Frank went back to Terry's place and scanned the article. The paper only had sketchy details about the bus being found late last night, just inside St. Clair County. There was nothing about the number of people involved, how many were dead, alive or missing, nor any speculation from the police about exactly what had happened. Frank heard Terry's alarm go off at 6am. He was sitting in the living room, and a few minutes later, Terry shuffled by and dropped a kiss in his general direction on her way to the kitchen and the coffee machine. He heard her flip the switch, then she shuffled by in the opposite direction heading for the shower. Frank was still sitting in exactly he same spot when she came out. She went back into the kitchen, from which he could smell the aroma of coffee, and he heard her making toast. Ten minutes later, she waved a couple plates in his direction as she went to sit at the table. She'd made her usual breakfast of toast with peanut butter and homemade jam (not her own—she'd gotten it from someone at work), and she'd made enough for him too. He came to the table and laid the paper by her elbow. It took a second, and a few sips of coffee, before what she was looking at registered in her brain. “Oh my God! This was your dream,” she said as she studied the photo. He waited while she read the article, then debated aloud who might be least likely to grab a gun and shoot the phone (or him) when he called them. Because, they did need to tell the others. If something like this was turning up in Frank's dreams, then it wasn't just the work of your average homicidal maniac.

Terry suggested that he try Angie first. Frank dialed, and he heard a muffled answer. She sounded wide awake but tired, like she hadn't been to sleep yet. In the background, Frank could hear a muffled chuckle, then the sound of a pillow hitting someone. Had Angie seen the morning paper yet, Frank asked her. There was an interesting article on the front page, and he recommended she take a look at it before she met him for breakfast. Angie asked when and where, and they agreed to meet in two hours at the team's usual diner. Frank dialed Leigh next, and was a little surprised to hear her sounding bright and chipper at that hour. She told him she'd gotten up early to get a little work done. He suggested she read the paper and meet him and the others for breakfast. Frank tried Tony, but the call went straight to voice mail. He'd been hard to get hold of all summer, too, so this didn't surprise Frank. Frank left a message that Tony should call when he got “done with whoever” he was “doing.” Finally, Frank called Justin. He was still trying not to antagonize Karen too much, since it had taken a while to regain her trust. Besides, he'd always figured it was the quiet ones you really had to watch out for anyway. He'd let Justin take the grief for this early morning call rather than call Karen directly. It was past 6:30 am by now, and when Justin answered he sounded slightly out of breath. Frank apologized for 'interrupting,' and Justin snorted and told him he was just out for a jog, nothing else. Karen was still asleep at home. Pretty much everyone knew that she wasn't a morning person, and she usually set her alarm as late as she could to still get to her office on time. Frank told Justin that he should pick up the paper on his way home, and bring his wife along for breakfast at the diner at 8:30am.

On the front page of the Free Press, there was a big picture of a bus in a cornfield. There were smudges on the side of it like the stains left by smoke. The name on the side looked like it had been painted over. The article was much smaller than the picture, and it was mostly “police are withholding details.” It did state that the bus had been discovered late last night in a field off Springborne Road between Church and Meldrum, outside Anchorville. and that there were no survivors. Neither the number of victims nor anything about them was being released pending notification of relatives. And arson investigators had been called in to help with the on-going investigation. By the time the team met for breakfast, everyone had read the article and studied the picture. As soon as the waitress had taken their orders, Frank played back the recording he'd made as he described his dream. It was time-stamped 3:30am. Moments later, all the others had called in to work and taken the day off except for Terry. She had plenty of work on her desk and a boss who wasn't going to wait while she took on cases from 2 counties away.

The team debated their options. Frank wouldn't have gathered them if there wasn't something weird about this case. But they couldn't figure out how they could get anywhere near the scene. Even if Terry had had the time to help, that was way past the edge of her jurisdiction. Finally, they decided to at least drive up there and see what they could find out. Leigh, Aiden and Angie piled into Charlie, which Leigh was still using in Reg's absence. Justin and Karen were in Justin's truck, and Frank was in his car. Before they left, Frank suggested they all put on their comm units, so they could keep in touch along the way. That was why they were all able to hear Frank when he called the St. Clair County sheriff, Dan Lane, to offer his services. He'd read about the incident in the paper, he told the officer who answered, and thought that perhaps he could help in some way. He was currently on leave from the DHS while working on his medical residency, he told her; and ,given the unusual nature of the crime, he thought that the sheriff might appreciate help from someone with his expertise who had no interest in being the lead on the case. Obviously the sheriff was busy at the moment, the woman who answered told Frank, but she would make sure he got the message. It was obvious as the three vehicles came to a stop at the top of the exit from I-94 that this was the far outskirts of the Metro area. There were several new subdivisions visible from the ramp, but they were all surrounded by fields of corn, late wheat and soybeans. Frank had a detailed map of the area, and he led the way to the section indicated in the article. As they turned onto Springborne Road, they could see a couple Sheriff's Department cars pulled off the side of the road in the distance. They slowed as they neared them. If she could get a look at the area where the bus was, Karen suggested, maybe she could see if there were any spirits of the victims left to talk to.

The two cops cars were angled across the opening the bus had created in the standing corn. There were two deputies in one car, and the other car had one deputy inside and another sitting on the hood holding what was most likely a cup of coffee. He took a sip and glanced up at the three cars rolling by. The look on his face told them that they weren't the first 'gawkers' to drift by the scene of this horrific crime that morning. As they passed the opening, those who looked could see that the bus had been removed from the scene. At almost the same time, Aiden saw Leigh gasp then pass out cold in the Land Rover's front seat, and everyone heard both Karen and Frank gasp as well. Justin and Angie, each driving and unwilling to take their attention off the road, asked what had happened. Frank started to say something, then hesitated, not quite sure how to describe it. What Karen had seen had been a blinding flash as she looked at the spot where the bus had been. But it wasn't a visible flash of light. It was pure, undistilled Evil. And when she saw it, she realized that it saw her too, and she got the feeling that it knew she'd seen it and that to it she was already dead and that the only reason she was still sitting there breathing was because she didn't know she was dead yet. Aiden roused Leigh, and the three who'd 'seen' it all seemed to start talking and stop at once, trying to confirm with the others that they'd felt what they'd felt. All three had gotten the 'message' that if they crossed this thing, they were dead, and that it WOULD have them. The thing was strong, whatever it was. And it felt old. Not quite as old as the 'Hellmouth,' But it was more.... “aware,” Leigh offered, and the other two agreed. Karen told them that she'd seen no spirits left there, and she had the feeling that the thing had done something to them, or with them. In any case, she whispered, as if the thing could hear her, there was no way she was doing a séance to try to contact any of the victims, even if they did find out their names. Justin stiffened. Damn straight she wasn't! Whatever they'd seen, if it spooked even Frank that much, he wasn't going to let her do anything that dangerous no matter what the others said. But Frank agreed. They definitely didn't want to draw any more of this thing's attention.

They'd slowed almost to an idle as they passed the opening, and as they started to speed up a little, they saw a car come up from behind them and turn in next to the cop cars. Frank's phone rang, and it was Terry. She would be free about 2pm if they needed her, she told him. He said that there wasn't much they could do at the moment anyway, but that he'd call her if anything changed. The deputy on the hood of the car slid off and went to the driver's open window. What transpired couldn't even be called a “conversation.” A moment later, the deputy was taking his position on the hood again, and the driver was backing out with a disgusted look on his face. They guessed that the guy was a reporter looking for more info. Frank increased his speed, and the others followed him back to the freeway. The sheriff's office was in Port Huron, so that was the most likely place the bus and any remains had been taken. Hopefully Frank's offer would get them a foot in the door of this investigation. They drove up there and found a nice diner to hang out in until then.

Frank's phone didn't ring again until 5:30pm. It was Sheriff Lane. He'd finally gotten a chance to respond to some of the messages he'd gotten that day. When Frank explained his background with the FBI, some of the...unusual cases he'd worked for the Bureau, and that he was currently unattached to any Department while he was on leave, the sheriff told him he'd be grateful for any help Frank could give him. Ultimately he'd be kicking it up to the State Police, but he'd like to give them as much as he could when he did that. Then he gave Frank the basics of the case. The bus had been stolen from a church school in East Pointe sometime after the regular driver had dropped it back there yesterday afternoon and everyone had left the school for the day. It was reported missing this morning. There appeared to be the remains of 8 children and 2 adults burned to death on it. The arson investigators were still looking for signs of what accellerant had been used, because the fire had burned hot enough to melt the bus's frame in places and to almost completely consume the victims' bodies. In fact, they didn't even have enough left to identify the victims through dental records or to be able to tell for sure if the 2 adults were one male and one female as they suspected. But they were concerned that the accellerant might have been so completely consumed as well that they might not find any trace. At the moment, the bus was in the State Police crime lab in Port Huron being processed, and he could take Frank there and introduce him to the officer in charge of that operation. There was no sign of this being a terrorist attack, the children weren't from the school from which the bus had been stolen, and there had as yet been no reports of a group of 8 missing kids, so they must have gone missing in ones and twos and could have been from just about anywhere. There were no footprints around the scene except for the ones left by the police, and no sign that anyone had gotten on or left the bus during the fire. A guy on his way to work at the crack of dawn had spotted the bus and thought it might be a prank, but called 911 anyway and reported it. When the police got there, the metal was still warm.

Frank suggested that Sheriff Lane look for a missing family, maybe one that home-schooled. If this was some sort of cult activity, that sort of family better fit the profile. If it was a cult, it was most likely a very small one, since the number of victims was so small. The sheriff told him that he'd gotten reports of 4 missing kids just that day, and they were from Detroit, Pontiac and Port Huron, so they were going to have to run a pretty wide search. But if Frank wanted to meet him at his office, he could take him to the crime lab. Frank asked if it was OK for him to bring along a colleague who had experience with explosives, and the sheriff agreed. When he was done on the phone, Frank let the others know that the fire had created crematorium-level heat, yet it sounded like the bus itself hadn't also been consumed. Angie could think of a few incindiaries or explosives that could generate that kind of heat, but nothing that could have still left the exterior of the bus intact. Frank asked the others to get rooms at a local hotel and start doing what research they could on the church the bus had come from and any fire-related cult activity they could find. Then he and Angie left for the sheriff's office. When the other 4 got settled into rooms, they called Terry and enlisted her help. A short time later she called back to let them know that the church was the Church of the Redeemer. The school had about 150 students. They were part of a Protestant sect that were Bible literalists, pretty right-wingy, and they weren't very trusting of the government. She'd called the sheriff's department to get the info from the stolen vehicle report, and raised a few hackles because they thought that the DPD was trying to step on the 'small-town sheriff's department's toes.' So she was going to just stay down there in Detroit rather than driving up that evening. She'd leave the phone on, in case they needed her, and plug in the electric blanket. She sounded just slightly grumpy to Karen and Leigh when she mentioned the blanket, like it was a bother that Frank wouldn't be there. The two just grinned and winked at one another. No point in telling the guys because it would just cause trouble—for Frank and then for themselves.

Sheriff Lane took Frank and Angie directly over to the crime lab. There were several people in 'clean suits' working in and around the bus when they got there. There were smoke stains up the sides of the bus from every window, and an oily smell of burnt flesh. But the bus frame appeared intact. John Hunter was the tech in charge, and he handed Frank and Angie clean suits of their own so they could take a closer look. After they put them on, Hunter called Susan Fellows out of the bus. She was the local ME. It didn't look like a terrorist job to her, and Frank agreed. It sounded like a death cult, he suggested to her. She led the two Envoys into the remains of the bus, to the driver's seat. She pointed out how the side window was burnt and buckled right where the driver's arm would have rested. His shoe had melted right to the accelerator pedal and the seat itself was melted. But nothing else in the area was as badly damaged. And what little was left of the body looked like it had burnt from the inside out. The only thing she could think of that might cause that sort of pattern was Spontaneous Human Combustion. It was the same with all the other bodies as well.

The other thing she'd noted was that it looked like these people all just sat there and burned alive. Usually someone who's on fire will move and struggle, try to put the fire out; especially children. But there was no sign that any of them had moved at all. The fire damage was localized to the seat and the windows and sheathing beside them. The remains were left in neat little puddles. She led them out of the bus and picked up a small jar that was sitting on a tarp nearby. That was all that was left of one of the children; not even enough to check for drugs, but she was going to try anyway. It was the only way she could think of to have kept the kids from moving around. Next she pointed out a hand mark on the support bar of one of the overhead hand rails. Someone had stood there and held on while they burned. Frank asked if it was possible that the person had been restrained there somehow and the restraints had been fully consumed. She thought about that. Admittedly, there were plenty of stories of Buddhist monks sitting still and meditating as they self-immolated. But never kids.

When Frank asked if there was any other evidence that had survived, maybe of cult activity, Fellows told him that she hadn't found anything and that she hadn't heard of any cults active in the area. Frank figured they would have kept their activities quiet, but maybe this was some sort of message from the leader. The unusual things were that there weren't more victims and that the message still wasn't apparent, if there was one. Normally one smaller part of a larger sect wouldn't do this on its own, so it had to be small. The only things she'd found inside were little odd items—a coin purse, part of a backpack, a melted cross necklace. Angie asked if she could take samples too, and Hunter said it was OK as long as she shared any answers she got from them. Frank want back inside the bus and looked around. Everything he saw confirmed what the ME had told them. He glanced down at the driver's seat again, and something caught his eye. It was a glint of metal. He looked closer and found what might have been a fairly good-sized silver pendant had melted into the seat. It was warped and runny-looking but Frank could make out the shape of a thunderbolt or lightning bolt. He called Fellows back in and pointed it out. She'd missed that, thinking it was just part of the seat frame. She called a tech over to collect it and Frank went back out.

Angie was carrying around a clipboard and doing calculations and mumbling. She couldn't figure this out, because the damage wasn't adding up to any of the incindiaries that she knew of. Frank walked around the outside of the bus. He was still looking for the message he was sure the cult leader would have left. Then, as if it were a trick of the light, Frank saw it. He'd stepped out as he came around the side of the bus and was thinking about why they would have spray painted over the school's name on the side. When he looked at it again, he saw how there was something more to the pattern of the paint. They'd first sprayed over the name, then painted the word TRANSFORMATION over that using the same paint. No doubt about it...this thing had the stink of death cult all over it. Frank pointed this out to Hunter, who was amazed that Frank had been able to spot it. Now it seemed all too obvious. Finally, after they'd been there a couple hours, Frank gathered up Angie and told Hunter, Lane and Fellows that he'd contact them immediately if he came up with anything else useful, and the pair took off. As Frank started the car, he called the others to find out where they'd gotten room, and they headed over there, picking up some take out on the way.

That evening, the conversation was all about death cults. All the laptops were set up and running searches on Detroit area death cults, with the key words “transformation” and “fire.” Leigh shared what she already knew about Norse cults of this sort, with the phrase “Soul Forge” springing immediately to mind. It was out of Norse mythology, and was an idea that had been gaining popularity among American prison inmates, who embraced 'worship' of the god Isactru or Odin. Inmates joined seeking power, protection and unity. Odinists, as they're sometimes called, who tended to be White Supremicists, believe in becoming martyrs for their cause and used a thunderbolt as their symbol. One of the key concepts in Norse mythology overall is that of Ragnarok. It was the Norse version of the End Times, but as a beginning as well as an ending, a time of transformation. This led them to add recently released prison inmates with families in the area to their computer searches, and also people (and their families) who might have helped put those men in prison. Justin called Fr. Jerzy, to see if he knew anything about the church where the bus was stolen or about any strange death cults in the area. He told Justin that he'd see what he could find out. Frank called and asked Terry to see if she could find out anything about possible discarded spray paint cans in the area where the bus was stolen. And Justin suggested that the next day they go back and try to take a look at the fire scene from the precise spot where Frank saw it in his dream, to see if they could find any new clues there.

Not long after Leigh finished having lunch with Frank and Terry that first afternoon on the cruise ship, she went to her cabin and tried to call Reg. He should have been in San Francisco by then and she wanted him to know that the team had rescued Terry, and that she would come to Frisco if he wanted her to. But his cell phone sent her call straight to voice mail with the message that the phone was either turned off or not in a service area. That was strange, since Reg rarely turned the phone off and the only areas where he couldn’t get service were places that were so remote there weren’t even people there. San Francisco was NOT one of those places. She went back out to find Frank again. Reg not answering worried her and she wanted to fly up to join him as soon as she could; but since Frank had paid for her to be on the cruise, she didn’t want to just leave without making sure that he didn’t mind. When she found the Frank and Terry, still sitting on deck amusing themselves with ‘people watching,’ Leigh asked if Frank would mind her leaving at the next port with an international airport. Frank didn’t mind, but wondered why; and when Leigh explained her concern, Frank offered to make a few calls in the meantime.

While Frank called old contacts in the Frisco area, Leigh went to work off some of her stress in one of the ship’s gyms. She invited Terry along, but Terry seemed content to just stick close to Frank and sip her ‘frufru’ drinks. Frank told Leigh to check back with him a little later. He was just finishing up with one of his old FBI buddies when Leigh rejoined them at the table they’d staked out on deck. He looked troubled, and Leigh ask him if he needed a drink...or if she was going to need one. He couldn’t be sure yet. He’d been able to find out that the kids were fine and in foster care, that Claire and Phil were injured rescuing the girls, that there was still no sign of the girls’ father..., oh, and that Reg hadn’t shown up in San Francisco yet. Leigh looked like she was ready to bolt for one of the lifeboats and row her way back to the States. Frank got her to sit back down and he told her that there was a record of the police calling Reg early on the 28th, and that as far as his buddy could tell, Reg’s plane disappeared from radar over the Gulf of Mexico. But her going to San Francisco right then might not accomplish anything, he cautioned her; and until he could get more information, there was no way to know what the right course of action might be. So, he would try to find out everything he could about Reg’s flight, and Leigh would just have to trust him enough to stay put on the ship for the moment. Leigh agreed, but she wasn’t happy about the situation. She felt so helpless, and she knew that if she thought too much about it, she wouldn’t be able to do what Frank asked. So she ordered a drink. And another. And another. Between her and Terry’s drinking the rest of that afternoon, it was a wonder there was enough alcohol left for everyone else on the cruise.

Frank didn’t have time for drinking, though. With Reg missing, he didn’t want Leigh to be alone. And although she wasn’t being ‘clingy,’ Terry wasn’t ready to be more than an arm’s length away from him yet. So he persuaded the women to have their drinks sent to the suite. This way, he’d know that both women were safe even after they’d passed the point of being able to look after themselves; and he’d be able to work on the phone and computer all night, tracking down anything he could find about Reg’s flight, the fire, and where the girls were being fostered. The next morning, Dec. 31st, Frank called Justin’s cell. He knew if he called the room, the call would be blocked. Karen hadn’t said much about it, but he knew she was still angry about the little practical joke he’d played on the couple. As soon as they’d all gotten back on the ship, Karen had insisted on blocking all contact with herself and Justin by any of the other Envoys. She had even shut her phone off. She was adamantly refusing any contact with the outside world that might further disturb their honeymoon. Frank had a feeling, though, that Justin wasn’t quite as upset as Karen, and that he would take the call. He was right; Justin had put his phone on ‘vibrate,’ just in case someone needed to get in touch with them. Luckily, Karen was still sleeping when Justin noticed the phone vibrating on the night stand. When he saw that the caller was Frank, he got up and grabbed the phone on his way to the bathroom. Frank didn’t waste any time. He explained to Justin that Reg’s plane had disappeared over the Gulf. Justin told him that he’d keep his phone handy, and that Frank should call if he found out anything else or needed any help from him and Karen. He wasn’t going to tell Karen anything yet; but if Frank did need them, Justin would find a way to break the news to Karen gently. She might not be happy about it, but Justin knew that, in the end, she could never refuse a friend in need.

After they had breakfast, Frank, Terry and Leigh tracked down Aiden and Angie, who were already stretched out on the top deck to spend as much time in the Caribbean sun as humanly possible. Nobody had been able to find Tony since they’d seen him putting his arm around some 30-something redhead the evening before. Frank wanted to show them all what he’d been able to find out about Reg’s flight, but they couldn’t really talk freely out in any of the ship’s public areas. So Terry suggested they go back to the suite. As they all got settled onto the couches and chairs, Frank got Reg’s flight path displayed on his computer. While they waited for it to load, Leigh booted up her own laptop and had sympathy cards and teddy bears sent to Topaz and Amethyst at the foster family’s address, and she included her contact information, telling the girls only that she was a good friend of their Uncle Reg. Then she sent get-well cards and flowers to Claire and Phil in the hospital, and made arrangements for new ones to be sent weekly until they were released. The line indicating Reg’s flight path just stopped in the middle of the Gulf, right over one of the ‘dead zones’ there that are similar to the “Bermuda Triangle” in the number of unexplained phenomena that are reported. Given the circumstances, Frank was beginning to wonder if the fire at Claire’s house was just a distraction designed by the Ancient Evils to separate Reg from the rest of the group so they could ‘pick him off.’ As far as Frank could find out, Reg hadn’t deviated at all from the optimal route from Cancun to San Francisco. Fortunately, since the plane had an FAA registry and disappeared over international waters, the US would be involved in the search; they wouldn’t have to rely on the Mexican government’s disinterested attempts at finding the lost plane.

Unfortunately, while that meant a Navy ship would be sent to look for wreckage if there happened to be one in the area, they might not be looking too hard since it was just a small private passenger plane with only two occupants. Leigh was getting frustrated, and her hangover wasn’t helping. Why was it sounding like there was nothing they could do to find Reg? Weren’t they talking about finding a guy who owned a huge high-tech US corporation? Wasn’t this the kind of thing that Americans just threw money at to solve? The fact that Reg owned a huge corporation wouldn’t do anything for helping find him if the person with his Power of Attorney, most likely either Phil or Claire, wasn’t in any condition to sign off on spending the money, Frank explained. “What about a seance?” Leigh asked. Wouldn’t that at least tell them that he was alive, if his spirit couldn’t be contacted, she wondered. Frank wasn’t sure. It sounded logical enough. The hard part was going to be getting to Karen to ask her to do it. Leigh knew that. She’d already tried to ask Karen to have coffee with her, so she could commiserate with Karen about Tony’s misguided fantasy; and she’d been intercepted and sent away by the Purser. But if this was the only way she had of finding out whether Reg was dead or alive, no Purser was going to stop her. Though she was still a little unsteady on her feet, Leigh waved off the offers of help from Angie and Aiden. She was sure that Karen knew that she didn’t have anything to do with the ‘room bugging’ joke; but she also knew that Angie was the other person in on that, and wasn’t sure if Karen knew that or not. She couldn’t take any risk of having the door slammed shut if she DID get to their room without being stopped.

And make it she did. She wasn’t be sure if it was God’s hand shielding her from the watchful eyes of the Assistant Pursers, or just the luck that protected drunkards and children. Either way, she got there, and knocked on the cabin door. Karen answered, and immediately she could tell that something was wrong. Karen had never seen Leigh drunk before, but it was obvious that she’d been drinking heavily recently and that she was suffering the after-effects now. Karen’s face darkened as she pulled Leigh into the room and asked “What’s wrong?” Reg was missing, Leigh told her. He never made it to San Francisco, and it looked like his plane had gone down in the middle of the Gulf. Leigh wanted her to do a seance, to see if Reg’s spirit would come or not. If he didn’t come, maybe that meant he was still alive and lost somewhere. Justin saw Karen’s shoulders slump slightly as she looked down at the floor thinking. He came up and hugged her from behind. He wasn’t sure if she would be able to handle another interruption of their honeymoon, even though he knew that she’d do what Leigh had asked. Karen leaned back against Justin and sighed. Even if she didn’t owe them for everything they’d done for her lately, they were still her friends, Leigh even more so than the others. She rubbed Justin’s arms, which were still wrapped around her, and she straightened up.

“Where can we do it?” Karen asked Leigh. Leigh told her that all the others were in Frank and Terry’s suite, then hesitated, hoping that Karen wouldn’t change her mind when she realized that it was the same suite they’d moved out of because of Frank and Angie’s joke. Karen just nodded and gathered the things she would need. Justin got his boxing wraps. Reg had been their friend, and, if he WAS dead, Justin couldn’t imagine his ghost trying to hurt Karen or any of the others. But there was always a risk of something going wrong with this sort of thing. He wasn’t as worried about it as he’d been the first few times Karen had done this, since he’d never actually seen anything go wrong during one of her seances. But there was no reason not to be prepared for the worst. When they got to the Presidential Suite, Karen couldn’t help but glance around anxiously, looking for hidden camera or mikes. “It’s clean,” Frank said teasingly. Karen glowered at him, then slipped into ‘teacher mode.’ She directed others to arrange the table and chairs, while she salted and chalked and lit the candle she’d set at the center of the table. Aiden and Frank would join her in the circle. Terry wasn’t ready to take part in any of these ‘weird rituals’ yet, after what she’d just been through; and Leigh felt that her own agitation over Reg’s disappearance might disturb Karen’s concentration. Angie, like usual, wanted to be keeping an eye on Aiden’s ass, since it was his turn to join the circle for a change. And even though he still didn’t like the whole idea, Justin knew that it made Karen more comfortable to have him watching her back.
As she’d been preparing the room, Karen had also been preparing herself, focusing her attention on thoughts of Reg and blocking out thoughts of all the others and of her disappointment over her and Justin’s honeymoon being interrupted again. Maybe it was the extra relaxation of being on vacation, or maybe it was just because she was becoming more adept at the rituals of a formal seance, but Karen slipped quickly into the near-trance she needed to call spirits. “Reginald Arnold Morrison, please join us in this circle.” She paused a moment and let her attention expand up and out like the heat from the candle’s flame. “Reginald Arnold Morrison, if you can hear me, please join us here.” She felt nothing. “Reg? Reg, if you’re able to come here, please, I...We need to talk to you.” The candlelight flickered, but all Karen felt was the slight air movement from the air conditioner turning on. She hesitated, trying hard to sense any spiritual presence. In the back of her mind, she knew that she’d gone into the trance more easily than other times. Now she began to doubt herself, unsure if she felt nothing because Reg wasn’t going to come or because she’d screwed up and wasn’t able to draw him in. She didn’t want to break the circle if all she needed to do was try a little harder....

Leigh had settled on the couch, and watched the seance intently, wondering if it would be better to know he was dead because his spirit came or if it would be better to be left not knowing where he was because he didn’t. Then, in the silence of Karen waiting for some response, Leigh heard Reg’s voice say “Nice coconuts....” Was it really him? Or was it just her brain wishing too hard to hear his voice? “Reg...? Is that...?” She was afraid to disturb the seance, but this wasn’t the first time she’d heard his voice in her head. He’d told her himself that he was just discovering that he was able to project his thoughts to another person. In fact, he’d almost scared the pants off Cathy by doing that. She giggled, giddy with knowing that he must still be alive. Karen felt Frank’s attention turn to Leigh as she whispered loudly that Reg had spoken to her, sort of. Karen’s focus began to waver. If he was talking to Leigh telepathically, then his spirit was still in his body. Karen nodded at the two men and gently released their hands from hers, then leaned in and blew out the candle. At least now they knew they should be looking for a living person and not just for a body.

Leigh told them all what Reg had said, and they began speculating about what it meant. Maybe he and Raimon were stuck on a deserted island somewhere? Justin asked if Frank could enlarge the map showing Reg’s flight path. Maybe if he could pick out some likely islands, they’d have a place to start looking. The two men also realized that the radar used for tracking planes didn’t cover all the way to sea-level. Reg may not have crash landed; he may have been forced to fly under the radar until he found a place he could land the plane safely. Karen wondered aloud what the natural range of coconut palms were, and how much gas Reg might have had on his plane. Both those things might help them narrow their search, too. If Reg didn’t have enough gas to make the flight non-stop, then that would limit the size of the search radius. Otherwise, the radius would be equal to the total distance he could fly on a full tank, less the distance he’d already gone; and that might be a substantially larger area to search. Also, there were only so many places where coconut palms would be growing naturally without some human intervention.

Leigh did a computer search for info on coconuts, and found that while they’re native to the South Pacific, they can float for thousands of miles before washing up on land and sprouting. “True,” Karen said. “But they still won’t grow if they wash up on a beach in Alaska. We need to know what climate range they can survive naturally in.” Leigh went back to that research while Justin and Frank pulled up other, more-detailed maps of not only the area where the plane had disappeared from radar, but also the largest possible range he might have covered if he’d continued to fly. Eventually, the stress of the search began wearing on them all, and they left the room and the computers about mid-afternoon, to eat and think. Leigh dragged Angie off to the gym to work off some of the stress. Karen and Justin went back to their room for a little time alone. Aiden went out and fell asleep in the sun. And Frank and Terry went back to ‘their table’ for a drink. When Angie finally went to join Aiden, Leigh called and invited Karen for coffee and conversation, trying to keep it light...and off the subject of finding Reg.

By the time they all met back up at Frank and Terry’s room later that afternoon, everyone was relaxed enough to think clearly. And they all realized that finding Reg was not going to be a quick or easy task. Most of them had jobs to get back to once the cruise was over on Jan. 2nd. Terry was due back at work on Jan. 8th, and Karen’s classes started back up at Wayne State on the 9th. Even though Justin was “the Boss,” he DID have to show back up at the shop eventually. Aiden was due to go back on rotation right after they got back to Detroit; and if Angie wanted to keep her job with the DPD, she had to be back at work then too. And Frank still had his psych residency to finish, though his schedule was more flexible than Aiden’s in the ER. Leigh had been planning on doing some translation work, but doing everything she could to find Reg now superceded that plan. Since they knew now that Reg was still alive, at least as of that morning, Frank suggested that they finish out the cruise; it didn’t appear that the couple extra days of searching they would gain would help much, but the chance to relax for a couple more days might. Then, when they got back to Miami, he and Terry would go directly to San Francisco with Leigh to check on Reg’s family and to find out what they could about the mysterious fire that precipitated this whole mess. Frank had a feeling that finding out more about that would give them clues to finding Reg. Besides, it was New Year’s Eve, and trying to avoid the festivities would be next to impossible. They all agreed to Frank’s plan, and scattered to enjoy the last bit of their vacation time.

Without really planning it, they all managed to end up at the same parties that evening; and Karen had, by the time the ball was dropping in Times Square, even canceled the ‘do-not-disturb’ order she’d requested. She’d known when she had requested it that she couldn’t stay mad at her friends for long. But she felt like she had to make some effort to draw a line between what she thought of as her “real life” with Justin and the impositions that The Fight, as Justin called it, made on that life. And, like it or not, she felt like she had to put her friends on the other side of that line for a while or she risked losing her sanity. Now she understood why Vanya didn’t allow people to get in touch with him at all times. But even though she’d was willing to celebrate the New Year with everyone, she knew she wasn’t ready to jump right back into her therapy sessions with Frank yet. She felt that he’d betrayed her in a way, pulling that prank for his own amusement even though she’d opened herself up to him in such an intimate way by going to him for therapy. Not that it was his fault that she’d chosen to have him as her therapist. That was her own choice, and she still wasn’t sure why she’d made it. Like with her attraction to Justin and her strange relationship with Fr. Andrew, she didn’t really understand in an intellectual way why she felt that connection to Frank, a connection strong enough that she was willing to lower her ‘walls’ with him like she had with Justin and Fr. Andrew. But she was trying to learn to trust her instincts about people. Frank’s ‘joke’ made her question the wisdom of having trusted him, and she knew that it might take a little bit of separation before she was ready to trust him again. The funny thing was, she never actually doubted that she WOULD trust him again and go back to doing therapy with him.

When the ship docked in Miami on the 2nd, most of the Envoys caught a shuttle to Miami International. Frank had converted his, Terry’s and Leigh’s tickets for the next morning’s flight back to Detroit into the soonest flight he could get to San Francisco for them. While they waited at their gate, Frank got a search started to find out what he could about the family that was fostering the girls. And Leigh found a note with a phone number in her e-mailbox from the two kids. Angie had converted her and Aiden’s tickets from Cancun to Detroit into a pair from Miami to Detroit, to get them back in time to keep their jobs. Justin and Karen weren’t flying back to Detroit until the next morning, so they caught a shuttle to the Marriot. And all any of them had seen of Tony the entire cruise had been glimpses of him with that same redhead. They didn’t actually see him leave the ship, but when he didn’t turn up to catch one of the shuttles, they figured he’d gone off with her to wherever she was going next. Which he had.

When Frank, Terry and Leigh landed in San Francisco, their first destination was the hospital. Claire and Phil were in the Burn Ward. When Frank explained who they were and why they were there, they were told that the two patients were lucky they were unconscious. If they hadn’t been, the staff would have had to put them under anyway. Claire had 3rd degree burns over about 40% of her body, and Phil over about 60% of his. Both were undergoing intensive skin grafting, and would likely be in the hospital for several months. Because of the risk of infection, they were in isolation, but the three were welcome to check on them through the windows of the isolation units. As they left the hospital, Leigh’s phone rang. It was Topaz, who was 7 years old, calling to thank her for the teddy bears. Leigh didn’t need to worry about them, Topaz told her, because things were OK. Well, except for Mommy was in the hospital and Grandpa was in the hospital and they didn’t know where Daddy was. But their foster parents were nice, Topaz told her, and Leigh asked if she could speak to them. When the girls’ foster mom came on the phone, Leigh was relieved to find that she sounded like a very nice woman. Besides the two girls, the couple were also fostering two boys as well. Leigh offered to take them all out for lunch. She had a few photos for the girls, and it would be a good opportunity to meet them all. She asked __ to pick the place, and she’d meet them all there.

When she got off the phone, Frank suggested that Terry go along with her. He wanted her to get a ‘cop’s read’ on the kids and what they saw or remember about the fire, and on the foster family. He was going to try to ‘work the case’ as much as he could, talking to the cops, the doctors, even going to the remains of the house itself if he could swing it. __ picked a nice family place for lunch. On the way, Leigh stopped at a toy store and got stuffed horses for all 4 of the kids. She also had the pictures of Reg for them. Leigh had no problem picking the family out of the crowd when she and Terry got there. __ was about 40-ish and looked a little harried from riding herd on 4 kids. Her husband, Dan, was at work and couldn't make it, she told the other two women. The girls looked just like they did in the photos Reg had. __ introduced the boys as Jerry, a little boy of Asian descent, and Pete, a little African-American boy. She and Dan found they couldn't have kids of their own, and they'd decided to try fostering. It was obvious to Terry that, although it looked and sounded like they were lower middle class, Dan made enough to keep the family clean, happy and well fed. They definitely weren't in it for the money like some of the foster parents Terry had run into in Detroit.

Terry somehow got volunteered to stay with the kids while Leigh and __ went to the restroom. It was Leigh's only chance to tell __ about Reg disappearing without the girls overhearing. Both women agreed that it would be best if they didn't know that for now, and __ told Leigh that she also was putting off letting them see their mom and grandfather until both were in better condition. Leigh told her a little about herself, including that she'd recently lost her husband, and __ got the impression that Leigh and Reg were a little more than casual friends. When Leigh got back to the table, she and Terry asked the girls to tell everything they could remember about the night of the fire. 'Paz (as Amy referred to her), the older at 7 years to Amy's 4, told most of the story. They had gone to bed at 8pm, their usual time, and Daddy had kissed them goodnight like always. The next thing they knew, it was all smoky and Grandpa and Mommy were waking them up. Mommy had to pull Amy ('Paz called her Thistle sometimes, Amy told them, when she wanted to pick a fight) out from under the bed because she'd been scared and crawled under there. That was how Mommy got burned. Grandpa had grabbed her ('Paz) and had run out of the room carrying her. But when they were going down the stairs, they broke and Grandpa protected her when they fell. That was how he got burned. They didn't know where Daddy was, and they hadn't heard or seen anything different than normal that day or evening before bed. Before leaving the restaurant, Leigh made sure to get special dates for everyone in the family, so she could send cards and keep contact with them all.

Frank met with a little resistance when he first tried to get information about the case. The locals didn't want a Fed taking over their case, or taking all the glory for solving it. Not that they could figure how he could do any better than they were. When he finally explained that he was there as a friend of the family and not in any official capacity, they opened up to him. The source of the fire appeared to be electrical, it looked like it started at the tree, and it had started about midnight. The arson investigator found no sign of accelerants. The weird thing was that the fire seemed to have burned hotter, faster and bigger than it should have been without accelerants. But not hot enough to have completely consumed a body, so the father was considered missing and a suspect. On the other hand, all his acquaintances say he wasn't acting in any strange or unusual way at all in the time leading up to the fire. When he disappeared, he took only the clothes on his back, and there has been no activity on his credit cards or bank accounts since before the fire. All in all, they were beginning to hate this case. It smelled bad somehow, but they could find absolutely no evidence of it being anything other than what it appeared, an accidental electrical fire during the holiday season, just like tons of others that happen at this time of year.

Frank got permission to go to the 'crime' scene partly because they trusted he knew what he was doing and partly because it wasn't really a crime scene anyway. There was almost nothing left of the structure. Frank had to pick his way through the debris, and he couldn't find anything that hadn't been touched by the flames. He could feel a residual sense of the Unknown, but nothing specific enough to make him stop and study any particular spot. He did notice a couple places that seemed colder than they should have been, but, again, he could find nothing unusual about those spots. He looked for anything that might have led him to believe that occult rituals of any time had occurred there, and found nothing. No symbols hidden under ashes, no ritualistic items left burned in the debris. Only the tracks left by the firefighters and the investigators who followed them. It was a little too mysterious, but he'd learned all he could from the scene and went to speak with Claire and Phil's doctors, to see if what they had to say jibed with what he'd seen there. The Unknown HAD been involved somehow, as he'd suspected. It would be interesting to hear what Terry and Leigh found out from the children, too. Which was pretty much things they already knew. Terry's assessment of the family: If she were orphaned, she'd want to live with this family. The parents were just strict enough, and doted on all the kids. They were responsible, respectable, and there was no sign that they in any way mistreated the kids or the foster system. When Frank finally got the chance, he loaded some pertinent facts about the fire to a few of his 'favorite' conspiracy websites to see what might trickle back.

When Karen and Justin got home, Karen called her mom to make a lunch date. She wanted to see if anything had changed since she'd seen her at Christmas. Her mom sounded well enough on the phone, and they decided that Cathy would pick Karen up at 11:30 on Wed., Jan 4. Since Karen was going to be out for lunch with Cathy anyway, Justin figured he might check out what Edward was up to at the same time. Karen thought that was a great idea. In fact, he could give Edward the belated Christmas gift they'd gotten for him in the Caribbean, since Karen was taking the one for her mom. Her mom had insisted that the couple didn't need to get them anything for Christmas, but Karen wanted to get her mom something. And it would have been rude to get Mom something without getting something for Edward. As long as her mom was still with him, they were going to have to do their best to keep up the farce and pretend that they liked Edward too. It wasn't like there was anything the two needed, so Karen and Justin managed to find something small and Caribbean-themed for each of them, things that wouldn't clash horribly with everything else in the house. The two also checked on the condo, and found that Brown Jenkin was gone. There was no sign that it had returned at all while they'd been gone. But just in case, Justin set up some surveillance cameras in the attic and a couple other places to keep an eye on the place until Leigh got back. They wanted to make sure that she'd be safe there, and that the other owners were too.

Justin met Edward at the brew-pub, which happened to be on the opposite side of town from where Karen and Cathy were having lunch. Both pairs spent most of lunch talking about Justin and Karen's trip. Edward was as smooth as ever at deflecting questions and turning the conversation back to Justin, and the two had a perfectly pleasant lunch. Cathy was still managing to avoid setting a wedding date, which Karen was pleased about, but she sounded much less uncertain about the idea of marrying Edward than she had been before. In fact, even though Edward didn't have the same 'help' he'd had before from the electrical creature, he was still somehow continuing to 'mold' Cathy into the 'perfect wife.' She wasn't quite “Stepford” yet, but she was no longer the mom Karen had grown up with. She no longer talked about her other interests; in fact, she seemed to be trying to deflect attention away from herself the same way Edward did, though not to the same degree. Karen brought up the idea of a “girls' weekend” away, maybe up at the casino. Her mom used to loved going to the casinos with her friends, though Karen was never the type to find spending money entertaining. But Cathy countered the suggestion with the idea of a spa weekend instead. Yet another thing that had changed since she'd met Edward. Cathy told her that Edward was going to start lecturing again, and Karen suggested that they schedule the weekend sometime when Edward would be busy anyway. Her mom seemed to like that, and told Karen she'd get back to her with Edward's schedule. Maybe they could do it sometime in the spring.

The next 9 months passed relatively quietly for the whole team. Karen had her usual school schedule planned out, and she reopened the dig that summer without incident. She did manage to get her mom separated from Edward for a weekend and tried everything she knew to break the spell Edward had over her, to no avail. Whatever he was doing now was good old-fashioned brain-washing. Nothing Unknown about it, so there was nothing Karen could do to fix it. She managed to talk her mom into going to the spa at Soaring Eagle so that she could have her friends there 'run interference' if Edward showed up. He didn't; but he did call Cathy on her cell every evening, and Karen couldn't bring herself to prevent her mom from talking to him though she'd done everything she could think of to prevent him having any physical contact with her. Later, she tried taking a look at Edward in the 'ethereal plane,' but he looked completely normal. It took her a couple months before she was ready to 'forgive' Frank for his little prank, but by March she was back to seeing him for bi-weekly sessions. She still wasn't sure if it was doing much, since she could have used the clinical terms to describe her 'issues' as well as he could. But she guessed it made her feel a little better somehow to unload some of the stuff in her head to a 'disinterested third party.' As much as she loved Justin, it was different when she told him this stuff. He wanted so much to 'fix' it all for her, but there wasn't much he could do. It was mostly stuff she'd have to figure out how to fix for herself, and she always felt bad putting Justin in a position where he couldn't do anything more than give her a hug and let her know he was there for her. Karen also remembered to call CJ occasionally to keep her 'connected.' The show Harvey had come up with and she'd tweaked into “Supernatural” had been picked up by one of the smaller networks and renewed for a second season. Her next idea, “Jericho”, about a small town in the Midwest that's isolated when the US comes under a nuclear attack, was keeping her busy on the West Coast since it got its shot as a new fall show on one of the major networks.

Justin started back to work at the same time Karen did, and he'd also started working out more in some of his free time. He tried to get Karen involved, but other than some sparring to keep her boxing skills fresh, she wasn't as interested in a workout regimen as Justin was. Justin continued to work on the 'splat gun' project, going from modifying off-the-shelf paintball guns to building something from scratch to match the picture in his head. He also decided to pick up a couple extension classes in carpentry so that he could take care of things around the house himself if they wanted anything fixed or remodeled. Leigh was keeping busy with her translating, and she arranged to teach a comparative mythology class at Wayne State as a guest lecturer. The condo continued to be free from unusual visitors, except for Diva, who still came to curl up in her favorite spot on the bed. Leigh got no more telepathic messages from Reg, but kept herself open for them just in case. And though she didn't make a big deal of it, she'd decided to stay away from dating in the meantime. She'd kept in touch with Reg's family, even going out for an occasional visit. The girls stayed with their foster family until Claire was able to take care of them again, which happened when she was released from rehab just before school began that September. Phil was still in rehab, but Audra had been spending as much time out there with him as she could, and was rearranging her 'life' so that she could move in and take care of him when he did get out. Neither Phil nor Claire remembered much about the fire. They would get random flashes of memory, maybe the smell of smoke or the feel of heat on the door, or the feeling of the stairs giving way beneath Phil's feet. But that was all; nothing substantive.

Angie was keeping busy with the DPD, both with teaching and running training exercises. The latter assignments were the part she really enjoyed, coming up with twisted plans for the training scenarios, setting them up and tormenting her 'students' with them. Aiden had been picking up so many extra shifts, he managed to put in his Residency hours faster than usual. There was a small 'bidding war' among the local ERs for his services as Senior Resident when he became eligible, which Receiving won (though, he would have chosen to go there anyway.) And he and Angie were still together come October, to almost everyone's amazement. At least once a month, as many of the team members as could make it, including Gary on occasion, got together for a group dinner to share anything new that might have been happening. This was in addition to the 'training' sessions that Frank, Terry and Angie put together. These were unscheduled, and the others would only get a text message from one of the three, never knowing for sure if it was real or a test. They'd all agreed that it was the best way to keep themselves sharp and ready for action. Sometimes the sessions were just a chance to go to one of the local shooting ranges for some target practice or to a local gym for hand-to-hand sparring; other times they were practice assaults on one sort of 'evil creature' or another to work on team-work drills. And sometimes the three rigged a 'secret location' with special effects to mimic an ambush, for the team to practice working in unexpected pressure situations. They also got together in smaller groups for purely social reasons during this time, for a quick lunch with friends or for a chat over coffee. And there were a few minor 'weirdnesses,' like the occasional ghost, that kept everyone from forgetting why they'd all met in the first place.

Nothing had been heard from or about Reg or Raimon in all this time, and no wreckage had been found either. Frank continued to try to 'dream' for any information he could get about Reg's condition and whereabouts, but each dream, though different from the last, amounted to “ask again later.” He had been tracking Edward's movements using the schedule that Karen got from her mom, and he'd also been trying to trace Edward's connections within the government. Most of Edward's engagements had been on the East Coast. They were no longer the large seminars like he used to do. These were mostly small groups, of conservatives or the Christian Coalition. It was more like consulting or 'think tank' work. Once every month or two, Frank would also get a note from one or another of the conspiracy nuts, saying that he heard that Frank wanted “fire stuff”--stories about how up out of nowhere someone burned up or burned up a family member. There was a lot of dross, but Frank did get some useful stories, like the one about the 22-year-old co-ed who sat down in the quad, poured gas over herself then lit a match last spring in Washington. People tried to put the fire out but it was burning too hot and too fast. Frank would pass the stories along to Karen and Leigh, who helped do some of the research to check out the more promising stories. He also met with Jared a few times, just to chat. Jared talked about Kat more than anything else. Frank let him know that he was still trying to track down the mysterious female 'photographer' from Kat's funeral, but he hadn't been able to find out anything at all.

Frank and Terry's relationship had grown to the point that Frank was occasionally spending nights at Terry's place, and summer had long since wound down into fall when Frank laid down next to Terry to sleep on the night of Oct. 10. Things had been so quiet for the past 9 months that he was expecting 'the other shoe to drop' at any time. As he'd gotten ready for bed, he wondered if this time he might 'dream' himself some information about how to find Reg, since it seemed like they might have time to work on that particular 'project.' He drifted off to sleep with Terry warm against his side. He opened his eyes and found himself standing by the side of a lower Michigan road. The air was crisp, and the sun was low enough to be late afternoon or early evening. The leaves were just turning color. As he stood there, a small school bus drove by. It seemed odd that late in the day. Maybe it was a field trip. There was a woman standing at the front of the bus, and the kids were sitting in nice orderly rows. There were a number of them, he couldn't tell exactly how many, but the bus wasn't full. For some reason he couldn't quite make out the name of the school on the side of the bus, though it looked like there was something written there.

Across the road was a field of corn. It was turning brown and bent over from the weight of the ears waiting to be harvested. Suddenly, the bus made a sharp right turn into the cornfield at full speed. It finally rolled to a stop in the middle of the field, and Frank walked toward it wondering if maybe the driver was having some sort of problem. As he got closer, he saw the inside of the bus light up, like large candles were being lit inside. It was the children! One by one, they burst into flames. Frank could hear music, like the children were singing, maybe a hymn but he couldn't quite recognize which one. The whole bus was on fire, but there was no screaming and no one was trying to get out. There was only the haunting sound of the music....

Frank woke with a start and found himself back in Terry's bed. He sat up on the edge of the bed and felt around for the small voice recorder he always kept by his bedside, then started describing the dream. It was about 3:30am on the 11th, and after a few minutes of recording his dream, Terry woke too. She laid there quietly beside him until he was done, then sat up and began rubbing his back. “I wouldn't pay to have nightmares like yours,” she told him. When she finished the backrub, she got up. She tossed him his sweatpants and began pulling on her own. “We're awake, we may as well go for a run,” she said. “Then maybe we'll be tired enough to get back to sleep.” The two jogged for a few miles, and when they got back they flopped back into the bed. Terry fell back to sleep immediately, snoring after a few minutes. Frank couldn't relax enough, so he got back up and went to check his email. In the mailbox was a note from one of his conspiracy buddies telling him to check out the early edition of the paper. He'd know the story he was looking for, but it wasn't in the online edition yet. Frank got dressed and went out to the nearest coffee shop to pick up the paper. The main story: a bus driver drove his bus into a cornfield last night and set the bus on fire with all the children inside.

Karen and Leigh studied the carvings on the walls. The place was obviously leading into a temple, but the marking were merely decorative as far as the women could tell. But the fact that the bat carvings had fangs did nothing to allay their fears. Tony racked a round into the chamber of the shotgun he was carrying and looked at the others. He’d changed clothes and blackened his face, and Justin thought he looked ready for a recon mission, kind of like the character Sgt. Elias from the movie Platoon. The team peered down the stairs into the darkness, and Tony reconsidered his choice of weapon. The stairway was narrow, and he had no idea how far the stairs went or what was at the bottom. He slung the shotgun over his shoulder and pulled out his pistol. Then he took ‘point.’ Just before he started down the stairs, he joked that maybe if Justin took point, the creature would think they were “bringing a virgin sacrifice.” Everyone chuckled, but the laughter was as lame as the attempt at a joke.

Justin followed about an arm’s length behind Tony, pistol drawn. Karen was put in the center because she didn’t have a weapon, with Leigh behind her carrying the ‘net gun.’ Frank brought up the rear, carrying not only his gun but the med kit as well. The air was thick and humid as the five crept down the narrow stairway; and the light beam from the hand suns Justin and Frank carried cut through the gloom as if the darkness were a living thing that refused to give up even an inch of ground to the Envoys. The still air smelled faintly of ammonia and old blood, and of the sweat of the five rescuers, which wouldn’t evaporate and pasted their clothes to their skin. The ceiling was only 6-foot high, causing most of the team to stoop to avoid scraping their heads on the stone; and it was only about 3 and a half feet wide. It was close and hot, and the smells stuck in the back of their throats. “The Mayans were a small people,” Karen whispered, partly to explain the size of the hallway to them and partly to break the oppressive silence.

Tony signaled that he was just reaching the bottom of the stairs, and Frank had only just gotten inside the opening at ground-level. So, the stairs didn’t go as deep as they’d looked from above. There was an intersection ahead, Tony whispered back. No one was sure why they were all whispering. If the creature had other bat-like abilities, as they suspected, it probably already knew they were there. Justin hissed at everyone to be quiet for a second. He thought he’d heard a skittering noise down near his feet.... He pointed the light beam down, and saw spiders. He pointed it around at the walls and saw spiders. He pointed it at Tony’s back, and at his own legs, and at Karen and saw spiders. They were getting inside pants and down shirts and up sleeves, and they were getting stuck in their hair. There were thousands of them, boiling out of the walls and crawling all over the three at the front of the line! Karen started screaming. Spiders didn’t normally bother her. They were an occupational hazard, and she’d learned to ignore them for the most part, even when they bit her. But now, my God, they were all over her! She beat at them with her hands, and stomped and spun, barely avoiding crashing into Justin or Leigh. When she felt them crawling onto her face, she went from screaming to an hysterical, sobbing, close-lipped whimper.

Tony shook hard and started backing up just before Justin reached out to grab him; but he kept his eyes focused on the darkness below him, ready for something worse to attack them from out of it. Justin turned his attention to Karen, ignoring for the moment the spiders on himself, and nudged her backwards toward Leigh. Leigh could see the spiders covering Karen, and checked for any on herself before brushing enough off Karen’s back so that she could grab her shirt. Frank backed outside and kept the light trained down the stairway for the others. Justin used his own body to crush spiders by bouncing off the stone walls, careful to keep his balance and to keep from banging the hand sun. With Karen being led by Leigh, the other four got outside quickly. As soon as they were away from the opening to flat ground, Tony and Justin ‘stopped, dropped and rolled,’ to crush the spiders that were on them. Karen kept sobbing and whimpering and careening around the ‘courtyard’ until Leigh and Justin forced her to the ground to roll, too. While Leigh helped those three, Frank opened one of the cans of kerosene they’d brought to fill lanterns. He poured it down the stairs, then pulled out a lighter and lit the stream of kerosene. If the others had had the time to pay attention, they would’ve seen the stairway light up with flames and heard the crackle of spider bodies popping in the fire.

As the fire burned itself out, Frank and Leigh helped the others strip, and checked to make sure there were no stow-aways under their clothes and or bites that could be poisonous. Luckily, no one had been bitten; and as they re-dressed, they took care to button every button, tuck their pant-legs into their boots, and duct-tape shut every ‘seam’ where one piece of clothing met another. Leigh wrapped Karen’s braid tight to the top of her head and pulled the stocking cap Justin handed her down over it before taking care of her own hair. Only Karen seemed to be having a lingering problem with the spiders. Leigh and Justin had to help her undress and dress, because she would spasm every time she thought she felt something crawling on her. She would jerk and slap at the spot, though she’d been told several times that all the spiders had been removed. And she continued to whimper, her lips still pressed tightly together to keep the non-existent spiders from getting in her mouth. When they were both dressed, Justin held her tight and rubbed her arms and back roughly, reassuring her that there were no spiders on her, until the spasms faded. He felt her shudder one last time, then she relaxed with a heavy sigh. She wasn’t over it completely yet, but she was as ready as she ever would be to go back down again. She had no choice. She couldn’t leave Terry down there.

Frank handed them all air filters to pull over their mouths and noses. Not only would they cut the smell of the burnt kerosene and spiders, but they might help protect them from any ‘poisonous vapor’ traps the creature might have in store for them. When everyone was ready, Frank took ‘point’ and started down the stairs. He wanted someone in front who didn’t have impaired hearing this time. Nothing against Tony, but his recon skills left something to be desired after years of working with explosives. Tony followed Frank, then Karen and Leigh again, with Justin bringing up the rear. Every time he saw Karen shudder or jerk, he felt his chest tighten and he had to look away. He needed to concentrate on what they were doing, and he couldn’t afford to split his attention between that and his wife. No matter how much Karen needed him right now, they both knew that Terry needed all of them more. What a horrible way to spend their honeymoon.

Once again, the darkness swallowed the light from the hand suns as the five crept down the stairs. Karen concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, all of her senses stretched to their limits as she tried to anticipate the next attack. She didn’t even try to suppress the shudders that coursed through her body. All she could do right now was ignore them and get through this. But this time nothing attacked them. The smells of kerosene and burnt spiders now almost drowned out the fainter scent of ammonia and old blood, and the masks couldn’t filter them out completely. Tony aimed the light beam at the floor in front of Frank. Every 4th flagstone was carved with the image of a bat, with other figures carved of the rest of the stones. Frank got to the intersection and had Tony shine the light down all three hallways--to the left and right, and straight ahead. Nothing. The stones all had the same sorts of carvings, and there was no dirt or dust or debris covering any of them to give Frank some idea of which way Terry had been taken. Frank lowered the mask from his nose. Terry usually wore perfume. He’d never given it much thought before, but maybe if he could catch a whiff of it now it would tell him which way to go. He motioned to Tony to stay put, and he edged a few steps down each of the hallways. It was very faint, but he was sure he could smell it down the hallway straight ahead. He motioned to the others, and started moving again.

Frank had gone about 12 feet, and Justin had just gotten to the bottom of the stairs, when the group was plunged into darkness. Every light the team had on was instantly extinguished, and they were left standing in a pitch blackness that can only be experienced underground. Justin could barely make out the faint outline of the opening above him, and it seemed a thousand miles away. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, the stairway seemed to brighten ever so slightly with a faint ghostly glow, and he was amazed again at just how much light the stars could make in an otherwise dark sky. Karen gasped before clamping her lips together, expecting another swarm to attack her. She shuddered and began fidgeting, her body still recalling the feel of thousands of spiders crawling on her. Justin felt his gut lurch when he heard her. He wanted so badly to go to her; but he knew he needed to hold his position there, and he knew she’d understand.

Tony closed his eyes for a second and tried to extend his other senses in every direction. He knew that the slightest sound, or the slightest change in a smell or in the feel of the air on his face might warn him of trouble. He heard a small crack and the sound of sloshing liquid from Frank’s direction that he recognized immediately as a Chem-lite being lit, but he saw nothing when he opened his eyes. And he could hardly miss the racket that Karen was making behind him. Beyond that, he heard someone flicking a lighter. Leigh was trying hard to light her Zippo, but it was as if the thing was out of fluid. She knew it was full when she put it in her pocket, and she shook it again to make sure it hadn’t leaked. No, it was still full, so something was preventing it from lighting. Justin, talking just loud enough that he figured they could all hear him, suggested that they gather into a circle facing out, so they’d be ready for an attack. Frank wasn’t about to run again unless he had to. He chucked the Chem-lite down the hallway and listened as it hit the floor and bounced a couple times before stopping. Still no light. But there didn’t seem to be anything attacking them either. If the darkness was being caused by a spell or some sort of trap, maybe they’d be able to see again further on. He suggested they leap-frog along the hallway until they could see again. Justin pulled out the rope he was carrying and got everyone tied together.

Then they began working their way slowly down the hallway. Frank moved out to the end of the rope, then stood against the left wall while Tony moved past him, left hand out to the front and right hand feeling the wall, so that he’d all know if he got to another wall or cross-passageway. Then, as much as she was afraid of being the one alone at the front, Karen followed Tony and did the same, followed by Leigh, then Justin. Then Justin became the ‘anchor’ point as the line continued past him. The group had gone about 20 feet in this way, when Frank felt a wall ahead of him. He paused and listened a moment, and when he heard nothing, he cracked 2 more Chem-lites. This time, the hallway lit up with a bluish-green glow, and Frank could see Tony behind him and walls on the other three sides. Beyond Tony, the hallway was still pitch black and the rope holding the team together, and the piece of twine that Frank had been trailing behind them, disappeared into the darkness. Damn! They’d gotten to a dead-end. But, he was sure they hadn’t passed any other openings along this hall. Either it was a trap, or there was some way out that he was just missing. He was just turning back to inspect the walls around him when he heard a gasp behind him. He turned back and could see Karen beyond Tony, and Leigh’s and Justin’s figures dimly beyond that. Everyone else flicked their lights off then back on and the hallways lit up again.

The five began studying the walls, ceiling and floor, looking for a hidden door. Finally, Frank and Leigh found a seam that formed a continuous line in the shape of a floor-to-ceiling rectangle on the wall at the end of the hallway. It had an elaborate carving on it with a bat motif similar to the entryway, and there was a small opening where the mouth of the bat would be, big enough to put a hand in--or a gun barrel. Frank put the barrel of his pistol into the hole. As he slid it deeper in, there was a metallic CHINK, the slightest feeling of resistance, then...nothing. Frank pulled the barrel out. There was a thin line cut into the metal that would have been at the top of the hole. It looked like it was deep enough that whatever made it would have cut a hand put in there. How deeply they couldn’t be sure. Karen suggested in a tiny voice that maybe someone HAD to put their hand in it. Maybe it needed blood.... The five looked at one another. When no one else seemed to come up with a better idea after a significant pause, Karen held out her left hand. She might not be useful enough to do a better job at finding Terry, but she could do that much. She stepped toward the wall and started to move her hand toward the bat’s ‘mouth,’ when Frank stopped her. He had a better idea. He pulled a syringe from the med kit and drew a little blood from his own arm. He made Karen step back and glanced at the others, warning them to get ready for, well, for anything. Then he squirted the blood into the opening.

There was another metallic SHINK, louder than the last, and a grinding noise, then quiet. But the door had moved, silently, pivoting around a center point and not even touching the floor, so carefully had it been built. Frank stepped part-way through the opening. The hallway continued on, sloping gently downwards. There was the same musty smell of ammonia and blood, but there was more. It was Terry’s perfume and something else, something a little too sweet, like spoiled fruit. The team slipped through the secret doorway one at a time, with Justin at the end. As Justin stepped clear of the door, it pivoted shut behind him. He checked the floor and the walls, but could find nothing that might have triggered its closure. The Envoys moved on, and Frank stopped when he came to another intersection a short way ahead. This time, corridors extended out to the left and right, but they were only about 2 feet wide. Frank studied them, looking for anything that might tell him which way Terry had been taken. Finally he spotted it. There was a tiny smear of blood and a little clump of a few hairs to the left, as if the creature wasn’t being especially careful as he carried Terry down and her head hit the wall.

Frank turned left and the team followed him, each person an arm’s length from the person ahead. Justin studied the corridors as they went. It was as if they’d been swept clean by whatever had moved through them. He thought that maybe the creature, if it was the same bat-thing that had taken Terry, might have worn a trail in either the floor or the ceiling. But there was no evidence of damage to any surface, so it either didn’t rub against them or it just didn’t travel this way often enough to have worn a trail. It didn’t take the team long to realize that they were in a maze. Frank was still leaving a trail of twine as they went, and they began to mark each corridor as they systematically moved through. After about 45 minutes, Frank came to yet another dead-end. But this one was different. For one thing, he knew that it was at the end of the last unchecked hallway. And the area in front of the wall had widened like a foyer. But most importantly, there was an incredible carving covering the wall. It was done in the same Mayan style, and, larger than everything else, at the center of the wall was a woman standing with her arms outstretched, with a huge bat behind her. Karen and Leigh looked at it for only a moment, both appreciating the skill of the carver and the ‘beauty,’ if they could call it that, of the image, before agreeing that it appeared to ‘describe’ a marriage ritual. And, sure enough, there was also another hole with well-worn edges in the wall, at just the right height for someone Karen’s size to place his or her hand inside.

Frank squirted more blood from the syringe into the opening. A moment later the wall began to rise, grinding loudly, as if the mechanism had rusted from millennia of disuse. As the team stepped through the opening, they found themselves at the top of a flight of stone stairs. A large room spread out around and below them. It was like a small stone stadium, with bleachers, punctuated by flights of stairs, surrounding a flat central ‘field,’ at the center of which was the stone altar Frank had seen in his dream. Lying on it was Terry, her upper body and head bloody, wearing only the tank top and underwear she’d been kidnapped in. “Here, Vlad,” Frank said, his voice barely above a whisper. He carried the mahogany spear in the rifle holster that was slung across his back. Justin asked if he’d brought any flashbangs, and Frank told him they were a little harder to come by on the Mexican black market than they were when he was DHS. Tony pulled out the cross he wore on a chain around his neck and kissed it, asking God’s help and protection. Karen closed her eyes and touched the crucifix she wore and prayed silently that they would all get out of this alive.

The five started cautiously down the stairs until they were all standing spread out slightly along the edge of the ‘field.’ They continued to scan their surroundings, certain that the creature knew they were there and certain that it was using Terry as bait in a trap, at least for the moment. Karen had continued to press her hand against the crucifix, and was a little startled to find that the crucifix felt warm to her touch. She let the others know. She still wasn’t sure what that meant, but it had to mean something. Three of the others acknowledged her comment, but Frank stood stock-still, looking up at the ceiling. It took them all a second to realize that he wasn’t just studying something--he was being held there. Without a second’s hesitation, Leigh sent out a Mental Shield as they all turned to look at whatever Frank had last been looking at. Before they could even make out its form, the creature made an ear-piercing shriek and flew straight at Frank.

The thing was huge, with a wingspan of about 20 feet, and it crossed the space between its roost and Frank like...well, like a bat out of Hell. As Frank began to move again, Justin and Tony raised their guns. Tony was carrying an automatic rifle, and the flash of ten bullets spitting out the barrel left a trail of bright spots in the dim light as he followed the thing across the room. The creatures eyes were milky white with no pupils or irises, like it had cataracts. Frank dropped his gun and pulled the spear from the holster. He wrapped both his hands tightly around it and waited for the creature’s attack, thrusting the spear upwards at the last moment before its gaping jaws could clamp down on his head. As the spear sank deep into the creature’s chest, Leigh fired the net-gun, hoping that if the spear didn’t kill it, the net would at least restrain it while they continued to attack. Justin was standing a few yards behind Frank, and he fired his gun at the same moment, exploding one of the creature’s eyeballs. They all watched as the net expanded above and behind the thing and dropped down onto it as it crashed into Frank. The creature spasmed with the combined injuries from bullets and spear, tangling itself and Frank in the net. Its momentum carried the two across the floor and into Justin, and then into the risers at the far side of the room.

Karen had paused only a second, long enough to see that all of the creature’s attention was focused on Frank, before she darted across the room behind the thing toward the altar. Terry appeared to be in a deep sleep, and Karen pulled out the hem of her shirt and began carefully wiping blood off the other woman’s face. She saw Terry’s eyelids flutter, then Terry lurched over onto her side and began retching. The vomit was bloody, and Terry stopped only long enough to catch her breath before the retching wracked her body again and again. Karen cradled her friend’s head and rubbed her back, wishing there were something else she could do to help her. On the other side of the room, Frank and Justin were both covered in the black ichor that spilled out of the creature’s wounds. Justin was struggling against the net and trying to punch the creature, grunting “You won’t rape my friend.” Leigh set down the net gun and ran across the room, pulling out her knife. Tony came up on the opposite side of the pile of dead bat and living men with a machete in his hand. As Leigh cut the 2 men free of the netting, Tony cut the head off the creature with a single strong blow, causing even more ichor to splatter out onto all of them.

It took a little work, but Leigh and Tony eventually got men, net and bat untangled enough to get the men out while leaving the creature’s still and headless form wrapped tightly in the net. As soon the men were free, Leigh took the med kit over to help Terry. But Justin had no sooner regained his feet than his cell rang. He tried to find a less disgusting portion of his clothes to wipe his hands on, then he answered. It was Fr. Colin. “Yer breakin’ up,” he told Justin. “Because I’m deep underground,” he replied with just a hint of exasperation. “Aren’t ye supposed ta be on yer honeymoon?” Fr. Colin asked. Justin mumbled something grumpily, managing to avoid swear words. “What do you know about Vampire legends?” he asked the priest. “Got a lot of battery?” Fr. Colin asked. “Think really old,” Justin told him. “Ah. Like the European vampires,” Fr. Colin began. “Dracula, the original one, is dead,” he continued. “And....” “What about Camazotz?” Justin interrupted him. “We’re in Cancun.” “Oh. Well, I don’t know much about Mexican ones. But I can do some research,” Fr. Colin told him. “Can you get us Holy wafers?” Justin asked impatiently. “I’ll have to find someone there who can work with you,” Fr. Colin answered. “I’ll call you back.” Justin closed the phone and told the others what the priest had said.

As soon as Frank had shaken as much of the ichor off his hands as he could, he crossed the room to check on Terry. Over his shoulder, he suggested that they drag the bat out and stake it in the sun. He didn’t know if it would work or not, but it couldn’t hurt. As soon as Terry saw Frank she launched herself at him, wrapped herself around him and started sobbing. It wasn’t loud, but Frank felt her whole body shake with each sob, stopping only for an occasional gasp for air; and if she’d been hanging on to him any tighter, she’d have snapped his neck. Leigh got alcohol swabs out of the kit and began wiping blood and ichor off of the two. Karen began collecting the gear that had gotten dropped or scattered around the room, with Justin and Tony secured the bat’s body and head for transport. “I like my idea of someplace for a date better,” Frank said to Terry. There was a snort and an almost-laugh from the shoulder she’d buried her face in, then her whole body shuddered again. Frank dug around in his pocket with one hand and pulled out a little tube. He persuaded Terry to lift her head, and he wiped a thin smear of camphor gel under her nose, to kill the stench of blood and ichor that covered most of them and filled the room. From where he, Terry and Leigh stood near the altar, Frank suggested that they leave the spear in the creature’s body until it was ‘ashed’ in the sun, and the others heartily agreed.

Beyond minor cuts and bruises, Terry didn’t appear seriously injured; but whatever the thing had done to her had weakened her, and with the mental and emotional trauma, she was in no condition to make it out under her own power. Frank and Leigh helped her through the passageways, and the other three followed with as much equipment as they could carry. At about midnight, as Frank, Terry and Leigh stepped first out of the stairwell they were blinded by a bright light in their faces. For a second, the rescuers were concerned that the local police were actually investigating Professor del Gado’s death that very night. “Frank? You look like hell!” Angie said. All Frank could do was sigh. He and Leigh helped Terry sit on what was once a wall, and Aiden came over and began checking her over, forgetting that Frank was more than qualified to have already done so. “Is she OK?” Aiden asked, looking up at Frank. “Sitting right here,” Terry said to him. “Are you OK?” Aiden asked her. “Yes,” she answered. But she didn’t look it. Even in the dim light of the flashlight Frank was now holding she looked pale, and the remaining smears of blood and ichor and bloody vomit didn’t make the picture any healthier-looking.

Aiden apologized for not having been back sooner, as he checked Terry’s vitals. It had taken a little while to calm down Professor de la Ruiz, and then it took a while longer to get back because Angie was driving, he explained. “She won’t take directions,” he huffed. “I knew where we were,” she replied. “And that’s why we had to double back?” Aiden retorted. Angie snorted and stomped off to help the others. Justin let Terry know that Frank had brought some clean clothes for her, and Leigh set up one of the tents for her to use. She handed Terry the clothes and a few rags and bottles of water as Frank helped her into the tent. He exited a moment later, giving her a little privacy, and grabbed a couple more rags and one of the cans of kerosene to clean the ichor off himself. When they’d gotten the first load of equipment out, Karen, Tony and Justin went back in for another load and Aiden joined them. Angie stayed outside with Leigh to guard the compound and set up another tent. When everything else was out, the four made one last trip in and Tony, Aiden and Justin dragged out the bat, with Karen opening the secret doors ahead of them so they didn’t lose their momentum once they got going. Outside, Karen studied the ‘clearing’ and her compass, and they moved the bat-bundle to a spot where she thought it would get hit as soon as possible by the morning sun.

When Frank had gotten as cleaned up as he could, he pulled a bottle of Jack Daniels from his gear. He went over to Terry’s tent and quietly stuck the bottle through the door-flap, unsure if she was finished dressing. Against the side of the tent, the others watched as her shadow grabbed the bottle with one hand and Frank’s arm with the other and yanked him inside. A moment later, they saw his shadow and hers lock in an embrace; then the light inside the tent clicked off. Terry kissed Frank with a great deal of intensity. “I have no idea what that thing was doing, and I doubt I would have liked it if I had,” she whispered roughly to him. “But all I could think about was that you were going to get killed trying to find it.” Terry paused. “Thank you,” she told him. Another pause, as they moved to sit beside one another on the ground. “Ya know, I’m really getting sick and tired of getting kidnapped by flying ugly things,” she told him. “Here. This might help,” he replied, handing her a gun. She smiled tiredly, and asked him if she had “Sacrifice me” written somewhere on herself in invisible ink. “I guess I’ll just have to stick close to you,” she said, grinning a little wider. “Then I can shove you out in front next time.” She leaned against Frank’s side and he put his arm around her.

Outside, the others planned a watch schedule. Leigh had settled near the front of Terry’s tent so that she and Frank wouldn’t be disturbed; but it never sounded like they were getting into any compromising positions. The two were both quiet for a while, then Terry began to tell Frank what she could remember of the past 24 hours. There was cutting and bleeding, and something forced her to drink blood; then she felt weird and passed out. Frank handed her a small bottle of holy water. “Here. Drink this,” he told her. He wasn’t sure what it would do to her, but hopefully it would help cleanse her system of whatever the creature had done to her. She took the bottle and tipped it slowly against her lips, then drank greedily. He could sense the residual of contact with the Unknown on her; it wasn’t the feeling of a creature possessed by the Unknown, but more like that of someone that had been affected by it. When she’d emptied that bottle, Frank came out of the tent for more, and the others could see that both of them were still fully clothed. Frank suggested that Angie and Tony take Professor del Gado’s Jeep and leave it about a mile up the trail, to slow down the police if they did decide to investigate del Gado’s death first thing in the morning. Justin followed in another Jeep, both to give the other two a ride back and so that he could pull the distributor cap and slow the cops down even more. And if the police did manage to get in there before the team had cleared out, they could just tell them that the Jeep had broken down and they didn’t want to risk it being stolen if they couldn’t get back to it right away.

As he got more water, Frank told Aiden, Leigh and Karen what Terry had just told him, and they suggested that he also give her some of the energy bars they’d packed. She’d need the protein to help her body replace the blood she’d lost. And the chocolate coating wouldn’t hurt! He took the water and protein bars into the tent; and when Justin, Angie and Tony got back, the first pair started their watch. All in all, the night was quiet. Each pair on watch could hear the cries of jaguars and the sounds of other nocturnal denizens of the Mexican jungle. But most of those creatures gave the camp a wide berth. Karen barely slept. She was still feeling the spiders crawling on her skin; and though she would doze off from sheer exhaustion, she never slept for more than a half hour at a time, and often for less, before her body would jerk her awake from the phantom touch of the imagined spiders. While it bothered her that she was still reacting to the earlier ‘attack’ and that she wasn’t getting any sleep, she was more upset about the fact that she was keeping Justin awake too. She felt guilty, even though he never complained and he kept comforting her and reassuring her that it was alright. And she wondered again just how she’d managed to deserve such a wonderful guy. She and Leigh had taken the last watch, and she spent the entire three hours pacing the clearing, stopping and shuddering every time anything--a falling leaf, an insect, or even the occasional breeze--touched her skin. The local police never did show up that night. They undoubtedly understood the dangers of being out in the jungle at night.

The sun rose on Dec. 29 to brighten a cloudless sky. The light poured like warm butter across the clearing and across the dead creature’s form. The thing was even uglier by daylight than it had been in the light from the flashlights. But it didn’t burn to ashes from the sunlight’s touch as they’d hoped it would. Maybe it wouldn’t burn until precisely noon. Or maybe it wasn’t vulnerable to sunlight at all. The group was pondering the implications of that thought around 8:30am, when Justin’s phone rang. “Buenos dias, Senor Justin,” a male voice said to him. Justin responded in Spanish, and the conversation continued in that language. The man introduced himself as Fr. Ignatio, of the Church of the Holy Virgin. Fr. Colin had contacted him and asked him to offer Justin a very special item that only the Church could supply, he said. Justin told him that he wouldn’t be able to come for the item right away, and the priest told him to just call when he needed the help. Justin then asked if he knew anything about local legends or if he knew of anyone else who could answer some questions. Fr. Ignatio suggested Justin talk to Professor de la Ruiz at the university, and Justin, remembering what Karen had said last night about her being evil, asked the priest if the professor could be trusted. “Of course,” he replied. Justin took her number without further comment, then thanked the priest and hung up. He told the others what the priest had said, then dialed Fr. Colin’s number.

Fr. Colin answered promptly, and Justin put the call on ‘speaker phone.’ The creature didn’t have much by way of vulnerabilities, Fr. Colin told them, besides a mahogany stake. Justin used the phone’s camera to take a picture of the spear and sent it to Fr. Colin, then he and Tony got a little silly and insisted on sending another picture of Tony standing with one foot on the creature in a ‘Great White Hunter’ pose. When the snickering had quieted down, Fr. Colin told them that wild onions were said to work to keep the creature away much like garlic did with European vampires. That was all he’d been able to find so far about killing the thing, so they’d definitely want to leave the spear in. He’d also discovered that the creature would ‘take one wife’ every ten years. He hadn’t found details about how the creature chose her or what it did to her, but after sleeping for 2-6 months, she would awake with a great hunger. At first it was for insects, then the blood of animals, and eventually for human blood. After 10 years of living with these increasingly perverse appetites, the creature’s “wife” had become pretty much insane, and she would end up wandering into a city and going on a rampage of killing until she herself was killed. Frank looked at Terry. “How do you feel?” he asked her. “Hungry,” she replied. He handed her another protein bar.

Karen and Leigh put their heads together for a minute, then Karen raised a Sphere. Nothing happened to either Terry or the dead bat-creature. Leigh raised a Mental Shield, but again nothing happened. Frank checked Terry again for any Unknown influence. He still sensed the same feeling as last night, but this time he was sure that it was just residual from having been in contact with the bat. So basically, they all concluded, the only thing they could do was bury the thing with the spear in its chest, somewhere where no one else (everyone looked pointedly at Karen, who said “What? It’s what archaeologists DO!”) would dig it back up. That was about it, Fr. Colin agreed; but he’d keep researching. When Fr. Colin hung up, the team ate and began cleaning up the ‘camp.’ A couple hours later, just before noon, Fr. Ignatio called again. “I understand you’re going to need a very big box and a lot of concrete,” he said to Justin. “I’ll expect you here at church after the 6pm Mass.” When Justin told the others this, Karen and Tony immediately said that they wanted to go to the Mass. Angie merely stated that she hadn’t gone to Mass since high school, and they all understood that she had no intention of going now. But if Justin, Karen and Tony were going in to Mass, Leigh pointed out, staring at Aiden, someone would need to keep an eye on the bat. Angie and Aiden immediately volunteered. They would all stay put for a few more hours, then head back into town at dusk so people would be less likely to notice and become curious about the large bundle strapped to the roof of the one Rover.

Since the other six were going to deal with disposing of the creature, and Terry was looking decidedly uncomfortable in her own skin, Frank offered to take her back to their hotel. She nearly knocked him over trying to get to the shower. He waited patiently for the hour that the shower was running, surprised that she was still getting any hot water. While he waited, he picked out an outfit for her, basically the same tank-top, blouse and khaki shorts combination she’d been wearing a couple days ago, before she’d been taken. He slipped the clothes inside the bathroom, cracking the door just enough to set them on the counter. There was a long pause after he heard the water shut off, then he could hear Terry vomiting. A moment after she finished, the shower turned back on. After being in the bathroom for a couple hours, Terry came out dressed and looking almost normal again. Frank stood and headed for the bathroom, and Terry handed him ‘product’ as he went by. “That stuff,” she said, looking at the splotches of ichor still covering his clothes, “smells awful.”

Nightfall came more quickly under the jungle canopy, and it was already dark when the other six Envoys started the trip back into town. They parked near the church, and they all got out of the Rovers. Tony, Karen and Justin were going to go in for Mass, and Leigh kept hinting that she and Angie would be fine watching the cars alone if Aiden wanted to go, too. Aiden insisted that he had no intention of going in and that he’d stay with Leigh and Angie. But just as the church bells began ringing for the beginning of Mass, Tony grabbed Aiden’s arm and dragged him through the front doors of the church before he could get free. “I made a promise to Fr. Andrew,” Tony whispered to Aiden. “He’s dead. He should be leaving me alone by now,” Aiden hissed back. “Tony has a crush on Leigh,” Aiden whispered to Justin and Karen, as the four made their way up the aisle. “It might have escalated the other night,” Tony told them. “But I can’t tell how much.” “She wasn’t with you,” Aiden whispered at Tony. “Yes she was,” Tony whispered back. “Can we talk about this later, after Mass?” Justin asked the two. Karen was trying hard to ignore ‘the three stooges’ walking ahead of her. Aiden kept trying to stop at pews farther back, and Tony kept prodding him further up the aisle until the four were sliding into the very front pew.

Karen obviously had a lot on her mind. All during Mass, though she chanted along with every prayer even though they were being said in Spanish, she kept her eyes closed, her hands folded, and her head bowed. It had been a long time since she’d gone to Mass on a regular basis. She’d drifted away from the religion in which she’d been brought up, though she’d never fully committed herself to the religion of her adoptive tribal family either. The strength of Fr. Andrew’s faith had been drawing her back to Catholicism (even though she had to admit that he did seem overly hung-up on the ‘guilt’ and self-denial parts), but his death had left her feeling cut adrift again. After what had happened last night, though, she felt obliged to offer a little thanks to The Guy Upstairs. She still wasn’t planning on making any deals with Him, ‘do this for me and I’ll do that for you’ stuff. But, it sure seemed like He’d come through for them all last night. And Weeping Sparrow had warned/reminded her that sooner or later she’d need to make a choice and commit to it. Maybe it was time for her to start accepting the possibility that He’d always been doing more for her than she’d wanted to admit, and to start giving back the little He asked for in return. She wasn’t really good at asking for or accepting help from anyone. But if she could loosen up and learn to do it with Justin, surely she could make the effort for Him, too. And if she was ever going to figure out exactly what Fr. Andrew’s crucifix was telling her, she’d probably be needing all the help she could get. This was going to be the start. And when she made up her mind, it suddenly got much easier to ask Him to help her protect her mom–and to let Fr. Andrew know she said ‘Hi.’

After Mass, the four continued to sit while everyone else filed out. The guys had started arguing in whispers again almost as soon as Fr. Ignatio had gotten past them during the recessional. Tony was still insisting that Leigh had come to his room and had sex with him and the college girls the other night. Justin kept insisting that Tony was delusional. And Aiden was insisting that Leigh had spent that night with Reg and Raimon, which actually was the truth. Karen continued to pretend to ignore them, but this time she was actually laughing to herself behind her folded hands. She wasn’t sure which of them was right, but she’d always thought that Tony might be more of a gentleman than he appeared. On that point she must’ve been wrong, because a gentleman wouldn’t have been going around telling everyone that a particular woman had had sex with him unless he was sure about it and sure that she wanted the world to know. And Karen was pretty sure that, even if Leigh HAD been with Tony, she’d have admitted it unless she didn’t want the world knowing.

Fr. Ignatio stood at the back of the church for a couple minutes waiting for the four stragglers to leave, before he realized that Justin must have brought friends. He came up and introduced himself, and each of the four did the same. When the priest noticed that only Justin seemed to speak any Spanish, he switched to English for the benefit of the other three. He asked them to follow him, and he led them out a side door and across a small enclosed courtyard. On the far side, near a small gate, there was a large crate, about the size of a piano crate, and a small cement mixer with a pile of bags of mix next to it. He hoped that this was what Justin needed, but Fr. Colin was both specific and not specific when he called earlier. Justin asked if Fr. Colin had told him anything about their ‘problem.’ Fr. Colin hadn’t, Fr. Ignatio said, because he really didn’t want to know about it. Right now, all he was doing was a favor for a fellow priest, as a professional courtesy. If he knew what was going on, it might become more than that, and he had a feeling that it was safer for himself and his parish if he didn’t know.

When Fr. Ignatio went back inside, asking only that Justin close the gate when he had loaded everything, the team brought the Rovers around and got it all loaded and the mixer hitched to the back. Then they started to discuss where they could bury the creature. Obviously it had to be somewhere that other people (and again, they all looked pointedly at Karen, who was beginning to feel a little about her choice of profession) wouldn’t dig it up. Karen assured them that with a few minutes to study a local map, she could probably figure out a place that was unlikely to be excavated, at least not for archaeological reasons. But hiding the site in the jungle would be their best option, and digging a hole the size they’d need was going to be a pain with all the roots from trees and other jungle flora. Angie started snickering and the others turned to see a wounded look on Tony’s face. He and Angie could make the hole for them and no one would even get their hands dirty, he told them. Duh! Of course! The others apologized for their lack of appreciation for Tony skills, and readily agreed to let him and Angie explode the jungle floor for them. A short time later they were on their way, Karen giving them directions from the map laid across her lap. They found a likely spot, not too close or too far from the city or from any of the other known or suspected ruins. Tony and Angie made quick work of the hole, and Leigh and Karen stood watch while the other four got the box in the hole and the creature in the box. At least, its body. They dug through the Rovers and managed to find another box that was just the right size for its head, and they buried that separately. Once the boxes were filled with cement, they were covered, and more cement was poured over them. They waited for it to set, then covered over the cement-filled holes with dirt and debris. As a finishing touch, Tony and Angie rigged a vine-covered tree to fall over the spot.

When Frank had come out of the bathroom freshly showered and in clean clothes, Terry sighed wistfully and wished out loud that the cruise ship hadn’t left already. She really wasn’t keen on staying in that hotel room, that city, or even that country any longer. She wanted to sail away somewhere beyond the reach of big ugly flying creatures, and sit in a lounge chair drinking fruity drinks with little umbrellas in them. Frank checked their itinerary, since he’d already booked them space on the cruise. The ship wasn’t scheduled to leave port for another half-hour. If they got their stuff packed right away.... Terry was out of the chair and flinging her things into her bag before Frank even finished his thought. Frank went back to his own room and did the same, and the two still had just enough time left to leave a note for the others in Leigh’s room before they dashed off to the docks. As they slowed down to a casual stroll on their way through the central lobby, Frank mentioned that he’d HEARD that the Presidential Suite had suddenly become available. Terry laughed and asked if he was paying and if he was getting them two rooms. Heck, that one suite was large enough for seven, Frank told her. They didn’t even have to SEE each other when they were in it, if she didn’t want. Terry paused for a minute. Justin and Karen were probably going to be mad enough at them for getting on the ship before them when they were out ‘cleaning up,’ she said to Frank. The two might never talk to either her or Frank again if they stole their room. Well, it wasn’t really stealing, Frank countered, since they’d given up the room willingly. Terry stared at him for another few seconds, then a grin spread across her face. A moment later the two were approaching the Purser’s desk and getting reassigned to the Presidential Suite.

The other six dragged back into Cancun about midnight. Karen had been complaining during the drive back about the ship having left already. Tony told them that getting a chopper to take them out to it in the morning wouldn’t be a big deal. Karen just stared. “Oh, yeah,” Tony said, “maybe we forgot to tell youse guys. We’re booked on it too.” Karen just groaned and dropped her head into her hands. If this was God’s idea of a joke, she didn’t really appreciate His sense of humor. When they got back to the hotels, Leigh handed Justin and Karen the key that Reg had given her. His room had been paid for already, and she still had her own room in the other hotel. Even though they all wondered how Terry was, no one wanted to disturb her at that hour, so they didn’t go to her or Frank’s rooms. But a few minutes after they’d settled into their various rooms, Leigh called them all to let them know that Frank and Terry had gotten on the cruise ship before it left port earlier that evening. They’d left a note saying, “Caught the ship on the way out. The ship is safe. See you later.” Karen would have hurled her cell across the suite if Justin hadn’t seen her arm start to cock back and stopped her. DAMN it! WE interrupted OUR HONEYMOON to help FRANK rescue TERRY so that those two could sail off on OUR CRUISE SHIP! Karen stomped her foot but she didn’t say a word, though Justin could see the thought written on her forehead and in her clenched jaw. She didn’t know whether to scream or to cry. This was SO not fair! Justin felt bad that he couldn’t make everything better for his beautiful wife. He offered to get them onto some other cruise, even though they’d have to pay for it themselves. Karen refused. She really appreciated the thought, and it wasn’t that she was afraid to spend the money. But she wasn’t about to let the others ruin their honeymoon any more than it already had been. Besides, Drew was still in their room. And it was a big ship and the Purser owed them; they didn’t have to see any of the others unless they wanted to. And right now, she absolutely didn’t.

Terry’s first night on the ship hadn’t been as relaxing as she’d hoped for. She spent the first few hours consuming dozens of the ‘frufru’ drinks, until Frank had to help her back to their room. Then she sent some of the drinks back out into the sewer system. When she finally collapsed into the bed, she had nightmares. Frank woke her when they got too bad. The worst thing, she told him tiredly, was that she didn’t even remember much. She asked hesitantly for some ‘comfort,’ unsure of how to ask and unsure how Frank would take the request. Frank laid on the bed beside her and let her get comfortable against his side before wrapping his arms around her. She fell back to sleep, and the human contact seemed to quiet the dreams. She still woke a couple times during the night, but Frank didn’t want to give her any drugs unless she wanted to take them. In the morning, he let her know that was an option, and she told him that she would ask if she felt she needed them.

Back in Cancun that morning, Dec. 30, Angie called Leigh and asked to have breakfast with her. It seemed that Aiden had told her about his conversation with Tony at the church, and Angie wanted to let Leigh know that Tony still had a crush on her and that he somehow got the idea that the attraction was mutual. It sounded like he was beginning to forget that he forgot Leigh coming to the room, and he was instead ‘remembering’ things that never happened, to fill in what he assumed were just alcohol-induced holes in his memory. When the six had eaten and packed, they met in the lobby of the luxury hotel. Karen was looking a little sullen, and she barely spoke three words. Tony had already gotten the concierge to hire a chopper to take them and their luggage out to the ship, and in no time they were skimming over the Caribbean Sea, closing in on the cruise ship. Leigh had maneuvered to get her and Tony sitting together in the back seat of the chopper, and she tried to straighten him out on the ride over. She saw him nude on the beach, and he her, but that was it, she told him. She hadn’t ‘done’ anything with him. She’d spent that night with Reg and Raimon. “I understand,” Tony replied. “Nothing happened. I’ve been there. But, anytime you want to ‘spend time with Reg and Raimon,’ just say so.” He smiled at her. All she could do was close her eyes and shake her head.

“So, it was just a little fun between friends,” he thought to himself. “What happens in Cancun, stays in Cancun. But...we ARE going to a cruise ship....” He smiled to himself. The chopper landed on the helipad, and the Envoys began unloading their gear. Tony grabbed Justin and Aiden and pulled them aside. “That ‘thing’ I told you about? That didn’t happen,” he told them with a grin and a wink. Justin stopped for a second and stared at Tony. “You’re nutty!” he told him as Tony went back to pull out his bags. Angie came over to hand Aiden a bag as he was saying to Justin “I think it’s cute that he’s so enamored of her that he wants it to be true.” Angie grinned, “I’d do him.” Aiden gave her a dirty look, then Justin asked if it was possible to get Tony a ‘CAT’ scan. “If Drew’s on the ship we could give him one,” Angie said, trying to look innocent. Aiden groaned and complained that the joke was older than her. Justin wasn’t sure he’d ever heard the whole thing, so Angie proceeded to tell it, laughing when Aiden groaned again. Aiden covered his ears and wandered off to get her bag. As soon as Karen and Justin had all their stuff, Karen practically dragged Justin off to their room. She refused to even acknowledge the existence of the others until the cruise was over, even if it meant spending the entire time in their room. She even went so far as to call the Purser and demand that the others be kept away from her and Justin.

Around lunch time, Leigh went looking for Karen. She really needed to talk to a female friend about Tony’s delusions. Through the doorway into one of the smaller dining rooms, she could see Justin and Karen having lunch. She started to walk towards them and was stopped by one of the Assistant Pursers. He scanned through a list on the clipboard he was carrying and told Leigh that “the Kazotchek’s” didn’t wish to be disturbed. Leigh asked if she could at least have him deliver a note to Karen for her and he told her that wasn’t possible. Leigh wandered off, disappointed and a little hurt. She had nothing to do with camera or mike; in fact, she’d tried to talk Frank and Angie out of the practical jokes. But she supposed she could understand why Karen and Justin wanted to be left alone. The team’s presence had disrupted their honeymoon. She found Frank and Terry out on deck with fruity drinks and floppy hats, people-watching. Terry looked significantly better than she had yesterday, and the two asked Leigh to join them. Terry thanked her for the team coming to find her. “It was that or go babysit Reg’s nieces in San Francisco,” Leigh told her with a sad smile. What an awful pair of choices she’d had to pick from--rescue a friend kidnapped by a creature of the Unknown, or go with another friend, who also happened to be a potential boyfriend, because his family had suffered a tragic fire.

Leigh started to explain her predicament with Tony to the two. He apparently couldn’t be satisfied with having a good time with 4 college-aged girls. “Hope they were legal,” Terry interjected. “Probably in Mexico they were,” Frank said. Leigh continued. He’d gotten the idea that she’d been with the ‘group’ too because of an off-hand remark she made when she went to fetch him to help. Then he tried to convince Justin and Aiden it had happened. Now, he had convinced himself it happened, when nothing had happened at all in the first place! Terry jokingly offered to break Tony’s knees for Leigh, but Leigh didn’t think that would help. He’d probably find some way of using that to support his fantasy. Unfortunately, Frank told her, they wouldn’t let the two bring their guns onto the ship. Leigh mentioned having been stopped from speaking to Karen and Justin by the Purser. Frank almost grinned. At least HE wasn’t going to take that as a challenge. Angie, on the other hand.... Terry suggested that maybe they could all just ease off on the harassment for now. Frank agreed that he could lay off them....

Then Terry asked Leigh if she could see where it was written on her body “Kidnap Me.” Frank said that she hadn’t let him inspect her that closely yet. She grinned. She kind of figured that it must be some place a bit more visible, since apparently so many things could see it. Leigh suggested that maybe she should have someone--other than Tony--take a look spectrally. “Why not Tony,” Terry asked her. “Because he’ll probably get the idea that you want out-of-body sex,” Leigh said. “Besides,” Frank added, “then Leigh will get jealous.” The women looked around, concerned that Tony might hear the conversation and take it the wrong way. Frank told them it wasn’t Tony he was worried about, it was Angie. “So, how long do you think THAT will last?” Terry asked him. “As long as Angie keeps getting the adrenalin rush while she’s with him,” Frank replied. “So, you’re telling me I did my part for keeping them together by getting kidnapped?” Terry said. The three laughed and turned their wit to commenting on other people going by, mostly those with cosmetic ‘enhancements.’ They even began arguing whether or not some of the women would need the life jackets the ship provided if they fell overboard.

The next couple days went relatively smoothly. Leigh was eventually able to get through to Karen later that afternoon and asked to meet her for coffee. Karen relented. She couldn’t imagine that Leigh actually had anything to do with Frank’s ‘gifts.’ Leigh told her about Tony’s delusion, and Karen told her about the guys arguing about it in the church. The next night, New Year’s Eve, Karen and Justin found the others at one of the ship’s nightclubs, and celebrated the beginning of the New Year with them. The next day, Karen called the Purser and had him cancel the ‘do-not-disturb’ order. She never could hold a grudge, and these people were her friends. She was even able to laugh about Frank’s awful sense of humor when it got directed at Tony. Tony had come on the cruise looking for nubile single young women. Too bad the ship was mostly populated by single OLD women who were less than nubile. He might not have been interested in them, but they were certainly hot for him. When one woman, who must have been in her 80s, studied Tony a little too intensely one night, Frank sent her a drink with Tony’s cell number written on the napkin. The aftermath was insanely funny to the others, but Tony acted the complete gentleman and let the woman down gently. He’d started looking in his ‘target range’ of the late teens and 20s. When he couldn’t find any woman in that age group, he expanded his search to include divorcees in their 30s or 40s on the cruise with female friends or relative, or even staff members in the right age brackets as long as he thought they could be discreet enough to not get caught. By the end of the cruise, he’d managed to land a recently-divorced 34-year-old who was there to celebrate her new-found freedom. The two celebrated it together--no strings attached.

Upon taking a closer look around the room, Frank realized there weren’t many signs of a struggle. The balcony had metal railings, and there were scratches in them, as if something large with clawed feet had perched there. There were similar scratches on the wood floor inside, and snags in the throw rug. The covers on the bed were thrown back like Terry had gotten up fast, but she’d taken nothing with her. Her clothes were draped over a chair with her shoes tucked underneath it, and her wallet, watch and key-card were still lying on the dresser. Frank grabbed the key and went back to his own room--through the door this time. There was no time to waste. He was going to call the others for help; but whether they came or not, he was going to find Terry.

Reg, Raimon and Leigh had finally fallen asleep around 4:30am. Dec. 28, after a couple hours of ‘adult entertainment.’ At 5, Reg’s phone rang. He wouldn’t have answered if he hadn’t known that Raimon would not stop poking him until the phone stopped ringing and disturbing his beauty sleep. Not that Raimon needed the help.... The tone of the male voice on the phone slapped Reg wide awake in an instant, and that brought Leigh up from the edge of sleep she’d been teetering on. There’d been a fire at Claire’s. The two girls had escaped, but Claire and Phil were in the hospital’s ICU in critical condition. They hadn’t found Reg’s brother-in-law yet. Reg hung up and made sure the other two were awake. He told them what had happened, and ordered Raimon to begin packing while he called and got them the first flight back that he could arrange. “So much for protecting my family,” Reg muttered. “Raimon, how do you feel about kids?” Leigh was out of the bed even before Raimon. She told Reg to get three tickets; she was going with him. Raimon hesitated. “I don’t do ‘kids’,” Raimon said. “And why do I have to go?” Reg was working on getting them on the 6am flight and couldn’t answer him, but Leigh suggested that he might need to watch the kids while she went to the hospital with Reg. Or he could go with Reg and she’d watch the kids. Either way....

Then, at 5:30am, Leigh’s phone rang. And Reg’s. Reg had just hung up after calling Audra and leaving a message on her voice mail, and he thought it might be her. Leigh had just been about to go pack her own things. But it was Frank. They could hear some of the others picking up, too. Aiden and Angie sounded groggy. And Justin and Karen sounded like they’d just been woken from a deep sleep. In fact, had they been awake enough to think straight, they probably wouldn’t have answered at all. It was only reflex, and the fact that they’d forgotten to turn the phones off last night, that made them answer now. The only person that hadn’t picked up was Tony. He did remember to turn off his phone. “It seems...” Frank started. “Now’s not the best time, Frank,” Reg interrupted. “...something has flown off with Terry,” Frank continued. “Anyone who wants to help should be over here in the next half-hour. I’ll meet you in the lobby.” They could all hear Karen moan “Noooo,” before she dropped her phone. Then there was faint sobbing in the background. Some of the others thought maybe she was just that concerned about Terry’s disappearance. It was actually that her fears were coming true; she’d been afraid that if all the others were there, her honeymoon was going to be ruined. And now it was. Justin went over and hugged Karen tight to his side as he held the phone to his ear with the other hand. He and the others heard Leigh apologize to Reg. “No, you’re needed here,” Reg told her as he was hanging up his phone. “Raimon, my Latin lover, you’re going with me,” he said, as Leigh was telling the others about the fire. “Ahhhhh!” They heard Raimon’s anguished wail in the background from Leigh’s phone.

All of them told Frank they’d be there as fast as they could, then hung up to get ready. Karen’s hands were covering her face as she sobbed, so Justin almost couldn’t make out what she said. “God hates us,” Karen sobbed. “We’ll never get a moment of peace to ourselves ever again.” Justin rubbed her back. “He doesn’t hate us,” he said. It wasn’t His fault they’d been dragged into this Fight, he told her; they would just have to make the best of whatever time they did have. Justin felt her head nod against his chest. She sniffled and rubbed her eyes. Tears were still spilling out, but she began getting dressed. While Raimon reluctantly filled their suitcases and Leigh pulled on the dress she’d worn clubbing the night before, Reg called the desk and got checked out. Leigh had the two men drop her off at her hotel on their way to the airport. The Ferrari wasn’t very comfortable for three people and luggage, but it wasn’t far to the other hotel. As Leigh ran down the hallway, she paused at Frank’s room. She told him that she would call Tony and get him there if she could. Frank was packing not only his own things, but stuff for Terry as well. He wasn’t about to consider any other possibilities right now except that they would find her alive and able to use the things he was packing.

Leigh knew that Tony was staying at the same hotel as Reg had been, so she dialed the front desk. She asked to be connected with Tony’s room, and the clerk told her that Mr. Leonetti had requested that his calls be held. He could certainly take a message for her and see that Mr. Leonetti got it though. Leigh sighed. Tony would never get a message in time. She thanked the clerk and said she’d just come over to see him. The clerk replied that Mr. Leonetti would no doubt welcome that. There was the hint of a smirk evident in his tone. Leigh wasn’t sure where Tony had gone after they’d gotten to the club, but he must have ended up at his room with a woman. Tony had only just fallen asleep about the time his cell would have been ringing with Frank’s call if he’d left it on. All four of the college girls had joined him in his room, and the five were now sprawled across his king-sized bed so that you couldn’t tell whose limbs were whose without untangling them. Leigh called the desk to have a cab ordered, then dressed hurriedly in sturdy pants and boots, and a t-shirt with a long-sleeved shirt over it. As she passed Frank’s room, she paused again to let him know that she couldn’t get through to Tony on the phone, so she was going over to get him. She raced back downstairs, and as she jumped in the cab, she warned the cabby that there was a big tip in it if he did exactly what she asked. He sped over to the luxury hotel well over the speed limit. She told him to wait as she jumped out of the cab, and he casually opened the morning paper as if this were a common event. Leigh went to the front desk. She pulled 5 twenties out of the small wallet she was carrying and asked the clerk for Tony’s room number. Luckily for Leigh, Tony had only given him $50 to hold his calls.

Leigh tapped her foot impatiently as the elevator crept upwards. She was out the doors before they were even fully open, and she raced down the empty hallway. She knocked on Tony’s door, and heard giggling from somewhere on the other side. She was about to knock again when the door was opened by a young woman wearing only one of Tony’s t-shirts. “I need to see Tony,” Leigh said. “Tony’s kind of...well...he’s not dead,” the girl told her with a grin, stepping back from the doorway. There was a ‘puppy pile’ on the bed, and Leigh sighed wistfully, thinking of the bed she’d been forced from less than an hour ago. She leaned over and shook what she thought might be Tony’s shoulder, and his eyes opened slowly. He got a shit-eating grin on his face and told the other girls to make room. Instead, they began to disentangle themselves from him and each other and pick through the clothes that were strewn around the floor. Leigh squatted next to the bed, so she could talk a little more privately with Tony. “It looks like Terry got disappeared,” Leigh told him. He didn’t seem to understand what she said. He asked Leigh how she was doing. “I was having fun until about 15 minutes ago,” Leigh told him. It wasn’t entirely true, since Reg had gotten the call from San Francisco about 45 minutes ago; but it was the first thing she could think to say. “Damn, I don’ remember nothin’,” Tony said disappointedly. “But come on back in bed and I’ll try to remember dis time.” Tony wrapped one arm around her waist. All she could do for a second was stare at him. Where on earth did he get the idea that she...? She stood, slipping his hand from around her waist, and went over to the small coffee maker near the bathroom, and started a pot of coffee, effectively hiding the grin that began to spread across her face. Apparently Tony was going to need a little something to get his brain started this morning, and they didn’t have time for a full breakfast.

The other girls were starting to filter out of the room by now. As each one got finished dressing, she would go over and give Tony a hug and kiss. He was gentleman enough to ask if they needed cab fare, and they declined, saying they were fine. They also said goodbye cheerfully to Leigh as they left, not at all upset with her presence. When the last had left and the smell of the brewing coffee began sparking his brain into action, Tony crawled out of bed and stood there a second in all his ‘buffness,’ scratching his head. He still didn’t remember Leigh coming back to the room with him last night, and was mumbling something about that as he strolled past Leigh and into the bathroom. As he passed, Leigh reminded him that Frank was in a hurry. He shut the door and she heard the shower turn on. After about 15 minutes of listening to Tony sing in Italian (opera, she thought, but she wasn’t sure which one), he came out still toweling himself off and started picking through his clothes. A few minutes later he looked like Don Johnson in Miami Vice, with an open shirt under a light-weight jacket, loose-fitting cotton slacks, sandals, and five-o’clock shadow. He poured the coffee Leigh had thoughtfully made into one of the styrofoam cups next to the coffee maker, then went to the desk. He wrote a quick note, and pulled a couple bills out of his wallet and slipped them half-under the note. Leigh noticed as she followed Tony out the door that it was an apology and tip for the housecleaning crew. The cab was still waiting when they got downstairs, and when he’d dropped them back at Frank’s hotel, Leigh gave the cabby the large tip she’d promised.

By a few minutes after 6am, the last of the team was joining Frank in the hotel lobby. Aiden and Angie had gotten there in about 10 minutes, shortly after Leigh left to get Tony, and Angie had even stopped and gotten Frank a large black coffee on the way. Leigh and Tony got back at just about the same time that Karen and Justin hustled in, having had to come up from the docks. On their way off the ship, Justin made sure to let the Assistant Purser know that they’d run into some friends the night before and might be spending some time in Cancun with them. The woman quickly printed them off a copy of the ship’s time-table, so that the couple could rejoin the cruise at their convenience, if they remained in Cancun after the ship left for the next port-of-call. Karen stayed back by the doorway and concentrated on her bag, so no one could see her red-rimmed eyes. Nobody but Justin, who was keeping a concerned eye on her, saw her flinch when the woman mentioned them rejoining the cruise. It served her right, she thought to herself, for skipping Mass on one of the holiest days of the Church calendar. She wasn’t about to start making deals with God, so she didn’t promise anything in return; but she offered up a silent prayer that the team would find Terry alive and rescue her safely, and she and Justin would be able to finish their honeymoon. She fingered the crucifix that she never took off, and wondered how Fr. Andrew had expected her to not let this kind of thing keep her from living her life. Easy for him to say that she shouldn’t put off having a family. He wasn’t planning on having one anyway. But how could she possibly plan to have a family when the Unknown wouldn’t even leave them alone long enough for her to have a happy honeymoon.

She swallowed back more tears as Justin put his arm around her shoulders and led her off the ship. By the time they walked into the hotel lobby, the only sign left of her distress was the puffiness around her eyes. There was no time for whining or distraction right now. The sooner they rescued Terry, the better chance she had of finishing her honeymoon in peace. As they came up to the small huddle of people, the only ones in the lobby at that hour, Justin asked if the group needed transportation. “Not until we know where we’re going,” Frank answered. Except for Tony, everyone was dressed for spending the day hacking their way through the inland jungles. Frank motioned toward the elevators, and the group headed upstairs to Terry’s room. Along the way, Justin called Fr. Colin. He might not be an Envoy, but he understood the kinds of things SAVE dealt with, and while he might not be able to come down to help, he might at least put them in touch with someone in the area who could help them. The call went straight to voice mail. Fr. Colin’s heavy Irish brogue announced that he couldn’t answer the phone just then but he’d be “checkin’ me mail sometime t’day and get back t’ you.” Justin left a message that told him “the honeymoon’s a bust, a friend’s gone missing, can you put us in touch with a ‘mutual friend’ who might help?”

When they got to Terry’s room, the team clustered just inside the door as Frank told them about his dream, and pointed out the things he’d already noticed--the scratches on the balcony railing and the floor, and the fact that Terry’d taken nothing with her, so she probably hadn’t left willingly in spite of the lack of signs of a struggle. Justin studied the scratch-marks. The claw that made them looked about the size of a dinner plate, he told the others. (He paused as he said it. It was strange how much of an effect marriage was having on him. A year ago, he would have compared the size to an engine or car part, or maybe even something from his Army training. Now, he was using dinner plates as a frame of reference....) Frank looked more closely at them, and pulled out his pocket-knife. He poked at the wood floor with the tip. Whatever had made the marks must have been between 200 and 300 pounds he told them. The scratches weren’t dug-in like the thing was trying to rip into the floor. It looked like they were just a side effect of the thing getting a footing on the floor. But they were still pretty deep, so the creature must have been pretty heavy. On the other hand, the railing was scratched but not deformed in any way. So the thing wasn’t heavy enough to bend it under its weight, and it had enough strength to perch on the railing and carry away Terry, who wasn’t very big, but either not enough strength to crush the railing or enough sense to not squeeze that hard.

The strange thing that both Frank and Justin noticed was the pattern. As far as Justin could tell, the creature’s stance was 4-legged, but wider in the front than the back. “Like a giant bat?” Karen asked warily. Justin and Frank both looked at her then back at the floor. Actually...yeah. She might not know a lot about tracks or animals, but she’d seen enough bats when she was out on digs. They had this odd way of using their wing-tips as feet when they walked. In fact, most paleontologists theorized that pterodactyls walked the same way, since the bone structure of the wing portion of fossils that had been found closely resembled bat wings. Using the spacing of the stance, Justin and Frank figured that the thing was about 7-8 feet tall. That would explain why he couldn’t hear the bat he’d seen a couple nights ago, Frank thought to himself. It must have been much farther away than he thought at the time. He told the others about what he’d seen. With all this talk about bats, the first thing Tony thought of was the creature he’d encountered at the warehouse when they fought the Zombi Master. He poked Aiden in the arm and motioned at the easy chair. He sat down, and a moment later his body slumped. A few minutes later he was back. He couldn’t find any residual from an incorporeal creature having been in this room or in Frank’s; and there didn’t seem to be any ghosts around, to ask if they’d seen the thing. He let the others know what he’d been thinking about.

Leigh and Karen had been thinking about what they knew of legends about bat or bat-like creatures. The first thing that came to their minds was the Camazotz, or “snatch bat” of Central American legends. It was a giant bat that attacked humans and animals. The myth might have grown out of finds of the fossils of D. dracula, the giant vampire bat, in Central and South America. In Mayan legends, Camazotz was an inhabitant of the Underworld that killed (temporarily, at least) one of the Hero Twins. Later legends told of Zapotec worshipers of Camazotz that could shapeshift into bats. Justin wondered if the thing was any relation to the Chupacabra. Karen and Leigh weren’t sure that there was any connection except for the fact that both drank blood. But Leigh pointed out that a similar connection could be made to Vampires. A ripple of fear passed through all of them. Karen vaguely recalled stories of bat-men from Native American mythology. They were more powerful than humans, and were a connection between men and gods without being gods themselves. But in the legends, they offered men helpful guidance, and there was no hint of death or blood-drinking involved in the stories that she could remember. In fact, there were myths associated with bats and bat-gods in almost every culture. There was Mali, an aboriginal bat god in Australia; and Ngunung Ngunnut, the Australian bat god that created sex; and Pe’ape’a, the eight-eyed Polynisian bat god that kidnapped the wife of the trickster god Maui, who waited until the god fell asleep then cut its head off to rescue his wife. Considering that the only three real blood-drinking bat species were all native to Central and South America, Karen could see how bat-gods could end up being more deadly here than in other mythologies, even though the real blood-drinking bats were not at all deadly. And there were a number of well-known hardwood trees native to the region, Leigh pointed out. Which, if there was a connection to Vampires, raised the possibility that staking the creature might be a way to kill it.

When everyone was done looking around Terry’s room, Frank took them back to his room. There he handed pistols to Justin, Tony, Angie and Leigh. That was all Frank had at the moment, but Aiden and Karen didn’t mind. Aiden wouldn’t have used a gun if he’d had one, and Karen still wasn’t sure she was ready to have to point one at a human being again, even if the person was under the control of the Unknown and trying to attack her. Frank told them that he’d checked, and banks wouldn’t be open until 10am. He didn’t know about the others, but he wanted cold, hard cash in his hands for some of the transactions he was planning that day, and the $400 per day limit at the ATMs wouldn’t be enough. Justin and Leigh recognized the usefulness of that, and decided that they’d be making a trip to the bank as well, as soon as it was open. In the meantime, the group discussed what they might need for their expedition to find Terry. Frank would be securing more firepower, at least a couple of assault rifles, and asked Tony to go with him on that errand. Tony agreed, but only if he could also visit some business acquaintances before or after. “Ya never know when youse might need t’ close up a tunnel or somethin’,” he suggested. And if he couldn’t get in touch with his contacts, he’d need to go shopping for the components to make what he needed. Leigh chose to go with them as back-up.

Aiden wanted to put together a med-kit, since he wouldn’t have been able to bring his along on the plane even if he’d known to plan ahead for it. Angie was going to go with him “to keep an eye on his butt.” “Don’t you mean back?” Justin suggested. “Yeah, that too,” she agreed. Karen would go along with Justin to get anything and everything they could think of from camping and sporting-goods stores. At the very least, Justin wanted to get spear-guns or bows, some of those ‘hand-suns’, machetes, packs.... They’d also pick up a Land Rover. They weren’t positive where they were going yet, but a Rover could go anywhere. And Karen was going to ask the historian on the cruise who they dealt with on the ground in Cancun to set up the tours. Maybe she could work out where the most likely place would be to find an altar like the one Frank saw in his dream. Before they left the hotel, Tony suggested that he, at least, was going to look for some ‘local-looking’ clothes, just in case he needed to blend in. The others agreed that it wasn’t a bad idea, and it made Frank think to ask if anyone knew Spanish. Justin had learned some, between high school classes and his time in the Army. And Angie said she was pretty fluent, having learned from ‘Carlos.’ Aiden was about to get jealous when his attention was drawn to Tony, who was gazing across the room at Leigh with a shit-eating but confused looked on his face. Some of the others noticed too, but there was no time left for friendly banter.

By the time they were all done planning, it was 10am. Next stop, the bank. Frank was hoping to get $10K in cash. Justin and Leigh wanted to get cash, too, and the bank manager wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t be able to accommodate them all. They all agreed to a mixture of US dollars, local currency and traveler’s checks, which allowed the manager to give each of them what they needed. Then they split up for their various errands, having decided to meet back at Frank’s room at 1pm. Everyone was able to find what they were looking for except Tony, who had to make due with the common, everyday components that would allow him to make what he needed. When the others asked how much time he’d need to mix his stuff up, he told them that it was kind of like a good epoxy--you didn’t want to mix it until right before you were going to use it. “Here...One’a youse wanna hold dis jar’a nitro while we bump along tru’ da jungle?” he joked.

Then Karen told them what she’d found out. She had been directed to a local tour company who made the arrangements for the ‘archaeological’ tours. They, in turn, told her that their “local experts” were a couple of professors from the Universidad de la Yucatan, Professor del Gado and Professor de la Ruiz, and gave her a number to call. A woman answered and introduced herself as Dr. de la Ruiz. Karen asked if she could speak with her about seeing some of the local archaeological sites that weren’t normally seen by tourists. She was an archaeologist herself, Karen explained, specializing in Native American archaeology. But most of her work had been done in the US, and she wanted to expand her knowledge about the natives of the rest of the Americas, whenever she had opportunities like this to do so. Professor de la Ruiz told Karen that normally Professor del Gado led groups out to his dig, but he was out ‘walking’ the dig that afternoon and wasn’t available. However she’d be more than happy to meet with Karen, perhaps after the siesta. The university was just setting up an exhibit of Mayan artifacts that had been discovered at del Gado’s new site, and she might like to see that, as well. The professor chatted with Karen about the costs of running the new dig and of setting up the exhibit. It was an expensive venture, and the university and government weren’t always forthcoming with funds, even when the site was relatively untouched and as exciting as their new one was. Perhaps if she had the time, the professor intimated, she herself could take Karen out there to see it, rather than waiting for del Gado to get back. Karen caught the unspoken hint that a donation to the department and museum might get her more help than the professor would otherwise have had the time for. They agreed to meet at 3pm.

The group spent the next couple hours sorting through the stuff they’d all bought and re-packing it to make it easily accessible. A little before 3pm, they all headed over to the university. Professor de la Ruiz was a fairly tall and very elegant looking woman with a touch of obvious Indian ancestry in her mostly Spanish background. She and Karen continued the conversation they’d started earlier on the phone, comparing their projects (her specialty was native folk lore, del Gado was the archaeologist), and discussing similarities and differences between the native populations here and in the US. Karen explained that when her friends found out that she was coming to see the professor, they asked if they could come along to see some real ruins instead of the touristy places tours normally went. Would she be willing to guide them out to Professor del Gado’s new dig site? They would, of course, happily donate a suitable honorarium to support the dig, Karen told her, in return for the time she would be spending away from her duties there. But they didn’t have much time to wait until tomorrow, Frank told her, since they wouldn’t be staying in Cancun long enough; would they be able to go that afternoon? He handed her an envelope with $500 US in it, the amount the group had decided on earlier when Karen had told them about the professor’s offer. The professor’s eye widened a little, but she covered her surprise well. She would have been satisfied with $100 and a nice dinner out. She told them to meet her at the school’s museum around 4pm. They would start with a look at the artifacts that were going into the exhibit, then head out to the dig. Oh, and they would need Jeeps, she warned them.

The team left to find another Land Rover and get their equipment loaded. Karen was surprised to see Leigh loading a large net, then realized how useful that would be to catch a large bat. Then they checked the local weather. Sunset would be at 5:15 that evening. They were 3 days from the new moon, so they’d already passed moonset, which had been at 2:53pm. And tomorrow morning’s sunrise would be at 6:30am. It was going to get dark faster, too, they realized, once they got into the jungle, so they made sure all the lights--chem-lites as well as Mag Lites and the ‘hand suns’--were on the tops of the piles. And they also tried to split the gear evenly between the two vehicles, in case anything happened to one or the other. Justin drove one Jeep, with Karen and Leigh, and Angie drove the other, with Aiden, Tony and Frank. They all wore ear-buds and throat mikes. They got to the museum a few minutes before 4pm, then waited. Frank was beginning to get restless long before Professor de la Ruiz finally arrived at 4:20. Karen and Leigh had to keep reminding him that they were on ‘native time’ there. Everything seemed to be done at a slower and more leisurely pace everywhere else in the world than it was in the States. Only Japan had anything similar to the frenetic lifestyle of Americans. And even they had their rituals and customs that seemed slow and time-wasteful to Americans.

Professor de la Ruiz led them into the museum and into what almost looked like a storage room or work room. There were a few glass cases, work benches, and crates with packing materials spilling out of some of them. The exhibit was still being set up, the professor explained. They’d only begun working the site a couple months before, but the finds were so exciting that they wanted to share them as quickly as possible. She proceeded to show them a number of items that only another person seriously interested in archaeology could appreciate. There were pot shards, and several obsidian knives which had been found in pieces and were being reconstructed. And then there was their pride and joy, which had only been discovered recently and was so well preserved that.... The woman was beaming as she held up a wooden spear, about 6 foot long. It was solid mahogany, sharpened to a wicked point and fire-hardened, then carved down its entire length and polished to a satin sheen. “I believe it was, perhaps...” she began, then hesitated. “Not a staff. Obviously a spear, and you can see where ornaments had been attached to it, which must have decayed or fallen off,” she continued, pointing to very fine wear-spots along the shaft.

The group studied the carving, all in the squat, blocky style of the Mayans. Several were clearly bat figures, and they all glanced at one another. The unspoken thought they all shared was that maybe the archaeologist had awakened something that should have been left alone. Justin and Leigh were both taking photos of the item, and Justin commented that it would look great over the mantle at home. De la Ruiz just ignored the comment, but that was more the response Justin had been hoping for. He wanted to know just how committed the woman was to her work. He’d heard plenty of stories of people doing this sort of work just so they could get artifacts to sell on the black market, or so they could find items that could be easily faked and sold as originals. But she and Karen were obviously deep in conversation in a language that was foreign to several of them--academic. “Would it be possible to have a local craftsman recreate something similar,” Justin asked her, in all seriousness this time, “if we showed him a photo of this?” Possible, the professor admitted, but not likely, since she didn’t know of any craftsmen with the level of skill necessary; and certainly no one would be able to do it before they had to leave town. However, she could certainly point him in the direction of the markets where he’d have the best chance of finding someone who might be commissioned to do the work if he wanted. Frank sensed nothing Unknown about the spear, but the bat motif was too much of a coincidence to ignore. As the team neared the door again, the professor took out her phone. A moment later, she closed it again with a disgusted look on her face. She’d been trying to call Ricardo...Professor del Gado...since she’d first spoken with Karen that afternoon, and he didn’t answer. Ah, but service could be spotty out there, so perhaps they would meet him on the way out. She asked if they’d thought to bring lights, and when told that they had, she led them out of the building.

But Frank lagged behind the others, and picked up the spear on his way out. Normally he wouldn’t condone a theft like that. But Terry’s life was at stake...no pun intended. It was almost 5pm, and light outside was already getting dim, more so than it had when they were on the beach at the same time last night. Frank was able to slip the spear into the Rover without anyone noticing, while Aiden busily squirted everyone else with DEET. Karen and Evelina were on a first-name basis by now. Evelina didn’t even blink when it became obvious that most of the others were carrying guns. There were jaguars in the jungle, not to mention drug smugglers, poachers and relic hunters. She herself carried a .38, she said lifting her jacket so they could see the pistol hanging at her hip. “Just aim for the balls,” Justin commented, his preference being to hurt the smugglers first, before killing them. “Yes, or the head,” Evelina replied. “Though my shooting instructor always stressed aiming for the center of mass. But then, Ricardo spends more time in the jungle than I do.”

Everyone climbed into the Rovers, and Justin took the lead, with Evelina beside him to give directions. When she wasn’t pointing out the next turn, though, she and Karen were still engaged in an animated conversation, with Leigh following along well enough to join in occasionally. They headed out in a northwesterly direction away from the city. The trip would take about an hour, Evelina had advised them. But they realized that most of that time would be due to slower travel through the jungle, when they turned off the last paved road about a half-hour out. Periodically, Evelina would interrupt the conversation to point out some item of interest, such as the pyramids that most tourists went to see, or the place where a road turning off went out to another Mayan ruin. The places the tourists were taken had gotten commercialized over the years, but the government was careful to have the archaeologists and historians guide all the reconstructions that had been done. The women shared a laugh over the Starbucks store at the center of the Forbidden City, in China. Mexico was also very careful to not allow the commercialization to get that out of hand. If he hadn’t loved his wife so much, and hadn’t wanted to get whatever time with her that he could, Justin might have wished he were in the other Rover. Karen and Leigh had turned their com-units off, but he’d left his turned on for the drive to relay info to the other vehicle; and he could hear the others discussing the relative merits of the additional guns Frank had bought compared to some of the things Tony and Angie would have wished for, which was much more interesting to him than the comparative culture discussion going on among the 3 women.

It was almost 6pm when Evelina told them to slow down. The conversations ended, and Leigh and Karen flipped on their com-units. It had been getting darker and darker as they went, not just because of the setting of the sun or the closing in of the jungle, but because the deeper they’d gone into the jungle the more bugs there were hitting the headlights; and some of the moths they hit were large enough to cause an appreciable drop in the amount of light the headlights cast. They had put the windows down, and the sounds of the insects flying and buzzing around them filled the air. When they looked up out the open windows, they could see hundreds of small, winged creatures flying above them--a bat column. “Don’t worry about them,” Evelina told them. “There’s a cave near here. But they’ll stay away from the lights and us.” She seemed completely unconcerned, but Frank wasn’t so sure and he studied them for a moment. Oh, yeah. There was definitely something of the Unknown about them he warned the others quietly. Justin slowed the Rover further, and Angie was almost riding on his bumper now. Evelina pointed out what she said were the remains of a wall and told them they were almost there. She hollered out the open window, to let Ricardo know it was her if he heard them coming. Karen was the only one who could make out the feature she’d been pointing at, though. “We should see him soon,” Evelina said, and a moment later the jungle seemed to open up a little bit, at least as far as Karen and Evelina were concerned. Karen had a sudden thought, and tried to sense if there was anything Unknown about Evelina. Her face flushed with heat, and Karen was sure that the woman she’d been chatting so casually with was the epitome of Evil. Her heartbeat sped up, but she managed to remain calm as Evelina had Justin stop the Rover and they all piled out of the vehicles. Knowing was half the battle. Now she just had to warn the others.

Karen saw Frank passing flashlights out of the back of one Rover, Tony standing nearby and fastening one to the shotgun Frank had handed him. She pulled Justin over there as Evelina turned on the ‘hand-sun’ she’d brought and began scanning the jungle and calling out for Ricardo. “I felt...something,” she whispered to the two men she wanted to tell first, without remembering that she was telling everyone at once anyway over the throat mike. “Something like what?” Justin asked. “Like Edward?” “No, worse,” she told them. “Are you sure?” Frank asked her. He still didn’t trust her judgement, maybe even more so now that he knew more about her from their therapy sessions. “I could be wrong,” she said hesitantly. “But...I don’t think so. Just...keep an eye on her.” Evelina was moving into the ruins, calling Ricardo’s name and scanning the area with the light. Justin asked her where it would be OK to set up their tents. “We are not staying,” she answered him. “But, isn’t Professor del Gado?” he asked. “No,” she said, her voice wavering. “He was due back this evening.” She turned back to the ruins and continued her search. Tony asked if anyone had charcoal. Leigh tossed him a black paint stick and he began marking camo’ stripes on his face. Karen didn’t want to know why Tony felt the need to camouflage himself or why Leigh happened to have the stuff to do it. If some giant bat was going to attack them, it was going to find them by echolocation not by sight.

Aiden had been checking over the med kit, which he’d thoughtfully filled with anti-venoms as well as all the usual stuff. Angie, Leigh and Justin had been keeping an eye on their surroundings and on the professor. And Frank was tying the beginning of a roll of twine to the bumper of one Rover, when Tony stumbled over something on the ground. He caught his balance, then knelt to uncover it. Karen half expected it to be a fallen tree, or a piece of stone that had once been part of the wall. They were all shocked when Tony told them he thought he’d found Professor del Gado. The figure, lying face down in the green of the jungle floor, was clad in khakis and had dark hair. Aiden rushed over to the body. He checked the side of its neck for a pulse and shook his head, then turned the body over just as Evelina got there. The throat was torn out and there was a look of abject horror on the face, but there was no doubt that it was Ricardo del Gado. Evelina screamed and began backing away. Karen saw a flash of fear rising on the faces of some of the others as well. There was no time for tracking down anyone who ran off into the jungle right now. She looked at Leigh, and indicated that she would use a Mental Shield to calm everyone down. Hers didn’t have the same range Leigh’s did, but everyone was still nearby right now and they might need that range later.

Angie, Leigh and Tony took over the ‘watch’ as Frank and Aiden began studying the body and Justin the area around it. Karen went over and tried to calm down Evelina. If she wasn’t evil, then she deserved to be comforted. If she was evil, then she still deserved the comfort, but Karen also didn’t want her calling her minions to attack them. They had enough to worry about right now. There wasn’t nearly as much blood as there should have been, but except for the missing gobbet of throat and the lack of blood, the body appeared intact, Aiden told them. “Did he die right here,” Justin asked, “or somewhere else and that’s why there’s not enough blood here?” Aiden couldn’t be sure. Justin began looking for tracks, and it didn’t take long to find more of the giant bat tracks in the dirt under disturbed vegetation. It looked like the thing had landed, took a couple steps, attacked the professor where he was standing, then took off. Frank and Aiden concluded that the creature had clamped its jaws around the man’s neck, drank the blood as it gushed out, then ripped out the throat in order to release the man before taking off. Tony suggested looking for a camera or other recording device, and Aiden searched the man’s pockets as Frank raised the man’s eyelids. He shined his flashlight at them and was surprised to see that he’d had severe cataracts. The professor would have been practically blind except for seeing what would amount to shadows. Aiden slipped Frank the camera he found in the man’s pocket.

Evelina was calming down now, and Karen studied her back as she went to the body and dropped to her knees. She was sobbing, and between sobs she was ranting a mile-a-minute in Spanish. She smacked the man’s leg loudly, and the others realized that it was the same spot where she carried her holster but where he carried none. She was cursing him for going out alone without a gun where jaguars could get him, Angie told them over the com-unit. Karen wondered if their relationship had been more than just professional. She seemed so distraught, and though she didn’t catch all the words, the tone of the professor’s voice carried more grief than what Karen would have felt had she found one of her colleagues dead. Or maybe it was all an act. If she was as evil as Karen had sensed, maybe she’d done this herself or knew what had, and was trying to hide the fact. The woman had finally collapsed on the dead man’s chest, sobbing, her apparent anger at his death having worn her out. Frank asked her if Professor del Gado had trouble with his eyesight. “No,” she told him between sobs. “But he was talking about getting glasses for close work.” Justin asked if there had been others here with him, and if not, where his Jeep had gone. “He went out alone,” Evelina told him, slapping the dead man’s chest again in anger and grief. It didn’t take Justin much work before he found where the man’s Jeep had been parked.

“We must take him back,” Evelina said, finally pushing herself up from the ground. The Envoys looked at one another. Evelina was in no condition to drive back alone, especially with the dead body of her colleague in the back of the Jeep. That would mean splitting up the team, and they weren’t even sure what they’d be facing yet. But the look on Frank’s face told them that HE was not leaving there without Terry. Aiden and Frank got the body wrapped, and Angie helped Frank get it into del Gado’s Jeep while Aiden ‘played doctor-guy’ for Evelina, making her sip some water and calming her down. “Maybe you should take her back to town,” Frank suggested to Aiden. Aiden nodded, “Sure,” and Angie almost reluctantly offered to go with them. The others could tell that she was torn between staying to help Frank (and the probable action that would involve), and keeping Aiden safe. Angie went to help Evelina into the Jeep. “Leave the kit, though,” Justin requested as Aiden went to pick it up. Aiden looked up and hesitated. He’d feel almost naked without it. But, then, Frank certainly knew how to use it. “Sure,” he finally said. “But don’t do anything that requires my ‘special skills’.” “You either,” Justin told him as he climbed into the back seat of the Jeep. “And, Angie, remind him that he isn’t licensed to practice down here. That means he doesn’t have to stay and do all the paperwork....” Justin caught Angie’s eye and made sure she understood what he was really saying: “Get him out of there before anyone, especially the authorities, starts asking too many questions.” “And I can stop him from ‘being a doctor’?” Angie replied with a smirk. She hopped into the driver’s seat of the Jeep, and the other five watched them roll back into the jungle.

Frank turned on the digital camera Aiden had handed him and pulled up the first picture. Jungle. The next--more jungle. Karen took a look and was able to point out details of the ruins. They were all photos of the ruins, and there were a lot of them. But there was nothing that looked even remotely like what Frank had seen in his dream. They began scanning the area with the lights, and Karen was able to get a feel for the layout of the site by comparing what she saw to the pictures. The area inside the ‘walls’ was depressed, which indicated that there was probably more below that they couldn’t see. Maybe that was where the altar was. There was already a great deal of regrowth of the vegetation in the past week or so, since the spear had been found and they’d stopped the dig to start planning the exhibit. Justin suddenly realized that he’d been looking at the place all wrong. He’d gone out there expecting to see a ruined pyramid similar to the one in the brochure for the excursion, except covered in jungle. But either this place had been much smaller (“it was that,” Karen told him) or it was all upside down and buried in the ground. That must have been what the professor meant by finding the spear when they’d “finally gotten down into the ruins.”

Now that they all understood better what they were looking at, it didn’t take them long, even working in the dark, to find the opening they were looking for. Frank shined his light down into it. The walls and stairs leading down were made of well-crafted stone-work. They still looked heavily overgrown to the others, but Karen pointed out where the jungle had been cleared back from the hole and how the vines had already begun creeping back over the edges of the wall, as if drawn down into the darkness. The light of the hand-sun barely penetrated the darkness below them, and they couldn’t make out where the stairs ended. Backing the beam of light up onto the walls bracketing the opening, they could see Mayan carvings in the stone. The most prominent--figures of bats.

Aiden and Angie were out on the beach bright and early Monday morning, Dec. 26. Justin and Karen’s cruise ship wasn’t due into Cancun until tomorrow morning, according to the itinerary they showed everyone last night; and Aiden was determined to spend at least one day just lying on the beach before all of Angie and Frank’s plotting and evilness began. Leigh came out to the beach a little later, carrying a bag of supplies for the day, which included a cover-up, books, and SPF 5000 sun-screen. She laid out her towel a short way down from Aiden and Angie and stripped out of her bathing suit. Aiden was quite happy to be a gentleman and apply the sunscreen for her. Frank and Terry had no interest in hanging out on the beach. First of all because the whole ‘clothing optional’ thing wasn’t either of their styles; and secondly because neither appreciated finding sand in places that the human body just wasn’t supposed to have sand. So they started their day with a light breakfast, followed by some jet-skiing in the bay. They met back at the hotel’s waterfront deck to relax after changing out of their swimwear. Frank was wearing an A-shirt with a Hawaiian shirt over it, khaki shorts, sandals, and a white fedora. Terry was wearing shorts, a tank top covered by a filmy cover-up top, sandals, and a straw hat.

Things were quiet all morning, aside from the buzzing of jet-skis and powerboats, and the occasional grunt from either Angie or Leigh, to request that Aiden add another layer of sunscreen. After jet-skiing, Frank and Terry spent the morning and early afternoon playing ‘detective games,’ first on the deck and later in the bar. They would see which of them could first spot the pick-pocket in action, then take turns picking out who his next victims would be. Or they would take turns pointing to a person whom the other one would then have to ‘tell a story’ about. For some people, the stories would have been humorous and completely made-up. But for the two seasoned investigators, the stories were more often than not so close to the truth that, had the person heard them, he or she would have thought the two were psychic. They had a lot of people to choose from for their game. Both the beach and the bar, while not crowded, contained people of every size, shape, age and gender. All the people on the beach were completely comfortable with its clothing-optional status, though not everyone had chosen to strip; and the people in the bar seemed unconcerned with the fact that other people might be watching them. None of the five Envoys had any idea that they were soon going to be joined by a couple unexpected arrivals.

Tony’s flight had arrived in Cancun at 4am, and he was beat. But since the trip was his ‘bonus’ from CDI “for doing a great job this past year,” he wasn’t going to complain about the flight. The company had also arranged a generous per diem, and had booked him a room in the nicest hotel on the beach. He was good to go for a week of fun in the sun. Reg and Raimon’s flight arrived at 6am. Reg couldn’t stand another moment with his sister or her milk-toast husband, even though his dad had come along to intercede when necessary. When he’d walked out of Claire’s house Christmas evening, he hadn’t even bothered to make it clear that he really wasn’t coming back. Of course, his dad would probably kill him, next time he got hold of Reggie. But a little relaxation with Raimon was just what Reg needed. Luckily, Raimon happened to NOT have any other plans for the holidays. (Or at least, he’d chosen to not tell Reg about them if he’d had any plans, and either cancelled them or just skipped out on them.) Generally, Raimon was in high demand. He was smoldering hot, and happy to accommodate anyone who was willing to give him the “attention” he needed. Reg harbored no illusion that Raimon’s relationship with him was exclusive, any more than his with Raimon was.

Early that afternoon, the three new arrivals woke from their naps ready for a little time out on the beach. Aiden, Angie and Leigh had had light lunches brought out to them, and only had to lie back down when they were done eating. Frank and Terry had chosen to eat under an umbrella on the deck. Reg was lying on the bed enjoying the peace and quiet of their suite when Raimon bounded in from the balcony like a man who’d had 5 cups on espresso in the past couple hours. Raimon bounced onto the bed and shook Reg. “Come! You must see the view! It is beautiful!” Raimon said in that heavy Spanish accent that Reg found almost as attractive as Raimon’s body. He tried to explain to Raimon that he’d seen the view from this hotel plenty of times before, but Raimon was not about to let him lie there. He got up and let Raimon ‘drag’ him to the balcony. “There! You see?” Raimon asked, pointing at two figures lying prone on the beach several stories below. Wait, was that...? Reg leaned forward, then started chuckling. He knew that butt! Or more precisely, he knew that tattoo. That could only be Angie, and it must have been Aiden lying beside her. Raimon looked at him questioningly, and Reg explained that the couple were friends of his. “You DO know everybody,” Raimon said. “So, hurry and introduce me.” Reg suggested Raimon give Angie a wide berth, and Aiden even more; because if Raimon made a pass at Aiden, Angie would be able to twist Reg into more of a pretzel than Raimon could--and it wouldn’t be nearly as pleasant an experience. Reg dialed room service and ordered a pair of drinks, to be delivered to the couple on the beach whom he described to the voice on the phone. Then he began lacing up the two strips of cloth that Raimon insisted was his bathing suit. In an instant, Raimon had on his ‘banana hammock,’ and danced around the room like a child waiting for permission to open his presents on Christmas morning.

Meanwhile, Tony had gone down to the beach himself, carrying his bag of ‘supplies’--a towel and a full box of condoms--and wearing a thick white terry-cloth robe. His camera phone was out, and he seemed to be scanning the beach for some attractive ‘scenes’ to take pictures of. He couldn’t help but notice the very pretty looking (at least from the back) brunette lying face down nearby. But she had a buff guy lying face down right next to her, so Tony wasn’t going to bother doing anything more than appreciate the view. He heard someone laugh as he was strutting along the beach looking for a good spot to stake out, and he assumed the woman (it was definitely not a guy’s laugh) was laughing at something happening further down the beach. He had no idea that it was Leigh, and that she had recognized him. He finally settled on a spot and shook out his towel and laid it down. As he was shrugging off his robe, the pretty brunette mumbled something to the man next to her. He remained motionless, snoring quietly. Angie tried again, “Sunscreen.” Still no reaction from Aiden. Finally she poked him in the side with the bottle. He sat up at precisely the same moment that Tony, wearing a Speedo, turned to stuff his neatly folded robe into the bag. “Aww, just when I thought I could go on vacation,” Tony said, louder than he realized. “Man, they’ll let anyone on this beach,” Angie said, sitting up when she heard Tony’s voice. “So, why Cancun?” she asked him. “The booze is cold and the women are easy,” Tony replied. “Are you easy?” Aiden asked Angie as he smeared more sunscreen on her back. “I’ll show you,” Angie replied, rolling over and grabbing Aiden. “NOT HERE!” Aiden said in a panicked voice. Angie just laughed. She loved pushing his buttons.

“It gets better,” Aiden said when he was sure his voice would come out normal again. “Frank, Terry and Leigh are here, too,” he said pointing out Leigh, who was coming up the beach toward them carrying her towel and bag, the cover-up draped over her shoulders. He explained that he and Angie had decided about a month ago to come for a short vacation while they both had the time off, and that Justin and Karen were on a honeymoon cruise that was due into Cancun’s port in the morning. Leigh told Tony about how Frank had surprised her and Terry with the plane tickets just last night. Then Aiden warned him that Frank and Angie were planning to prank Justin and Karen, too. Just then, Reg and Raimon walked up. Neither of them had any more clothing on than Aiden, Angie, Leigh or Tony. As the others stared at what little there was of Reg’s bathing suit, Reg began to introduce Raimon Alazar to his friends. Reg noticed the others staring, and when Leigh asked about his ‘suit’ with only the raise of one eyebrow, Reg said that it was staying on...because it took too long to unlace it. Raimon lifted Leigh’s hand as she was introduced to him. “Ah! Audra told me all about your Nordic goddess,” he said to Reg, continuing to smile suggestively at Leigh. “Wait, Raimon,” Reg started. “Audra...? Oh. Never mind.” Reg realized that with Audra being a reporter who traveled as much as he did, it should have come as no surprise that she’d managed to find at least one of his other ‘paramours.’ “Um, has she said anything about my dad?” Reg asked, a little worried. “No,” Raimon replied. “Is he not still in San Francisco?” Reg let the conversation drop as he continued introducing the others, though Raimon would have had to be completely oblivious to have missed the implications of Reg mentioning Audra and his dad in the same sentence.

As Reg introduced Raimon to Angie, Raimon kissed and stroked Angie’s hand as he had Leigh’s. But when Reg introduced Aiden, the look Raimon gave him could have melted steel. The red started at the tips of Aiden’s ears, and before Raimon’s gaze had gotten to Aiden’s feet, so had the red. Aiden either sun-burned in an instant or he was blushing ALL over. Angie put a proprietary arm around Aiden’s waist and suggested a swim. Nobody else was allowed to push that particular button, and she really didn’t want to have to hurt Reg’s friend. When Reg introduced Tony, Raimon looked him up and down and said, “Mmmm, I love Italian.” Tony didn’t say anything, but Reg whispered in Raimon’s ear that Tony was most definitely heterosexual. Ah, well. But Raimon could still dream, could he not? Leigh told Reg that she was there with Frank and Terry, and again, Raimon gave her and Reg suggestive looks. Reg couldn’t speak for Leigh regarding her proclivities for such things, but he was quite sure that the three weren’t together there in a ‘sexual’ sense. However he warned Raimon to give Frank and Terry a little space, because they were ‘just starting out’ and ‘still fragile.’ Plus, there was the same danger of...well, the same “danger” with Terry as with Angie. Reg signaled for a couple more chairs and towels to be brought out as Tony and Leigh spread their towels near Aiden and Angie’s, too; and Reg made sure to position himself between Raimon and the others.

When Aiden and Angie came back, the six chatted about how they’d all ended up in Cancun. Reg expressed his concern for how his two nieces, Topaz and Amethyst, were going to turn out with a couple of nutballs for parents. Frank and Terry had left the hotel deck to go for a leisurely swim in the hotel’s pool. When they met back on the deck to go out on the jet-skis again, they noticed that Leigh had moved near Aiden and Angie and that a crowd had sort of grown there. It didn’t take long to realize that two of the others were Tony and Reg. Frank and Terry started with a little bumper-tag on the jet-skis. A couple of teenagers seemed to think that the two were ‘too old’ to be out on the skis, and let them know it by generally making asses of themselves. Frank proceeded to goad them into a race, which he and Terry won by using ‘age and treachery.’ When the others finally noticed the two zipping back and forth, they were amazed at the fact that Frank’s white fedora never left his head. Terry’s hat they could understand; she had it tied down with a scarf. But Frank’s didn’t appear to be held on by anything other than his will that it stay put. The conversation among the six turned to where each of them was staying, and Angie once again expressed her disgust with Aiden’s choice of hotel, considering they were both rich. When Reg found out that they were staying in the rat trap at the far end of the beach, he called the concierge and asked if there were still any nice rooms left, perhaps one near his. There were, the concierge told him, including the one with the door adjoining his suite. Reg asked the couple if they would be interested in moving to the luxury hotel that he and Raimon, and Tony, it turned out as well, were in. The look on Angie’s face told Aiden and the others that he had no real say in the matter, but Aiden agreed anyway that, given the size of the roaches he’d seen, moving might not be a bad idea. Reg was soon back on the phone with the concierge getting Aiden and Angie a room next to his, but without the adjoining door. No point in tempting Raimon too much.

When they were done showing up the two kids, Frank and Terry joined the others, and Reg introduced them to Raimon. Frank looked at Angie and asked if she thought that Justin and Karen had been on the ship long enough. Terry protested that she would have no part in the pranking, as Aiden explained to Reg and Raimon what was going on. But she did want to hear what happened, she told Frank, and he and the others could tell that she would probably end up participating anyway. Frank pulled out his cell. Little did any of them know that Justin and Karen weren’t the only victims of Frank’s sense of ‘humor.’ When he’d found out the night before that Aiden and Angie were staying in the cheapest hotel on the beach, he wasn’t surprised at their choice based only on the cost aspect. He was shocked that Angie would stay in a place that no doubt had little concern for the security of their guests, especially after she’d been in Iraq. He had wanted to make the risk as apparent to her as it was to him, and he figured he might as well get a laugh out of it while he was at it. So after Aiden and Angie had gone out to the beach that morning, he had suggested that Terry go enjoy a massage while he took care of some business. She suspected that his ‘business’ involved more torment of Justin and Karen, so she made the appointment rather than feel guilty knowing what he was doing. Frank went over to Aiden and Angie’s hotel, and a few dollars got him the key to their room with no questions asked. He ran a trip-wire from the outside knob, around the door and into the room, leaving it visible but not too obvious. When he shut and re-locked the door, he attached the other end of the wire to a motion sensor, which he set up to trigger a strobe light cross the room. Before climbing out the window and rapelling down from their third floor room, Frank left a little note by the light that said, “BOOM! You’re dead.”

Justin and Karen had just finished having a late lunch, and when they got back to their room--the Presidential Suite (Edward had insisted that they have only the best)--they found a note on the floor which had obviously been slipped under the door. This was the first time the two had been out of their rooms since boarding, and it seemed strange that the note had come during the short time they were gone. All it said was “Check the flowers.” There was no signature, and they didn’t recognize the handwriting. There were several flower arrangements around the two rooms, which they now viewed with trepidation. They hadn’t given them much thought before, assuming that they either came with the room or had been sent by Edward and Cathy. They checked one and found a note from Edward and Cathy wishing them a “Happy Honeymoon.” In the next, they found a nice handheld digital camera--pointed directly at the bed. The note said “Merry Christmas,” but it wasn’t signed. Karen turned beet red, then paled white as a ghost and backed toward the door. Justin began to wonder if it really was a camera. When he was sure Karen wasn’t going to pass out, he dug around and found the tiny screwdriver in the glasses-repair kit that Karen carried, and opened the case. The camera had been ‘off’ when they found it, and he discovered that, as far as he could tell, it really was a camera. Justin readily blamed Edward for the intrusion, and began swearing in a quiet and controlled voice about what he was going to do to the freak when he got his hands on him, as he put the camera back together.

But Karen wasn’t so sure. Edward might creep her out, but not at all in that way. She’d never gotten any sort of vibe from him that he was interested in her in any way other than as Cathy’s oldest daughter. And she already knew from what her mother had said that the two had an active sex life together. Why would he want to spy on them? She tried to gather her wits and started looking through the other arrangements. One of the remaining two was indeed from the cruise company, congratulating them on their wedding. The last had no card, but there was a tiny two-way transmitter/receiver buried among the flowers. When Justin looked closely at it through the magnifying glass from the kit, he found that the serial number had been carefully filed off. This really scared Karen. There were so many things this could be used for. What if Edward had sent it? He certainly had the connections to have these things planted in their room. Instead of listening to them, was he going to use this to brainwash them when they were sleeping? What if the rest of the suite had been ‘bugged’ like that? Justin, on the other hand, was now beginning to doubt that it was Edward. The man might have connections, but would he really bother to bug their rooms? Karen was right, earlier. It didn’t seem like his style to do anything so impersonal. Who else did they know that might have access to this kind of ‘tech?’ The first name that came to mind was Frank’s. That asshole. Justin knew it was him.

But Karen couldn’t relax now. She couldn’t sit still, and as she moved around the suite she kept wondering where else a bug or camera could have been hidden. Justin could tell that she was getting close to panic again, so he checked the entire suite twice, everywhere either of them could think of or even imagine that a camera or mike could be hidden. But it still wasn’t enough for Karen. She was almost hysterical, and she pleaded with Justin to get them another room. He called the Guest Relations Manager, and one of the Guest Relations Officers came to their room within minutes. They had other rooms, certainly. But none as nice as this. It didn’t matter Karen told the man, trying hard to control her rising panic. As long as it wasn’t this one. What was the nicest they had available, Justin asked. The man described it, and Justin told him they’d take it. The man offered to have someone come to move their things, and Karen refused. She would move everything herself. Then he asked, almost as an afterthought though Karen knew that it wasn’t, if they could tell him why they needed to switch rooms. “Because we found THESE in two of the flower arrangements,” Karen told him, placing the camera and mike on the table. The man was horrified and began to apologize profusely. They would be moved immediately, and when he found out which crew member had done this, he or she would be dealt with severely. They were being treated like royalty before because they’d been booked into the Presidential Suite. Now, they were being shown even greater deference. The Chief Purser himself apologized to them as well, and went over the room with Justin to assure Karen that it was not bugged in any way. A bottle of the ship’s finest champagne was brought after they had been settled into it. That evening, they were invited to sit at the Captain’s table for dinner. If Karen hadn’t been so tense, she might even have enjoyed all the pampering. She trusted Justin when he assured her that their new room was ‘clean,’ and she knew that the Purser would see that nothing else disturbed them for the rest of their trip. But she still had a hard time relaxing that night, and it took a little while and a bit of persuading before Karen let Justin do more than just hold her close in bed, the covers pulled almost over their heads, in case whoever had bugged their other room had managed to slip a new bug into this one.

Once the arrangements had been made for Aiden and Angie’s new room, Leigh offered to help them move their things. Reg suggested they all meet later for dinner, and he told them that he’d get reservations at the nicest place in town and that they’d need to dress up a little for it. The three gathered their things into the bags they’d brought, and Leigh left her bag with Reg when the three headed off down the beach. When the three got to the room, Aiden was in the lead since he’d been carrying the key. He slipped the key into the doorknob, and put his other hand on the knob to turn it. A split-second later, Angie clothes-lined him across the chest with one arm while tripping him backwards with her foot, saying only “Hold on!” Aiden landed heavily on the hallway floor gasping for breath. Leigh knelt to check on him, but kept one eye on Angie. Angie had knelt in front of the doorknob and was muttering, something about “Cheap-ass, amateur job....” She studied the door for almost 2 minutes, during which time Aiden recovered his breath and sat up, leaning against Leigh and rubbing his chest. Angie dug into the bag, and came up with a small pouch of tools. She clipped the one wire leading from the knob and looked for secondaries, then cautiously opened the door, motioning the other two to stay back. It took her about 5 more minutes to trace the wire inch-by-inch over to the motion sensor, and then the next wire from the sensor to the strobe.

When Leigh and Aiden saw her stand and pick up the note, they followed her into the room. She held the note out to them, and they recognized the handwriting as easily as she had--Frank’s. The look on Angie’s face didn’t bode well for Frank, but rather than showing anger it was more contemplative. It looked like it was half prank and half warning to upgrade their room, Leigh suggested, hoping that Angie wasn’t planning anything that would cause this to escalate to a dangerous level. It wouldn’t do any of them any good to have team members at each others’ throats. “Good thing we’re moving to another HOTEL!” Angie said, angry as much with herself for not having thought of this risk as she was with Aiden for booking them into a cheap-ass hotel and with Frank for pointing out their mistake with this sort of trick. Then she noticed Aiden still rubbing his chest, looking at her woefully. “Sorry,” she told him, her guilt over hurting him written on her face. “But I thought it was real, and I didn’t want....” Aiden’s face softened, and he picked up one of their duffle bags to begin packing. Two roaches fell out as he lifted it, and the three looked at one another and grinned. They proceeded to shake out every single item before packing it, and this process caused the whole project to take longer than it should have. As they worked, it was obvious that Angie was plotting. Leigh started talking about maybe moving herself, since the luxury hotel is right on the clothing-optional beach, hoping to distract Angie from whatever she was planning. As they began walking over to their new hotel, Angie asked Leigh which room was Frank’s and if Terry ‘with him.’ She wasn’t, Leigh told Angie. But she hesitated to give Angie Frank’s room number. “Give me the number and nobody gets hurt,” Angie told her in a half-joking tone. “Just don’t tell him I gave it to you,” Leigh requested before telling Angie what she wanted to know.

Reg made a call a short time after Angie, Aiden and Leigh had left, and let Tony, Frank and Terry know what time they’d need to be ready for dinner. Tony said that he was going to hang out on the beach a while longer and he didn’t know if he would join the others for dinner. A little while later, Frank and Terry headed back up to their rooms to clean up and change. Reg and Raimon went to their rooms a little after that. As soon as Angie dumped her load on the bed of their new room and pulled on a pair of shorts, she left Aiden and Leigh to empty the bags. She went over to the hotel that Frank, Terry and Leigh were staying at, and rode the elevator to the third floor. Per standard police procedure, she stood to one side of the door, with her back to the wall, as she reached out and knocked three times. She listened for even the slightest sound from the room; nothing. She knocked again, and waited. Again, she heard no sound. She watched the bottom of the door and the ‘peep-hole’ as she knocked a third time, looking for a passing shadow that would tell her that Frank was in there. On the other side of the door, Frank moved across the room, ducking as he passed between the window and the door so that he wouldn’t cast a shadow on the ‘peep-hole.’ He walked carefully, trying to make no noise, as he came up beside the door and listened. He recognized that sort of knock, and suspected that Angie was there to pay him back for his little joke. And if it wasn’t her, he needed to be even more careful. He was beginning to really regret the fact that he hadn’t picked up a gun by now. When Angie saw and heard nothing, she slipped her lock-picking tool out of her back pocket and squatted in front of the doorknob. Frank heard the click of metal on metal as Angie worked the lock, and just before she unlocked the door he grabbed the knob and pulled the door open. She was already jumping backwards when he said “If I had a gun, you’d already be dead.” She stood and stuffed the pick into one pocket as she pulled a small piece of paper from another. “I believe you left something in our room,” she said, holding out the note he’d written and trying to cover her surprise with indignation. “Are you upgrading?” he asked her. “Yes,” she told him almost petulantly.

Angie looked around at what she could see of the room from the doorway. It was comfortable-looking. She’d always pictured Frank’s preferred quarters being more spartan. “Interesting look for you,” she said, noticing the light-weight suit and lack of a tie that he’d dressed in for dinner. “I was just returning this,” she told him, holding the note out again and waiting for some sort of response, maybe even an apology. Frank took the note without saying anything, and Angie turned and flounced off down the hall as if that really was all she’d come for. Frank stood there a moment watching her go. He wondered what she would have done if he hadn’t been in the room. How much of a war did he really want? Should he call security and report that she’d tried to break in? With the lock-pick in her pocket, the local police would certainly take her in for questioning, even if Frank ‘decided’ later not to press charges. Nah. It wasn’t worth the future trouble it would cause. “That was for inviting Terry to the Weendigo fiasco,” he said to her as she neared the elevator. “Now we’re even.” “Oh, no,” Angie said, turning around and heading back toward Frank. “I didn’t know it would turn out like that. I just thought.... You two were getting friendly....” She followed Frank into his room, neither one wanting to argue in the hotel hallway. Frank pointed out that it wasn’t her place to play matchmaker for them, and it was still her fault that Terry had been there at all. If she hadn’t been there, she wouldn’t have been dragged into being an Envoy. Angie argued that she’d had no way to know that something like that was going to happen, and that she also had no way to know that there was a critical mass problem for Envoys. Maybe if Frank had been more forthcoming with information like that....

And he still owes her, because she was forced to hurt Aiden to keep him from opening the door, since she had no way of knowing until she looked at it that the trap was a fake. Frank paused for a minute. She had a point. It was one thing for him to prank her in return for inviting Terry along to the UP. But he hadn’t expected anyone to get hurt by it. “OK,” Frank finally said. “I owe the two of you drinks.” “A bit more than that, I think,” Angie replied. “You should see the bruise on his chest.” “Fine. Drinks and dinner,” Frank agreed. Now that Angie was appeased, she began chatting with Frank about Raimon and how he shouldn’t be looking at HER boyfriend ‘that way.’ Then she did a complete 180 and asked him, “So, why are you and Terry in separate rooms?” “Because as far as I know, the relationship hasn’t progressed that far,” Frank answered. “What? Do I have to spike your Ovaltine with Viagra?” Angie asked. “Or maybe ‘rufies’?” Before she could tease him any more, Reg called to let everyone know that they’d need to leave shortly for dinner. Angie still needed to change, and she rushed back to her room without pushing Frank any further.

Tony had been planning on taking full advantage of the per diem that CDI had arranged for him, and having dinner with his friends from Detroit didn’t figure into those plans. So he stayed out on the beach, hoping that he’d have more luck ‘achieving’ something without the others around. Before long he spotted a statuesque red-head strolling by. He took a closer look. She was either a natural red-head or she was going to pretty extreme measures to perfect that disguise. He asked if she was in Cancun alone, and before long she’d agreed to have dinner with him. He couldn’t help but notice as they sat on the beach and talked, that although her ‘endowment’ wasn’t natural it was very well done. She was a flight attendant on her break. In the past five years she’d been all over the world. She was married once, but it hadn’t been a good experience and she was single now and planning to stay that way. Tony called the concierge and told him to make reservations at the nicest place in town, hoping that the others wouldn’t be there to ruin his evening. She told him where her room was, and both went to change. A little while later, the two were sitting at a quiet table in front of the chiminea, and over drinks and appetizers Tony was telling Sheila about what he did for a living, with pictures on his cell phone to prove that he really did blow up buildings. Most women didn’t believe him when he told them that he explained, but Sheila didn’t actually care. She wasn’t looking for a husband. Tony seemed like a nice enough guy, though, so she feigned interest.

Their entrees had just been served when Tony’s worst fear (at the moment, anyway) came true. In walked a group of far too beautiful people, all dressed for the occasion--even Angie, in the red dress that suited her so well. Tony was deep in conversation with Sheila, and didn’t notice them come in. Frank commented on the couple, and Angie asked if the comment meant they were going to leave Tony in peace. “Not at all,” Frank replied with an evil grin. As the group settled in for their own dinner, Angie was being very solicitous to Aiden, still trying to make up for hurting him earlier. Reg sent a bottle of the restaurant’s finest champagne over to Tony’s table, to have with their dessert. All through dinner, Angie and Frank were being far too chummy for Leigh’s comfort. Leigh requested that they not put a bomb in her room. “Not yours,” Frank assured her. “But....” He glanced over at Tony with the same evil grin. In the end, the only thing Frank and Angie arranged was to have all the women in the group wave at Tony as they filed past on their way out. Angie even went so far as to stop and put her arm around Tony’s shoulders and whisper “Good luck.” Sheila didn’t seem bother by the display, and Tony introduced Angie as a friend before leaning past her and saying ‘hi’ to Aiden. Aiden looked more uncomfortable by all of it than Tony did. When they all got outside, Reg suggested going ‘clubbing.’ Leigh’s only request was that they go somewhere where there would be enough room between the bodies to breathe. “This should be interesting,” Frank quietly commented to Terry. “I know you know how to dance,” she said back, hinting that he wasn’t off the hook.

Tony was as ‘indisposed’ as Karen and Justin that night, having been attacked by a stewardess from Poughkipsie. The others had a great time at the club Reg chose, and no monsters jumped out at them. Raimon was an excellent dancer, and did a very erotic tango. He flirted excessively with Leigh, but he seemed to know exactly where the line was and never crossed it. A private shuttle dropped them off near their hotels, and they all strolled around to the bar before heading back to their rooms. Frank and Terry noticed a strangely low-flying bat silhouetted against the moon as they walked along. The weird thing was that they couldn’t hear it, even though it seemed close enough to almost touch. Frank felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and he knew it wasn’t an ordinary bat. But when he told Terry, she just dragged him toward the bar and said she wanted to get a drink before bed. Maybe there WAS something to that ‘critical Envoy mass’ thing, she told him, but she didn’t want to worry about it tonight. Raimon remarked to Reg as they walked that he wasn’t sure who scared him more, Frank or Terry. “Frank should, dear,” Reg told him. “He’s the one getting the psychiatry degree.” Reg also warned Raimon that most of his friends were ex-military, so he really should be careful of them all. When the two left the bar, Reg suggested a drive in the Ferrari he’d rented, and he even let Raimon drive. When they did get back to their room, they had great sex. Raimon was practically operatic. But no one else heard them, nor did they hear a sound from Aiden and Angie’s room. It was good to know that the place had good sound-proofing.

On the other hand, Leigh and Frank didn’t have such a good night. Leigh dreamt that she was wading out into the ocean. The water was warm like silk against her skin, and she went further and further, until she could no longer touch the bottom with her toes. She laid back and let the water support her, floating under the wide blue sky. But the water soon became choppy and the sky began to cloud over. Both got worse, until Leigh was forced to start treading water to keep her head above the waves. She looked around and realized that there was no land as far as her eyes could see. The waves got worse, until the force of them pulled her under. Frank dreamt that he was being sacrificed by an Aztec priest. He woke in a cold sweat as the priest drove the ceremonial knife deep into his chest. A few minutes later, Frank was dressed and heading for the seedy part of town. He paid cash to an entirely disreputable man for an entirely disreputable firearm, one that he wouldn’t feel bad about leaving behind; and before heading back to the hotel, he went back to get another, for Terry. The next morning, when Terry saw Frank’s new weapon, the disappointment flooded across her face. “I wish you’d told me...” she started. Then the grin on her face was like the sun coming out from behind clouds, when Frank handed her the other one he’d bought.

In the morning, it was obvious to the Hostess that Karen wasn’t entirely enjoying herself anymore. She’d been told what had happened, so she arranged for the couple to have massages. By the time the ship docked in Cancun, Justin and Karen got off the boat all jelly-legged and relaxed. And the massages felt pretty good too. They had an excursion out to a Mayan pyramid scheduled for the next morning, but the rest of this day was free. At lunch, Karen had dragged Justin off in search of the historian who would be leading the excursion, and the three chatted over the meal. Not just about history and archaeology, either. Karen was concerned that Justin not feel like she was ignoring him, so she made a point to ask about other things to do while they were in port. The historian recommended a local restaurant for their dinner, if they wanted to ‘eat like the natives’ while they were there. The service was, well, what they might expect from a small local place; but the food was exceptional, he told them. Karen also made sure to make a few changes to the itinerary her mom and Edward had arranged for them. It was a very nice one, which had a good balance of free time and excursions. But it was obvious that her mom had Karen more in mind than Justin when she picked the excursions. It looked like they were scheduled to see every ancient ruin in the Caribbean. If Karen had been on the trip alone, it would have been perfect. But she knew that Justin wasn’t as interested in history and archaeology as she was. So the two sat and pored over what else was available, and managed to cut their schedule down to only a couple trips to historical sites.

The two walked along the pier each with one arm tight around the other. They smiled and glanced up at one another when they both spotted another couple kissing passionately. When the red head let go of the guy and backed away, it turned out the guy was Tony. Tony spotted them at the same time, and led the woman over to them. “Why is Tony on our honeymoon?” Justin asked Karen, as the two stopped stock still. Karen couldn’t answer because her jaw was hanging open. As Tony and Sheila got closer, Karen tugged Justin’s arm and motioned toward the ship. “Maybe we should go back in and try this again,” she suggested, her voice sounding a little scared and a little irritated at the same time. “What are you doing on our honeymoon?” Justin asked Tony, when he stopped in front of them. “It was my Christmas bonus,” Tony told them. He introduced Sheila, who told the couple, with a look at Tony that spoke volumes, that Tony had been a very good boy. And he knew everybody, she continued. He’d introduced her to a whole bunch of other people that were friends of his, including a very cute brunette. Sheila said this without the slightest hint of jealousy, and Tony grinned evilly. “Yeah, I’ll have to introduce youse guys to dem sometime,” he said, continuing to grin from ear to ear. Karen smiled politely, but she could feel the tension rising through her back and shoulders again in spite of how relaxed she’d been just a few minutes ago. She knew he meant that more of the team was there, maybe even all of them. As Tony and Sheila turned to continue down the waterfront, Karen asked Justin again if maybe they should go back on the ship and start over. Maybe Tony and the others wouldn’t be there then. Justin hugged her against his side and turned them to go in the opposite direction from where Tony had gone. He was determined not to let the others ruin his time alone with Karen.

The two wandered around the town for a little while, and actually managed to miss seeing any of the others that afternoon. They walked on the beach, and got drinks from a tiny palm-covered hut, and watched the sun drop until it was touching the treetops before they headed over to the restaurant the historian had told them about. It took a minute for their eyes to adjust to the low light, and when they did, the first thing the two saw was Reg sitting next to a beautiful man. All the others were there, too, except Sheila. Then the half-dozen waiters and waitresses gathered in front of the couple and sang “Happy, happy anniversary ” Karen pressed her face against Justin’s shoulder. He shoulders were shaking, but she wasn’t crying. She was trying hard to stifle her laughter. She wondered which of those morons had come up with the idea, and how long they’d been there teaching the goofy song (just like they sing in chain restaurants in America) to the restaurant’s staff. When she felt sure that she could smile at them without laughing hysterically, she faced them and clapped politely. She didn’t want to embarrass anyone, or make them feel bad, since she had no way of knowing how much effort they’d put into the song. Then Reg waved them over and Frank suggested that they might as well join them at their tables.

As the two had been led to expect, the service was so-so, but the food was fabulous. Oh, the food on the ship was good too, they told the others. But there was nothing else like eating the local cuisine. “So, why are you guys all here?” Justin asked them. Each of them explained what had happened, that Reg had been fleeing from his sister and picked up Raimon in LA on his way down; that Aiden and Angie had planned a month ago for their escape to someplace warm; and that Frank had surprised Terry and Leigh with the trip as a Christmas gift (mostly for Terry, they suspected.) The service was nothing to write home about, despite the waitress stopping past their tables every few minutes. It soon became clear that she wasn’t stopping for the rest of the group, she was mostly interested in Tony. At one point, she even wrote her phone number on the back of an order slip and passed it to him. Tony was charming and polite, but he was trying to make it pretty clear that he wasn’t interested. He may have been there looking for cold booze and easy women, but locals were never ‘easy.’ In every story he’d ever heard, the local girl always had big, beefy brothers or boyfriends or fathers who were ready to protect the girl’s reputation; or else she was part of a gang who would be waiting in the back alley to mug the guy, or worse. He’d hook himself another tourist girl later.

Reg was telling Justin and Karen about spotting Aiden’s and Angie’s butts (mostly Angie’s) from the balcony. “They were staying in a dive,” Frank interjected. “The place was more bugged that your rooms.” It was as if the whole room went silent for a minute around Justin and Karen. Aiden was trying to defend his hotel choice by saying that he’d made the arrangements a month ago and didn’t know everyone else would be there. But Justin’s and Karen’s focus had narrowed to Frank. “What do you mean ‘more bugged than’ our rooms,” Justin asked. He knew it. Frank had planted that stuff. Karen had turned beet red again, and was studying the cracks in the tabletop. “Well, you did find the camera I sent you, right?” Frank replied. He tried to tell them that it was part of a gift basket, but Justin wasn’t buying it. It didn’t even have a card, and that didn’t explain the 2-way mike. Frank said that he couldn’t understand how the card had gotten lost, but he really didn’t know anything about the mike and had no idea who could have sent that. “Maybe Edward?” he suggested. Angie sat there looking completely innocent, but Aiden began to squirm. Justin asked if Aiden had planted the mike, since he was looking so guilty. “I have nothing to be guilty about,” Aiden insisted. But Angie didn’t say a thing and Aiden continued to squirm, even more so when Justin explained that they’d had to change rooms (which meant a downgrade from the Presidential Suite) because of the incident and that the Purser was going to fire whoever helped plant the items. Well, he let Angie pick out his bathing suit, Frank prodded. Aiden blushed. He ought to be guilty about that, Aiden admitted. “Yeah,” Reg teased; “Raimon spotted you from the hotel room ” Aiden blushed even redder. “Why are people commenting on my ass?” he whined. “Can I just die now?” “They were the best cheek on the beach,” Raimon replied with a hint of lust. “Wasn’t the rump roast good last night,” Tony laughed from the other end of the table. “Ah. I preferred the loin,” Reg responded, chuckling.

Aiden was trying to slide under the table now, but Angie wouldn’t let him. Karen, in an attempt to take the heat off him, told the others that she and Justin were going to see a pyramid in the morning. “So was I,” Leigh told her. “I just hope nothing swoops down and carries me off,” she joked. Karen got a glum look on her face. “Something probably will happen, now,” she said, “with everyone here.” Leigh elbowed her and nodded briefly at Raimon. Right; they couldn’t talk freely in front of him, Karen remembered. The two compared notes and it appeared that they were going on the same tour. And they, she and Frank and Terry, were going to be joining the cruise, too, Leigh added. It turned out that Aiden and Angie had made arrangements to join the cruise as well. Tony wasn’t sure what he was going to do yet, since his arrangements had been paid for by CDI. And Reg and Raimon were planning on hanging around Cancun a little longer before both returned home to deal with prior commitments. Mostly Reg was hoping to avoid his father for a while, since he’d abandoned him at Claire’s. He was sure his dad was going to get revenge for it. Raimon made a disparaging comment about Claire, and Justin told them that he disliked the woman and he’d never even met her. It was mostly the comment Phil had related to his son in the hospital, that Claire wanted Reg to come for Thanksgiving and ‘bring along whatever he was dating at the time.’ “What were you dating at the time,” Raimon asked in his charmingly heavy accent. Reg thought for a second then pointed at Leigh. “Well, at least you have taste,” Raimon said. Reg actually blushed.

Dinner took hours, as dish after dish appeared on their tables, was cleaned off, and was spirited away to make room for the next. The waitress had managed to give Tony a little pinch on the ass, and by the end of dinner it was clear that she wanted HIM for dessert. He was never rude but he also wasn’t encouraging; and when they left the restaurant, the waitress wasn’t with them. Justin and Karen headed back to the ship for the night, and the others went clubbing again. Tony met another American female tourist who was as interested in him as he was in her, and she happened to be in Cancun with 3 girlfriends. Not being one to turn down a woman, Tony willingly invited them all up to his room. As Leigh, Raimon and Reg walked back to their hotels, Raimon moved around to Leigh's side and whispered suggestions for how to turn Reg into goo. What he said was delicate but suggestive enough to intrigue Leigh and she agreed to go to their room with them. Frank and Terry were walking behind them and Frank asked Terry if it was something in the water. Terry told him that she didn't drink the water, just beer. Did he want to go get a drink? They veered off toward the bar, and ended up the last two to get back to their rooms.

Most of them had a good night. But Frank woke around 3:30am in a cold sweat. He hadn't been having a nightmare, but he felt like someone had walked on his grave. He concentrated for a moment. It didn't feel like there was any unusual presence in his room. He went next door and knocked on Terry's door. No answer. He knocked louder. Still no answer. He went back to his room and out onto the balcony. He climbed over to Terry's balcony and found the door open. The room was in disarray, and Terry was not in it. The chain was still in place on the hallway door. Bugger. Frank hadn't had any prescient dreams lately, and hoped that he could find the answer he needed to this puzzle now. He curled up on the floor of Terry's room and concentrated on how to find Terry, and he drifted off to sleep. In his dream, he woke and looked around a stone chamber lit only by flickering torchlight. It was eerily similar to the chamber in which he’d been sacrificed by the Aztec priest in his dream the night before. He heard the rustle of large wings. Too large. But he saw nothing flying in the chamber. On the far side of the room was what was plainly a sacrificial altar, and sprawled across it was Terry. She was clothed only in her underwear, and a gash on her forehead had spilled blood down her face. He couldn’t tell for sure if she was dead or alive. But she didn’t appear to be bound in any way, and there was no priest standing over her with a ceremonial dagger. Frank woke with a start. The glowing red numbers on the clock on Terry’s nightstand told him it was 5am. He pushed himself stiffly up from the floor and began to look around more closely.

About 8:30 Christmas morning, Justin and Karen’s phone rang. Karen woke with a start, expecting the worst. She answered, still kind of blurry from the night before. It wasn’t exactly what she expected, but it ended up still being pretty bad as far as she was concerned. It was her mom, asking if she wanted directions. Karen laughed. Why would she need directions to her mom’s place? Cathy had been living there for a couple years now, and Karen certainly knew the way. “Oh, not that place, dear,” Cathy said to her. “I haven’t lived there in almost a month It seemed kind of silly for both Edward and me to keep separate places.” Karen was flabbergasted. She managed to stutter out something that sounded like “Wha... but... when....” Justin was sitting up now, too, and he could tell from the tone of what little Karen said that something was wrong. “Oh, I’m sorry, honey. I thought I told you,” Cathy said. “Edward and I made the decision when he got back to town from that trip after Thanksgiving.” Karen’s heart was in her throat. First, Edward rushes back after she did the Shield on her mom the second time. Now he had Mom living in his house, where he could no doubt keep a closer eye on her.

But her mom didn’t sound at all unsure about the decision. Or as uncertain about the relationship as she had before, either. How was she going to get her mom out of this without breaking her heart? “How did you move everything so fast without help?” Karen managed to ask her mom. “Oh, Edward took care of everything. He just had some movers come over, and they did all the work.” Karen wasn’t sure what to say. She really hated this idea, but how could she object? It all sounded perfectly logical. And it would have been, if her mom had just gotten engaged to any normal human being. But Edward was simply not normal. But how come she still reached her mom when she dialed the old number? Her mom laughed. “I had it forwarded to my cell, dear. They can do that kind of thing now,” she told Karen. Karen sighed and tried to laugh. At least it wasn’t going directly to Edward’s home number; but that didn’t mean her mom had any more privacy with it going to the cell. “So where is Edward’s place, Mom?” Karen asked her. “In the Pointe, dear,” her mom replied. Karen told her that she only needed the address, and she would map it on the computer. “Oh, and can you call all your friends and give them the directions, too?” Cathy asked her. Oh, she would certainly be calling the others, Karen thought to herself. God, how were she and Justin ever going to get a honeymoon, when shit like this kept happening? “Sure, Mom,” Karen told her, and the two hung up.

Karen didn’t cry, but Justin could tell that she was upset. She told him about her mom moving in with Edward, and if Justin had thought it was a viable option, he would have driven straight over there and carried Cathy out himself. But that would only make things worse, and it wouldn’t solve the real problem--Edward. The two got up and dressed. They’d really been hoping to sleep in a little, but that wasn’t going to happen now. When Karen saw what Justin was wearing, she asked where he was going for Christmas, since it was obviously someplace different, and fancier, than she was going. He'd put on dress slacks and a dress shirt with a tie, and had his suit jacket hanging on the door knob to grab on his way out. Karen just had on jeans and a sweater. She hadn't dressed up for Christmas since she was a kid going to visit her grandparents for the holiday. While Justin changed into a pair of black jeans, with a plain shirt and suspenders, Karen got the computer booted up to map Edward’s, and now Mom’s, address. Then Justin started calling the others. They were all duly disturbed by the change, and more so when Karen let them know that Edward’s place was within a mile of where Reg’s house had been. Once that was taken care of, Justin and Karen figured they might as well head over to Marie’s. Marie and Olivia would be going over to the big family Christmas party later (which actually started on Christmas Eve and lasted through the two days following Christmas, since the family was so large and there was so much visiting to do), but Justin and Karen were already off the hook for that. The two hadn’t really had a chance to figure out what they were going to do about splitting holidays between their families yet. But Marie understood how they might want to spend Christmas with Cathy, since she had just gotten engaged to Edward; so she had already ‘made excuses’ for them with her and Justin’s relatives.

Marie had a beautiful tree, that filled the front window of the house--and a quarter of the front room. The rest of the floor already had scraps of torn wrapping paper strewn about. Marie had tried to make Olivia wait to open her presents “from Santa,” until Justin and Karen could see her open them; but she never could refuse her daughter and the opening started a little early. Olivia dropped what she was playing with when Justin and Karen came in the door. She laughed out loud when they gave her the present they’d brought, and she even managed to sign “Thank you,” before plopping down in the middle of the growing mess to open it before moving on to other still-wrapped packages. Wading through the paper and toys was Cinnamon, who’d gotten enormous, but not fat, over the past 8 months. She was up to 16 pounds, Marie told them, which was amazing considering how tiny she’d been when Justin and Karen brought her over. Before too long, there was food and drinks on the end tables, and the three adults were alternately eating and talking and playing with Olivia as she brought each toy over to show them what she’d gotten. Marie objected that they really hadn’t needed to get her anything when they gave her her present. But when she opened it and saw the gift certificate for a weekend at the swankiest spa in southeast Michigan, she was touched. She deserved it, Karen told her. Not only did she almost single-handedly arrange their wedding for them, but she never failed to help whenever anyone else asked her. It was her turn for a little pampering (and a chance for her and Justin to spoil their niece, too, Karen laughed.) Marie told them that she would make the reservation for whatever weekend worked best for Karen and Justin to take Olivia, and Karen scolded her that she should do it whenever it suited HER best, not them. But Marie was firm on that point, and Karen promised she would check their calendars and get back to Marie. They left about 1:30pm, wondering if they were going to be able to eat ever again, much less that afternoon when they got to Edward's.

Karen's sister (who started gushing about how charming Edward was almost as soon as Karen said ‘Hi’) and her family were there already when Justin and Karen got to Edward's, and by 2pm everyone else had arrived, too. Frank had gotten a call from Terry shortly after Justin and Karen had called that morning, wondering if she was driving over to his place or he was picking her up. Frank had rented another apartment near where he was doing his residency, even though he kept his other one. He'd actually given the others this address, and Terry had even been allowed to go over there since Frank was only planning on keeping the place until he finished his residency. He told Terry that he'd pick her up. He was more amazed every day at the things the two had in common. It turned out that neither had family, which generally made the holidays easier than they had been in the last month. Now, when he picked her up, he discovered that they had similar taste in holiday wear, too. They hadn't discussed what they were wearing ahead of time, but Terry was in a green blouse with dark green slacks which matched perfectly with the dark green shirt and Christmas tree tie that Frank had decided to put on just that afternoon. Since the temperature outside was staying pretty steadily in the low thirties, everyone's Christmas clothing was covered by heavy coats, which were hung in a large closet near the front door as they came in. Like at Thanksgiving, each of them was greeted warmly by Edward and Cathy. Edward was as charming as ever, giving the men the usual 'politician's handshake' and the women an 'air kiss' on the cheek. He was wearing slacks and a sweater, and Cathy wore a nice but not overly fancy pant suit and gave everyone a motherly hug.

Karen was kind of startled by how dressed up everyone else was. (She had actually expected to see Edward in a suit, since except for the picture her mom sent of them in Rio, she’d never seen him ‘dressed down.’) She hadn't thought to let the others know that Christmas with her mom wasn't a particularly formal event. Angie was in a dress, and Aiden was wearing dress slacks and a 'varsity' sweater over a dress shirt and a tie that had reindeer on it. Leigh was also wearing a long skirt, with a sweater. She'd had a surprisingly good sleep the night before, in spite of the disturbance caused by Brown Jenkin, and had fallen asleep long before Aiden and Angie had quieted down in the other bedroom. She didn't even have any dreams, at least none that she could remember. But when she went into the bathroom that morning and looked in the mirror, she was shocked to see what looked like little hand prints on her face. She closed her eyes tight and took a deep breath, and when she looked again, they were gone.

The house already smelled of spice and cooking food, and when Justin had asked where he should put the case of Sam Adams Winter Brew that he'd brought, it was whisked away to the wet bar by a man in a waiter's vest. The same happened when Frank handed Edward the bottle of port he'd brought and when Terry offered the bottle of cabernet and Leigh her spiced wine. When the women all asked if Cathy needed any help in the kitchen, Karen was surprised to hear that her mom wasn't actually doing the cooking; “the staff” was taking care of it. Cathy must have noticed the look on Karen's face before Karen could mask it; and she told Karen “Don't worry, dear. They're using my recipes, and it's just...happening. I just pop in and supervise.” It was so nice to be able to visit with everyone on the holiday for a change, she explained, instead of being chained in the kitchen. And as if on cue, a young woman in a similar waiter's vest came up with a fresh drink for Cathy, and asked what the other women would like to drink. Across the room, they could see that the first waiter was doing the same for Edward and the others, replacing the glass he was holding with another that looked like it held scotch. It seemed that Edward had made sure that the bar was stocked with everyone’s favorite beverages, since whatever anyone asked for was available. The “staff,” Cathy told them, amounted to 4 people, a man and woman in the kitchen taking care of the cooking, and the man and woman they'd seen already, refreshing drinks and plying Edward and Cathy's guests with hors d'oeuvres and being generally helpful. They were polite, but unobtrusive.

And dinner was served precisely at 3pm, as Cathy had told them it would be. It went so smoothly that Karen felt uncomfortable. This wasn’t at all like Christmas usually was with her family. In the past, the celebration had been an amazing chaos of people coming and going from the kitchen, that miraculously produced bowls and platters of food that were piled onto a table that had been set by whoever wasn’t already stirring a pot or ‘testing’ the latest thing to come off the stove or out of the ‘fridge. This year, they were all seated around the table before any of the food was brought out. All the leaves had been put into the dining room table, and all 15 adults and 2 children actually fit around it. Then “the staff” began bringing out the food--the prime rib, neatly sliced and separated onto platters of rare, medium and well-done; the bowls of mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and candied yams; the boats of gravy and au jus; and the baskets of bread and rolls, with accompanying chilled plates of molded butter pats. It was exactly the menu they always had, but none of it was the same. Instead of being brought to the table in whatever bowl the server had grabbed from the cabinet, or sometimes in the dish it had been baked in, everything was in perfectly matching table service. No passing the hot-pads along with the casserole dish. And instead of a stick of butter that was hacked in every conceivable direction by the time it had gotten passed around the table, there were those damned perfect little pats with the tiny Christmas tree on the tops. The food didn’t even taste right...though, if she’d been pressed to make a totally honest and unbiased assessment of it, that was because it was actually better than when her mom made it. Karen didn’t like this. It was too...perfect. Just like Edward. She disguised her shudder by ‘adjusting’ the napkin (real linen, not sheets of paper towel folded in half) in her lap, and took a big sip from her glass of wine.

When they were done with dinner, everyone went back to the great room. There was a huge, white-flocked Christmas tree in the corner with presents piled attractively under it. There were things for the kids, of course, who finally stopped running around and getting under foot long enough to open their newest presents. Karen and her sibs had all agreed that once there were kids in the family they’d just buy stuff for them and for their parents, instead of each other. But there was a lot more than that under there. It turned out that Cathy and Edward had bought a little something for each of Karen and Justin’s friends, in addition to what they’d gotten for Cathy’s children. The gifts for their friends were thoughtful without being inappropriately expensive--a first edition of one of Leigh’s father’s books, in Danish, for her; autographed first editions of books by well-known authors on medicine, psychiatry, and law enforcement for Aiden, Frank, and Terry; and a set of training videos from military and police agencies around the world, specially compiled just for Angie. There was even something for Tony, though he hadn’t been able to make it. (A first edition book on explosives by Alfred Nobel himself, Cathy whispered to Karen later.)

Then Karen and Justin and Karen’s sibs were given their gifts. Karen’s jaw dropped when she and Justin opened the envelope Cathy gave them. There were 2 round-trip tickets to Cancun, leaving the next morning from Metro, and an itinerary for a Carribbean cruise that would sail from Cancun the following night. But that wasn’t all. Cathy motioned to the young woman in the waiter’s vest, and she brought out a matching set of brand new suitcases from the guest bedroom closet, which were filled with all the things Karen and Justin would need on their vacation, in the proper sizes. The two didn’t know what to say. “Mom, I...” Karen stammered. “Just say ‘Thank you,’ dear,” Cathy said, beaming. Karen went over and hugged her mom tightly, and she even hugged Edward. “I knew you’d never go on your honeymoon if someone didn’t push you to the airport,” Cathy told her, and Karen blushed. “We were going to,” Karen objected. “I told Justin that we would just go to the airport tomorrow morning and get tickets on a flight to anywhere that had the seats.” Everyone else in the room started laughing. “Tomorrow?” Cathy teased her daughter. “Everything will be booked solid.” “I’m sure there’d be some place that no one else was going,” Karen said. “Like Siberia?” They all laughed again. “And how would you pack for that trip?” Cathy asked her. “There are stores everywhere. We’d buy what we needed. And if we couldn’t get a room, we’d just get a tent,” Karen said defiantly, as if she were daring anybody to say she couldn’t manage just fine traveling that way. All of Karen’s sibs got equally expensive gifts, each the perfect thing for the person or couple that got it. There was no sense of ostentation about the gifts themselves, or the giving of them; and it was clear that there was no friction between Cathy and Edward over the cost of the gifts. “I’ve always wanted to give you all something extravagant,” Cathy told them when the last gift was opened. “And now I can afford to.” Later, when Justin thanked Edward again for the gift, Edward confided that he’d been worried that the gift, which had been Cathy’s idea, was too presumptuous even though Cathy insisted that it was just what the couple needed. Justin assured him that the gift was perfect, joking that at least he hadn’t put deposits down on the three previous attempts they’d made at planning a honeymoon. As he was sure Cathy had told Edward, Karen was far too devoted to a career she actually loved, which made it hard to persuade her to take a break, no matter how much she needed one. This was one of the few times during the year when he had any hope of getting her away.

The great room wasn’t the only room that had been lavishly decorated for the holidays. The entire house was decked out for the season. That was done by ‘the staff’ too, Cathy told them when Leigh asked for the ‘grand tour’ of the house. It seemed strange to Karen that her mom appeared so comfortable with that, as if it were a natural thing. It seemed very unnatural to Karen. Her family hadn’t been poor in any sense of the word when she was growing up. But they’d never been what she’d have considered “rich” either. Not that her mom was bragging or in any way trying to imply that there was anything wrong with the way things had been before. In fact, she was almost ‘detached’ as she showed Leigh around the house. She focused more on the details she’d added than on the house itself. Oh, it was nice that she didn’t have to clean it herself, she told Leigh. That was part of the reason why she’d moved out of her old house after Karen’s father had died, what with all her kids moved out with lives of their own. But mostly Cathy talked about Karen and her siblings, especially how proud she was of Karen. Leigh got the feeling that this was much more than she would have ever said to Karen directly or if Karen had been nearby, as if she weren’t really sure how to tell her daughter how she felt. Leigh also got the impression that Cathy didn’t have any outside interests besides her children, which seemed unusual for a woman who had once been a history teacher and who had spent the last three years learning to live without her mate of over thirty years.

The house wasn’t as ostentatious as Karen had expected when she’d mapped the address. The property had lake frontage, though the house was surrounded by trees and large shrubs so that it wasn’t obvious. It was five bedrooms, which was modest for this section of town, with a professional-style kitchen and a finished basement. The master bedroom, with a king-sized bed, was on the first floor and had an attached master bath with a whirlpool tub. There was also another bedroom for guests on the first floor, as well as Edward’s study, another full bath, and the large formal dining room, which, as they’d all seen, was perfect for entertaining. And in back, the deck was fully enclosed with thermal windows, making it into a very comfortable ‘3-season’ room. Upstairs were three more guest bedrooms and two full baths. All the furnishings had a masculine feel, but were accented with Cathy’s feminine touches, such as family photos, both framed and in albums, flower arrangements, and little keepsakes from the couple’s travels. These were the things that seemed to make Cathy genuinely interested as she pointed them out to Leigh. The strange thing, Leigh noticed as she looked around, was that the place seemed barely lived-in. The carpets all looked freshly cleaned, and the few things set out on counters or tables looked...staged. When Karen told them that morning that her mom had moved in with Edward, it had sounded like he’d owned the house already. But if she hadn’t known that, Leigh would have said that the place had been newly purchased in the past 24 hours, with no time to spare for making it looked lived in.

Everyone had, of course, eaten more than they’d planned; and most were relaxing, wandering around the house or sitting and chatting amiably until they all were ready for dessert. Edward seemed unconcerned about Cathy’s family or her daughter’s friends looking around as he made sure to spend time with everyone. As he had at Thanksgiving, he also never went for more than 20 minutes without turning up at Cathy’s side to refresh her drink, or to give her a small hug or a light kiss on her cheek. It didn’t really seem predatory, but he always seemed to know just where she was, never having to ask or search for her. Frank had settled in a quiet corner and pulled out his Blackberry. In spite of what Edward had said about Justin and Karen’s gift being Cathy’s idea, he wasn’t so sure that it wasn’t an attempt to get Karen away from her mother, perhaps permanently. He wasn’t about to have two of his team members sent off on a cruise unprotected, especially when he wasn’t sure that either of them was astute enough to notice that it could be a trap. And with Reg gone, he couldn’t very well leave a third team member alone in a building that the Unknown had decided to take up residence in as well. Now, the dream he’d had last week made more sense. He been contemplating the possibility of getting far away from Detroit for the holidays, before Karen’s mother had ambushed them all with the invitation for Christmas. (He could see now where Karen got her tendency to act as a pawn for the Unknown.) And he’d dreamt that Cancun would be the place to do it, that the area would be safe from severe weather for the rest of that hurricane season. He looked online and found that there was actually a large number of vacancies, both in hotels and on the cruises that left from that port, probably because of the damage that had already been done that season. And there was plenty of space available on the flight to Cancun that night. So he booked three tickets on the 11pm flight from Metro to Cancun, for himself, Terry, and Leigh. This could be entertaining in more ways than one, Frank thought to himself as he closed the Blackberry.

Then he got up to take another look around. It seemed that ‘Bob’ was safely contained for the moment, so Edward was the next problem they would have to tackle, assuming something else didn’t blindside them first. He gotten a feel for the layout of the house as he’d looked around the place before dinner. Now he wanted to get an idea of just how well-protected this guy was. He ambled around the house, nonchalantly sticking his head into rooms and glancing around. And with every glance, Frank made note of anything that might hamper his movement through the premises. It looked like there was a pretty standard internal security system, serviced by ADT. Motion sensors in the hallways that covered major entry and exit points near the sleeping quarters without interfering with middle-of-the-night trips to the bathrooms. Magnetic sensors on all the doors and windows, and motion sensors outside all the main entryways. As he passed Karen coming out of the bathroom, he suggested quietly that she might want to get her mother away for a little while, for a sort-of ‘girls only’ trip. He caught her eye and made sure that she understood exactly what he was saying, and she seemed to. Unfortunately, they both knew it would have to wait since Karen and Justin were going to be out of town for the next week.

Frank wasn’t the only one surreptitiously checking the place out. Justin had been looking around, too, trying to get a feel for just how Edward got such a hold over other people. When Justin ‘wandered’ into Edward’s study, he got a clear indication of how much influence the man might have on other ‘powerful’ people. Hanging on the walls and sitting on the book shelves were numerous photos of Edward with all sorts of ‘important’ people. There was Edward with Pat Robertson, Edward with Vice President Cheney, Edward with George W., and Edward with Tim LaHaye. On a more ‘local’ level, there were pictures of Edward with various auto industry big-wigs, and with gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos. Well, there was a really good reason to vote Democratic in the next election. Justin pulled out his camera-phone and started taking pictures of all the photos, keeping an eye on the doorway in case Edward just happened in. He also wanted to take a closer look at the desk. It was a fine piece of workmanship, something that Justin could really appreciate as a craftsman himself. It wasn’t so huge that it dominated the room, and it didn’t appear to be an antique, though with a well-cared-for piece of solid wood furniture it might be hard to tell. It was definitely heavy and expensive-looking. The top was inlaid with a beautiful pattern of scroll-work that was so carefully fitted that Justin couldn’t even feel the seams. The odd thing was that the desk-top was clear enough for Justin to see the entire inlay pattern. He’d heard of people clearing their desks before going home for the day, but this was ridiculous. The only thing on the desk was a laptop docking station with no laptop in it. He tried a drawer, but it was locked. Same with the study’s closet door. So, there were things that Edward didn’t want people seeing. Justin moved on to the next room. One thing for sure, everything in the house appeared to be ‘top drawer.’ All the furniture still looked newly-bought, and the man hadn’t skimped on any of it.

Karen didn’t bother looking around. She was hoping that her mom wouldn’t be living there long enough for it to matter to her. She chatted with her family and friends (and found out that Justin wasn’t the only one who’d chosen to bring a weapon along to a holiday celebration. He’d stashed his in the truck when Karen objected to him bringing weapons, even less-than-lethal ones, into her family’s party; but it sounded like Frank and Terry had hidden theirs in their already-bulky winter coats. Angie, though, pointed out that it was much easier to hide a small gun under a dress than under a sweater, and Karen realized that Leigh probably was armed, too.) Karen also sat on the floor and played with her niece and nephew. And when her mom got back after showing Leigh around, Karen cornered her. “So, what do you want for Christmas, Mom? I wasn’t sure what to get you....” Karen asked her. “Oh, honey. You don’t need to get me anything. Just you being here, and enjoying your gift, is plenty,” Cathy replied. Karen grinned. Probably every mom on the planet said that kind of thing when her kids asked that question. “Fine. I’ll just have to get you some new trinket to dust, maybe something from Cancun,” she laughed. Cathy laughed too, and hugged her oldest child. Around 7pm, everyone went back to the dining room for dessert--apple pie a la mode or chocolate mousse, or both for those with hollow legs, and a small mincemeat pie for Karen, her one child that loved it as much as Ben had.

It was almost 8pm by the time the last plates were cleared away, and Leslie was trying to get the kids into their coats and boots. Karen gave her a hand, and hugged the kids and Leslie and Dave ‘Good night.’ That started others leaving, too. Cathy and Edward made sure that everyone got a hug or handshake and some neatly packaged left-overs on their way out the door. As Frank and Terry walked with Leigh out to their cars, Frank told them they’d better pack fast. “The plane to Cancun leaves Metro at 11. Merry Christmas.” Leigh looked almost disappointed. It was really nice of Frank, but she had kind of been looking forward to a quiet week at home to do a little translating and maybe some reading. “Beats the hell out of the tie and cufflinks I got you,” Terry told Frank playfully, handing him the carefully wrapped box she’d left on the back seat of the car. She also handed Leigh a small box that had a pair of hammered-silver earrings in it. Aiden and Angie left at the same time as Sean and his new, new girlfriend; then Patrick and Beth. Finally, Karen and Justin said “Good night.” Karen almost felt bad as she hugged Edward, sorry that she couldn’t actually like the guy. She wouldn’t have said this out loud to another soul, but he really did seem to be genuinely kind and generous. And if she hadn’t known that he’d somehow brainwashed her mom, she might have added 'he makes Mom happy' to the list, too, which would have been no small thing as far as Karen was concerned. Luckily, the cold made her eyes water anyway.

When they got home, Karen went online to check out ideas of things to do while they were in their various ports, while Justin stuffed a few 'personal' things into the suitcases. He might not be able to use his bounty hunter license to get away with taking firearms into foreign countries, but he wasn't going anywhere, not even on his honeymoon, without some sort of weapon for 'just in case.' He was a little dismayed, when he was done packing, to find that Karen had managed to find every ancient ruin within a reasonable distance of each port they would visit. "Look!" she told him excitedly. "This one has a tour where you ride horses through the jungle out to this Mayan ruin!" Justin told her that he wasn't going anywhere, jungle or not, riding on some creature with a mind of its own. "Well, they also have one where you go to the ruin in Jeeps...." she tried. He wasn't buying it. Those were the kinds of places where bad things happened in every movie he'd ever seen. He wasn't going to end up fighting some other country's Unknown creatures on his honeymoon. He counter-offered the plan that he would keep her entertained enough on the ship that she would forget about ancient ruins altogether. She giggled as he lifted her out of the desk chair while she was trying to shut down the computer, and he carried her off to bed.

Leigh met Frank and Terry near the ticket counters at Metro. She’d left a note for Reg, telling him that she’d gone to Cancun with Terry and Frank, and that the condo might be haunted so he shouldn’t stay there alone. The three got their e-tickets from the kiosk and checked their bags. Getting through security went smoothly, and they chatted as they walked down the terminal to their gate. Frank and Terry both spotted Aiden and Angie immediately, among the 40 or so people sitting around the waiting area, and went over to them. “Who’s dying?” Angie asked them first, a frown dispelling the relaxed look she’d had a moment earlier. “What?” Aiden said, lifting his head from the back of the seat. “You came all the way down here to get us?” “We thought you came to see us off,” Frank replied. Angie explained that she and Aiden made a whimsical decision late the previous week to run off to Cancun for the holidays, since they both had a break. “‘Let’s go someplace warm,’ he said,” Angie told them. “‘Cancun!’ I said back.” Then when she looked online, it looked like nobody else went to Mexico over Christmas. She found a great hotel deal at a place right on the beach, and the plane tickets were cheap. Aiden looked a little sheepish when he realized that it hadn’t occurred to either of them to invite Leigh along. She would’ve been left alone at the possibly haunted condo. Of course, he didn’t know that everyone else was leaving town too, when they made their plans.

Frank and Angie started laughing. Both had the same thought at the same time--it was going to be fun to ‘mess’ with the ‘newlyweds’ when they got there. Aiden had been looking forward to a few days of burning his ass on the beach, he told them. But this might be fun. The only problem was that they wouldn’t let him take the med kit along on the plane. “Just break into the one on the ship if we need it,” Frank said. “What ship?” Aiden asked. “We weren’t going on the cruise. We just got a cheap hotel room on the beach for the week.” “Why not?” Angie asked him. “We’re rich, you idiot!” She gave him a playful slap on the back of his head. “He forgets that,” she said to the others. “He’s been a poor med student too long.” Frank pulled out his Blackberry, and he and Angie found that there were still a few open rooms on the mostly booked cruise, one of which they booked for her and Aiden. Things only went downhill from that point. The two began plotting all the cruel fun they could have with Justin and Karen, since the two had no idea any of the others would be on the cruise with them. Frank wondered if any of them knew anything about floral arrangements. Wouldn’t it be nice if they sent a bouquet to Justin and Karen’s room? Of course, it might just happen to have a micro-camera in it. “Or how about a two-way mike?” Angie cackled evilly. “Think of the fun we could have with that!”

Leigh concentrated on the book she’d brought for the flight. She had planned on spending the trip quietly, maybe doing some of the translations she’d planned for before, and practicing her Hebrew with some of the old Jewish people who seemed to populate cruise ships on the documentaries she’d seen. She wasn’t sure about the whole idea of having fun at Justin and Karen’s expense. As Frank and Angie’s plans got more elaborate, Aiden slouched down and put his feet up on the chair opposite, and pretended that he didn’t know them. But he did quietly put the kibosh on some of their more evil ideas. Their flight went smoothly, and the next morning they all went to the beach to relax while they waited for Justin and Karen to arrive. Frank was pleased to see that all three women were in bathing suits--a maillot for Terry (she had an amazing body, but Frank had never really noticed that before since she usually disguised it with her suits and her ‘professional demeanor’), a one-piece for Leigh, and a bikini for Angie. And the bikini didn’t stay on for long once she got her towel laid out. She had no intention of going back to Michigan all pale and paste-y...anywhere. But mostly she just wanted to push Aiden’s buttons. Which was why Aiden was dismayed to find out that he’d made a huge mistake in allowing Angie to buy a bathing suit for him. What he ended up having to wear (though he did his best to cover up with his towel) was a ‘marble bag.’ He either burned the instant he dropped the towel, or he blushed all over. The funny thing was that he had nothing to be ashamed of. He was well-built, and probably one of the few people on the beach who should have been in one of those things. Even Leigh, with ever the European sensibilities, took off her suit when she found that they were on a clothing-optional beach. And the time until Justin and Karen arrived (and the real fun began, as far as Frank and Angie were concerned), passed quickly.

However, Cathy had no sooner gotten home from Hawaii than she was making plans for Christmas. She called Karen first, to make sure that she and Justin would be coming over on the holiday. Then she asked for the numbers of all Karen’s friends that she didn’t already have numbers for. Karen tried to dissuade her mom from inviting everyone, but it almost seemed like Cathy wanted as many people there as she could get. Karen wondered if she was trying to protect herself, in a way, from being alone with Edward that day. She half-thought about calling everyone first and warning them, so they could come up with excuses for not going before Cathy got to them. But if her mom really was trying to build a wall of sorts between herself and Edward, Karen didn’t want to mess that up.

Almost everyone on the team spent the time leading up to Christmas doing the things normal people did during that season, decorating, buying and wrapping gifts, pretending to work until their vacations or paid holidays started. Frank did, too, for the most part. But he was still trying to find answers to some of his questions about the ghost and Edward. One night, he’d gone to sleep pondering how he was going to deprogram the people who’d been brainwashed by Edward. All his dreams--and nightmares–that night somehow ended up being about the stuff he’d learned in his psy-ops courses in the military and FBI; mostly the more grisly aspects of the courses. About a week later, he’d been wondering if there was a way to kill the creature that they’d captured, and just what that would entail. That night he dreamed of a bloody ceremony that he somehow understood was directed at allowing the creature to possess the celebrant. As he watched, he saw a body lying on the altar, struggling. Slowly, his view shifted until he realized that HE was the celebrant, standing over his human sacrifice. He looked down at the altar, and the sacrifice was Terry. She died at his hands, and as she died, he felt the creature take possession of his body. Then he threw himself off the cliff on which the altar was situated. He felt himself falling, and woke with a start, covered in sweat and pretty sure that the creature was going to be staying put for a long time, if killing Terry then himself was the only way to kill it.

As Christmas got closer, everyone got a call from Leigh. She was planning a traditional Danish smorgasbord for Christmas Eve, and wanted everyone to come. Only Reg had to beg off. Since he’d missed going out to his sister’s for Thanksgiving, he couldn’t very well avoid going for Christmas. The thing was, as annoying as Claire could be, Reg really loved his niece and nephew. Besides, his dad wasn’t going to let him out of it this time for love nor money nor skull surgery. But the rest of the team made it to Leigh’s, even Tony. Unfortunately, Anne had to work. It was the price she had to pay for getting Christmas Day off. Terry brought a Jello salad along to contribute to the smorgasbord, orange with Mandarin oranges in it. Frank brought some Chinese food from his favorite take-out place. And after finding out from Leigh what she planned to make, Karen brought cheese, crackers and some whole-grain bread to complement the rest of the food; and she brought Drew along for a little added entertainment.

Everyone already knew their way around Leigh’s place since she was renting the condo from Karen, so they all made themselves at home. There was plenty of beer, as well as mulled wine and soft drinks, and it didn’t take long for everyone to settle down to ‘eat, drink, and be merry.’ But there was an underlying nervousness about the gathering. Like usual, they all recognized the fact that they were at ‘critical mass;’ and though no one said anything, they were all waiting for something awful to happen. They chatted about their plans for the next day, and Justin asked Karen exactly when they were supposed to be at her mom’s. Any time people wanted to go over there, Karen told them all, and dinner would be served around 3pm. Tony wasn’t sure if he’d make it, he told them; Anne had invited him to come to her family’s celebration. As he said it, Tony tried to act as if he weren’t very excited about the prospect. But the more he talked, the more obvious it was becoming that he would go anyway. Someone raised a toast, that was mostly left unspoken, to the team’s success at capturing the ‘ghost in the machine.’ Then Tony asked Frank if he thought he’d get his job back now. The problem was, Frank told him, that it wasn’t the monster that made him lose it. Capturing the creature didn’t solve all the other issues related to the situation, like all the ‘brain-washed’ people in positions of power in government, big business, religion and the military; or Edward’s hold on Cathy and a lot of other people. He may have lost his ‘mojo,’ but that hadn’t ‘broken the spell’ those people were under. And Frank still wasn’t sure how to do that without using some very unpleasant deprogramming techniques, because the team still didn’t know how the brainwashing had been done in the first place.

Leigh had decorated the condo modestly, and had a small pile of presents on the mantel. Now, she handed them out to her friends, who hadn't expected them. They weren't extravagant, just little things Leigh had come across over the last few months that she thought would make nice gifts. Like the Danish Special Forces training manual she'd found for Angie, or the antique hood ornaments for Justin, or the book of 'strange but true' news reports for Terry. When she couldn't find anything she felt drawn to get for Karen, Leigh made a donation to the tribal education fund in Karen's name. It was something she had learned was close to Karen's heart, when Karen once told her excitedly about the Indiginous Law Program that had been started a couple years ago at MSU. As they sat around talking and eating, no one said anything about how Frank and Terry were continuing to show up at gatherings as a couple. The two continued to act as if it was just a convenient way to share information about the Grosse Pointe case without drawing attention. But they’d finally started calling each other by their first names rather than their titles, and were seeing each other more frequently than if it were just a convenience. It turned out that Terry was a football fan. The others found that out when the TV got turned on that afternoon. Tony, on the other hand, wasn’t. He ended up falling asleep in his chair, in spite of the occasional cheering. The conversation that afternoon and early evening ranged from Father Andrew (and Tony’s continued insistence that the priest had told him that he needed ‘more lust in his life’), to whether Justin and Karen were either dead or zombies (for their continued reluctance to talk about their sex life), to ancient female fertility goddesses, to food, to Edward.

Aiden and Angie had staked out a place in the loveseat, and when they’d finished eating, Angie started giving Aiden a foot rub. The two were acting silly in a romantic way, but they managed to stay quiet enough that they didn’t become the center of attention. Then Terry told them her big news. She’d been called into the Chief’s office. The room got quiet, as everyone held their breath expecting the worst. But this was good news; she’d gotten a promotion to Captain, which came with a shiny new shield and a nice raise. And the Chief had told Terry that she didn’t want to see her before New Year’s. Everyone congratulated her, and then the conversation took a strange turn. Aiden had insisted that they watch It’s a Wonderful Life, and he’d even brought his own copy of it. As they watched it, Justin made a comment about babies; and somehow everyone seemed to think that there was something that he and Karen weren’t telling them. Karen turned bright red as she tried to explain that, yes, she did want kids someday, but no, she wasn’t pregnant, and she didn’t expect to be any time soon since both she and Justin were ‘protected.’ There was a bunch of joking about how maybe she’d gotten pregnant by immaculate conception, since both she and Justin both refused to admit to even having sex. Frank asked Justin if he wanted to make an appointment to come by and ‘talk about that,’ and Karen pointed out that nothing in the Bible had ever been interpreted to mean that Mary had gone from not pregnant to full-term overnight. If Karen WERE pregnant by immaculate conception, she’d have had to be showing by now if the birth were imminent. No one could refute that logic, and they all finally agreed that Karen must not be pregnant. But it took a while before the blush faded from either Justin’s or Karen’s faces.

By the time they were halfway through the movie, Justin, Angie and Tony had started joking about how they would’ve just killed ‘the old guy in the wheelchair.’ People were beginning to feel the effects of the alcohol and the comradery, and the military backgrounds of several of them were starting to ‘show.’ Someone pointed out that it was better torture to leave the old guy alive, so he could see how much everybody loved George; and someone else said that they thought everybody loved Raymond. Justin wondered what the guy who played Raymond’s older brother had looked like as a kid, and Karen said it would be much more entertaining to hear what he sounded like. By the time the movie ended, it was nearing midnight and both Aiden and Angie were crying. The others weren’t quite sure if that was because of the movie or the very uncomfortable-looking position the two had maneuvered themselves into. Frank silently contemplated throwing something at Angie, to get her up, but thought better of it. “It’s very drunk out,” Justin proclaimed, though he wasn’t particularly drunk himself. He was a big guy and he hadn’t really had much to drink. Karen, on the other hand, was feeling pretty good. Someone suggested that it was probably time for everyone that didn’t live there to leave, so that Leigh could go to bed. She told them that they didn’t have to leave, and that they were welcome to ‘crash’ there, especially if they weren’t in a condition to drive. But the last person out should lock the door, she requested. Tony asked if the fireplace had a chimney for Santa to come down, and Karen explained that it wasn’t a ‘proper chimney’ because it was just a gas fireplace and only had a vent. Tony argued that it didn’t matter for Santa, and Frank was beginning to wonder about the sanity of other members of his team.

Karen began looking for Drew, so that she and Justin could leave, but she was having trouble locating the cat. As she called out Drew’s name, and the antique mantle clock struck midnight, they were all startled to hear a THUMP on the roof. Justin went to the French doors that led out onto the balcony and opened them. It was a cold, crisp night out, and the stars shown like diamonds in the sky. Justin listened intently, but he heard nothing but nearby traffic. Justin, on the balcony, and Frank and the others inside, tried to sense if something Unknown had caused the sound. Almost all of them felt it, the wave of heat that accompanied the presence of the Unknown, but they couldn’t get a feeling for exactly where the creature was. Then they all heard a couple sounds at once, a sound that was like jingle bells, but more electronic-sounding, and the sound of something skittering across the roof or up in the attic/crawl-space. Karen saw Justin draw his gun, and she objected to him “shooting Santa.” Frank drew his too, and asked Leigh where the attic access panel was. If he was going to shoot something that was on the roof, better to do it from the attic than to have holes in Leigh’s ceiling. She led him to the bedroom, and pointed out the drop-down ladder in the closet. Karen wasn’t sure which way to turn. She was worried about Drew, but she was also worried about Justin, who had holstered his gun so that he could climb the tree beside the balcony to get up to the roof.

Karen barely felt the cold as she stood on the balcony and watched Justin slowly disappeared above the balcony’s roof-line. She gasped as she saw his foot slip when one of the branches gave way under his weight, and she started breathing again when she heard him drag himself over the gutters and onto the roof on his belly. She went back inside as she followed the sound of his movement across the roof, and was startled when her cell rang. Justin found the snow on the roof highly disturbed, covered with tracks that went this way and that over the whole roof. Something had been up there, he told Karen on the phone, and he was looking for tracks. When he found them, he was alarmed. If they’d been about one fifth the size, he would’ve said they were rat tracks. But they were the size of a human hand! Justin studied the patterns. There was either one creature moving around an awful lot, or there were as many as six of them. Karen relayed this to the others. Tony asked if the tracks were bracketed by single lines, like the runners of a sleigh would make, and started laughing.

Tony had grabbed a billy club out of his bag and followed Leigh and Frank into the bedroom. He heard Karen behind him asking if he was really going to hit Santa with a club. All that showed of Frank were his legs. The rest of him was up in the attic. It was about three and a half feet high above the opening, and maybe four and a half feet at the peak from what Frank could see in the beam of light from the Mini MagLite he was holding off to one side, in case whatever was up there tried to target the light. Tony stood beside Leigh, ready to do...well, whatever he needed to. Frank could sense that there was something up there with him, but he couldn’t get a good look at it. It was either moving inhumanly fast, or it was somehow ‘skipping’ the spaces in between where it was and where it went to. He called out to it and heard a small squeaky voice reply “Go away!” Hmmm... He couldn’t very well start shooting holes through Leigh’s roof trying to hit something that moved so fast he couldn’t ‘lead’ it. He came down the ladder; he was going to go out and get the ‘hand sun,’ he told the others, and Angie followed him out the door. Justin was moving back toward the balcony, when he heard a cat just screaming out on the lawn. He peered over the edge of the roof, and could make out a small black spot in the center of the lawn that might be Drew, and seemed to also be the thing doing the screaming. Justin gripped the gutter, and swung his legs over the edge of the roof and down to the railing.

Inside, the others could still hear skittering noises from the attic, moving all over the attic really fast. As fast as Justin got back inside he was headed out again, almost at a run, through the door and down the stairs. He almost ran into Frank at the bottom of the stairs, as Frank and Angie came back in with the light. Karen and Leigh looked at one another and wondered just what would happen to the creature in the attic if they went to opposite sides of the condo and raised Spheres. It ought to force the creature out through the roof, they figured. But they didn’t have a chance to try it. Tony was thinking about trying something else. “Watch my back,” he said to Aiden, as he settled into the recliner and set down the club. Karen realized what he was doing, and knew that the Spheres would interfere with Tony’s plan. Aiden grabbed the med kit that he’d gotten in the habit of carrying everywhere, and explained to Terry what Tony was planning to do when she came over to help. By the time he got to the part where “Tony’s body will look dead,” Tony was already gone. Down on the front lawn, Drew was looking up at the roof and screaming his lungs out when Justin got to him. He WAS NOT going back inside. So Justin ran around the building to the truck and got the paintball gun from the stash-box. He really didn’t want to put bullet holes in Leigh’s...Karen’s condo.

Tony floated into the bedroom, and noticed Diva’s ghost curled up and sleeping in the middle of the bed. He floated over to the attic access ladder and ‘thought’ himself up through the hole in the closet ceiling. It looked really weird up there, not at all like what he expected. It was like there were dozens of pieces of plastic sheeting strung all over, with holes poked through it all. And moving through them was something the size of a small human that he couldn’t get a good look at. It moved like it was down on its haunches, and like it was aware of the webbing. Tony reached out and touched some of the stuff and it was gooey, like an ectoplasmic snotweb. But he couldn’t tell if it was ethereal or not, though the creature definitely looked corporeal. Tony watched the thing for a moment. It didn’t look like the creature was making the webs, but it was definitely moving to keep them between itself and Tony, like it knew Tony was there. Tony didn’t feel like the thing had been up there for a very long time though. He was thinking about that, and about going back to his body, when he felt a sharp pain in the back of his head. He turned and got a close-up glimpse of the thing before it shimmered out of sight. Or maybe it was just moving away really fast. He was so startled by what he thought he saw that he couldn’t really tell. It looked like a rat with a human face. It had dark brown fur, a skinny, hairless rat-like tail, and bony rat-like hands. And the sound it made was like when you kicked over a trash can that some rat had just been rummaging in and the thing was complaining about you disturbing its dinner.

Frank and Angie came back in just before Tony went back into his body, and the two went straight to the attic ladder. Frank wanted to get a good look at whatever was up there. He climbed up and flipped on the lamp. As he was doing this, Tony was complaining to Aiden about the pain in the back of his head where the thing had hit him, and telling Terry, Leigh and Karen about the ‘psychic cobwebs’ he saw up in the ethereal attic. Frank swept the attic with the light but didn’t see anything that looked like what Tony had described to the others. All he could see were regular cobwebs and human hand-sized rat tracks in the layer of dust on the floor. When Tony heard that Frank couldn’t see it, he went back out for another look. Sure enough, the thing appeared to be gone, and the webs seemed to be thinning, melting almost. He found that out when he accidently put his face through a puddle of the goo. He watched Frank shining the light around the attic, and followed that for a few seconds, then started to head back toward his body. He could vaguely hear the others talking, and saw Justin coming in. They were looking up, like they were wondering if the thing was completely gone or just out on the roof. Tony flew up to take a look, but only found the same fading ‘snotwebs’ up there, so he went back into his body.

When Tony assured them that the thing was gone for the moment, Justin went back down to the yard for Drew. When he came back in, Drew leapt down to the floor from Justin’s arms, and as he leapt up into Karen’s he mewed what sounded almost like “Mommmm!” before burying his face in Karen’s neck. Karen looked around the room at the remains of their meal, and asked Leigh if she knew of any rat-like creature from Scandinavian myths that haunted people on Christmas Eve. The two thought about it for a moment when they looked at one another and said, in unison, “Brown Jenkin.” It was a creature described by HP Lovecraft, that had been the familiar of a witch named Keziah Mason. This witch had either discovered or been taught by some creature of the Unknown how to travel outside normal space and time. The witch and Brown Jenkin, in the story at least, harassed a college student who lived in the very room the witch once had more than a hundred years before, and Brown Jenkin eventually killed the student on Walpurgis Night (May Eve). As Karen and Leigh told the others what they knew about the creature, Drew curled up in Karen’s lap and fell asleep. With Reg out of town, Leigh didn’t really want to stay in a possibly haunted condo alone. Karen and Justin invited her to stay at their place, but Leigh was also unwilling to just give up and let the Unknown take over her place either. So Aiden and Angie agreed to stay with her, at least for that night.

That night, Frank was dreaming about Edward and the creature, his mind going over again and again everything they knew so far. He could see Edward sitting at a desk, but he was much younger than now. Frank’s field of vision widened, and he could see that Edward was sitting in front of a computer, an old one. His eyes were drooping and he was starting to nod off to sleep. As Edward’s head dropped forward, his elbow slid across the desk and knocked over a coffee cup. As the puddle of brownish liquid spread across the desk away from Edward’s elbow, it pooled up next to and under the computer. Suddenly, Frank saw a spark flash from one of the vents on the side of the computer. It traveled across the surface of the coffee until it contacted Edward’s wet elbow, then skittered up his arm. As Frank watched, the spark moved in slow motion, though his logical mind told him it must have happened in an instant. Frank woke with a start, his arm tingling like it was he who had been shocked by the machine. So that was how the creature first came in contact with Edward. Frank wondered just how long ago it had happened as he tried to settle back to sleep, knowing that his dreams would only get worse that night.

When Frank dragged himself from bed the next morning, not feeling particularly rested, he made a note to get the others together later in the week, to see how plans for trapping and killing the creature were going. Aiden and Angie arrived at the back room of Roma that evening looking like they’d been glued together. The distance that had seemed to be growing between the two had disappeared now that they were able to spend time together on a regular basis again. When everyone settled down for dinner, several people had news for the others. Karen and Leigh let them know that Leigh was learning how to raise a Sphere of Protection, so that someone else on the team could do it. Frank told them his dream about Edward, and Reg explained that it sounded like ‘spawn processing.’ It was a system where you could increase a computer’s processing capacity and speed by spreading the work among as many other machines as possible, sending small portions of the work to get done using other machines’ unused capacity. Justin asked if it was like what’s done with the SETI research, and Reg said that was a good example of the process. The original creature must have ‘spawned’ to Edward, and now Edward was either using the creature’s power for himself, or he was spreading the creature’s ability to control to others.

It seemed clear that Frank had been right. The team needed to focus on killing the creature before turning their attention back to Edward. Of course, Frank explained, they couldn’t actually “kill” the creature. All they would be doing was pushing it back to the other side of the ‘barrier’ that normally separated their world from the Unknown. There was no way to really tell how long it would stay over there once it was sent back, but Frank was certain it would be royally pissed at them when it came back. Plus, its ‘physical’ separation from our world didn’t prevent it from communicating with its minions in this world and getting them to move its plans forward--or take its revenge on the team. That was what seemed to be happening with the ghul that Tony ‘killed.’ “No, it’s DEAD,” Tony insisted. Frank had a dream that seemed to indicate that it was still communicating with its minions in Afghanistan. But since the control the electrical creature had over Edward seemed to have stemmed from physical contact of a sort, according to Frank’s dream, maybe the creature’s ‘death’ might break that contact and end whatever supernatural capabilities Edward might be receiving from it.

Reg had been working on a plan for baiting the trap for the creature. Since Stephen said that it was the connecting of all the dots that had caused the creature to kill him in the first place, Reg had a way to recreate that situation. He had laptops for all of them, and he’d broken down all of his and Stephen’s research topics into portions for each of them as well. As they went about their normal business, they should occasionally use the special laptops to re-collect their portions of the research. They shouldn’t use the laptops for anything else, and he was setting them up in a very special way. They would all give out a false IP address when they linked to the Internet, and they would disguise their connections by replacing the real ISP with a false one when the search program was engaged. This would make it virtually impossible for even the most sophisticated tracers to track the computers back to any one of them. They should also run the program from as many far-flung places as they could manage. When Tony or Justin left the state for work over the next couple weeks, they should hook up from there. The rest of them should travel to somewhere other than their homes or workplaces, in fact as far from Detroit as they could manage, to hook up. That would add to the confusion of anyone, or anything, trying to trace the connections. When they collected data, they should pass it to Reg on the memory sticks he had for them. He would take it and load it onto an electronically-isolated server. Over the next few weeks, then, they would be able to collect everything he and Stephen had without putting any of them in danger. When they had everything they could get, and the rest of the trap was ready, Reg would dump everything onto the Internet at once, making quite sure that it was obvious where the data had come from. Within five minutes of ‘going live,’ there should be dozens of ‘bread-crumb trails’ leading back to that server. Enough people would be able to connect the dots that the creature would be compelled to come to shut the server down.

Leigh wondered if all the cloak and dagger was really necessary, though. As a creature of the Unknown, she wasn’t sure that it had the ability to make leaps of logic like humans could. And it would certainly need a leap of logic to connect different computers searching for different pieces of the puzzle as part of a larger plan, even without having to do the searches from remote locations. Maybe not, Frank agreed; but a little redundancy in the system didn’t hurt when they were trying to cover their tracks to keep any of them from being killed like Stephen had been. And he hadn’t been the only one. Frank told them that he’d been able to collect some information about other unusual deaths similar to Stephen’s, but he hadn’t had time to process it all yet to see what it could tell him. The conversation then turned to the trap itself. With Tony’s skill with chemistry and electronics, and Justin’s ingenuity for building things, the two were making serious headway on that. They would isolate the server inside a Faraday ‘box’ with the ‘pinch’ on top of it. The whole thing would be further isolated inside a Faraday cage. The server had to have a hard-wired connection to a battery-powered generator that would be inside the cage but outside the ‘box’, and to the laptop outside the cage, from which Reg would start the ‘data dump’ and keep track of traffic to see when the creature came calling. But the two had figured out a way of triggering a guillotine-door to cut the connections when the creature went into the server. And the instant the door was triggered, it would in turn set off a separate, isolated trigger that would set off the ‘pinch.’

All they needed was a relatively isolated place to set up the whole thing so that if something went wrong and the cage didn’t trap the creature, the trap would still be cut off from other electricity sources and there would be no one nearby but the team. Karen started giggling. “What about Reg’s place? The creature already knows his address.” The others dismissed the idea since it was in the middle of a residential area. “But half of those people are either dead, in the hospital, or in jail right now anyway. And there’s a giant hole there to set everything up in so no one can see it, right?” Karen laughed. The others stared at her. Justin looked almost scared that the pressure might have finally pushed her over the edge. It had been a while since Karen did any joking at all, and they’d forgotten that she had a somewhat twisted sense of humor. On the other hand, it didn’t seem like she was entirely joking. And she wasn’t. They all thought about it for a minute. Reg’s house had been in the middle of a pretty large lot. “And every inch of wiring was fried, then pulled out all the way back to the power pole when the house was demolished, wasn’t it?” Justin asked. That would make Reg’s former basement about as electrically-isolated as they were going to get without driving an hour or more outside the city. They looked around the table at one another. Right. So Reg’s basement was it. Karen had turned a little pink, and studied her napkin. She could tell that the others thought for a minute that she’d lost one of the few marbles she had left. If she hadn’t known them all for a while now, she would never have ventured to say what she thought out loud. But maybe they still weren’t ready to hear good ideas from the crazy girl. Oh, she knew that they didn’t think she was crazy. But she also felt like sometimes they still underestimated her. She did her best to push those thoughts away and just be herself and enjoy the friends she was with. That stuff would all come up again at her next appointment with Frank, and she would deal with it then.

Things got somber again pretty fast when Terry told them what she’d found out. She’d been able to get all of them cleared to travel by putting her own neck on the line. She knew that they had acted in self-defense, and she also knew that none of them was a flight risk even though some of them, like Tony, had little enough tying them to Detroit. They weren’t going to run, if for no other reason than it would be the end of her career, at the very least. And the fact that every one of their assailants had a drug that causes psychotic behavior in their bloodstream didn’t hurt her case. She looked at each one of them so that they understood the gravity of what she was telling them. “You were right that my curiosity about your case would force me into a position where I would have to do things I would never have considered before,”she whispered to Frank. “I never thought I would ever plant evidence, so I really hope you’re right about all this. Because one thing I will still not do is frame an innocent man.” Frank assured her that he would try to never put her in that position.

She turned back to the group. She had found out something chilling during her investigation, too. Every one of those people also had heard Edward speak, and she had done nothing to hide that piece of information when she was filling out her progress reports. Everyone glanced around at the others. They all hoped she wasn’t taking too much of a risk with that. There were a lot of speaking engagements he did that weren’t listed on his website and that he received little or no money for, she continued. The two neighbor kids had heard him when they were at the Family Life Christian Camp that past summer. Some of the other groups he’d spoken to were Concerned Women of America, the group that was led by Tim LaHaye’s wife, he of the Left Behind books; the Council for National Policy; Americans for Tax Reform; Focus on the Family; the Eagle Forum; the American Coalition for Traditional American Values; the Confederation of the Societies for the Unification of the Americas, a group with ties that led back to the Unification Church of Reverend Sun Myung Moon; the Free Congress Foundation; Trinity Broadcasting Network; Radiant Life Network; and Tri-State Television. A number of these groups not only had connections to LaHaye, but also to the John Birch Society, a right-wing group from way back. All of them were way out on the right wing-nut fringe. Leigh turned to Karen and asked if she’d been able to find out what religion Edward followed. Karen had asked her mom, who’d told her that he was “some kind of Protestant.” Neither Cathy nor Karen had pursued the question any further.

When Karen mentioned talking to her mom, it reminded Reg to ask if it would be OK to invite his dad along at Thanksgiving. He thought it might give Frank an opportunity to get to know him better, in case they had to do the deprogramming. Karen figured one more person wouldn’t make much difference; her mom already cooked like she was planning to feed the entire US Army. Reg called his dad right away to ask him. Phil’s first question to Reg was “What’s wrong, Reggie?” Just the fact that Reg was asking his dad to spend time with him ping’d Phil’s radar. Reg assured his dad that nothing was wrong. He’d just gotten a taste of his own mortality, and wanted to make up for old missed opportunities. They both knew that he’d always been closer to his mom because they were more alike, with their noses stuck in books. He just wanted to spend some time getting a little closer to his dad now. And Reg really wasn’t stretching the truth at all. But, Phil reminded Reggie, he did have orders from Reggie’s sister Claire that he was to come out to California for the holiday and bring along Reggie and whatever he was dating at the moment. Reg sighed. That was his sister. She never did have much tact. The two commiserated over Claire’s little quirks for a couple minutes. Reg told his dad that he was welcome to go ahead without Reg, but there was no way Reg’s doctors were going to let him fly out to the Bay Area so soon after having surgery on his skull. No, that didn’t mean there was anything wrong. In fact he felt fine, Reg told his dad. He was even starting to get a little fuzz growing on his head already, too. But the doctors had their own rules to live by, and they didn’t want him messing up their ‘very nice work.’

Phil finally agreed to go without Reg, just so Claire wouldn’t be able to complain about him skipping out on their arrangements. Even though if HE had to suffer through Claire’s cooking, he really wanted Reggie to suffer with him. How exactly could you have a vegen Thanksgiving? Reg could almost hear him sobbing as he hung up the phone. While Reg had been talking, Justin was thinking about all of them being at Karen’s mom’s together. Something bad was likely to happen, and he didn’t want to be caught unarmed. He told the others to bring their cars by his shop sometime before Thanksgiving, and he would put stash compartments in them. That way they could have the paintball guns, or whatever other non-lethal stuff they had, along without it being obvious. Karen objected to the idea of them all going to her mom’s covered in armor and carrying guns. Yes, she recognized that they were going to be in another ‘critical mass’ situation. But they were going to be at her mom’s apartment! Which was in the middle of a ‘senior-living’ residence! Even if they had their guns, they couldn’t just shoot the place up!! Karen buried her face in her hands for a minute, and Justin was afraid she was crying. Her shoulders started shaking and then he was sure of it, until she lifted her face and he saw she was laughing. What else could she do? The whole situation was so absurd. What other group of friends in this entire country would be planning on taking guns along to Thanksgiving dinner? Maybe some of those militia nut-jobs. And them. If she didn’t laugh, she would definitely start crying.

Everything was progressing nicely toward completing their plans during the couple weeks before Thanksgiving. Justin, Aiden and Angie ‘borrowed’ an impact dummy from the hospital, and after wrapping it in plastic, they tested the modified paintball guns. They worked just like Justin had planned, and even Angie was pleased with how well they worked. When they were done, all they had to do was unwrap the dummy, toss the plastic, and no one at the hospital was any the wiser that the dummy had gone out on a field trip. Everyone was collecting as much data on the laptops as they could get, and passing it along to Reg as fast as they pulled it in. And the trap was taking shape at Reg’s old basement. Tony still had to make a few business trips, but he was able to help Justin get the pinch put together, and he even remembered to call and invite Anne along to Thanksgiving dinner. By now, with Karen’s family plus a number of her friends coming, the head count had climbed to 22. A few days before Thanksgiving, Karen got a call from her mom. Edward wanted Cathy to have fun over the holiday, not be stuck slaving in the kitchen. So he insisted on making arrangements to having the gathering at the East Room at the Whitney, and he was paying. It took Karen a minute to pull her chin up from the floor. She was flabbergasted. So, if Karen didn’t mind calling her friends, her mom continued, she would call Marie and the family to let everyone know about the change in plans. Karen told her mom she would get right on it.

And she did. She spent the next 20 minutes arranging a massive con-call, and broke the news to all of them at once. The women immediately agreed that a shopping trip was in order. The Whitney wasn’t even usually open on the holiday; so although they didn’t trust Edward’s motives, they still needed to look their best. The guys were mostly concerned about how this change might affect the trap they were setting. It was decided that they would spring the trap after they’d all left the Whitney, as long as everyone thought the trap would be ready. Reg was sure they had enough data on the server to make a big splash when he dumped it to the Web. And Tony and Justin were as sure as they could be that the trap would work. Karen’s mom would still be with Edward, and she would certainly call Karen immediately if capturing the creature had any adverse physical effect on Edward; so they should get feedback on the results right away, if there were any. So that was it. They were going to have a very expensive Thanksgiving dinner on ‘the Enemy’s dime,’ as Justin put it, then hopefully capture and maybe even ‘kill’ the ghost in the machine. What a way to spend Thanksgiving!

On Thanksgiving day, people began to arrive at the Whitney at abut 4pm. Edward and Cathy were there first to greet their family and friends, and they both looked radiant and very much in love. As if by design, the Envoys all arrived at the same time, and the women’s new dresses were the conversation starter for the afternoon. Angie was in a bright red dress, all flowing ruffles, and wearing 4-inch stiletto heels. The guys were amazed that she could stand up in them. But what was she going to do if there was trouble? First, Angie explained, the ability to walk in shoes like that was part of a woman’s genetic make-up. But you couldn’t run in them. To do that you would either take them off or break off the heels. Every woman knew that, too. Terry was wearing a dark blue dress that complemented her blue eyes, with matching blue flats. Her shoes weren’t as exciting as Angie’s, she admitted; but at least she didn’t have to risk losing or ruining them if she had to run. She’d been a cop--on a cop’s limited income--too long to not consider that. Leigh’s dress wrapped her in warm earth tones, with high boots that not only matched nicely but were quite fashionable that season. And Karen’s was a deep emerald green that enhanced the auburn highlights left in her hair from the summer sun, with short dark-green suede boots.

Even the guys looked pretty spiffy in their suits that cool fall afternoon. Aiden was wearing black, as was Frank, who looked more like a ‘Man in Black’ than he had when he really was one. His gun was barely noticeable under the jacket. When Reg discovered that Justin really didn’t have anything nice short of a tux, he sent his tailor over to the shop to have something custom-made. And since Reg had just had his own jackets altered to accommodate a handgun and holster, his tailor didn’t even need to ask if Justin needed his cut a similar way. Tony and Anne were the last to arrive and Tony was perhaps the biggest surprise, although Karen and Leigh at least had some inkling that he did have a bit of taste that he kept well hidden behind his New York attitude. They pulled up in a stretch limo, and in response to the stares Tony said, “What?! Youse guys didn’ t’ink I’d be bringin’ my beater to a joint like dis, didja?” as he stepped out and held out his hand for Anne. He was wearing a fashionably-cut Armani suit with a silk tie and a Rolex, and there were a couple big-ass gold ‘goombah’ rings on his fingers. Reg couldn’t help himself, even though he knew Tony. He looked Tony up and down, then raised one eyebrow in an expression that said, “If only I didn’t know that you were as straight as they make ‘em....” And Tony couldn’t help but strut a little as he held out his arm for Anne and the group strolled toward the entrance. Anne’s black and white-patterned dress was a perfect match for the steel grey of Tony’s suit.

The group were shown to the East Room, and as they entered they saw Edward leaning over talking to Karen’s sister Leslie, one hand on her shoulder as she looked up at him and listened with rapt attention. He kissed her lightly on the cheek as he straightened up and turned to the doorway when he heard them come in. Reg whispered, just loud enough for the others to hear, that they might want minimal physical contact with the man, in case whatever he ‘had’ was passed by touch. Karen didn’t even have a chance to acknowledge the comment before Edward swept her up in a hug that lifted her off the floor. She fought the urge to flinch, and instead hugged him in return as if she was truly happy to see him. Cathy was there beside him a moment later, enveloping Karen in another hug as soon as Edward had set her down. Justin got an even bigger hug from her, in contrast to the firm handshake and slap on the shoulder he got from Edward. Edward was working the room like the pro that he was. He made sure to speak directly to each person as they came in, with a light kiss on the cheek or hand of each woman, and a ‘politician’s handshake,’ left hand on the arm or shoulder as the right firmly grasped the other man’s hand, for each of the men. Except for Tony. As the two approached one another, Tony wrapped his arms around Edward in a big ‘paisano’ hug, slapping him heartily on the back. Edward didn’t show even a second’s hesitation in returning the greeting, speaking to Tony in Italian. As the two stepped apart, Edward bent slightly at the waist as he took Anne’s hand and kissed the back of it gently, complimenting her in Italian as well.

Frank noticed Terry’s ‘shields’ go up the moment Edward greeted her, but Edward himself never indicated that he noticed anything. When he greeted Frank, Frank decided to play the same ‘dominance’ game that Edward was playing, matching his moves to Edward’s and never backing down. When Edward had moved on to Leigh, Frank whispered in Terry’s ear that she might want to unclench her jaw. The tension would slow her down if she needed to act quickly, he teased her. With a deep breath, she consciously relaxed and tried to act naturally. Edward greeted Leigh in flawless, unaccented Danish, complimenting her on a paper she had published shortly before going on sabbatical. His comments even made her think he’d actually read it. Reg also played the ‘dominance’ game with Edward in his own charming way. But keeping in mind that the man had been gracious enough to invite them all to this event that was certainly going cost him a good deal of money, Reg made sure to show Edward a proper amount of deference.

Everyone mingled a while, nibbling on hors d’oeuvres and sipping drinks. As they did, waiters moved around checking with each guest to see which of several entrees they would want for their meal. As another one of the waiters came around checking peoples’ drinks, Justin motioned him over. It had taken him a little while but he’d finally figured out why the guy seemed familiar. The kid was one of his cousin Marty’s sons, maybe the oldest, but possibly the second or third. His name tag read “Jerry.” Jerry had sort of recognized Justin, too, and he recommended either the duck or the rack of lamb to his somehow-relative. Justin asked if Edward had brought any of his own staff along to help out. All the guys were slightly more paranoid than usual about the possibility that the team was going to be ambushed, and Justin was trying to check out the situation. No, Jerry told him. He and all the other guys there usually worked at the Whitney. They weren’t normally open on the holiday, Jerry explained, but (and he looked around to make sure nobody was listening) they’d all been told that they could make triple-overtime plus tips if they wanted to work this special party. None of them could pass up money like that. Justin asked him what he thought of Edward. Jerry shrugged. If the guy wanted to let them make a month’s pay in one night, who was he to argue. Then Jerry excused himself and moved on to other guests.

Leigh was glad to note that they had a salmon dish available, since she still couldn’t bring herself to eat animal flesh or even fowl. Karen had long since managed to deal with that particular violation, and opted for the traditional turkey and fixings. Edward again made sure to chat some with each person, though he never went for more than 10 minutes at a time without pausing to give Cathy a quick hug or kiss or touch. And the attention wasn’t forced or faked; he looked like he was genuinely entranced with her, and she with him. One of the topics of discussion in the room was Karen’s brother Sean’s girlfriend (“-of-the-month” according to Karen and both of her other siblings), who was ‘really built.’ Another, was how “simply wonderful” Edward was. As Karen heard each member of her family except the kids, even Marie, give that ‘speech,’ she tried hard not to visibly cringe. Whatever Edward did to people, he was getting to her entire family, without any of them going to one of his talks or seminars as far as she knew. Another topic, among the Envoys only, was just where the women had managed to hide guns on themselves. While none of their dresses were especially revealing, they also weren’t designed for the concealment of weaponry. Angie and Terry laughed. That’s what purses were for. Karen, though, hadn’t brought her gun, she warned them all. She didn’t say why, but her fear of shooting another unarmed, and next time possibly innocent, person was one of the things she was working on with Frank. Besides that, it would be her family that was caught in the cross-fire this particular time, if anything did happen; and she steadfastly refused to be a party to any of her family being injured. She and Justin had gone out and replaced the .357 that was being held as evidence in the shooting at Reg’s, and the new gun was in the truck-stash if she really needed it, along with her and Justin's paintball guns.

When the head waiter approached Edward to indicate that dinner was ready, he gallantly held the chair for not only Cathy but also Marie and Olivia; and he helped Karen’s little nephew Eric hold the chair for Mary Elizabeth, Karen’s other niece. There were bottles of good red and white wines on all the tables, and as one would expect at a fine restaurant, one bottle was no sooner emptied than it was whisked away and a new one brought to replace it. About an hour into dinner, Karen had to stop eating and stare. A very sad-eyed little girl walked into the room, one whom no one else seemed to see. She walked over to the fireplace and held her hands out to the fire to warm them. Then she went from person to person around the room, looking hard for a few seconds at each person’s face as if she was looking for someone in particular but she couldn’t quite remember what the person looked like. When she got around to Edward, the girl threw her hands up to cover her face, as her mouth opened wide in a silent scream before she dropped through the floor and out of sight. The girl’s sudden disappearance startled Karen so much that she dropped the fork that she’d been holding motionless over her plate for the last couple minutes. The others at the table couldn’t help but notice that her hand was shaking slightly as she took a sip of wine to calm herself. She told them, briefly, what she’d seen.

A short time later, the dessert tray was brought around. They all started moving around sampling each other’s dessert choices, and Karen took the opportunity to let the Envoys seated at other tables know what she’d seen. As the last of the dishes were being cleared and the coffee brought out, Edward stood and tapped his glass with a spoon. He turned to Cathy and held out his hand, which she took as she stood as well. They both wanted to thank everyone for joining them for that special holiday meal. He’d learned over the last 8 months that Cathy was a great cook, and he was sorry that those who hadn’t yet sampled her cooking hadn’t gotten their chance that day. But with such a large group of cherished friends and family coming, he had wanted her to enjoy the festivities rather than be tied to the kitchen. But now, it was time for an announcement. He was now the happiest man in the world, because Cathy had agreed to marry him. Karen’s heart sank even though she had almost seen this coming. As others in the room clapped and cheered, Karen masked her sadness with a grin and a squeal of excitement, and she rushed across the room to hug her mom. There was no reason for them to rush to the altar, and they would take their time planning the wedding right, Edward continued; and he hoped that everyone there would be able to take part in that joyous occasion when it finally came. Karen had gone to stand with her sibs, and Edward turned and kissed Cathy as the waiters brought out glasses filled with champagne and bottles to refill them.

Both Frank and Reg studied the happy couple as the announcement was being made. Frank couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something very subtly ‘off’ about both of them. Reg sensed that Edward was too ‘flat,’ robotic even, as he spoke, like both the speech and the emotions were rehearsed. And Cathy seemed to be able to tell that something about Edward wasn’t quite right. Reg whispered this to Karen as she passed him, and she mentioned it to the others as she went around acting as excited as any normal woman would be at the prospect of her widowed mother finding new love. This was by no means the end of the gathering. Everyone began moving around again, regrouping to chat about this new turn of events. Tony poked Justin and motioned him toward the doorway. Karen joked with Reg, Leigh and Anne about men now going to the bathroom in groups; but she was hoping that Tony was doing the one thing she couldn’t get away with doing right now. He was. When the two got to the hallway, Tony led Justin to a nearby room and positioned a chair near a wall. He wanted to see what the little ghost girl had seen and needed Justin to keep an eye on his temporarily uninhabited body.

Frank had mentioned to Edward when he came in that he was interested in speaking more with Edward about his seminars, and he took that opportunity now. Edward was more than happy to oblige. The two talked about different learning styles and how one needed to adjust one’s teaching style to accommodate them. Everything Edward said made perfect sense. Then Edward glossed over what was covered in the seminars in the same way that the attendees that Frank interviewed had, smoothly avoiding any details of exactly what went on. Frank asked Edward about how he met Cathy, and Edward described how he’d seen her buying a hat at one of those goofy little shops on Mackinac Island. All of a sudden he saw only her and nothing else, and he knew he had to meet her. The feelings he had at that moment for her had only grown over the last 8 months. Regarding Cathy, Frank could tell that Edward was being sincere; there really was honest warmth and affection in his voice when he spoke about her. Then Frank asked about the trip to Rio, since Karen had mentioned that they’d just returned from there. Edward began telling Frank about the beautiful beaches, the nice weather, the great drinks, and of course the charming company. He’d gone down to give a seminar, but all of those things made it awfully hard to want to work. The words all sounded perfectly normal, just like anyone else would say after a trip to Rio with their lover. But Frank got the impression that the guy was lying through his teeth. The whole tone of what he said made Frank feel like Edward was saying what he thought Frank wanted to hear. It was all very smooth, but it was as if the unspoken attitude behind it was one of “what else would we have done but have a good time?”

Karen had been sitting talking with her mom about wedding plans, and when her mom got up to mingle some more, Karen also started moving around chatting with others. Tony and Justin were back by now. Tony told Justin what he’d seen, that Edward looked kind of flat and out of ‘phase,’ not like a regular person looks. It was a little like Aiden looked when Jody had forced him out of his body, but not quite and without the ‘silver thread’ that connected Aiden’s body and spirit. Justin passed this on to Karen, and Karen let the others know. She also passed the word that whatever Edward was doing, it was affecting all of her family as well as Marie. This worried the others, because he’d had physical contact with all of them, but in different ways for each person, so they couldn’t pin the change to any one thing he’d done. Frank wondered if it had something to do with the amount of contact he had with people over time. Maybe Karen’s family was affected because he’d spent more time with them. But he hadn’t, really, Karen said. He’d been traveling so much that none of them had seen much of him or their mom. And that didn’t explain his effect on Marie. Tony went over and asked Anne what she thought of Edward, and now she gave the little ‘Edward speech,’ too. A look of worry passed across Justin’s face. He went over and took Olivia aside, out of sight of Marie, and asked what she thought of Edward. The relief was evident in his expression when she signed that he was OK. The relief turned quickly to fear, though, when she asked why the little girl went away. She had SEEN the ghost! Justin told his niece that the girl wasn’t supposed to be there, and she left so she didn’t get in trouble. So Olivia shouldn’t tell anyone else about seeing her or the girl might get in trouble.

Justin’s hands were shaking as he came back over to the little cluster of Envoys. He hated lying to his niece that way, but he also didn’t want.... He couldn’t remember; had Karen said that the ghost she saw was a little girl? He asked her, and when Karen confirmed it, he gripped her arm tightly as he told her what Olivia had said. Karen tried to calm him down. It wasn’t like having the ‘gift’ was a death sentence. Most kids had the ability to see the Unknown. That’s where invisible friends and the monsters in the closet and under the bed ‘came from.’ But most children grow out of it, Karen told him. Society and the strength, or frailty depending on your point of view, of the human mind have ways of forcing people to become willfully ignorant of the unseen things that share the world with them. At least the kid wasn’t infected with whatever Edward was passing around. That wasn't the point, Justin told her. He was more concerned that his beautiful little niece not get pulled into the "Fight." Karen didn't say anything. What could she say? It was certainly a possiblity that eventually she would. But it was jumping the gun to worry now. She might still lose the ability as she got older. She squeezed Justin's hand. She would do everything she could to protect the girl, that was for sure. However, now seemed like a good time to raise a Sphere, she told them, to see what happened. When she did it, they should all be watching one or two other people to see their reactions. Like the last time, Edward showed no reaction at all to the Sphere. But several other people, including Terry and Marie shook their heads and got a puzzled look on their faces, like they couldn’t quite understand why they’d been thinking what they’d been thinking.

Leigh had been watching Cathy, and as the Sphere went up, Leigh thought she looked older somehow, and almost...hunted. Then, all of a sudden Cathy clamped her hand over her mouth like she was either stifling a scream or afraid she was going to be sick, and she hurried out of the room. Leigh followed her out and down the hall to the bathroom. As Leigh came in, Cathy was leaning over the sink splashing water on her face. Leigh asked if she was OK. She grabbed a couple paper towels and began drying her face, and told Leigh she was, as she went into one of the stalls and closed the door. Leigh waited, listening to Cathy breathe deep, calming breaths. Cathy was a little surprised that Leigh was still there when she came out of the stall. It was nothing, Cathy told her. Just a little panic when the whole idea of getting married again hit her. But she was alright now. She knew that she would be very happy with Edward, Cathy told Leigh as she took her time washing and drying her hands almost methodically. He’s a very nice man. But marrying again at her age? She wasn’t sure she was prepared for that. Leigh reassured Cathy that if she ever wanted to talk to someone, someone who wasn’t a member of her family and could give her an outsider’s opinion, someone who had also been widowed and was finding a renewed interest in the opposite sex, she could call Leigh. Cathy thanked her and gave her a shaky hug. As Leigh patted Cathy’s back, she sensed a slight residual of contact with the Unknown. Strange. Edward didn’t react to the Sphere like a creature of the Unknown; but close contact with him seemed to leave behind a signature as if he was. Then the two women went back to the East Room.

When Leigh came back in, Reg cornered her. He wanted to know if Cathy was alright. As the Sphere was going down, he told her, he’d spoken to Cathy in her head, telling her that he could help her and she shouldn’t be afraid. Leigh stared at Reg like he had grown a second head. OK, he admitted, maybe he shouldn’t have done that. He had only just figured out that he had the ability when he was in the hospital. Maybe it was the morphine, or the blow to his head. Leigh realized that she hadn’t been imagining it then. At one point when they were all in the hospital, she thought that Reg had spoken to her out loud and she’d just mistaken it for telepathic contact like Dee was able to do. But he really could do it. Maybe it was somehow related to the way he could tell what people were feeling, too, he continued. He’d always thought that that was something he’s just learned to pick up on from body language and facial expression. But maybe it was something more. In any case, he must have scared Cathy pretty badly, Reg conceded. Leigh told him that she thought any damage he’d done would be fleeting, but that Cathy was definitely uneasy about where her relationship with Edward was headed anyway. Karen came over because she’d seen Leigh come back in with her mom. Leigh told her what happened, and Karen rolled her eyes. Reg admitted again that he hadn’t really thought about what he was doing, and Karen suggested that he keep that little trick for use within the group from now on, after he let the others know he could do it. It would have been a little distracting during a fight, for her at least, she said, to suddenly hear Reg’s voice in her head when he was across the room, if she didn’t already know he could do that kind of thing. When she got back over to Justin, she told him what Reg had done, too.

Frank had noticed Terry’s reaction to the Sphere, and he pulled her aside now. “What do you think of Edward?” he asked her. “He’s simply wonderful,” Terry started. “He’s the most....” She paused. “Wait a minute.... I don’t think he’s wonderful. The guys creeps me out. Why did I just...?” She looked up at Frank as she felt a chill run down her spine. “It wasn’t that I felt compelled to say it,” she told him. “But those were just the first words that popped into my head when you asked, like I’d been rehearsing it so many times it just spilled out as a natural response.” She shivered and paled ever so slightly. Frank took her arm and led her to the coat rack. When they turned toward the door, Cathy and Edward were there to bid them ‘good night.’ When the others noticed they were leaving, Terry told them she was fine, that she just needed a little fresh air. She was going to keep this between herself and Frank for now. Outside, she told Frank that she hadn’t seen that level of adeptness at manipulating people in anyone but serial killers and con men. Since he didn’t appear to be a serial killer, she figured Edward had to be a con man of the highest magnitude. She kept having the urge to give the ‘speech’ every time she heard someone ask what someone else thought of Edward. And it was really giving her the creeps to think that even she could be manipulated like that.

Frank and Terry’s exit started a flood of people leaving. Each of them stopped to thank Edward and Cathy as they left. Tony and Anne were next, and after they got outside, Tony asked Anne again what she thought about Edward. She still gave the same response without a thought. Aiden and Angie slipped out next, and Marie and Olivia shortly after since it was way past Olivia’s bed time. Reg got out one of his business cards and jotted his personal cell number on it. When he and Leigh were ready to leave, he handed Cathy the card and told her that he’d be glad to help with the wedding in any way he could. He was the one who had originally given Peter’s name and number to Karen, and he was sure he could get Peter’s help again too, if she wanted it. A brief flash of fear crossed Cathy’s face when Reg first started talking to her, but she covered it well and thanked him for his kind offer. Leigh slipped Cathy her number too, in case she wanted to talk. When the two were in the car on their way to Grosse Pointe, Leigh confided in Reg that she was disturbed by Edward’s effect on her. He wasn’t her type, but every time he spoke to her, she found herself thinking that he could easily seduce her if she let her guard down for even a second. And that really didn’t sit well on her mind at all.

As Karen sat and chatted with her sibs, Justin went to talk with Cathy while Edward spoke to the manager to settle up the bill. She’d looked a little scared earlier, Justin said, giving her a hug. Well, just a little overwhelmed by the size of event the wedding would be, she told him, what with all Edward’s business contacts that would need to be invited. She wasn’t sure she could handle something that big. Justin could tell that she wasn’t being entirely truthful, and he tried to get her to open up a little more. She kept insisting that she was just being silly, that there was no reason she should be concerned about marrying Edward. As he listened to her, he grew worried about the way she kept doubting what she felt. She would start to say something then stop and tell him that it was nothing, that she was just being silly. It was like she was talking herself out of trusting her feelings. He'd heard abused women talk the same way, making themselves believe that the abuse is really their own fault. He took her hands and looked her straight in the eyes. She should trust her gut instincts, he told her. If something inside her, some little voice, was telling her to think twice about this marriage, she should listen to it. But even if she wasn't sure she could do that alone, she shouldn't worry, he said, because he could help her; she shouldn’t be afraid.

Justin used the exact same words that Karen told him Reg had used. This kind of freaked out Cathy. She backed away from Justin and hustled over to where Karen was sitting, and gave her an almost desperate hug. When Edward got back, Karen and Justin thanked him and Cathy for a wonderful time and the extraordinary food (though it didn’t even come close to what her mom would have made, Karen teased Cathy with a wink), congratulated them on their engagement, and said good night to Karen’s family. They were the last of the Envoys to leave, and they’d planned ahead and had a bag on the back seat of the truck, with a change of clothes for both of them. Karen changed as Justin drove out to Reg’s, then he changed after he parked the truck next to everyone else’s cars. Whatever happened next, fancy suits and dresses were not what they should be wearing.

Everyone else had changed, too, somewhere between the Whitney and “Reg’s crater,” as Frank had taken to calling it. When Justin and Karen came up to the cluster of Envoys standing near the hole where the trap had been set up, the others were discussing the evening’s events. Terry was commenting on how she found herself thinking that Edward was attractive, when he was definitely not her type. Leigh replied that she was a bit wigged-out over the fact that she realized she could be seduced by him if she wasn’t careful. And Reg was explaining to those who hadn’t heard yet, that he could ‘speak’ telepathically to other people now and that he thought maybe the morphine he’d had in the hospital had helped him ‘open the door’ that allowed him to use that ability. He may have even had some empathic ability all his life, and he was only now discovering that it wasn’t just a skill in ‘reading’ people like he’d thought it was.

It was between 9:30 and 10pm, as the team huddled there in the cold. There was a very light snow falling, and Reg was careful to leave the tarp covering the laptop when he threw back the part covering the chair he’d brought there a few days earlier, when he, Justin and Tony made the final hook-ups on the trap. The laptop was situated so that Reg would be facing the ‘door’ to the trap as he watched it, and his back was to the dirt ramp that had replaced the stairs out of the basement when the demolition team was finishing clearing the lot. As Reg turned on the battery-powered generator and booted-up the server, Karen considered the fact that if something went wrong the team might need to get Reg out of there in a hurry. She suggested tying a rope around his chest, and Justin went to the truck and came back with a climbing harness with a rope anchored to the back. He helped Reg into it while Reg was getting the laptop set to broadcast the research they’d all collected.

Then it was just a matter of waiting. Reg estimated that it would be about five minutes before there was any activity at all. But what he was looking for was a sudden huge surge in activity, including attempts to delete the files, that would tell him that the creature had taken the bait. The other spread out around the ‘crater,’ some keeping an eye on Reg and the trap, others keeping an eye on the surrounding area. Justin stood a little back from the top of the ramp, holding the other end of the safety rope, in case he needed to yank Reg out. Right on schedule, Reg announced that the hits were starting to come in. Just a trickle at first, 3 or 4. Then activity started to ramp-up. There were 20 hits, then 50. But it still wasn’t the surge that would tell him the creature had come to call. Suddenly Reg stood, knocking over the chair. He’d seen something, just the faintest flicker on the screen. That same moment, Justin’s and Tony’s attention was grabbed by the streetlights blowing out at the far end of the block. The exploding lights moved up the street toward Reg’s lot, and a crackling...arm...of energy shot out of the monitor and reached for Reg.

Reg stumbled backwards over the fallen chair, and the only thing that saved him from the touch of that bolt of energy was the fact that he fell flat on his back as it shot over his head. He scrambled backwards, then turned and scrambled toward the ramp. The ‘arm’ continued to thrash around in the air above and behind him, searching for its target. Justin pulled his paintball gun and shot at the monitor. He didn’t want to cause an explosion, but he wanted to kill the laptop. The gel round hit the screen and nudged the laptop toward the edge of the low table it sat on. Karen ran down the ramp toward Reg, to help him out of the hole. When she got close to him, she concentrated for a second and raised a Sphere to protect the two of them from the creature. What she hadn’t thought about as she did it was the effect it would have on the creature. The others watched as the ‘arm’ of energy retreated backwards away from Karen and into the laptop, then even further back in the only direction it could go--along the cable leading into the server...at the center of the trap. They could hear the crackle of energy as the creature shot through the cable, and as soon as it was past the doorway, Tony triggered the door. Justin shot the laptop again, sending it toppling backwards off the table. Karen and Reg were just getting to ground-level, when Frank, who had been watching the creature’s progress intently, announced that it was in the cage and madder than hell. The door dropped, cutting the cable to the laptop and triggering the ‘pinch.’ There was a sort of muffled WHUMP as the ‘pinch’ went off, then nothing for a moment. The streetlights had stopped exploding, and the laptop laid dead on the ground.

Then Frank saw the box that the server was in rock gently, so slightly that none of the others even noticed. It moved again, a little more distinctly. “Looks like ‘Bob’s’ a little pissed,” Frank commented. “Bob?” Reg asked. Frank tipped his head toward the trap. They were all quiet, holding their breaths. They could hear, very faintly, a sound like the crackle of a live wire mated with the roar of Godzilla. It was a sound of both anger and pain. “A little pissed” was an understatement. The team stood around the edge of the ‘crater,’ alternately watching the trap and looking at one another. Now what? The thing appeared to be trapped and the EMP had definitely hurt it, but it obviously wasn’t dead. And at the moment, they had no way of knowing whether it was the creature itself or just something the creature had sent to kill the server and Reg. They couldn’t move the server, because opening the cage and box would allow the creature to escape. Ditto blowing the thing up. They’d already seen what that would do. They couldn’t even move the cage, because that would unground it, also allowing the creature to escape. They all looked at Reg as Tony said that the only thing they could do was bury it in place. Reg sighed. So much for selling the lot or rebuilding. He nodded, and Justin and Tony went and revved up the Bobcats that the demolition crew hadn’t hauled away yet. Moving dirt around judiciously from all over the large lot, they managed to fill in the ‘crater’ by 11pm without making the lot look like it had been bombed. Every so often while they worked, the box moved a little as the creature struggle to get out. The guys would come back later in the weekend, depending on the weather they told Reg and the others, and cap the hole with cement.

As Justin commiserated with Reg about being the owner of a ‘haunted’ piece of property, Reg had a thought. Tony was in the construction industry, right? Karen and Tony both laughed at the same time, and looked at one another. “More like the ‘de-struction’ industry,” they said in unison. In any case, Reg continued, wouldn’t Tony be able to declare the site a ‘brown-field’? Then he would at least have a reason for not being able to sell or rebuild on it. Tony thought for a second. Sure, maybe he could come up with something reasonable to put on the paperwork. He’d just have to get someone else to sign-off on it; but he knew lots of people. As they stood around stamping their feet against the cold, Terry suggested going for a drink to celebrate. They hadn’t killed it, but it looked liked they’d at least trapped it. “What about Edward, though?” Tony asked as they went back to their cars. It had been over a half-hour since the creature had gotten trapped, and Karen’s mom hadn’t called to say that something had happened to Edward. Maybe nothing had, she suggested. Or maybe he’d done something to Cathy, Tony replied. Now he had her worried. She nervously speed-dialed her mom’s number. The call went to the machine after 4 rings. Well, at least her mom had dialed it down from the dozen or so rings it used to take.

They all drove to a nearby bar and settled around a couple tables in a back corner. The place was mostly empty except for them and a few people who had no place better to be on Thanksgiving night. Reg called his dad to see if he was still giving the ‘Edward speech.’ Phil was at the airport already. Claire had been being Claire, and he just couldn’t take any more, even though it meant he couldn’t spend time with his grandkids either. Reg commented that Claire’s husband was a saint to put up with her. “That’s not the word I would have used,” Phil grumbled. “No. But ‘idiot’ is impolite,” Reg replied, laughing. Reg invited his dad to come by Leigh’s for lunch when he got home, and hung up without ever having a good opportunity to ask how his dad felt about Edward now.

Over the next couple of days, Justin and Tony got the ‘crater’ capped; Karen and Justin went to see Uncle Jerzy, to let him know about Olivia’s ‘gift’; and Frank started seeing discussion on the conspiracy sites about ‘Lone G’ having gone missing since T-Day night. A couple other of the regulars had disappeared, too, it sounded like. With Reg and Terry’s help, he did a little digging and they found out that the times of death of the missing conspiracy theorists seemed to indicate that the creature had killed them on its way to attacking the server. There were a total of 12 deaths around that time, all freak electrical accidents, scattered across the US. When they’d worked all this out, Terry asked if it would be possible to set another trap, to see if that was the only creature out there. Whether it would work or not, Reg said, depended on if the thing could learn. But if there was another one out there, it still couldn’t afford to let the information out. And it would have no way of knowing what had happened at Reg’s anyway, Frank said, since the creature they’d trapped had been completely cut off from everything when the trap was sprung. Well, Reg agreed, that was the beauty of redundancy. He, Tony and Justin had already anticipated the possibility of needing more than one trap, so they had all the materials they needed to make more. It would just take them a little time to get it all put together again and find a new place to set it up.

The following week, there was a big announcement in the business section of the News about Edward’s engagement. Terry went to re-interview the assailants, and found that they were still giving the ‘Edward speech.’ And Karen got a call from her mom on Monday, suggesting they get together for lunch. Karen was a bit surprised by this, since Edward had mentioned at Thanksgiving that he would be flying off to do another seminar that Monday. Karen had figured her mom was going with him. She met her mom at a little deli after her last class. Cathy was clearly sitting on something, wanting to talk about it but not quite sure how to start. She asked about Karen’s friends, how they enjoyed Thanksgiving. Karen told her that they’d all had a really nice time. Some of her friends were a little...strange, Cathy commented. Karen smiled. Yeah, but people had always thought she was a little strange too. Not strange, Cathy said warmly, just special. Karen laughed. Then she asked her mom if she’d made any decisions about the wedding plans yet, and after hesitating a little, the worries started to spill out of Cathy. She SHOULD be excited, but she was having a hard time with the whole idea. This was the first time she’d met someone she was attracted to since Karen’s dad had died. But wasn’t she a little too old to be getting all giddy about getting married again? “No one’s too old for love,” Karen chided her. Well, but she wasn’t really sure if it WAS love, Cathy fretted. Karen’s heart leapt. Maybe her mom was breaking free of whatever hold Edward had on her.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t the perfect man. Even the sex was incredible, Cathy confided with a giggle. Karen felt the heat burning the tips of her ears. God, she REALLY didn’t need to hear about her mother’s sex life! But she didn’t want to stop her mom from talking, so she settled for an exasperated “Mommm!” and silently wished for about a gallon of vodka to totally obliterate those brain cells. Any woman would be ecstatic to have Edward, Cathy continued. SHE should be ecstatic. There was an unspoken “but...” hanging over the table. “What, Mom?” Karen prodded. “Well, he’s a little TOO perfect,” Cathy told her. She wasn’t sure if she could live up to that perfection. What she really wanted was to see him stumble over his words occasionally, or trip on a step, or...something, so she’d feel like he was still HUMAN. Karen reassured her, telling her that she hadn’t said anything before because she didn’t want to hurt her, but she’d always felt like there was something strange about Edward too. He kind of rubbed her the wrong way, Karen said; but she’d tried to be happy for Cathy because she seemed so happy. If Cathy wasn’t comfortable with the idea of marrying him, then she should wait. There was no reason to rush into it anyway. Edward had even said that himself. And if she couldn’t live with his ‘perfection,’ marrying him wouldn’t fix that. Cathy smiled at her, and patted her hand. Maybe Karen was right, she admitted. The two women stood and Cathy hugged Karen tight. Karen hugged her back, and hoped that the Mental Shield she was focusing on her mom just then would nudge her towards breaking off the engagement. Of course, some types of mental control took more than one Shield to break. She’d have to come up with a reason to see her mom again in about 12 hours, to do another. Hmmm...they’d had a late lunch.... Maybe her mom could sleep on it and they could have breakfast in the morning before she had to be on campus, to see how Cathy felt about everything then, Karen suggested. Her mom agreed and the two women went their separate ways.

The next morning, Karen met her mom at a coffee shop near campus. The first thing she did as she hugged her mom was raise another Mental Shield. The two chatted for about an hour, about Thanksgiving, the family, Karen’s classes. Everything but Edward and the wedding. But her mom didn’t seem to be upset or uncomfortable like she had been yesterday, so Karen kept her mouth shut and hoped for the best. When Phil had gotten back into town last Friday, he’d called Reg and the two had agreed to have lunch at Leigh’s on Tuesday. He looked sort of worn-out when he got there, like just being near Claire had taken a lot out of him. Reg could understand that. Phil sat in a recliner and had a beer as Reg worked on lunch, and the two chatted. Phil teased his son about cooking far too well for a boy, and mentioned that he’d heard about Edward’s engagement. Reg started ‘reading’ his dad as he took a shot at asking what his dad thought about Edward. Once again, Phil rattled off the ‘speech.’ He’d been all animated right up until he said “Edward is simply wonderful....” At that moment, his emotions went all flat and robotic. Reg flashed a look at Leigh. As soon as Phil was done talking, Leigh asked him about his grandkids, and he became animated again. It was like a switch had been turned off and then back on again.

Reg had come out to sit with his dad as lunch baked, and when Phil asked for another beer, Leigh got up to get it. As she rounded the wall into the kitchen, Phil leaned forward and slapped Reggie on the shoulder. “She’s alright,” he said with a grin. “You said that about Audra, too, Dad,” Reg told him. “Well...Audra...she’s REALLY alright,” Phil said with more enthusiasm than Reg expected. Oh, no.... “Wait, Dad. Are you and Audra...?” Reg asked. “Well, if you two had been in an exclusive relationship,...” Phil started. Now it made sense, Reg thought to himself. The two had seemed oddly...close...when they visited him at the hospital. And he’d gotten the distinct impression that Audra had been dodging his calls lately. “...I never would have let it go that far. But it’s only been recently,” Phil was saying. “I may be a little older than her, but I’m not DEAD. Boy, she’s something else in bed. Do you know she suggested that the three of us spend a little ‘quality time’ together?” Reg could NOT believe he was having this conversation with his dad about a woman they were both dating. “Audra always has been a little...kinky,” he agreed. “She suggested the same thing about....” Just then Leigh walked back in the room with Phil’s beer. She could tell by the look on Reg’s face that they’d been talking about Audra. “So, did Reg tell you that he’s doing a little better with his kick-boxing now?” she asked Phil, changing the subject completely. A moment later lunch was ready.

Late that same afternoon, Karen got a call from her mom. Edward was back in town. Cathy sounded a little breathless. “He came back early because he couldn’t stand to be away from me any longer,” she told Karen. They were going to take a trip to Hawaii, a vacation just for the two of them. Karen’s heart nearly stopped. Had he felt it? Did he somehow know that someone had tried to break his hold on Cathy? When were they leaving, Karen asked, hoping that she had a chance to see her mom and do another Shield before he dragged her away. “Right away, dear. Our flight leaves in an hour and I’m not even packed,” her mom said. “We’ll only be gone a couple weeks, but I’ll call you and let you know when we get there safely.” Oh, God. Two weeks? Frank said that a pretty thorough brainwashing could be done in just a couple weeks. But...her mom didn’t sound like she was afraid or upset about going. She almost sounded a little excited about the trip. Karen bit her lip. She wished her mom a safe and happy trip, and let her get back to packing.

Then she called Justin first and Frank next, to let them know about this new development. There wasn’t much she could do now, except keep her eyes and ears open to find out what really made Edward cut his trip short and drag her mom off to Hawaii. She rubbed her head. God, she needed a break. She and Justin STILL hadn’t had a chance to go on their own honeymoon. Maybe once she knew her mom was back and safe.... She still had the week between Christmas and New Year’s open. Shit, Christmas! She needed to check with Justin about getting the kids gifts. And she’d been thinking about getting Marie one of those weekend spa trips, to thank her for all her help with the wedding. Plus, she and Justin could take care of Olivia for the weekend, and she could have some time alone with the girl to talk to her about ‘ghost safety.’

Word got to everyone about Edward and the trip to Hawaii, and they all started looking for anything they could find about what had happened. A notice was posted on Edward’s website that he had decided to stop doing seminars for a while. As they neared Christmas, they started hearing reports that Edward had ‘lost his mojo.’ Apparently, he’d gone up to do his first talk at that seminar after Thanksgiving, and when he started talking he didn’t get the response he usually got. (Whatever that was. The Envoys still had no idea what happened at these seminars.) Something was wrong, but he didn’t know what. But he covered it very well, and continued on with what ended up being a pretty average talk about financial planning. He canceled the rest of that seminar and was on the next plane back to Detroit. About this same time, Reg, Tony and Justin had gotten the new trap ready. Reg found a little undeveloped piece of land up in the Thumb that he was able to get a good deal on, and the team set up the trap. The hardest part was getting a hole dug for the cage, since the ground was starting to freeze. Reg set the bait, but this time nothing happened. The server didn’t get attacked, and the data wasn’t being wiped from the Web. They weren’t sure exactly what it meant yet. Cathy and Edward got back safely from Hawaii, with Cathy none the worse. And though Edward seemed ‘oogier’ than ever to Karen, even without his ‘mojo,’ her mom was still studiously avoiding setting a wedding date, and Edward wasn’t pressuring her about it at all.

Reg was sent home on Nov. 6. Well, to Leigh’s place, actually, since his house was uninhabitable. The contractors had deemed the wiring damage irreparable, so Reg was going to have to start over. Or maybe let someone else start over there after he’d found someplace new. Especially since the Unknown knew his address now. But he hadn’t decided yet for sure. He was released under Frank’s care, not that it was needed. Aiden’s Healing had gotten him to the point that the doctors were amazed at Reg’s recuperative powers. What little damage was left after a week in the hospital was quickly patched up as soon as he was released. But he still tried to stick close to ‘home,’ to prevent anyone from wanting to inquire too deeply into his rapid recovery. Leigh kept him company. Her nightmares had eased off, and she hadn’t remembered her dreams in several nights. She was even able to sleep through the night of the 6th. And on the morning of Monday the 7th, when Leigh asked Reg what he wanted for breakfast, his response of “World peace. Free love.” earned a smile and laugh from Leigh.

For everyone else, the few days between Nov. 2 and 7 passed uneventfully. Justin and Karen were able to pass a quiet weekend at home. Karen still favored her left knee, but she was able to take off the brace. And though her sleep was occasionally disturbed by dreams that involved far too much gunfire and blood, she was at least able to get to sleep without relying on drugs. Justin was back to work at the shop by the 7th, as soon as the bandages were off his face. When the guys asked about the thin scar that was by now fading to pink, he was truthful enough when he said that a bike chain snapped and caught him across the face that they didn’t even think to question it. Tony had come and gone from Detroit a couple times, but he was home to see a movie with Anne on Saturday evening and was back in town again on Monday after a quick consultation in Dubuque. And he’d been around town enough to help Justin some with modifying the paintball guns and to work on his own little project of making himself some rubber bullets, for when the paintball guns would be too noticeable but he might still want less-than-lethal rounds. Teresa was busy trying to solve the impossible case that had been dropped in her lap. And Aiden was doing his rotation, so he wasn’t home much at all. But he was glad to be on his own two feet in the ER instead of on a gurney, so he wasn’t about to complain about the hours.

Frank filed requests for every type of data he could think of about Edward Harrington. And between the time the paperwork flowed out and the information began to flow in, he did his own residency rotation. That left Angie free to...show up at the office in a suit?! Her fellow Envoys would have chalked that up to residual brain damage from the hits she took to the head. Or maybe it was just that another close call had gotten her to take her job a little more seriously. Or maybe she was trying to look as professional as possible in order to deflect any potential fall-out from the mess at Reg’s place. In any case, she was setting an alarm, dressing in nice pants and a suit jacket, going into the office every morning, and spending her day helping Frank with paperwork and writing cheerful “how to be safe around explosives” posters. Frank couldn’t help but laugh when he saw the ones that were in-progress. Angie’s first drafts were what she really thought, and it was obvious that they had come from the mind of a Marine. One had “Don’t cut the RED wire or...” at the top, and the bottom of the sheet was shredded as if it had been blown apart. Another said “Don’t shake the box!” with a graphic picture of a dismembered hand lying on the ground among other bits of explosion debris. No one else saw these drafts. Once she had the basic idea of what she wanted to say, she refined them until knew they would pass when submitted for approval.

Unfortunately, things never go so smoothly for very long for Envoys. Frank and Angie were in the office at 8am on Monday, Nov. 7, and by 8:15 they’d settled in and gotten their computers running to check on any incoming data. Frank had sorted everything else out of his new email file when the computer chimed to tell him he had a new message. It was from Birkoff. That was odd, since he was in the office he’d taken just upstairs. “Please come to my office--8:30am” was all the message said. Why didn’t he just come down there if he’d wanted to speak to Frank? Frank was pondering this when Angie poked her head in the door. One look at Frank’s face told her the answer to her question. “You too,” she said. It was as much statement as question. Frank nodded. He got up and slipped his jacket back on. He had a feeling he knew what this was about, so he might as well look the part. The two went upstairs and into Jared’s outer office. The secretary had an expression on her face that they could tell had been carefully composed to give nothing away. “He’ll see you now,” she said and nodded at Frank. When Angie started to follow Frank toward their boss’s door, the secretary put her hand out to stop her. “Alone,” she added. “He’ll see you next,” she said to Angie. “Please, have a seat.”

As Frank walked in, Jared looked up from his desk and motioned to the chair across from him. Frank could see that the coffee mug on the desk was already empty. Jared started talking. The work Frank had done for the department was outstanding. If it hadn’t been, Jared would never have hand-picked him to take over the office. And recent developments didn’t negate that excellent record. But he could see that Frank was under some stress from doing both his DHS work and his psychiatric residency. So Jared felt that it was time for Frank to take the break he deserved and focus on the residency. Jared was giving him a year off at 3/4's pay to do that. The case Frank had been working on up to now was closed. The issue of the shooting in Grosse Pointe was still being investigated, but Jared didn’t foresee any negative repercussions when it was eventually resolved. This was not a dismissal, merely an opportunity for Frank to concentrate on his medical work. Jared stood and moved around his desk. “Oh, and I'll need your badge and gun,” he said as he held out his right hand to shake Frank's. Frank pulled his gun and badge out and held them out to Jared with his left hand while holding out his empty right to shake Jared's. “Thank you for all your service,” Jared said, taking the gun and badge. “And I'll see you in a year.”

Frank smiled slightly and nodded at Jared, never giving away that this was anything but routine business, as if he'd requested this a while ago and had only been waiting for the call. But it wasn't routine at all. Jared had obviously been forced to do this, and was making it as easy for Frank as he could. And it was just as obvious that Jared didn't really like it, as obvious as the thumb drive that Jared had passed to him with that handshake. Which also told Frank that Jared couldn't speak or act freely even in his own office. Frank said nothing to Angie as he passed her on his way out the door. He only nodded, to let her know that something was indeed up. Angie was in Jared's office for even less time than Frank had been. She was now on permanent detached reassignment to the Detroit Police Dept. By 9am, the two were standing outside the Federal Building, Angie holding the boxes that contained everything from their offices. They found the boxes already packed and sitting on their desk chairs when they got done with Jared.

They started walking toward the parking lot. This was something big, wasn't it, Angie asked Frank. So big that Jared didn't even feel comfortable talking to them in his own office. Even she could see that and she hardly knew the man. “But I'm liking him more all the time,” she told Frank. He did what he had to but still took care of them, Frank agreed. “So, what now, boss?” Angie asked Frank. “Breakfast?” Frank replied. Angie followed Frank to the nearby diner they usually went to. Whoever was pulling the strings, Frank speculated, at least they didn't send her back to Iraq. Angie looked almost disappointed at that thought. At least in Iraq, she generally knew where she stood. “But I'd have kinda missed ‘martyr boy’,” she told Frank. Then her face brightened and a grin spread across it. Aiden didn't go back on rotation until Friday. When they were done eating, Frank told her he had to go talk to some people. “When are we telling the others?” she asked. Frank told her he'd take care of it. She said she'd be in her “bunk” if he needed her, and the two went their separate ways.

When Frank left the diner, he stopped first and picked up a disposable pre-paid cell phone. That would definitely come in handy now. Then he went to a cyber-cafe. He sat at one of their computers and set up a g-mail account with the screen name Spukie. Then he went searching for his conspiracy theory contacts, using every encryption toy he had available. His first messages went a couple of them who were more paranoid but a little less crazy than the rest. He sent them a number of the links related to Edward Harrington and data on places where his seminars had been, and signed as “Spukie, who's not so spooky after looking into it.” Then he sat back and waited for a response, and checked what Jared had given him on the memory stick. "EH employed by RCA until 1968. Moved to SRI in 1969; top secret security clearance granted." was all that was on it. A few minutes later Frank got an IM from one of his contacts with the screen name LG. “Bummer of a birthmark, pal. Parachute, bungee cord or just off the cliff?” “Parachute,” Frank replied. “Topic seems off the beaten path for you,” lG said. “Pretty creepy when you look at it. Caution if you look too much into his background. Cyberspace gets cranky,” Frank typed back. “Maybe what happened to Bojangles,” LG wrote. “??” Frank asked. He didn't recognize the screen name. “Dropped out of cyberspace. Freak electrical accident. Checked in meatspace--electrical accident,” LG told him. Suddenly LG dropped offline. He'd heard sirens in the distance and figured they were coming for him. In the meantime, Frank called and left voice mail messages for all the other Envoys who were involved in this mess, and asked them to meet him for dinner at Roma that evening. Then he went surfing the web. About an hour later LG popped back up. He sent Frank a 2-word message, “Pre-millenial Dispensationists,” then dropped off again. A little while later LG was back, and sent “RCA, SRI, security clearance,” and disappeared again. That was really strange. That last one was essentially the same hint that Jared had passed along. Frank spent the rest of the day checking out the direction that Jared and LG had sent him in.

By the previous Thursday, everything that could be salvaged from Reg's house--that was everything that wasn't electrical--had been stuffed into a POD and sent to storage, as had the cars, except for 'Inge', who was parked at Leigh's. And by Monday morning, there was no sign left of Reg's house except the large hole that used to be his basement. There had been no problem with the insurance writing it off as a total loss due to a lightning strike, although that was incredibly inadequate as far as explanations went. But the adjuster couldn't come up with anything better, because NOTHING could fully explain the unbelievable amount of damage. The fire inspector had even come out, and found no sign of arson.

At WSU, nothing unusual happened that Monday for Karen, except for the fact that everyone had studied for their exams. But even that could be explained by the fact that they were more than halfway through the term, and everyone had learned that Karen had no problem failing people that didn’t do the work she knew they were capable of. At lunch time, Cathy called her. Karen’s mom was in Rio with Edward, and she wanted to make sure that Karen got the photo she sent from her camera phone. Well, that and she just wanted to chat with her daughter, since the two hadn’t been able to connect in a couple weeks. The weather was beautiful, her mom said, and she was having a really nice time with Edward. She’d also been thinking about having a traditional Thanksgiving with the whole family at her place and wanted to know what Karen thought. Even Edward would be able to be there, Cathy told her. Karen rubbed her head. She REALLY would rather he weren’t, but what could she do? Karen told her that she and Justin would certainly be there, and asked if it would be OK for Marie and Olivia to come, too, if they didn’t have other plans. Cathy loved the idea. In fact, she had Marie’s number and would call herself. Karen warned her not to get her hopes up, since she didn’t know what sort of plans Justin’s family usually made for the holiday. Then Cathy asked if any of Karen and Justin’s other friends would like to come too, like that lovely Danish woman, Leigh, who stood up at their wedding, or the charming man who’d helped so much at the reception, Reg. Karen promised her mom that she would ask them as soon as she could and get back to her. Then they said goodbye.

Karen was uneasy as she opened her email to look for the picture. It was a perfectly normal conversation, and yet.... The picture had come through fine. Her mom was wearing a cute sundress and straw hat, holding a straw bag. Edward was beside her with his arm around her, wearing shorts and a polo shirt. There was a small bit of some Rio beach in the background, and the whole photo was a little off-kilter, like someone not familiar with the camera had taken it for them. Both were smiling broadly and looked deliriously happy. Karen saved it and hoped for the best. She wasn’t wild about having all of the team at her mom’s for Thanksgiving. It seemed like when Envoys were gathered in one place, there was a critical mass at which something awful usually happened. She REALLY didn’t want it to happen at her mom’s place. But if it made her mom happy, how was she supposed to say no? At least if Edward was going to be there too she’d have lots of back-up, because she was sure that whatever did happen would be his fault.

Once Frank had gotten them a reservation for the back room at Roma, he let the others know to meet there at 7pm. Both Aiden and Angie arrived looking more relaxed than they had in weeks, maybe months. When Teresa got there, she asked Frank if this was official or not. He asked her if she was allowed to speak to him ‘officially,’ and when she replied that she wasn’t, he said that it must be unofficial then. She told him that in that case he would have to pay for dinner; then it would be a date. There were some hidden grins and muffled giggles over this, and someone asked if that meant Frank was paying for all of them. The look said “No” quite decisively. The table got quiet for a minute and Angie asked Frank if he was going to tell them or if she was. Frank shook his head, then told the others that he and Angie were no longer DHS. They described what had happened to each of them when they were called to Jared’s office. Justin pointed out that those in the group who had known Jared the longest knew that he always took care of his people. Frank and Angie agreed that he’d done what he could to soften the blow, which had definitely come from high above him. Frank’s inquiries had certainly gotten someone’s attention.

Frank let them know that Jared had also managed to slip him one last piece of sensitive information before Frank left his office and was cut off from secure government data for at least the next year. Harrington had worked for RCA after college until '68, and then he went to work for SRI in ‘69, one year before the Institute went private. At that time he’d been given a 'top secret' security clearance, and as far as Frank could tell, he still had it. That was the thing that was really unusual. Once he left there, the clearance should have been revoked. A couple of people at the table looked confused, so Tony quickly explained that SRI was the Stanford Research Institute. They did lots of work for the military and government, and that was the first place where artificial intelligence research was done. Tony had gone to Stanford, and he might still be able to get ahold of one or two of his old profs to see if they knew and remembered Edward. Even when SRI was part of Stanford U., it was still separate; but there were only so many bars for the geeks to hang out in back then, no matter which part of Stanford they were with. The discussion turned to whether they should be planning for a road trip, and then Frank asked if Reg knew or remembered any of Stephen’s screen names. Oddly enough, he did. The one Stephen used to use when he was working on their ‘research’ was Bojangles. Frank didn’t seem surprised to hear that. It figured. He hadn’t heard of any other “electrical accident” deaths like that before meeting Reg, and now he heard about it from his conspiracy theory contacts, too. Couldn’t be a coincidence.

Karen asked Frank if he still wanted more information about Edward, information he could only get from deprogramming someone who’d been to one of the seminars. She spoke quickly, like she was trying to get something out before she lost her nerve. Because she was willing to go to one of the seminars, she said. She wouldn’t have any problem getting in, since Edward was dating her mom. Reg spoke up, arguing that if anyone was going to do that, he would be a better candidate. Then someone suggested Frank just deprogram Reg’s dad Phil...or Karen’s mom. Justin objected to that even before Karen could. But it did remind Karen about her mom’s request, and Karen relayed the invitation for Thanksgiving to all of them. It really wasn’t her idea, she told them before Frank could accuse her of setting the team up. Only Marie and Olivia coming had been her idea. Justin didn’t know what to say. He REALLY didn’t want his sister and beloved niece being dragged into this. But he couldn’t really refuse Karen’s mom either without explaining why. Plus, Karen told him, her mom was calling Marie directly. It was out of their hands.

Reg asked what would be involved with the deprogramming, and if it would be dangerous to a man his dad’s age. Frank said that it could be, depending on how deeply embedded the programming was. He wouldn’t have thought that it was all that deep considering it seemed to be done in a weekend. On the other hand, it appeared that the people who had attacked Reg’s house had been pretty seriously programmed in the few seconds the phone call had taken. Maybe it wasn’t just that, Leigh suggested. Maybe it was because it had been done on Halloween, one of the few nights in most mythologies when the veil between this world and the next is thinner and more easily breached. Maybe that was why whatever caused this--Edward, the ghost in the machine, or something else--had picked that night to attack Reg. Frank thought about that, then told them that he was beginning to think that they might need to deal with the creature first. He’d gotten some information from some non-government contacts, and they’d pointed him in the direction of the Pre-Millennial Dispensationists. Teresa’s face paled just slightly. They were a group, Frank explained, that believed that there would be no peace in the world until the Second Coming, and that accelerating the warfare would bring that about sooner. Under his breath he muttered that apparently there was one of these nuts in the White House right now. Rumor had it, he told them, that this group may have helped instigate the fighting in Lebanon. Oh, and did we realize, he asked, that five thousand bucks would buy you a hit?

“Less than that,” Tony said. “I know some guys....” The implied suggestion was obvious, and Karen said that she’d rather not jump straight to killing Edward until they knew they had no other choice. She might not like the guy, but her mom was crazy about him. She didn’t know if that was real or just programming, but either way, her mom would be devastated if he died. “People die all the time,” Frank told her. “Maybe,” she replied, “but not usually as the target of a hit.” While they were talking, Tony dialed information and got connected to the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Stanford. A woman answered the phone at Professor Gordon’s office; Professor Gordon had been his computer prof. “Yo, Betty! Is that you? This is Tony Leonetti!” Betty was Prof. Gordon’s secretary when Tony went to school there, and it was indeed her answering the phone. If Tony had been standing there, he would have felt the temperature in the office drop about 20 degrees. Instead he could only hear the effect in Betty’s voice. Eh, she never did really like him for some reason. The professor was teaching a class right then, she told Tony. She would have him call Tony back. End of conversation. Well, it was about 4:30pm out there. He hadn’t thought about that when he called. But the professor shouldn’t be too long.

While Tony was on the phone, Justin had been telling the others about their work on the paintball guns. They’d gotten two completely refitted, and a third was within a couple hours’ work of being done. Of course, since Frank probably couldn’t get them CS gas for inside the ‘paintballs’, that idea was out unless Tony could whip some up. He could, Tony added while he was being transferred to Professor Gordon’s office, and he was also working on making some rubber bullets. But wasn’t Frank getting them some, someone asked. Sure, and they would probably be delivered to his office by Wednesday, Frank said. Faces around the table fell. It hadn’t completely sunken in until just then. With Frank out of DHS, at least for the next year, they lost access not only to government files, but also to all the cool toys Frank had gotten them. Well, not completely, Teresa said. She was still working on getting them tasers. And Tony was making the rubber bullets, and he and Justin could easily put together a flame thrower if they really needed one. Then Justin motioned to Aiden to talk away from the table for a second. He wanted Aiden to be there when he tested the paintball gun modifications. “Why?” Aiden asked. Because he wanted them to be tested on him, so he could get an idea of how hard they were hitting and if they would do what he wanted them to. But why couldn’t he just test them on an impact dummy, Aiden asked. He could get one from work. Justin didn’t think they’d get the sort of information he was looking for from a dummy. Aiden insisted he could. The two argued, trying to stay quiet enough that Karen wouldn’t hear what they were talking about. Justin didn’t want her to know that he was going to let someone shoot at him. Karen laughed. They weren’t being THAT quiet! Why should that bother her, she asked them. If Justin didn’t try to stop her from being brainwashed at one of Edward’s seminars because he trusted her judgement, why did he think she would stop him from having the paintball gun tested on him? She knew he could take it. And she trusted his ability to modify them without making them lethal.

When Tony got off the phone and told them his prof would call him back later, Reg turned the conversation back to the Pre-Millennial Dispensationists. It sounded like Frank found some connection between them and politics. Weren’t they just your average religious-right-wing-nuts? “What religion IS Edward,” Justin asked Karen. She didn’t know. She hadn’t ever really thought to ask her mom about that and didn’t know if her mom had ever thought to ask Edward. In any case, why would Edward want to go into politics, Reg wondered. “So he would be the one with his finger on the button,” Frank suggested. Reg argued that he would have more power by staying behind the throne, so to speak. “But he wouldn’t have direct control of bringing about the Second Coming,” Frank replied. Teresa told them that she’d found no indication of him having political aspirations. But the P-MDs...they’d had them for the last 30 years. Everyone stared at her. “What?” she asked. “They could become a serious threat, and someone needs to keep on top of them.” She got quiet, like she was debating with herself. “No, you guys will think I’m crazy,” she said almost half to herself. Would anything she said now be any crazier than what she’d heard or seen around them up until now, Reg asked her. She hesitated, then said that there was a theory that the whole recent political shift to the right, the disproportional effect that fundamentalist wing-nuts have on politics and business, and the avaricious greed of large corporations had been developed to push the P-MD agenda, so that the Second Coming will happen sooner by putting certain people in power.

Teresa paused. Consider the “Left Behind” books, she said. They’re really awful. The writing is terrible, and they’re extremely bloody. She’d tried reading them and had to stop, they were so bad. There was no ‘New Testament Jesus’ in those books, and yet the sales of the books are through the roof; and the guy behind the ghost writer is none other than Tim LaHaye, who’s heavily involved with the P-MDs. Justin told them he heard that there was a TV show based on those books, and a movie was in the works, too. “And then there are all the people who don’t give a rat’s ass about the future generations, and are only out for a buck at the expense of others, even without having a political or religious interest,” Teresa added. The look on her face told them that she was talking herself into believing what she’d started out trying to talk herself out of, and she wasn’t happy that she might be right. If this was a conspiracy, Reg asked, did it have something to do with the break-ins at DynaFlow? They’d only started after Stephen’s death, so in the past three and a half years; but was there any sort of pattern to them? He’d thought it was pretty strange that they were always written off as pranks, but maybe there was someone that didn’t want them solved. Admittedly, Reg said, there was the whole thing about finding fur at the scene. It was probably easy enough to consider the scene contaminated and shelve the investigations even without talking conspiracy. Reg pulled out his laptop and called up the files with the dates and times of the break-ins. He had the case numbers for Teresa if she wanted them. She wouldn’t need them, she said, and they could all call her Terry. That’s what her parents and friends called her. Reg read off the dates and times, but the group couldn’t see any pattern. As they worked on it, Reg tried to get a feeling for how Terry felt about all this. Alarmed, amused, really deeply worried (probably that the whole thing was even bigger than they suspected, Reg thought, from the look on her face), and alert. This definitely had captured her interest.

Reg wondered aloud if the final form of Stephen’s algorithm was what triggered his death and the subsequent break-ins, and how it connected into everything they were discovering now. Leigh looked at Karen. Karen nodded. They’d been sitting at Roma for a couple hours now, and it was about 9pm. She’d been reluctant to bring up the seance because she was afraid of what might happen, but it seemed that talking to Stephen might be their best option right now. “I suppose we should talk to Stephen directly,” Karen said to no one in particular. The others discussed where they should do the seance and asked Karen if it mattered. The guys figured that being as far away from electricity as possible might prevent the creature from following Stephen over, or from taking his place. Karen wasn’t sure, but it didn’t hurt to take that into account. The closest option they come up with, with the least electrical contact, was Belle Isle. Karen had everything she needed to do the seance in her pack, but she would need to know the questions they wanted answered and their priorities. She wasn’t sure how hard it would be to get Stephen back to their ‘plane’, if she even could, nor how long she’d have to talk to him or how many questions he would be able to answer for her. It was an Art, not a science, and she didn’t always know ahead of time what sort of results she would have.

In fact, it could be dangerous not just to herself but to all of them, Karen said by way of explaining the process to Terry. When a creature was called, it had to come and it had to answer to the best of its ability the questions that were asked. But it didn’t have to like it and it could use any of the powers at its disposal to attack any or all of them. With a ghost, one of those powers could be possession. The creature could even stay after Karen dissolved the circle if it wanted. She didn’t expect that from Stephen, but she wasn’t positive it would be him that came, or if he did, that he would be alone. If she weren’t the one doing the seance, she would be able to use the Sphere of Protection to protect them all. But right now she was the only one who could do either of those things. It took them about an hour of discussion, and a bit of arguing, but the team finally came up with 5 questions for Stephen. Karen asked if they’d be OK using Belle Isle at that hour of the night or if the police would roust them. Terry told her she’d take care of that if it came up, but it wasn’t likely. The DPD had more important things to deal with than a group of weirdos sitting around Belle Isle in the cold. Did she want to join them, Karen asked her. She told Karen that she wouldn’t miss it.

Everyone went home to change into more appropriate clothing, and Terry made a call to make sure they weren’t disturbed. They all met near the Conservatory at about 10:30pm. Justin, Angie, Aiden, Leigh and Tony would stay outside the circle; Karen, Terry, Reg and Frank would be inside. Karen was hoping that Tony might learn how to do seances too, so she could protect the group during seances in the future. Or that someone else might want to learn Sphere, so they could protect the group. That might even be more useful. Karen readied the circle and sat down to begin concentrating while the others got comfortable. Justin was putting the boxing wraps on his hands, and Terry realized that was in case someone got possessed and he had to knock them out. “I really don’t want to hurt my wife if I have to punch her in the face,” he said to Terry in a low growl. Karen put out her hands, and reminded the other three not to break the circle for any reason. When it was time to end, she would let go of them. Their faces were lit by the crescent of a waxing moon and the faint light of a candle. Karen called out, asking Stephen Rudolph Adams to join them in the circle. She needed to talk to him. She waited a minute, then she asked again if Stephen Rudolph Adams would please come to her and answer her questions.

The wind picked up inside the circle and mist began to coalesce above the candle. It was hard to tell, being outside in November, but the temperature may have dropped some too. The figure that was beginning to form looked humanoid, and Reg couldn’t help but think of the Visible Man toy from biology class when he was a kid. He clung to that thought as the figure resolved into Stephen, because to think of what appeared before him as being Stephen hurt far too much. The skin was flensed in charred strips, and the musculature was visible. The extremities were just charred bone. The eyes were charred out, and the lips burned away. Karen had to fight back her tears; there wasn’t time for that now. “Stephen, what do you think was the most important piece of data that led to your physical death?” she asked him.

“The pieces all came together, and I saw the pattern as it all came together, that hands were moving behind the scenes, and that they were pushing things into the shape of the end of all things...the people in positions of power, turning in odd directions, it all connected...the ministry,
the motivational speeches, the money. And I remember the last clear thought I had was ‘This is… this can’t be coincidence, this has to all be connected.’ I could see it, like a schematic, all the lines connected. Not what the specific source was, but there was a single source, and it goes all the way back to the earliest computers; someone made something alive, and others fed it and it grew and it hungered and it hates, and it wants to feel us all die. And it doesn’t want anyone to know that it’s here.” “Stephen, are Edward and the electrical creature working together, and in what sort of relationship? Who’s in charge?” Karen asked next.

“Edward who?” Stephen asked. Karen mentally kicked herself. She had to be specific. “Edward Harrington,” she replied. “I do not know if the puppet knows who pulls its strings. I think maybe not. Does the donkey know who’s holding the stick with the carrot on the end, or does it just see the carrot?” Stephen asked. “Is there any help you can give us in stopping the plans of whatever is creating the pattern?” Karen asked him. “There’s nothing. I...I am only here at your power, not at mine. It is as much machine as spirit. It has all the power and all the weakness of its birth.” Karen pulled the sheaf of papers out that she had been holding under her leg. It was as much of Stephen’s algorithm as Reg could remember. He had wanted to know if Stephen could make any necessary corrections, thinking that it was the completion of the program that had drawn the attention of the creature that killed Stephen. “Can you fix the algorithm I have here, so that we can use it to find the thing pulling the strings?” Karen asked.

“It is not the tool, it’s not the algorithm, it’s the insight. Reg is smart enough to have that insight himself, he just sells himself short. Take care of him; I can’t.” “We will,” Karen told him. Her tears started to spill out against her will. “Were you the one who came to me on Halloween morning?” Karen asked him, her voice wavering. She knew that she didn’t need to hear his answer. It had been him. His love and concern for Reg had made him come, whether he was used or not. “Yes, I think I may have been duped. The word was that when the walls were thin, that Reg was too inquisitive and would have to be removed. And I didn’t want that to happen. I thought if it was all destroyed, he might stop, stop looking, and then not be seen. I was wrong.” Karen choked back a sob. That was all she had to ask of him, and she hoped that she hadn’t caused him pain by bringing him there. And she hoped that Reg wasn’t too hurt by the sight of him in that condition. As it was, it broke her heart.

“I must go.” The husk bent and kissed Reg on the lips, and the wind blew the candle out as the figure dissolved and disappeared. All Reg could feel was cold. Karen’s hands were shaking as she let go of the hands she held. She’d been prepared for the worst calling she’d ever done, and in one way it was. Stephen was...how could he not be in pain? What that creature had done to him was horrifying, and her heart felt like it had been flayed inside her chest. And yet, he’d come much more easily that she had expected. She should have known that he would do all he could to help. But she thought that something might try to prevent him from coming. Instead, calling him had caused her much less physical strain than she’d been prepared for. This time it was only her heart that hurt her as she stood and clung to Justin. As she pressed her face against Justin’s coat, out of the corner of her eye she could see Leigh go to hold Reg. Karen wondered if what he had seen had fully registered with him yet, or if he was going to block it out.

Someone suggested getting a drink. When several of the others heartily agreed, they discussed where to go on their way back to their cars. They ended up at a small bar where they could sit in a corner and be ignored by everyone else there. Karen let the others order first while she decided if she really wanted a drink. She was certainly no stranger to alcohol, being from an Irish family. But drinking was supposed to be done to enhance a good mood, not create one from.... From what? She wasn’t exactly in a bad mood. Drinking would have only made that worse, and she wouldn’t have even had to think about it before asking for pop. No, she was actually mostly sad. Sad that Stephen had been hurt so badly when all he’d wanted to do was protect Reg because he loved him. Sad that he’d had to die in the first place, apparently because he knew too much. God, that sounded like something from a really awful movie. Or from one of those conspiracy nut websites. OK, so for her at least, this was going to be a wake for Stephen--a perfectly suitable reason for drinking.

The group tried to keep the conversation as far away from everything they’d been doing up until then as they could. That didn’t stop each of them from thinking about it, and a few of them from working on their next plans to deal with it. From what Stephen had said, the ‘ghost in the machine’ was in charge of everything, and they’d have to deal with it before they worried any more about Edward. Tony realized that Professor Gordon had never called him back, and he blurted it out before he could stop himself. They all hoped that nothing was wrong out there. Would they have to go out there to deal with the creature? If they did have to go, Terry was going to work on clearing it so they could leave the state. Karen thought they would, but the guys thought that they could lure it back to Detroit. Then what? How did you kill something that was energy and information? What about an EMP, Justin asked. He’d come across something once, back in the Army. He’d heard the guys guarding and transporting it talking; who paid any attention to the grease monkey who was fixing their broken-down truck? They called it a “pinch,” and it was supposed to be a portable EMP generator. He might be able to make something like it.... But how were they going to make the thing hold still? Maybe a Faraday cage, Tony suggested. If they could rig up some way of getting it inside with the ‘pinch’.... The team realized that in spite of their best intentions, they’d come right back around to solving the problem again. They agreed to meet again in the next week to talk more; but for now, they all needed a rest. Frank knew that he wouldn’t get much rest himself. He’d been wondering how Harrington and the creature first got in contact. Knowing the answer to that might help them figure out what to do with both....

Once again, the wee hours of the morning proved unrestful for a few of the occupants of the hospital room. About 4 am, both Leigh and Frank were having extremely disturbing dreams. Frank dreamt that he was the ‘bad guy.’ He was standing in the center of the room, surrounded by dead bodies; and as he looked at them curiously, he realized that they were the rest of his team, and he realized that he was the one who’d killed them. His gun still felt warm in his hand.... He woke with a start. The room was quiet except for some movement from Reg’s bed. Frank slipped his hand under his pillow and felt for his gun. It was right where he left it. He pressed the magazine release while it was still under the pillow, and let the clip drop into his hand as he rolled up onto his elbow and pulled the gun out. It was cold and still fully loaded. But was that how it would end some day, with them all lying dead at his feet...?

Frank laid there thinking. He’d been concerned last night that Teresa make sure she had someone watching her back, someone who didn’t know Edward Harrington from Adam. It occurred to him that he didn’t know if anyone in his own office might have been to one of Harrington’s seminars, and been corrupted by him. He also wondered what might happen if one of their attackers was led to believe that Harrington was dead. He wasn’t going to get back to sleep now, anyway. And he really needed a drink. He’d take care of that first, then head into the office and see if any of his ‘net searches were starting to pay off. He slid the magazine in and used the pillow to muffle the CLICK of it snapping into place. The gun was still in his hand as he stood up. He scanned the room. Leigh was moving slightly; she must have been dreaming. Reg appeared to be asleep. Aiden and Angie were still dead to the world, figuratively speaking. In the bed next to him, Karen slept the sleep of the drugged, a small puddle of drool from her slightly open lips growing on Justin’s slowly rising and falling chest.

Leigh had crawled in to sleep next to Reg, and he was wakened by her movement as she twitched and whimpered beside him for almost 5 minutes. He couldn’t really hear any sounds from anywhere else in the room. But it wasn’t the movement that finally made him open his eyes; it was the movement stopping that disturbed him enough to look. Leigh dreamt she was lying on the bedroom floor in Reg’s house, just waking up. She’d been reliving the past 24 hours--the attack, taking Reg and Angie to the hospital, everyone recovering, sharing a hospital room together, talking with Lt. Worth, meeting Reg’s dad. She opened her eyes and saw the old woman kneeling beside Reg, stabbing him over and over with her knitting needles. Everything Leigh thought had been real, had only been a dream! The last day had only been in her head! Only the attack was real, and they were all going to die! She cried out and reached for Reg. But her leg...the pain was excruciating; it was broken. She pulled herself forward, mentally pushing down the pain and praying that Reg wasn’t dead, and grabbed for the old woman to make her stop.... Then everything went black.

Frank scanned back around the room again, and his eyes met Reg’s as they both noticed Leigh stop moving. “What are you doing with the gun?” Reg asked Frank in a stage whisper. “Go back to sleep, you’re hallucinating,” Frank replied. He turned and gathered a couple things from his bedside table. When he turned back, Reg whispered that he was thirsty. Frank came over and pressed the morphine button, then went to the door and slipped out of the room. Leigh sensed movement far away in the blackness, and she muffled a gasp as she tried to drag herself out of the darkness. She laid there listening for sounds, wondering if anyone else was awake...if anyone else was alive.... When she slowly opened her eyes, afraid of what she would see, all she saw was Reg propped up on his elbow looking down at her sleepily, his newly shaved head wrapped in bandages. But...which one was real? And how would she be able to tell? On a scale of 1 to 10, that one was a 15. If she was awake now, then she never wanted to go to sleep again. She couldn’t bear the thought of reliving that horror. And if she was asleep now, then she hoped she would never wake. Whichever it was, she would have to stay in the state she was in right now. She laid still and shut her eyes, struggling to puzzle it out silently in her head. Reg saw Leigh’s eyes open and look at him before shutting again. Since she seemed to be OK, he laid back to let her get back to sleep, and drifted off himself

A few hours later, about 7am on Nov. 2, Leigh listened to the squeaking of the meal cart rolling down the hallway. It stopped, then got closer, stopped, then got closer, until it stopped at their room. The others were just starting to stir too. At least they were all lucky enough to have slept undisturbed. She might never sleep again. She’d spent the past few hours mentally charting each and every sound--the slow breathing and occasional coughs and sniffles of the others; the soft beeps, clicks and whooshes of the IV machines and monitors; the squeak of the nurses’ rubber-soled shoes on the tile floors; the scratch of the nurse’s pen on someone’s chart as she made notes about their current BP and respiration. Justin rolled slightly and let Karen slip gently off his chest onto his arm. He started to stretch, stiff from lying in the same position all night, and winced at the pain along the left side of his chest. Luckily, Karen didn’t notice. If she found out that it was uncomfortable for him to have her sleeping next to him, she wouldn’t do it again until he was fully healed. But not having her there by his side would be more uncomfortable for him. He wanted her there, even if his ribs hurt, even if...um...eww...she drooled on his chest. Guess he’d have to ask for a new scrub shirt.

Karen and Angie stretched as the orderly brought in everyone’s breakfasts and got the trays moved around. He didn’t even say anything about how everyone had doubled-up in the beds. Word had gotten around that you didn’t bother wondering about these people; they were all a little weird. Leigh went in the bathroom and splashed water on her face, hoping it would mask her tiredness and discomfort. It didn’t. But the others knew that Leigh sometimes had bad dreams, and she would talk about them if and when she wanted to. Reg was still on the morphine and the feeding tube, so they hadn’t brought him any food. And Aiden was still out cold. But everyone noticed that Frank wasn’t there to eat what he’d been brought. Reg told them he thought Frank had left sometime during the night. They weren’t happy about it, because there had been an unspoken agreement that nobody went anywhere alone right now. But of all of them, they all thought that Frank was the most likely to survive without back-up. And Tony...? He’d said something last night after Teresa had left about going out to find some beer, and he’d never come back. But he often disappeared without telling them, called away on business. They all hoped he was OK, and wondered where he’d gone this time. Actually it wasn’t as far away as they thought. He’d run into Anne on his way out. She’d been rotated to days and was just getting off work, and the two left together.

Karen wrinkled her nose at the...stuff...they called food. But at least this morning she didn’t have the urge to throw-up that she’d had yesterday. She was going to stop at a coffee shop on her way to class and get something to eat, she told the others. She had realized as she was waking up that she hadn’t even called in to cancel her office hours yesterday, and she felt bad that students might have come looking for her when she didn’t even have the decency to have a note posted on her door. Her leg was stiff, but otherwise she actually felt pretty good this morning. So there was no reason she shouldn’t teach her classes. Leigh immediately offered to go with Karen. She wanted to do a little research in Wayne’s library while Karen was in class, and she had to call Audra to meet her for lunch. Since the two wouldn’t be staying together all day, and Frank had mentioned wanting to keep an eye on Leigh when she had that lunch with Audra, Angie offered to go with them too. Karen would be pretty safe alone with her students, so Angie could trail Leigh to her lunch date.

Justin looked around. That would leave the three guys there to suffer the tortures of the nurses alone. Damn, and they didn’t even have anything to entertain themselves except the TV--and that didn’t seem to have any of the decent cable channels. Maybe Karen could get his laptop from home for him...? Karen reminded him that she didn’t have a car there since she’d come to the hospital in the ambulance. Yesterday, Karen, Leigh and Frank had used the car Frank’s co-workers had brought him when they brought his laptop and stuff. But Frank was gone for now. And so was Tony, with ‘Marcus.’ Karen thought for a minute. She had a long break at lunchtime; she could always take a cab out to Reg’s to get Justin’s pick-up, then swing past the house and get the laptop. Aiden and Reg looked longingly at Justin as Karen said that. Maybe they could share it somehow.... That reminded Karen that she didn’t have a laptop anymore, either. She and Leigh both had theirs running at Reg’s when the power blew. Suddenly, Justin realized something. They did still have the phone in the room, and you could get almost anything over the phone if you knew who to call.

Justin would call his cousin Timmy, he told them, to order new laptops for anyone who needed them. Timmy’d get them together pronto and they’d all be ‘connected’ again by the end of the day. And speaking of being connected, none of them but Frank and Angie had new cells yet. He’d order those too. Leigh commented on the fact the Dee had learned some ‘special abilities’ during her years in ‘The Fight’, including a way of communicating without using her mouth. Reg started to snicker, and then Justin, and Angie was the first to see what direction their minds had gone in from that comment. A minute later Karen turned a little pink, and Leigh stared at Reg. Everyone had noticed that Reg seemed a little more ‘whacked out’ than he had the evening before, and even he couldn’t connect it with Frank’s “help” before Frank left that morning. But as he started to comment on what Leigh had just said, he wondered why he was having trouble again with preventing the weird thoughts in his brain from spilling out. “Dee...,” Reg said; “She’s HOT...oh, and married.” He looked sheepishly at Leigh. “You’re hot too...and...uh...widowed.... Oh, sorry....” Angie grabbed her pillow and threw it across the room at Reg. And in spite of the noise and nearby movement, Aiden was still sleeping.

All she’d meant was telepathy, Leigh told them; and the guys finally quieted down. She wondered aloud how she would get to her lunch date with Audra, since she didn’t have a car nearby either. Karen suggested that there were a lot of places close to campus, or she could have Audra pick her up on campus and drop her back off. By now, the three were ready to go. Leigh offered to pick up whatever Timmy was making them, when it was ready, and Justin told her he’d let Timmy know. Then the women left. It was only a couple blocks to Karen’s office, and Leigh could call Audra from there. And Karen gave Leigh her swipe card to get access to the special collections stacks at the library. If Leigh was going to find anything pertinent to their usual line of research, she’d probably find it in the special collections. Leigh called Audra right away and she picked up on the first ring. “I’m so glad you called,” Audra said almost breathlessly into the phone. Leigh could hear noise in the background, but at first couldn’t make out what it was. Audra had tried to call Leigh’s cell last night, but only got the voice mail. (“Because my phone got fried and I haven’t replaced it yet,” Leigh thought to herself.) She had to rush off to Milan (so THAT was the noise--the flights being called at the airport), so they’d have to reschedule. That was fine with Leigh. She’d have a little more time for research now. And by this afternoon she’d have her cell phone again. Audra could just call when she got back into town.

Justin called Timmy’s office as soon as Karen and the others were gone. But it was only 8:30am, and Timmy didn’t answer, a young woman did. Timmy wouldn’t be in until 10am she told Justin, and Justin explained who he was and what he needed. The woman told Justin that Jeff, who Justin knew was one of the other ‘geeks’ that Timmy had working there, could help him get the order placed and she transferred Justin. Justin started with Reg’s laptop. He tried relaying info from Reg to Jeff, then just handed the phone to Reg. Reg wasn’t in the best condition to explain what he wanted, but Jeff was able to use the clues that Reg managed to drop to inch their way toward a complete order. Then Reg handed the phone back to Justin. While they’d been working on Reg’s order, Justin had worked out what Karen needed for her laptop and basically got a second for Leigh. He ordered new phones for all of them, on a plan that allowed them free calls to each other, and got “Borg implants” for everyone too. And a PDA for Reg. And a voice recorder for himself, to replace the one he always carried, that also got ‘killed’ at Reg’s the other night. It took about an hour, but Jeff ended the call with a laundry list of expensive equipment sold. They’d have it ready by 2pm, he told Justin. Justin told him that Leigh would pick it up, and Jeff told him that unless she was coming with a truck, he’d better just let them deliver it. Justin warned Jeff that he’d have to deliver to the hospital, and Jeff shrugged it off. He’d heard about Timmy’s cousin....

Next up was some real food. Justin called their regular coffee shop. Since he always made sure to order enough to share with them, the nurses would just turn a blind eye to the blatant disregard of proper nutrition. When that was done, the room got quiet for a while. A few minutes before the food showed up, Aiden went from sound asleep to wide awake in a split second. He tried to sit, but when he felt his skin pull where the stitches held it together, he thought better of it. Hell, even if he could sit up, he wouldn’t be able to get the bumpers put down by himself. He squeezed the ‘call’ button. A couple minutes later, a nurse came in and helped Aiden get to the bathroom and back into bed. By then, the food had come and the room got quiet again as Justin and Aiden ate, and Reg enjoyed the last of his morphine.

In a city as large as Detroit, it wasn’t that hard for Frank to find some place to get a drink, even at 4:30am. When his tension had relaxed enough to allow him to be productive, Frank headed into his office. He wanted to get Harrington added to the “watch list,” and get in his request to have the financial guys start tracking down his history. He also wanted to start another data search for strange electronic occurrences and cross reference that with Harrington’s movements. Oh, and Justin had asked for a hard-copy map to plot this stuff out on. Might not hurt. Sometimes the computer searches looked for such small details they missed the big picture. Frank headed out of his office and over to the reference library where they kept the maps. As he walked, he decided to start finding out just how corrupted his office was. He wasn’t just looking at the DHS people. He was looking at everyone, CIA, FBI, all of them. He stopped the first person he passed and asked if they knew Edward Harrington. This guy just looked at Frank and asked “Who?” like he thought it was someone in the department. The next guy had heard of him. Didn’t he do those ‘feel-good’ type seminars? The third person was a woman he recognized as an info analyst with the CIA. He knew that she had degrees in both Math and Psychology, so she wasn’t dumb and she wasn’t likely to be easily brainwashed. Yes, she knew Edward Harrington! “Edward Harrington is simply wonderful! He’s the most caring, giving, kind, generous man I’ve ever met.”

Frank asked if he could hear more about him and the seminars, and the woman was eager to talk about it. They sat in one of the interview rooms, “so they wouldn’t get interrupted,” Frank told her, and he asked if it was OK for him to tape their conversation, so he had proof of how great the seminars were when he tried to get the approval to schedule one for his team. Then he “interviewed” her. She’d gone to the seminar in Langley, after the team she was with had completed a big case. Frank asked if she could tell him a little more about the seminars, what they did in them. She started telling him about the things that happened there, but Frank quickly realized that there was no depth to what she told him. She didn’t so much describe occurrences as she read him the agenda of topics that were covered. She could tell him precisely when and where it was, and who else went with her (Frank made a list, ‘so he could find out more before maybe scheduling a seminar for his own team’), but she couldn’t tell him details about the ‘team-building exercise’ itself or any of the other activities they’d supposedly done. But he also could tell that she wasn’t trying to hide anything. She was quite open about the experience; it was as if she had just forgotten all the details about it. She was certain, though, that it was well worth the time, that it helped a lot. Frank asked if she thought it would help with his people and she was sure it would, and she even pulled out a ‘spare card she just happened to have in her wallet,’ so he could contact Harrington’s company and schedule something.

As they were both getting up, Frank asked why she was at work so early. She had a kid, she told him, so she worked crazy hours so she could have a little time with him during the day. It was actually a pretty good arrangement for her, she told him. She chatted a little about the current case she was working on. She’d been in the hall to take a break and let the problem she’d run into gel a bit in her mind. It worked out great that she’d been able to help him at the same time! Frank watched her go on her way. If this was brainwashing, it was very, very well done and almost undetectable. He studied her back as she walked down the hall, but he got no sense of ongoing contact with evil. Frank went back to his office with the map he’d gone out for, and turned the monitor on. He was starting to get back some results on the correlation between Harrington’s travels and death cults and other strange or unusual disappearances. About 1/3 of the time, Harrington was in the vicinity just before the occurrence, about 1/3 of the time he was there just after, and the last third there was no relation at all.

Frank got up to stretch his legs. He was going to have to avoid giving assignments to people who had gone to one of Harrington’s seminars. He just had to figure out how to compile that list. He stopped another guy who happened to be walking by, and it turned out this one had been to one of the seminars too. He invited the guy to get some coffee and tell him about the seminar. Like the woman, this guy was eager to talk about it and had no problem with Frank taping the conversation. It had been a different seminar than the one the woman had gone to, since she was CIA and he was FBI. Different place, different time, different list of attendees. Yet the way this guy described it was hauntingly familiar to the way the CIA analyst talked about hers. The same listing of the agenda, the same enthusiasm, and the same disturbing lack of details. It was like their brains were filling in the gaps in their memories with details they somehow knew they should have had but didn’t. Frank thanked the guy for telling him about this. No sense of this guy having contact with evil either. Now all Frank had to do was figure out how to get all this into a report to Birkoff and get across how dangerous Harrington might be, without sounding paranoid.

As the day progressed, Frank continued to study the search results that were trickling in, and he continued to question everyone he saw about knowing Harrington, and he interviewed all of them who gave him the little ‘Edward is wonderful’ speech. About 2pm, Frank got up to stretch his legs again, and he saw his boss step off the elevator. Jared was walking with a cane now, but Frank could tell he still was having trouble walking for long distances. He invited Jared into the office that used to be Jared’s. Jared was there to tell Frank that Frank could not take any part in the investigation now. Jared understood that the shootings were ‘clean,’ but they were still talking about civilians being shot by a DHS agent. If Frank weren’t the very man that Jared himself had hand-picked to head this office, neither one of them would be there right now. By all rights, Frank should be sitting at home right now on paid leave. And Jared should be letting IA handle this. But he trusted and respected Frank too much to let him just dangle.

Frank told Jared that he didn’t want just anyone on this case. Jared asked, “Do I want to know why?” “No,” Frank replied. Jared asked who Lt. Worth was, whose name was in the report as the local lead on the case. “A good cop who had the misfortune of wandering into other cases that I’ve worked on,” Frank told him. And was this the kind of shit that Kat had been involved with? Frank studied Jared. He could see the grief cloud Jared’s eyes as he mentioned Kat. “It was,” Frank said simply. Jared closed his eyes. He’d never wanted to know about that, either, he told Frank. Whoever Jared put on this case, Frank told him, must be able to put a ‘normal’ spin on it when it closed. Otherwise, it just wasn’t going to be explainable. And the person had to be someone who hadn’t had previous contact with Edward Harrington. Frank started describing what he could of the case to Jared, the concerns they had about Edward Harrington, the way people who’d had contact with him acted and the newest problem--that Harrington had done seminars for the government and the military. “Crap,” Jared exclaimed. “I think he’s done seminars for Halliburton.” His eyes met Frank’s. “Maybe when Cheney was with them.”

Then Frank let Jared listen to the interviews he’d been taping all day. Jared rubbed his forehead as he listened to the first few interviews. He waved his hand to make Frank stop the tape. He was getting a headache now. “This isn’t your garden variety brainwashing,” Frank said. “No,” Jared agreed wearily. He straightened up in the chair and told Frank to make sure that he passed everything, even requests for paperclips, by him. There would be very little likelihood that he would turn down any request. Frank warned him that it was going to take a lot of grunt work to track down every person in the government and the military who’d been to the seminars. Jared nodded. He would have the people. And Harrington actually spoke at least 4 or 5 languages and did seminars all over the world. Again Jared nodded. This was big and he understood that it would take a lot of work. But it couldn’t be ignored. Just the fact that the woman from the CIA, who had no real influence, still carried around Harrington’s business cards and had the contact info in her Palm.... If he had this kind of influence higher up, and in other countries as well.... The implications were just too horrible to imagine. Frank asked if Jared would let him know when he was allowed to ‘carry’ again. Jared told him he would, and he would forget that he saw the piece Frank had under his jacket. Jared got up to leave. “Sorry about the headache,” Frank told him. “Welcome back. I was just getting used to having the couch....”

The day passed pretty uneventfully for the others. Karen taught her classes, and Leigh did research, and Angie tried to entertain herself and hone her surveillance skills by tailing Leigh. Several people asked Karen about her leg. She told each one, with a straight face, that she’d hurt it tripping over a dead body in the catacombs under Detroit. Chris looked hurt when she said it, and told her that all she had to say was that it was none of his business. Karen told him she just thought that was a more interesting story than “someone bumped into me and I’m so clumsy that I hurt it trying to stay upright.” He laughed. A couple of the students in her Intro class got all wide-eyed, thinking that maybe there were secret catacombs under Detroit. Karen couldn’t help but laugh at that. All three women went to Reg’s when Karen went to get the truck. She dropped Leigh and Angie off to get their own vehicles, and they all met back up at the hospital to drop off Justin’s laptop and leave the vehicles in the lot there, before heading back to campus for the afternoon.

Unfortunately, Leigh’s research was going nowhere. She was trying to find out what Edward was doing between ‘62, when he got his Bachelor’s, and ‘76, when he got his MBA. But she was finding nothing in any electronic format, using the library’s computers to search the ‘net. She’d hoped to find some trace that he’d been active, published books or papers, theses that had been loaded onto some website. But it was as if everything electronic had been cleaned and sanitized of any reference to Edward Harrington, to an inhuman level. Doing a road trip right now may not have been a great idea, but it seemed like they might have to resort to that to get information directly from Iowa or the Wharton School at UPenn or even the little town in Texas where Edward came from.

As promised, the new electronics were delivered by 2pm (bless Timmy’s heart), and the men were all happily reconnected to the world shortly after. Justin boosted Aiden’s energy when he noticed Aiden was still a little tired-looking, and Aiden promptly went over and Healed Reg. And he was even still able to get back into bed by himself and expressed some interest in food afterward. He must be getting better himself. When the nurses came in to check on Reg, they were amazed at his wonderful constitution. He’d suffered a serious trauma, but he seemed to be doing amazingly well and was recovering nicely from the skull surgery. They even began to cut back some on his morphine dosage, without realizing that Reg had already been cutting back himself.

Even Justin noticed the change in Reg as the afternoon went on. He wasn’t touching the morphine button at all, and he was beginning to flirt with the nurses when they came in. He must be getting better. But Aiden needed to be careful about Healing Reg too fast. There was no way the hospital staff was going to let a guy who’d just had a plate put in his head walk out after a few days, even if Reg could get up and do head stands. So there wasn’t much point in Aiden wearing himself out to get Reg Healed up faster. He glanced up over the laptop at Reg, and out of the corner of his eye noticed Drew lying on his back batting at Reg’s catheter bag. “Hey!” He pointed it out to the guys, and got up to get the cat before he ended up drenched. That’s all they needed, to have to try to hide a cat that smelled like urine. And you knew that if the cat got wet, he wasn’t going to sit calmly and wait to be cleaned up. Not that Justin wanted to do THAT anyway.... But as soon as he moved Drew, the cat went right back to the bag. Like cats do, he wanted to play with the one thing he knew the humans DIDN’T want him playing with. Justin tried playing with him, petting him, holding him. But after a minute, Drew went right back to the bag. All they could do was hope to move fast enough to get the cat out of the way if it opened the bag.

Just before he left for the day, Frank received some new files. The financial guys had gotten Harrington’s tax records from the IRS. Well, some of them. It looked like Harrington did pay taxes between ‘62 and ‘76. But the files were corrupted, and they didn’t have any details about where he was getting the money he paid taxes on or where he was living when he paid them. Frank saved the files and closed up the laptop, and headed back to the hospital to check on the others. Karen, Leigh and Angie had gotten back a little before 5pm, and Frank came in about 6. As soon as he gave Justin the map, Justin laid it out on the bed and began to pore over it. At least as much as he could with a cat in the middle of it. All day Drew had been playing with things he shouldn’t while Justin tried to get him to play with him. NOW, all of a sudden, the cat had to be there. He picked the cat up and moved him. Drew went right back. He tried putting him in his bathrobe pocket. A lot of squirming and a minute later the cat was right in the middle of the section Justin wanted to look at. Karen tried to keep from laughing and ended up snorting and choking after Justin’s third attempt at controlling the contrary ball of fur.

Reg wanted to hear what Frank had found out. He’d been cooped up in the hospital all day, half of it with no reasonable connection to the outside world. Frank retorted that at least Reg had nurses. And Reg replied that they were only touching him in “inappropriate and wholly uninteresting ways,” so that didn’t count for entertainment. Reg asked if Frank was still able to get access to the DHS files. Frank said he had good news, creepy news and really scary news. The team opted for the good news first. Frank told them that the good news was that he has access and that the team was not in trouble for the shootings. Karen asked if Jared was in town, and when Frank confirmed that he was, they all asked how he was. Walking with a cane--but walking nonetheless--and getting a headache already over this case.

He continued with the creepy news. Did they know that in addition to teaching his seminars all over the world, Edward also speaks six languages? Karen remembered her mom saying something about it, but it hadn’t meant much at the time. Good, but did they realize that he also did work with high-level military and government groups including the DoD and the CIA, and military contractors like Halliburton? The team shot glances around the room at each other. This was starting to get scary now; it was much bigger than they’d anticipated. Finally the scary news. It did not appear that Edward was being controlled by the electrical creature. He was doing this all on his own, and as far as Frank could tell, it was completely mundane in a very scary way. The people he’d interviewed that day could not give details about the seminars. It was like they had been GIVEN their memories of them. And there didn’t seem to be any sense of ongoing Unknown contact or control. That level of brainwashing should have taken years to complete, and Edward seemed to be doing it over the course of a weekend. This was the stuff of not-so-secret government research, and the research Frank knew of said it couldn’t be done.

The room was quiet for a minute as everyone digested this information. Had Frank considered that Edward might have him under surveillance, if he knows that Frank is looking at him? Frank had. Had anyone considered where Edward was and what he’d been doing when Stephen had been killed? More quiet as they all pondered that question. It prompted Leigh to explain the problems she was having with her research, and that she was considering a road trip to the schools for information. Everyone agreed that no one was doing that alone, and they even questioned the wisdom of flying commercially, given what had happened at Reg’s. Maybe Reg or Tony could get access to a private plane that they could fly without filing flight plans, so Edward couldn’t find them. Reg explained that filing them in hard-copy would slow things down sufficiently, without having to worry about getting chased by BATF for smuggling. They discussed the possibility of getting all their info in hard copy from now on, in case Edward had a way of tracking anything they did electronically. Frank told them that asking for everything in hard-copy would bring a ton of attention. It would be too unusual in this day and age. But he could call for mandatory hard-copy back-up of everything, which wasn’t that unusual, in case stuff was being corrupted or intercepted between the source and him; and he could get government flunkies to do their legwork in Iowa, Penn, and Texas so the team wasn’t having to run to hell and gone for it; and he could make sure that anyone that was doing work for him had never had contact with Edward. Justin took a break from playing with the cat and ordered dinner; and as they ate, Justin outlined his plans for modifying the paintball guns for Frank.

Everyone was settling down for the evening, when Karen when over to Frank. She wondered if she could talk to him. They didn’t have to go somewhere private or anything, since it was kind of the stuff she’d talked to them all about earlier. But.... Karen was afraid that the hospital shrinks would come looking for her since she’d skipped the appointment the intern had made for her for today. She understood that the intern was trying to be helpful. But...the last time she got dragged to talk to a shrink, she ended up committed. She couldn’t let that happen again. And she needed Frank to promise that he wouldn’t use anything she said to do that to her. Frank told her he’d never do that. He was a little surprised that she was coming to him. Although they all knew he was doing his internship for his psychiatry license, it wasn’t like he usually gave off the “talk to me, I’m a good listener” vibes.

She was still having trouble with what had happened at Reg’s, Karen told him. Not about shooting the kid with the chain. He was an active threat. But the woman.... She’d shot her without even the slightest hesitation or thought about her being unarmed. Frank asked how she felt about that. Scared. Scared that she’d actually pointed a gun at a real person and shot them. Scared that she’d done it without thinking. Fr. Colin said it wasn’t a sin under the circumstances, especially since Karen hadn’t killed her. Frank asked Karen what she believed about that. All Fr. Colin could tell her was what the church said, Frank told her. He couldn’t tell her what she felt in her heart. Karen studied her shirt hem. Well, she hadn’t killed the woman, but...it still felt awful to have shot someone like that. Especially when she could have done something else. What else would she have done differently? There were things she could have done to protect her friends rather than attacking their assailants. She screwed up. She knew that. Pulling her gun first wasn’t the best thing she could have done. Normal people didn’t do that. No they didn’t, Frank agreed. Across the room, Angie snorted back a laugh. Unless they’ve been trained to do it, Frank added. “Maybe we could do some training, then?” Karen asked.

But that was part of the problem, too, she said. How could she go to anyone else and explain it? She couldn’t describe the situation without it sounding crazy, unless the person she told knew about the Unknown too. Frank told her that he would certainly always be ready to listen if she needed to talk to him. Then Karen asked, almost in a whisper, “And the dreams? Will they go away?” Justin had to use all his willpower to resist the urge to wrap his arms around Karen and cry for her. He would never have wished this kind of pain for her, and he would take it all onto himself if he could. It was different for every person, Frank told her, and it had a lot to do with how quickly and how well she came to terms with what she’d done. But he could get her some pills to help her sleep, and she could use them if she wanted, or not. And they could work on it some more in a day or two if she liked. And the shrinks from the hospital? He would let the hospital know that she was his patient now, and they should leave her alone, Frank said. Karen had been on the verge of tears a couple of times during their talk, and a couple spilled out now as her tension released. She stood, and before Frank could turn back to his laptop, Karen hugged him and said “Thank you.” Justin and Angie tensed up as she did this, both expecting Frank to pull his gun. They’d never seen anyone get in physical contact with Frank and not have him pull the gun. But he didn’t. He was a little confused about why she would do that, and it showed on his face. But if it made her feel better, he supposed he could stand it. It was kind of his job as a psychiatrist, now, wasn’t it?