No wonder I dreamed of him all night. Of him climbing up to my window, and kissing me the moment I opened it to let him in. Of course there was more to the dream, but I'm gonna let you fill in the blanks. I woke up at eight-thirty to a cold bright morning, feeling like I'd slept ten hours straight, full of energy, in the best of moods and ready for whatever the day may throw at me.

Looking out while I got dressed, I had a flashback of my dream and chuckled, shaking my head. I really needed to tone down my body chemistry if I didn't want to make a fool of myself. At the same time, everything I saw through my window seemed to call out to me. So I wore my jogging clothes and trotted down the stairs.

Amy was already in the kitchen, making breakfast. She looked happy and energetic too.

"Going out so early?" she asked, handing me a steamy mug.

"No, thanks. It's too beautiful a morning to stay indoors. Wanna join me?"

"Rain check."

"Your loss."

I was heading out when the Collins walked in.

"Morning, Susan, Mike. Please remember Trisha is still sleeping," I said on my way out.

The moment I turned to the garden, the guesthouse front door opened to give way to Pri— I didn't think of him by his last name anymore, so let's update the narrative. To Brandon. We saw each other and stopped, surprised. Then we noticed each other's jogging outfit and chuckled. We didn't need a word: he motioned for me to lead the way and I headed for the long trail to the Quabbin.

I didn't dare to even glance at him, matching my pace to trot by my side, his face hidden behind sunglasses and cap. But I loved the sync of going out for a jog at exactly the same time, just as I loved sharing such a simple, everyday activity with him.

He wasn't the least bit agitated when we reached the Quabbin, and frowned when he saw me stop and produce my bottle.

"You already quitting?" he asked, surprised.

I could only nod, panting. "I've been doing this for only two weeks," I said when I caught a little breath. "And this is how far I can get without supplementary oxygen."

He chuckled under his breath and shrugged.

We walked in no hurry by the shore down to my fallen tree without a word, like we didn't need to speak to fill in an awkward silence. It was so, so weird, feeling so fine around this unpredictable man I had nothing in common with. Weirder still, no dream flashback popped up in my head to make me feel awkward or silly.

I had just sat down on my bench when his phone buzzed. He picked up where he was, a few steps away from me, and I still could hear Isaac talking to him with his usual abundance of exclamations. Brandon disconnected and turned to me with a mild smile.

"Isaac's going over what we shot of the cleansing and says I have to check it out," he said. "Wanna come?"

His invitation caught me by surprise. "I— I should drop by the Manor and check with Amy first, in case she needs anything."

He moved his phone by his face, raising his eyebrows. Yeah, how about living like we were in the Twenty-first century? I nodded, chuckling, and called her. It was only obvious she wouldn't need me for anything and would give me her blessing with a generous amount of jokes and mocking giggles.

"Let's go back the way we came," Brandon said, reaching out to help me back to my feet.

He made me jog all the long way back to the Manor, the bastard. And he still wasn't agitated when we reached the guesthouse, while my legs were shaking and I felt I couldn't get enough air through to my lungs.

"You're seriously out of shape, young lady," he said, opening the door for me to walk into the guesthouse.

"Don't say," I mumbled.

Isaac hurried down the stairs, greeted me with one of his big smiles and motioned for us to follow him to the dining room, where I found the table covered in computers and big screens.

"Look, man. We got it from every angle," he said, pointing at a large computer monitor with the screen split in four. "I've already synced it."

"Let me get some water," Brandon said.

Isaac made me sit right in front of the big screen and pointed at the coffeemaker he'd brought from the kitchen. "Want some?"

"No, thanks. I still need a few more gallons of fresh water."

"Ha. I should be grateful it wasn't me. Brandon never gets tired."

I decided to keep my mind from elaborating on that particular bit of information, else it would feed a whole new generation of infernal butterflies.

Brandon came back with a bottle of water for me and of all the available space in the room, he came to stand behind me.

"Roll," he said, resting his hands on the back of my chair.

Don't ask me how any of that footage looked. It was hard to keep my eyes on the screen, mostly because seeing me there made me feel so awkward, but also because he would point at one of the four images now and then, his hand brushing my shoulder and his hoodie pressing against the back of my head. What I did register was a very discreet tattoo on the back of his right hand, between his index and his thumb. It looked like some kind of sigil.

Lucky me, the Collins came knocking, to bring our guests vegan provisions for six months, give or take, and ask if it was okay to do some housekeeping for them. I excused myself at the speed of light and fled to the Manor.

Trisha had just crawled downstairs and was having breakfast, clearly still a couple of hours away from being completely awake. Amy was sitting at the kitchen table opposite her, leafing through a fat old book.

"How is our Dr. Octopus?" she asked when I joined them.

I shrugged, heading straight to the fridge for more water. "Fine, I think? You know it's hard to tell."

"Mood shifts?"

"Nope. None."

Amy grimaced. "I don't like that."

I dropped myself on the chair by Trisha's with a questioning frown. She sighed, closing her book.

"Parasites tend to act out when you start severing their links to a host. So he should be grouchy, stressed up, and feeling physical discomfort. If he isn't, it means those worms are attached to him with an iron grip, and the first cleansing hardly bothered them."

"Meaning they're gonna need more than three sessions? Because Isaac looked fine too."

"More sessions and more often. At least two a day. If they're both already up and about, maybe we could do one session in a while and another one before sunset, because we cannot do it after nightfall."

I just nodded, shrugging again, and texted Brandon to ask if they were available for an early cleansing. He replied right away that yes, they had no problem. So I headed upstairs to take a shower and get ready, dragging Trisha along before my friend could even get what was going on.

We waited until the Collins left the guesthouse to go there, where Brandon and Isaac welcomed us already in their white outfits. Brandon noticed Amy's look at his dragon tee and anticipated her scolding.

"I'm taking it off," he said, smiling.

We set everything faster than the first time, and I could tell Amy didn't dig the men's merry mood at all. When we stood in a circle, holding hands, Brandon leaned toward me to whisper in my ear.

"No need to be so shy anymore."

The bastard. He clearly had no idea what those words did to my glands. Or maybe he knew, and that was why he'd said them. Lucky me, Amy had spent the last thirty minutes instructing me about how I should proceed, and I seriously meant to follow her lead. So I locked up my glands away and focused on the task literally at hand. Honestly, I didn't expect to find it so easy and so hard at the same time.

I was able to recite the incantations almost without tripping, and I found out it helped me stay focused. It didn't feel like just going through the motions: I loaded every move, every word, every touch with all my intention.

I was doing this for Kujo, the starving creature chained in the basement that had literally trusted me with his life. And I was doing this for Brandon too, to let him walk past the thick darkness wrapped around him, and give him a chance to be himself, even if he didn't remember who he was anymore. I wanted light to reach him. I wanted both of them to be free. And in order to achieve that, I needed to weaken and remove those nasty things I was lucky I couldn't see. I poured my heart and soul into what I was doing, surprised to feel the palm of my hands seemed to get cold whenever I rested them on him.

I felt him stiffen and even shiver. His shoulders would move like he fought the impulse of brushing me away. Good. I wanted those hideous parasites to know their time was over, and I wouldn't let them keep their grip on him. By the end of the cleansing, I felt cold from head to toe, tired like I'd gone out for another long jog. My eyes were full of tears and my teeth clenched. And Brandon was agitated and almost panting, his eyes tightly shut and his whole face pursed in a discomfort grimace.

I think both of us were glad to be done with it and hear Amy say, "So be it."

The moment I moved my hands away from Brandon, he grabbed his belly with a muffled grunt. Isaac looked pale and sweaty when he opened up his eyes, with a puzzled frown like he didn't know where he was. Amy signaled Trisha to be ready to give Brandon back his glasses and grabbed my hand, pretty much dragging me to the kitchen. She opened the sink tap and made me keep my hands under the cold water.

"Keep them there until you feel okay again," she said, dead serious. "I'll go check on them."

While I let the running water wash away all the upsetting sensations rioting inside me, Trisha hurried in to grab two bottles of water from the fridge.

"You okay, Fran?" she whispered.

I just nodded, trying to smile back at her. It took me five whole minutes to feel myself again, but I was eventually able to close the tap and go back to the living room. Trisha moved around noiselessly, picking things up while Amy kept an eye on the men. They looked far from just out of the spa like the day before, but rather like waiting at the ER to be checked for little aches all over their bodies.

Isaac had sat down in an armchair and gulped up his water, eyes closed, while Brandon pressed his belly with his face still pursed, his dragon tee back on.

"How come it feels so shitty today?" he was asking Amy among grunts.

"Because it's working," she replied gently. "That's why we need to do this again in the afternoon."

"What?" cried Isaac with a begging look at her.

"If we wait until tomorrow, the parasites will undo anything we may have achieved just now."

I was helping Trisha with the candles when Brandon met my eyes with a frown.

"I don't know if I can go through this again in only a few hours."

"It's supposed to get worse before it gets better," Amy said. "So you should make up your mind."

"Why do I feel so sick?" asked Isaac before Brandon could answer.

"You've had those things feeding on you all this time, and today we started closing their access to your energy, so the parasites are trying to reopen their food source any way they can." Amy turned to Brandon again. "I know it's hard, but if you guys can take it, you can be clean by tomorrow 's sunset."

Isaac looked up at Brandon, raising his eyebrows, but Brandon shook his head slightly. Amy snorted. "If you're not up to this, you better pack up and leave. I'm not putting Fran and myself through any more of this for you to bail on us at the last minute."

I paused and looked up at Brandon like Isaac was doing, waiting for his reply.