It was getting colder and colder, the autumn air piercing all the way to the bone. The forest still had a lot of green, but brown and yellow were seeping in, spreading like dark clouds on the horizon.

Garofița had been living in Ferești, in her little house by the periphery, for a few months now. Summer passed in the blink of an eye. Homeless people knew her as one of their own, as did people around town in general. In the sense that they recognised the young black-haired face-masked girl as someone who "lived around" and accepted her as part of the scenery. "Garofița" was a name usually donned by old ladies, but few people knew her by name, and fewer by her full one. "Garo" came easier, it seemed.

By then she trusted the people in the encampment not to go around saying there's a runaway girl named abc from xyz. They were good people and she was good to them in turn. Everybody helps each other around here, she kept hearing. When it came from the people in the encampment it didn't sound like a sinister contract.

"Can I help with anything else?" Garofița asked.

"No, it's alright!" Mrs Heredea said, tying closed a bag of garbage. "Thank you, dear!"

"You're welcome!"

"Aren't you cold?"

"No, I can handle it so far." She said, rubbing the arms of her fuzzy shirt.

"During the summer, I was wondering how you weren't boiling in that thing." Mrs Heredea laughed. "Do you want one of Denisa's old hoodies?"

"Oh, it's okay! You don't have to!"

"DENISA!" Mrs Heredea called out like a squawking hen, making her jump.

"WHAT?" Denisa replied from one of the buildings.

"You know your blue hoodie that doesn't fit anymore?"

"THE WHAT?"

"THE BLUE HOODIE!"

"WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH IT?"

"Seriously, you don't have to-"

"I WANT TO GIVE IT TO GARO!"

"OH, OKAY!"

"T-Thank you-"

"WHERE IS IT?"

"I DON'T KNOW!"

"HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW WHERE YOUR STUFF IS? IT'S ONE TENT!"

"UGHHH! YOU'RE SO ANNOYING!"

Garofița received the hoodie, thanked again, and swiftly dipped. She knew people weren't yelling at her specifically, but hearing raised voices made her frightened regardless of target.

Along with making her feel good about herself, helping people around town also earned her things to fill up her house with, such as the hoodie from Denisa, light blue and in perfect condition. Denisa was taller than Garofița, so it looked baggy and it would cover her butt when she sat down.

From Mrs Delia she received a small wooden crate for fruit, which she decided will be used to store her books. She found some with funky covers at the thrift store, "Un român în Lună" by Henric Stahl, and "Băiatul de pe strada liniștită" by Zivorad Mihailovic, 3.99 lei each. She found a table too, but it was wobbly as hell (probably why it was thrown away). Her initial idea was to sleep on top of it, use it like a bed frame, but it didn't look like it would hold up for long, so she scooted it in a corner and put her teddy figurine in the center. If she or Buddy or Walker walked on the floorboards around it, the table would shake. She also found in the trash a red plastic washbasin. It had a long crack along one side, but she could use it for storage, like a bigger basket when she went foraging.

Searching through bins and alleys wasn't as daunting as she thought it would be. At most she had to worry about some old hag yelling at her to leave. What was wrong with taking trash nobody wanted anymore? She never made a mess, she was careful not to. Matter of fact, she left the place tidier than when she arrived. Ugh, whatever.

Vitalis taught her and repeated it a lot that she must always be polite, amiable, inoffensive. It made people's rage slow down. You wouldn't yell at the sweet little homeless girl, right? And nothing could be held against her either. A lot of people can't wait for a reason to spill their nerves on someone who can't fight back, and if you were acting like a jackass then they could say it was deserved. Don't give them that.

Vitalis had a pass to be a bitch because she was old and everyone knew her, but Garofița had yet to earn her bitch right. There are certain ages in life where people get away with everything because confronting them would be more trouble than it's worth, or it would get you in trouble instead.

"That's a good thing about getting old!" Vitalis laughed. "You can be a huge asshole and everyone will be like 'oh just let her be, she's old, she can't change anymore, she'll die soon anyway'."

"You become Stinkmeaner." Garofița giggled.

"What on earth is that?"

"It's a character from an American show. He was diagnosed with cancer, I think, and decided he would be an asshole for the remainder of his life, only to live to be like 100 years old. Being an asshole was keeping him alive!"

"Hell yeah!"

"I wonder if I'll become an asshole when I'm old." Garofița said in the present as she pet Buddy, who was sniffing her new hoodie.

Marius straightened his back, grunting at the pops in his spine. He was getting old.

He made his way to a black BMW. In the driver's seat sat a detective named Andrei Guler, who handed him coffee. Blackest black for Marius, with milk and caramel for Andrei.

He was almost a decade younger than Marius, and one of his first cases resulted in him being arrested. Marius was jailed for two days until a certain vampire bailed him out. It wasn't the first nor the last time. Another time Marius paid Andrei back by breaking his nose.

They've become friends since then.

"Haven't heard from you in ages." Marius sipped his coffee leisurely. "How's life goin'?"

"It's going." Andrei said while stirring his own cup.

"How's the Missus?"

"Oh, she's taking the kids to grandma today!"

"That old hag's still holdin' on?"

"She's the kind of person who will outlive us all."

"Thank God I never married."

"Because you didn't want to, or because all of them said no?"

"Go wipe someone's ass."

Andrei put his cup in the cup holder. "Enough small talk. I need your help."

"Thought that was why you hit me up. You don't really call me otherwise."

"Aww! You miss me, old man?"

"Nah. So what's up?"

Andrei sighed. "A couple days ago, a deceased girl was found in a KFC parking lot in Văleni. Bălașa denies having anything to do with her, of course, but she seems to be telling the truth. By all means it looks like this girl was walking through the parking lot and just... dropped dead. A stroke at only 17."

"May she rest in peace." Marius made a lazy sign of the cross.

"She was taken to the hospital, confirmed to have been dead for a few hours. This is where the weirdness begins: nobody can identify her. It's still early, but so far nobody in Văleni knows who she is. She had no identification on her, just the clothes on her body, all freshly washed. She doesn't seem to be in any database of any kind."

He showed Marius a photo. A pale white girl, baby-faced, blue eyes and light brown hair, uneven bangs. Utterly unremarkable, except for a brown mole on the right side of her upper lip.

Marius shook his head, not recognising her either. "Truly a Jane Doe." He commented.

"That's not all..." Andrei said, expression tense. "The body disappeared."

Marius raised an eyebrow.

"The pathologist, Dr Groza, called me in the middle of the night. He was alerted by the security guard, who provided us CCTV footage of our Jane Doe pushing herself out of the refrigerator, then shambling out of the morgue, naked and stitched up. The guard hauled ass out of there because, his words, 'he wasn't trying to die of whatever that was'. Can't blame him, but still. We have an undead fugitive now."

"Well I'll be damned." Marius said.

"The morgue is on the edge of Văleni, pretty far from everything else. She seems to have left town. Have you guys in Ferești seen anything like her lately, or anything strange?"

"Nothin' stranger than usual."

"Damn..."

"So what are you doin' now?"

"Mostly combing through missing people reports. Nothing could have stopped her or somebody else from changing her appearance! My daughter got bangs without telling me and I didn't recognise her for a second when I got home. Don't laugh."

"I'm not. And true, true, people go missin' all the time around here. Maybe Jane got involved with somethin' bad, or already was supernatural before dyin'. Maybe dyin' triggered some weird shit."

"The closest match I could find is this girl, Liana Prisăcaru, who went missing from her backyard three years ago and would be 17 today. But she has green eyes, not freaking blue."

"Can't think of anythin' that messes with your eye colour..."

"There's also this girl, Amalia Hodișan, but she's only 14. They have similar features. Amalia apparently ran away with her boyfriend 8 months ago, and they found him without her. He swears up and down that she ditched him and that he has no idea where she went."

"You think he did somethin'?"

"Nah, he looked like a wimp. There's another 14 year old, Adina Ștefănescu, who ran away from her drunkard dad only a week ago. In her diary she wrote she was going to try to join the fairies."

"People still do that shit?!"

"Yup!"

"Jesus Christ! When I was a kid, if I thought I saw a fairy I ran like my ass was on fire!"

"I don't think I ever saw one in real life." Andrei said, continuing to look over the papers. "I can run some cases by you with this occasion. Does Mirela Popovici ring any bells?"

"Hmmm... Popovici was a guy I knew back in the day. God, haven't thought about that cunt in years. He was a fence, retired about 15 years ago. I remember he had a kid, but I ain't sure if it was a girl or a boy. Is that her?"

"I will have to check. Do you know anything about Diana Oltan?"

"Never heard of her. I know an Oltean, though."

"That's fine. Do you know anything about Garofița Gavrilescu?"

"I do."

"What do you know?"

"I know exactly where she is right now." Marius said, finishing his coffee.

Andrei stared at him.

"Doesn't seem like a walkin' dead, so take her off the list."

"Ohhhh-kay."

"Got any news about the cult? Sorry we couldn't get much from the wretch our Mihai caught. Eddy went a bit overboard too."

Andrei sighed again, more deeply. "It's like they turned invisible!"

"You want Gabriel Eghedi to join y'all?"

"The occultist kid?" Andrei raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, he's researchin' the Seekers too. Could use some help, he's kinda losin' his mind."

"Sure, why not?"

"He's a little... eccentric, but he's a good kid."

Gloomy days became more frequent than sunny ones. It was hard to read inside the house without the sun coming through the windows, and all day long there would be this miasma of sleepiness.

Garofița walked to Amante where she was told Roxi would be, plastic bowl prepared. She didn't recognise the black BMW parked outside, but didn't think much of it until she stepped inside the restaurant. To her chagrin, there were other people there.

"Hiii!" Mirabela's sing-song voice greeted her from where she sat at the bar. She was wearing the velour Nike tracksuit that covered her whole body except for her hands and head. Vampires being able to go outside during the day when it was cloudy enough felt like cheating.

"Hello..." Garofița said, trying to be polite.

She had been trying, and successfully managing, to avoid Mirabela and the rest of the Amante staff, except for Roxi and Mihai. She didn't see much of Gabi these days, holed up with his research like a mad scientist.

As much as she wanted to be a waitress for Amante in the beginning, she now avoided having a job like it was the plague. Being indentured to a vampire sounded like a really bad idea, and Vitalis needn't do much to scare Garofița from falling for it. Roxi was happy with it because the advantages outweighed the disadvantages in her case: be a service worker and deal with drunks. But for more "involved" servants, like Mr Marius and Mr Eduard, their entire lives revolved around doing Mirabela's bidding.

Lying low worked to Garofița's advantage in multiple ways so far, and she was keen to keep it that way.

"How are you..." Mirabela said, looking at her and moving her pointer finger as she searched through her memories. "...hold on, I got it... Garofița, was it?"

"Yes."

"Yessss!" She pumped her arm.

"I am good, thank you." Garofița smiled stiffly.

Mirabela was sitting with Mr Marius and a man she did not recognise. The latter made wide eyes for a second when he heard Garo's name. Mr Marius was looking at her, squinting. Garofița awkwardly turned her eyes to the floor. She didn't like Mr Eduard because of how he treated Toad and his creepy demeanor in general, but Mr Marius was freaking her out too. Why did he look at her like that? Like that guy from that one detective show. Doakes? Was that his name?

"I almost called you 'Laura' for a second." Mirabela said. "But that's the older girl. How is she, by the way?"

"She's good." Garofița cautiously said. "Studying."

"Good, good! Med school is no walk in the park!"

"You're sponsoring a student again?" The other man, Andrei, asked with a little nervous laugh.

"Yes, she will enroll next year!" Mirabela smiled. "A very good kid! There's a lot to catch up, but I'm sure she can do it. And it's not like she had anything better to do."

Garofița glared at Mirabela's turned back.

"Heeey!" Roxi said, emerging from the kitchen door. She updated her wardrobe for autumn, with a bell-sleeve white shirt and a navy-blue faux leather skirt. She still had a bit of crop with a sliver of belly showing, though. "Your soup is ready!"

"Thank you!" Garofița walked behind the bar and made her way to the kitchen.

"You're still livin' in that house by the woods?" Marius asked, although by his face he didn't seem too interested.

"Y-Yes, sir."

"You're like our little forest-ranger!" Mirabela giggled. Garofița paled. Andrei side-eyed the vampire.

"Stop hirin' minors." Marius said.

"What? I'm nooot! It only happened a couple times!"

Garofița hurried to Roxi's side in the kitchen, holding out her bowl for her to fill with cream vegetable soup.

"Sorry!" Roxi whispered to her. "I didn't know she would show up today!"

"It's alright..." She whispered back.

"Do you need anything else? Are you cold?"

"No, it's fine. I can handle it. My, hehe, my dog Buddy is like a hot water bottle."

"If the winter will be really bad, you can stay at the shelter in town. It's gonna be crowded if it's really cold, but you can sleep there at night. You can stay with me and the boys too if you'd like! I have an old coat that should fit you."

"Thank you...! I... I don't want to take too much..."

"Nonsense!" Roxi bumped her with her hip. "I do it out of my own kindness, same with the soup!"

Garofița smiled sheepishly.

"Tell you what!" Roxi grinned. "Wanna go out with me and my girls this weekend?"

"Oh, uh, sure! B-But, I don't know them-"

"That's fine, you'll meet them! I'll take you out like you're my little sister!" She giggled. "Isn't it boring sitting in that house all day?"

"Not really, no. I go out in the forest too!"

When they both returned to the restaurant, the three adults were preparing to leave as well.

"Roxi, you know your manicurist friend?" Mirabela asked.

"Georgie?" She said. "She's on a trip with her aunt."

"Yeah, I know! When is she coming back?"

"I think next week!"

Garofița listened to their conversation, trying to pretend she couldn't see Mr Marius watching her like a hawk. The other man, Andrei, looked wary of him too. What were they doing?

"Andrei, would you drive us to my house?" Mirabela asked him. "In case the sun does come out."

"Sure!" He said.

"Yay! Thank you!" She said, running her hand on his back, from one shoulder to the other, as she walked past him. Andrei looked shocked and a little panicked.

The women climbed inside the BMW and drove off, Roxi waving at Garofița through the window. She waved back and made her way to her home, hot soup in hand. To her substantial distress, Mr Marius walked alongside her.

She sneaked glances at him, not daring to look at him for long, not knowing what to do or say.

"How are your pets doin'?" He asked. It was hard to tell if he was in a bad mood or not.

"Uhm, good!" She said. There was no point in lying to him, since he already knew. "My, uh, Buddy is growing fuzz! He's, uh, kinda like a peach. And my cat Bezea is growing bigger. Her legs are long and gangly, she looks funny!"

"And your skin-walker?"

"He's alright... His bad leg, uhm, looks skinnier than the healthy one, and I think the bone healed in a weird shape. It looks kind of bow-legged, but only one leg."

"What does he eat?"

"Uh, what I eat too! Fruit, bread, soup, salami, peanut butter..."

Marius laughed despite himself.

"... sometimes he goes to the forest and lies down until a bird checks him and he catches it, then eats it f-feathers and all... But he doesn't go far from the house, I never saw him try."

"You've domesticated it?"

"I-I guess so! He's kind of like a cat, but also a dog. Mr Eduard said they're like mountain cats."

"And you're fine livin' with a wild animal who steals skins?" He raised an eyebrow.

"I mean, he can't do that anymore." She said, looking up at Mr Marius. "He can't run, at least not for long. And he's well-behaved, he does as I say. Well, sometimes he doesn't, but, you know..."

Marius watched her speak, looking for reminders of Eddy back when he was her age, but the way Garofița spoke was more naive than unsettling.

"Why did you take in a skin-walker?" He cut her off.

"Uh, uhm..." She looked away again. "I... felt bad..."

"You felt bad?"

"Y-Yeah, he was hurt! I felt bad leaving him alone, with a bleeding leg... you could see bone... I didn't like just... sitting there and doing nothing... And he never hurt me."

"I see."

"He's not evil."

"You sure?"

"No, he's an animal... He doesn't know any better. And he can live without a skin, l-like Toad..."

Marius paused. "You know about Toad?"

"Y-Yeah, I was walking through the forest and saw him in Mr Eduard's yard."

He groaned. "Just be careful around it."

"I am."

"I'm shocked you two can live with those ugly fuckin' things in your houses. Ain't you scared?"

"I think he's more scared of me." She giggled. "After I put iodine on his wounds, he was very well-behaved."

There was a little Eddy in there.

Next to Mrs Delia's shop she saw something shining in the faint light, from between trash bags and debris. Upon closer inspection, she realised it was a sheet of glass, stained to hell but still in one piece.

"Look what I got!!" She showed her pets.

Buddy sniffed it and cocked his head to the side.

"Careful with the edges!" She said, pulling it away.

She walked over to the window of the main room they used, the one facing the forest, and put it up against the window sill. She turned it around and that way it could cover up half of it vertically.

"If I could find another sheet, I could put two like doors." Garo thought out loud. She put the glass against the windowsill and let the top of it rest against the wooden frame above, where her spider was weaving. She didn't trust it to hold balance for long and took it down, setting it flat on the floor. "What could I use...?"

The houses around Garofița's were also abandoned crumbling structures, places to dump trash if you were an asshole and hiding spots for hooligans.

In the doorless house across the street from her, with only two of the four walls still standing, she found ripped floorboards. She shoved them around with her shoes, then her eyes landed on the window frame, cracked and splintered, with dark red nails sticking out. Bingo!

It took some struggling and manoeuvring, and a lot of rust stained her fingers, but she got the nail out, long and bent at an angle.

She searched the grass for a big rock and returned to her own house, finding Bezea leaving her pawprints on the glass.

Garofița placed the nail's sharp end against the side of the window frame and used the rock as a hammer, gradually pushing it inside. She drew in air through her teeth whenever the wood made a louder noise than before or cracked more than she expected.

She lodged the nail inside and, bent as it was, she could turn it around like a crank. One of her spiders, Blonker, inspected it.

"I'm a genius!" She snickered to herself, then ran back outside to find more nails. She dug one more rusted nail from the cracked frame and found another one through the grass and dirt, shorter but usable. She hoped three nails would be enough.

"I could put cloth over the other windows in the meantime!" She told her pets. "I could keep it shut with tape, or more nails like this."

Buddy sat on his butt at her side and watched her work. Bezea seemed to like the glass, lying down on it. Even in this cool weather she felt too hot? Walker kept adjusting the skin on his head. It looked flimsier and thinner by the day, the yellowish pink having turned into a pale grey.

"You could take it off." Garofița said while she hammered (rocked). "You could sit around naked. I'll get you warm clothes. You'd itch less too. Just sayin'."

Support nails in place, Garofița took the glass sheet and carefully slid it between the window frame and the nails. Oh fuck, she put one of them too close to the outer edge. She inched it inside slowly, praying the glass wouldn't break under the tension. She turned the nail crank to hold the glass in place too, and took a step back.

"It worked!!" She gasped, clapping and hopping in place. Buddy jumped to his feet and hopped around her as well. She grabbed his front legs and spun around with him, laughing in success.

"Maybe I can move this nail a little bit." She slid the glass away, putting it in the middle of the window with two empty strips on either side, held up by her hand and the tips of the longest nails. "Or maybe I could bend it out of the way."

BANG!

Garofița jumped out of her skin, the glass pushed out of her hand. She caught it at the last moment, against her stomach and thighs. It only had scratches where the tips used to be.

A dark figure, that came towards the window like a bullet, that squeezed between the glass and the frame on the side opposite of the nails, now scrambled on the floor with flailing wings. Bezea arched like a snake.

It was a bird, a juvenile crow with short feathers and white lips around its beak, having had a disastrous first attempt at flying. It flapped like a madman around the room, missing the other window and trying to find perches at the ceiling corners. Buddy and Bezea watched it in shock, while Walker's mouth drooled.

Garofița frantically checked the glass sheet and, when she was sure it wasn't broken, she turned to the intruder with a look of anger. "You bitch!"

The crow clung to one of the walls, digging its claws in between the planks of wood and cawing at her.

Garofița (carefully) put the glass down and marched towards the bird, snatched it with her bare hand, and she chucked it out the open window. "Get out!!"

The crow flew upwards into the trees. Walker looked disappointed.

Marius found Garofița in the encampment, all smiles as she was talking to Vitalis, very passionately recounting something. As he got closer, he heard that Garofița hammered nails all by herself and put up glass in one of the windows. Vitalis was smiling too, listening to her with endearment on her rough face. He hadn't seen her like that since Roxana was little.

"Afternoon!" He greeted them.

"Hey, there!" Vitalis said.

"Uhm, hello!" Garofița's smile faltered for a moment.

"What are you doing around here?" Vitalis asked him.

"Ștefan said he wanted to go to the shop, but I can't see him anywhere."

"You missed him, he went with Bea to dye his hair."

"Again?"

"He hates that he's blond, I don't know!"

"Why doesn't he dye his hair here?" Garofița asked.

"There has been an incident a few years ago." Vitalis twisted her mouth to the side.

"Incident?"

"If you go to the room over there you can see the floor is still all purple." Marius said. "Nothin' works to get it out."

"O-Oh..."

"I'll wait for him outside, then." He turned back to Vitalis.

"Suit yourself." Vitalis replied.

"I'll go home too." Garofița stood up.

"Take care, kid." She pet her head.

"I'll walk you home." Marius said.

"A-Alright..."

Bea and Ștefan were probably at the public bathroom by the small park, so the two of them walked at a slow, promenade pace.

Garofița again worried if she should speak or not, what to even say, when Mr Marius spoke first again.

"You're pretty crafty, huh?" He asked.

"Y-Yeah!" She said, a sincere pride in her voice. "It was fun!"

"Good job!" He smiled. "I heard you've gone to the Sunday market in Hidiș too."

"Yes, but I didn't buy much from there. I went with Gabi and Mr Ozsvar."

"You'll become a cryptozoologist too?"

"I don't know!" She giggled.

"You already got cryptid experience."

"I like them. I like all animals. When I was younger I-I wanted to be a veterinarian."

"You could still do that."

"Don't you have to go to college for it?"

"So?"

"I-I am not... I'm a missing person..."

"Ah... We can sort that out."

Garofița's heart seized. "B-But I want to go by myself."

"What you mean?"

"B-... By myself, like... I want to pay for it myself. I don't want, uhm, Mirabela-..."

"I understand." He nodded.

Garofița nervously rubbed her own knuckles.

"You could be a vet tech as well." He said.

"What's that?"

"Like an animal nurse. I used to know a lady who worked for a dog breeder, was basically a dog midwife. She used to work in a corporate office before that."

"Oh!"

"Heh. When I was little my mama wanted me to become a priest." Mr Marius smiled.

"Really?" She smiled back.

"Yeah, she was gettin' real religious towards the end. God rest her soul."

The two of them walked in silence for a while. Not a tense silence, but Garofița was always tense.

"Mister?" She asked.

"Yeah?"

"Have you been working for Mirabela for a long time?"

"Since I was 17."

"Vitalis, uhm, told me you used to be homeless too."

"It's true. It's a whole story. A whole soap opera."

"It is?"

He let out a long sigh and leaned his head back a little. "I'm a son of the gangster Bujor Ilie from Moldova. My mama ran all the way here to escape him, then died when I was 6 years old, the clumsy broad. I've known Mirabela since I was a little kid, been workin' for her since I was a teen."

Garofița was too stunned to react. "B-B-Bujor Ilie...?" Was all that came out, the first thing she could think about to repeat.

"Most folk in Western Romania haven't heard of him. He's been dead for a while too. One of my half-brothers is the head of the family now. A couple years back he went to jail for fraud and there was a photo in the article. We could be twins!"

Marius huffed out a short laugh. "I wonder if any of them know I'm still alive."

"They don't?"

"Nobody ever searched for mama and me, as far as I'm aware. And I'm not plannin' on payin' any of them a visit. Your turn to tell your life story now."

"..."

"Vitalis told me a bit, but I want to hear it from your mouth too."

"... ... my parents were abusive... m-my whole family, but main-m-mostly my parents. They're not gangsters, it's not as bad as yours."

"It's still bad."

"I know, but..."

"Any amount of abuse is bad, kid."

"Couldn't really do much to stop it..."

"What'd they do?"

"... they'd- they'd scream at me, and, uhm, and hit me... I couldn't do anything, say anything... I wasn't allowed to eat or u-use the bathroom whenever I needed, there was a schedule..."

"A schedule?!"

"Y-Yeah, c-cause if somebody needed to go while I was there and I took too long it would make them angry, and, uhm... if I didn't eat on time, I wouldn't eat at all... y-yeah... Just... just mean, and cruel, and, ju-just... just insane. It was like... like-like, I don't know..." She said, bitterly thinking that even her cryptid and skin-walker were more reasonable.

"Was there sexual abuse too?"

"No, no. Nothing like that. I, uh, had a grandma who grabbed my thigh out of nowhere and complained I'm too skinny, b-but I don't think that counts."

"Got it. So you ran away?"

"Yes..."

"What would happen if they found you?"

"... they'd probably kill me, like they promised."

"They said they'll kill you?"

"They did it a lot. It was their, uh, their go-to threat. Towards the end... it... felt like they were really meaning it..."

Marius nodded. "Want me to check on them?"

Garofița whipped her head towards him. "NO!"

"I won't do nothin'..." He said, both eyebrows raised. "Just... take a look."

"Don't! I don't want anything with them! I just want to be away from them!"

"Alright, alright..." He said. "No revenge, no nothin'?"

"... What if it won't make me feel better?"

"True. Want us to keep tabs on them?"

"What?"

"Like the reverse of stalkin'. Know what they are up to so you can avoid them."

"... no. I don't want to know."

"Alright."

"If I could, I would forget them."

Marius reached out a hand and pet her hair. His hand was softer than she expected.

"Scraps from the trash"

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