Clearing out an entire town is never a one-day affair. It's the worst thing you'll ever see in this line of work, but they're manageable if you know what you're doing and you don't give up. Avoid bringing too much attention to yourself, though. You'll get locked up that way, and probably for the rest of your life.

This House is Not Your Home

She was right. They didn't understand. And people feared what they didn't understand.

Eve told me about outbreak scenarios one year and six months after she brought me aboard, when she determined I was ready to assist her—in some capacity—with the larger jobs. I was always recalling Eve's advice on things, always taking her word at face value. So far, she'd never been wrong. I had a hunch it would stay that way when dealing in these matters.

A single dwelling thankfully is a one-day affair, but just about an all-day affair by the same token. We only had this one job lined up for the entire week. Work was sparse lately. To the Callers, as we sometimes referred to them, our presence here was a Godsend. Hardly anyone believed in ghosts. It was foolishness, worthy of mockery. Yet, here we were, requested by two non-believers. To us, it was just part of our routine, carrying on in what we did like normal. Today was going to be an easy day. Just an ordinary house call.

An outbreak was not my cup 'o tea. They were biblical in comparison to the routine gig such as this. You actually had to get right into the thick of it, interact with them, and somehow make it go away once you fully understood the full nature of the beast. Obviously, the more entities were involved the more difficult it became. In the past, I wished that more people were like us, that they could see for themselves this other world denied to their eyes. But the first time I saw a town get infiltrated with her that long time ago, I began to wish this ability of Sight on nobody. It was the first time I ever thought about abandoning Eve before the show had gotten interesting. The most frightening experience I could ever recall was this, and they never failed in that regard.

Not the kind of fright that shocks suddenly with quick, random and short-lived jolts of adrenaline; it was the primordial kind of fright. The sort of dread that lasts you a lifetime in memories. Always long-lasting in the mind and never without their own unique dose of pain, scenes full of Wanderers and The Oblivious, the ones who didn't know they were already dead.

The prelude to the first raid I took part in wasn't particularly frightening for someone like me. In fact, I didn't feel threatened in the least by what I saw at first. It began as any one of countless operations began: The Watcher.

The lone apparition.

It happens at a precise moment in the day, and only in that moment. That's the one thing that frustrates me about this kind of work. You have to wake up so God-damned early all the time.

Eve wasn't a morning person. I knew that from the start. I once thought her a primmdonna with the way she complained about the little things, how she never aided me in the chores she tasked me with. I once thought she somehow placed herself above others, but she was truly all business when the going got tough. Many Ghost Chasers didn't even know that every dwelling has a tenant spirit watching over it, but she figured it out a long time ago. Took a few jobs with her for me to see it for myself, but as usual she was correct. It was always the elder female, the first one to take up residence in the area. You had to be excruciatingly observant to know this. Eve was this. I considered myself one of the lucky ones with Sight to be mentored by her, coarse and abrasive as she was.

Almost every time, the Watchers were harmless. The good ones. Caretakers in a weird, befitting way. Of course, there were many types of Watchers. Some had no real-world structures to lay claim to. I'd seen some that strolled parks and beaches. Some dwelled in mountainous caves as if hibernating away from the world. The Watcher's appearance was only possible during the first light of dawn, when most of the living were still wading through the thickets of their nightmares. You could set your watch by this phenomenon. Something about the angle of incidence photons struck the world at. And in accordance with some unestablished, supernatural law, she was right on time.

"It's coming up on zero-five." Eve whispered, still wearing that typical, everyday expression. It was one of boredom, just like the routine we'd settled into. Just another job, nothing special.

With a slow wave of her hand, she swept strands of her thick, red hair out of the way of her sight, then stifled a yawn. Tired and sapped as she was, Eve was a warrior who never gave up. She'd been waiting for the days when she could be at the employ of more and more affluent clients. And I knew when that day came, she was gone. She'd move on. We'd part ways and she'd go solo. She invested time in prepping me for greater and greater encounters—but the flow of credit these days was weak. We needed this small-time gig just to scrape by. I knew something big was on the horizon, though. I already considered her the virtuoso in our sphere, but still I could sense a catch in her voice as if she had only recently turned novice, like an audible spike of adrenaline running through those hardened veins and steely nerves as she stirred a little in her seat and barked, "Java."

I sighed and complied, reaching forward and removing Eve's coffee from the console's cupholder. I'd been relegated to all kinds of additional duties in her service. I guess that's the price of an education.

I handed the steaming mug to her without glance, then immediately went back to clutching myself in the bitter cold. She'd insisted we park outside with the windows down. I wasn't prepared for that. I didn't bring a jacket along. I was somehow unable to cope with the climate as well as she was. Not that the temperature itself was particularly unbearable, it was the humidity and those damned gusts that seemed to enter my window at just the right angle. The cold, wet drafts cut right into my layers of clothing and down to the hollow of my bones.

At least she hadn't lost her spark on jobs. At least she had something to be observed by someone like me who was still learning and absorbing.

"Alright, Jake, time for Magic Hour."

When the Watchers told their story to those able and willing to witness it.

That's why it always took time and a considerable effort to relieve an entire town of problems. One house a day was the usual pace for us. It limited our daily uptake, but it also made for a steady and predictable flow of income that would be sustainable and prevent us from going on a massive spending binge with our winnings.

I sat straighter, glanced over to Eve and found she'd already been directing rigid attention towards the house herself, only absentmindedly raising the coffee to her mouth for a petite sip. She never lost visual control. She was a hawk on the job, always focused razor-sharp. Per Eve's instructions, the living occupants opened the garage door for us at exactly the right time. The hinged, metallic panels began to rise, gradually folding before fully retracting into the ceiling. There, a completely empty room lied just a hundred meters before us. That was our queue to break out the binoculars. I unlimbered mine and she unlimbered hers, and we peered into the shadowy distance of the dark space. They'd been rather skeptical when they first contacted us a week ago, but their state of fear and confusion throughout recent days was enough motivation for them to at least hear us out. We explained as best we could what we thought was happening. They bought it, strangely. Usually, it took more convincing, but they were already unnerved and begged for some kind of release. With the credit we were asking, the well-endowed newly-weds accepted the offer without bargain. Appeasing the living was such easy money as long as they succumbed to their own fears—

—Eve and I had always believed.

Per our instructions, the owners moved all earthly possessions from the garage so we could get a good look inward, though we had a very good idea of what we'd see here and now. The only thing still visible was a refrigerator they said couldn't be moved. Their living room was already packed full to the ceiling. We said we'd work around it if we had to venture inside for inspection, no big deal.

I was on Watch-the-Watcher duty this time, a promotion from Eve. At once, it materialized.

This was my second one I'd ever seen, and she was beautiful. Middle-aged with fair skin, long and flowing brown hair that swept down to her middle back. The clothing she wore depicted her era of life. I'd poured through enough history books to nail down little details like that, a tenet which Eve still touts on to this day.

Even the minutest of details can help you.

If only more people believed us, we'd solve centuries-old murder cases.

Whatever, I usually thought. As long as we get paid and we quiet down the spirits, it's all the same. Win-win.

Often or not, it was just irrelevant, gee-whiz tidbits that I was tasked at sifting out for her. The errand-boy apprentice. That was what I was relegated to. But today was slightly different. She'd let me go inside with her on this one for some reason. I sensed she trusted my abilities more and more with each passing month and the many jobs therein. It wouldn't be long until I was ready to take a lead of my own, go solo. We could split up and cover twice as much ground and make good progress on Earth, rake in twice as much money. Maybe in a few years I'd branch off from her and start my own business on some other colony, be a world traveler. Flee her roost. I had suspicion that was always her intent some day. I had also suspected she taught me her craft out of kindness, with the inner need to be able to relate with someone else. Ghost chasing is a lonely life. It's rare to find understanding and common ground being yourself. Arkham was looking more and more like my world of choosing if I could ever muster the credit to venture beyond Earth.

I focused in on the Watcher. She was definitely pre-Renaissance with the way she was dressed and kempt, maybe royalty, a King's wife or mistress with her stunning beauty. I couldn't help but begin to wonder why she would have perished at such a relatively young age. Then again, life-expectancy in that epoch was relatively short as well. She moved with the grace of an artist's brushstroke, her step light and fluid. Those slender, porcelain arms glided in front of her with every opposing stride as she gaited to the boundary of her 'domain', gazing out into the distance. The pale, waking dawn this side of the world was dimmer than she was.

At a few paces out, she looked directly at us, smiled for a fleeting moment, then walked back the way she came. She was gone.

"Did you time it?" Eve asked, slowly stowing away her binoculars. "Well, did you?"

I didn't. I had been a little too distracted. "Um—"

"—You've got to pay more attention to these things, Jake. I've told you."

"Sorry, I zoned out there. It won't happen again."

"Shall I arrange a date with her for you after we're done here? Jeez."

She shook her head at me and started up the car, then turned on the heater and opened her door. She slammed it shut as emphasis once she dismounted. "Just…watch the damned car. And you'd better not be snoozing when I get back."

A demotion.

Eve walked over the morning dew towards the house, retrieving a hand-held radio from her coat. Her voice steadily faded as she transmitted, "It's over now. You can close your garage door. I'm coming inside."

Idiot, I thought.

Then again, neither of us were the brightest bulbs in the box. We'd both failed grade school, and at present she left the damned windows open while the vents heated up the outside world.

Looking back, I was undeniably embarrassed and certainly frustrated for not remembering to time our encounter with the Watcher. Six seconds.

If a Watcher greeted you for six seconds or longer, you could move on. The area was safe and the racket that plagued the Dim-Wits would soon subside, probably never to recur. She never told me why it was six seconds and I don't' think she knew the reason either. That's just what it was, tried and true. That part of the process wasn't established by some elusive cult or some ridiculed community of practice or a fucking Ouija board; that was Eve's observations after two decades of this stuff. Anything less than six seconds means problems.

Big problems.

Usually, bad encounters with Watchers lasted a lot less than six seconds, and I was reasonably sure that this one was on the safe side. She—the spirit—didn't seem riled up or in a hurry. On the other hand, the real-world tenants did mention that the noises in their house had persisted for two weeks now with regularity, which meant this wasn't a fluke. While not amounting to the kind of spiritual unrest as we'd witnessed in times before, it was still cause for concern.

She was in there quite a while. What was she doing?

I was left behind as punishment while she handled everything. More learning opportunities I was missing out on. In my self-loathing, I was starting to bore.

I'd known Eve long enough to know when to push her buttons and still get away with it. On the job, she was focused, purely customer-oriented and a true professional. If I did something wrong or did something to annoy her, the retribution was swift, severe, but it was forgotten three minutes later. So, I climbed out of the jeep and made for the house.

At first, Eve was oblivious to my presence. While she jotted down some notes in her data tablet, the Watcher came back, startling me. Eve was unperturbed as she stowed away her device and went back into observation mode, keenly on-target.

"Hello." Eve offered curtly as if speaking neighborly with someone known to her.

"Oh, thank goodness." The woman said. "I thought I was alone all this time. Where is Henry? Have you seen him? I heard he was traveling here from the high court. So many of you are dressed strangely. Of what realm are you from?"

"Henry?"

"Yes, King Henry."

Eve then smirked at me, then turned back to her. "I think Henry is gone. No more worries, dear. Your head is safe."

The woman gave Eve a contented smile, then walked away straight toward a wall. Before she disappeared completely, Eve acted fast, unlimbered an ancient Polaroid camera dangling from a lanyard around her neck and snapped a photo. As the flash exposed all surfaces of the dark space, the resultant image was almost instantaneously ejected out of a port aboard the ancient technology. Why she insisted on lugging that heavy burden around her neck was beyond me. Maybe a novelty fetish of hers. Far more compact and efficient devices were available for purchase. The red lines imprinted around her skin were painful just to look at, and I could see her upper vertebrae crying for relief the way her shoulders arched forward all the time. I never asked her why, just figured she had her ways about her. Not like she'd listen to me anyways. She was not your typical girl. Yes, she could clean up well and have some degree of charm to her, but by the same token her strong-will was a downer most of the time.

She began fanning out the material immediately after she grasped it from the device's ejection port.

In another minute, she sighed and threw it to the ground.

"No good?" I asked.

"Not this time. One of these days I'll capture one at just the right angle and then maybe we can score big and forget all this day-to-day hustle, and just chill.

She spoke as though we were a full-fledged team, almost like family. But I knew the time was drawing near when she'd cut me loose. She was teaching me everything she knew, maybe out of common ground if anything. Again, we're a lonely bunch. Normal interaction with people is rare. We spend more time looking at dead things.

"Maybe I need a brighter flash and a bigger lense." Eve whispered, seemingly to herself.

Under the perfect and rarest circumstances, charged particles from a variety of sources could strike a spirit's outlines and a recording device of specific attribute could potentially capture them. That was the theory. We'd seen examples before from others that Eve still kept in contact with, but so far no one had a really compelling find with which to present to people outside of our 'circle'. Some postulated that charged-coupled devices and CMOS sensors in conventional cameras could pick up fractions of those particle collisions if aimed correctly—which usually meant perfectly—which further meant it was damned near-impossible. More and more research was being conducted, some by those who believe and some by those who sought to finally debunk the entire argument, but all of it was still considered pseudoscience. And likely always would be. But a perfect result—again hypothesized—was the full reveal of an otherworldly silhouette. To date, no one had captured a full outline or even minute details therein. In fact, it was more likely for someone to be struck by lightning or win the lottery a few times than it was to attain what we called a Category Zero Proof, meaning there'd be zero requirement to speculate or try to justify anything about the integrity of such an image—it'd just be solid proof because it was detectors calibrated to NIST standards doing all the reveal.

Statistically speaking, however, it was in and of itself a ghost chase. Most people would categorically reject the notion of a spirit world outright. And we understood. If you can't see it, how can you believe it? So we let the blind be and never truly associated with them, much less connected with them. Perhaps it was indicative of Eve's other theories, one in particular that was the wildest thing I'd ever heard in life. She said it once while we were drunk and burning the midnight oil, that when the physical body dies what remains ascends into a higher dimension. This isn't a new concept, per se. Lots of people long before us presumed an afterlife, but their theory was crude. Hers was more believable rather than just saying that it true because it was written in ancient text and handed down by divine interaction. No, her belief was that they're always here, just inaccessible. Fourth dimension, or even higher. Just projections of beings that had rare, limited interaction with our three-dimensional perception. It made me think a lot, Eve's musings. It made me wonder why we were different?

Soon after, I would realize that it mattered little. Even if we had something concrete to provide as evidence, our undertakings would always be laughable and dismissed.

But it never hurt to try.

"Do you think she was the one causing all the racket here?"

"No, don't think so." Eve replied. "She doesn't seem like the kinda gal that would put up a fit over much. She's too proper."

"So it's some other entity."

"Yep."

"So do we stick around and keep investigating? Stake the place out a bit more?"

She glanced sidelong at me. "Are you kidding?"

"No, I was serious. Why?"

Again, looking directly at me, she took me to task in her typical, scathing manner. "Why would you suggest that, Jake?"

Then again, she was the expert, not me.

"I don't know, I'm just putting myself in their shoes. Maybe they'd like to know who it was causing this. Have some closure."

"These people just tied the knot. Let's not invade their lives anymore than these Bits have."

"Well, we could do it from a guest room, or even from outside in the car. We could justify a price hike for extra services. You did say that this visit was just a consultation, right?"

"Jake, my time ain't free. I charge by the hour. They can't afford me, much less the both of us. I think we're done here. Let's go tell the owners."

And speaking of which, the husband and wife were aptly waiting for us at the foyer. No sooner had Eve propped open the door, they were situated a few paces away already facing us, clutching one another in an embrace of mutual trepidation.

"So?" The wife said. "Anything?"

"You definitely have some activity happening and I don't think it will stop any time soon."

"So what's the next step and how much will it cost?"

"Won't cost you one more credit because there is no next step."

"What of our home? We just moved in."

"Unless you can tough out the noises, best bet is to find a new place to live."

That was when the husband stepped forth. "So, that's it? You're done here?"

He was the most unsettled of the two and was starting to show it. There was no telling how much these occurrences cut into his personal life.

"I thought you people chant them away or cast a spell or something."

"No, that's just in the movies." Eve replied candidly. "We have no power over them. They do whatever they want."

And that was how jobs sometimes ended. Sad for people just trying to make a home for their family, but then again it was repeat business for us. The home would eventually sell on the market. They dared not mention the true reason: that fitful spirits were residing in the home they just vacated. Lest they desired ridicule and tarnished reputations. So, new tenants would move in and sooner or later we'd get the call and get paid again. Rinse and repeat. Our bread and butter. An under-the-table business. No taxes. No e-trail. Static-free.

The ones chained up inside of mental wards were the ones running away from—and not understanding—their Sight. We were literally banking on our gift day by day.

Jim Morrison once said:

Expose yourself to your deepest fear. After that, fear has no power and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.

Eve unlimbered her tablet and added the house's address to her e-log so we could one day reference it as some place we'd already worked. The problem would inevitably resurface some day. All we had to do was let our services be discoverable for the structure's next occupants.

With money and necessities in short supply, we had little to eat later that night. Less leisure and fun to be had lately. We needed that job like a fading soldier needed morphine. And we'd been seeing more of each other in our own pastimes. If our economic outlook deteriorated much more, Eve might be put into the awkward position of asking me to vacate and strike out on my own. Wasn't a particularly terrifying prospect for me; I'd done it before. I'd only recently started to regain contact with my family once money was good and I could afford connectivity again. That she'd given me a skill was charitable, to say the least, and more than I could ever ask of her. There'd be no bitterness toward her if she had to make the decision for us both.

After the meal, we both decided to walk out to the fields and shake off the miasma smothering our spirits lately. Atop an old, abandoned vehicle we sat, our backs to its windshield, looking up to the heavens. At least the night sky was clear and unpolluted, the only clarity to be had at present. The future was clouded with doubt.

"You ever wonder what's out there?"

"What do you mean? Thinking of being an Outie, Jake?"

"No. Well, maybe. I don't know. Sometimes, I wonder if humans are the only ones allowed to have ghosts."

"What, like Covenant?"

"I can't help but wonder if other life has its sprits too. I'd hate to think not."

"It would make humans unique for once." She said.

"Or make the universe incredibly boring."

Eve got a chuckle out of that. The first time in a long time I'd seen her smile like this.

"So," I said, trying to get comfortable atop the cold, hard windshield, "do you think science will ever find the answers?"

We were no scientists, but we kept our ears to the ground. She had friends who fancied themselves as technologists, at least within our odd confines.

"Well," she fished her pockets for a cigarette, "probably not any time soon. The scientific community is very materialistic. If you can't see it and you can't measure it, it doesn't exist."

"What about religions? I mean, they all speak of hereafters. They've got to be on our side at least to some degree."

She scoffed at me through a puff of smoke. "Religion's just like science. It likes to rely on everything that's already occurred. If your grandfather believed something, then naturally you want to believe it too. If the scientists who came before you want to believe something, then you're expected to believe in it. Otherwise, the options for those who deviate can be very scary. You know this."

"What about that Wolfenstein thing you went on about last month? Any updates on that?"

Again, she smirked. "That theory is old."

"Well, the older the better, right? Hasn't been debunked yet."

"Ah, yes, Jake." She sat up, placed hands on her hips and said, "The Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein Effect."

She then glanced sidelong at me with that snicker of hers, the one that sought to knock me down a peg or two. Snickering at me like girls would do to a boy at a schoolhouse recess, chasing after some stupid ball for some stupid reason. Pointing and laughing under their breath. Eve muttered the words almost grandly, though I could easily sense her sarcasm. I tolerated it. What else could I do?

"They have top experts working on it 'round the clock." She added mockingly.

I hadn't taken kindly to her antagonism and quick wit toward me at first, but I had gotten used to it, developed a second skin just for her. As time went on and we worked more jobs together, I came around to her sense of humor which was snarky to say the least. For me, anyway, all the science pointed to the Neutrino. The subatomic particle common to everyday life. A near-massless thing, it travels at close to the speed of light and is somehow able to pass through ordinary matter almost undisturbed. Difficult to detect except with the most sophisticated of sensory arrays, but it was established long ago that more than 50-Trillion Neutrinos originating from our own sun nevertheless pass through a human body every second, journeying clear to the other side of Earth and beyond mostly unabated. It wasn't until Neutrinos oscillated in electrical charge that they were easily detectable by more accessible instruments. Those particles changed 'flavors' like this in certain circumstances—the kind of circumstances we were hopeful to see in our time.

Eve was the one who enlightened me to all this theory, and was just another feather in her cap when it came to degrading me with her superior intellect in these matters. Maybe that was the only point it served these days. Surely that she was a decade older than me gave her the edge. But why was it that strange quirks registered in photographs? Why were there unexplained anomalies and why were they left unexplained? Why weren't there more people investigating? What caused pinpricks of light to materialize on photodetectors when in some cases the detection occurred in dark confines with no reflective surfaces and no light sources? Could it be true that the elusive Neutrinos also interacted with matter belonging to things truly unseen? Was the bridge between the multitude of dimensions the Neutrinos themselves? Like miniscule entwining of the planes that resulted in the occasional fright-night for Dim-Wits?

What about people like me and Eve? We both knew long ago that neither of us was crazy, just different. Especially when we found each other. So, what was it that made our perception vastly different?

These were the questions yet to be answered. Until then, there'd be no belief in people like us except of that coming from the so-called cranks and weirdoes and fringe groups. It would drive you nuts if you let it, but you just had to keep busy. Keep making money off it, hope to be vindicated by a miracle one day.

"Changing the subject…" she hinted at me with a slight irritation in her voice. She then extended her cigarette tin toward me, the first offer of such, which I quickly declined.

There was utter silence as the stars glimmered above. The night sky was very clear. I could see satellites slowly arcing in and out of sight from one horizon to another.

"So," I asked Eve, taking a deep breath while looking straight up, "what was your first time?"

"My first encounter?"

"Yeah."

"No one's ever asked me that before." She glanced at me.

"First time for everything, right?"

She took a deep drag of her cigarette and exhaled. "I think I was eight. It was an old lady. An Oblivious."

"What happened? How did you know she was a ghost?"

"She asked me if I knew the way to the Emory Theater. I said to the lady that the Emory was demolished the week prior. It got infested with Dakrats. It was a small town and everyone knew everything about it, so I thought she was one of those people that had dementia. I asked her where her husband was. She said he didn't make it through the last winter. I asked her who takes care of her. She looked at me like I was crazy. A day later I found her obituary in an e-paper that was nine days old."

"You had it easy."

"What was your first?" Eve then sat up to look directly at me. We were no longer star gazing.

"I was five. I wasn't even old enough to start school. Still playing with toys and doing everything my parents told me to do. The Ghost would just wander in and out of my room. I thought it was normal. I'd draw pictures of the man who I thought was part of the family. This went on for three years unnoticed. It was weird that it never talked to me, but I didn't know any better. One day at my first year of school, the teacher asked me who was in my drawings and I said I didn't know his name or even who he was. This gave the school some kind of red flag. Then one day when my parents showed up at the principal's office and we all sat down…and I just remember everyone in the room looking at me for a long period of time while I was asked to draw more pictures. Then one day I stopped going to school. Subjects were taught at home. When I got a little older, I started to realize I was way different than anyone else. Saw my first ghost movie, I forget what it was called. That's when I realized I'd been living with a ghost and no one would believe me. I knew I'd be alone for the rest of my life, but it didn't bother me either because I knew I was born with Sight. Just kept it to myself through the years. Then I met you."

Eve smiled compassionately. A rarity.

More silence following our brief moment, then she broke the news.

"I found work at Byzantium."

She dropped it on me in one fell swoop, right out of the blue. Better that way, I guess. Besides, I knew it was coming. Just didn't think it would be this soon. Did that mean I was ready in her opinion?

"I have enough cred to get me there," she continued, "and you're welcome to come along if you want."

"Well, thanks, Eve."

"So, would you want to go? The clients I have lined up aren't going to wait much longer. I stalled them as much as I could."

"Truthfully, I'd go with you, but I don't think I could make it that far with the money I have."

She chuckled a bit and asked, "What have you been spending all your money on when I'm not around then?"

"Well, you know I have my hobbies. They're not cheap."

"What are you going to do ten, twenty years from now, Jake? Can't keep living in the moment, you know. Who's gonna take care of you when you get old?"

"I guess I don't plan that far out."

"You should start."

"Ain't worried about it. This guy next to you is still a young buck with plenty of opportunity ahead of him and maybe one day I'll outshine you, score big, and then the student will become the teacher." I winked at her.

She snorted a laugh right at me.

"Fat chance, boy. Not with the kinda rookie mistake you pulled today."

"Yeah, well, it figures. You've got me so scatter-brained every time we go out. Jake, focus on this. Jake, focus on that. Jake, where's my coffee? Jake, how many seconds? Jake, where's my coffee?!"

Eve laughed again. A freebee from her given to me. I lashed out and it worked. She was human after all.

"True. I'll give you that one. Just training you the toughest way I know how. And you'll thank me. Some day you'll be good. Maybe as good as me. But don't ever think you'll get to the honey pot quicker than I will. Never forget I taught you everything you know, there, Bucko."

Of course, neither of us knew what the future held in store, so of course neither of us knew I'd end up proving her wrong.