That, and Emily's stories, are enough to pass the time until...

Huh, who's that?

No hint of recognition. It's not Kyle.

That's no change from this morning, she tells herself sternly, eyes stinging. Back then you thought you had to rescue him, and you were right. You didn't lose anything.

"H-hi," she whispers, then manages to get her voice under control. "Kyle, right? I'm a friend of Emily's."

Well, at least she's here to cry over Emily, instead of over him.

Nico has had a difficult night, and the knowledge that he did it to himself, for carefully-considered reasons, helps only up to a point. He showed himself sixteen hours ago, and every waking moment since then has been a barrage of medical tests and weeping relatives. No police, yet, but they're busy, and also down a man thanks to Nico's actions on Holy Saturday. He's sure they'll take a turn eventually.

The story he's been telling everybody is that he woke up bleeding on Flint Hill with no memories, not even his own name, and a glowing woman in red appeared out of nowhere, picked him up, and carried him to the hospital. Has anyone else seen her? he keeps asking. I really want to see her again.

Which, as an information-gathering strategy, sure did pay off right away. The Glowing Woman saved his body's sister, literally that same morning? And the two siblings' mom just up and left eight years ago without ever explaining herself or telling anyone where she was going? Nico's just about convinced: he fought Kyle's mother yesterday. That's bad in that she definitely won't stop coming after him, but good in that she might be open to negotiations once brute force fails. Even if she's not a traditional alchemist she clearly has some power of her own; maybe she can fix Kyle, after Nico leaves him behind.

But for now he's playing the good son, and that means he shouldn't be rude. "Hi, friend of Emily's," he smiles. "Sorry if we've met before. I'm having some problems with my memory."

He moves like the Juice Man, but his voice is new: harsh and raspy, like he smoked thirty years of cigarettes in the twenty-six hours since you last saw each other.

Yeah that was a pain in the neck to get right, ha ha. Plenty of people have damaged their voices with alchemical potions over the centuries; he might be the only alchemist to ever do it on purpose. But Adam literally laughed at his attempts to imitate a New Hampshire accent, and he wanted to cut down on the number of weird things he'd have to explain when other alchemists inevitably start circling. The plan is to pretend to be a helpless ritual victim; damage sells that in ways that incongruity can't.

"No. No, we don't know each other, don't worry."

"Her name is Sophie!" Emily puts in. Come on, girl, you're choking. You have to give him more than that!

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm Sophie."

She should treat this as an opportunity. She's right in front of her enemy and he has no idea. She's spying on him, basically. She should use that. She should.

"So you made it back," she manages, after a hopefully-not-too-awkward pause. "What even happened?"

Nico is not a connoisseur of pauses, awkward or otherwise. "I don't know," he replies easily. "When I woke up, I didn't even know my own name. But an angel in a red dress swooped down and rescued me, and carried me here. The same one who rescued my sister, it sounds like." He'll give her a little smile, the one he practiced with a mirror before he started this scheme. "So if you see a glowing woman around somewhere, would you tell her I want to talk to her again? Please?"

UM. Is her brother in love with the angel?!? The first time she heard this story she was so excited to see him that she barely even listened, but now that she's hearing it again...there's subtext. Or text. Or even, like, supertext.

"But you don't remember anything that happened?" she presses.

He shakes his head. "Not a thing. Some of my life is starting to come back, like how I remembered I had a sister once I saw her, so I hope I'll find out soon. I plan to go around to different places in Raymond, and visit Boston, and see if that stirs anything up." A thought strikes him, and he adds, "And it's just an intuition, but I think more strange things are happening in Raymond than just this thing with me and my sister. If you notice something like that, something you can't explain, something adults wouldn't believe you about, would you please let me know? I really want to understand what happened to me. That's not so strange, is it?"

Yes, part of the point of his being here is so that he'll be in a position to hear about the cards before faraway alchemists do. He should be trying to recruit the local children into an ad-hoc intelligence-gathering network, that just makes sense. He'd been assuming he'd do that with Kyle's friends and relatives, whoever they turned out to be, but why not make use of Emily's friends too?

So there are more cards missing. They'd been pretty sure of that already, but this pretty much confirms it.

Huh, this is pretty useful, actually. They could lure him into a trap. Okay. Okay, she's doing great at spying. She should build on this. She should...

Doing this without her aura is so hard. Maybe it's time to take the win and leave, before she makes some kind of terrible mistake.

"I, uh, I actually think I'd better go. The nurse told me half an hour and it's been way more than that, so. Yeah."

She'll grab her bag and smile at Emily. "I hope they let you go soon. I'll come visit you once you're out, how about that?"

Emily does not understand Sophie's strategy here AT ALL, but she'll support it. "Sounds great!"

And then it's time to skedaddle. Out of this room, out of this hospital, back to her home and her parents and all the good things in her life.

Huh. Weird girl. But Kyle's sister is kinda weird too, so maybe it fits. He'll lie back on his bed and smile at Emily in an I'm-too-tired-for-a-long-conversation sort of way; it's a complicated thing to express with a smile, but he's had a lot of practice today, and it is not at all a lie.

Yeah that's fine Emily has other things to focus on.

Sophie's plan is great, it's so romantic Emily could literally die, but she's not sure Sophie's thought it through all the way. There's not going to be school for a while, and when there is Kyle's a year older than her, so they're not going to be together that much. When exactly is he going to be hanging out with her, so he can see her and realize how great she is and fall in love with her again?

Like, look how she behaved when Kyle came back in the room! She basically took one look at him and ran away! Is Sophie shy? She doesn't act shy, most of the time. She didn't sound shy, when Kyle was talking about her. Is she playing hard to get?

Hmm.

Kyle was Sophie's first boyfriend, he said. Emily, by contrast, has kissed three different boys, one of whom was French and should count at least double. Well, Quebecois. He spoke French, that's what counts. The point is, Sophie is two years older than Emily, and so cool and so smart, but she maybe doesn't understand boys as well as Emily does. She probably doesn't know how dumb they are, how you have to get right in their faces before they understand even basic, obvious facts.

Yeah, the more she thinks about it the surer she is: Sophie needs her help. She'll be sneaky about it. People don't think she can be sneaky, but that's because she's SO SNEAKY they never even notice. She won't tell her brother anything, that would be tragic. But one way or another, she's getting those two back together.

And then someday, years from now when she's the maid of honor at their wedding, she'll tell Sophie all the different schemes she used, and she'll be so, so impressed.

Nico stares at the hospital ceiling, letting his thoughts drift.

This plan has merit; even Adam thought so. He'll be in Kyle's body instead of his own most of the time, so he'll be hard for the Glowing Woman to track. He'll be surrounded by friends and family, so she won't be able to swoop in and kidnap him in secret. And if anyone stumbles across one of his cards, he'll have a chance to hear about it and intervene. And unlike his enemy, he can operate in two bodies by turns, staying up nights when she has to sleep.

Which reminds him: can he feel her right now?

No. Your sense of her flickered on and off all morning, a good distance northeast, but that stopped about two hours ago and hasn't restarted.

Well, she doesn't seem like the type to start a fight in a hospital, so she's probably not sneaking up on him. At least for now, he's safe. Probably the same when he's at home, or at school, or other places with innocent bystanders.

What should he do, if she doesn't respond to all the lures he's been putting out? Should he try to find her again? It'll be hard, with how she's made herself untrackable half the time. Well, if all else fails, he can put Kyle and Emily in danger again. He'd rather not; it's a tricky place to start negotiations. But at least he knows it would work.

It's strange, though. This is probably the most exciting thing to happen in this town in a century. Why is he the only person working on it?

Pastor Reed didn't have a lot of time to think about the mysterious stranger, at first. At the school he settled Emily down by the heater in the nurse's office, though she hardly needed it; even her warm winter coat was dry. Later he went with her family to the hospital; he was involved already, and he's pretty handy with a chainsaw. When people asked him what happened, he stuck to the bare facts, and didn't try to interpret anything. If anyone asked him any hard questions, he just told them he had to pray about it.

That worked for everyone. Nobody quite dared ask him, "was this a miracle?" but clearly everyone was wondering.

As well they might!

When he finally has space and time to think about exactly how this all came to be, late the following night, he isn't thinking about who the stranger reminded him of.

The lost lamb is saved. She was rescued by a stranger whose first words to him were "Don't be scared!". In the Bible angels say that a lot, usually right away, trying to calm their poor mortals down enough that they'll listen to whatever the message is.

The message...was a little more diffident and confused, actually, than he'd have expected from the voice of God. More abrupt.

Please, Lord. If it is Your will, just this once tell me plainly. What did I see, in the gym doorway during the storm?