I'm good at faking it. It's all I'm good at, at this point. I used to be a warrior, with blazing diamond armor and a sword of light. I protected the world from darkness and the evil that lives within it. Before that, I was a wizard and a priest. Now, I sit in a coffee shop in Manhattan, fighting to remain invisible, to escape the notice of the sharp-eyed manager behind the counter, hoping I can sustain it long enough to make it through another night.
       I can no longer remember whether I should count my years in the hundreds or the thousands, so I appreciate the irony that it takes most of my concentration to make it hour by hour. In unguarded moments, when my concentration wavers, I catch my reflection in the dark glass and I recognize the man there: an artist's self-portrait that was part of an exhibition at the Met, the French Romantics or some such, from a time when there were cars, but not the self-driving kind. Tragic eyes and dark, wavy hair. At the time, I recognized the look in his eyes: still in the prime of his youth, he had seen too much, another irony I could appreciate. I thought it an homage and a jest, to look like him. Now I don't remember what I used to look like, and I don't have enough strength to remake my image anyway. I can barely hold on to the last of my magic, to keep myself from retaking the mortal form I abandoned so long ago.
       I don't know how long I've been coming to this coffee shop, not any longer. I picked it because it's more like a cavern, with two levels looking out on a vast open space that is fronted by two-story glass windows along Park Avenue. Normally even at night it's crammed full of tourists willing to pay outrageous prices for burnt espresso and a clean restroom, and I don't have to try so hard to hide among them. Tonight, the snow hurtles at the ground with the intent to destroy and only the hardiest of City people are here. They stare at laptops or mobile phones and put almost as much effort into ignoring each other as I do in maintaining the focus that hides me from their gazes.
       Two regulars here worry me. The young man, currently standing in line, has the same bruised eyes and full lips as my Romance artist, though this man-boy has the bushy beard, waxed mustache, and man-bun of an ardent hipster. I suspect he's a writer, but he could be a musician. 'Toby' is the name the barista calls. He's always here very late. He gives my table furtive looks as he steps up to the counter, as if some movement catches his attention, but then finds nothing there. Some mortals can see through even my invisibility, if they try. I don't know how or why. Toby looks like he's trying to convince himself there's nothing to see. I have no intention of helping him, either way.
       The other regular is a woman, 'Tara', mid-thirties. She usually leaves about the same time Toby arrives, closing up a book and marking the page with an elaborate filigreed bookmark before putting her coffee mug – decaf vanilla almond latte – in the washing tray. Everything about her speaks to me, her thick dark hair, her olive skin, the glow of the golden flecks in her warm brown eyes. She comes from people I know, or knew once. But those memories are too distant to recall, flattened by time. Her gaze will drift over my table and pause. A tiny frown line will appear between her eyes. But then she'll shake it off, reach into her big leather shoulder bag and pull out her knit cap with long, careful fingers – also the fingers of a creator, like Toby, though I haven't yet figured out what kind. And then she'll pull the cap down over her ears, brush an errant strand of hair from her eyes, and push out the door into the cold.
       Once or twice she has bumped into Toby on her way out, and they have traded good-natured apologies as they pass. In another time, another life, they might have made a good match. Or perhaps they were that match already, and Fate has doomed them to pass each other, unknowing, through the stretch of their current lives. I know that side of Fate very well.
       Tonight, Tara lingers at her table, and the frown line is there. Her head is bent over her book, but her attention is elsewhere. I fear it's on me, which means I will have to move on. It's a terrible night to do that, especially as weak as I am, but it is better than whatever she might demand of me. I have nothing to offer her but danger and death. She is a creator, and I was made to destroy. And now I'm incapable even of that. There is no good end for me, and on a night like this, its impending arrival seems closer than ever.
       I steel myself for the cutting wind and empty streets, and push to my feet. That's when I feel it, an ache in my chest as if my heart is being squeezed. A warning: a shade. A blighted creature that feeds on the worst of humanity and spreads it far and wide – depravity, cruelty, hate. One of the creatures I was made, long ago, to destroy. It passes down the street, as brazen as can be for those who might be able to see it, moving along the length of the glass walls that front my coffee cavern, the new snow untouched beneath its feet. It's enormous, the largest shade I've ever seen, a towering black mass like an oil spill heaved upright. It lashes sharply as it moves, throwing out tendrils of slime to hook trees and cars in order to pull itself along.
       My head swivels to follow it even as I cower inside. Once, I would have drawn my armor around me, summoned my sword from the aether, and charged such a foul, evil creature. Instead, I hold a breath long after it has passed my hiding place, waiting for it to double back, to attack.
       When nothing happens, I'm forced to a piercing conclusion: I'm so weak, it didn't even sense me. I sink into my seat and clench my hands against the table. How can such a creature ooze its way through the streets, spreading hatred and unrest in its wake, unaffected by the decline in magic that saps my strength? Once upon a time, my reborn brothers and sisters would have descended on that beast, slashing it to ribbons with magicked swords until there was nothing left. I don't remember the last time I saw one of my kind, except that it was his own end, not unlike what I now face – the magic gone, the sword beyond his reach, and then a brief dip into mortality before fading away completely, like ash in the wind. But shades? It seems there are more of them, bigger and stronger, with every day.
       I hold my right hand flat against the table, my sword hand. It trembles. Do I have the strength to summon my sword? My palm tingles, but then it fades. A wave of dizziness washes over me.
       I feel the weight of a gaze upon me and look up to find Tara staring back, mouth open, eyes round.
       She sees me.
       I shake my head, a small movement, a denial. Stay away. I push to my feet and slink between abandoned tables and chairs, headed for the door. I reach it uncontested, rip it open and stumble into the street. The wind bites into my flesh and I can barely keep my eyes open against the thick flakes of snow. But deep in my chest, I feel the call. Even in my weakened state, I find I must answer it, no matter what it means for me. I turn to my left, uptown, the shade's trail a black snake of slime in the street, visible only to me. Quite possibly, the last of my kind.
       The door opens behind me. Tara stands on its threshold. I hunch into the mortality that my fading power has thrust upon me. She looks to the left, to the shade's trail. Her hand clutches at her chest. "What was that?"
       The jolt of her question – that she sees me, that she saw the shade – my palm burns with it. And I know what I must do.
       A fierce grin slashes across my face as I grasp at the last of my power. I hold out my arm. My vision fades as I reach across the barrier into the aether and draw my sword. Its light casts a sphere of empty space, where even the snowflakes are burned away by its clarity. A stillness descends over me. "Stay inside," I tell her. And run into the night, pursuing my ancient foe.
       At least now I know the shape of my end.

       The shade's trail makes a sharp right turn ahead, and intent on going out in a blaze of glory, I follow. An alley swallows me, dank and dripping, and so tall and narrow that only a few random snowflakes find their way to its bottom, and even they are snuffed out by the darkness that has taken root here. The shade has spread itself against the three walls of the dead end. It surges forward and falls upon me like a tsunami.
       A shout of defiance tears from my throat. I bring up the sword and slash an X across the featureless void that would be any other creature's face. A squeal like rending metal cuts through the hollow of my chest as my blows strike home.
       My arm and shoulder burn with the effort of wielding my sword, a fatigue I have never felt before. I cast the pain and doubt aside. If this is my end, then I intend to make the most of it.
       The beast recoils from my sword's blade of light, and I follow, thrusting with a speed and fury I thought long lost to me, even as death drags at my strength. The shade pulls in on itself in a corner behind the dumpster and then launches overhead, using fire escapes as leverage to fling itself out into the street. But I've seen this move a thousand times, a million. I'm ready. I leap into the air, my sword high overhead, ready and aiming for the core of the creature, its death the only price I'm willing to pay for my own.
       A tendril of slime hardens into an obsidian column and whips across the alley into my side, slamming me into the ground. My ears ring, my sight blackens. Every breath I pull into my lungs is a cup full of glass, arcing across my chest and down my side. I taste blood in my mouth, such a mortal thing I laugh in surprise, only to suck in more sharp red agony. My sword is gone. The alley is dark.
       The dumpster sails through the air and crashes into the alley's back wall as the beast clears a path to me. I can feel it hovering over me. It knows I am defenseless. I close my eyes and wait for the end.
       A brilliant flash burns red through my eyelids. A woman's voice calls, clarion and fierce. "Get away from him!"
       Tara.
       The effect on the shade is immediate. It screams and thrashes away, deeper into the alley.
       The flash comes again, and through my fading vision I see Tara striding forward, holding a camera high. Emboldened by the impact, she sets off the flash in rapid succession and each hit of light is like a strike from my sword. The shade squeals and cowers, throwing off tar and slime and shrinking more and more into itself with every burst of light. Finally, it disappears with a pop! as its stinking heart returns to the hell-hole that spawned it.
       She bends over me. Her camera, slung over her shoulder by its strap, bangs into her bag. Melted snowflakes cling to her knit cap like stars caught in a net. "Are you okay?"
       Whatever I mean to say to her comes out garbled and in a froth of blood. I marvel at it – a thing that I have not tasted in so long, and yet so immediately familiar.
       I am dying. Finally.
       Her hand darts to her bag and fishes out her phone. "I'm calling 9-1-1."
       "No." I manage to spit that out. I reach for her with the last shred of my will and press it upon her. No hospitals. No healers. She cannot take me where many others might gather, especially the weak and ill.
       "I'm not leaving you here." Her voice is thick and stubborn.
       There will be other shades, too many, coming to avenge their brother. If she stays, I'll only draw more danger to her. I try to tell her this, but my grip on reality slips, and then I lose it completely.
       I descend into nothing.

       To my surprise, I find that my end is my beginning.
       I kneel in a large waxed-cloth tent thick with brightly-covered, tightly woven rugs to keep the sands at bay. Ornate glass-and-filigree lanterns hang from cross beams and cast patterns against the walls. On either side are twelve comrades in arms, warriors-to-be, on their knees like me. The witch stands before me. Others of her kind each stand before those of us who would sacrifice our bodies, but it is the witch before me that I see and will carry with me in my heart. Her thick dark hair is unbound and uncovered, startling in its intimacy, even as I understand this is the most intimate moment I will ever live. The golden flecks in her deep brown eyes begin to glow like sparks as her lips form the words of the incantation.
       My flesh burns. I throw my head back and embrace the pain. It will set me free, releasing the essence and fury of the warrior so desperately needed to defeat the shades and their darkness that threatens the world–
       I wake to another world, another life. All of my hurts descend upon me and my long-ago rebirth recedes into a hazy past, and somehow, I am not dead. Yet. My side makes breathing an agony. I'm propped sideways to take the pressure off my ribs and lungs, but one twitch makes me realize this is as good as the pain is going to get.
       A loft apartment surrounds me, with exposed brick walls and windows made of metal and glass. I'm draped across a leather couch stuffed with warm-colored pillows with tassels. A giant flat screen TV sits on a pedestal across from me, separated from my couch by a wood and steel coffee table strewn with heavy books, and a rug that looks a poorer version of the one from my fevered memory. In front of the window next to me, three filigreed Turkish lamps hang on chains from a rafter over a reading chair and table. Everything here speaks in low, cultured tones of prosperity and deliberation. Even the wood floor is carefully preserved, whispering a long history of heavy machinery and work boots, brought back to life with a warm glow.
       In my addled state, all that wood is an exotic, foreign luxury, and I can almost reach through the feeling to grasp the memory of my arrival in New York, a ghost among the desperate and the lunatic, as they descended to the dock from the masted ship that had barely carried them across the cruel, cold Atlantic. But the memory fades before I can grasp it, leaving only the thick syrup breaths I can barely suck in.
       Only one thing in this room stands apart from the others. Above the TV is a giant photograph of a derelict house, black and white and agonizing in the loneliness it has captured. I know at once it is Tara's work. Her creation.
       And indeed, Tara comes around the end of the couch, from behind me. She carries gauze and tape and towels and a stock pot of water. She sees my eyes are open and gasps softly, dumping her supplies onto the coffee table with a clatter. She turns and reaches out, but then withdraws, as if afraid to touch me. "What can I do? How can I help you?"
       I wish I had not come awake on her couch, that I could have just faded away already, as I have seen my brothers and sisters do. Too many of them.
       She sinks to her knees next to me. The tears in her eyes startle me. "You're dying, aren't you?" She looks down at her hands when I don't answer. Her voice grows thick. "Can you tell me your name? I-I would remember you, if there is no one else who can."
       Her question stabs me. I no longer know my name. But the tent and the fire of my rebirth are still close, and somewhere in there I see the witch looking up at me, her shoulders bare, her hand cupped to my jaw, my hand covering hers, and a whispered name. My name.
       "Mishka," I grate out. I rasp in a breath and add, "You should have left me to die."
       She shakes her head, a sardonic and stubborn gleam in her eyes. "Never. I don't know what you are, but I know a death alone in an alley is not what you deserve."
       I try to laugh – at her youth and energy, at the fierceness in her voice. Instead I choke and no air will come on its heels. I thrash, trapped in this very mortal death. This is not how the others died.
       Tara grasps my arms and holds on to prevent me from sliding to the floor. "Mishka!"
       My back arches as my lungs refuse to draw more air. I have died before. I know this. And yet still my body fights it, and I am powerless in the struggle to live.
       "Mishka! No!" Tara's voice is full of anguish.
       The last strength leaves me. Tara cries over me. Her tears fall on my face, and in my fading vision she reaches out to stroke my cheek, to wipe the tear away.
       Her fingers burn along my jaw, and her will presses against mine. I see my witch again, the one who touched my face this way, so softly, and whispered my name.
       Through her touch, Tara's past lives stream past me, all of them, the twists and turns of time that lead me back to my witch, to Sosi, a name I had almost lost forever. A love I have forgotten, and that rushes now to reclaim its space in my head and my heart.
       Sosi reaches out to me through the connection, and raps me smartly on the top of my head, as if I am a wayward child. Fool. You were never meant to lose so much. None of you!
       I am the last, I tell her. It's too hard to love and then lose you again and again when all of the Thirteen are gone. When hope is gone from the world.
       And yet you must, she counters, the gold flecks in her eyes glowing like a thousand suns. The others are not gone – just lost. Like you. Find them. Ground them again, return them to what they can be. Restore the balance.
       And just as fire burned away my humanity to make me what I am, it falls upon me once more. Fire burns in my side, racing up through my ribs, my lungs. The blaze rushes through me, washing away my pains, the heaviness in my limbs.
       I open my eyes. The Turkish lamps swing wildly. They bang into their chains, casting their light patterns in fits and starts across the room. The gauze bandages flutter like wounded birds. The pot upends itself, spilling water across the books before flipping over to land with a clang on the floor.
       Tara cowers beneath the lamps, her hands thrown up to protect her face.
       I sit up, and feel the fullness of the strength returned to me. I have not felt this whole since before the time of the Six and the battle over the Black Death in Western lands. The tingle in my palms has grown to a sharp itch. I could throw sparks from my fingers without even trying. "Tara." Even my voice rings with power.
       She drops her hands and looks up at me. Her mouth falls open. "You-you-"
       I rise. "I am whole." I help her to her feet. "Because of your gift."
       "My what-"
       I stop her question with a kiss. Her lips are not the same shape as Sosi's, and we do not move together in the same way, but I sense my witch there, and the curse that we chose in order to save the world. That I would be doomed to live forever, and fight forever. And she would be doomed to find me, and love me, and die a thousand times to find me again in yet another life.
       I break the kiss, pleased with the dusky blush in Tara's cheeks. But a new ache pierces my chest, not the warning that precedes the shades. Something different. I stagger away, overcome. A raging loneliness, a grim despair to fight on. In some places it's thin, torn and shredded like a flag left too long in a relentless wind. In others, it's only beginning to fray. I was not the last, but it was close. My brothers and sisters, of the Thirteen. Lost, but not gone, as Sosi promised.
       Once I master the new sense, I turn to Tara. I hold her back when she would fold herself into my arms. I brush a lock of hair from her face. The witch, my true love, is but a sparkle in her eyes. "I must go," I tell her.
       "I'm glad I could help." She hides her disappointment well, but it is there, in the catch of her breath, in the shift of her weight as she eases away from me.
       "Tara." I reach out and clasp her hand. I give it a squeeze. "Can I see you again?"
       Her face softens. "Yes. I would like that."
       I nod, satisfied. "Soon, then."
       She smiles, and the new power coursing through my body sings in response. A song I will carry with me to save the others, even as I fade from Tara's sight.