"You need life energy. I need people killed tracelessly. It seems like a fair trade to me."

"Not hardly, actually. I'd take the life energy anyway. You're payin' me money and givin' me protection for doin' somethin' I can hardly stop myself from doin'. What's in it for you?"

"It's not an effort for me to pay your salary, Psychophage. I've got money. The protection is so you kill who *I* need killed and not whoever's most convenient. Also, you said that after you feed you get extra speed and strength?"

"Depends on how much I take. Right after a kill, I could lift a car . . . or outrun a deer."

"I might need someone like you as a bodyguard. Certainly there'll be mutants more powerful than you, but against normal human beings you're pretty formidable. *And*, something I didn't know before, you can tell a mutant by touching them. I can think of a lot of uses for that."

"I can't outrun a bullet."

"I know." Mystique sipped at her coffee. "Why didn't you just kill your husband?"

Jessamy squirmed. She had asked herself the same thing. If she had only killed Richard, she wouldn't *need* protection -- deaths by energy loss always looked like heart attacks, strokes, pernicious anemia or something else natural. Richard would be stopped, and no one else would know she was a mutant, or a killer. And Ettie would be safe. But . . . "I don't know, Mystique. Part of me still loves him, I guess. If he showed up in my face now, I might kill him -- or I might just run. If he threatened Rogue, I *would* kill him. But at the time . . . it seemed like it would be better if I just ran away."

"If you see him again, kill him." With her irisless, pupiless golden eyes, it was almost impossible to tell where Mystique was looking, or what she was thinking. Jessamy wondered how she saw anything, and how she would know to turn back to human before the check came, now that Destiny wasn't here to warn her. "I've done some investigating. Your husband works for the FBI."

"Yes."

"I can't match those kind of resources yet. If he turns you in, I'll have to get you out of the country, and I need you here. So far, he hasn't turned you in -- he probably considers you his own personal demon, not something he can afford to let others deal with. But the safest way to make sure is to kill him."

"I will. If I see him again."

"And I'll track him down and kill him myself if you don't. He's too dangerous to let live." Mystique shifted back to human form just in time as the waiter arrived with the check. "Let's go pick up your daughter."

Ettie apparently liked Destiny, who she called Irenie and Destiny in about equal portions, a great deal. She said that Destiny knew that her name was Henrietta, but that Destiny said Rogue was a pretty name and so she was going to keep calling Ettie that. Ettie had thus decided that she liked to be called Rogue a lot. It was just as well. Jessamy was probably going to have to change her own name and Ettie's anyway, and if Ettie could get used to a name like Rogue, she could get used to a new real name as well.

They headed up to their hotel room, leaving Mystique and Destiny behind. "Can I go swimming, Momma? Destiny and I saw the pool -- well, I saw it, Irenie didn't see it 'cause she's blind, but we went there -- and it was *huge!* And there were lots of kids playing in it, and I wanna go swimming too."

"Sure. We brought bathing suits, and it's been half an hour since breakfast. We can go swimmin' if you wan'." The maid had been to the bedroom already; the beds were made and the carpet had been vacuumed. "Get your bathin' suit out of the bag. I'm goin' take a shower."

"Okay." Ettie began rummaging through the bag, dumping most of the clothes on the floor. Jessamy sighed. She'd pick it up later.

After three days' straight driving, her body felt grungy. She hadn't had time this morning to do more than wash her face and arms for the meeting with Mystique. Now she sudsed her hair and luxuriated in the joy of having a chance to shower again. It felt as if she were washing away her old life with the dirt.

Ettie screamed. "*Momma! It's Poppa!*"

Jessamy was out the bathroom door, naked, with dripping wet hair, in seconds. Richard stood in the door of the hotel room, holding Ettie in a headlock with one hand. In the other he held a gun. "Nice long chase, Jessamy."

"Richard -- Richard, let her go, it's me you wan'--"

"Not even going to ask how I found you?" He smiled ferally. "You made your reservations under one of your old pseudonyms. I had you investigated before I married you -- you think I didn't know your old names?"

Oh God -- Oh God, she hadn't even thought -- "Richard, *please*. Ettie's innocent. She hasn't done anything."

"Not yet. Bet you hadn't killed anyone when you were five, either." He shook his head. "For what it's worth, Jessamy, I'm sorry about her at least. It wasn't her choice to be born a monster. I guess it wasn't yours either. But hell, it isn't a dog's choice to get rabies, and you've got to put it down anyway because it's too dangerous. That's what you and Ettie are. Rabid dogs." He stepped into the room, still holding Ettie and the gun, and shut the door behind him. Jessamy backed up.

"It was my choice," Jessamy said. "I could have not killed. Ettie doesn't have to kill. Not all mutants do. Just me. She isn't going to have my powers, Richard, she'll have something different. Something so she doesn't have to kill. *Please!* She's your *daughter!*"

"She's not human, Jessamy," Ricahrd said quietly.

Jessamy lunged at him. The bullet caught her in the chest and flung her back in a wash of pain. Distantly she noted that the gunshot was much quieter than she'd thought it would be -- a silencer? Of course, if he was going to kill a woman and child in their hotel room, he'd need a gun with a silencer.

With pain-hazed eyes, Jessamy saw the door slam open behind Richard, hitting him in the back. He spun to face a policeman with a leveled gun. "*Freeze*, mister!"

Richard released Ettie and raised his hands, dropping his gun. The policeman motioned for Ettie to move away from Richard. Ettie did so -- toward the policeman. Blocking his line of fire for a crucial second.

In that second, Richard moved. He twisted and kicked the policeman's arm, so the policeman's gun flew off in the opposite direction, and then kicked the policeman in the crotch. The policeman staggered backward but did not gasp. Richard ducked down and recovered the gun, bringing it up to aim at Ettie, who was frozen behind the policeman, eyes wide and terrified.

As Richard moved, Jessamy did as well. Agony shrieked through her as she used all of her energy to force herself to her feet, and run to Richard. And as Richard leveled the gun on Ettie, Jessamy wrapped arms around him from behind, grasping his face and draining his life force.

The policeman became Mystique, who gathered Ettie to her. "Don't watch, Rogue," Jessamy heard Mystique whisper as Richard's life force roared into her. "Don't watch."

Richard's mind was an open book to Jessamy -- his terror, his resolve. She knew what he was going to do, but could not tear herself away from her feeding to stop him as he used a supreme effort of will to overcome the paralysis, turn his body slightly, and fire the gun point-blank into her chest.

Jessamy staggered backward, falling. Grimly she fixed her eyes on Richard. His life force kept her going when she should have been dead already. With inhuman endurance, she staggered toward him again. Too weak to run, Richard lifted the gun again -- and Mystique, behind him, reached down and yanked it out of his hand. He looked up at Mystique's mutant form and back at Jessamy's blood-streaked one with despair and horror in his eyes. Then Jessamy reached him again.

His death was sweet. She felt his terror and pain and savored it, drinking him ruthlessly, tearing his life force out of him and reveling in the sensation of his death.

As the energy flow stopped, she returned to herself. Mystique was standing up, holding Ettie pressed to her chest. Ettie was sobbing. The gun was nowhere visible.

"Mystique," Jessamy began, voicelessly -- she had no breath. "I--"

Then the weakness hit and she pitched over backward. Mystique dropped Ettie, lunged forward and caught her, and lowered her gently onto the floor.

"Don't talk," Mystique said. "I'll get a doctor."

"A doctor?" Jessamy whispered, and would have laughed if she could. There was a huge gaping hole where most of her chest used to be. No lungs, no heart -- nothing but blood pouring out everywhere. The only thing keeping her brain functioning was the life force she'd absorbed from Richard, and that was leaking out with the blood. "Can't -- live. No way."

Mystique was pressing a blanket against her chest. "I'll bandage you -- you won't lose any more blood--"

"Mystique." A harsh croak. "Don't fool yourself . . . ain't foolin' . . . me."

"Momma?" Ettie's voice trembled with sobs. "Are you -- are you gonna go to heaven?"

Jessamy doubted it. Killers went to hell. "'Yeah," she whispered. "Poppa . . . killed me. Just like . . . ah did . . . him."

Ettie screamed. "Don't die! Momma, don't die! Don't die!" She flung herself across the blanket and Jessamy's chest, pressing down. If Jessamy could still breathe, could still feel pain, it might be uncomfortable. She could barely feel her daughter's weight at all through the cold enveloping her.

"Can't . . . help it . . . Ettie." She looked up at Mystique. "Mah daughter . . . "

"I made you a promise. I failed you," Mystique whispered. "I said I'd protect you . . . "

"Take . . . mah daughter. She needs . . . a mutant momma. Someone . . . t'understand . . . when the powers come in. Please."

Mystique shook her head. "I -- I can't raise a child, Psychophage -- I abandoned my own son, I'd never make a good mother--"

"Mah name's . . . Jessamy. You owe . . . me, Mystique. You gotta."

"My name's Raven," Mystique whispered. "I'll find her a good home, I promise--"

"No. You. She needs . . . protector . . . a mutant momma . . . with connections . . . please, Raven . . . "

Mystique nodded, the golden eyes glistening with unshed tears. "All right, Jessamy. I'll raise her as my own. Better than my own."

"Ettie . . . "

"Your momma wants to talk to you, Rogue," Mystique whispered.

Ettie looked up with a blotchy, tear-streaked face. "Momma?"

"Mystique's . . . goin' be . . . your momma now . . . okay? You mind her . . . like you would me . . . "

"I don't want Mystique to be my momma! I want you!"

"Ah'm *dead*, Ettie . . . " Jessamy could no longer hear any sound from her own lips. She spoke, but the ruined remains of her lungs couldn't give her a voice, and her vision was growing dimmer and dimmer. "Ah can't stay . . . you mind Mystique, you hear? Promise me?"

"I promise, I promise, Momma . . . "

"Love you . . . Ettie . . . "

Ettie sat staring at her mother's mouth, waiting expectantly for another message. None came. After a moment Mystique reached out and gently closed Jessamy's eyes.

"*Momma!*" Ettie screamed, clinging to the body and sobbing. Mystique moved her legs so she could pull the cooling body and the little girl both onto her lap. After a moment, Ettie released her dead mother and clung to Mystique instead, sobbing heartbrokenly. Mystique held her and rocked her, tears stinging her own eyes.

Why hadn't Irenie warned her earlier? If she'd gone up to the room before Jessamy had been shot, before Richard had even arrived, couldn't she have prevented all this? . . . or would that have ended in her death? Irenie was a sweet, gentle woman, but with a core of ruthlessness -- if it was a choice between the death of a stranger and possible harm to Mystique, she would choose the death of a dozen strangers rather than let harm befall her best friend and lover. If Irenie had chosen not to tell her of Psychophage's danger until it was too late, it was probably because she sensed that doing it any other way would result in harm to Mystique. So Mystique was left unhurt, and a five-year-old girl was made an orphan.

She thought of the son her fragile sanity hadn't let her raise, left with a gypsy woman in Germany, and vowed it would be different this time. Psychophage -- Jessamy -- had been someone she barely knew, a killer whose death should hardly bother Mystique . . . but holding the dead assassin's daughter in her arms, her heart nearly broke for Jessamy's death. *Rogue will grow up in a world where mutants aren't murdered by their loved ones in front of their children. I promise you that, Jessamy. Whatever it takes, I promise you that.

Mystique, Rogue and Destiny are copyright Marvel Comics Group.Psychophage/Jessamy copyright Alara Rogers.

The name Henrietta (Ettie) for Rogue's original name was invented by Alara Rogers and almost certainly bears no resemblance to whatever her original name actually *is* in the comics.