After a moment he squinted an eye open to make sure I was looking. Then closed it hastily and resumed being dead.

“You ate all of them?” I said incredulously. “The entire civilization? We talked about this. You said you wouldn’t do it again.”

“I was hungry. And bored. There was nothing to do. You said you would be back. You WEREN’T. Your expects. Not bars on my cage anymore.”

“Dani,” Mac said warningly behind me. “You do know what Shazam is, right?”

I shot an inquiring look over my shoulder. “You mean, like, what species?”

Shazam leapt to his feet, instantly alert, and drew up to his full height. “I have no species. I am a singularity.”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Mac said.

I shook my head. “He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Because I belong to no species,” Shazam said tightly. “Don’t listen to her, Yi-yi. She lies.”

“He wouldn’t tell you for good reason. He’s a Hel-Cat,” Mac said.

“Am NOT.” Shazam reared up on his haunches, eyes narrowed to thin slits, and spat and hissed alternately.

Mac said, “They’re nearly extinct. Or more precisely, there’s said to be only one left in all the universes. They’re as mythical as the unicorn.”

“What’s a Hel-Cat? And how do you know what he is?” I said.

“No one knows exactly what they are, or what their true form is. They were legend to the Fae. I saw a picture of one of them in my files. The form he’s adopted is the one they use to lure others close. Highly evolved, they have uncontrollable appetites and were destroyed because they kept wiping out civilizations. They were hunted by every world in every galaxy. They learned to hide in higher dimensions, coming down only to prey. Dani, you made friends with the last remaining Hel-Cat. Hel-Cats don’t make friends. They eat them.”

I looked at Shazam, who was staring at Mac with a venomous gaze. “You will never find me to hunt me, tiny white.”

He vanished.

“Great. Now look what you did,” I snapped. “Legends are always bigger and badder than the real thing. You of all people should know that.” To the air, I said, “No one is going to hunt you, Shazam. I’ll protect you.”

His eyes materialized in front of me. “You will? Promise always?”

“Yes. But you can’t eat people on our world and you can’t wipe out species. We’ll find another way to deal with your appetite.”

“But what if I can’t help myself?” he wailed.

“You can. I’ll teach you. You did great when we were together before. Everything’s easier when you’re not alone. Come on. We’re going home,” I told him firmly.

“Home? Where I can stay forever?” His lips pulled back, revealing sharp fangs and a black-tipped tongue as he turned a suspicious glare on Mac. “She doesn’t want me.”

“Not true,” Mac said. “But there will be rules.” She glanced at Barrons, who raised a brow and shrugged in a silent, What’s one Hel-Cat compared to the things we’ve handled?

“I am NOT a Hel-Cat,” Shazam said with a regal sniff. “I am Shazam. My Yi-yi named me and that is my only name.”

“Shazam,” Mac said, and it was the offer of a truce, of new beginnings. To me, she said, Can you control him?

I nodded and opened my arms. Shazam exploded out of the air and leapt into them at full velocity, taking me back to the ground beneath him, licking my face and biting my hair.

I wrapped my arms around him and held on to his furry, powerful body. He was going to sleep with me tonight and wake me up in the morning. I had someone of my own to love. I would survive the pain of losing Dancer. And one day life would be good again.

“And we’ll have adventures,” he said happily, pouncing my curls.

“Every day,” I told him. “Ew. Tribesman breath!”

“Your pitiful abandonment. My bad breath. You might have packed that can with fish, but no. Another big empty. Like all the other big empties in my life.”

“No big empties anymore.”

“Promise?”

“Swear it.”

He shifted his paws about, accommodating his great belly, then dropped hard on my stomach, evoking a loud whuff from me, and touched his damp nose to mine. “I see you, Yi-yi,” he said, eyes slanted half closed and gleaming.

I thought of Dancer. Of love lost. Of love regained. “I see you, too, Shazam.”

Then he was up and running across the island, and I was off chasing him and laughing.

He pounced my ankles and tripped me and I tumbled to the ground with him on top of me, nipping at my jeans, tugging at my shirt. Beneath a dazzling sun, on the island where I’d lost him along with a part of myself, I found both again.

We played for hours, running and blowing off steam, wading at the lake’s edge, catching silvery minnows, and I was happy to see he’d not eaten all the fish. He’d eaten only his enemy. I understood that. He could control himself. Together, we’d learn smarter ways of living and being.

Much later we sat together watching the waves lap at the shore, Shazam snuggled close to my side, keeping me warm as the temperature dropped.

I’d forgotten all about the others, lost in a time of much-needed joy and abandon.

As stars came out to twinkle in the sky above me, Shazam looked at me and I was suddenly struck by how old his eyes seemed. All playfulness and vulnerability had vanished and I was struck suddenly by how accurately I’d named him after a wise old wizard.

“He’s happy, Yi-yi.”

I went very still. “He, who?”

“The one who danced you into love.”

I stared at him. Then, “How do you know about him?”

“Slipstream. I’m in it. All. I am somewhat…larger than I appear.” His whiskers twitched as if he were vibrating with hidden laughter, then he busied himself polishing them with spit-moistened paws. That had long lethal talons. My Hel-Cat.

“Shazam, what are you really?”

He leapt up and was off, racing across the island. Over his shoulder, he called, “Hungry. And ready to go. Hurry, tiny red. Take me home.”

Home.

I knew some truths about that word now.

You weren’t always born into one. But if you were lucky, you found one somewhere along the way. It was a place where you fit and were accepted, where people helped you with your problems and you helped them with theirs. Where you made mistakes and so did they but the love never wavered.