organs are tearing themselves to bloody shreds inside your ribcage. Jodi takes a minute to process it, to quarantine it carefully in one corner of her mind as she has been taught, and then she grabs her clothes and her cane and heads out into the night.

It's freezing. She knew this already, but it's something else to have it confirmed. All jokes about soft city slickers aside, a December night in Mahogany just has more bite than one in Goldenrod. Jodi shivers, tucks her chin deeper into her scarf, and taps Lothian on the back of the head.

Okay, she says, without words. Help me out here.

She opens her mind. His ears swivel into a position. Jodi feels the vibrations building up inside her, rumbling around in the pit of her stomach, and then, with that sudden twist of the mind, there it is: the vibe she needs, the timbre of the voice she's been hearing for the past few minutes. She hums a single voiceless note, down in the depths of her brain, and hears Lothian take it up too, richer and deeper, her mind carried outwards on a dense wave of sound.

Hello? The voice is clearer now, though still faint. Who is that?

Hello, projects Jodi, as clearly as she can. Stay calm. I'm coming to find you.

There's something out there; she can feel it in her bones. Beyond her range, but with her psionics mingled with his vibes Lothian can find it.

Hello? The voice sounds frantic. Hey, did you say something?

I'm coming.

Hello? Help! I'm – I don't know, it's so dark, I can't see anything.

I'm coming, Jodi replies, but it's clear that the other person can't hear her. Fine. She'll have to get closer.

"Come on, Lothi," she says, voice muffled by her scarf, and he moves slowly down the street, ears swivelling as he tracks the vibrations. Jodi follows as closely as she can, testing each step with her cane before she takes it. The streetlights turned off hours ago; except for the gleam of moonlight on snow, the world is a single formless mass of black. She didn't think to grab her torch. If she sticks close to Lothian, it shouldn't matter. He doesn't need light to find his way.

God, but it's cold. Even concentrating on tracing the voice isn't enough to distract her. It's an angry cold, nipping and scratching at every bit of exposed skin, burrowing down through your coat to scrape along your ribs. Jodi screws her face deeper into her scarf, pulls down her hat, but still it bites. How Lothian stands it with his thin fur she has no idea. When she caught him, he was living in an icebound cave in the Silverblacks, in the only noibat colony east of the Black Sea. It was even colder there than it is here, so cold her fingers were too stiff to get a poké ball out of her backpack, but he flew over to her as agile and curious as a growlithe on a summer's day.

Ugh. Stop thinking about the Silverblacks, she tells herself, and returns her attention to the mind she's trying to follow.

Hello? asks the voice. Are you still there?

Clearer now. Something strange about it, though it's hard to tell what. Where even are they? Huxley Road? Jodi looks up for a moment, but all she sees is the night, huge and dark. This was a terrible idea, honestly. She shouldn't have rushed out like that without telling anyone what she was doing. What if she falls over and freezes to death out here, a block from her own house? It's not going to happen, obviously – Lothian will drag her back home and blast the door off its hinges if he has to – but what if it did?

Bloody empathy. If she hadn't felt the other person's fear the way she did, she might not have―

The crunch of Lothian's claws on the snow stops, and Jodi has to stop too or trip over him. She squints ferociously into the dark, trying to figure out where they are. From the turns they took, it feels like Foster Road, and she doesn't think they went very far down it. She could tap into Lothian's echolocation, but it's not worth the headache. Bolting an alien sense onto her mind isn't good for her brain.

She reaches out instead, bangs her hand on something and hears the ring of metal. Weird angle, though; it seems to be sloping towards her. For a moment, she can't figure it out, and then she remembers the skip. Rick Fawkes' pet project, right? The house that never gets finished. They drove past it on the way home.

But why are they here now? Jodi concentrates for a second, but doesn't find anyone nearby. There's Lothian; there's something that feels like maybe a noctowl; there's some other animal, hiding somewhere nearby. Apart from that, there's nobody here except Jodi herself. No other humans at all.

"Lothi," she begins, but before she gets any further the voice breaks into her mind again, as clear now as if the speaker was just a few feet away.

Lothi? Lothian?

Jodi's focus shatters, just like that; she loses the link with Lothian, tumbles back into her body with a thump that almost knocks her off her feet. She knows that voice. And who it is, is … No. No, that's not possible. That just isn't possible.

Alex?

A leathery flutter, and the clang of claws on steel: Lothian has flapped up onto the skip. She hears scraping, rattling, and then something heavy hits the pavement at her feet with a crack.

He's found it, he announces, at the same time as the voice calls out:

Alex? Is that you?

She can't move. Her whole body seems to have locked in place, like the cold has seeped into her veins and frozen the blood mid-flow.

She knows what's coming, even before the voice says it.

Alex, it's Tacoma. Where are you?