Appropriately enough, the Connecticut Yankee was the one on duty at Times Square when the girl came through. She felt a sympathetic vibe from her for some reason, but it became clear when the girl opened her mouth. Jen Clement's pen name came from more than baseball loyalties and a multilayered novel; she grew up with wicked, with 'pahk the cah in the yahd' rolling off her tongue, with blue blood and noses in the air.

The girl had blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, and the Connecticut Yankee would have mocked her for it except that it was a shade that no woman would ask for out of a bottle; convenient as it might be, this was what the gene pool doled out to her. Her eyes stopped the Connecticut Yankee from spitting insults at her: baby blue eyes, soft and innocent and lost, genuinely baby blue, not just hyperbolically described mundane blue eyes. She looked to be a few years younger than the writer in mere chronology, putting her in her early thirties, but a good two decades behind the writer in emotional age. What drew the Connecticut Yankee's attention was her outfit; she wore a softball uniform that didn't fit her around the middle anymore, the pants clinging to her calves as if sprayed on, the brown leggings stretched to their limits. She even had the cleats, which made it easier for the Connecticut Yankee to track her trail back through the filth that coated the streets where the lights once shone brighter than the noonday sun.

The writer recognized a mark when she saw one, someone who teetered on the edge of sanity, danced the tightrope between Britney's world and the real world, and so she dug through her bag and handed the girl a couple of tales at random. Upside down, she read the title pages and recognized the two stories immediately; one of them was a Snow Queen special, one of those impressionistic pieces that made its best sense through the shimmering smoke of a joint, and the other was one of Wraith's classics. Good stuff, both pieces, the kind of work that could hook the unwary.

Most people, when they received something from an Amazon, walked away reading it, nose buried in the pages, and by the time they realized what they were reading they had wandered halfway across Manhattan. But this girl didn't even get to the next corner before running back to the Connecticut Yankee. "Where is she?" she asked, her New England accent sharp as a knife and comforting as a child's blanket. "Where did you get this? Do you know where she is?" She waved the paper in her hand in the Connecticut Yankee's face. It was Wraith's story, the short one that barely made two pages typewritten.

"Why do you wanna know?" The Amazon forced herself to inject some rudeness into her voice; no matter how special this girl seemed, she couldn't let her reputation suffer.

"Because she's my mommy," the girl replied.

If ever there was something to make a jaw drop, that would be it. The Connecticut Yankee's first thought was that she'd been wrong: this girl wasn't dancing the tightrope, she'd fallen off and cracked her head. Crazy was all well and good in New York, but Amazons tended to get sensitive about crazy that involved their sisters. She had known Wraith for years, and knew that she wasn't even old enough to have a daughter this age, nor was she inclined to engage in the sort of act that would produce a daughter. "Okay, I think you're mistaken."

"Come on, a girl would know her own mommy, right? Take me to her, please, if you know where she is? I haven't seen her in years and I really miss her. She's all I have left, since they killed..." Her voice broke off, and she started sobbing. For the briefest of moments, the Connecticut Yankee let down her guard and allowed herself to be just Jen Clement so that she could hug the girl to her, pat her head a couple of times, and whisper the address of the Refuge into the girl's ear.

Then the moment passed, and she withdrew into her persona again. The girl's silhouette stood out against the orange sky as the sun set, rocking back and forth with an awkward and painful gait. The Connecticut Yankee watched her go, pulling out her handheld and sending a text message to the Refuge. She might indulge a stranger's fantasies, but she wasn't dumb enough to let her friends and colleagues face what might be an unknown danger. She knew too well that danger could come in the most innocuous packages... and it *had* been a former softball player who betrayed them the first time around.

The Amazons, by and large, were night owls, like most writers. But there were degrees and there were degrees. By one in the morning, only a few people tended to be up. Light in the Dark was from San Francisco, and after all the moving around she'd done in her life, she had decided that she was going to live on West Coast time no matter where she was; of her own volition, she took the graveyard shift on surveillance. Opal came from the same time zone, and even if she hadn't, she had long since matched her circadian rhythms with her beloved Wraith's, and the Southern-born writer had always been one for the quiet and the darkness. There were a couple of Disciples who kept similar hours, but they tended to keep those hours in clubs and bars with beautiful women.

It neither disconcerted nor surprised Light in the Dark when a knock on the door resounded through the small vestibule. She got up from her chair, took another drag of her joint, and looked out the slot cut in the door. "The whores' headquarters is in Long Island City, take the 2 to 42nd Street, change for the E, fuck off at Queens Plaza," she informed the blonde girl.

"I'm looking for my mommy."

"Barbie doesn't live here, Goldielocks, haul your ass off to the broken bulbs of Times Square and stare at the pretty lights that aren't there." But the girl didn't leave, and her stubbornness reminded Light in the Dark of something that her roommate, best friend, and co-conspirator in marijuana procurement had said once she got home and collapsed on her bed. It was hard to see in the dark, and harder to see through the smoke from an hour's worth of joints, but she could make out some of what the Connecticut Yankee had told her about baby blue eyes and endearing innocence. She moderated her tone slightly. "Look, kid, it's one in the morning, and if your mommy's here, which I really doubt, she's probably asleep. Try again in the morning."

"But I've been walking for houuuuuuuurs! Mommy Lainey's gotta see me, she's just gotta!" The pitiful wailing of the girl's voice set Light in the Dark's teeth on edge and eradicated any trace of pity that had stirred in her heart.

"Clear out! I warned you once already, and if I have to warn you again, I'm going to do it with a Smith and Wesson." The dark-haired writer grimly set her joint in the recessed ashtray on the table so that she could reach into the drawer, pull the revolver out, and make sure that the girl heard the safety catch going off. When it was clear that there was no way that the girl was going to leave, Light in the Dark cursed under her breath and stuck the muzzle of the gun out of the specially designed peephole.

"Mommy Lainie! Mommy Lainie, help me!" the girl shrieked.

Thump, thump, thump down the stairs, and Wraith poked her head into the vestibule, pale blue eyes slitted against the light, brown hair in a loose, disarrayed ponytail. "*What* is goin' on here?" she demanded. "Make it quick, Beck, I don't think Laurie can stay in that position much longer."

"Mommy!" the girl interjected.

"You hear the problem," Light in the Dark said dryly.

"Yeah." Wraith's voice had softened even below her usual speaking tones, and her gaze was abstracted towards the street. "Shove over."

"What?"

"You heard me." Without waiting for more protests from the Californian, Wraith squeezed up against the door and spoke through the slot. "Catherine?"

"You called me Kitty. Remember? You were the first one who ever called me that." Out of sight of the two Amazons, the girl's face lit up with a big grin.

Wraith turned to Light in the Dark. "Put the gun away and stand down."

"Excuse me? There is a whacked-out blonde on the other side of this door who thinks you're her mommy, and you want me to stand the hell down? Wraith, I'm a junkie, not a fucking moron."

"Stand the hell down, Marcia, or I will whip your ass with that pea-shooter," and suddenly the quietness of Wraith's voice assumed an air of menace and intimidation, because most people didn't even know that Light in the Dark's nickname was Beck, much less that her actual name was Marcia Beckett. Wraith was a woman of few words, but even the Amazons tended to forget that that meant she heard and knew far more than she would ever say or tell. Light in the Dark put the safety catch back in place on the gun. "Thank'ee. Would you be kind enough to tell Laurie she might as well hit the sack? She's gonna hurt herself keepin' that pose for too long." Light in the Dark didn't take as much offense at being used as an errand girl as she would have liked to, because it wasn't worth the agita. She followed the order without questioning it. Once she was gone, Wraith turned back to the door. "Catherine? You still there?"

"Yeah. Mommy, why don't you call me Kitty anymore?"

"'Cause we played that game a long time ago, and we're both too old for it now. They were good times, I wouldn't ever deny that, but that time is long gone. We aren't even close to bein' the same people we were when we met. We can't go back to those roles, face facts. If you're serious 'bout-"

"Roles?" Catherine's voice rose to a shrill screech that caused a flurry of wings as the Disciples' messenger pigeons took to the air in fright. "Is that all I ever was to you, mommy? Just a role for you to play so you'd fit in? I'm your daughter, not just some kid off the street! We're family! I thought that was something I could trust when everything fell apart. They're dead, mommy, our slashy girls are dead and there's nothing we can do!"

Wraith listened to this tirade with as much aplomb as she could. She, like several of the Amazons and even a few Disciples, couldn't publicly admit to a twinge of grief at the killing of the Lone Wolves. They remembered the olden days, the glory days, before everything had been turned upside down. It was forbidden for a Disciple to consort with a Lone Wolf, outlawed both by the cult of the Layd and the bylaws of the Disciples; there had been a time when the Disciples could coexist with the Lone Wolves, but after what had happened to Scarlet, the line had been drawn.

But the destruction of the Lone Wolves changed everything. Wraith and Emily had spent much of the last two weeks trying to figure out what events were coincidences and what were not: the fire that had seriously damaged Lindseyville, the marked increase in car accidents on Connecticut roads, the spate of gory killings in Petrograd, Nigeria's aggression against Liberia, the repopulation of Rye and Yonkers, the Yankees' sudden losing streak, the Blue Jays' sudden winning streak. Somewhere in all of this there was a pattern, and Wraith had the sudden feeling that Catherine was tied into this pattern like a fly caught in a spiderweb. "What made you decide to come to me after all these years?" she asked Catherine.

"I had to! When I heard that the government had massacred them, I knew you'd help me- you're my mommy and that's what mommies do."

"We gave up that roleplay when you married Zach. If you're serious 'bout New York- if you aren't just here as a tourist- I'd be honored to be your sister in pens, 'cause Lord knows we could always use more writers, we're three down since last year..."

Catherine tilted her head. "Zach," she said distantly, and for a second Wraith was sure that she'd lost the girl, that she was going to revert to another Channel 1 drone. Any second the poison would pour from her lips, the hatred would be unstoppered, and the dull ache under Wraith's breastbone would flare up again. It hurt trying to breathe with a broken heart; Wraith knew this from experience, having experienced it a year ago after Gina's murder. She didn't look forward to the stabbing pain that cut her like broken glass.

But Catherine's next sentence drew her throughts away from that possibility. "He didn't matter. I think he's dead. He left and then he came back, but he was a little different when he came back. He was cuter the second time around. Why weren't you and Mama Gina at my wedding? Mother of the bride's supposed to be one of the most important people there, and I would've been really special for having two moms there."

"You never invited us, Catherine. We lost touch after Richardson was elected. You started cussin' me and Laurel out every time you saw us, and when you told us 'bout the wedding, it was like you were gloatin', not like you just wanted us to know 'cause we cared. That was the last time I heard from you 'til now, so I don't know what you're tryin' to pull, but it's not funny at all." Wraith had meant to sound gentle and concerned, but remembered slights had gotten the best of her, and by the time she finished her point, her voice had grown sharp.

"I don't remember that," Catherine said, and there was a distinct sniffling coming from her side of the door. "I wouldn't do that to you, you must be making it up! Mommy, please, open the door! It's so hot out here, and I just- I can't-" The sniffles were replaced by sobs, and had Wraith not been trying to figure out what on earth was wrong with Catherine, she would have opened the door right then and there.

The more she thought about it, the more she was certain that Catherine's return and extremely odd behavior in returning had to do with the defeat of the Lone Wolves. The girl had referred to it in explaining why she had come to New York. From what she knew of Channel 1 brainwashing, if something didn't compute, the person's brain got scrambled but good. She knew Ariel to be mild proof of this, and some of the tales she'd heard from the woods indicated that this was also what lay behind the madness of the Lone Wolves. If she had to guess, then she'd bet that Catherine was going through similar confusion; her memories had been wrecked, so she couldn't think of her real family, the flesh-and-blood family that had taken care of her for almost twenty years before she ever stumbled into the slash fandoms. All that was left in her reality was the running joke of nearly five years' duration.

Wraith had a few choices now, none of them very palatable. She could turn Catherine away and let her former protégé figure out New York by herself, which gave the girl about the same lifespan as a mayfly. She could keep Catherine at arm's length, befriending her and helping her in any way possible without writing alongside her. She could treat Catherine like the adult she was supposed to be, convince her to swear the Disciples' oath and join the Amazons as an equal, try to rebuild her adult psyche; of course, that would take ages, with Catherine fighting her every step of the way, and it came with the risk of Catherine reverting to Channel 1 and betraying the Disciples the same way Switch-Hitter had betrayed the Amazons. Or she could play along with Catherine and mother her the way she longed to right now, even though it couldn't possibly be good for Catherine's mental health, and probably wouldn't do Wraith's any good either; as for her relationship with Opal, Wraith was dead certain that introducing a foster daughter into the equation would unbalance things, especially since Catherine still spoke of Mama Gina, and Laurel had never been comfortable with the depth of that particular friendship in her beloved's life.

But her train of thought made a sudden and unannounced detour. She couldn't make this decision as Wraith, cold-blooded leader of America's third-most feared terrorist group, sworn to the oath of America's second-most feared terrorist group. This had to come from the woman- the girl, even- that she had been before Britney, who wrote without ulterior motives, whose ideas came only from her fertile imagination, who had used her writing as a tool for making frriends and reaching out to people, who had fallen in love and fallen in lust and found her home somewhere in the middle. Whatever she did for Catherine, it had to come from her, her alone, not from the Disciples' need for secrecy, not from Opal's imagined worries, not from everyone else's views of good and bad. She had to step out of her persona. She had to be herself.

Alaine opened the door and took Catherine into her arms. "Welcome home, Kitty," she murmured.