Sounds like Speculative Assassination Plan Failure Point Number Four won't be a problem either! He reclines the seat as best he can, tries to get comfortable.

"I'm moving back to the other body now. As soon as you can, turn east or west. If the water keeps following you, abandon this body and flee; the water won't hurt me." He's almost sure of that, sure enough that he's not comfortable risking Adam's life for that one last sliver of certainty.

"Will do, boss."

Will he actually? He'll figure it out when he gets there.

Nico closes his eyes, breathes in and out just once more, and plunges back into the well.

Meanwhile

Your plan worked, Sophie: you found a random person's yard! There's a big bare oak tree looming over the house; it probably gets nice and shady around May. A tire swing rocks uneasily in the wind, jerking toward you and falling back away. The windows, visible in stripes through the branches, are dark and uninviting.

Otso wants to follow her into the yard, but he isn't sure he should. His dad and Sophie both said he should stay away from places where people could see him. On the other hand he doesn't want his new friend to leave him alone wants to see the yard, he's never seen a tire swing up close before and wants to know if he could swing from it.

If Sophie sees him hesitate, she'll beckon him to follow her.

"I know I said you should hide, but I literally glow. The rain is still..." she waves at the cloud of steam around her. It doesn't seem like it's hot enough to be boiling but it's sure doing something other than falling down like it's supposed to. "People are going to notice that something's up. So long as you don't talk you're the least weird part of this whole situation. If anyone asks, I'll tell them you're my magical guardian bear and I trust you with my life. That's not even a lie, come to think."

It even works out Biblically, she vaguely remembers. Didn't one of the prophets have bears for companions? Maybe one of the hermity ones? She can look it up later.

And if he say the tire swing thing out loud in her head ugh ugh ugh, she'll reply that probably the branch and rope aren't sturdy enough and he should leave it alone.

Magical guardian bear?!

TRUSTS HIM WITH HER LIFE?!?!?!

All he'll say, once he's got himself under control a little bit, is "That makes sense. Too bad about the tire swing. It looks fun."

"Once Kyle's feeling better he can make you one with thicker branches and, um, a chain or something. He's good at stuff like that."

The windows of the house are all dark? No lights in the basement, none in the attic, nowhere?

Nowhere.

Probably no one's home, fair enough. Are the houses on either side close enough to see? If not, or if they're dark too, she'll just walk around to the road.

You can't tell; this is one of the sparser parts of Raymond and the forest is encroaching on either side of the yard. Once you reach the street you can spot a few more houses, but their windows aren't lit either.

That's pretty unlucky, not everybody goes to church on Sunday morning. Or, ooh, maybe the power's out. It probably is. Rats. Is she just going to have to knock on every door on Glen Ridge Road until someone hears her over the storm and decides to answer? She can do that, it's not like her plan was super sophisticated in the first place, but there really nothing smarter?

There is, at least little bit: where's the nearest parked car? She'll just go bother every household with a car in the driveway: maybe some of them took just have two cars but it's some kind of clue at least. It's not very clever, but it's been a long hour (or so!?) and Sophie is all out of clever. Persistent will have to do.

A lot of these folks have covered garages like your family's, but as you walk up the road you find a one with a car parked in front of the garage, instead of inside it. It doesn't really have a porch, but there's a little awning over the front door to give your rain shield a break.

Good enough.

Knock, knock, knock!

!!

Jill is not an old lady. She was born sixty-three years ago, that's just a fact, but old-ladying is something you do. It's quitting book club because you can't face taking the stairs down into the town hall basement. It's complaining about Youth These Days, or your bowel problems, or whatever damnfool thing you saw on TV last night. It's being scared of the unknown. She saw it in her mother, she's starting to see it in her friends, and she for damn sure won't accept it in herself. Sitting a rocking chair reading a murder mystery by flashlight like she's been doing is a borderline case, but she'd've done that when she was thirty, too, so she thinks it squeaks by.

Startling so badly you almost fall out of your chair, when somebody knocks in the middle of a roaring thunderstorm and a power outage, is old-ladying for sure.

She'll curse herself for a timid old fool, just once, then take her flashlight and go off to investigate.

A magnificent glowing woman is at the door, holding an unconscious teenage boy! Gillian doesn't need her flashlight to pick out the girl's features, and the boy barely reacts to it. She doesn't recognize either of them.

...huh.

Her first thought is ghosts. Ghosts aren't real, or at any rate she's never seen one, but glowing women aren't real either so there you are. Her second thought is stories her own grandmother used to tell, about the odd strangers one meets at night and the things that happen to people who turn them away. Does believing stuff like that count as old-ladying? It might. But then again, isn't it just common sense to help people in trouble?

Does she look like she's in trouble?

She looks relieved, mostly. Sophie was getting a little impatient with her own plan, there, but now it looks like she might get to sit down and stop doing things for a few hours.

Good enough. She'll open the door. "You folks lost?"

"I found him," she'll toss in a nod toward Kyle, "up on Flint Hill. He's exhausted, and hurt, too. Once this storm stops, I'm going to take him to the hospital. Until then he needs a place to rest. Can we stay in your living room for a few hours? If that's all right?"

She planned that out in advance, but actually saying it is pretty weird. The tone she's aiming for is "government official commandeering your vehicle in an emergency", but she's never done that and she has done a lot of "good child asking for an extra-special favor" and she feels like she's getting them mixed up.

And oops she almost forgot. "The bear behind me is named Otso. You don't have to worry about him, he's a magical guardian bear, he's not dangerous."

_{Why did that feel less weird than asking to use this lady's living room?}

"Excuse me, the what?" She'll play the flashlight beam over the space behind them, trying to find this mystery bear.