"The human said nothing, though? Where was this?"

She shakes her head and names a street intersection.

"So if one of us goes there - broken door on the shop - would you expect an ash pile or any smears where the guy got vaporized?"

She hesitates, then shakes her head again. "No. I don't know. It didn't look like anything - fell, after. He was just gone."

"Did the monster talons leave marks on the sidewalk?"

"I'm not sure. They might have. Not big ones, anyway, not that I could see from where I was standing."

"What kind of shop is this?"

She shrugs. "It was closed, lights off and everything, they all were. I didn't turn back to look at the sign."

"I don't... I don't think so," she says.

"Do you know what time this happened? Can you go into more detail about what the alien sounded like? Or the weapon - what it looked or sounded like?"

"It was made of shiny metal," she recalls, "and it tapered almost to a point but sort of blunt, and it made a sound like - like a screamy whoosh. And there was a smell after it fired. Kind of a burning smell but not quite. The monster's voice was very deep and kind of growly, but it didn't sound like an animal, it sounded like an angry man muttering to himself. Except the sounds weren't quite right. I've no idea if he even could speak any human language, with that mouth. And it was, I don't know, a little after midnight."

"The hell would I do that for? I didn't even go home, I went straight to Ethan's."

"Whose parents are likewise in complete ignorance, I assume?"

"Yeah, of course."

"If Charlie were - but he isn't. And I don't see Renée being very useful here either. I suppose we could tell Trouble."

Robin considers this notion.

"No harm in it," says Ethan. "...Probably."

"Well, I don't know what use he'd be, but one thing I definitely don't expect is for him to decide unauthorized that the situation would be better if forty more people knew about it."

"Yeah, you've got that dead right," Ethan agrees.

"And then he'll know to - I don't know. Avoid that intersection at night? Go looking for that intersection at night? I actually don't know, maybe we'd better not tell him."

"There is that."

"We can tell him, though," says Robin, "if we think of a way it would help. Help what, I don't even know. I just saw some stranger murdered by a, a demon. What's going to help with that?"

"Unless you want to risk explaining to a therapist, I don't really know."