In the apartment Sam and Bai Haorui had rented temporarily, the curtains were drawn tight, leaving only a warm yellow table lamp that made Jessica's gauze-wrapped neck stand out all the more. Although mugwort salve had stopped the claw wound from bleeding, it lay like a gulf between her and Sam.
Jessica held a glass between her fingertips, tiny ripples trembling across the water. She stared at the bubbles at the bottom, her voice so soft it seemed she feared shattering something. "You never told me... this was what your family did."
Sam sat on the sofa opposite her, his knuckles white, his palms still holding the warmth of her body from when she had fallen from the ceiling. He reached to touch her, but stopped halfway. "I was afraid you'd be scared, afraid these things would ruin your life... afraid you'd leave me."
"These things aren't what ruined my life." Jessica's glass clanked against the coffee table, spilling half the water. "It's that you kept hiding it from me. Every day, I had nightmares about a dark shadow choking me, and you told me over the phone, 'Don't worry, you're just stressed.' Just now, when I was pinned to the ceiling, watching fire rise from under the bed, I thought I was going to die-and you already knew all this would happen, didn't you?"
Her voice shook, and her eyes were terribly red, but she shed no tears. Bai Haorui and Dean had tactfully stayed on the balcony. Dean leaned against the railing smoking, smoke rings drifting into the night; Bai Haorui toyed with the Five Emperor Coins, their soft clinking providing the only buffer in the apartment.
Sam's Adam's apple bobbed, and he finally spoke the words weighing on his heart. "My dad's a demon hunter. I grew up following him around hunting ghosts, monsters, and demons. I left home for Stanford because I wanted to escape that life, to live an ordinary life with you... but the Yellow-Eyed Demon won't leave me alone. It came after you because of me."
"Because of you." Jessica repeated those three words, then suddenly laughed, her laughter full of bewilderment. "I always thought our future meant graduating, finding jobs, renting a house with a little garden... not demons and demon hunters, not being pinned to the ceiling and burned to death at any moment."
She stood and picked up the backpack on the sofa, pulling its zipper shut swiftly. "Sam, I need time. I have to think again about whether I can accept a world like this, and you like this."
Sam sprang to his feet and caught her wrist, his fingertips icy. "I can wait. However long it takes."
Jessica gently pulled free, her fingertips brushing his palm as though saying goodbye. "Don't walk me out. I'll go to the station myself and head back to my aunt's." The moment the door closed, Sam's shoulders sagged. Only the table lamp's light remained in the living room, illuminating his solitary shadow.
The two men came in from the balcony. Dean stubbed his unfinished cigarette out in the ashtray and offered Sam a beer. "When I was seventeen, I told a girl I wanted an ordinary life too. John and I were hunting vampires then, and I watched her get bitten." He paused, lowering his voice. "Some roads aren't ones we choose. We have to walk them."
Sam didn't take the beer. He only stared at the doorway, as though waiting for Jessica to suddenly return. Bai Haorui patted his back and waved his phone. "Don't sit here stewing. A new burger place in town's gone viral. The line stretches halfway down the street. I hear all the customers are college girls. Get a little yang energy somewhere crowded, and check out some girls while you're at it-better than staring at an empty apartment."
Dean's eyes lit up, and he gave Sam a shove. "Come on, my treat. You can see what a real 'master' looks like while we're at it."
The two half-pulled, half-dragged Sam out the door. The burger shop's line was indeed long, curving around the street corner. Sunlight filtered through the plane-tree leaves, falling warmly on the student couples waiting in line. Bai Haorui went up toward the front and struck up a conversation with a girl in an off-white hoodie, twirling a Five Emperor Coin in his hand. "Hey, are you here to try it out too? I heard the meat in their bacon cheeseburger is thick enough to fill your whole mouth." The girl laughed and handed him a candy. Bai Haorui passed it straight to Sam. "Something sweet to take away a little of the bitterness."
Dean leaned against a lamppost, commenting on the girls passing by. "The one in the denim skirt has nice legs. And that one with the high ponytail-you can tell she's athletic. Damn, she's hot." Sam bit into the candy, but its sweetness didn't reach his heart. Instead, he remembered lining up for milk tea with Jessica. She used to lean against him like that too, complaining to him about the long line.
"What are you thinking about?" Bai Haorui nudged him. "The burgers are here. Eat up. They won't taste good cold."
Sam took the burger and bit into it. The aroma of cheese and the meat juices spread through his mouth, yet he couldn't taste a thing. Watching Bai Haorui and Dean huddle together, discussing what equipment to bring to their next stop, he suddenly felt that perhaps he had never truly escaped-from the day his mother died, a demon hunter's blood had flowed in his bones. Jessica's departure had only made that clearer to him.
Early the next morning, Sam and Bai Haorui went to Stanford's academic affairs office. The advisor pushed up his glasses and looked at the leave-of-absence applications on his desk, his brow tightly furrowed. "Both of you had GPAs above 3.8 last semester, and you're about to apply to graduate school. Why take leave so suddenly? Has something serious happened at home?"
Bai Haorui leaned over the desk and said with a smile, "Nothing that serious. An elder in the family is in poor health, so we need to go back and look after them for a while. We're both smart anyway. We can catch up on our courses when we come back and still be top students. There's no rush."
After completing the leave procedures, the three stood beside the GMC. Dean waved a slip of paper in his hand. "Dad's trail went cold in Minnesota. A friend at the police department there said there've been several 'face-swapping murders' lately. Sounds like a Shapeshifter."
Bai Haorui patted his backpack, which held freshly purchased glutinous rice and yellow paper. "Don't worry. I'll definitely have the glutinous rice rounds ready for this trip to Minnesota. We didn't get to use them against the Yellow-Eyed Demon last time. This time, we'll let the Shapeshifter find out what a 'master fraud-buster' is."
Dean rolled his eyes, but couldn't help laughing. "Keep making empty promises, and you're charging in first next time we fight a monster."
Sam leaned against the car door and took a deep breath of air tinged with autumn, still clutching the pearl hair clip Jessica had left behind-she had forgotten it at the apartment yesterday. He put the hair clip in his wallet and looked up at the other two. "Let's go. Let's not let the trail go cold again."
The GMC's engine started, and it drove toward the highway. In the rearview mirror, Stanford's gates gradually grew smaller.