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said, pushing the jar containing the bicarb towards her. She frowned as he got up and crossed to the counter and filled a glass with some water. He returned to the table and poured some of the powder into the glass to make a paste. 'Come on, try it. It'll take the sting out.'
    She took the glass and, wincing in anticipation, poured it over her arm. At first it seemed to be making her skin sing with pain, but then the sting evaporated, taking most of the heat with it. She scraped off the gunk and was staring at the handprint-shaped burn on her arm when Victor started speaking again, quietly and quickly, as though he was worried she might jump up and fire the gun at him now that her arm was better and she could aim with two hands.
    'I'm a Hunter. Our job is to keep Unhumans out of this world. We've been doing this for a very, very long time.'
    'OK,' she said, 'I'm just going along with this for the sake of conversation.' She cleared her throat. 'So you're telling me you're like, what? Some kind of border control?'
    Victor leant forward. He seemed to be chewing on his response. 'If you want to think of it like that, then yes,' he said, sighing under his breath. 'We keep this world safe from . . . well, you've seen what we keep it safe from. The reason we're safe now, the reason they won't come back just yet, is because they'll know more Hunters will be on the way.'
    Evie frowned at him, waiting for further explanation.
    Victor shrugged. 'Safety in numbers.'
    'Where do they come from?' Evie asked, her voice shaking. 'These Unhumans ? If they don't come from this world?'
    'They come from other realms. There's a gateway - in LA. It's the link between this realm and the other six realms.'
    Evie nodded slowly. 'Right,' she said, while surreptitiously scanning between the tables for what looked like the fastest route out of here. 'This is such bull,' she said at last. 'None of what you're telling me makes any sense. It's not real. It can't be.'
    Victor smiled then. 'This world,' he said, 'the world you grew up in, Evie, this is the one that's not real. You just need to see it from our perspective.'
    She opened her mouth ready to tell him where he could stick his perspective but he cut her off.
    'It exists, yes. People are born, they work, they get married, they have babies. If they're lucky they live to grow old, see the next generation grow up, and then they die. But they do all that without ever knowing what's really happening around them - in the darkness, in the shadows. In the parking lot of their local diner.'
    Evie felt herself suddenly go cold. She wrapped her arms around her body, hugging herself tight. Was he right? Was this all possible? Her head was screaming no, but everything else, her instinct or whatever it was, was telling her that it was the truth.
    'Humans love to fight. There are always wars in the human world,' Victor continued. 'Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, the Second World War, the Great War, the Crimea, the Crusades. And on and on. Wars that last a week or a year or even a decade. But the war between Humans and Unhumans has been going on for over a thousand years. Without pause and without reconciliation.'
    'Why? What are you all fighting about?' Her voice sounded surprisingly together, considering the rest of her was slowly collapsing inwards like a star silently extinguishing itself.
    'To keep our world safe,' he said. 'The Unhumans wish to possess all seven realms. Our world, the human world, is the seventh. The only realm they haven't been able to take control of.'
    He waited a beat and then continued. 'We've fought in secret all that time. It's a tiny war in terms of numbers. There are only a few of us who are Hunters in each generation - our numbers are shrinking. But the outcome of this war is far greater, far more important, than any war ever fought among humans.'
    He sat back in his seat, resting his gaze level with hers.
    Evie finally cleared her voice. 'OK, thanks for the alternative history lesson and