Nancy and I freeze. Our eyes meet. My palms turn sweaty.

  My experiences with other people over these past four days have been church-going folk who were excited to see another human and a crazy man whose immediate reaction was rape and child trafficking. This could be anywhere in between.

  “You had those gas things in your hand and then… they just disappeared!” the man goes on, and I take a deep breath in through my nose and out my mouth before I turn to him. “How’d you do that?”

  He’s a thin, wiry man with salt-and-pepper hair worn down to his shoulders. The way he’s dressed could either mean he was homeless before the Event or was still living in his parents’ basement: a pair of sweatpants that were way too big, hanging so low on his hips that we could see the magenta and red polka-dotted boxers he’s wearing under, with huge rips along the knees. His shirt might be a grey crew neck tee—or it was once a white v-neck. A black and white flannel on top, holes worn into the corners of the breast pockets. A pair of pristine high-top Nikes, sparkling white and neon green.

  He stands in the doorway to the small attached convenience store, his arms full of snacks, a package of jerky in one hand already ripped open with a meat stick on the way to his mouth. He points to us with the jerky. “Hey, lady, I asked you a question!”

  I turn to Ryder just in time to see him take a few steps in our direction. I shake my head, a small movement, but he hesitates. Ryder thinks about it, then takes another step. I glare at him. He pauses, his brow tense, looking over at the scene. I don’t think he can see the man from where he’s standing, but that means the man can’t see him.

  Protect Ryder. Protect Nancy. My initial instinct. Nancy’s jaw is clenched and I’m ready to come down on this guy swinging—hit first, ask questions later, which was never really my style—but she looks right at the guy. “Gas things?” she asks sweetly. “You mean this?” She reaches behind her, on the side that the man can’t see, and pulls one of the canisters from her inventory. I’m not entirely sure it’s believable, but she has it mostly covered by her body and rotates as she tugs it forward. The gas inside sloshes as it’s dragged. “This is the only gas thing here.” Her voice has gone up a few pitches, and I wonder where she had to learn that tone. Is it a customer service voice? A voice practiced at bars when boys got too handsy?

  “How—I saw—But—You trying to trick me?” he asks.

  Nancy’s eyes dart to me quickly and then back again, and I recognize it as a call for help. “No tricks.” But help like a good bash over his head, or talking him down?

  De-escalate. Let’s go with talking him down. That will keep my Party safest.

  “None at all, sir,” I say, trying to match Nancy’s good-girl tone. “Just the one gas canister.” I gesture toward it.

  He glares, his eyes turning between me, Nancy, and the gas. And he starts coming toward us. Nancy places one hand on the handle of the canister, a little possessively.

  I’m ready to give this man the gas, if that’s what he wants. We have three others and a whole city of gas stations we can pilfer. And I don’t want to fight another human, despite my impulse a moment ago. The fact that I haven’t had to yet is not something that’s been lost on me. But this man’s eyes move away from the gas and onto…

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  Nancy.

  And that just won’t do.

  “You got one of ’em—one of those magic-ses, don’t you?” he asks, his gaze roving over Nancy in a different sort of way.

  Her posture stiffens, her knuckles on the gas can turning white. “Magic?” she asks, squeaking, sounding a little forced. She laughs, a wooden thing that sounds nothing like her. “What magic?”

  The man scoffs, still taking even steps in our direction. “Everyone got some magic, or are you little ladies too dumb to have realized that?” He glances away from us long enough to take in the open gas reservoir, the hose, the hand pump. “You skipped all the food inside, so you can’t be the smartest. But nah, you lot ain’t dumb,” he goes on, mostly to himself. “Maybe you just need someone to steer you right.”

  Oh, gag. It’s one of those. I reposition myself, crouch with one foot flat on the ground and sitting on the other, ready to spring up at a moment’s notice. I reach for the weight and the hand pump. “No thanks, dude, we’re doing fine on our own,” I say.

  “On our own here, right now,” Nancy quickly adds. “We’re not on our own. We’re travelling with a big strong man who’s waiting for us.”

  Because that worked so well with the guy in the Wal-Mart.

  The maybe-homeless man scoffs, taking a bite of his jerky. “Sure,” he says, talking with his mouth full. “He’s welcome to join us too, if he wants.” He laughs again, a scratchy, throaty sound that gives me nails-on-chalkboard feelings. He keeps heading toward us.

  I tuck my hand with the small weight out of sight and pull it into my inventory. Then I start reeling up the hose, slowly sliding it from the tank. No sudden movements.

  “Look, you can take your snacks, sir,” Nancy says, and pushes the gas a little closer to him. “And the gas, if that’ll be helpful. We’ll just head out.” With one hand on the gas canister still, she pushes herself to her feet. But, like me, she stays crouched.

  “See, I don’t like when people lie to me,” the man says. “And I saw you out here with four of these things a minute ago.”

  Shit.

  I can hear Nancy’s dry, pained swallow. I stop reeling up the hose, a new plan forming in my head. “You said everyone got some magic,” I say. It’s part of my plan, but it’s mostly my curiosity getting the better of me. “What sort of magic did you get?”

  The man looks over at me, blinking as if he forgot that I was there. And then he smiles, a savage thing. “I can sense the truth. I know when someone’s lying to me.”

  A plausible power. And not one I can readily test. But if he is telling the truth, that actually helps.

  “Then you already know that you’re right,” I say.

  “Jane,” Nancy hisses.

  “We did have four of these babies,” I go on, chinning toward the gas canisters. Though that’s not the only signal I make. “And my friend here put them into her magic inventory, which is the power she got.” I look over at Nancy, who is glaring daggers at me now. “A much better piece of magic than being a human lie detector, huh?”

  “Hey!” the man scolds.

  But I talk right over him and stand up, and his full attention comes to me. “But if you really are a human lie detector, then you know my friend wasn’t lying. We do have a strong man waiting for us.”

  The man frowns, thinking. I think he might actually be truthful about his power: when Nancy said that, she had been lying. When I said it, I wasn’t.

  After a second, he scoffs, and finally comes within spitting distance of us. “I don’t know what funny business you think you’re playing at, but I’ll just take the girl and her inventory and go.”

  “No, you see, you really, really won’t.” I start reeling the hose back up, faster this time, hearing the piece at the end banging against the gas tank.

  “And who, exactly, is going to stop me?” he sasses back.

  I smile, wide and broad. “My big strong man.” And with one last yank and a flick, the hose comes out of the tank and splashes a few drops of the gas over the front of the man. He flinches.

  “What the fuck!?” The man shouts, distracted by the gas on him, dropping his collection of snacks.

  “Now, Ryder!”

  And my big strong man, who saw my slight finger summons, comes up from behind the man where he’d been circling, and runs past him with a fireball alight.

  And snatches up a bag of chips in his free hand.