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providers, and so after a string of failed attempts, Jared had to join his mother at her office job, which entailed staying quiet in the corner with Dragonlance books and hand-held videogames. His dad moved back in, but the relationship never improved. His parents did take him back to the lake regularly every weekend, before it was filled in and made into basketball courts.
    Jared never saw Fatso again, but long imagined other gulls guiding him back to the ocean where he’d heal and be loved.
     
    * * *
     
    As they continued down the all-too familiar city streets of his Southern Californian childhood, Jared watched the banshee, his feelings still on a tilt-o-whirl. Long hair drinking in the sunlight across threads of purple and magenta steel awash in a chestnut storm, she was outrageously attractive to him. So human looking and yet… alien. He was both enamored and terrified with the very concept of her. Even so, there was a strange trust between them, like a parent and child, but unique unto itself. He would follow her anywhere and that scared him more than anything else.
    “How did you know the Assembly were near?” he asked.
    “People died today who were not scheduled. That was their doing. It isn’t permitted to rearrange the schedule, but they are owed you.”
    “People died,” muttered Jared. “Because of me?”
    She ignored this question, lost in thought. “Still, I can't believe the Assembly was given permission to abuse the death schedule for so many, not even for a grant from the Silent Kings.” The banshee glanced down. Then her face darkened. “They mean to blame me... if I survive, I’ll be made to answer for these unplanned deaths.”
    “What do you mean, if you survive? You aren't a person. You can't die, can you?”
    She looked at him as though she’d let something slip. “Everything can die, Jared, even those life forms that cannot age have a means to expire. Even banshees can die. It’s difficult, but there are ways.”
    “But who hails your death then?”
    The banshee pressed her lips together, thinking a moment. Somehow it made her more beautiful to him.
    “I've met my own banshee three times now, but she rarely visits the Deeper Unseen,” she replied. “She has red hair, is slender, with rather fierce looking features—but kind eyes. Just as with me, she has no name. She has watched me all my life, just as I've watched you.”
    “That’s weird that banshees have banshees.”
    “Everything with a soul needs to be given passage. All that energy goes to the same place, in the end. I'm lucky none of my assignments are other banshees—those assignments are long term, if not eternal, and require tracking just like any other. I can't imagine the patience it would require.” The banshee winced at something and stepped off the sidewalk.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Even walking on this concrete makes my soles sting a little because it’s not as solid a connection to this world. That’s why I had to get you to come down from the second floor of that doctor’s office. I couldn’t go up there myself. The farther away I get from the ground, the more I lose connection.”
    “Why is that, banshee?”
    “This isn’t my reality, Jared. I belong to the Deeper Unseen. That’s my home. And without using the Cosmos Scream, I have to remain anchored when I have physical presence in this dimension. That goes the same for the Assembly, for that matter.”
    “But, banshee—”
    “What, human?” She eyed him. “That’s getting annoying, you calling me banshee . I must say.”
    “You have no name though.”
    “Well use your imagination and give me one.”
    Jared thought about it, but he’d never considered assigning a name to someone before. Pets yes, people no. He shrugged. “I don’t know… some of my friends in school used to shorten my name to Jare. How about we shorten banshee to Banch?”
    “I hate it.”
    “Okay,” Jared said, clearing his throat. “Let’s stick with Bs