John’s back was pressed against the alley wall, hand clasped around Cassandra’s mouth.

“This isn’t what you think,” John started, voice tense. “If I let you go, will you let me explain what happened?”

Cassandra didn’t respond, instead she just kept looking at him with that same terrified expression. He was fairly sure she’d bolt the second he loosened his grip. New plan.

“You saw him shoot me, right?” John nodded towards the corpse a few feet away. “What I did – it was just self defense.”

Cassandra stared at him, then the body still laying on the alley floor, and the gears in her head finally started turning. Good. John cautiously removed his hand. She looked up at him, a tinge of fear still in her voice.

“. . .What are you?”

“I’m. . . not really sure.” John answered.

It was a few minutes later that John had managed to coax the girl away from the alley, and the police whistles that had followed in the wake of the mugger’s gunshot.

Now, he sat across from Cassandra in a small ice-cream parlour. A large sundae between them. It was completely untouched by the girl who was staring with open hostility.

“This is. . . complicated,” John offered. “Can’t really explain something I don’t understand myself.”

“Are you going to hurt me?” Cassandra asked, pointedly.

“No. And I’ll be out of the city by morning, anyway. So, you don’t have to worry about me – or what you saw.”

Cassandra was watching him with a critical eye.

“Is this why you read the paper everyday, and mark that map? You’re looking for people like that man in the alley.”

“That’s right,” John admitted. “He was a killer, that part I know. I’ve been looking for him for a while.”

“So how come you didn’t run? Why stay and explain this to me?”

Truth be told he was stalling. If Cassandra heard him, it was likely those detectives weren’t far behind, especially after that gunshot. They’d be searching the area right now, probably not for long but still. And he had other concerns.

“Mostly, I wanted to make sure you don’t end up in some insane asylum. The cops aren’t gonna believe what you’d tell them, trust me on that. It’d be best if you just forgot about it.”

She considered that, eyes drifing to the red spot on his chest, and realization suddnely hitting.

“Shouldn’t we be at a hospital?”

John opened his jacket, lifting his shirt slightly. The wound was gone, healed over a stain of dried blood and torn fabric.

“. . .Are you a demon?” Cassandra practically whispered, staring at the bare skin.

“If I was a demon, would I buy you ice cream?”

Cassandra looked at him, the ice cream. Then she drove a fork into John’s forearm, bolting out of her seat an instant later. She didn’t make it far before John grabbed her, lifting her off her feet.

He stood, gently sitting her back into the booth, and removing the now bloody fork from his arm.

He took a deep breath as she stared at him, trying to keep the anger out of his voice.

“. . .Why would you do that?”

“You eat people. Mom told me stories about stuff like you – and they never end well for people like me.”

That was actually fair, given what John was. Still. . .

“I don’t hurt good people. I go after the bad ones, like that man in the alley. Not people like you.”

A server approached, the woman stopping a few feet away from their table. She took in the bloody fork, the trail that led back to John’s still bleeding forearm, then Cassandra. Cautiously, she laid a check on the table, and moved off without another word.

John stood as the woman disappeared into the back, laying a few bills on the counter.

“She’ll be calling the cops. We should go. Now.”

John and Cassandra walked along the empty street, back towards their apartment. The detective’s car was gone, so it was likely they’d moved on.

Then Cassandra took his hand, surprising John. She turned it over to look at the wedding band still on his finger.

“What about your wife?” Cassandra asked. “Is she like you?”

John pulled his hand away.

“I don’t want to talk about my family.”

Cassandra frowned, eyeing him.

“Okay. . . What happens if you stopped eating, would you die?”

John looked the girl over. Oddly, she didn’t seem afraid anymore. More like she was curious, as if she were thinking something over.

“Wish it was that simple.” John replied.

“That mugger, did you eat his soul? I saw that smoke you made and. . .” Cassandra noticed his warning look. “I’m not saying you are a demon, just like one.”

“. . .Maybe.” John conceded. “I get the sense of their lives when I take them. Their memories, good and bad.”

Cassandra stopped then, turning to John.

“I want to make a deal with you. You can have my soul if you help me find whoever killed my mom.”

“Why would I make a deal?”

“They always make deals in the stories mom told me. I thought it was a rule, or something.” Cassandra answered, matter-of-factly.

“I told you, I don’t eat good people. And you don’t know your mom was killed, cops said it was a heart attack.”

John started walking again, Cassandra jogged to keep up.

“Maybe they’re wrong.” Cassandra suggested. “If the cops around here were any good there wouldn’t be anyone left for you to eat.”

John snorted, but she had a point. Glancing down, he saw she was still staring at him, completely serious. John sighed.

“Look, I’m sorry about your mom. I really am, but she died. It happens, doesn’t feel good – but that’s just life.”

Cassandra stopped, dead in his path.

“I know someone killed her. She never gets sick, let alone die.” She paused, giving John a pleading look. “I won’t tell anyone about you. . . Not if you help me.”

John considered the girl, her situation. It didn’t take him long. After all the girl was right.

Bad things happened when he was involved.

“There’s nothing to help you with.” John responded. “And no one’s going to believe you if you tell them about me.”

He left then, walking into the apartment building. The best thing he could do for the kid, the only thing that was right, was to get her to move on.

That much he was sure of.

The next morning, John headed out of his apartment to get a fresh paper. Cassandra had been quiet, which was probably for the best. All he could do now was find the next city he’d head to.

It was when he returned that he found Cassandra in the apartment hallway. She held a large pile of newspapers in both arms. The door to his apartment was wide open, he hadn’t bothered locking it being so close by.

“What are you doing?” John asked.

“Investigating!” Cassandra answered.

Before John could say anything more the girl turned towards her own apartment and slammed the door.

John stared at the closed door, then looked over his own apartment. It was. . . cleaner.

He could see she’d taken most of the older issues, the obituaries he’d left in a small pile by his desk. Part of him debated doing something about it, but he decided against it. It wouldn’t be right to yell at the kid, and besides, he’d be out of the city by nightfall.

Everyone coped differently, if taking some of his trash helped her, so be it.

John finished packing what clothes he’d decided to keep into a small duffel bag. What was left would stay here, he preferred to travel light.

Satisfied, he took one last look at the apartment, then paused, noticing something. He moved to the couch, the one Cassandra had been laying on, and found a small photo lodged between the cushions. Cassandra and her mother, both in formal dresses, smiling side by side.

It must have fallen out of her journal when she wasn’t paying attention. He grabbed it, heading out to the hall, to Cassandra’s apartment. John raised his hand to knock, then thought better of it.

No, sometimes it was simply better to just disappear. He was about to slip the photo under the girl’s door when a shout came from behind him.

“She in there?!”

John turned to find his landlord, an overweight, balding man, in the stairwell.

“There a problem?” John asked.

The landlord looked John over, obviously pissed.

“Rent’s due. Little shit’s mom’s been dodging me all week.”

“She ain’t dodging you,” John explained. “She’s dead.”

“Is she. . ? Or maybe that’s just a story the two of them came up with. Either way, I don’t give a shit. Rent’s back due and I want my money.”

John moved towards the man, letting some of the annoyance slip into his voice.

“I talked to the cops myself, they found her mom’s body yesterday.”

“How’s that my problem? If the kid ain’t got the money, she can start spreading her legs like her old lady.”

John stared at the man a beat. Then another. Then, he crossed the distance between the two with inhuman speed, slamming the landlord’s head into the wall as his hand wrapped around the portly man’s throat.

“Did you mean what you just said?”

The landlord was too terrified to answer.

“Did you mean it?” John asked again, louder this time.

The air liquified, and white smoke began to pour out of the landlord’s body, his skin shrivling. John allowed the strands to float towards him, tasting them. Then he abruptly stopped, the smoke disappaiting. He’d only seen a few things, but it had given him the sense the man was crude, but not evil. Not yet at least.

John let the man drop to the ground, watching as he scrambled away on all fours.

“I suggest you get the hell out of here.”

The man didn’t wait, he turned, sprinting for the exit as if his life depended on it.

John waited until his footsteps had faded far into the distance, then turned to Cassandra’s door. He knocked, lightly.

No answer. That was odd. He was positive the entire hall had heard that little exchange. He tried the handle; and found the door was unlocked.

John entered to find what once was a modest, feminine home was now littered with newspaper clippings, missing people, obituaries.

“Cassandra?”

No answer. Worried now, John searched the apartment. The girl had covered the floor in newspapers, a few pieces of tape linking pages together. At the center, he recognized an article he’d read, then discarded, the morning before.

[Local woman found dead in Chinatown]

Cassandra’s mother, he knew. She really had been doing her own investigation. As he looked through the mess of paper and tape, John’s foot kicked something metal, sending it skittering across the floor. He tracked the noise to find a single bullet spinning towards another pile of newspapers. A single, 9mm bullet, the same caliber as John’s own gun. He watched it slow to a stop, remembering the sight of Cassandra leaving his apartment.

John ran for his desk, opening the drawer to find the gun that was supposed to be resting inside, missing.

“Shit. . .”