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“And if you have any further concerns, please don’t hesitate to make an appointment,” Gabby said with a smile and a wave as the one o’clock appointment left. The moment the door closed behind the patient her smile immediately fell.

She fell into her chair at the clinic’s front desk with a groan. Another day, another patient freaking out over a bite from a coyote. It wasn’t like a single bite from a coyote posed any actual danger. Just clean the wound, wrap it up, and give a rabies shot just to be safe. The ‘wound’ wasn’t even really much of one to begin with. Just a couple punctures from their teeth that a simple adhesive bandage would solve. But the patient insisted on a proper check up. Gabby obliged, not like it was her own insurance that was paying for it.

And it certainly wasn’t as if a bite from a coyote was the worst thing in Pioche.

She covered her face with her hands and let out a deep, exhausted sigh. She felt her right shoulder, rubbing the bandages and unhealing bite under her scrubs. Coyotes were far from the worst thing that could bite you in Pioche.

She checked the time on her phone. There weren’t any appointments booked for another hour.

She reached under the desk for her bag and grabbed her pack of cigarettes from inside. She shouted out to the doctor in his office, “I’m going out for a smoke.”

She stood outside the clinic, right by the memorial plaque by the door. She lit her cigarette and took a long drag of it. She looked at the plaque on the wall. She assumed the clinic, Hinman Memorial Medical Centre, was named after Edna Hinman. An advocate for the mentally ill during her life and till her death in Two-Thousand and Eleven.

But, to her severe disappointment, it was in memorial to her late husband who had died in the eighties and was a ‘professional’ gambler and the clinic was built in his dubious honour from, quoting the plaque she stood next to, “all the profit he made for the casinos over four decades years as a patron”.

She took another drag of her cigarette, and blew the smoke out with a shake of her head. The Casinos. If the Casinos were what funded the clinic, the least they could have done was be more up to date with the medicine it stocked. The clinic still stocked colloidal silver. The FDA had long since disproved any medical use it may have had.

She then remembered that it was also overly stocked with silver sulfadiazine, silver nitrate, and silver wound dressings. She shook her head as she realised exactly why there was so much silver based medicine. Be it snake oil or genuine.

It was an open secret that the casinos were run by the mafia. But she never would have guessed, even after what happened to her, that the mafia were werewolves. It was because of them that she lost her job and house to begin with. Made all her colleagues think she snapped and went loco like her patients. Made her lose her medical license. Now she was working for them.

She flicked the ash building at the end of her cigarette onto the plaque before taking another drag. But these same monsters were the ones that used their connections to get her medical license back, and a job at this small clinic that, for some reason, paid her more in a week than she made in a month back at the asylum.

At least now she was making enough money that retirement was an actual possibility in a few decades rather than the pipedream it was before.

She grabbed her bandaged shoulder with a hiss, as it suddenly flared with a burning itchiness. Her fingers twitched as she fought the urge to tear at her scrubs and bandages to scratch at the unhealing weeping bite underneath. She steadied her breathing, steeled her will to ignore the intense itchiness. Eventually the feeling faded. She rubbed her shoulder, she would have to change her bandages soon. She always had to when the bite flared up like that.

She paused, there was also one other time that the bite would flare up.

“Long day?” asked Jesse leaning against the wall from just out of Gabby’s line of sight.

Gabby let out a shriek of shock, and dropped her cigarette.

“¡Chinga tu madre!” she swore, clutching her chest. Her heart hammering against her ribs.

“What are you doing here?” demanded Gabby, reaching for another cigarette.

“I’m just checking in on you,” said Jesse, offering one of his own cigarettes instead. “Wanted to see if you’re settling in alright.”

He sounded sincere, but a niggling thought at the back of Gabby’s mind set her own edge. Put her on alert. She had seen his like before in the asylum. The kind of people who were charming, getting people to like them for their own gains with absolutely no empathy or conscience. To put it simply; a psychopath.

Something changed in Jesse’s demeanor, almost imperceptible. A mask was dropped. The way he leaned against the wall now had more confidence, lounging against it like a predator. He smiled, which unnerved Gabby all the more. Usually when she found psychopaths out, they hated it. Saw her as a threat. They would attempt to turn others against her. Thankfully, since the ones she came across were patients, the staff were typically wise to those attempts. But Jesse’s smile. He seemed to like that he was found out. Like a person who was finally beaten at a game that they were constantly winning and starting to get bored of because of it.

“I like you,” said Jesse with a purr. He offered her the cigarette again but as a genuine offer this time with no strings attached.

When Gabby hesitantly took it and lit up, he lit up one for himself and asked, “So how are you settling in?”

Gabby blew out a thin stream of smoke, “It’s a small, pleasant town here.”

“So you’re bored out of your mind,” said Jesse, not as a question, but a statement.

She shrugged, thinking of a certain patient the previous day, “Not always.”

“Oh, do tell,” Jesse cooed, intrigued by the prospect of fresh gossip.

“Patient confidentiality,” said Gabby, refusing to elaborate and flicking the ash from her cigarette onto the clinic’s plaque.

“Oh come on,” said Jesse, pouting. “You don’t have to give names.”

“Fine,” said Gabby, giving in a bit too quickly. She missed gossiping with the other nurses back at the asylum. “Had to twist someone’s testicles to reverse some torsion the other day.”

Jesse let out a sudden shrieking laugh that made Gabby jump.

“The Rowley kid was whacking off too hard again?!” wheezed Jesse once he composed himself enough to speak. “Oh god, Jessica’s gonna love hearing that.”

Gabby shot him a warning glare, and Jesse held his hand up, smoking cigarette in between two of his fingers.

“Okay, fine. I won’t tell her,” said Jesse.

Gabby shook her head and returned to her cigarette. She had no idea how Jesse knew it was Mark Rowley. They lived in Alamo and his father only came all the way to Pioche to help prevent such an incident from getting out and embarrassing him. She scoffed to herself. Real father of the year, concerned more over his own embarrassment instead of the very real risk his son faced over possibly losing a testicle. As far as she knew, Alamo was another pack’s territory, with another pack in between them and here. With neither of the pack’s being associated with this ‘protectorate’ the beasts had.

“Asides from overly horny teenagers,” said Jesse, “Anything else?”

Gabby shook her head, “No. This place isn’t anywhere near as interesting as the Asylum was.”

“What made you want to work at an asylum to begin with?” asked Jesse.

Gabby stiffened up at the question. She never told anyone why except two people. And they were both priests during confession.

“I’d rather not say,” Gabby said with a flat face.

“Can’t be any worse than what anyone in the pack did,” said Jesse. He pointed at Gabby’s shoulder where her scrubs hid the bandages underneath. “You know this better than most any human in town.”

“But I’m not human anymore, now am I?” snapped Gabby.

Jesse was silent, letting Gabby continue.

She took a long, hard drag of her cigarette. Too hard, making her cough. Once she cleared her lungs she said, “Humans can’t turn into a red wolf. Humans can’t see spirits. Humans don’t-”

The last few words stuck in her throat, choking her.

Eventually she managed to force it out, the words bitter in her mouth, “Humans don’t have wounds that never heal.”

“You’re still human,” said Jesse. “Just like how I am.”

“How?” demanded Gabby.

“Cause if we weren’t, we’d be nothing but bloody thirsty beasts, more spirit than flesh,” answered Jesse. He put a hand over his heart, “Humanity is what compels us to maintain the balance between this world and the Hisil. Allows us to sympathise with humanity and spirits. To go against our nature for the greater good. Even if it makes others see us as monsters.”

“The greater good?” scoffed Gabby.

Jesse nodded. “If spirits were allowed to run rampant, they’d slaughter humanity. Consume them until the Mundane world is a barren desert. If the vampires were allowed to run amok, humanity would be enslaved and turned into cattle, born and raised for their blood. If the mages…”

He shuddered, and shook his head, “They already destroyed the world once when Atlantis fell. It can't be allowed to happen again.”

“Didn’t you people destroy the world when you killed that Father Wolf spirit?” asked Gabby.

“We had no choice,” said Jesse. “He was growing senile and failing to protect the balance. How were we supposed to know that his death would shatter Pangea, and destroy the Border Marshes?”

Gabby shook her head. Everyone wanted to save the world and maintain the balance. But everyone disagreed on what the balance was.

“I deserve all of this,” she said under her breath.

“What makes you say that?” asked Jesse.

“Back when I became a Registered Nurse in California,” she said as her breath trembled, as did her hands.

“I was working in the ER when a patient came through,” She couldn’t believe it. She was really going to tell someone outside of Confession. “She was just a little girl. No older than ten. She was in a car crash with her family, T-boned by someone running a red light.”

“Her family?” asked Jesse.

Gabby didn’t answer, taking another long drag of her cigarette.

“She was awake for all of it,” said Gabby looking across the road, but what she saw wasn’t Pioche. “From when it happened, the fire fighters rescuing her, to coming into the ER. We did everything we could for her. But…”

She trailed off, a lump forming her throat, “But her spinal cord was completely severed at the L1 Verterbrae.”

She drew in a sharp breath, sounding more like a sob, “She did soccer at her Elementary school.”

She tried to get her breathing under control, “Then the driver came through. Didn’t have a scratch on him and had a Blood Alcohol of point four-three.”

“He got done for that, right?” asked Jesse.

Gabby said nothing, only taking another drag of her cigarette. There wasn’t much of it left.

“Right?” asked Jesse.

“Fucking judge let him off with community service,” said Gabby, extinguishing the cigarette on the plaque and flicking the butt away. “Dumb bitch bought his sob story.”

“That’s not where it ended, is it?” asked Jesse.

Gabby shook her head, “Not even two months later he came in after crashing a car with a Blood Alcohol of point four-four.”

She should have gone back to work by now, but she still continued telling Jesse what happened. But she also faced away from him in shame of what she did next. “When I saw him I was just so fucking mad. The next thing I knew I was standing over him with a syringe of three hundred milligrams of morphine in his IV.”

“How much is lethal?” asked Jesse.

“Two-fifty,” answered Gabby. She knew that he knew what the lethal dose was. He had to have known. But she told him anyway, just to get it off her chest.

“So you killed some scumbag,” said Jesse, dismissively. “I don’t see how everything that’s happened to you is deserved. You did everyone a service if anything.”

“I didn’t,” admitted Gabby. “I couldn’t do it. I wanted to but I couldn’t. I couldn’t commit that kind of sin.”

“What did you do afterwards?” asked Jesse.

“I told my priest during Confession,” said Gabby. “I moved here. I knew how… violent mental patients could be. So I knew working in an asylum would be the proper penance for what I did. But to also help the addicts that get committed there. So stuff that he did and what I almost did won’t happen again.”

She chuckled. A hollow, pained chuckle. “And look where that got me. It’s clear to me that the Lord didn’t see that as proper penance. I needed to be punished more.”

Jesse shook his head, “You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

He put a gentle hand on Gabby’s shoulder, “Look at it this way. At least one good thing came out of David’s massacre.”

“And what could that possibly be?” asked Gabby. She couldn’t see how such a massacre could possibly have a silver lining.

“Doctor Foley was raping his patients,” answered Jesse.

Gabby slapped the hand from her shoulder and spat in Jesse’s face, “He was not!”

Doctor Richard Foley was a good man. The senior psychologist at the asylum was the only one willing to take on patients that others were considered lost causes.

“It’s true,” said Jesse, crossing his arms. Oddly indignant on the subject.

“How could you possibly know that?” asked Gabby. She refused to think a thing was possible.

“David told me,” said Jesse.

“And he should be trusted, why?” asked Gabby.

“David’s stupid,” said Jesse matter-of-factly, “Very stupid. But when it comes to spirits he's probably the smartest out of all of us. Even Lucas.”

“What does that have to do with you slandering a good man’s name?” demanded Gabby.

“Do you know how loci are created?” asked Jesse. When Gabby shook her head Jesse explained, “They’re created when a constant, strong concept or concepts are produced in a single area. The grief and despair of a dying man trapped in a collapsed mine, intense faith and zealotry of a church’s congregation, or-”

He stressed the final example, “The intense fear, confusion, and humiliation of patients suffering under the abuse from a serial rapist who was supposed to help them.”

Gabby noticed something in Jesse. A flicker of intense emotion. One that Jesse didn’t intend to show. He sympathised with Doctor Foley’s patients, far more than one would normally. A sympathy born from experience Gabby realised.

“Oh god,” said Gabby, a pit formed in her stomach as she understood. “Oh, Mijo, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine,” said Jesse with a smile, waving a hand at Gabby trying to dismiss her concerns.

He wasn’t fine. Gabby could tell. The switch between his serious tone about Doctor Foley to brushing off Gabby’s concern was far too sudden. The waifish man was trying to rapidly pushback down the buried trauma that was unintentionally brought back up.

“Almost everyone killed at least one person during their First Change,” said Jesse. “The one who hurt me was mine.”

“Almost?” asked Gabby. “Who hasn’t?”

“Kaiden,” answered Jesse. “And David played an integral part in making sure he didn’t. He’s the one that broke him out of his cell. Saved him from the Pure getting to him first. If he didn’t, who knows how many would have died.”

“This is insane,” said Gabby, grabbing her head. “I’m insane.”

“We’re all insane,” said Jesse. “Us Uratha, mages, Humanity. Everyone.”

“How is humanity insane?” asked Gabby.

“The Truth of the world is right there in front of humanity's eyes,” said Jesse, waving an arm to show off his surroundings.

“Werewolves, vampires, and mages. All of it. It’s right there right in front of them,” he pointed at the ground in front of him with both hands before throwing his hands up in frustration. “Yet what do they do when they see it, plain as day? They deny it. Say it’s not real. Yet in the same breath worship gods whose holy books tell them the same Truth that they deny.”

“You worked in an asylum,” he said, lowering his voice to almost a whisper. “You knew David before his change. You were suspecting there was something more to him. Yet you brushed it off.”

“He was acting delusional,” said Gabby. “Attacking things that weren’t there.”

“But he wasn’t,” said Gabby, pointing an accusatory finger at Gabby. “You know that now. And you knew that then, even if you did lie to yourself about it.”

“He was the most sane person there. But he was locked up and emotionally and mentally tortured for sixteen years by the ones who were supposed to help him and thought they were. How is that not insanity?”

Gabby didn’t respond. She didn’t know what to say.

“I’ll leave you to it,” said Jesse, turning away. “Your smoke break went on long enough. You’ve only just started this job. Your boss might know to look the other way when we rock up, but that doesn’t mean you can take longer breaks than you should.”

He stopped and looked back at Gabby with a mischievous smile, “I’m not a psychopath by the way. Just Uratha, but I understand the confusion.”

With that he turned around the corner. Gabby looked around and saw that he disappeared without a trace. No footprints, not even an area he could have hid behind.

She rubbed her face in exhaustion, the smoke had proven more stressful than it should have been.