Before the gift became a curse, it was a real gift, something that made her life better. As a child, she’d had an uncanny knack for knowing what was wrong, and how to fix it- if her mother cried, Marie would cuddle up and wrap her skinny arms around mama’s neck. In her pretty little head there’d soon be a vision of something grown-up and foreign, which she didn‘t really understand; bills, illness, heartache; but the gift had always told her what mama needed to hear.

“Don’t cry, mama.” she’d coo, and tug lovingly at the auburn hair, her only lasting inheritance. “There’ll be enough money.” Sometimes there was, and sometimes there wasn’t; but Marie gained the reputation of being a singularly perceptive child.

With David she knew he was a good boy, knew it in the center of her heart, the kind way he looked at her; the strange prickling sensation she’d get when his eyes drifted down her front. Their first real kiss was going to be different than the ones they stole between classes, it was going to be everything she’d dreamed of. He leaned closer and a foreign heat erupted in her veins, the butterflies in her stomach did a somersault, and she thought to herself I must be in love.

She’d really rather not do that again.

---

That this place calls itself a city is depressing, the worst kind of joke. There won’t be a hotel here, not that she’s got the cash for it; but back a few hundred miles there was a least a bed and breakfast, where she washed dishes and hauled firewood in trade for a meal and a cot in the laundry room. Forget that. There’s not a corner of this dirty wreck that she’d feel safe falling asleep in.

Bars are open all night, and it’ll be loud and awful enough to keep her awake. Inside, somebody might notice if she got murdered.

When a man hits the steel fence just above her head, Marie thinks she might have been mistaken. She could get murdered here all day in technicolor, and still be just a side-attraction. The man doing the throwing looks smaller than he ought to be, for that kind of brutality, but she’s old enough to know that things are generally not what they seem. He’s handsome, in a rough way, from what she can see of his face; half-wreathed in smoke. She watches him go down under a few hits, and then suddenly batter the living hell out of the other guy.

It’s an education in violence, and over terribly fast. She finds herself rooting for him, just a little, which she knows is ridiculous; since it’s only because he didn’t throw the first punch.

---

Logan isn’t a planning fellow. One look at his ramshackle trailer could tell you that: ruined clothes, empty cupboards, cheap souvenir postcards taped to the windows to block out the light. He tried to look at it as a temporary situation, but nothing better ever seemed to appear. There was always another dead-end logging town, a bottomless glass of whiskey; and the long northern winter that he couldn’t seem to outrun. A psychologist might have suggested that he made his bed that way, and laid in it; but probably not to his face.

It was a hassle to get a real job, a hassle to get a real roof over his head. They always wanted to see ID, which he couldn’t provide; and some money up front, which was laughable. So he makes do in other ways. He eats alright. But that’s really due more to the fact that he doesn’t get food poisoning, ever, than to the concept of proper nutrition.

There’s not a lot in the last fifteen years that he’s proud of, but he’s survived. He’s upright. And it sure as hell counts for something.

---

He counts his money in the back room, before he’s even bothered to clean the other guy’s blood off of his knuckles. They bet more against him when he’s winning; like that’s going to psych him out, the stupid back-country fucks.

“Not a lot of talent like yourself around.” The guy who runs the cage hasn’t taken his eyes off of that pile of money since it started to grow, but now he unglues his eyes long enough to look Logan in the face. There’s disbelief there, and sly, dirty greed. “Where’d you learn to fight like that ?” Logan waits a beat, like he’s really thinking about it, and shoves the cash into a back pocket.

“Church.” he says.

In the bar there’s your usual assortment of lovelies: fat bouncer, old men, somebody’s ugly wife. He doesn’t see the guys he thrashed, and that’s for the best. If they drink enough after the fight, they tend to ask for a rematch. The beer’s cold, the take was high, and the TV’s on. This is about how good it gets. And then the girl in the green coat turns her head.

---

There’s always the probability that he’ll run into another mutant. He met one in Nova Scotia, a dark-eyed woman with glassy skin, hiding behind layers of wool and family connections. But there haven’t been many. Usually it takes an accident to discover it; a slip of the tongue, a fight, a car crash. It’s never like this- sitting across from a girl in a bar, looking into her lovely face, and knowing everything she’s hoping to hide.

She looks sideways at him, gentle and bitter for somebody so young; and he realizes he’s just as transparent. What a fucking joke. The beer sours in his mouth, and suddenly the TV is talking about them, how awful they are, how dangerous; they are problems, mistakes.

He’s almost relieved when he feels the tap on his shoulder.

---

“No, you didn’t.”

In the end, he stops the truck. Mostly because she looks strange in his rear-view mirror, disappearing into a little pine-tree of green and brown. Partly because she yelled, back in the bar, not knowing or caring what he was capable of. Partly because it’s been so long since anybody sat in that right-hand seat, that Logan can’t remember the face or the name. Partly because she's pretty.

She eats everything in the glove compartment, and gets it all over her scarf and face, making stupid noises and talking about how good it is. It’s beef jerky. And fairly old. Logan isn’t sure whether he finds this repulsive, or really goddam charming.

She smiles at him then, and he knows which one it is.