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I want to see you in the sunshine.

What an idiotic thing to say. Not because she doesn’t deserve to be seen and appreciated outside dark bars and her quiet bedroom and the four walls of my condo, but because it’s something I have no right to ask of her.

I’m still entirely aware of the fact my ember deserves someone better than me. But that doesn’t mean any part of me would pass up having her here, now, scrolling through her phone to put something folky and acoustic up on the car’s speakers as she continues to tell me about her life growing up in Idaho.

I sprinkle in a few of my own anecdotes here and there. Some of them get more raised eyebrows or curious questions, especially when I let something slip that happened in my life decades or centuries ago like it might have been last week. Mostly, though, I enjoy listening to her speak.

A couple hours into the drive, we stop to fuel up and Kenna heads inside the station. She walks out a few minutes later with a giant fountain drink in one hand and a plastic bag filled with gas station delicacies in the other.

“Absolutely rancid choice of snack, ember,” I tell her as she settles into her seat beside me, gleefully opening up some neon-orange chips.

“Oh, really?” she challenges. “Fine. Then you can’t have any.”

I’m already reaching a hand over the center console to dive into the bag she has nestled in her lap. “Hand them over.”

She makes a good show of protest before finally relenting and passing me the bag.

“Why is the Bureau in Seattle, anyway?” she asks a few minutes later, after taking a sip of her soda and handing it over so I can do the same.

A small intimacy, and one I don’t really register until I hand it back to her and she sets it in the cup holder. The fizz of the drink still lingers on my lips, and when I swipe my tongue over them, I almost imagine I can taste Kenna, too.

Apparently not as tripped up by the soda sharing, Kenna continues.

“I’ve always wondered. Seems like it would make more sense to have it in Washington D.C.”

It’s a fair question.

“The way the Bureau was founded was a bit… unorthodox,” I tell her, thinking how to best explain. “We never intended it to be an extension of the United States government, at least not at first.”

“What did you intend it to be?”

“An organized effort to bring paranormal creatures out of the shadows. To help all of us achieve a better life than the one we’d been relegated to.”

“Living in hiding?”

I nod. “In hiding, or never free to shift forms, or employing various forms of glamours and practical disguises.”

“Never able to be yourself,” Kenna murmurs, and I nod again. “But that still doesn’t explain why it’s headquartered in Seattle.”

There’s always been an abundance of paranormal creatures in the Pacific Northwest. There is in other parts of the country, too—Appalachia, the deep southern swamps, the far north of Alaska—but whatever stars needed to align for us to come together and found the Bureau had shone over Seattle.

I explain it to Kenna as we continue on toward the cabin, and she seems just as content to listen to me speak as I was her. She asks questions here and there, astute and thoughtful, and I answer as much as I can within the bounds of confidentiality.

“And you left Morgan-Blair Enterprises to help start the Bureau?”

“I did. Though truthfully, my heart was never in the business the way Elias’s is. I always felt my purpose was elsewhere.”

It’s surprising, the ease with which the words come, the way it feels almost… natural, to let her in like this. We talk a little more about the Bureau and its history, where I hope it will go in the future, and the words keep coming easy and free.

It’s not until Kenna leans back in her seat and asks her next question that all of that ease comes to an abrupt halt.

“Nora once let something slip about you and Elias and some adventures you might have gotten into on the high seas?” she asks with a smile in her voice. “Before you started Morgan-Blair?”

Though she’s done it inadvertently, the tenor of the conversation instantly shifts with her question.

Just the mention of those days is enough to put a leaden weight into the bottom of my stomach. Memories of Lizzy, of the day I lost her, of everything that followed, rush in between the cracks in the walls I’ve been letting down with Kenna, reminding me exactly why it is I put them up in the first place.

Swift and violent, the storm of emotions they bring with them has me biting down hard on my jaw and clenching my hand on the steering wheel.