When the six got to the coffee shop, it was clear that Aiden was a regular there. As he walked past the front counter, he picked up a pot of coffee and a mug and headed straight back to his usual table in the corner. “If you guys want any of this, grab yourself a mug,” he told the others over his shoulder. Karen wasn’t planning on staying up late enough to burn off coffee, so she sipped on a glass of water. She’d had a little more to drink than any of the others, since that was a part of clubbing for her, and she needed to rehydrate.

Justin was already wired enough. After what they’d encountered at the Blue Note, he had plans beginning to take shape in his brain for a new take on an old weapon for everyone. But Frank, at least, was heading for Terry’s ‘floater’ scene when they left here, so he needed a little fuel. It was 3:30am now, and he wasn’t sure just how much longer he’d be up. “So, obviously this is a different...” Aiden started.

“Perpetrator?” Leigh filled in the word Aiden seemed to be hunting for.

“Yes, I guess that’s one word to describe it,” Aiden agreed.

“I think we met the one who did this,” Leigh told him. “He’s playing sax at the Blue Note, Deacon Blue.”

“Good enough to put the world on hold,” Frank added. The team explained what had happened there.

“So what else do you know about him?” Aiden asked.

“The waitress said he’s from New Orleans,” Justin said.

“What do the liner notes say, Leigh?” Karen asked. “You got his CD, right?”

“They are from New Orleans,” Leigh said, scanning the back of the jewel case. “Deacon Blue and the Boys. Sam plays the bass and Tone the drums. No last names. There’s a website.”

“So what can you tell us about Sue’s wounds?” Justin asked Aiden.

“My patient was awake for a few minutes before I sedated her. Miss Charles is a secretary for National City Bank,” Aiden told them. “She told me that she thought she’d fainted because she’d only had a salad and 3 crackers for dinner before going out. Stupid diets. If she hadn’t been eating too little in the first place, the amount of blood loss shouldn’t have been enough to make her pass out.” It seemed to irritate Aiden that the woman was so concerned about her weight that she refused to eat sensibly. “All three sets of marks are similar in span and depth. I’m willing to say they were all caused by the same person.”

“How deep were they?” Justin asked. “I mean, they didn’t look savage like Vanessa’s. Were they just deep enough to do the job, or what?”

“That’s basically it,” Aiden said. “Just enough to get the blood flowing.”

“Was the choker on her when she was brought in?” Justin asked. “She’d been wearing one to cover the older marks on her neck.”

Aiden blushed when Justin mentioned covering marks on her neck, and Angie smirked. The others suddenly realized that Aiden had his shirt collar carefully pulled around his neck so that only the front was slightly open. And of course they all stared at him until he ‘broke.’

“OK, yes...I’m hiding a hickey,” Aiden said, reddening further. “It really wouldn’t be appropriate for my patients to see it.”

“Anything we need to worry about?” Frank teased Angie.

She shrugged. “He tastes good.”

“What’s amazing is that he’s embarrassed,” Justin said. “Why be embarrassed about a hot chick giving you a hickey? You’re lucky I don’t completely remember the ‘hickey chant’ we used to do in high school.”

“I’m embarrassed because my girlfriend enjoys talking about our sex life to our friends,” Aiden moaned.

“I heard that’s a sign of a healthy sex life,” Justin told him.

“I think she’s just compensating for something,” Frank teased.

“Wait...are you saying that Angie has a small dick?” Justin laughed.

“I could hurt you,” Angie growled, warning him.

“You’ll need to talk to Karen about that,” Justin told her.

“What?” Karen asked, surprised to hear her name come up in this conversation.

“She’s the one that keeps my social calendar,” Justin continued.

“Did I miss something?” Karen asked, starting to turn a little pink. It had been a long day by now and the Sphere and Shield she’d done earlier, plus the late hour, had her worn out. Her brain was starting to shut down for the night, and she’d fallen off the conversation train long before it jumped its tracks from Sue to Angie hurting Justin.

“Angie is threatening Justin for teasing her about giving Aiden a hickey,” Frank explained, summing up the huge tangent for Karen.

“Please don’t hurt my husband,” Karen pleaded, grinning. She found it funny how often she had to say that to Angie, protecting her big, strong, former jock, ex-GI husband from the tough little female former-Marine.

“Um, could we get back to the point?” Leigh asked. The others settled down

“I got the impression that Deacon seemed to think I was part of some group,” Frank told them. He related his conversation in the alley with the vampire. “I’m not sure that he knows specifically about SAVE, but maybe he thought I was with some team of vampire hunters or something like that.”

“Well, there must be other people that do this kind of thing, right?” Leigh said. “And by the way, thanks for throwing yourself on the ‘Deacon grenade,’ too. It seemed to keep his attention off the rest of us.”

“That was the point,” Frank said, nodding. “Not only did waving at him keep him from consciously noticing that I wasn’t the only person in the room unaffected, but following him out back kept him from having the time to think about the incident enough to realize it later.”

“Well, we all appreciate it,” Karen agreed.

“The strange thing is,” Leigh asked, “why didn’t his ‘time stop’ affect us?”

“Ya know, now that I think about it,” Aiden said, “I seem to remember reading something in a report or Drew mentioning something about ‘time stopping,’ and about some creatures that are able to do that.”

“Wait!” Karen said, leaning across the table and putting out her hand to stop Aiden from continuing. “Reports? You mean somebody actually puts out reports about this stuff?!”

“Well, they used to, back in the day...before...” Aiden said, shrugging.

“Before ‘That Day’,” Leigh said, and the way she said it sounded like the words were capitalized. Dee wouldn’t, and probably couldn’t, tell Leigh everything about what happened back then. But Leigh had picked up enough from the things Dee said, and the things she left unsaid, to know that life as Envoys knew it changed in a monumental way when SAVE, around the world, was almost wiped out in a single day’s events.

Aiden had gotten a slightly more complete and less emotional briefing about those events from Fr. Andrew. But his impression of what happened and the changes it brought about was no less bleak. Aiden shook his head. “Anyway, those little pins I gave you, that Drew gave me, supposedly keep it from working.”

“And it must be something about the design itself, not just them coming from Fr. Andrew,” Frank added. “Because I had mine before I met him or the rest of you, and it worked for me too.” Frank looked at his watch. It was almost 4am, and he still wanted to see what Terry had found. “So, Angie, you comin’ with me?” Frank asked.

“Sure, just a sec,” Angie replied. She turned and planted a lip-lock on Aiden that should’ve caused suctioning sounds to echo through the room.

“Wow. I’ll refrain from doing the ‘Kissing Chant’,” Justin said.

“The ‘Kissing Chant’?” Frank, Karen and Leigh asked quizzically.

“Yeah, you know... ‘Aiden and Angie, sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G....’” Justin chanted. They all rolled their eyes, and Karen thought for a second that her contacts might get stuck on the back of her eyeballs.

“Maybe you should take Justin home now, Karen,” Frank suggested, “and think of some way to break him of his chanting habit.”

“Me? What am I supposed to do?” Karen asked.

“Well, everything does seem to be leading back to sex for him this evening....” Frank said.

Now Karen was as red as Aiden had been earlier. Angie turned around and smirked, then stuck her tongue out at Justin.

“Mind if I come along with you and Angie?” Leigh asked Frank. She had been thinking about Deacon, and was trying to formulate a question for doing a Clairvoyant/Prescient Dream later. It would be the first time she would be trying out on her own the methods Frank had been teaching her for controlling the dreams and remembering them afterwards. So far, every time she’d had one of those dreams accidentally, it had been a terrifying thing and she’d woken extremely agitated and disturbed. She didn’t want to go home and do it alone in the condo, and was going to ask to sleep over at Angie and Aiden’s place. But if Angie was going with Frank, that meant she’d have to stick with Angie.

“Your choice,” Frank told her. Floaters were never attractive. If she wanted to get up close and personal with Terry’s case, that was fine with him. He’d have just as soon gone home and read the report later. But if this was connected with Vanessa, there’d be things he’d be looking for that the coroner wouldn’t. He needed to see the body himself to know. He pulled out his phone.

“Worth,” Terry answered her phone.

“It’s me. We’re done here,” Frank told her. “So where are you? Is it worth coming by?”

Terry gave him her location. “I’m gonna be here a while. They’re still trolling for parts,” she said. She sounded more than tired; she sounded weary.

“We’ll be there shortly,” Frank told her, “with coffee.”

“Thanks,” Terry said.

“We’ll leave our phones on,” Karen told the others, as they headed back over to the hospital to get Karen’s and Frank’s cars. “You call us if you need us.”

Leigh nodded. Then she and Angie rode with Frank back to Karen and Justin’s house, so that Angie and Leigh could collect their vehicles. The three headed down to the riverfront from there; and Justin and Karen went inside.

Karen was halfway up the stairs before she realized that Justin wasn’t behind her. She came back down and could see the light on out in the garage. A minute later, Justin ran in and grabbed a pencil and paper from the kitchen and ran back out to the garage. “You’d better be to bed before I fall asleep,” Karen told him on his way back out the back door.

“Why do you think I’m running?” Justin asked over his shoulder. Karen grinned and headed upstairs. A short time later Justin came up. “I can put it together in the morning,” he told her, not saying what “it” was, “but I needed to get it down on paper right away.” Neither did much talking after that.

As Frank, Angie and Leigh pulled up to the docks, they could see that one whole section was ‘roped’ off with yellow crime scene tape. They hadn’t even gotten to the tape when a uniformed officer led Terry over to them.

“C’mon in,” she said, lifting the tape for them. She must’ve had the ‘uni’ keeping an eye out for them.

“Well?” Frank asked her.

“I don’t know if it’s related yet,” Terry told him. “We haven’t found the head yet.” Frank raised his eyebrows. “See for yourself,” Terry said, leading him over to a body bag lying on the dock and squatting down beside it. Leigh and Angie followed the two, but stood back a little as Frank squatted down opposite Terry and the two unzipped the bag. The first thing they could see was shoulders and a torso topped by the ragged stump of the neck.

Frank studied it with the eye of a trained forensics investigator...and a doctor. It didn’t look like any tool had been used to separate the head from the neck. In fact, what it looked like was that the head had just been twisted around and around until it came off. “What about the rest?” Frank asked.

“The arms and legs are present, if not completely accounted for,” Terry told him. “Female, but we determined that more by the ‘absence’ than the ‘presence.’” Frank raised his eyebrows again, and Terry pulled the zipper down further. Both arms had been dislocated, pulled from the sockets but not fully removed. One of the legs was turned around. “Legs aren’t supposed to go that way, are they,” Leigh commented glumly.

“The coroner’s best guess is that she was in the water a couple days, maybe three,” Terry said. “But it’s been kinda warm, so he’s not sure yet.”

Frank rocked back on his heels and studied the body, starting with the general observations. He kept up a blunt running commentary of what he saw. “She was Caucasian, late 20s or early 30s max. The only clothing left is her underpants.”

“What remains of her pubic hair is brown,” Terry said, reading Frank’s thoughts from the direction of his gaze.

“Assuming her head was proportional, she was tall, maybe six foot,” he continued. “And she had been muscular and small-breasted. At least, from what I can tell. There isn’t much left of the fleshier parts. A lot of the chest and...(he pulled on a pair of latex gloves and rolled the body gently onto one side) all of the buttocks are down to raw meat. The soft, fleshy parts are the first to get eaten by scavengers. Possibly a body-builder,” Frank mused. “It took a great deal of physical strength to yank her arms like that. There’s plenty of evidence of post-mortem tearing and chewing by rats... fish... crabs... But there’s nothing to indicate that any cutting was done, even at the neck. And while there isn’t enough there to be totally sure, it doesn’t even look like the neck was partially torn out, like Vanessa’s had been, to facilitate the ripping off.”

Frank got closer, to refine his examination of the body. “Given the time in the water it’s hard to tell, but I don’t see anything that looks like defensive wounds. And from the musculature, she would’ve been able to defend herself if she could have. On the other hand, ignoring the bloating, I don’t think the body’s been in the water any more than 24 hours. There’s evidence of rat bites, and while rats can swim, they generally don’t eat while they’re swimming. Maybe it was under a dock for a while before ending up in the water. Falling in, getting picked up by a wave...or being tossed in. And if that is the case, that’ll make it even harder to determine time of death with the recent weather.”

“I’ll get you a copy of the coroner’s report as soon as it’s ready.” Terry told him.

“Any scars?” Leigh asked.

“Or tattoos?” Angie added.

Frank looked over the body again. “No tats that I can see, but there’s lots of skin missing. The coroner might find something at autopsy. ALS can sometimes show up the subdermal ink. Looks like she had knee surgery, but a while ago. It’s long-healed. And it was laparoscopic, so no pins or joint replacements to get serial numbers off of.”

“The head’ll help with making an ID,” Terry said, “or we can hope her prints are in the system.”

“Getting the prints might be hard with her having been in the water,” Frank said, “but that’s what CSIs are for. And she may not be in the system. Hookers don’t usually have the time or money to get involved in serious body-building. And exotic dancers generally want to be more...well-endowed.”

Frank stood. He’d gotten about all he could from the body. If he were in the lab, he was sure he’d find more. But, again, that’s what the CSIs were for. He pulled off the latex gloves and Terry pointed out the bag that the CSIs collected all their used materials in. All that kind of stuff needed to be accounted for in case trace got transferred onto any of it during the collection process.

“Any chance you might wander back to my place when you’re done tonight?” Terry asked him quietly.

“Are you putting in an official request?” Frank replied, humor flashing in his eyes.

“Well, I wouldn’t kick you out if you’re there when I get home. Not that I know when that’ll be....” Terry said.

“As long as you plan to shower as soon as you get in,” Frank told her.

“I don’t think I could do anything else,” Terry said, wrinkling her nose. “I hate floaters.”

Frank, Leigh and Angie headed back out to their vehicles.

“Listen, Angie,” Leigh stopped her before she put on her helmet. “I was wondering.... I don’t want to impose, but, would it be OK if I slept on your couch? I’ve been thinking about Deacon, trying to figure out what we can do about him, considering what we think he is, and I expect I’ll be having another nightmare tonight.”

“Sure, no problem,” Angie answered. “But you don’t have to stay on the couch. You may as well share the bed. Aiden won’t be back to use it until Tuesday.”

“Thanks,” Leigh said gratefully. She got into her car and followed Angie back to her and Aiden’s place.

Terry walked back out to the end of the dock, to watch the water recovery team work. It was about an hour to sunrise, but there was already the hint of light down-river toward the horizon. Terry hoped that she wasn’t still there to see it come up.

All evening, Frank had been pondering in the back of his mind how to frame the question he wanted to Dream about. The whole thing with Deacon, while he did need to be dealt with, was just a side note to the main problem of the thing that ripped out half of Vanessa’s throat and may have killed at least two other women...and now maybe a third. They needed to figure out what it was, where it was, and how to kill it. That was an awful lot to expect from one Dream, so he wanted to narrow down his focus. And the latter two questions would be easier to answer with research when they had the answer to the first. What was the thing that chewed on Vanessa? He headed over to Terry’s place and went straight to bed, hoping to get the Dream, and its resulting nightmares, out of the way before Terry got home. But as he laid there, trying hard to relax and center his thoughts, he began to regret the coffee he’d had only a couple hours before. He would toss and turn, then finally start to drift off, only to wake suddenly and begin tossing and turning again. This went on for the next three hours. He thought that maybe he was finally drifting off for good when he heard Terry’s key in the lock. He checked his watch. 8am. He rolled over, groaning. Terry, thinking Frank was asleep, wandered quietly past the bed, grabbed her robe, and headed straight into the bathroom. Frank heard the water come on in the tub. Terry undressed in the bathroom because her clothes reeked; and a minute later she shuffled by in her robe, holding the clothes at arm’s length on the way to the small washer in the closet off the hallway.

Frank heard the lid drop shut. When Terry came back into the bedroom, she could see that Frank’s eyes were open and alert. “I’d ask if you want to join me in the shower, but...I don’t want to join me in the shower,” she said. “We never did find the head. Hell, it’s the Detroit River. The thing could be in Canada now.”

“Or it might never have made it into the river...” Frank said ominously.

Terry turned and went into the bathroom without responding. Sometimes, her relationship with Frank notwithstanding, she really regretted having insisted on knowing the whole truth. Frank laid there for a few minutes, until the lingering scent of decomp from Terry’s clothes going through the room twice made him get up and go in search of one of the multitude of scented candles he knew Terry had sitting around the apartment. He lit it and carried it into the bathroom. The room was pretty steamy, and Terry must have been on her third or fourth lathering by now. She gave him a weary smile through the translucent shower door. Frank wasn’t quite used to that yet. Terry had made the switch from a curtain to the door right after the whole thing with the human torches. The things she’d seen at some of those scenes.... She never said anything much about it at the time, but it had really shaken her up. “Thanks for the candle,” she said loudly enough for him to hear her over the water.

A few minutes later, Terry came out of the bathroom wrapped in her robe, with fluffy slippers on her feet, still toweling off her hair. She didn’t really cut a very romantic or erotic picture, but it was the most comfortable, comforting clothing she owned. As she came back into the room after throwing the towel into the washer and starting the load, Frank handed her the glass of scotch he’d poured when he heard the shower turned off.

“Ya know what I really like?” Terry asked, dropping onto the bed. Frank picked up one of her feet and began rubbing it. “Mmmm...besides that.... You understand,” she answered the question for him. “And not just because of the whole psychiatrist thing. You’re a cop, too. And sometimes it seems like you know what I’m thinking before I even think it. Not that that isn’t a little creepy sometimes.... But you knew, without me having to come out and say it, that I didn’t want to be alone when I got home.”

Frank didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say. He might not be sure of the wisdom of being in the relationship, with the work that he did and the life he led; but she was right...he did understand. He set down the one foot and started on the other.

“Mmmmm.... Snuggles?” Terry asked him. “‘Cause I’m about to fall unconscious.”

“How many hours do you need?” Frank asked her. “Six?” she answered wistfully. “But I could by on 4.”

Frank set down her foot and went out to the kitchen. He loaded the coffee maker and set it to turn on automatically at 2pm. “What?” Terry asked when he came back.

“Set the coffee maker,” Frank answered, crawling into bed beside her. “Mmmm...you’re wonderful,” Terry said, drifting off to sleep. And this time, when Frank laid there, centering himself and relaxing, focusing his subconscious on the question he had, he felt himself drifting off...hopefully for real this time....

The darkness in front of his eyes began to resolve into a dark framework of metal surrounding him, lit by some hidden source. He blinked a couple times, willing his eyes to become accustomed to the dim light. He reached out to touch the metal around him, and realized that he was standing up off the ground, on a fire escape or balcony. Light came from below, from a streetlight somewhere beyond the corner. As his eyes adjusted further, he noticed that there was light coming from above, as well. The full moon was just peeking over a nearby building. On its way up? Or down? He couldn’t tell. Straight above him, he could see that the sky was crystal clear. He became aware of a sound like tape being pulled off a roll...no...cars, driving on wet pavement. Concentrating, he tried to get his bearings. It smelled like it had just rained. The air was still, and the sounds of people talking...laughing...negotiating...drifted up to him from a block or two away. He heard the scrape of a shoe below him and looked down. Hair, either silver or white...it was impossible to tell in this light. It was cut short. He could see, below the hair, dark clothing, a long-ish, maybe ‘car-length’ coat. The way the person moved, he thought it was a woman, though there was something of the stalking cat or hunting coyote in the way it was moving, too--placing its feet carefully, stopping after every few steps to listen...or to sniff the air like an animal tracking a scent.

From further away to his other side, he heard the tap of shoes approaching, a woman’s leather-soled shoes. He looked out, up and down the alley, and up, above the nearest buildings. He realized that he must be near the corner of a building, where the alley emptied onto the street. Now that he was used to the darkness, from this vantage point he could make out the lights of apartments and condos on Wayne’s campus. Sizes and distances seemed distorted by the weird angles of the different light sources, so he couldn’t tell for sure what building he was on, but it had to be along Cass. The ‘clicking’ of high heels was closer now, and he saw a woman at the mouth of the alleyway, her form outlined against the opening beyond, the streetlight stretching her shadow out behind her until it blended in with the shadows of the alley. She turned, and he heard a female voice say something like “I’ll see you next Tuesday.” As she got closer, he could see that she was a pretty African-American woman, tall, like Vanessa...but not exactly. Suddenly he noticed that all the other sounds had faded away. All that was left was the clicking of her shoes on the pavement....

He felt more than heard a low growl rumble below him. The woman turned the corner into the alley...and the white-haired creature leapt on her, clamping its hand over her face before she could scream. It wrapped its other arm around her, hugging her body tightly to its own, so that the only sign of her struggle was her legs kicking weakly, just far enough off the ground that the shoes didn’t even scrape it. The creature dropped its head, and he heard a wet munching slurping sound, like a kid burying his face in a huge slice of watermelon. All of a sudden the thing stopped...and looked straight up at him. Its eyes glowed red against the dark hunger of its face...its white, Nordic-featured face. Above those eyes, its high forehead was topped by the short, spiky white hair. And below the eyes, its fangs and lips dripped with the woman’s blood. It growled again, at him this time, a warning and a threat. And then it dragged the woman away into the darkness of the alley.

Frank couldn’t move, and for a second or two he wasn’t sure if he was awake or still dreaming. He felt like he was pinned down, like.... Like Terry was all tangled up with him, her legs twined with his, an arm over his chest and her chest atop his arm, her head wedged between his shoulder and his chin. She was snoring just a little, just enough for him to know that he was awake, in her bed, in her apartment.... With his one free arm, free only because it was on the opposite side of the bed from where Terry had begun the ‘night,’ Frank reached out and felt around on the night stand until his fingers touched the small digital recorder he always kept by the bed. He pressed the Record button as he brought it close to his face, and he began describing the Dream. A couple minutes into his recitation, he felt Terry wake. She opened one eye and watched him for a moment, until she was sure he wasn’t talking in his sleep. Then she carefully disentangled herself and laid there besides him, quietly listening to the Dream and waiting.

It was past 5am by the time Leigh and Angie collapsed into bed. “Just don’t kill me first, if I wake you with my nightmare,” Leigh sleepily requested of Angie.

“MmHmmm,” Angie grunted into the pillow. The two fell asleep. Leigh was just minding her own business, sleeping... when she realized she wasn’t sleeping anymore. She was standing in the dark, a warm breeze stirring her long skirt and ruffle-y, flowing blouse. She could hear sax music, just the sax, sounding like a lost soul crying in the night...crying for love, for understanding. She felt her nostrils flare when they were struck with the smell of roasted cinnamon, like that used to mellow the bite of chicory coffee. Then, under the cinnamon, the fainter odor of coffee. There was a dampness about the breeze, she realized, like it was coming off the water. And the smell of salt and earth, the smells of the bayou. The music wrapped around her like a lover’s caress. Looking down, she saw the mist swirling around her feet, sliding up her body. She moved, swaying in time to the music, to see what would happen to the mist. It embraced her, moving with her like a lover, in the most erotic of dances. And still she could hear the music....

She closed her eyes and leaned away from the warm, humid touch, dropping her head back. And she felt a strong arm against her back, carefully lowering her into a dip as they moved with the music. She put her hand out, her fingers alighting on the muscular arm, sliding up it, across a shoulder, around the back of a neck, and up the neck...until her fingers tangled in the soft texture of a black man’s hair. The smell of incense mixed with the faint odor of the grave, and the strong arms swung her around with the music, firmly but tenderly. Lips, damp with sweat, kissed her wrist... the crook of her elbow...her shoulder... her lips... her throat... She could feel wet pressure against her throat, her blood pulsing under the touch of his tongue and lips.... And then a tiny pinch... that should have hurt, but somehow didn’t... or maybe she just didn’t mind the pain.... Or the languorous warmth that flowed out from her throat, suffusing her body... And he whispered something softly into her ear, so softly she didn’t understand exactly what he’d said. As the music faded, the mist slid away down her body, leaving her sweaty and relaxed...

Leigh opened her eyes slowly, and could see the stripes on the ceiling from the glow of the streetlights pouring through the blinds. Or was it sunlight? Her neck.... She could feel a bead of sweat roll slowly down the side of her neck, and she reached up to wipe it off as she sat up on the edge of the bed. But it didn’t feel right.... Behind her on the far side of the bed, Angie was curled up into a fetal position around a pillow, deeply asleep. In fact, Leigh had to look twice to check that Angie was actually breathing. That was strange, because like the others who’d been in the military, Angie went from sound asleep to wide awake in a split second, and it usually took little more than a change in the air currents to wake her. And the sweat Leigh had wiped from her neck...it felt slicker than her sweat did after a workout. She brought her hand around to her nose, then cautiously touched her tongue to her fingers. It wasn’t sweat. The liquid had the metallic smell and salty taste of... blood. Leigh stood. She felt incredibly relaxed, physically and mentally, like after really good sex. But she hadn’t... she couldn’t... Leigh rushed to the bathroom. Her body and brain were sending her all the signals that she’d just finished making love. She leaned over the sink and peered into the mirror. On the side of her neck there was a little blood, like she’d nicked herself with a pin, and it seemed to have oozed from two tiny puncture marks. Oh, hell...

Leigh’s first thought was to shower. The ease and euphoria she’d felt before now chilled in her veins. She had thought it was just a dream, but she was wide awake now. And her rational self over-ruled the shower idea just as she was using a tampon to do a ‘self-rape-kit.’ The shower would wash away most if not all of the physical evidence that Deacon had violated her. She was going to have to see Karen and Aiden about this. And considering that her body was telling her that she had indeed been having as much fun as her brain dreamt she had, she was probably going to have to have a chat about this whole thing with Frank eventually, too. But... why hadn’t Angie...? How had he gotten past her? If he did anything to her...

Leigh rushed back into the bedroom and leaned toward Angie’s still body from a few feet away. She could see no evidence of physical injury. Leigh stepped to the edge of the bed and carefully reached out to touch Angie’s throat, wary of the chance that Angie could wake suddenly and break her arm before she realized it was her. The pulse was strong and steady, though beating at the slow pace of someone in a dreamless sleep. If she didn’t wake for that... Leigh leaned closer, checking for needle marks... or bite marks. But what struck Leigh as she bent over Angie was the faint odor of chloroform. So that was how he’d dealt with her....

Leigh grabbed her phone and dialed Karen while she hunted around the apartment to find Aiden’s emergency med kit. It was harsh, but smelling salts would wake Angie fastest, and since she didn’t seem to be injured in any way...

“Hunh, h‘lo?” Karen answered her phone. She rolled over, and found that Justin was up already.

“Karen, it’s Leigh. I’m sorry to call you so early,” Leigh said, “I know you haven’t gotten much sleep.” Honestly, though, Leigh had no idea what time it was. She hadn’t thought to look before, and now found that it was already 10am. “You know how we’d been talking about seeing Sue again this morning and all, and I was just thinking that if you weren’t busy we could do it now and kill two birds with one stone,” Leigh said, kind of rambling.

Karen glanced at her clock and saw that it was about 10am. Ah, that was another reason why she loved Justin. They’d only gotten to bed at about 4am, and they hadn’t gone right to sleep. But Justin got up at ‘oh-my-god-o’clock’ every morning no matter how late they went to bed the night before. And he always did it quietly enough that she could keep sleeping until her own alarm went off. She sat up and rubbed her eyes with her other hand. Now that she was a little more awake, she could tell that at least she’d gotten enough rest before the phone rang. “Sure,” she told Leigh. “So Frank’s gonna be there, then?”

“Oh, I can call him, too,” Leigh told her. “I guess I was just being a little selfish right now.”

“Wait.... You mean..?!” Karen asked, suddenly fully awake.

“I’ll meet you at Receiving, but no need to rush,” Leigh said. Then she quickly hung up. She couldn’t get into a big conversation about the whole thing right now. She’d found the kit and gotten a vial of smelling salts, and she needed to get Angie up.

Leigh stood at arm’s length from Angie and cracked the small vial, then quickly stuck it under Angie’s nose.

“HUH?! WHA’?!” Angie sat straight up, struggling to kick off the covers that had gotten tangled around her feet.

“I think someone’s been in here,” Leigh said quietly and calmly to Angie.

“Oh, crap! Are you OK?” Angie asked, “Am I OK? Who...?”

“Deacon,” Leigh told her, “I think he....”

“I’ll kill him,” Angie said, cutting her off. And the tone of her voice told Leigh she meant it and would be quite happy to do it.

“You aren’t the only one; you’ll have to stand in line,” Leigh told her.

“Shit, Frank’s never going to let me live this down,” Angie moaned. How many times now had she been unconscious and unable to help in a fight? She’d lost count, and it was beginning to bug her the way getting kidnapped by Unknown creatures bugged Terry.

“I think we should both see Aiden,” Leigh said, “and I think I’m OK to drive.”

“I’ll drive,” Angie said in a tone that brooked no argument. Then she gracefully tripped over her own feet on her way to where her jeans were hanging over the back of a chair.

“I’m going to call a cab,” Leigh retorted.

“We should probably call this in,” Angie mused aloud as she pulled on her jeans. “I really don’t want to call in a ‘vampiric rape,’” Leigh told her.

“You don’t have to put it quite like that,” Angie said. She already had her phone in her hand and speed dialed the precinct.

“Hi, I need....” Angie started.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Special Agent Paloma,” Sgt. Peters teased as he heard Angie’s voice. “I s’pose you think you’re too good for us now, since you got yourself transferred back to DHS.”

“No, I don’t think I’m too good for you, Peters,” Angie said. “I know I am...and you still failed. But that’s not why I called.” And when she said that, Angie’s voice got so serious that Peters knew she wasn’t calling to joke around or chat.

“Listen, someone broke into my place, and my friend and I need to be checked out at the hospital,” she told him. “Send a car and a CSI team, ‘K?”

“Got it, Paloma,” Peters said. “And Paloma,” he added before Angie could hang up, “we’re here for ya, y’know?”

“Thanks, Peters,” Angie replied. “And can you kind’a keep a lid on this? I’m OK, and I don’t want too much to be made of it.”

“Sure, Paloma,” Peters said.

Leigh and Angie quickly finished dressing and they carefully stuffed the clothes they’d been wearing into clean Ziploc bags. “I expect they’ll be taking your pillow,” Angie said, glancing pointedly at the spot of blood on Leigh’s pillow.

“I did a ‘self-rape-kit’ too,” Leigh told Angie, holding up the Ziploc bag with the tampon.

“Good thinking,” Angie said as they heard a knock on the door. “You can give it to them.”

Angie answered the door and found two uniforms outside. They’d gotten there so fast that Angie figured they must be the team that was working this neighborhood this morning. One was an African-American man who looked like he could’ve been a linebacker. The other was a small woman, very white with red hair, blue eyes and freckles. The DPD couldn’t have formed a stranger-looking team than these two.

“Officer Shaunessy,” the female cop said, holding out her hand to Angie. “And this is my partner, Officer Potter.” So, in spite of Potter’s more imposing presence, Shaunessy was the senior. Angie ushered them in and shut the door. “The CSIs are on their way,” Shaunessy told her. “But I can take your statements now and then another car will take you to the hospital.”

The two women explained what had happened, or at least as much as they knew and could divulge. They’d gone to bed about 5am and the place had been locked up tight, windows closed and locked, door closed and locked. Leigh woke a little before 10am with the blood on her neck and Angie unconscious on the other side of the bed. Leigh honestly wasn’t sure if she’d been violated, since all her clothes were still in place when she woke. But she had no idea how she’d gotten the cut on her neck, and she just wanted to be sure. They were pretty sure that Angie had been drugged to put her out cold, and they had no idea how anyone could have gotten in. By the time their statements had been taken, a second patrol car was there to take them to the hospital and they were quickly bundled into it.

“Listen, can you take us to Receiving?” Angie requested. “We have friends that work there.” The officer nodded.

Then both Leigh and Angie pulled out their cells. “Aiden, Leigh and I are on our way in,” Angie told his voice mail. “We’ll explain when we get there, but we’re not injured...exactly.” He was probably in the middle of someone just then; but he’d get the message by the time they got there.

Leigh listened to Frank’s phone ring a few times. She wondered if he’d had as bad a night as she had. OK, well, there probably wasn’t any way it could be, but... Heck, was Terry even home yet? She hoped that Frank was able to answer. She didn’t want to leave a message, because she wasn’t really sure what to say.

“It’s your phone,” Terry whispered to Frank. He was just finishing up dictating his dream into the recorder, and she didn’t want to mess up his concentration. But since she was there with him and he had the day off, it was either a huge emergency at work or it was one of the others calling. Both possibilities, whether they liked it or not, needed immediate attention.

Frank set down the recorder and picked up the phone, looking at the display. “What can I do for you, Leigh?” he asked her.

“Well, you can get most of it from the police report,” Leigh said. “There was a home invasion at Aiden’s. I’m OK on the outside, but a little anemic. We’re going to Receiving.” Then she hung up before Frank could ask her anything else, because they were pulling up at the ER entrance.

Aiden and a nurse met the two at the entrance with wheelchairs. “Good thing you called for reservations,” Aiden teased them. “It’s been a fairly busy night. There was a dust-up between a couple rival gangs.” But they could see that the smiling face was just for show. If his girlfriend had to come to the ER in a cop car, something was seriously wrong and he wasn’t at all happy about that. The two were taken to adjoining exam cubicles for the not-entirely-pleasant experience of having rape-kits ‘pulled.’ Both women explained that the clothes they’d been wearing had been bagged and left with the officers on the scene. But the officer that came to pick up the rape kits had orders to get Leigh’s clothes from the night before as well, which is all she had to put on that morning for the trip to Receiving. So Leigh called Karen and asked her to stop past the condo and bring some clean clothes. And then it was a matter of waiting. Aiden had already been called away to help with other incoming emergencies, and they were supposed to meet Karen and Frank there to see Sue anyway.

It was around 11am when Aiden came back to Leigh’s cubicle. “I just saw Angie,” he told Leigh. “She’s fine, but she did have a trace of chloroform in her blood. They’ll be testing the swabs from your neck for DNA, and you’re a little bit anemic. But there was no semen in the vaginal swabs that were taken, and no indication of penetration.” Aiden was talking very quietly, in an extremely controlled manner, and Leigh thought she could hear his teeth grinding. But that wasn’t much of a surprise. His home had been invaded, his girlfriend chloroformed and another friend assaulted there. He said nothing about the marks on her neck. “Do the bites match?” she asked, prompting him.

Aiden hesitated. “Yes, they seem to be the same size as Miss Charles’,” he admitted. “But since you’re not on any weird diet, you’ll be fine with a couple iron supplements and a good meal. You aren’t down enough to need a transfusion,” he told her. “Just orange juice, food and lots of water.”

“So, do you think I could get some juice and cookies, since I donated?” Leigh asked lightly. She was disturbed by the bite marks, but more than that, she was angry that Deacon had done this to her.

Aiden smiled. “I think we can arrange that, and I’ll have some scrubs sent in, too,” he told her.

“I shouldn’t need the scrubs; I called Karen to bring me clothes,” Leigh said, “since we still have to go up and see Sue again.”

iden nodded. “Angie’s in my office, whenever you’re ready,” he told her. Then they heard him being paged over the PA, and he headed back out to work.

“Time to get up, Terry,” Frank said almost cheerfully, “and get your vampire killing kit.”

“Huh?” Terry asked, slightly confused. Frank hadn’t said anything between answering his phone and hanging up, so she had no idea what Leigh’d wanted.

“Count Dracula took a bite out of Leigh,” Frank explained.

“So is Angie OK?” Terry asked.

“Yeah,” Frank said, dressing.

“Hell, is the vampire OK?” Terry laughed. She could imagine that Angie would’ve put up a bit of a fight, and Leigh was no slouch when it came to defending herself, either.

Frank grinned. “Listen, can you go to the hospital and check on them?” Frank asked her.

“Where are you going,” Terry asked. “Checking out the scene,” Frank told her.

“Right,” Terry said. She should’ve known. She didn’t need to ask about his dream, since she’d heard almost everything he’d dictated; so she didn’t interrupt his flow. He was already up and dressed before she was fully out of bed. He gave her a kiss and flipped on the coffee maker on his way out the door.

She took longer getting dressed; she was having a little problem with the buttons on so little sleep. Then she called the office, to see if there had been any missing person’s report filed that resembled the floater, and sucked down her starter cup of coffee. There was no report that matched yet, but she really didn’t expect anything, for a few reasons. First, unless the missing person was a child, they usually wouldn’t take a report until 24 hours had passed. By Frank’s estimation, it wasn’t much past that when they found her. Second, unless she had family or friends in the area who had been expecting to see her, it was a holiday weekend and no one might have missed her yet. Third, the autopsy wasn’t done yet, and without some concrete way to connect her to a report, the connection could easily be missed. On the way to the hospital, she stopped to get more coffee for herself, and some for the others. Aiden always seemed to need it, and she had a feeling that Angie and Leigh were gonna need it, too, this morning. She ran into Aiden first, and after taking a long sip of his coffee, he led her up to his office. He was a little surprised that Leigh and Karen weren’t there yet, but he left Terry there so Angie could fill her in in the meantime. And he would be down in the ER until they needed him.

Over at Aiden and Angie’s place, Frank was surprised to see the door halfway open and a uniform standing outside it. He’d assumed that when Leigh said he could “get most of it from the police report,” she’d meant that she’d tell him when he got to the hospital. He was a little astonished to find that they’d actually called in the DPD on something like this. But, he’d just have to make the best of it and hope they hadn’t done too much damage to the scene. He pulled out his badge and showed it to the large male African-American officer.

Potter opened the door the rest of the way and led Frank in. “Wait here,” Potter told him, shutting the door all the way, then disappearing into Aiden’s kitchen. “I got a Fed here,” Potter told Shaunessy in a low voice. “Don’t know what he wants.”

A moment later, the black cop followed a white female cop out of the kitchen...only Frank wasn’t where Potter had left him. A CSI had come out to get his kit, and Frank had followed him back into the bedroom, passing the bathroom, where he saw another CSI bent over the sink. Frank watched the CSI work the bedroom, and carefully stalked around the room himself, trying to get an idea of what had gone on there earlier. The window was wide open, and Frank put his head out to look at the fire escape. As he pulled his head in, he looked up at the outside and bottom of the sash. The tell-tale traces of printing powder made it obvious that they’d already processed the window and found no prints. But...there were scratches on the aluminum frame, very subtle, and he couldn’t think of a tool that would make marks like that. They almost looked like...fingernail scratches.

“Can I help you?” Shaunessy said firmly to Frank from the bedroom doorway. It was definitely a ‘get off my territory’ warning. Luckily, Frank had no intention of stepping on their toes, especially since the CSIs seemed to be doing a competent job.

Frank straightened up. “Agent Muelder, DHS,” he said, introducing himself. Then, turning to the CSI, he asked, “Did you see this?” He took out a pen and used it to point out the scratches. The CSI took a look.

“No! How’d you spot those?” he asked Frank. “We were both over that window a couple’a times, taking photos, dusting...and neither of us saw ‘em.”

“I almost missed them, too,” Frank said. “Guess I was just looking when the light was just right or something.”

“Damn. They said the window had been shut,” the CSI explained. “That’s why we were trying to take such a close look at it, because it was open a crack when we got here, and Shaunessy and Potter,” he nodded at the cops, “said they hadn’t touched it.” Frank nodded and went over to the two cops. The CSI squeezed past the three and went to the bathroom to get the other CSI. The looks on Shaunessy and Potter’s faces told Frank that they were revising their opinion of him.

“We can talk in the kitchen,” Shaunessy said, turning. Potter motioned for Frank to go first, and Frank didn’t hesitate. Potter brought up the rear.

“The vics said that neither of them had been in the kitchen since getting home last night,” Shaunessy explained. “The CSIs checked it out and cleared it, and we’ve been staying out of their way. They did find a cloth handkerchef in the bathroom trash basket that still smelled of chloroform.” Frank nodded. So they were being thorough. Then Shaunessy read from her notes the statements that Angie and Leigh gave her, to bring Frank up to speed.

“I don’t like this,” Potter blurted out when she’d finished.

“Potter!” Shaunessy said with a curt shake of her head.

“What do you mean?” Frank asked him.

“It’s just been a rough week,” Shaunessy answered for him, hoping to calm him down. But Potter wanted to open up to someone, and he got the impression that Frank was the person who would understand.

“We found a woman with her throat torn out not too far from here,” he told Frank. “It just seems weird, and I don’t like it.”

Frank looked at Shaunessy. “You know that this type of violent offender doesn’t go backwards,” he said.

Shaunessy understood what he was saying. “So we’ve got two different incidents here,” she said, “and then there’s the floater they found last night.”

“I heard her head was torn off,” Potter added.

Frank let the hint of a smile turn up his mouth. “Don’t believe everything you hear,” he told them. He had to get this one clamped down fast.

“We might have seen the perp who tore the girl’s throat out,” Shaunessy finally admitted tentatively. Frank put on his best ‘go ahead and open up to me’ face. It worked. “We were first on the scene, because this is our beat,” Shaunessy explained. “I stayed with the girl until the wagon could get there, while Potter checked out the area.” She paused and let Potter take over the narrative.

“I saw somebody move down the alley...white hair, maybe six foot, but I didn’t get a good look because it was dark and....” Potter stopped for a moment and looked at Shaunessy. She nodded, urging him to continue. “I got to the corner, and...they were gone. No sign of ‘em at all. And when they’d moved, it...it didn’t look right. They were too damned fast.” Potter stopped abruptly, angry at himself for not getting a better look, a better description of the perp, and angry that someone would do this on their beat.

“Speed freak?” Frank asked him, trying to get him to continue. “Maybe,” he agreed. But Frank could tell that he wasn’t telling him everything yet. Potter sighed, not sure if he should say anything more. “You’re gonna think we’re nuts,” he told Frank.

“I’ve been at this a while,” Frank said, reassuring him.

“Ever since then, I got the feeling that somebody’s watching me.” Potter waited for Frank to laugh or something, and when he didn’t, both cops seemed to relax a little, relieved that the one person they’d told so far seemed to believe them.

“We’ve been trying to look into this a little more, ya know...when we can,” Shaunessy said. “There’s a detective assigned, but...it’s just a simple assault with intent right now, and they got a lot more on their plates....”

“Besides,” Potter added, “this is our beat, and if some guy is gonna go around attacking people....”

“And we caught the case,” Shaunessy finished.

“Have you come across anyone else who saw anything?” Frank asked them, implicitly approving of their investigation.

“No,” Shaunessy admitted.

“But it’s not the usual ‘we ain’t seen nuthin’,” Potter said. “And we ain’t gonna give up.”

“Obviously somebody is taking this seriously,” Shaunessy said. “I mean, you are DHS. You think this might be somethin’ bigger?”

“Hard to say,” Frank told her. “I’m mainly here because one of my agents was one of the people in the bed. But I’ll definitely look into it and help you out if I can.”

“Thanks,” Shaunessy said. “We’re gonna keep askin’ around, and I’ll get you a copy of the reports.” They traded business cards.

“My advice?” Frank said, looking both of them in the eye, “Trust your instincts. If you’re being watched, be careful.”

“My dad and granddad were both cops,” Shaunessy told him. “They had a saying... ‘If your feet say run, keep up.’”

Frank smiled and nodded. “I’m gonna hang around a little while longer,” Frank told them, and they nodded. Then Shaunessy took up the post outside the front door and Potter picked up his coffee. Frank went into the bedroom and, carefully avoiding the CSIs, began trying to get into Deacon’s mind. If he could figure out the way the vampire’s mind worked, he’d be able to find it faster to kill it. He began walking through the event from Deacon’s point of view... ‘I come up the fire escape and find the window shut and locked. I try to get a look inside...to see if she’s in there....’

When Karen got off the phone, she began hunting for Justin. She finally found him in his workshop, with a pile of wood slats and leather straps on the bench in front of him. “Leigh just called and I think something’s up,” she told him. “She wanted to go do the Shield on Sue again and said something about killing two birds with one stone, and I think maybe something happened to her last night.”

“I’ll be in in a second,” Justin told her. “I just have one more to finish. Then I’ll clean up and go with you.” If something happened to Leigh, he wasn’t letting Karen go check on her alone.

It was about 10:30am, and the two were just about to walk out the door when Karen’s phone rang again. “Karen, it’s Leigh. If it’s not too much trouble, could you go to my place and bring me some clean clothes?” Leigh asked.

“Of course!” Karen said. “We’ll see you in a little bit.”

When they got to the garage, Justin went to the workbench first. “Here,” he said to Karen, holding out one of the things he’d been working on. He’d gotten the idea down on paper last night...that morning...when they got home, and it didn’t take too much work to fashion them from stuff he already had laying around. They were essentially knife belts, and Justin had modified them to hold wooden stakes that he’d made from ash and oak lathing. He’d had the idea for the weapon belts a while ago, and had been fiddling with different ways for them to be worn and for weapons to be attached. So putting together a belt for each of them from what he’d already designed went quickly. The stakes took a little more time to shape, but he’d managed to get a handful of stakes from each type of wood before Karen came out to find him.

“Leigh wants me to stop and get her some clean clothes,” Karen told Justin as they set the other stake belts in the back seat and climbed in the truck. Justin headed over to the condo and followed Karen upstairs. Inside, Justin shut the door behind them. He was just going to wait on the couch while Karen collected Leigh’s things. But as he turned, he realized something was ‘off.’ It took him a few seconds to figure out what it was. His mom had not been, nor were Marie or Karen, slobs by any means; but comparatively, Leigh was an almost fanatical housekeeper. However, where there should have been only neat, parallel lines in the vacuum pattern on the carpet, he saw the faintest disturbance in the tracks. It was just a subtle tilt to fibers that should have been straight, with a hint of smudged dirt on the tips of a few of the fibers near the French doors. “Karen, wait!” Justin hissed, grabbing her by one arm. He signaled her to get behind him and pull her gun, as he pulled his own. There was no time to explain right now, so he signaled that they would be clearing the rooms and sticking to the walls. He worked his way toward the master bedroom, which happened to be the farthest room in the condo, keeping one eye on their surroundings, and one eye on the footprints.

When Justin was sure that whoever had been there was gone, he relaxed slightly and explained what he’d found to Karen. The prints were man-sized, but they were nowhere as deep as the size of the foot implied; so the person must have been lighter than most men with that shoe size--or a Shaolin monk. The print was definitely of a shoe, not a bare foot, and there was no indication of any pattern to the sole of the shoe, meaning it was probably a smooth leather sole not a sneaker. The prints, which weren’t in any sort of continuous trail in the first place, seemed to begin at the French doors, go to the bedroom, then return to living room. And there they just stopped.

While Karen got out Leigh’s vacuum and a couple muslin tea bags to use as a filter, Justin checked to make sure he hadn’t just lost the tracks when they made an unexpected turn. He even checked to see if there was any trace of the person having moved across some other surface, like the furniture, walls or ceiling. But there was nothing.

“Do you smell that?” Karen asked, wrinkling her nose.

“Smell what?” he asked back. He didn’t smell anything, but, truth be told, the smell was fainter than most people would have noticed. Karen only happened to catch it because it was a smell that was fairly familiar to her. It was the same scent of dirt and decay that she came across when an old grave was opened.

“Grave,” she told Justin, “and I don’t think anyone makes Eau de Sepulchre incense or room deodorizer.”

Justin went to the doors where the tracks started, and Karen began vacuuming over the spots that Justin had pointed out to her. She’d have just walked right over them if Justin hadn’t seen them and shown them to her. She hoped that whoever had been there had left some trace behind. Justin found that the balcony door was open about a quarter inch. So he’d come in through the door. But there’s been no moisture on the carpet, even though it had been raining out last night. And how had he gotten in, Justin wondered, when he was positive that Leigh wouldn’t have gone out and left the house unsecured.

“I don’t suppose you saw Deva around anywhere,” Karen chuckled when Justin mentioned the door. It still hurt her to think about what had happened to the little cat; but Deva had had a habit of coming in through portals that people were sure had been sealed, leaving them open a tiny bit behind herself.

Justin didn’t seem amused by the thought. He and Reg had done an expert job of securing the condo after Deva had been killed there. And not only had Brown Jenkin danced around in the attic that one Christmas, but now someone had managed to sneak in and traipse through the whole place leaving barely a trace. Justin wasn’t just concerned about Leigh’s safety, he was angry that the work he and Reg had done had been circumvented. Justin stepped out on the balcony and studied the door and its frame. There were no obvious tool marks on either, and no hole in the glass. But...there in the door...near the bolt.... Faint dents in the metal. They weren’t deep, but they were evenly spaced as if.... Justin turned sideways and put his hands over the marks. They were spaced just as if someone had dug their fingernails into the door to pry it open. The span of the person’s hand was even bigger than Justin’s, so undoubtedly male; but no one should have been able to pry that door open with just his bare hands. He told Karen what he’d found. “But, I thought vampires couldn’t enter a house unless they’re invited in,” Karen said. She already suspected Deacon, after the way he’d looked at Leigh last night. “Well, you and Leigh did say that there are a lot of different types of vampires and not all of them follow the ‘usual’ rules,” Justin replied. He took close-up photos of the scratches, and Karen suggested doing a ‘rubbing’ of the marks, in case something like that turned up somewhere else. Finally, Justin downloaded the video feed from the condo’s cameras onto a thumb drive, and Karen collected clothes for Leigh. Then the two finally headed on to Receiving, and arrived about noon.

Leigh was just beginning to wonder if something had intercepted Karen and if she should get a set of scrubs and go find her. In fact, she had her cell out to call Karen when Terry walked into the cubicle. “Have you seen Angie yet?” Leigh asked her.

“How’s she doing?”

“She’s just pissed that she was unconscious again when a friend needed her help...and that Frank will never let her live it down,” Terry told her.

“She thinks she’s pissed,” Leigh said. “I’m pissed that I apparently need a physical guard to protect me when I try to do a Clairvoyant/Prescient Dream!”

“You aren’t the only one,” Terry told her. She didn’t go into details, since she didn’t know if Frank wanted the others to know about how he’d almost overheated the one time and how she’d had to dump water on him to wake him and bring his temp down. But if that ‘C/P Dream’ was the same thing that Frank had been doing at the time, then it didn’t seem to be safe for anyone to do alone.

“You didn’t happen to run into Karen out there, did you?” Leigh asked. “She’s supposed to be bringing me clean clothes so I can get out of here sometime today.”

Leigh was starting to get grumpy, so Terry didn’t push her to talk about what had happened. Luckily, a short time later, Aiden led Justin and Karen into the cubicle.

"You did say not to hurry," Karen said to Leigh with a wink and a grin as she handed her the bag of clothes.

“We’ll wait in Aiden’s office,” Terry said, herding Karen and Justin back out almost as soon as they’d gotten in. “We can talk there.”

‘I can see that she is, but so is another. I need an opening to get in,’ Frank continued in his mind, walking through the incident in Deacon’s shoes and trying to work out a profile for him. A mist was the only thing left behind when Deacon disappeared in the shadows last night, Frank recalled. ‘So, I don’t need to get through the window in any normal sense, I just need it open far enough to slip in as a mist. And I’m strong enough to manage that without tools. Once inside, I have to neutralize the other one. She could cause me trouble. So I ‘time stop’ them long enough to put the chloroform on the hanky and knock her out. When that’s done, I do what I came here for...then leave the way I came in.’ Frank looked around the room. Aside from what he could tell was moved by the CSIs as they worked, it didn’t look like things had been disturbed. No signs of a fight or of items broken or knocked over. So Deacon didn’t hurry, and it seemed like his movements were well-planned enough that he was prepared for all possibilities, like Angie’s presence. Of course, with the ‘time stop’ ability, he shouldn’t need to hurry. Frank asked if he could see what the CSIs had collected so far, and they allowed him to look at the evidence bags, though of course he wasn’t allowed to open them. Both Angie’s and Leigh’s bed clothes, a pillowcase with a small blood stain, the handkerchief labeled as having been found in the bathroom waste basket, and the tampon. So he was tidy--he’d put the chloroformed hankie in the wastebasket in the bathroom--and organized. He’s done this before, often enough to be comfortable with the familiar routine, like a rote exercise. And he knows that the ‘time stop’ either lasts only a short time, not long enough to control Angie with that alone, or requires a level of concentration that he can’t maintain when he’s feeding. That was good to know.

Frank continued to think through the incident, recording a word or two that would mean nothing to the CSIs if they overheard him, but that would remind him of the important points. Deacon proceeded without malice--he could have killed Angie outright--and even without much predation. Again, no signs of a struggle and not much blood on the pillow case. So Leigh didn’t struggle either, and she told the unis that her bed clothes were still all in place when she woke. Afterwards, she still had the presence of mind to rape-kit herself; so while he was sure that it was something they’d be discussing later, the incident hadn’t been so violent or traumatic that Leigh had been panicked or hysterical afterwards. She’d realized she shouldn’t shower, and she’d taken the time to find the most efficient way to wake Angie.

Deacon thought of his actions as a necessary evil; he had to feed, so he might as well make it as pleasant an experience as he could, for both himself and his vic. The hankie portrayed a certain gentility about the man and his actions, though there was no doubt this was a rape, no matter what the exam ended up showing. And if he hadn’t kept the two ‘time stopped’ through the whole incident, then he must have controlled Leigh some other way, some way that was non-violent and left Leigh with enough awareness and self-control to cope. Only one thing still had Frank concerned. He couldn’t get a feel for how old a vampire Deacon was. The gentility suggested an older vamp who had lived during a time more concerned with propriety and manners. But Deacon had seemed quite comfortable in this day and age, with no particular problem dealing with modern technology. That belied his being very old...or he’d just done a good job adapting to the times.

When Leigh finished changing a few minutes later, she went to Aiden’s office, where she found Terry, Angie, Karen and Justin waiting for her. “So what’s going on?” Karen asked her. Leigh and Angie went through the morning’s events one more time. They’d barely finished when Aiden came to see how they were. “My office is just not big enough for this,” he said.

“No, but Sue’s room is,” Karen suggested.

Frank had just walked up behind Aiden. “Boy, this is cozy,” he joked.

Aiden shook his head. “Sue’s awake,” he told them.

“Could you sedate her?” Justin asked.

“Not just so that we can use her room for a conference room,” Aiden said.

“Well, we don’t have to talk up there,” Karen said. “I just want to do the Shield on her, and Frank, and now Leigh, too.”

“How do we explain all of us up there?” Terry asked.

“I’ll let Aiden handle that,” Karen laughed. The seven trooped up to Sue’s room, again by a route that avoided cameras. On the way, Karen realized that she and Justin couldn’t very well go in as a couple, since Sue thought Justin was single. Karen didn’t want to ruin his cover. A cloud crossed Justin’s face when she mentioned it. He hated being left out of the action, even though there wasn’t going to be much going on.

“I wasn’t going in either,” Terry mentioned.

“Well, then I’ll just hang out with you guys in the hall,” Angie said.

Karen and Leigh let Aiden, then Frank go in first. From that point on, it didn’t really matter that the two women were in the room. All of Sue’s attention was focused on the men.

rank took the lead.... “Agent Muelder, DHS,” he introduced himself to Sue, holding out his hand. She took it, but let go of it only reluctantly. And she didn’t seem to recognize him. But then, he hadn’t been wearing his Fed suit last night and she’d been more interested in Justin...and Deacon. “Can you tell me exactly what happened last night?” Frank asked her, sliding his hand away gently.

“I felt dizzy and light-headed. But I didn’t have much to eat yesterday,” Sue told him. “So I figured I’d just sit down for a few minutes when I got home, and it would pass. Next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital.”

“Before that,” Frank prompted her. “Can you tell me about your evening?”

“Well, I went to the Blue Note with my friend Betty,” Sue said. “And when we left, I said good night to her and hugged her, then went home, just like usual when we go clubbing.” And then, as if she considered the clubbing completely unrelated to her current situation, she went on. “A girl can’t afford to get fat these days,” she told him, making Aiden frown, “but Dr. Carter...” Sue said his name with a little sigh, “says I should eat a more balanced diet.”

“I’m here because I’ve been investigating a series of drugging cases,” Frank told her. “Do you recall anything strange about your drinks at the club?”

“Well, I know I should get some of those tester sticks,” she said, “but I really didn’t drink that much. Just one beer.”

Leigh nudged Frank’s elbow from behind and handed him a few of the sticks from her supply. Making it look like he’d just pulled them from his jacket pocket, Frank handed them to Sue. As she took them, she rested her hand on his wrist...then ‘forgot’ to let go of it.

While Frank kept her attention, Karen did a Shield, making sure to include Frank and Leigh, as well as Sue, within it. Then Leigh raised a Sphere, just to be safe. No one seemed to react to it.

Aiden moved around checking Sue’s vitals and making notes on her chart. When Frank had finished talking to her, Aiden told her, “You can go as soon as I get your blood-work results back...and you eat all of what’s on this tray.” He pointed at the lunch tray, which had barely been touched though Aiden knew it had been there for at least a half hour before they came in.

“And here’s a prescription for a visit to the hospital nutritionist,” he said, handing her a slip of paper. “He’ll teach you how to maintain your proper weight without starving yourself.”

Sue smiled at him and he smiled back. But it was a sly smile.... He’d made sure to give her the name of the male nutritionist rather than either of the female nutritionists. He figured she’d pay more attention to a relatively handsome male than to any female on the planet, no matter how well-educated.

Then Aiden shooed everyone out of the room, so that Sue could concentrate on eating her lunch without being distracted by himself or Frank. When they came out, Justin noticed that Leigh looked a little pale, even for her. He asked how she felt, and when she confirmed that she was a little tired, he put his hand on her shoulder and boosted her energy.

Passing through the parking lot on the way to Aiden’s other ‘office,’ Justin herded everyone on a detour past the truck. There, he gave them all their ‘stake belts.’ He even had a spare ready, in case Tony turned up unexpectedly. They talked about the case on the way. Justin was reluctant to upset Leigh considering what she’d been through that morning already; but what he and Karen found at her place was too relevant to let go. So they told the others about the break-in and the prints. They hadn’t had a chance to look at the video footage yet, but Karen gave the vacuum ‘filter’ to Terry, to see if she could get any contents examined. If not, Karen thought she might be able to get the chem lab on campus to do it.

After hearing about the ‘break-in’ at the condo, Leigh, without going into too many details about her ‘dream,’ explained why she was confident that there was some ‘mist’ connection, given the events in her ‘dream,’ the break-in, and what Frank had seen last night.

Frank described the scratches on the window sash at Angie’s, then asked Leigh, “Considering it seems like Deacon knew where to look for you, do you have your wallet?” Leigh was startled by the question, but no more so than Angie and Karen. None of them had even thought to check for something like that, since they didn’t remember Deacon going anywhere near their purses. Leigh dug through her purse and almost panicked when she couldn’t find her wallet right away. But it turned up when she dumped the contents out on the table at the coffee shop. Inside, her license was in its usual pocket...but upside down.

Karen and Angie pulled out their wallets now, and found that their licenses had also been disturbed. This shook all of them up. Not only could they not remember Deacon having any opportunity to handle the licenses, but this meant he knew their names and where all of them lived. Justin had brought his laptop along, and he popped in the thumb drive. It took a little ‘surfing’ to find the part when Deacon invaded the condo; then they all scrunched around the computer to watch what happened.

The first thing they saw almost looked like a glitch in the recording. A fog crept up over the balcony railing, along the floor and up the door. For the next minute or so, they could see only the top of a fedora, because of the angle of the hidden camera. Then they saw the door swing open a crack and the head dissolved into mist as if swallowed by the shadows. A moment later, the motion sensor on the cameras inside activated the recorder, and they saw a brief blur as a dark shape moved across the living room toward the back hallway. Slowing down the playback speed, they could see that it was Deacon, placing his feet carefully to leave as little trace as he could. But he had been moving at an incredible speed, so that when Justin reset the playback, he seemed to flow through the room. He disappeared into the bedroom, where Leigh kept the camera disabled unless she was planning to be gone for a longer period. When he found the room empty, he reappeared on the camera for a split second again before disappearing into a shadow. Then they saw a mist drift back out the door. Justin checked the time stamp. All of this happened in a matter of minutes, about 5am.

Sunrise was at 6am that morning, and by the time Leigh woke, the sun was well up. So Deacon was definitely up after sunrise; and unless his resting place was really damn close to Angie’s and he was able to stay behind buildings the entire way, he was out in sunlight. “Were you wearing your indalo or some religious symbol?” Frank asked Leigh. Her hand went immediately to her neck. She had a cross that she rarely took off, and she knew she had it on when she went to bed. But it was gone. Why hadn’t she noticed that before?

Frank called Shaunessy. “Did your CSIs happen to find a necklace on the bed, a cross?” he asked her.

“Hold on a sec,” she told him. The sound was muffled by her hand over the mike, but he could hear her talking to someone. A moment later she came back on the phone. “Not on the bed, so I looked around and found it in the drawer of the night stand,” she said. “Thanks,” Frank replied. He told Leigh and the others. “So obviously he’s got at least some resistance to holy or religious symbols,” Frank surmised, “since he had to have touched it to take it off. Or else he had some power to make Leigh do that herself for him.”

“I would suggest spreading salt across any portals,” Aiden said. “I don’t know if it will work, but it’s the best thing I can think of until we figure out what this guy is vulnerable to.”

“Leigh, if it’s OK with you, there’s something I’d like to try,” Frank said. “I don’t know if it will work, but I want to hypnotize you and see if the bite created any sort of psychic link to Deacon. It’s a long shot, since it’s something I remember from reading Stoker’s “Dracula;” but if it works, it might lead us to his resting place and make killing him easier.”

“Are we sure we want to kill him right away?” Karen asked him.

“Oh, no...I’d rather let him keep running loose until he completely drains Leigh,” Frank said sarcastically.

“That isn’t what I’m suggesting,” Karen replied. “I’m not saying don’t kill him. All I am saying is that he may have some idea about what the thing is that’s ripping out women’s throats and how to kill it. Shouldn’t we try to get any info we can from him before we stake him? It just seems like he could be more helpful alive...or at least undead...than dead right now.”

“Yeah...about the thing that’s ripping out women’s throats,” Frank said. He described his dream to them, and the conversation he had with Shaunessy and Potter. “So we might be making progress on that creature without the vampire’s help,” he finished.

Leigh agreed to let Frank try hypnotizing her and got comfortable in her chair. Frank warned the others to be quiet while he worked, but Leigh was too tense and he wasn’t able to get her under. The break in the conversation had left all of them pondering their own thoughts. “Angie, can I talk to you alone for a second?” Frank asked when he’d finally decided he wasn’t getting anywhere with the hypnotism. Angie had been dreading this all morning. She nodded and the two went to an empty table in the opposite corner of the room.

“Yeah, Frank?” Angie asked when they sat down. “Or, should I say ‘yes, sir?”

“‘Yes, sir’ would be more appropriate right now,” Frank said. He was quite serious, but he didn’t sound as angry as Angie had been expecting. “Angie, if you are ever the victim of a crime again and do not call me immediately, I will fire you,” Frank told her sternly.

Angie let out the breath she’d been holding. “That’s fair,” she agreed.

“Are you OK?” Frank asked her, his tone softening.

“Angry,” she said, “very...and a little scared. I mean...he only knocked me out, but....” She paused. “I’m scared,” she continued, “and I’m not used to being scared. I called the locals because I’ve been spending a lot of time with them and I want to get Leigh in to the hospital.... But you’re right; I should’ve called you. I...didn’t even wake up to smell the chloroform....”

“He might have ‘time stopped,’” Frank consoled her.

“Yeah...and my indalo was in the night stand,” Angie said with a hint of disgust at her own stupidity.

By the time the team had finished doing their research, Terry was beat. The margaritas crept up on her, so she decided to head home and get some sleep. “But I’ll be leaving my phone handy, if you need me,” she told Frank.

Tony was calling it a night, too, since he had to be up for an early flight to LA and then from there to Tokyo and on to Beijing.

The remaining five Envoys were ready to go clubbing. It occurred to Frank that the five of them, 2 men and 3 women, going in together might not garner the right type of interest for gathering information. So they agreed to split up, the men and women going separately. They would start at the last place Vanessa had been, the Blue Note jazz club, and trace her movements backwards from there if they could.

While Frank printed out a couple copies of Vanessa’s faculty photo, Justin and Karen changed into ‘clubbing clothes.’ For Karen, that meant tight, ratty jeans, knee-high Doc Martens with3-inch soles and more buckles than leather, and a black leather bustier. She grabbed random fist-fulls of her hair and pulled them into pig-tails that stuck up at odd angles from her head. She was about to head for the door with Leigh and Angie, when she turned and hurried back to the bathroom. A few moments later she was back, without her engagement and wedding rings. She’d tucked them carefully into a pocket, and disguised the pale line around her ring finger with a little make-up. Justin was wearing tight jeans, combat boots and a just-loose-enough bowling shirt with “Mack” embroidered above the pocket, which held a pack of smokes and a lighter. He didn’t smoke, but he knew that lots of people did, and learned a long time ago that the pack could often work as a handy ‘ice-breaker.’ Noticing Karen’s missing rings, Justin remembered to pocket his own ring, too.

The girls headed over to Angie’s place next, where Angie changed into a short skirt and an almost-see-through blouse. Her shoes were sandals with 2-inch heels, and Leigh and Karen weren’t sure of the wisdom in wearing them when they had no idea what they might encounter. So Angie showed them the ingenious straps, which were designed to keep the shoes firmly attached to her feet, even if Angie had to run in them.

The last stop before the club was Leigh’s place, where Leigh changed into a black skirt, thigh-high black boots, and a black sleeveless top made of a stretchy micro-fiber fabric that clung to her, accentuating her well-proportioned body. The three were ready to go, and they called to let the guys know.

Justin and Frank had gone to Frank’s place for him to change into something a little more appropriate for a jazz club, which turned out to be black slacks and an open-collared dress shirt.

All of them wore or carried jackets, since the air had quickly cooled after the rain. And all of them wore their comm units and whatever weapons they felt most comfortable with, which required clever hiding under the women’s clothes...or lack thereof.

It was agreed that the women would go in first, so they headed straight over to the club from Leigh’s. They parked in one of the campus ramps, so Karen’s Jeep, with all the spare weapons Angie and Justin could cram into it, was close enough if they needed it, but out of sight.

They crossed at the corner farthest from the club and watched carefully to see if they were being followed as they walked along the street, chatting and laughing loudly as if they had been enjoying their evening so far. They made an interesting trio--one tall, blond and model-beautiful, with a kind of willowy strength and zen-like calm; one short, pretty and brunette, obviously muscular and openly sure of herself; the third fair and brown-haired, not as athletic as the other two and trying to disguise her girl-next-door looks with her tough-punk clothing. Angie looked the most like the usual clubbers, and the bouncer manning the door of the Blue Note looked her up and down appreciatively a couple times, almost to the exclusion of Karen and Leigh, before waving her through. He let Karen and Leigh in as if it were an afterthought and only because they were with Angie. But at that hour on a Sunday night, there was no line to get in, and the place was not particularly crowded.

A few steps inside the door, the guy perched beside a tall stand holding an old cash register took their cover charge and stamped their hands, and waved them further inside. There was jazz playing over the sound system, obviously taped, and a placard posted near the front corner of the stage told them that “Deacon Blue” was taking a 45-minute break and would be back at 11pm. They checked their watches. It was about 10:30pm.

They found an empty table near the center of the room, not too far from the stage, the bar or the door, and sat down. They’d all been drawing interested looks from most of the guys in the place...and a few of the women, too. Karen was never very good at this kind of thing, so she tried to follow Angie and Leigh’s lead and hoped that her punk ‘armor’ would ward off any serious attempts at flirting with her. Luckily for her the vibe in the room was subdued; not solemn, but uneasy and just somehow ‘off.’ The three sat talking and scanning the room as if they were looking for a waitress to take their drink orders.

They’d only been there a few minutes when a very tall man approached their table. He had dark hair and very dark skin, and his pronounced cheek bones made him strikingly attractive. The two anthropologists at the table thought he could be Ethiopian or Somalian, though some of his features indicated that he might be of mixed race. He was wearing a loose-fitting shirt of moss-green with black leather pants. “Good evening, ladies,” he said smoothly as he stopped at their table. “Can I buy you a drink?” Though the “you” could have meant all three, the way he looked at Leigh told the others that it was directed more at her than them.

“That would be fine,” Leigh nodded, and he held out his hand to her. She rose, taking it lightly. Karen and Angie stood, too, as if they were joined to Leigh at the hips.

“So much beauty...so little time,” he said, smiling at all three. The man was as charming as Vanya, Karen thought to herself, but in a very different way. While Vanya exuded a certain Gypsy machismo, his was a boyish charm that he would turn on and off, using it to entertain himself and the people he was with; and he was always careful not to mislead anyone with it, since he was actually quite happily married. This man had the devil’s own charm, a charm that was more ‘snake-like’ than Vanya’s, and it felt to Karen like he used it in a more calculated manner than Vanya did. She was sure he used it to manipulate people...and that he saw no need to ‘turn it off.’

Extending his arm, he guided the three toward the bar. “My usual,” he said to the bartender, “and give these ladies whatever they want. Put it on my tab.”

“Yes, sir,” the bartender said, in a tone that told the women that he knew he would be getting a good tip at the end of the night. Each of the women ordered a mixed drink, nothing too exotic, and the man was handed a snifter one-third full of some amber liquid, a brandy or liqueur that left thick trails clinging to the sides of the glass when it was swirled.

Leigh slipped a swizzle stick from her purse and stirred her drink with it. It was one of the new tester sticks that could detect several different drugs if they’d been added to her glass. But it came up clean. Angie had somehow managed to produce one of the sticks, too, and her drink was clean as well. Karen hadn’t thought to bring anything like that, since she usually went out with her big, protective husband in tow. But if Angie’s and Leigh’s drinks were OK, she didn’t expect that hers would be drugged, and she could rely on the other two women to protect her if it was.

“You look like you stumbled in here by mistake,” the man said to Karen, smiling and eyeing her decidedly punk outfit with amusement.

Karen shrugged and grinned. “I took them to my club earlier, now it’s my turn to come to theirs.”

The man nodded, not at all offended that she wasn’t there entirely by choice. “I hope you will enjoy yourself here anyway,” he told her.

“I haven’t seen you here before,” the tall man said, turning to Leigh. “Tell me it was the music that brought you.” The man had a voice like smoke and whiskey and honey. Karen was almost startled when Michel de Ribeauville came to her mind. She’d never met the loup garou in person, but his voice, even over the phone, had that same warm, smooth and slightly dangerous feel. The main difference was that this man’s English had a hint of Afro-Caribbean, where de Ribeauville’s French was perfectly native. Karen couldn’t help but wonder just what this man was.

“Music is the universal language,” Leigh replied charmingly. “It has so many uses and can communicate so much.” The man’s face lit up, and all three women began to suspect that if he was not the owner of the club then he must be the evening’s entertainment, Deacon Blue. He had certainly acted as if he were their host thus far.

“You understand!” he said to Leigh. “It is hard to hide the truth in music.” The man led them back to their table and held Leigh’s chair for her before sitting down with the women. He had an animal magnetism about him that announced that he knew his own worth and was very comfortable with it. It was as if he were a civilized wolf--powerful, attractive...and not currently on the hunt. He would lean in close as he spoke, but he was very respectful of each woman’s personal space.

And if he noticed the indalo that each of the women had somewhere on themselves or their clothes, or the crucifix that hung around Karen’s neck, dangling just low enough that it was hidden in the top of the bustier, he made no indication of it. He carried on with the pleasant conversation, talking in a very educated fashion about the various types of jazz, and made an effort to include all of the women. But he was clearly more focused on Leigh. She easily picked up on his casual invitation to more than conversation, and sent back her own signals of possible interest with a healthy dose of ‘don’t come too close yet.’ Leigh could tell that he wasn’t trying to pressure her and that if he was eventually rejected he would be OK with that. Leigh was becoming more sure that the man was Deacon Blue, since she’d been to this club before and never seen him there. Whoever, or whatever, he was, while he was with them no one else approached their table.

Frank and Justin had circled the block a couple times before parking down the street. They’d seen the women go in and wanted to make sure there was no one hanging around suspiciously or following them, although Frank trusted that the person would have to be good to escape Angie’s notice. The bouncer barely acknowledged them when he waved them in, and the guy at the register was more concerned with collecting the cover. The two found a table and settled down. It wasn’t all the way in a corner, since that would be pretty obvious with so many empty tables available; but they picked one that gave them a good view of the whole room, with no one sitting behind them and no way for anyone to get behind them without being seen. They couldn’t help but notice that in the few minutes since the women had come in, they’d managed to attract one man’s undivided attention. Justin concentrated on studying the other people in the bar rather than watching his wife be charmed by the tall man. It wasn’t that he was jealous, because he knew that Karen loved him alone. But if he watched her too long, his attraction to her was bound to show and blow their cover.

The place was moderately smoky, the accumulation of several hours worth of cigarette-smoking by the few people with ashtrays on their tables. Besides the front door, there were doorways on the back wall to either side of the stage, and another hallway opposite the bar that was labeled “Restrooms.”

They’d been sitting there for about 15 minutes, watching as two members of the band quietly checked their instruments--a stand-up bass and the drums--before the next set began, when two blondes came over to them. The women introduced themselves as Betty and Sue, and offered to buy the men drinks. Frank smiled and pulled out a chair for Betty, then waved over a waitress while Justin pulled out the other chair for Sue.

“A bottle of Sam Adams, unopened,” Justin told the waitress.

“I like a man who knows his beer,” Sue purred at Justin. “The same for me.” Justin could feel his ears turning pink, and he was glad that the room wasn’t too bright. He felt kind of like the cat food must, when the cat looked into the bowl, licking its chops.

It was a couple minutes before 11pm, and after almost a half hour of pleasant conversation, the tall man stood and said, “I’m afraid that I must get back to work now.” He bowed gracefully from the waist and held his hand out toward Leigh. When she put her hand out to take his, he lifted it to his lips and kissed it lightly. His hand was quite warm, but not uncomfortably so, and he kept his eyes on Leigh’s face throughout the kiss. Then he turned and kissed Angie’s and Karen’s hands, though the kiss felt nowhere near as intimate or suggestive to them as it appeared to be with Leigh. As he turned and walked toward the stage, all three women tried to sense if he was an Unknown creature or under the control of one. And while they couldn’t actually tell if what they felt was him or something else in the room, there was a definite Unknown presence, strong but not as bad as the Weendigo had felt.

Frank watched the man go up onto the stage, then turned his gaze back to Betty. At the same time, he focused his thoughts on sensing any Unknown presence in the room and felt what Leigh, Karen and Angie had, though he was pretty sure that it was not coming from the two girls. Even Justin, who relied on his gut instinct rather than any concentrated effort at sensing the Unknown, could feel that there was Something there.

The recorded music was turned down, then off, and the house lights began to dim. “Betty, Sue, did you happen to see my long-lost sister here last night?” Frank asked, showing them the picture before the room got too dark. Betty took the photo then handed it to Sue. Each studied it for a minute, looking from the photo to Frank and back to the photo.

“I don’t see much of a family resemblance,” Betty said.

“She was adopted,” Frank told her. She shrugged and looked at Sue. It could be true....

“Well, we weren’t here last night. We were at a different club,” Betty told him. “But I think we saw her here the night before.” Frank tucked the photo back into his pocket. The stage lights brightened as the sound of a sax flowed out into the room. The tall man, with a fedora pulled low over his eyes, blew into the instrument, his long fingers caressing the finger plates. The two girls turned toward the stage and focused on him as if drawn that way by strings.

That was when Justin noticed something... unusual. Sue was wearing a strappy, gauzy top... and a choker that didn’t really seem to go with the blouse. And Betty was wearing a scarf, which matched her shirt but still seemed out of place. “Have you seen him before?” Justin whispered into Sue’s ear.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “He’s been here three weekends now.”

“So is he Deacon?” Justin asked.

“I think so,” Sue whispered back, her eyes never leaving the sax player.

“I thought all jazz men were short and dumpy,” Justin said.

At that Sue turned and looked at him. “Where’d you get that idea?” she asked, sounding surprised.

“I dunno,” Justin said. “Maybe I’m thinking the blues.”

“Where’d you get that idea,” Sue asked again, still surprised at Justin’s seeming lack of knowledge.

Justin named several short, round blues men he knew of. Then Sue named off several tall, skinny ones. Justin shrugged and grinned. “I stand corrected,” he told her. She grinned back, then turned to watch Deacon again. Justin actually knew more about jazz and blues than he was letting on, because the conversation hadn’t been the point. Justin had been trying to see if he could make out any marks on her neck that she might be trying to cover with the choker; and he had to say something that would get Sue to turn back toward him so he could see the front and sides of her neck better. He didn’t have any luck with that, but he realized why he couldn’t smell anything much at the moment. The women wasn’t just wearing perfume...she’d apparently marinated in it!

Justin looked around the room. Sue and Betty weren’t the only people so strongly affected by Deacon’s playing. Everyone, especially every woman, in the place was watching him like he was the only thing in their world. Even Karen, Leigh and Angie seemed to be focused on Deacon, though Justin could tell from Karen’s posture that she was only acting the part. And the women at his and Frank’s table weren’t the only two with unusual neckwear, either. In spite of the day’s unseasonably warm weather, at least a dozen women were wearing something that covered their necks, from scarves to turtlenecks to a couple of other chokers, even a dog collar on a girl that looked, like Karen, like she would be more comfortable in one of the punk clubs.

Then, as the first song ended, the strangest thing happened. Deacon stood and set his sax on its stand, and for a second the Envoys thought he was going to take a quick break or talk to the audience... But no one else was moving! Nothing else was moving! The ceiling fans had stopped spinning and the smoke itself was suspended in the air as if the air currents had stopped moving, too. And Leigh could see that the fly, which seconds before had been trying to land on the rim of her glass, was frozen in mid-flight, an inch from her glass. Justin, Karen, Leigh and Angie froze, not sure of what had happened but not ready to blow their cover. Deacon stepped off the stage, moving calmly as if there was no need to rush, then stopped. Something was...

Frank lifted his hand and waved at Deacon. Nothing drastic, just enough to let Deacon know that whatever he’d done hadn’t worked on Frank. And enough to draw Deacon’s attention away from the other Envoys, who he could tell, like him, hadn’t been affected but were acting like they had been. Deacon cocked his head, not quite sure he’d seen what he’d seen...until Frank smiled at him. Deacon took a sip of water from a glass on the table nearest him, then stepped back on stage and picked up his sax. The look that crossed Deacon’s face told Frank that his interest had been piqued, that he was tickled at the thought that there was someone out there unaffected by his powers.

And then the moment passed. The fans started moving, the smoke began swirling through the air, and the annoying fly landed again on the rim of Leigh’s glass. The sound of the sax signaled the beginning of the next song, and the bass and drums joined in as if nothing had happened at all. But throughout the rest of the set, Deacon kept his eyes on Frank, not sure of who or what he was or why he hadn’t been frozen like everything else. Betty and Sue assumed that he was looking at them, and they were just thrilled to be the objects of his attention.

The whole incident unnerved Karen, and she slipped away from the table to go to the restroom. When she’d felt the heat of an Unknown presence earlier, she’d looked around to make sure that it wasn’t just caused by a ghost. But there were none in the room. Now she knew for sure that what she’d felt was Deacon, and the fact that he’d kissed her hand creeped her out. There was no one else in the bathroom when she went in, and she went to the nearest stall. But when she opened the door, she was startled to see a girl sitting on the toilet. “Sorry!” Karen said, quickly pulling the door shut. It only registered in her mind after she shut the door that the girl’s clothes looked like a style from the sixties. The girl had been sitting with her elbows on her knees, her chin resting on her cupped hands. As Karen stepped away from the stall, a hand reached out through the door and tried to grab her wrist. “Wait!” a girl’s voice called from inside the stall. Karen stopped stock still, about to pull her arm back to resist the grasp. Thank God there was no one else in there!

Karen could feel the cold seep into her skin, though the hand went right through her. She opened the door and stepped into the stall, shutting the door behind her while trying not to step on the girl’s feet. Although she knew that the girl was incorporeal, Karen couldn’t help but react as if the girl were as solid as her. “You can see me!” the girl said with surprise. “You’re the first person that’s ever seen me! I’ve been here...I dunno...forever, and....”

The girl was thin and malnourished-looking, and she had dark circles under her eyes. She spoke fast, with a nervous energy, and Karen recognized right away that the girl must have been a heroin addict, before she even spotted the tell-tale track marks on her arms. “How can you...? Why can you see me? Other people keep coming and going and I try to talk to them but it’s like they don’t know that I’m here, they just ignore me,” the girl said in a rush.

Karen didn’t know what to say. It was clear that the girl had no idea that she was dead, and that wasn’t any easy thing to tell anyone. And she had no way of knowing how the girl would react when she told her. Jane had been angry and had refused to believe it; she’d lashed out like the child that she was. Jody had been angry too, but she’d been almost surgical in the revenge she took against Aiden, whom she blamed for her death. “I...I’m not sure exactly why I can see you and other people can’t,” Karen said. “I’ve just always been able to....” Karen hesitated. The girl needed to know, but Karen was here on other business. She couldn’t get caught up in helping this girl right now, no matter how much the girl needed it. She didn’t even know where to start. “Maybe it’s because.... I don’t know how to say this,” Karen continued. “There’s no easy way.... Don’t you know that you’re dead?”

The girl looked up at Karen with a look of surprise that slowly changed to understanding as she realized the implications of what Karen had said. “Well, that would explain it!” she said with forced cheerfulness. But there was fear in her eyes as she asked Karen, “So...what do I do now? Where do I go?”

“I can’t tell you that for sure,” Karen told her. “Usually when people die they cross-over to another existence. That’s what’s supposed to happen. But sometimes they don’t. Sometimes, like you, they don’t realize they’re dead because the death was so sudden or unexpected. Sometimes they know, but they have unfinished business in this world and they stay until they resolve it. Can you think of anything like that, anything that might be holding you here?”

The girl shrugged. Karen suspected that she’d spent the end of her life so jacked up on heroin that she couldn’t remember much of it. She also suspected that, because of that, the girl did have things she’d want to resolve. But even if she had the time to help the girl, she wouldn’t know where to start unless and until the girl did. She felt bad that she couldn’t stay with the girl and help her through this. She looked so small and lost. But she had other work to do and her friends were depending on her. “Listen,” Karen said to the girl, “you’ll know where to go when the time comes. Until then, you have to figure out what’s keeping you here. When you do that, you’ll know what you have to do to move on. Then I might be able to help you.” The girl nodded, trying hard to look like she was OK, but looking very unhappy instead. Karen nodded back at her and left the stall.

Karen wasn’t shaking on the outside, but she felt like she was on the inside. It was hard not being able to help the girl. She went to the sink and washed her hands, glad again that no one else was in there. She guessed that was one good thing about everyone else being mesmerized by Deacon’s music. Karen could hear muffled sobbing from the girl’s stall, and she tried to ignore it.

Leigh came in just then, and set her purse on the counter. Karen glanced over at her to see if she heard the sobbing too, but it looked like she didn’t. Leigh could see that Karen was upset about something; she looked a little anxious around the eyes. She’d have to ask her about it later. For now, Leigh went back to double-checking the supply of herbs in her purse. She’d gathered what she could from home earlier, and after Deacon’s little display a few minutes ago, it looked like they might come in handy. She had made a point of checking the mirror behind the bar as she went by. Deacon did have a reflection, but she knew that that didn’t rule out his being a vampire. There were plenty of types that had no problem with mirrors or a lack of a reflection. She had mint, garlic, elm, wild rose and wolf’s bane carefully nestled in the largest section of her purse, ready to grab if she needed any of them. It wasn’t an ideal way to keep them, but it was the best she was able to do on short notice.

Karen paused before opening the bathroom door, putting on her ‘everything’s fine’ face before going back out. Justin and their friends would recognize that she was covering something up; but they’d also know that she would’ve told them immediately if it was important. The ‘face’ was more for everyone else, the people she didn’t want any extra attention from. And she knew that the ‘face’ would work--she’d been using it for years. Karen sat back down at the table and resumed her ‘entranced by Deacon’ act, and Leigh came back a minute later and did the same. The music still had the same ‘pull’ as it had before Deacon’s trick, and it was obvious that he could have had anyone in there that he wanted. Even the staff were affected, doing their jobs at a leisurely pace, and no one seemed particularly bothered by it. Justin had been surreptitiously studying all the women with unusual neckwear. They might not all be hiding something, but there was no way for him to tell. So he tried to take special note of the ones whose neckwear was definitely out of place or didn’t fit with the rest of the outfit.

At the end of the set, the room exploded with thunderous applause, the audience giving the band a standing ovation. The band bowed and then obligingly did an encore, which drew even more applause. Then the stage lights went down, and the band shuffled off the stage, disappearing before the house lights went up. Recorded jazz started to play from the sound system again, and it was obvious that the hour-long set was the last of the night. Justin waved for a waitress, and asked her to send a round to the band on him.

“That’ll be $25,” she said, and Justin told her that was no problem.

“They’re definitely worth it,” Justin said.

“Yeah, they’re fantastic, the best I’ve ever heard,” she replied.

“Do you happen to have a schedule of their appearances?” Justin asked.

“I’m pretty sure they’re here again next weekend,” she answered.

“I haven’t seen them around before,” Justin said.

“I think they’re from New Orleans,” the waitress told him.

“Do they have a website?” he asked. “Yeah, here,” she said, digging in her apron and pulling out one of the band’s business cards and handing it to Justin. Then she wandered off toward the bar to place the order. Although the other two members of the trio came out and shuttled their equipment off the stage, Deacon didn’t reappear; and it seemed that most of the people in the room had been there just to hear the band, because things began to break up, though not abruptly. Sue and Betty were no longer paying the same attention to Justin and Frank that they had when they came in, and after just a little while said that they were going to call it a night. People began to trickle out the door and onto the street.

Leigh went over to the bar a couple minutes after the house lights had gone up. “Can you tell me where the band went?” she asked the bartender. “I wanted to tell them how great they are and how much I enjoyed the music.”

“Sometimes he comes back out and mingles, sometimes he doesn’t,” the bartender said, referring only to Deacon as if he knew that was who Leigh was really asking about. “But he’ll be back next weekend, and if you want to leave a message...or a phone number, I’ll make sure he gets it. They come in two or three evenings during the week to practice.”

Leigh took a pen from her purse and took a napkin from the nearby stack. “I loved your show and look forward to seeing you again,” she wrote on the napkin. Then she signed it with the number for one of her throw-away cells. “Do you happen to know if they have any CDs out?” she asked the bartender, handing him the folded note.

He pulled one out from under the bar and handed it to her. The case had a nice glossy insert that included a web address. “They’re ten bucks,” the bartender said, and Leigh willingly handed over the cash. He really was an amazing musician, but the power must have come from the man, not the music if he was selling the CDs from the bar.

Betty and Sue were gone now, so Frank stood. He didn’t say anything to Justin about what he was planning, but Justin understood that he was going to look for Deacon. He sat and kept watch as Frank made his way toward the back of the room and one of the doorways that led off into the back of the building. Before he passed into the hallway and out of sight of the main room, he scratched his ear, signaling Justin to activate his comm unit. It turned out that the hallway led to the kitchen, and he startled the only person back there when he poked his head around the corner.

The guy had been leaning against a counter smoking a cigarette. “If you’re lookin’ for the band, they’re on the other side,” the guy said to Frank. When Frank didn’t respond immediately, the guy continued, “Unless you want somethin’ ta eat. The kitchen’s s’posed ta be closed, but I think I could find somethin’....” With the cigarette hanging from his lips, the guy turned and opened the refrigerator. When he looked back at the doorway to ask what Frank wanted, Frank had already disappeared. A minute after Frank had gone into the hallway and out of sight, Justin saw him come back out and head for the other hallway. He wasn’t sure exactly what was down there, but it obviously wasn’t Deacon.

When Frank didn’t come back after another minute, Justin stood and went out the front door. More people were leaving by now, so it didn’t look strange for Justin to go out, and he wanted to see if he could find the band’s van. The waitress said that they were from New Orleans; so if he couldn’t find a vehicle with Louisiana plates, he’d see if he couldn’t find something that was large enough to carry the three guys and their instruments that happened to also have traces of that sticky red Southern clay. The stuff was impossible to get rid of completely, short of having the whole vehicle detailed. And most small bands that he knew of didn’t have lots of spare cash for stuff like detailing. Outside, Justin took a few steps toward where they’d left Frank’s car, then stopped and pulled out the pack of smokes. While it wasn’t a habit he’d ever acquired, he’d watched enough guys smoke that he knew how to fake it. He lit one up and stood there people-watching, like he was just waiting for his buddy to come out. Up and down the street and in the parking lot behind him, he could see people getting into cars of all types. But no sign of the band or anything with Louisiana plates.

Frank turned down the other hallway, and stopped when he came to a doorway. At the far end of the dimly lit hall, past this doorway, he could see a steel door with a panic bar, the word EXIT glowing red above it. He could hear movement from the other side of the doorway, but no talking. He stood there a few seconds with his back against the same wall as the doorway. When he was sure that no one was directly in front of the door, he quickly looked inside. It was the other two members of the trio, the bassist relaxing on a couch while the drummer packed his equipment. Deacon wasn’t in there. And since neither he nor Justin had seen him come back into the main room, he must have gone out the back.

Frank waited another few seconds, then checked to make sure neither man was facing the door before he crossed swiftly to the other side. A few more steps and he was at the back door. He pressed the panic bar gently until it was fully compressed, then pushed the door open a crack and listened. The only sounds were the rustling of trash in the breeze and the traffic out on Cass. Frank pushed the door further and stuck his head out for a split second, expecting an attack. He’d caught a quick glimpse of a typical alley, and a black panel van sitting under the single overhead light, its back doors hanging open. So he slipped out the door and gently closed it behind himself, then pressed his back to the wall, studying the alley more closely. From here he could see that there were already some instrument cases in the back of the van. But there was no one else around.

Then, inches from his ear, he heard, “We’re not going to have any trouble are we?”

Frank turned his head, and there was Deacon, leaning casually against the wall, wearing a long black trench coat.

“Nice coat,” Frank said. Deacon just watched him. “I don’t know,” Frank continued. “Are we going to have any trouble?”

“That’s up to you,” Deacon replied. “Are you going to start it?”

A faint smile crept into Frank’s eyes. For some reason he enjoyed sparring with his opponents, looking for their strengths and weaknesses as they did the same with him. “It’s not entirely up to me,” he said.

Deacon smiled. “I find you intriguing,” he told Frank.

“You’re very talented,” Frank told him. “Thank you...I am,” Deacon said, grinning. A second later the smile was gone. “I’d rather not...I’d rather we not have any trouble.”

“What makes you think we would?” Frank asked him. “You haven’t done anything that would make me think we will, have you?”

Now the light was gone from Deacon’s eyes. “You’d never see me coming, so let’s just leave it alone and leave it here,” he said, his whisper almost a hiss.

But Frank wasn’t ready to let the matter drop quite yet. He hadn’t learned what he wanted to. “But we both find each other intriguing,” he told Deacon. “Can’t we at least have a pleasant conversation? Can you answer one question for me?”

“You’ll have to ask it before I can say if I can,” Deacon replied. “How much practice did it take to get that good on the sax?” Frank asked him.

Deacon grinned, but Frank didn’t see anything unusual about his teeth. “All my life,” Deacon answered. “That’s not a very precise answer,” Frank chided him.

“A very long time,” Deacon said, the smile fading. “It’s the only thing I’ve found that will last me forever.” Frank turned his head to look at Deacon, but he was already gone, faded into the shadows. Only a mist was left behind.

Justin was listening to Frank’s conversation in the ear bud. He must’ve found Deacon, but it didn’t sound like he needed any help. Justin could see Betty and Sue further up the block, chatting as they walked. When they got to the corner, they hugged each other then split and went in opposite directions. The one thing Justin found interesting, as he watched the people going about their business--the average height of the women who had their necks covered was about five foot six or seven, quite a bit shorter than Vanessa and the two dead girls. “Elvis has left the alleyway,” Frank said to Justin over the comm unit.

Justin pulled out his cell and opened it, so he wouldn’t look crazy standing there talking to no one. “I don’t see him out here,” Justin told Frank. “But I can tell you that all the women with unusual neckwear, like Betty and Sue, are much shorter than the vic. Only about five-six or -seven.” As he spoke, Justin exhaled smoke upward above his head, hoping that if any creepy things were trying to sneak up on him from above, the smoke would outline them. But there was nothing there that he could see or sense.

“Now...if I were going out for a peanut butter and banana sandwich, where would I go?” Frank said, as much to himself as to Justin.

It was about 12:30am by now, and Leigh, Angie and Karen came out of the Blue Note. They stood outside the door for a moment looking up and down the street, then Leigh turned and walked toward the next club up the street and Angie and Karen followed her. Justin stared appreciatively as they went by, just like every other guy on the street at the moment. He watched as they went in a door about a block up, then pulled out his cell again and let Frank know where they’d gone and that he was going to follow in a couple minutes.

Frank began making his way back out to Cass, making sure he wasn’t followed. He couldn’t see anyone or anything tailing him, but he got the feeling that he was being watched. That didn’t surprise him at all. He also felt a generalized sense of the Unknown nagging at him. “Freakin’ Hounds,” he mumbled to himself, almost forgetting that the mike would pick it up. “And yet, he didn’t just off me, and he could have,” he said, thinking out loud. “He’s not rash, he’s a thinker. Which doesn’t fit with the injuries....”

“Or any kidnaping or disappearance,” Justin added.

“I think he was pretty hot,” Angie said, startling the men. They’d almost forgotten that the women were wearing comm units, too. They just hadn’t bothered activating the mikes until they made the move to the next club.

“Aiden is at work, isn’t he?” Frank teased her.

“Hey, I haven’t cheated on him,” Angie replied.

“Yet,” Justin, Karen and Leigh added at the same time, laughing. Angie just grinned.

Inside the club, they’d found that there was no band that night and the club wasn’t very crowded. But the place was still fairly hoppin’, the electronic music drawing almost everyone out onto the dance floor. And once again, the trio of women had no sooner walked in the door than they were attracting attention. “Oooh, I have to dance!” Leigh exclaimed as they got inside, already starting to move with the beat of the music. Angie followed her onto the dance floor. But this was definitely not Karen’s thing, and she quickly found herself a stool at the bar and ordered a drink. Moments later, she was bracketed by guys and almost wishing she’d chosen to dance instead.

The women didn’t really notice when Justin and Frank came in. Karen had been watching Leigh and Angie dance. A couple times, Karen had to wonder if Angie actually had any bones in her body or if she was just strong enough to fake it most of the time. And Leigh didn’t look bad out there either, her natural grace enhanced by the aikido training. After a while, though, the only trouble in the place turned out to be unwanted groping. Karen was glad that she wore the ‘big’ boots; they were quite effective at leaving bruises on and flattening the feet of guys who startled her by touching parts they shouldn’t have been. And it was amazing how a woman as graceful as Leigh could keep getting her feet tangled with those of guys who got too familiar.

But the thing that really put a damper on the ‘overly friendly’ contact was when Angie stiff-fingered one guy in the throat and he dropped like a stone. Frank had been watching the ‘action’ and knew that sooner or later something would happen. So he was right there when the guy went down.

Angie looked genuinely horrified, but Frank scooped the guy up saying, “Damn it, Bubba, I told you not to drink so much!” He hauled the guy over to a chair near a wall and dropped him into it, leaning him against the wall. “Don’t worry, you didn’t break him,” he told Angie over the comm unit. Luckily, she’d pulled the strike just in time to prevent any permanent injury. But the guy would probably be having a little trouble swallowing for a few days.

Not surprisingly, the incidents of groping dropped like the guy after that, for Leigh and Karen as well as Angie. And eventually Frank’s sense of being watched began to subside as well. Frank showed the picture of Vanessa around, but no one there recognized her. And after about 30 minutes, the women left for the next club, the men a few minutes behind.

For the next couple hours, they went from club to club, the women trying to attract attention that might lead them to the vampire, Frank showing Vanessa’s picture and trying to work out her time line the previous night, and Justin keeping an eye on them all and watching for any other women with oddly-wrapped necks, especially tall hookers. As they went from club to club, Justin managed to see hookers of just about every possible size, shape, color and sex; but none of them appeared to be hiding their necks...or much of anything else.

By the time the clubs started shutting down, the punk ones being the last to close, the team had managed to hit them all. Frank was able to confirm that Vanessa had been at both jazz clubs and one of the other ‘alternative music’ clubs, with the general consensus being that the Blue Note had indeed been the last place she was at. People had seen her with guys at various times during the night, but she didn’t come into the clubs with them or leave with them. It seemed like she subscribed to a sort of ‘catch and release’ program where guys were concerned. It was a little past 3am when they straggled out of the last club, Karen trailing slightly behind as she chatted with some of the people she knew there, introducing them to Leigh and Angie.

Up the street, Frank felt his phone ring. “Muelder,” he answered.

“It’s me,” Terry said. “I just got called out for a floater. It might not be anything, but I thought you might want to know.”

“Ya know, there’s an interesting jazz musician in town I’ll have to tell you about,” Frank hinted to her.

“You know I love jazz,” she told him. “You’ve seen my record...CD collection. So, do you wanna come, or you just wanna read the report?”

“Lemme ask around,” Frank replied. “You guys up for a field trip?” he asked the others over the comm unit. “Justin, you’ll have to see it from the other side of the line, with Karen and Leigh....”

But Justin was only half paying attention, because his phone had just started to ring. “Yeah?” he answered.

“It’s Aiden,” Aiden said. “You might want to swing by here on your way home.”

“Just me?” Justin asked.

“No, bring the whole crowd,” Aiden told him. “Hey, Frank, what’s your field trip?” Justin asked over the comm unit.

“Terry has a floater,” Frank replied.

“I got Aiden on the phone and he wants us to come over there. Which sounds more interesting?” Justin asked.

“Does he have something new?” Frank asked in response.

“Something new?” Justin asked Aiden.

“Yeah,” Aiden said.

“He said ‘yeah’,” Justin told Frank.

“OK, we’ll go there,” Frank told them all.

“We’ll be there shortly,” Justin told Aiden. “Want coffee?”

“Oh, God, yes,” Aiden answered.

“We’re gonna go to the hospital first,” Frank told Terry, “and I’ll give you a call when we’re done there.”

“Hey, Frank,” Justin asked as he hung up the cell, having walked over to where Frank was standing, “ask Terry if she wants coffee and if she ever worked vice.”

“Terry, Justin wants to know if you want coffee and if you ever worked vice,” Frank said.

“What? Why?” Terry asked, puzzled by the question almost as much as the others were.

“She wants to know why,” Frank told Justin.

“Because every female cop I’ve ever met gets tapped for vice duty at some point in her career,” Justin explained, “and I figured she might have connections that could get us more info about the previous victims...or be willing to act as a decoy if that’s that kind of person the, um, guy is looking for.”

Frank relayed the explanation to Terry. “Oh, in that case, Yes and Yes,” she told Frank. “She said ‘Yes and Yes’,” Frank told the others. Justin looked rather smug at having been right about Terry’s ‘resume.’

“Good,” Frank told Terry. “Justin’s glad he was right. Besides, you’ve got the legs for it.”

“Thanks,” Terry replied. “Maybe I’ll show you sometime....” The two hung up, and the Envoys headed back to their cars and over to Receiving.

At the hospital, Angie went in first to find Aiden. 20 minutes later, she finally came back wearing borrowed scrubs and paper booties, with Aiden in tow. The looks from the others told her they all suspected that she’d ‘tackled’ Aiden in his office again. But it wasn’t just that...and it wasn’t all her fault....

“I just didn’t...” she started to explain.

“You didn’t want to bend over and show everything,” Justin finished for her, trying to save her at least a little embarrassment.

“Well...yes,” she agreed.

Aiden once again led them through the hospital by a circuitous route that bypassed as many of the security cameras as he could manage. But this time they ended up in one of the regular wards, in a double room that had only one bed occupied. Aiden put his finger to his lips, warning them all to be quiet. “She’s sleeping,” he told them in a low voice, just outside the door. “Came in about a quart low. Evidently fainted going up the stairs to her apartment, and a neighbor heard her fall and called it in. I’d just as soon let her sleep...” he finished as he gently pushed open the door, giving the others a look that again warned them not to wake her.

Lying on the bed was Sue, looking pale and small now against the white sheets and light blue blanket. The choker was gone, and, pulling a small light from his pocket and shielding it with his hand, Aiden showed them a series of small puncture marks along her neck, all above the vein. They could see that the marks, three pairs, had been made over a length of time, since one pair was almost completely healed, the second pair partially healed, and the third set fresh. Justin pulled out his cell and moved around to take photos of the marks, and Aiden covered the girl’s eyes so the flash wouldn’t wake her.

“She’ll be fine,” Aiden whispered, “just a little anemic.”

“Got any holy water handy?” Justin asked.

“And have you cleaned the wound with it yet?” Frank added.

“No and no,” Aiden answered. “Just regular cleansing so far.”

“Karen, can you do another Mental Shield?” Justin asked.

“Not until about 6 tomorrow morning,” she told him, shaking her head. “But Leigh could,” she said, looking over at Leigh.

Leigh nodded and was about to raise the Shield when Frank stopped her. “Make sure you get me in it too,” he told her, “just in case he did put a Hound on me.” Leigh nodded. It wasn’t a bad idea for all of them to ‘get a shot of this,’ so they all moved close to Leigh and she raised the Shield. Then Justin leaned over Sue and put his hand lightly on her arm. Another look from Aiden warned him again not to wake the girl, but all Justin wanted to do was boost her ability to recover from the wounds. \

When they were all done, Aiden led them out of the room. “Let’s go to my office,” he said when they’d gotten a few steps down the hall. And he headed down and out to the nearest coffee shop.

As everyone was lingering just inside the open garage door saying their ‘good nights,’ Justin’s phone started ringing. They all paused, waiting to see if it was Aiden calling about their vampire victim. But it was Tony. He’d just gotten back into town and he only had one night there before flying off on another job; so he was wondering what everyone was up to. Justin told him to come over to their place, then told the others that they might as well head back inside. Karen had been trying to keep ‘official team meetings and work’ at the safe house rather than her and Justin’s home. She really liked this house, and didn’t want anything other than the ghosts that were already there finding out about it. But it seemed silly for them to all pack up and go over to the safe house since Justin also had a surprise for everyone in his workshop and he’d just been waiting for everyone to be in town at the same time to show them all.

They were settling in around the kitchen table, when there was a quick knock on the back door and Tony came in. They were a little surprised to see that he was wearing a clerical collar. “So, on your spring break you became a priest?” Karen asked nonchalantly. Justin stared at him, waiting for him to say why he was impersonating a priest, and the others gathered around the laptops that were being booted up, basically ignoring him.

Tony seemed disappointed at the response he was getting. “C’mon!” he prompted them. “Youse guys ain’t cooperatin’ here!”

“Oh, sorry,” Justin said. “Oh my God! Tony! You became a PRIEST?!” he continued with mock horror and surprise.

“It ain’t funny if I gotta MAKE ya say it,” Tony whined, turning away and pulling off the collar.

“Sorry, Tony,” Karen said. “It’s just...you picked the wrong room. Enough of us are Catholics that we know you can’t become a priest in that short a time.”

“So, what’ve all’a youse guys been doin’ lately?” Tony asked. “I may not’a been becomin’ a priest, but I HAVE been at da Vatican for da past few mont’s. I even learned Latin!”

Tony proceeded to say a few things in Latin, in the most amazing New York-Italian accent, to which Leigh responded in Latin, with her own Nordic accent. Then the others began to fill Tony in, in English, on what they’d been doing over the past few months. Mostly they’d all been working to become more proficient in the skills they used for their ‘other job,’ which happened to be the one that was most pressing at the moment.

They described the woman at the hospital, and what Aiden had been able to find out about similar attacks over the past 6 years.

Then Leigh discretely motioned for Tony to follow her out to the living room as the others started to work on various projects related to the case. For months now, she’d been trying to figure out how to get Tony to give up his fantasy that she’d had sex with him. She finally decided that the best way was just to be direct about it. But she knew that doing it with everyone around would turn the whole thing into a joke, so she needed to do it privately. “Tony, there’s something we need to talk about, and I was wondering if we could go somewhere private....” Leigh said.

“Sure!” Tony agreed quickly. “Whadabout Roma? I ain’t had dinner yet,” he suggested. Leigh nodded. She wasn’t quite sure what his motivation was for agreeing so quickly, but it worked in her favor right now. “Hey, youse guys!” Tony said as he headed through the kitchen for the back door with Leigh right behind him. “Me an’ Leigh’s goin’ out ta Roma ta get sumpin’ ta eat. We’ll be back in a liddle while!”

No one even had a chance to make a joke before the two were out the door and on their way. “Damn! And me without any ‘bugs’ handy!” Angie complained.

“Well, what kind of DHS agent are you?” Frank teased her.

Frank had snapped some pictures of the bite victim’s face with his phone earlier when he was photographing her wound, and he loaded that into a facial recognition program on his laptop. Karen started a computer search to see if the dates of the attacks had any connection to natural cycles, like full moons or eclipses. Justin was going over his list of ‘weapons that might be useful during this case,’ planning to collect what he could and arm everyone, and he asked for any ideas the others might have to add to the list.

Terry asked where she was supposed to stash yet another weapon, and they were all surprised to learn that she was regularly carrying 3 back-up weapons in addition to her sidearm. She carried that in a shoulder holster, but she also carried a 2-shot Derringer with a silver load up her sleeve, a stun gun in a waist-band holster at the small of her back, and a snub-nosed .38 in a holster strapped to her calf. Justin asked if she kept a weapon handy at night, and where she kept it. When she told him that she kept it in a holster loose under her pillow, he told her that he’d work out a bed-post holster like the one he had, that would leave the gun accessible in an emergency but that would also eliminate the risk that it could be accidentally knocked out of reach while she slept. Terry was checking the DPD database for missing persons reports that matched the bite victim; but she knew that a report might not even have been filed yet, since the woman may not have been missing prior to being found that morning.

If they hadn’t been regulars at Roma, Tony and Leigh might not have been able to get in that evening. The place was surprisingly busy; but with the weather raining-out cookouts, they could understand why people were at restaurants instead of eating at home. The maitre'd managed to find them a quiet table for two. They’d chatted amiably on the drive over about Leigh’s aikido lessons and what “surprise” Justin was cooking up for the team and the new ‘skill’ Frank had exhibited for passing messages without anyone but his intended target hearing him. But once they’d gotten their food ordered, Leigh cut right to the chase. “Tony, I’m still not sure how you ever got the idea that we had sex in Cancun,” Leigh said, “but we didn’t, and the joke is no longer funny. So please drop it. I was with Reg and Raimon that night, not with you and your college girls.”

Tony got a look on his face that was a strange combination of disappointment, offense, and wistfulness. “But...if ya weren’t dere...den why’d’ya let me t’ink you were?” Tony asked in amazement. “Why didn’cha jus’ tell me?!”

Leigh dropped her head and shook it for a few seconds. “Tony, I did tell you...several times,” she started, looking up again.

“But I t’ought you was jus’ saying it so’s I wouldn’ say nuttin’ ta da udders,” Tony interrupted.

“No,” Leigh shook her head again. “I didn’t say it just so that you would be ‘discreet.’ What you do in your own head is your own business....” Tony looked Leigh up and down with a slight leer. “But as a friend, I would appreciate it if you don’t say things about me that are patently untrue,” she finished.

Tony could hear the implied threat in the request, even though Leigh had in no way intended to be threatening. It wasn’t physical violence that concerned Tony, though Leigh might actually be able to kick his butt with her aikido training, even though she was a girl. No, it was the threat that, if he didn’t stop implying that she had slept with him, she would no longer be his friend that worried Tony.

“So...does dis mean dat we’re never gonna get drunk an’ have wild sex togedder?” Tony teased Leigh.

Leigh just sighed, so Tony stopped joking. “Look,” he said, all serious now, “I guess I was a liddle confused before. But dis clears it up.”

Leigh could hear the disappointment in Tony’s voice, and it was kind of touching in a way, that he had wanted the fantasy to be true so badly. “Tony, I do still respect you,” Leigh said, “as a brave, strong, talented member of this team.” The look on his face told her that this wasn’t making it any better for Tony. “But if you want any hope of anything real happening between us, you have to give up the fantasy you’ve been harboring,” she continued. Tony’s face took on a slight glow of hopefulness. “But I have to warn you,” Leigh went on, “I’m not interested in finding the ‘love of my life.’ I’ve already done that, and I loved him until the day he died...and after, even when he came back and tried to make me become what he had.” Leigh paused, unsure about revealing this much about herself to Tony. “Anyway,” she finished, “I’m no longer focusing on that element of my life.”

“Oh,” Tony said. “Dat’s too bad. I was hopin’ ta be on yer list’a choices for dat. I still hope one day ta make some woman a saint by givin’ her children, an’ I t’ought dat maybe....” Tony shrugged and Leigh tried hard to think of something to say. She had no idea that Tony harbored any strange notions like that, that motherhood was a woman’s highest calling and it made her somehow holier than other women.

What spilled out in response surprised even her, since it was not something she talked about with anyone else. “But, Tony, I can’t have kids,” she told him, “though before my husband died we’d hoped to maybe adopt. And now...well...I don’t really lead a life that would be good for raising a child at all.”

Oddly enough, Leigh felt an immediate change in Tony’s attitude toward her, even without him saying a word or making any outward change in his posture or expression. Maybe if she’d made that clear to him in the beginning, things would never have gotten to this point. On the other hand, how could she have known things would get this far at all? “Well, I am sorry it was just a fantasy,” Tony said lightly, grinning. “But is it OK if I still pay for dinner?”

“Of course,” Leigh agreed, returning the smile. “And I’m not ruling out going out with you someday, if you ask me properly.”

Tony let out an almost imperceptible sigh, then said in Latin, “Oh, sweet water under the bridge.... Alas! Alas!”

Leigh responded, also in Latin, “‘Tis actions which make the man, not words alone.” The rest of dinner went surprisingly smoothly, with the two chatting about work, and Tony’s studies in Rome--both in the Vatican library and the Roman tavernas, and what each had planned for the coming summer.

When they finished, Leigh had Tony swing past her place before heading back to Justin and Karen’s. She wanted to pick up the plants and herbs she had handy at home, to arm everyone with whatever she could right away. As they drove, Leigh couldn’t help but be relieved that Tony finally understood that the two of them wouldn’t really work as a married couple. And Tony was a little disappointed that Leigh turned out not to be ‘the one’ for him. “At least we still have ‘the Fox,’” Tony said wistfully as he opened Leigh’s door for her in Justin and Karen’s driveway.

The two went inside to find the others hunched over laptops. “Hey, since almost everyone’s here again, and the computers are working searches,” Justin said, “could we take a short break now? I have something to give you all.”

Karen just grinned and shook her head when the others looked to her. This was his surprise, and it was a really nice one, and she wasn’t going to ruin it by giving them any hints. Justin led them all out to his workshop, attached to the far side of the garage. There, hidden behind a large hanging tarp so that no one would see them if they came into the garage, were 4 customized Harleys. Each one had something special about the design or artwork that told them who it was for. “Sorry, Angie,” Justin said. “I didn’t make you one because you already have one. But if you ever want any custom work done on it, bring it over. And I didn’t bother making one for Aiden, since we all know how he feels about ‘Donor-cycles.’ I also know that he’s as attached to his truck as Karen is to her Jeep. So tell him if he ever wants any custom work done on that....”

“Wow...thanks!” was all that Frank and Terry could manage as they circled their new bikes.

“Oh, Justin, this must’ve cost you so much,” Leigh said appreciatively.

“Actually, not that much,” Justin told her. “The basic bikes aren’t real expensive. And the rest, well...I really appreciate everything you guys did for me...you know...with Horst....”

Tony had been studying his Hog, and now he came over and gave Justin a big ‘ol manly hug and slap on the back. “T’anks, Justin!” he said grinning broadly. “Hey! Maybe we oughta all get matchin’ tats, ta commemorate dis!” he laughed.

“I’m not sure we could all agree on what to get, much less where to put them,” Angie said.

“Our ‘team’ logo might be an idea,” Leigh hinted, flashing her indalo.

“Well, I’m not putting it on my wrist like Vanya,” Justin said. “I think Terry must already have it plastered on her forehead...or her back, like a ‘kick me’ sign,” Karen laughed.

“More like a ‘kidnap me’ sign,” Terry said a little glumly.

When they got back inside, they found that the search of the missing persons database had turned up nothing, so Frank started running whatever other databases they could think of through the facial recognition software. Though the woman hadn’t been recognized as a sex worker, she could have been in the police files for something else, so Frank started there. Nothing. Then he ran through the student registry at Wayne State, since she was found close to campus and looked young enough to be a student. Again, he found nothing.

Karen had found that the first two attacks that Aiden found reports for occurred near so-called Blue Moons, and that prompted her to check the calendar. Sure enough, there was a full moon on the 31st--and it was the second that month, a ‘Blue Moon.’ Karen immediately called Aiden and warned him to keep a close eye on his patient. They still didn’t know enough about vampirism to know what would happen to a victim who didn’t die from the vampire’s bite. And they had no idea if the Mental Shields she’d done and Leigh would do in the morning, or Aiden’s washing the wound with holy water and Healing the woman would do anything to prevent her from succumbing to the vampire’s ‘curse.’ Neither Karen, Leigh nor Frank could think of any particular type of vampire that had a supernatural link to ‘blue moons.’ Some types, they knew, couldn’t help but breed because the type of vampirism was so infectious. But that obviously wasn’t the type they were dealing with here, because Detroit would’ve been crawling with them by now since the first attack had been almost 6 years ago in November of 2001.

On the other hand, they couldn’t think of any type that could go several years without feeding either, so they couldn’t assume that the same vampire had done all 3 attacks. In fact, given that this attack was much sloppier than the other two, their best guess was that the vampire who’d done this last attack was newly made, perhaps by the one who’d done the others.

“So, what if a vampire made a new vampire out of a werewolf?” Angie asked, connecting the sloppy wound to the blue moon link.

Frank rolled his eyes. “You’ve see one too many horror movies,” he teased her. “Hey! Don’t blame me!” she retorted. “It’s Justin’s fault his video library is full of bad monster movies!”

“Let’s go over what we know again,” Justin said, ignoring the gibe. “The first one was found in an alley off of Cass. The second was found in a dumpster, again off Cass. And this one was found ON Cass. Do we have a map showing all three locations?” Frank shook his head. Justin pulled out a map of Detroit and found some colored stickers to mark the locations that Frank gave him. All three locations were within 4 blocks of each other, and the center of the ‘kill zone’ was about 5 blocks from the safe house. “Aiden said her clothes came in with her, right?” Justin asked.

Angie nodded. “She still had her heels on,” she said.

“And ya can’t really run in those things, can you,” Justin said more than asked. “I mean, most women would take ‘em off if they knew they had to move quickly, right?” Angie, Terry, Karen and Leigh looked at one another and nodded. That was why none of them wore heels on a regular basis.

“Her clothes were ‘disarranged,’” Frank said, “not ripped. But that was why they pulled a rape kit.”

“Well, those jeans in her ICU cubby must’ve cost her a couple bills, at least,” Angie added. “She paid a lot for the ‘look.’”

“So she could have been ‘clubbing,’” Justin said.

The others looked at Karen. They knew she went to some of the clubs on Cass, so the looks asked not just if she recognized the woman, but if she knew where the woman might have been Saturday night. “There’s...” Karen thought for a minute, mentally making her way up Cass past the clubs. “There’s 8 clubs along or within a block or two of that section of Cass,” she told them. “A couple jazz clubs, the two punk clubs...and the others host a variety of groups, but all ‘alternative.’ And, no...I don’t think I’ve ever seen her at the clubs I’ve been to. But I don’t go to the jazz ones.”

“How much trouble d’ya t’ink I’d have disguisin’ myself ta fit in at da clubs?” Tony asked. “T’ink I oughta shave my head again?”

“At the punk clubs, it wouldn’t matter,” Karen told him. “No one there really ‘fits in’ anyway. But I could help you look like some of the other guys if you want. The jazz clubs I have no idea about. Maybe wear a beret and a turtleneck?” She laughed. It was such an awful stereotype that she hoped Tony wouldn’t take her seriously.

“Hey!” Tony suddenly exclaimed. “Frank, did ya try checking mySpace ta find her yet? Seems like everyone’s got a mySpace page dese days.” Frank hadn’t thought of it. He wasn’t sure that it was realistic given the potential number of photos they were talking about, but it couldn’t hurt. He started the program running.

In the meantime, Leigh had started searching for an online supplier of saline solution, which they could take to Fr. Jerzy to bless, so that they all, especially Aiden, could have a ready supply of holy saline for cleansing wounds made by Unknown creatures. It was a good idea, but the others couldn’t help but joke about getting a Blessed Lavage Tray, too. While Leigh waited for the various veterinary and medical supply sites to load, she also made a list of all the herbs she didn’t have at home that they might use against vampires, so that she could find a source for them. And she put together small bouquets of what she brought from home so that they would all have as many different defenses as possible right away.

When the recognition software came up with nothing from the mySpace search, Terry asked if the search Frank did of Wayne State’s database covered staff and faculty, too. It hadn’t, because they’d only looked at students. The woman was younger than Karen so they’d just assumed she was a student; but she was certainly no younger than Karen had been when she started teaching at Wayne. Frank started the new search, and they quickly got a hit. Her name was Vanessa Holbrook, and she was a new prof in the Africana Studies department. That would’ve put her in the same College as Karen, but the department was housed in a different building than Anthropology so they’d never crossed paths.

Now that they had a name for the woman, they could start tracking her movements. While Frank ran a check on her credit cards, Karen pulled up her faculty bio and Terry pulled her DMV records. Her address was an apartment in Wayne’s short-term faculty residence–essentially a university apartment building for new or visiting faculty with leases available for no more than a year. Karen had an apartment there when she first started teaching at Wayne after graduation. Vanessa spoke French, German, Italian, Afrikaans, a couple Arabic dialects, and several of the African languages. She had her PhD from Georgetown in ethnography and women’s studies, with a concentration in the history of women in Africa. Her thesis was on the status of women in select regions of Africa and its effect on technological advancement in those regions. Karen told the others all this.

“She doesn’t have a MI driver’s license yet,” Terry told them, “but she does have a MI car registration for a brand new Prius.” Frank started getting results on his searches now, and he told them that she had used her credit card at both the jazz clubs the night before, the Blue Note last. She also used it at a restaurant before going to the clubs. When he gave them the name of the place, the women immediately recognized it as a very ‘chi-chi’ new tapas place.

“So, would she have driven last night? Should we be looking for her car?” Justin asked.

“If she owns a Prius,” Karen said, “then she’s probably ecologically-minded enough to have walked or taken public transport. I mean, I always walked or biked everywhere when I lived near campus, unless the weather was really nasty. And the clubs aren’t that far from her apartment.”

Justin studied the map, hoping for inspiration. “D’ya think she might have passed the safe house and been seen by our surveillance cameras?” he asked Frank.

“Doesn’t hurt to look,” Frank told him. So the two pulled up the recordings from the cameras for the past 36 hours and began running them through the recognition software.

“What about her dinner?” Justin asked. “Can you tell from the bill if she was alone or paying for someone else?”

“Considering it’s tapas,” Frank said, “not really. I think we’re going to have to hit the street for some old-fashioned footwork to get any more details than this.” And as if to punctuate the thought, Frank’s laptop told him that Vanessa had not been recorded on the safe house’s security cameras.

Karen began fretting on Monday, Nov. 20, about the upcoming Thanksgiving they’d be having with Cathy and Edward. Everyone had agreed to come, and between the critical mass and Edward’s presence, she expected that something awful would happen. It didn’t. In fact, other than everyone having to try really hard to think of Edward as not such a bad guy--and as Karen’s new step-dad--the day went very well. Even Aiden and Tony were able to make it--Aiden because most Thanksgiving emergencies happened later in the evening and he’d agreed to be on call as long as he was allowed to be out with his friends unless and until he was absolutely needed; and Tony because ‘destruction season’ in the southern hemisphere hadn’t gotten into full swing yet. Karen and Justin had stopped over to see Marie and Olivia and some of Justin’s other relatives earlier in the day, and Karen’s siblings had done the same with their in-laws so that they could all be at dinner with their mom that afternoon. The game was on the TV, and everyone watched as much or as little as they felt like, spending the rest of their time chatting amiably with anyone else who was bored watching football. Cathy was able to spend all her time visiting, since the ‘help’ was taking care of all the cooking and serving–except for when Edward carved the turkey and made a toast before the meal. And before everyone began leaving, Cathy made sure to let them all know that they were welcome for Christmas, too.

Justin and Karen spent Christmas Eve with Marie and Olivia, going to midnight Mass with them and then spending the night so that they could be there however early Olivia wanted to get up to open her presents. After breakfast there, they went home and freshened up then went over to spend the day with Cathy and Edward. Karen’s sibs and her and Justin’s friends all came by at various times, so there was an almost constant stream of people coming and going throughout the day. It kind of reminded Karen of holidays when she was a kid, with relatives and friends coming and going from each others’ houses over the course of several days before, during and after the holiday. Karen had been struggling for the past month trying to figure out what to get Mom and Edward for Christmas. What did you get a couple who could buy anything they wanted...and already had? Eventually, she settled on a ‘wine of the month’ package, something they would both be able to enjoy all year. Cathy and Edward got Justin and Karen another cruise, “since they’d had such a good time on last year’s,” Cathy said. This time it was to the Mediterranean, and Karen couldn’t help but wonder what elder god was going to decide to hassle them this time. There were plenty to choose from over there. But, luckily, it turned out that they didn’t have a critical mass of Envoys going on this cruise. Apparently last year had been entertaining enough for the others, and they didn’t all show up on this one. Angie and Aiden had also, coincidently, gotten tickets on the same cruise; but Justin and Karen only saw them a few times, at dinner occasionally, or lying on the deck as close to naked as the ship’s rules would allow. And Angie was too busy relaxing to play any practical jokes on Justin and Karen. (Or Aiden was too good at persuading her not to.) Reg was spending the holidays with his family, and Tony had already told them that he was going home to New York to visit family this year; so Leigh had invited Terry and Frank to Denmark for the holidays, to visit her family homestead rather than just hanging around Detroit. They accepted. Luckily, Jared had already moved on, so there was no issue with blowing whatever cover he’d adopted. And everyone had a wonderful, relaxing time on their respective vacations.

Over the course of the next few months, supernatural things were pretty quiet in Detroit. Karen would encounter the occasional ghost who needed help letting go of whatever was keeping it on this plane. Sometimes she was able to take care of it alone, and sometimes she called whoever else was available to help with a seance. But none of the encounters were much more than what she’d been dealing with all her life, and all were fairly easily taken care of. In fact, the scariest thing that happened to her was when her mom asked, in passing--as if she were asking about the weather forecast or what Karen was planning for supper--what Karen thought about her having a child at her age. Karen was horrified at the thought of Edward having offspring, but she couldn’t say that to her mom “I thought you were past that,” she said to Cathy. “Well, there’s always adoption,” Cathy replied. “Sure, why not ” Karen said cheerfully, the whole time thinking to herself “Edward should not be raising any kids, even if they aren’t his spawn ” Everyone else thought the same thing, when she told them. But what were they going to do? None of them could think of a way to prevent it. All Frank wanted to know was whether Karen would have a problem offing her own little brother or sister. “None at all,” she told him. “It might be my mom’s kid, but it’s also Edward’s. That makes it no problem at all.”

Tony came and went on the same irregular basis he always did, and Reg managed to make a couple trips back to visit, too, since his dad and Audra were still in Detroit. Frank and Terry were having ongoing ‘discussions’ about the state of their relationship, working through some of their ‘issues’ together. Everyone was back at work, and all their jobs were going smoothly. Terry, Frank and Angie were all busy from the end of March on, preparing for former President Clinton’s visit at the end of April. He was speaking at the annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner held by the Detroit NAACP, and the event, at Cobo, was expected to draw about 10,000 people. They, and all of law enforcement in Detroit, had their hands full with that, on top of all the usual crime. But the event went without a hitch, and both Frank’s boss Assistant Director Vallejo and Terry’s boss Chief Bully-Cummings were pleased at the way the agencies were able to work so well together again. Karen happily followed Justin around the Auto Show every day, since he was so good about going with her to see Choking Susan play whenever they had a gig in the area. And everyone surprised Aiden on Doctor’s Day, in March, with a catered party at the hospital, for all the times when they might have forgotten to tell him how much they loved him and valued his work.

By May, all the Envoys were waiting for the other shoe to drop. They were nervous, trying to avoid any mention of their ‘other job’ for fear that they’d jinx the run of quiet, relatively uneventful months. And they had begun avoiding one another, certain that a critical mass would draw unwanted Unknown attention. Karen was busy planning the season’s dig, but the weather had been so weird, going from cold to balmy to downright hot and muggy and back to freezing in the course of a single week, that she held off setting a start date until she could count on the warmer weather holding up north. In the meantime, she had her students sorting and cataloging the finds from last season, and practicing their skills helping ‘clear’ local construction sites that stumbled on possibly historic remains as the construction season got its start. Justin’s birthday was on the 19th, and Karen and Marie put together a small party for him, inviting Jerry and the other guys from work to enjoy a car-shaped cake that Karen had custom-made. Both she and Justin took the 21st off to celebrate their second anniversary together, and spent the day on a road trip to the Gilmore Car Museum near Kalamazoo, which was having a special Muscle Car exhibit. The following morning, the two went to church and lit candles for Fr. Andrew, who Karen still missed deeply, before heading off to work. And they called the other Envoys to remind them of the barbeque they were having for the team on the upcoming Sunday. It was a holiday weekend, and they’d decided to pretend for the day that they were just normal folks, doing a normal holiday activity together, no worries about critical mass, no concerns about the Unknown waiting to ambush them.

Justin and Karen had set up a volleyball net in the yard, and had jarts targets behind the garage near the fence, so any wayward jarts would get stopped before they hit a neighbor or friend. And Justin had created a make-shift horseshoes court at the very back of the yard. Tony was still on his way home from a job in China, Reg was taking Claire and the girls to Boston for the fireworks, and Aiden had to work, since it was one of the most accident-filled of the holiday weekends, with most people overdoing their celebrations in one way or another. But Angie came and brought a Jello salad and beer, and Leigh brought several side dishes, both hot and cold, and Terry and Frank brought the fixings for margaritas along with the ‘condiments’ and tortillas for fajitas, to go with the grilled meat, seafood and veges that Justin and Karen were making. Justin already had the grill fired up by noon, and by the time the others began to arrive at 2pm there was a perfect bed of glowing coals at the bottom. The six friends spent a relaxing afternoon drinking, eating, and playing a wicked game of girls vs. guys volleyball, then a cops vs. non-cops game, and an Angie vs. the other girls game.... In between volleyball games and other activities, they all tried their hand at jarts. You couldn’t find them in stores anymore, but Justin had managed to find a set on eBay. And after some practice and a little coaching from the others, even Karen was able to hit the target a few times.

It was about 6pm, when Justin’s, Frank’s and Leigh’s cell phones all rang almost simultaneously. “Oh, good The conference calling works ” Aiden said to all three. “Listen, I hate to disturb your lovely afternoon, but it’s supposed to rain later anyway and I’ve got something you need to see down here.” “How soon do you need us?” Leigh asked, looking at the bowls and platters and plates of food covering every level surface. “Well, the patient’s not going anywhere,” Aiden told them. “Just come to the ER as soon as you can make it and send Angie in to get me.” The women started collecting all the stuff that needed to go into the house, while Frank and Justin worked on shutting down the grill and getting the sports equipment cleaned up. The first raindrops were beginning to sprinkle down when they all piled into Frank’s sedan to head over to Receiving a few minutes before 7pm. While the rest of the team waited on the benches outside near the ER entrance, Angie went in to get Aiden from his office. Ten minutes later, the two finally came back out. “The ER’s not that big, Angie,” Justin teased her. “Let it go,” Leigh said, “she misses him.” “Not when she’s aiming,” Frank laughed. Angie smirked and Aiden turned red, and he quickly turned away to lead them inside. “We are going to avoid the cameras, right?” Karen asked. “We’ve already had to steal the tapes once.” Justin laughed, and as they walked, the two quickly filled in the others about their exploits with Vanya, having to steal the tapes that showed two burnt zombies getting up and leaving the morgue, which happened before most of the others had joined their little team and before some of them had even landed in Detroit.

Aiden was taking them on a rather circuitous route, that ended at the ICU while managing to avoid most of the surveillance cameras. Rather than trying to sneak everyone past the nurses, Aiden boldly strode up to the station and asked to see Jane Doe’s chart. He then used all of his considerable charm to persuade the nurses to look the other way while he took his companions into the patient’s room, assuring them that he’d called them in to help and promising that they would not harm the patient in any way. Frank put on his best ‘doctor-look’ and fished in his pocket, pulling out his medical ID badge and fastening it to his collar. Then Aiden led them all into the room of a beautiful young woman who was lying unconscious and hooked to the IVs and monitors common to ICU rooms. She was about 20-25 years old, about 5-foot-10, with cocoa-colored skin and a flawless complexion. But she was ashen pale, as if she’d lost a great deal of blood, and she had a large bandage wrapped around her neck. Leaving the curtains open, so that the nurses would know that nothing ‘hinky’ was going on, Aiden made a show of checking the woman’s vitals and explaining her situation to Dr. Muelder. Then he lifted the bandage to show all of them the woman’s wounds. It looked like a large dog had grabbed her by the throat and chewed or shaken her repeatedly, shredding her neck in the process. But the flesh was oddly desiccated, as if all the moisture had been sucked out of it. All of them tried to sense if there was any Unknown presence near the woman or the lingering touch of It on her. Frank had no doubt that the wound had been caused by some Unknown creature, but no one had any sense that the creature was still hanging around.

Next, Aiden set a chair in a spot that was less visible to the nurses, so that Karen could go out-of-body to make sure that the woman’s soul was still firmly in place. She slipped out easily, and Justin and Leigh stood beside her empty shell so that it wouldn’t slump unnaturally, in case the nurses did happen to look in. Karen checked first to make sure that there was no tell-tale silver thread snaking out of the woman’s head, and determined that her soul was still firmly in place. But Karen could sense more than see that her spirit had curled up around itself into a fetal position, and had no intention of coming out for anything. It reminded her of what had happened to Marlene, who was still lingering in a coma, mentally broken. What she did notice, though, when she looked closer at the wound, was that there was some sort of black ichor glowing in it, like the creature had left behind some disease-ridden fluid inside the bites and tears. She could just catch glimpses of Frank’s grey filmy figure moving around the woman’s body, taking pictures and measurements of the wound. When Karen was sure that there was nothing hanging around waiting to harm the woman again, she slipped back into her body. “She’s still in there,” Karen told Aiden. “But you’ll need to do something about the wound. Whatever did it left something behind and it doesn’t look healthy.” “She was definitely grabbed and thrashed,” Frank told them, continuing to take measurements. “Well, she’s already had four pints of blood replaced, and she still looks about a quart low,” Aiden said. “I don’t suppose anyone has any holy water on them?” he asked hopefully. Justin and Leigh both dug into the packs they were carrying and pulled out bottles and thrust them at Aiden. “The bite marks themselves are unusual,” Frank continued. “The incisors are larger than they should be, given the size of the other teeth; but all the teeth were sharp and all were involved in the tearing.” The Envoys looked at one another. They all suspected it but none was willing to say it yet: Vampire.

“So, what do you think it’ll do to her?” Justin asked, glancing from the woman’s torn throat to the bottle of holy water. “Think I oughta hold her down, or do you have padded restraints?” “That’d be a little too obvious...and odd, if they look in,” Aiden said, cocking his head toward the wall of safety-glass windows that faced the nurses’ station. “But it wouldn’t hurt for you to stand by, just in case we need it.” Aiden had already arranged a basin to collect the holy water as it washed through the wound. First he’d clean out as much of the black stuff that Karen had seen as he could with the holy water, then he’d Heal her as much as he could without it looking suspicious. He got ready to do the lavage, and Frank moved over by the IV stand and monitors, so he could let Aiden know if there was any sudden change that might bring in the nurses, and so he could inject something to sedate her in a hurry, if necessary. “Maybe someone should put up a Sphere, too,” both Frank and Aiden suggested. Karen was ‘faster on the draw’ than Leigh, and she nodded and did the Sphere as soon as Aiden began to pour out the holy water. For the first five seconds, nothing appeared to happen besides the water spilling over the woman’s neck and into the basin wedged below it. Then the Sphere went down.

Almost immediately, a puff of what looked like smoke rose from the wound, and the woman began to wriggle slightly, as if in pain. Justin glanced around for something, some cleaner or antiseptic, they could open to cover the smell of the smoke. Then they all realized that there was no smell. What they were seeing was steam, as if the water was pouring over burning hot coals. Aiden quickly emptied the first bottle, and opened the second. He continued the cleansing until the steam stopped rising, then finished off the second bottle for good measure. “Maybe we oughta take some bags of saline to be blessed by Fr. Jerzy,” he joked, as he patted the woman’s neck dry with gauze and moved the basin out of the way. The others nodded. It actually was a good idea. Then Aiden carefully laid his hands near the wound and closed his eyes. The others could almost see the flesh knitting together as Aiden Healed the woman. When he stopped, the wound still looked ragged, but it was much cleaner than it had been, and Frank reported that her pulse and respiration had both improved. Aiden dressed the wound, then stroked the hair back from her face gently. Her color looked better now than it had when the Envoys came in. “So, doctor, will she ever play the piano again?” Frank asked. “Only if she did before,” Aiden laughed, then grew serious. “I think she may speak again, at least...if she wakes. There was a slight nick in the carotid.... I...just thought you guys might find this interesting.” “Can we see the ambulance reports,” Justin asked, “and see where she was found?” While Aiden washed his hands, Frank was checking all her vitals again, including reaction times. Her system as a whole seemed to have responded well to the unusual care. “Why don’t we go down to my office,” Aiden said, in response to Justin’s question. It was one thing to bring a bunch of people into an ICU patient’s room; it was another thing entirely to let them all read her charts and records, and something the nurses would be hard-pressed to ignore.

“Wait...you have an office?” Justin said with some surprise. First of all, Aiden had never taken any of them but Angie there before. But, also, on all the TV shows, you never saw ER doctors going to their offices. They were always rushing around the ER, or crashing in the lounge, or getting in trouble outside the hospital. At least Aiden had that last part down pat. Justin came up behind Aiden as he said it, and put his hand on Aiden’s shoulder, transferring some of his own energy into Aiden. He’d become so used to Aiden pushing himself to the point of collapse by Healing wounded people, that he didn’t recognize until after he’d done it that Aiden really didn’t look too bad at all. “I only put a little into her,” Aiden told Justin as he led them all to the door. “Otherwise, someone would notice too much of a difference. And, yes, I have an office. It may not be much bigger than one of your closets, but it’s all mine.” He grinned, pleased at the mere fact that the hospital valued him enough to give him an office, regardless of its size. They stopped first at the nurses’ station. “She’s looking better already,” Aiden told her nurse. “And I think she’s ready for another pint.” “Boy, is the Red Cross going to be upset with us,” the nurse said. “Why? What type is she?” Justin asked. “I’m O+. You can tap me if you need to.” “I’d be happy to give some, too,” Karen offered. “We can talk about it in my office,” Aiden suggested, leading them back the way they’d come up.

Aiden wasn’t kidding when he said Justin and Karen had closets bigger than his office. There was a desk and chair practically buried under patient files and journals, and bookshelves fairly groaning under the weight of medical tomes. There was no window, and shoved back in a corner was a single empty guest chair. And there was only enough spare floor space to walk in and move carefully around all the furniture. Peering around the door frame, Frank said “I got dibs on the other chair.” “Why? Because you’re the other ‘consulting’ doctor here?” Karen teased, grinning. Frank grinned back and nodded. “OK, maybe not,” Aiden said, surveying the mess. “I think I need a coffee.” On the way past the ER office, Aiden stopped and told the nurses there to beep him if they needed him, that he was going out for coffee. “What do you want?” Aiden asked them, pulling out a note pad and pen from one of his pockets. “God, a quad latte with extra caffeine,” one of them groaned. Aiden grinned and jotted down their orders, then the seven went out to the nearest coffee shop. When they got there, Justin pulled out his wallet. “So, do you deliver?” he asked the kid at the counter, sliding a stack of bills out. “We sure can,” the kid said. “Good,” Justin said and began pointing at pastries and muffins and bar cookies. When he’d gotten a wide selection picked out and Aiden had given them the nurses’ coffee orders, Justin paid for it all, including a large tip to cover the delivery to Receiving’s ER and ICU. When all the Envoys had gotten their drinks, they pulled a couple tables together in the farthest corner and Aiden took a few files from his bag as they sat. “So...here’s what I know about vampires,” he started. “Um, I thought they left two little puncture marks,” Karen interrupted, holding out the first two fingers of her left hand and making a little stabbing motion at her neck. “This one must not be very good at it yet.” Aiden and Leigh rolled their eyes and Justin gave her a hug, teasing, “You’ve watched too many horror movies.” Karen smiled. She had suspicions about what they were looking at the moment she saw the poor woman lying there all pale, and knew full well what it was when she saw her neck. But a little levity certainly wasn’t going to hurt this situation.

“There’s a bunch of different types,” Aiden continued. “Some can stand daylight; most can’t. Some are hurt by all the stereotypical things, others only by more unusual items. But the tearing does suggest that this one is either a new one or one that’s been fasting and has little self-control left.” “Or one of the types that’s not quite sentient,” Frank added. “Well, every culture does have vampire-style creatures in their mythology,” Leigh said. “But while the word has also migrated, the creatures that carry the name don’t always fit the profile.” “Can we see the files?” several of them asked Aiden at once, and he spread them out on the table. “This is actually the third case like this in the last year,” Aiden told them. “But the other two weren’t on my shift and both died, so I didn’t know about them until ‘she’ came in.” “What can you tell us about her case?” Justin asked, as Frank began to scan through the medical files of all three cases. “She was found about 6am on Cass, presumed a ‘dump job’ since there was no blood around her on the sidewalk,” Aiden told them. “In fact, the cops assumed she was dead, but called for an ambulance anyway. It was a good thing. She was almost gone, and it was only quick work by the guys who brought her in that saved her. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the case right away. I only found out about her after she’d been admitted.”

“Frank, you said the incisors were bigger than they should have been?” Terry asked. “Could this have been done by a human?” “I’ve seen people who’ve gotten the implants and had their teeth sharpened and all,” Aiden said, “but I can’t imagine a human being able to get the suction required to drain that much blood that fast. Besides, if you’ve ever tasted human blood, there’s something about it that the human body just reacts too strongly against. Unless he had something to drain it into, a human couldn’t have ingested that much.” Karen saw Terry shudder ever so slightly, and thought about what the cop had been through in Cancun. It made her feel a little ill, too, and she took a long sip of her coffee to give her mouth and stomach something else to think about. “Well, she couldn’t have been where she was found for long,” Frank said, “or she would have had more brain damage than what her EEGs show...or she would have bled out and there would have been blood pooled around her.” “What can you tell us about the other two cases?” Karen asked Aiden. “Not much, since they were both DOA,” he said. “But they were both found in the early morning, like her, and in the same part of town. Both had been dead only a short while. ToD was estimated at just before dawn. Both were sex workers, one Hispanic, one white, and both were statuesque, like our Jane Doe. Both were known by the cops, which helped with IDing them. Unfortunately, our young woman had no ID on her, and nothing else that could help, like a purse or cell. And no one’s recognized her yet. She’s been printed but nothing’s popped up in the system on her; the cops would have called to give us her name. And they collected a rape kit when she was brought in; there was no semen, but there were signs of sexual activity.” “So maybe she was just going to one of the clubs?” Leigh wondered aloud. “There are plenty of them in the area of the school,” Karen agreed. “She does have a helluva manicure, maybe even a custom design,” Aiden mentioned. “But how do we know that she’s not a hooker?” Justin asked. “What was she wearing?” “Jeans and a tank top, jewelry....” Aiden said, glancing through the admissions report. “Just because she wasn’t dressed like a hooker doesn’t mean she wasn’t a working girl,” Justin said. “Although, I suppose jeans aren’t that great for ease of...um...access.” “That depends on....” Angie started to say. Then she saw Aiden get bright red and she stopped with a grin. Aiden studied his coffee until his ears and forehead stopped burning.

“Maybe we can track her through the manicure,” Karen suggested. “If it was custom work, someone’s bound to recognize it, like a good tattoo, right?” “Maybe,” Terry said, “but that gives us only...oh...a few hundred nail shops to check out.” “Maybe you should go in and see what’s in the police reports,” Frank said, looking at Terry. But she was pretty obviously not in a great condition for going into the precinct house. She’d been enjoying her day off relaxing with a pitcher of margaritas, and after several hours of drinking, was wobbly enough for it to be noticeable. “Why don’t we look through what we’ve got here while I work on that,” Terry replied. Since the other two cases had been assumed to be animal attacks, as this new one also had been, there wasn’t the same follow-up as there would have been with a murder. All they had were the coroner’s reports and photos, which showed and described bite radii of different sizes than the ones Frank had taken from the latest victim. “So there could be more than one of these things?” Karen asked. “What do we know about the other victims and what happened to their bodies?” Maybe she shouldn’t believe everything she saw in horror movies, but maybe these things reproduced like werewolves did, by creating new ones from victims. Frank looked through the files. “The white one was ID’d by the cops as Susan Meyer, street name Sugar,” Frank told them. “She had a record but no family, and the remains were cremated and interred at county expense.” He closed that file and opened the other. “The Hispanic girl was Melissa Ramirez, street name Misty,” he continued. “She’d first gone into the system as a runaway. Her family claimed her body for burial in Lansing. Looks like one was found last November, the other last July.”

Karen glanced at Leigh. “It would help to have exact dates, so we can check it against stuff like lunar cycles and such,” Karen said, and Leigh nodded agreement. “It’s obviously not linked to the solstice or equinox,” Frank said. “No, but there are so many other cycles it could be linked to,” Leigh argued. The others nodded. Terry was starting to sober up after a half-hour of pounding back coffee, but she really didn’t feel like going in to work on one of her rare days off; so she pulled out her phone. “I’ll call in and see what I can find out,” she told them. The others quietly looked through the reports and photos they had while she talked. “OK,” she said, closing her cell. “I talked to the woman who pulled the case--who thinks I’m a little bit crazy for calling in on my day off, I’ll have you know. It’s being handled by Major Crimes, because of the results of the rape kit, at least until they find out different. It might have ended up on Homicide’s desk if it hadn’t been for the quick action of the unis who found her. But their first job will be finding out who she is and how she ended up lying on Cass.” Frank and Angie nodded. It was pretty hard to figure out how she could have ended up out there when you didn’t know anything about who she was. “So, Aiden,” Karen asked, “do you think a Mental Shield might help her at all?” “It couldn’t hurt,” he answered her. “Hey, what is her blood type?” Justin asked, remembering his earlier offer. “Do you want to tap me?” “She’s AB+,” Aiden told them. “Since it’s a holiday weekend, we’ll take all the blood we can get, even if she isn’t the one who needs it. I’ll get it set up when we get back to the hospital. And I’ll get someone into her room to do the Shield, too.” Karen and Leigh looked at one another. “I’ll take the first one, if you want to do another in the morning,” Karen offered. “Deal,” Leigh said, nodding.

Aiden was looking nervously at his watch. He’d been away from the hospital for more than a half-hour, and he was expecting his phone to ring at any minute. “OK, I know I’m supposed to be your SAVE contact and all,” he said, “ but I’m afraid that I don’t know much about vampires. I’d heard there was a guy in the northeast who knew all there was to know about them...but I can’t remember his name right now. Or you could try getting hold of Dee. But let me try to explain what I do know before I gotta go back. First of all, don’t look ‘em in the eye. Some of them have some mind-control powers, and some can even still use them when they’re comatose in their coffins during the day. But they gotta have eye contact with you to do it. Some of them can control other creatures, like wolves, rats and bats. And some of them can turn into those things, or into a mist. I’m not sure if any of them burn up in the sunlight like in the movies, but some can be damaged by sunlight. The Macedonians breed like rabbits, I’ve heard, but the good new is that they’re pretty easy to kill. Exposure to sunlight for a minute, a wooden stake through the chest--it doesn’t even have to go through the heart--any blade blessed by a Greek Orthodox priest. You can drive them off by exposing them to religious symbols of any kind, garlic, wolf’s bane, wild roses, mountain ash leaves. You can keep ‘em busy by turning them upside down in their coffin....” “Do you mean on their stomach or...” Karen asked. “Yeah, on their belly,” Aiden said. “They can’t figure out how to get out and will try to claw their way through the bottom,” Leigh said. “They also can’t cross running water on foot,” Aiden went on, “though they can climb sheer walls and make themselves thin enough to slip through cracks. They can create swarms of bats, rats or crows....” “Do you mean call them or actually create them?” Justin asked. “Create,” Aiden answered. “And anyone killed by one becomes one.”

“Which is why I think we should find out what happened to Miss Ramirez,” Karen said. She didn’t have to mention keeping an eye on the woman in ICU, for a similar reason. “I just hope it didn’t follow us back from our cruise,” she added. “What other types are there?” “Carpathian,” Aiden said. “They have to be killed by cutting off their head and stuffing their mouth with garlic. You can immobilize them by holding them under running water for a minute or exposing them to sunlight for a minute. But that’s hard to do if they turn to mist.” “Think a blessed wet-dry vac could capture ‘em?” Justin asked, only half-joking. He was already making a mental list of the sorts of tools and weapons they were going to want to have on hand for this case. “Hmm, I was thinking a dehumidifier,” Frank laughed. Aiden rolled his eyes and continued. “They must rest on a bed of earth from their native land inside their coffin. You can drive them off with garlic, wolf’s bane or a cross. Both these and the Macedonians have no reflection. The Carpathians have been know to run in packs. With the Macedonians, ‘you bite it, you bought it,’ but you don’t actually rise again until the next full moon....” Karen glanced over at Leigh again. They were going to have to check when that was. They were both pretty sure there was one coming up really soon. “But with the Carpathians,” Aiden continued, “you don’t actually become one unless they drain you, and it can take weeks. There’s another type, the Bathorys, which are solitary and only go after attractive young women. They must drink the blood of three young women a week, but they don’t have to kill their victims, and they generally don’t reproduce.” “Most likely because they’re solitary,” Karen said. “They wouldn’t want others around, not even offspring.” “More competition,” Leigh agreed.

“That’s most of what I know,” Aiden said. “There are a few other types I’ve heard of, but I don’t know much about. The Ninja vampire can be driven off by a bowl of uncooked rice on the floor. And if you tell them three lies, they become confused long enough for you to escape them. New Orleans vampires can be driven off with mint. Mexican vampires, or Aztec vampires, are pretty hard to kill....” “What? You mean like that bat thing we fought?” Justin asked. “No, that was a Bat Lord, one of their gods,” Leigh told him. “Mexican vampires are different, though I don’t know much about them because it’s not my area of expertise.” “And I’ve heard Alpine vampires are almost impossible to kill,” Frank told them. “They have to be staked with an icicle,” Aiden said. All of them began thinking about how they might manage that. Just then, as Aiden had anticipated, his phone rang. “OK, Karen,” Frank said. “You’re in charge of carrying the bowl of uncooked rice, if it’s a Ninja.” He laughed, but Karen asked Aiden, as he closed his phone. “So, does it have to be an actual ‘bowl’ of rice?” “Yup,” Aiden replied. “Sorry, gotta run,” he said, getting up immediately. He leaned down and kissed Angie, then he was jogging out the door. Karen started mentally going through her cabinets at home, wondering if she had one of those Tupperware cereal bowls with a matching lid.... The others finished their drinks and got up, too. They all went back over to the hospital, to give blood if they were able, and for Karen to do a Shield on the victim. Then it was back to Justin and Karen’s house, for everyone to collect their vehicles and head home. All of them were beginning to plan ways to protect themselves, whether it was holy symbols, garlic, or small boutonniere vases in which they could place springs of warding herbs, flowers or leaves. Leigh let them know that she had several of the necessary plants, like mint and wolf’s bane, growing at home, and she planned to use her field guide to find local sources of anything she didn’t already have. In the meantime, research was going to be the order of the next day. They needed to know more about the different types of vampires, and they needed to find out if there were any other attacks, here or elsewhere, that fit the same MO.

In the early weeks of November, 2006, things began to return to what passed for normal for the Envoys. The injured members of the team, Justin, Karen, Reg and Angie, recovered quickly from their injuries under Aiden’s care, though Angie’s recovery was the slowest given that her injuries were entirely from mundane sources. Karen couldn’t help but tease her, asking if she had some sort of foot fetish. Except for the ‘zombi squeeze,’ her most memorable injuries seemed to have been received at someone’s feet rather than at their hands. But Karen said this from across the room and with all the others around to protect her--she wasn’t suicidal Leigh had Reg taken to her place for his recuperation. He was out cold for the first couple days, a combination of the severity of his injuries and the sedatives Aiden gave him until he was ready to let Reg get up, since he knew that “doctor’s orders” alone wouldn’t keep him in his bed. Once Reg was conscious, Leigh made sure to supply him with fresh flowers every day to brighten the room, and the freshest food she could make, to make him feel better inside and out. And once Aiden had cleared him for travel, he’d gone back out to San Francisco to stay with Claire.

Cathy and Edward had taken Claire under their wing as soon as they realized that they’d all gotten separated from Karen and her friends. Claire was pretty shaken up over everything that had happened recently, and she swore that she had seen her dead husband, Robert, on the Fox stage that night. The couple took Claire home and made her comfortable until they could get in touch with Karen and get word to Reg where Claire was. The two talked as soon as Reg was able (the team was able to keep Claire at bay for the couple days Reg was unconscious by playing phone tag, rather than tell her how seriously he’d been hurt), and he suggested that she head back to the West Coast right away to be with the girls and he’d be there himself within another day or two, once he’d ‘taken care of the business he’d actually come to Detroit for.’ Now that it was quite certain that Robert wouldn’t be coming back, Reg was going to help her start over, make sure she and the girls got what they were entitled to from the insurance company, help arrange a memorial service for Robert, and just generally help them get their lives back on track. But he couldn’t start until Aiden was willing to let him out of bed

Justin, still feeling guilty for the way he behaved while he was infiltrating Horst’s Angry White Men cover-group, was showering Karen with gifts. Flowers would unexpectedly be delivered to her office. Or Justin would pick her up as she left her last class and take her to dinner and a movie--her choice for both. Or she’d find a truffle and a love note on her pillow when she went to bed. Every day it was something different, some little surprise to let her know how sorry he was and how much he loved her. He even offered to buy her a new Jeep and re-build it from the ground up. While Karen appreciated the attention, she didn’t understand Justin’s overwhelming guilt. It wasn’t like he did anything specifically to hurt her. Yeah, he kind of emotionally walled himself off from her for those couple weeks. But she could certainly understand why he did it; and the only thing that hurt was that she knew there was nothing that she could do to help him through it except to not let him forget that she loved him no matter what. But when it came to the Jeep, she put her foot down. She loved the Jeep she had. It was the first big purchase she’d ever made for herself with her own money, and it had been with her through thick and thin for the last six years. She knew its little quirks, which rattles were part of its personality and which she needed to worry about. And she’d kept good care of it, even more so once she and Justin had started dating. She could see no earthly reason to replace it. Except that Justin wanted so badly to give her a gift that he’d made with his own hands. So she finally gave in a little and told him that he could rebuild the Jeep she had, and she’d drive a rental until he was done with it. Justin had also gone to a local confectioner and had a solid chocolate hand grenade made, to thank Angie for ‘throwing herself’ on Edward. The woman was even able to coat it in white chocolate dyed the same color as a real grenade, and Justin couldn’t wait to hear what she thought of the gift.

Tony was off jetting around the world blowing things up again. He’d call everyone when he had a day or two back in Detroit between jobs, both to find out if there was anything ‘going on’ and to get everyone together for pizza or coneys and a beer or three. And if he happened through town but didn’t call, it was most likely because he and Anne had hooked up for the little bit of time he was back. Terry had received a commendation from the DPD for being forward-thinking enough to arrange for Detroit Police officers to be on the scene at the Fox on Halloween night, even though the department had been told it wasn’t necessary. Since the officers had been there all afternoon, and had been on good terms with the ‘protesters’ throughout, they were able to protect the protesters from the flood of panicked people rushing out of the Fox, call for support from the other emergency services, and control the crowds until the area could be safely cleared. The first thing Leigh did, when Frank had confirmed that the ‘flags’ on all of them had been removed, was go to the German consulate to arrange for Heidi’s remains to be returned home, to her family in Germany. Once that was accomplished, and she’d let Greta know that it was done and she was safe, Leigh returned to her volunteer work, and to translating her father’s work and any folk tales that caught her fancy at the moment into English. When Aiden wasn’t caring for injured team members, he was back to work at Receiving, and back to spending the free time he had with Angie. Angie had put in for sick leave until the bruise on her face was healed enough to explain away as from a fight. That, the guys at the precinct would accept as ‘cool.’ Anything else, like, God forbid, the truth, would be just a little more embarrassing than she felt like dealing with.

Frank had been only days away from the end of his Leave of Absence when Stevens died. But the entire Detroit office was in such turmoil from lack of leadership for the next week (not that Stevens had been much of a leader, but at least he kept them busy while he was around), that Frank decided to just lay low until someone contacted him. He kept an eye on what was going on, making note of the fact that within a few days, the agents who’d come with Stevens were starting to be recalled to DC. By Election Day, only Agent Westin, the guy who’d done such an extraordinary job trying to save Stevens’ life, was left in Detroit, still recovering from his burns at Receiving. And Frank let Jared know what was happening in the Detroit office, using the convoluted method the two had worked out before Jared left, which allowed them to contact one another without Frank ever really knowing where Jared was. The brief message he got back from Jared was just “Good to know; going to stay on vacation for a while.” Eventually someone from DHS did contact Frank. A couple days after the elections, Frank got a call from a DC number. It was Eric Vallejo, the newly-appointed head of the Detroit office. He was calling to see if Frank was interested in taking back his old job. He’d reviewed Frank’s files as soon as he noticed the end date of Frank’s LoA, and he was impressed. Frank had accomplished a great deal in the short time he’d been in the office, most especially building an excellent rapport with local and state law enforcement.

Vallejo realized that he’d never be able to offer Frank the money he could make as a practicing psychiatrist, of course. But if there was anything Frank could think of that might make the job more attractive, he was certainly willing to consider providing it. Frank hesitated. On the one hand, private practice would not only earn more money, but it would allow a little more freedom in his schedule, for when his ‘other job’ required it. On the other hand, he didn’t really need the money, and the job with DHS gave him reliable and easy access to any number of tools, physical and technological, that would help him do that ‘other job’ much more effectively. It wasn’t until he’d been forced out on his leave that he realized just how useful having that job had been in carrying on ‘The Fight.’ And it didn’t prevent him from practicing psychiatry, either. He asked for a day to think about it, and Vallejo was happy to wait. Frank used the time to check out the man who would be his new boss. Vallejo had a Hispanic background, and had been teaching at Quantico when he’d been plucked from his classroom to take over the foundering Detroit office. Apparently, the head office wanted someone in there with the interpersonal and organizational skills to pull things back together. The release of Agent Collins’ forensics report had caused an immediate internal review of the Detroit operation. Information about Stevens, and his time running the office, began to surface...and it didn’t look good. He’d been running a very slip-shod operation, had run rough-shod over SOP, angered local and state law enforcement with his heavy-handed use of power...and that didn’t even touch on the mess with the attempted cover-up in the bus fire case. Everyone else in the office had been cleared of any wrong-doing in the whole affair, but the investigation left them all tense and unwilling to do any more than the very basics that their jobs required, for the time being.

Frank thought about what he’d want to take the job back. He’d like the freedom to call in people he trusted when he needed them without having to clear it or justify it. And that would include getting Angie reinstated, and bringing Reg on-board in some official capacity. But other than that, nothing in particular came to mind. He called Vallejo the next morning and told him he’d accept the position under his old contract, if he could bring in his own team of specialists. Vallejo told him he could allow that as long as he retained veto power over the people on that list. And Frank was willing to concede that much with the understanding that the veto be used judiciously if at all. So he took his old job back on a provisional basis. “Good. We’ll keep you on Leave status for now. I’ll be in Detroit on Monday,” Vallejo told him. “Have that list ready for me and I’ll see you then.” “I do have one official request to make, even though I don’t officially start until Monday,” Frank asked Vallejo before he could hang up. “I’d like to put in Agent Westin for a commendation. I’ve been told that his actions on the scene of Stevens’ death were the very definition of heroic.” “Have the paperwork ready for me Monday,” Vallejo said. Frank’s next call was to Angie. “Want your old job back?” Frank asked her. “Depends,” Angie answered. “Do I get to stay in Detroit? ‘Cause I know that idiot won’t leave here. He loves his job at Receiving too much.” “I think that can be arranged,” Frank told her. “Good Teaching guys how to not get themselves blown up is getting kinda boring ” Angie laughed.

That weekend, Justin invited everyone who was around over to the house for dinner. He’d been debating what to do about the trio of his cousins who had been at the barn meeting. It was one loose end that he couldn’t let go of. It sickened him that there were people like that in his very own family. And he wanted to make it up to himself for the fact that he’d had to behave in a way that he utterly despised. He couldn’t punish all the guys who’d been there, especially since several of them were already dead. And he didn’t have justifiable access to many of the ones who weren’t. But he could reach his cousins, one way or another. He’d already spoken with Uncle Jerzy about it. He’d been hoping that Jerzy would just tell him what to do. No such luck. When he told Karen what Jerzy said, Karen laughed and said the priest had learned far too much from Fr. Andrew before his death. All Jerzy would tell Justin was that he should do what his conscience told him. “God has given us all free will, Justin, and I can’t tell you what you should do,” Jerzy said. Frank, Terry, Angie and Leigh were the only ones able to make it to the cook-out. And Angie couldn’t resist having a little fun at Justin’s expense. She was impressed with his ingenuity in getting the chocolate grenade for her, and even more impressed with how real it looked--at least at first glance and from a distance. So she warned the others ahead of time, and when everyone was there, standing around the kitchen while the grill warmed up, she pulled it from her jacket pocket and tossed it at Justin. Justin got half-way out the back door, ready to toss it out into the yard before he realized what it was. Angie and the others spent the next ten minutes laughing hysterically, and the rest of the evening teasing Justin about it. But Karen did insist they leave him alone long enough for him to talk about why he’d invited them over. “So, I was thinking maybe an unfriendly, friendly game of paintball,” Justin told them. “Maybe give them a little of their own medicine. Back in the old days, racists who weren’t lynching blacks were covering them with white paint--‘white-washing’ them. I thought maybe I could special-order some white rounds, and let the women plaster them.” There was a hint of glee in Justin’s voice at the thought. “Sounds like fun to me,” Angie agreed, with an equal amount of amusement. “I think you might be better off warning the women of your family,” Leigh suggested. “They’re living around dangerous men, and familial pressure can be quite strong.”

“I’m just not sure how you’ll interest them in it at all,” Frank said. “Didn’t you say that the three don’t normally hang out together? And they never even recognized you at the barn meeting. They may not be the brightest bulbs, but I’d guess that they’ll be suspicious if you all of a sudden try to get ‘buddy-buddy’ with them.” “I have to agree with both Leigh and Frank,” Terry said. You should probably warn your female relatives. But I think that any direct attempt by you to punish them might backfire.” She paused for a minute, looking thoughtful. “Now...if I happened to find out that they did or are doing anything illegal...I’d be duty-bound to deal with them,” she continued. “If you could give me dates and times and places, I might be able to put a couple of uniforms on them, to catch them doing something....” “I can give you the address of the barn where the one meeting was held,” Frank told her. “Keeping an eye on it might not be a bad idea. But with Horst gone, things made fade off now. Of course...” Frank paused. “You do have other relatives who could take over the infiltration, right, Justin? Relatives who can do it in an official capacity....” Frank was right, now that Justin thought about it in that way. “I’ve got several who are cops,” Justin said. “Maybe I should let Jim, the one in SWAT, know what our trio of bad apples are into. He could get in with ‘em, catch ‘em in the act....” “Just make sure he knows that he’d be able to call in DHS support if he needs it,” Frank told Justin. “And he can work it under my authority,” Terry said, “so it’s all official and he’ll have back-up every time he meets with them if he wants it.”

Justin still didn’t look completely relieved, though. Later that evening, he called Uncle Jerzy. He was wondering if the priest, who was the most well-respected male member of Justin’s large family, would decide which of the family’s women should be told about the three cousins...and then maybe tell them? “Justin, my son,” Jerzy said, the warmth of both affection and laughter in his voice, “it’s up to you to decide who to tell and how much to tell them.” Jerzy knew full well how uncomfortable Justin was confronting the women of this family. If he wasn’t a priest, he’d be intimidated too It had been just as well, when Justin and Marie were children, that the family’s women were strong. It was that strength that his mother had needed to raise two small children on her own when Justin’s father left. And she’d done a fine job with both kids, with the help of her own parents and the rest of her family to varying degrees. Unfortunately, it left Justin a little bit in awe of strong women. But he was a grown man now, and he needed to work this problem out for himself. He could hear Justin’s sigh. “Um, would you be able to watch Olivia for a little while some evening, so I can have dinner with Marie to tell her?” Justin asked. “Of course She’s a delightful child ” Jerzy said. “How’s your sign?” Justin asked, worried that the older man might not be able to keep up with his precocious niece. “Good enough,” Jerzy told him. “I think we’ll be able to manage. She’s a very smart girl.”

Justin dragged his feet for a couple days, trying to decide just how much to tell Marie and when the best time would be. In the meantime, Cathy had called on Sunday to ask Karen if she and her friends Leigh and Angie would have lunch with her the following Tuesday. Karen called the other two, and they were both game. Karen was actually relieved that Leigh and Angie would be there. She had a feeling that this was about the wedding, and she still wasn’t happy about the whole idea. Her mom had put off Edward for so long already that Karen suspected that Edward was pressuring her now for a quick wedding for some reason. It was bad enough that she couldn’t figure out a way to pry her mom away from Edward. Spending an entire lunch trying to pretend she was happy about it might be more than she could handle alone. Monday morning, Justin left for work late, waiting until Karen got up for work. He was going to call and ask Marie to go out for dinner with them, to Roma, on Tuesday evening, he told Karen; and he was hoping that Karen could talk the others into coming along too. That way he’d have people there who could shut him up if he started to spill too much to Marie. Karen told him she’d take care of it and gave him a hug. She loved that he was so honest that it was practically impossible for him to lie to anyone; and she was glad that he was astute enough to recognize it and make the decision to protect himself like that. It was something that she hadn’t thought of. Karen called around, and got Leigh, Frank, and Angie to sign on for the project. Tony was out of town, since everybody with a construction project in the northern half of the US seemed to want his attention before things shut down for Thanksgiving and then for the winter. Reg was still in San Francisco; and Terry had to work but sounded disappointed to be missing the chance to join in the fun. Aiden, on the other hand, seemed a little too happy about being ‘on-shift’ that night.

Tuesday morning, November 14, Leigh and Angie met Karen at her office. Cathy had called her on Monday to say that they had noon reservations at the Bayview Yacht Club for lunch. So the three went over there together and met Cathy at the front door. Cathy looked younger than ever, but there was a hint of tension around her eyes that she just couldn’t disguise. So she tried to keep Karen and her friends too busy to notice, asking how they were and what they were all doing lately. Cathy listened with genuine interest as Leigh talked about her volunteer work and about the latest of her father’s books that she was translating, and Angie told her what a boost she’d gotten in her own work from having had the chance to chat with Edward a couple weeks before. But Cathy had 2 drinks before lunch was even brought to the table, which was not at all like her. Of course she drank. She was Irish, and family parties were always ‘well-lubricated.’ But Karen had never seen her mom drink quite that much in that short a time, especially in a public situation like lunch out. And when Cathy had the waiter bring her a third glass of wine as they were eating, Karen knew something was seriously wrong and she couldn’t ignore it any longer. She glanced at Leigh and Angie. It seemed that both of them had noticed Cathy’s drinking, too. She wondered if she looked as concerned as they did. First...she checked if there was anything Unknown that might be affecting her mom. But there was nothing, not even the lingering feel of some past interaction with it. She raised a Mental Shield just in case, hoping that if there was anything putting pressure on her mom, she’d at least be more clear-headed while they talked about this with her.

“Mom, is something wrong?” Karen asked, looking pointedly from the empty glass being cleared away to the full one. She wasn’t trying to be judgmental. It wasn’t the drinking per se that concerned Karen; it was the underlying cause. Cathy sighed. “Wrong is too strong a word,” she said. “It’s so...complicated. Edward...needs to invite all his business contacts to the reception, of course. And the family is getting so big now. It’s just getting...complicated.” Cathy paused, trying to collect her thoughts as she took another sip of wine. “I thought not having a church wedding would be less of a problem....” “Church or not, doesn’t change the number of people who are going to want to celebrate with you and wish you well, Mom,” Karen said. “But, ya know, you don’t have to do everything by yourself. All you have to do is call me. And have you thought of getting hold of Peter? He did an amazing job with my and Justin’s wedding, even with the whole Tribe coming, and having to move it to Cobo at the last minute, and all.” Cathy’s eyes widened at the suggestion. It had never crossed her mind that she didn’t need to arrange it all herself. Karen took a sip of her wine and thought about the best way to handle the next tack. “Of course, two months is not much time to plan any wedding, even for Peter,” she started. “Justin and I lucked out that we had you and Marie and Peter to help, or ours would never have happened. Maybe you could talk to Edward and push the date back a little. It doesn’t really have to be before Christmas, does it? That might be a chore even for Peter.” “Well...those people are very good at that kind of thing, but...well...I don’t know. I suppose....” Cathy’s voice drifted off.

“And you could maybe stretch things out a little, so it isn’t one huge party all at once,” Karen continued. “You know...have a party for Edward’s business associates to announce your engagement, and...the family all pretty much knows about it already right?” “Well, yes...I think so,” Cathy said. “So you can have another party for family maybe the following month or something. That way you spread out the work and avoid the complications of who to seat next to whom for a little while. It would give you some breathing space for working on the wedding itself.” “I don’t know,” Cathy said, still resisting the idea. “I hate to.... Edward has been so excited about the wedding, and....” Karen set down her glass and stopped her mom. “Wait...You have talked to Edward about this, right?” “Well, I didn’t want to bother him...” Cathy told the others. “Mom You have to talk to him about this ” Karen said. “He should know how much this is stressing you out. I’m sure he’d be happy to postpone the wedding. I mean, he seemed pretty cool about waiting until you were ready to get engaged, right? He didn’t pressure you or anything, right?” “Well, no...” Cathy admitted. “He did wait patiently. But...he’s so excited, and I’d hate to disappoint him.” “Mom, he’s going to be a lot more disappointed if you get everything arranged then have a heart attack at the altar from all the stress Besides, if he gets upset about you coming to him with your problem, maybe you should be rethinking this whole thing,” Karen told her. “You should be able to go to him with anything, right?” Leigh asked Cathy. “And if he’d rather not postpone the wedding, then he should at least be willing to help with the arrangements.” Leigh stated it so matter-of-factly that Cathy didn’t say anything for a minute.

“Well, maybe you girls are right,” Cathy finally conceded. “I will talk to him. And I’m sure that he’ll figure something out. After all, he is the most wonderful man, and he treats me so well. I...I feel better already. I’m glad we talked about this.” And Cathy did actually look like at least part of the load had been lifted from her shoulders. “Karen, do you have one of Peter’s cards in your purse?” Leigh asked. “Then your mother won’t have to search for his number.” Karen knew exactly where she’d put it in her wallet, because though this wasn’t the particular conversation she was expecting to have, she’d had a feeling that lunch would have something to do with the wedding plans. She pulled out one of Peter’s cards and passed it to her mom, who put it into her purse. “Thank you, dear,” she said as she set her purse back on the floor by her feet. “So, how are you and Justin doing?” “We’re fine, Mom. You know...working, starting to think about Christmas gifts for the kids....” Karen answered nervously. She hated talking about herself, and was trying to think of a way of deflecting the attention. “Yes, the kids.... So when are you two going to give me a grandchild or two?” Cathy asked her. “Mom ” That was all Karen could manage for a few seconds, and she could see Angie trying to hide her amusement. “You DO already have grandkids,” Karen countered. “Leslie’s? Or did you forget?” “Oh, now you know I haven’t. I’d just like more....” Cathy said. “Oh, and you’re bugging Patrick and Sean, too, right?” Karen asked, appalled that her mom might be implying that it was up to her daughters alone to give her grandkids. “Well, actually....” Cathy smiled. She was certainly an equal opportunity nagger. “Great. Well, I suppose Sean could be out there making babies that we don’t know about yet....” Karen said, teasing her mom about asking her youngest, unmarried, son for grandkids.

Then she got serious. “I...we...we’ve talked about it, and I...we DO want kids, but....” Karen said, tripping over her own tongue. “I’m not sure if I’m ready to give up my...my career...my freedom to up and spend the whole summer crouched over a hole in the ground.” Like she could really come out and tell her mom the real reason she and Justin were putting off having kids--that they couldn’t afford to give up The Fight quite yet, and they weren’t willing to bring a child, a tiny, vulnerable infant, into the middle of what they had to deal with. She knew what Fr. Andrew had said when she told him the same thing, that she couldn’t let the Fight stop her from living her life. But that was the one thing she and Justin could actually control in this crazy world at the moment, and she needed to hang on to that little bit of control until she was ready to face the danger that would come with letting go. She figured that, like Vanya and his wife had done, she and Justin would have to be ready to drop out of sight, to distance themselves from the Fight and the friends they’d be leaving behind, in order to have a family and keep it safe. They both knew that they couldn’t do that yet. “Well, I understand, dear,” Cathy said, patting Karen’s hand. “Babies do tend to change the way you live your life, at least for a little while. After you were all in school, though....” Karen remembered how her mom had gone to work after Sean was in school for the full day. When she was a kid, it hadn’t occurred to her that her mom had given that up to have her family, and was just returning to teaching, not deciding to teach on a whim because she was bored being home alone.

“Right, I mean, I just want to be able to plan to have them when I’m ready, and there’s nothing that says there can’t be a pregnant archaeologist, but....” Karen paused, sure that she was running off at the mouth and would say the wrong thing. “Whatever you do, you don’t want to be delivering in August ” Leigh said, helping Karen out. “I’ve heard that it’s miserable to be that far along when it’s so hot out.” “Right ” Karen agreed, grateful for the help. “Aiden was telling me that there’s this new intern working in the ER right now, a woman...and she’s pregnant,” Angie said. “While doing her ER rotation?” Karen asked, surprised. “I’d be afraid, ya know, with all the stuff she could be exposed to, blood....” “That’s what I said, too,” Angie agreed. “But Aiden said that she was being careful, and that he was keeping an eye on her, and, besides, it was better for her to do it now rather than waiting and being pregnant when she becomes a resident. At least she doesn’t have to deal with the crazy hours or anything, and she gets to sleep.” “True,” Leigh said. “We know what Aiden’s hours have been like. Imagine doing that when you’re pregnant.” “So, how ‘bout you, Angie,” Karen teased. “When are you and Aiden going to be popping kids?” She wouldn’t have had the guts to ask that if her mom hadn’t been there. Angie might have come across the table and throttled her. Of course, they wouldn’t be having this stupid conversation if her mom hadn’t been there....

Angie laughed. “Not now But I haven’t really thought about it, either,” she answered. Leigh and Cathy laughed too. Angie didn’t really seem like the maternal type to anyone, which was why Karen had chosen to pick on her, to derail the conversation. She didn’t ask Leigh partly because she was pretty sure that Leigh wasn’t in a relationship right now that would lead to kids. She was obviously still interested in Reg; but with all Reg had been through, Karen understood that their relationship was kind of on hold. And while she always thought of Leigh as the kind of woman who could easily say ‘it’s my body and I’ll have a child when I want, and raise it alone if I have to,’ because she had that kind of emotional strength, Karen also knew that Leigh felt very strongly about raising children in a traditional family unit. As an anthropologist, Leigh had seen enough studies indicating that children needed a mother and father, living together, and working together to raise the kids. And Karen had a feeling that Leigh would always do everything in her power to give her children everything they needed, even if it meant putting off child-bearing, or adoption, until she could provide it. Karen’s plan paid off. Angie managed to send the conversation in an entirely different direction, and the four women had a very nice lunch together.

When they finally rose to leave, Karen kept a close eye on her mom. Cathy hadn’t had nearly enough coffee after lunch to counteract the two cocktails and four glasses of wine she’d had before and during the meal. But her mom seemed fine, not at all wobbly or drunk. She must be drinking on a regular basis to handle that amount of alcohol in one sitting today. Of course, with all the functions that she probably went to with Edward, cocktail parties with business associates, dinners out and such, she could be getting her tolerance built up without being a ‘lush,’ sitting at home swigging booze from the bottle. “So, Mom,” Karen asked, “Are you OK to drive home?” “Oh, the driver will take me home,” Cathy said. “I don’t drive much anymore. Edward insists that I should have someone doing that for me.” She practically glowed as she said it, thinking about what good care Edward took of her, how he did little things like that to keep her safe and make her happy. “Gee,” Karen teased her. “‘The Driver.’ Must be nice.” Leigh and Angie laughed, and Cathy joined in. It still felt funny to her too, to say things like that. Her life had changed so much in the nearly two years since she’d met Edward, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to it. But one thing hadn’t changed. She liked seeing her daughter. “Oh, Karen,” she asked as they walked out to the parking lot. “You will be coming for Thanksgiving, right?” A big black Lincoln pulled around as they stood in front of the doors, for Cathy. “Sure, Mom,” Karen said. “Justin and I will be there.” “And all of your friends are welcome too,” Cathy said, looking at Angie and Leigh. “We’d love to have you all over.” “Well, I’ll let the others know, too,” Karen told her. “But we never know when and where Tony will be off blowing something up....” “The lucky bastard,” Angie interjected. “And with Aiden’s schedule, and Frank’s job....” Karen shrugged as she finished. She didn’t want to get her mom’s hopes up that there would be a full house at Thanksgiving, and she wanted to give her friends an ‘out’ if they didn’t feel like spending the day with Edward.

They all hugged one another, and when Cathy’s car had pulled away, the other three walked out to the car Justin had leased for Karen while he rebuilt the Jeep. Leigh was already wondering how Justin would feel about having lunch with Edward sometime soon, to warn him that his head would be on the block if anything ever happened to Cathy. It was one thing if Cathy was stressing herself out unnecessarily, planning this wedding all alone. It was quite another if he was causing the stress by pressuring her into it before she was ready. She wanted Edward to know that he was being watched. She would have to ask Justin tonight, after dinner with Marie. Karen dropped Leigh and Angie back at the parking ramp where their vehicles were, then headed back to her office for her afternoon office hours. Justin had made reservations at Roma for 7pm, and Marie would be meeting them there. As would Frank, Leigh and Angie. Justin had wanted ‘back-up,’ in case he started to spill something to Marie that would be better off kept secret. It turned out he needed the back-up more than he had anticipated.

The five Envoys met in front of Roma and went in together. The maitre d’ lead them back to the private room Justin had requested, but when he held the curtain aside for them to go in, Justin stopped stock still in the doorway. There was undisguised shock and fear on his face, for at the large table sat not only his sister Marie, but his Grandma Nadjosinski, and his Aunts Elizabeth, Cordelia and Sophie. He was not expecting the Matriarchs to be there Karen slipped her hand into his and stepped into the room, smiling and greeting the other women and practically dragging Justin behind her. Frank, Angie and Leigh were not so gently pushing him in from behind. The five settled into the empty chairs, and Grandma N asked, “So, what is good here, Justin?” “Um...the food?” Justin answered. Karen looked down, arranging her napkin on her lap, to keep from laughing. Poor Justin. She knew that his grandmother had helped raise him and Marie, and they both loved her dearly. But all she saw when she looked at Grandma N was a kindly old Polish grandmother. Justin obviously still saw the woman who, with nothing more than a look, could make him settle down in Church or express her displeasure over his less than stellar report card. “You are into something....” she said, staring at him as if to read his thoughts. Karen saw his ears beginning to turn pink as Marie and Justin’s aunts nodded in agreement. Good thing he’d thought to have the others along, because she could see that without some moral support, Justin would have already been spilling his guts. The funny thing was, like with Fr. Jerzy, Karen couldn’t really tell if Grandma N was just very perceptive or if she had some supernatural ability to see into Justin’s mind.

Grandma N looked at Justin’s friends and said, in her sweet Polish accent, “Justin is afraid because we are here.” There was more nodding from his aunts. “Why...? How...?” Justin couldn’t seem to collect his thoughts. If Grandma N did have supernatural powers of mind-reading, Karen couldn’t help but silently wish her luck. She might end up with a headache tonight. “A little birdy suggested this might be a family matter,” Grandma N said, as if she’d known what he was asking. Karen knew that if that ‘little birdy’ had been anyone other than Fr. Jerzy, Justin would have been silently cursing him right now. But it was pretty hard to curse a priest. “Let’s talk before dinner, so everyone’s appetite isn’t ruined,” Grandma suggested. She raised her hand in a slight wave, and suddenly waiters appeared with wine and bread sticks and antipasto. Justin took a sip of water and started twiddling a bread stick. “There was a little something going on,” Justin started. “Can you be any more vague, Justin?” Marie said. The aunts nodded, and Justin’s ears grew a little pinker. “...and I was investigating for the police,” Justin continued, his fingers breaking the bread stick into smaller and smaller pieces. “You work for the police now?” Grandma N asked. “No.... That’s why I was the man for the job,” Justin answered her quickly.

The women all stared at him, waiting for some elaboration. Justin stuck his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a couple photos, two that Frank had taken the day of the barn meeting. One showed his one cousin’s pick-up truck, and the other was a close-up of his three cousins together inside it. He handed the photos over to his grandmother. “You know they wouldn’t normally be together,” he told them, as they passed the photos back and forth. None of the aunts who were there was the mother of any of the three cousins; but one aunt was a sister of one cousin’s mother. All of the Matriarchs were shaking their heads, and Grandma N said, “Something is up with these boys.” “Yeah...bad stuff,” Justin told her. “You must be more precise, Justin,” Grandma said, chastising him. Justin grunted in frustration at the interrogation. They were asking him for answers that he just couldn’t give them. “Angry white guy shit,” he finally said, exasperated. “Justin ” Grandma said, raising her voice. “There is no excuse for bad language ” Now Karen could see what Justin was concerned about. The look on Grandma’s face could have frozen water. The aunts were nodding in agreement and shaking their heads over Justin’s lack of manners. Marie was covering a grin. Always the little sister, she couldn’t help but be amused at Justin’s dressing down. Frank got up and stepped over behind Justin and slapped him on the back of the head. The Envoys, who knew Frank well enough, could read the laughter in his eyes. Justin spun around and stared at Frank as he calmly returned to his seat. Grandma and the aunts studied Frank, trying to determine if he was mocking them or not.

“So, what were they doing...besides being assholes?” Marie asked. Grandma shot the same look at Marie as she’d given Justin moments ago. Marie might have a little more latitude as one of the ‘up-and-coming Matriarchs,’ but the look said that Grandma could still put Marie over her knee. “Sorry, Gramma,” Marie apologized quickly, knowing that she’d just stepped over a line. Justin’s mouth was gaping like a fish out of water, and before he could say something that he would regret, Frank said, “They’ve been associating with some unsavory characters. They may be affiliated with a small terrorist group we’ve been keeping an eye on. The group may have been involved in certain racist and misogynist attacks recently.” Justin nodded. “This was my way of avoiding ‘taking them down to the gym,’” he told the women. Grandma and the other women nodded sagely. “I see,” Grandma said cryptically. “If you think there’s anything these men are doing,” Frank said, pulling a card from his wallet and holding it out to Grandma N, “that the authorities need to know about....” Grandma N took his card and studied it a moment, then nodded as she tucked it into her purse. “Well...then let’s have a nice dinner, yes?” Grandma said, satisfied that Justin wasn’t the one getting in trouble. Karen was pretty sure that if he had been, there’d be hell to pay.

And dinner was actually very nice...for everyone but Justin. Leigh was in heaven watching the dynamics of a matriarchal power structure in action, as the older women and Marie made Justin sweat with nothing more than looks and off-hand comments. Angie was thoroughly enjoying watching Justin turn red every five minutes or so. And Frank got the impression that he’d been sized up and approved of as a potential ally by the head of Justin’s large and seemingly well-connected ‘family.’ Even Karen felt that she’d somehow passed a test and been accepted more fully as a member of Justin’s family. This was the first time that the real heads of Justin’s family had a chance to actually study Karen, and they seemed to approve. The others, Leigh and Frank in particular, could sense that the matriarchal power structure was broadening and enveloping Karen as dinner progressed. To Karen it was like the warmth she’d felt when she was finally accepted as a member of the Tribe. Not at the formal adoption and naming ceremony, but the first time she sat around with a bunch of her new sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles, just drinking pop and talking and actually being included. There’d been a definite shift, from the unintentional formality they’d always adopted when she was around before, to the looseness, the warm good humor that she’d always known in her birth family, at least before she’d been committed.

In fact, now that she thought about it, it was the complete reverse of the change she’d felt at the first family gathering she’d been at after she was released. Before, she’d never really thought about the warmth of being with family. It had always been there, like the subtle heat of thick Bailey’s sliding down her throat or the scratchy softness of being wrapped in a thick wool blanket. But that first Christmas back at home, when they’d all gone over to her grandparents’ house, all her aunts and uncles and cousins.... No one came out and said anything, but they all seemed to keep their distance, watching her out of the corner of their eyes like she might suddenly sprout a second head. Instead of the crushing bear hugs, they’d wrap their arms around her carefully, like they were afraid they’d break her. Instead of the jovial ‘Hey, what kinda trouble are ye gettin’ into?’ it was ‘So, dear, how are you? How are your classes? How...?’ Nobody here had a ‘before’ picture to compare her to, so her past didn’t matter. All that mattered was who she was now...Justin’s wife...the woman a favorite grandson/nephew/brother had chosen, after far too many years alone, to have a family with and spend the rest of his life with.

Karen slipped her hand around Justin’s arm and gave him a little hug. He was still so nervous. He’d been so worried that they would think he was some kind of creep, either the kind that would willingly hang out with his degenerate cousins or the kind that would go out of his way to get them in trouble. Now, not only did they know he wasn’t, but they’d acknowledged, with their loving jibes and merely by ending the ‘interrogation,’ that he wasn’t a creep at all. That made him feel better, even if he did have to suffer the jokes and teasing. As Karen listened to Marie telling about Olivia’s latest adventure, she suddenly heard Frank’s voice, as if he was sitting very close to her and whispering, not in her ear but directly into her brain. “Are you having fun watching Justin squirm?” he asked her. She looked over to where Frank was sitting. Well, well. Somebody had been honing a new ‘skill’.... Karen grinned and winked at him. Fun watching him squirm? Not exactly. But somehow she knew that she couldn’t be the one who rescued him from the questions. If she’d been too vocal, not only would they never have trusted her fully, but they’d never have trusted Justin fully either. And she was glad that Frank had seen how close Justin was to having his head explode, and that he’d stepped in just before things might have gone wrong, to save them all from explanations they really didn’t want to have to make.

When dinner was over and Marie and the Matriarchs had gone home, the Envoys lingered for a few more minutes. Frank was bringing them up to date on his ‘job situation.’ And the women told Frank and Justin about their lunch with Cathy. That gave Leigh the opportunity to ask the others what they thought of having a ‘friendly’ lunch with Edward, to make sure he understood how important Cathy’s current and future health and well-being were to all of them. Justin was all for it. He was hoping that Edward might give him a reason to peel him away from Cathy. But while Karen appreciated the idea, she wasn’t sure that her being there would be such a good thing. For the sake of her relationship with her mom, she didn’t want to put herself in direct opposition to Edward. If it forced her mom into a position of choosing between the two of them, she wasn’t sure anymore that her mom would choose her--and she couldn’t risk losing that connection. Angie didn’t say anything, waiting to hear what Frank thought of the idea. Frank was quiet for a moment, then asked Leigh, “Exactly what is your point in having this conversation with Edward?” “Well, for one thing, Cathy no longer has a father to ‘sus out’ Edward’s intentions....” Leigh told him. “MmHmm, but what message would my presence there send?” he asked her. Leigh wasn’t quite sure she understood what he was asking. “I’m just thinking that Edward has plenty of contacts in law enforcement, and in government in general,” Frank explained. “And I’m sure he knows that I am...or at least was...FBI and DHS. If he sees my presence as a threat, either personal or governmental, he would be well able to retaliate in kind, through his own contacts. I’m not sure that I want that kind of attention.”

It was apparent that Leigh was disappointed that Frank would not be joining her and Justin. “But...besides being a good judge of character, you’re also trained in observing people to discover their motives and their truthfulness,” she said. “That’s why I wanted you there.” Frank thought for a minute. “Maybe I can be, in a way,” he finally agreed. “Angie, how would you like to go?” he asked her. Angie groaned. She couldn’t stand the thought of having to sit and smile at Harrington again. Once was bad enough. But she knew he wasn’t actually asking her opinion...and she knew she’d be going whether she liked it or not. “OK,” Frank said, “how would you like to wear a mike and a camera in there so that I can hear and see Edward without being there?” A huge grin started to spread across Angie’s face. Covert work Now this she could get behind She quickly forced the grin back down into a frown (not that they didn’t all see the grin first, though), and said “Oh, alright.” “If all of you wear your ear buds, I’ll let you know what I think throughout the meal,” Frank told them. “And, Karen,” he continued, “you’ll have to figure out something to keep your mom busy while they do this.” Karen smiled. “I think that my mom deserves a day at the spa, considering how much stress she’s under,” she told the others. “Will Sunday be OK?” The others looked at one another, then nodded. She pulled out her cell and called her mom right away. “Hey, Mom ” Karen said as soon as Cathy answered. “Listen, I was thinking that maybe you just need a little break from all the planning. What do you think of an day at the spa in the RenCen with me?” “Well, honey, I....” Cathy started. But Karen didn’t let her finish. “I made a reservation for Sunday. It was the soonest I could get us in. I hope that’s OK....” There was a pause, and then Cathy told her, “Of course, dear. What time should I be there?” “Oh, I’ll pick you up, Mom. You’re not going to do a thing all day, except relax. I’ll see you at 10, Sunday morning ” Karen said. Then she hung up fast, before her mom could change her mind and argue.

Terry had been hinting for the past two weeks that she wanted to spend some ‘quality time’ with Frank, but with her being in rather high demand at work, after her brilliant job on Halloween, and him hunting down the loose ends from the Horst case and starting back up with DHS, neither had much time to schedule a ‘date.’ Finally, she just decided that the coming Friday would be the perfect time for them to talk. “Hey, remember when I said that we needed to talk, just before you went into the Fox on Halloween...and left me outside?” she asked when Frank answered his phone on Wednesday morning. She didn’t wait for a reply. She had a feeling he was trying to avoid this conversation and she wasn’t going to give him much opportunity. “How would you like to come over for dinner on Friday?” she asked. “I’ll warn you ahead of time that I want to talk about ‘us.’ I don’t want you to think I was trying to blindside you, but we need to talk.... And I’m willing to make a really nice dinner....” “OK,” Frank said. “7pm alright?” “Sure,” Angie answered. “Fine. See you then,” Frank told her. Someone listening in might have thought they were arranging a business meeting. Later that morning, Leigh called Edward. She had wanted to wait long enough after Karen called her mom about going to the spa that maybe Edward wouldn’t connect the two, but not so long that he might have made other plans for Sunday. “I’d like to invite you to lunch this weekend, Sunday, if that would work for you,” she told him. “Well, I’m afraid that Cathy isn’t available, but....” Edward replied. “That’s alright,” Leigh assured him. “As her friends, we’d like to get to know you a little better.” “Excellent Shall I make reservations at my club, for say, 11:30 Sunday morning?” he asked. “That would be fine,” Leigh said. “I’m looking forward to it.” “As am I,” Edward agreed. He gave her directions to the club, and both said goodbye. Leigh immediately called the others, to fill them in. They agreed to meet at 10:30am Sunday at the safe house, for Frank to get Angie wired and tested beforehand.

Frank was at Terry’s door promptly at 7pm on Friday evening. He’d picked up 2 bottles of good, single-malt Scotch. Not knowing exactly what Terry planned for dinner, it was the best thing he could think of. It might not be a great accompaniment for the food, but he had a feeling it would be the perfect thing to go with the conversation. She answered the door in a silky kimono-style robe-thing. As he stepped inside, his eyebrows went up. The place looked like a candle factory had exploded inside. “Wow, thanks,” she said, taking the Scotch so that he could take off his coat. “This will be great later.” When he got further into the main room of Terry’s apartment, Frank could see that she had the food laid out on the coffee table, and pillows piled around it on the floor. There was a small pot on a warming plate, with a large sake pitcher being gently warmed in the water bath, and two sake cups sitting beside it. There was sushi laid out attractively on a beautiful platter, with smaller plates, chopsticks and dipping bowls of soy sauce on either side of it. And there were small bowls and plates of other Japanese-style dishes filling any otherwise-unused space on the table. Terry saw him eyeing the table. “I know you like sushi,” she explained, “so that’s what I got.” It took him another moment to realize that there was soft music playing in the background.

“Hmm...it’s not Sweetest Day...” Frank said. “It’s called ‘I dig you,’” Angie retorted. “I wanted a pleasant, romantic atmosphere.” She sounded slightly defensive as she said it, so Frank backed off the sarcasm. He didn’t want a fight, but he’d been a little thrown off by the unexpected ‘atmosphere.’ “It’s just...distinctly out of character,” he told her. “Why?” Terry asked. Did he really think that her job as a cop had sapped all femininity from her soul? He answered slowly, hoping he wasn’t pissing her off and ruining the evening (whatever it might include) before it even got started. “Well...I’ve never seen this many candles at your place before....” he told her first. “Oh, well, I saw it in a magazine, and I thought it looked pretty,” she replied. She could see him looking at the kimono without actually LOOKING at it and knew he wasn’t sure how to ask about that, so she gave him a hand. “And I actually really like this kimono. It’s very soft--feel,” she said holding out her arm for him to touch the fabric. Frank just stood there trying to figure out where all this was supposed to be leading. “So...Frank....” Terry said, leading him over to the table and setting the Scotch on an end table as they passed the couch. “So...Terry....” he said back as he followed her and sank down to the pillows when she did. “Where do you want to go with this?” Terry asked him. “I mean, I’m not complaining. The sex is fantastic and I really like the company, too....” “But you know the divorce rate for cops....” Frank said. “I know, but...none of it is a patch for watching a man burn to death and knowing that it wasn’t for any natural cause,” Terry replied. “Life’s short, Frank, and I want to spend it with you.” “Are you proposing to me?” Frank asked her, genuinely amazed. Terry hesitated for just a second, asking herself if that really was what she was doing. “Yeah...I guess I am,” she answered. “If it makes you feel better, we can just shack up. But...I’d like to make it more permanent. Not only could either of us be shot by a perp or a terrorist, but there’s also stuff out there that could kill me with a thought! You give me comfort and satisfaction in the face of knowing all that....”

The room fell quiet for a minute, the only sounds the music playing in the background and the occasional sputtering of one of the numerous candles. “Um...I could use a little feedback here, you with the sphinx-like face,” Terry said finally, breaking the silence. “The nose is all wrong,” Frank told her, reaching up to point out the difference. “Could you meet me part-way?” Terry said, sounding a little exasperated. OK, so humor was out. “I’m afraid that this is the result of seeing just how ugly this world can be...” Frank said. “What, and what we’ve had up ‘til now hasn’t been a relationship?” Terry asked, a little offended at his semantics. “I’d call it ‘friendship with benefits,’” Frank told her. “Well, if you don’t want a relationship, just say so and I won’t give you any grief about it. We can go back to what it was like at the beginning,” Terry complained. “I’m just not sure that I want to commit to it right now,” Frank said, trying to smooth her ruffled feathers. “What then?” Terry demanded to know. “What we’ve had?” Frank said, then paused. “I don’t know,” he continued. “I’m flattered...and happy. But at the same time...so far your affiliation with the group has not been as direct as it could have been; and there are things out there that don’t like me very much, and being more intimate could put you in more danger. I know that you’re a big girl and can take care of yourself, but...it is a concern of mine.”

Terry softened a bit. He must have feelings for her to be this concerned for her continued safety. “If I’m going to be tainted by association with you, it’s too late,” she said. “If Justin and Karen can find happiness in the middle of all this, why can’t you? I won’t bother mentioning Angie and Aiden--I still think it’s all about the sex for them.” “Sex makes them happy,” Frank told her, shrugging. “And what? Are you afraid of being happy?” Terry asked him. “Do you think you’ll be punished for being happy?” “It makes you complacent,” Frank said, not actually answering her. “So you’re saying that you can’t be in a relationship and be alert?” Terry countered. “I have been, and been alert,” Frank told her. But there was a huge unspoken “BUT” hanging at the end of his words. “Look,” Terry said, “I’m looking for more than ‘friendship with benefits.’ I want a commitment.” “To what?” Frank asked. “To me,” Terry answered. “To living together, facing this stuff together, laughing together, having wild monkey sex together....” “Right. That must be a Detroit thing,” Frank said. “Sometimes I think you think too much and don’t feel enough,” Terry told him. “It’s part of my charm,” Frank teased her. “I think you HAVE feelings, but you’re afraid to show them,” she continued, ignoring the joke. Frank sighed. “In case you haven’t noticed, I have issues,” he said. “You have subscriptions,” Terry replied. “So do I. But are we going to work on them together?”

“I can’t say at the moment that I want us to drift apart...” he started. “But, I’m also not ready to make a commitment ‘til death do us part.’” “Will you ever?” Terry asked, very serious now. “Well, eventually we all do,” Frank answered, preferring to take her question to mean dying, not committing. “Need I remind you that the last time we relaxed and had fun together, you got kidnapped and carried off by a bat thing?” “I wish you hadn’t,” Terry groaned. “But, then...we weren’t doing anything fun when Stevens carried you off,” Frank continued. “I don’t know why I have to be a ‘damsel in distress,’” Terry complained. “Must be my karma. But it was fun watching you take him apart by remote control. You did it so masterfully.” Now Frank was the one to get serious. “I’m being as honest as I can be,” he told her. “It’s not because a relationship with you wouldn’t be nice; I’m just not sure I can get my issues out of the way. But...if you’ll help me with them....” Terry knew that for the time-being, this was as close as he was going to get to a commitment, so she was going to take what she could get. “If you’ll help with mine,” she agreed. “OK, first one.... The shoulder holster doesn’t work with the kimono,” he said, grinning again. Terry grinned too, and stacked up the empty dishes. Then she loosened the top of the wrap. Frank could see that she had a tank top on underneath, with the holster strapped over it to keep it from chafing. She shrugged the holster off and laid it on the table. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” she laughed. She leaned down and unfastened the ankle holster with the derringer, and laid that on the table beside her service piece. Frank grinned and slipped out the taser he carried in a back holster. Next, her pocket canister of Mace joined the growing pile on the table. And the knife Frank had up one sleeve. “Let’s deal with the rest of this pesky stuff,” Terry giggled, and rolling up on her knees, she leaned forward and began unbuttoning Frank’s shirt....

The few days in between Tuesday’s dangerous mealtimes and Sunday’s ambush lunch went calmly for the other Envoys, and Karen and Justin got up early on Sunday to go to 8am Mass. As soon as they got home, Karen left to pick up her mom, and the two women spent the next several hours being pampered with massages and mud baths and facials, all done in rooms with scented candles and trickling fountains and soft music. When both felt as wobbly-relaxed as lumps of Jello, they were wrapped in fluffy robes of Egyptian cotton and led to a small dining room where they had a lunch of lobster ceviche salad with avocado and a single glass of white wine. “Sweetheart, I have the best news for you,” Cathy said, bubbling with excitement. Karen was amazed at how much more relaxed her mom was than five days ago. Maybe Edward had actually agreed to postpone the wedding, at least long enough to get it planned properly without causing Mom to have a stroke....

When Leigh, Angie and Justin pulled up at Edward’s club, after stopping at the safe house to get Angie wired, they were met at the curb by the valet. Justin insisted on parking the truck himself after dropping off Leigh and Angie, but he still tipped the guy. He was only trying to do his job, after all. They were led to a table in a quiet corner and found Edward already there, and a bottle of wine already open on the table. Edward stood and held Leigh’s chair for her, and Justin held Angie’s. As he sat down himself, Justin asked Edward, “Would it be possible to get a beer?” “Of course,” Edward answered cheerfully as he waved over a waiter. “Consider lunch my treat,” he told them, smiling. “Oh But I had planned on paying, since I invited you,” Leigh objected. Edward just laughed. “But it’s my pleasure to get to know Karen’s friends better,” he said. “Besides...I’m rich.” The four all laughed as they picked up their menus and ordered lunch. They chatted for a while about what each had been doing lately, and Edward listened intently whenever any of the three were talking, allowing them to do as much of the talking as they wished. He seemed jovial and relaxed, laughing easily at every joke, nodding as he listened to them tell about incidents that had happened to them in the past week. “It’s interesting,” Edward said, as the waiter brought their food, “how we all do the same thing, in a way...we’re all students of human nature. Or of mechanical nature....” he added quickly, nodding at Justin. (In their ears, the three heard Frank’s voice, “I’m sizing up the competition.”) “I don’t know much about cars,” Edward continued, “but I understand you’re at the top of your field, Justin.” (“I’m trying to throw you off guard,” Frank commented.)

“Did you know that Karen and Angie and I had lunch with Cathy last week?” Leigh asked. “She seems very happy.” “Yes, she’s quite a woman,” Edward said. “She mentioned that she was having lunch with you.” (“My precious....” Frank whispered in their ears. Angie almost choked trying to keep herself from laughing out loud, and had to explain it away as a sip of wine going down the wrong way.) “I was wondering if you were able to get hold of Mr. Jacob?” Leigh asked. “Cathy didn’t come out and say anything, but I got the impression that she was quite stressed by the pressure of planning the wedding when we saw her,” she added. “Right! The wedding planner fellow! She’d mentioned it,” Edward replied. “It was so thoughtless of me not to have noticed how much pressure she was causing herself. But she’s the sweetest woman, and she didn’t want to bother me with the details.” As the four ate, the three Envoys noticed that Edward was wearing a gold ring, simple but elegant, on the ring finger of his left hand. A ring that wasn’t there the last time they’d seen him on Halloween. There was a pause in the conversation, caused partly by the fact that Edward still hadn’t actually answered Leigh’s question, and partly by the fact that the Envoys were all exchanging weighty glances, checking if the others had noticed the ring. “So...you eloped,” Leigh said rather than asked, looking pointedly at the ring. “I just hope you didn’t have the wedding done by Elvis,” Justin teased, not feeling anywhere near as good-natured about it as he made it sound. “Yes...and no!” Edward laughed. “I just hope that Cathy told Karen today, or I’m going to be in a lot of trouble!”

At that same moment, over their lunch of lobster ceviche salad, Cathy was practically bursting with excitement when she finally told Karen “...Edward and I eloped!” “Mom!” Karen said, laughing and hugging her. The hug gave her the moment she needed to get her emotions under control as she dealt with the surprise. She sat back and laughed, “See! I knew you would! Didn’t I say, when you were showing me the ring back on Halloween, that if you weren’t having it in the Church then you must be planning to elope!” Cathy was giggling like a school girl. “Oh, honey, I hope you aren’t too disappointed. But what you and Angie and Leigh were saying at lunch the other day made so much sense. All the pressure of the planning was making me unhappy, and talking to Edward about it was the perfect thing. Once you all convinced me of that, I knew that he’d figure out what to do--and he suggested going to Vegas! Now we can take our time with having the parties to announce it, one for his business associates and another for our family.” “Disappointed? Mom, no!” Karen said, hugging her mom again to hide the fact that she was indeed disappointed--that Edward had managed to use her advice but not at all in the way she’d intended. She wanted the wedding postponed...not accelerated! “I’m so happy for you! And this really does make everything simpler. Now all you have to do is plan plain old parties, instead of a wedding and reception!”

At the club, Leigh had finally worked around to the real reason for the invitation to lunch. “You do know how much Cathy means to all of us, don’t you?” she asked Edward. “And not just because she’d Karen’s mother, although that’s obviously part of it.” Edward smiled as he leaned over toward Leigh and put his hand gently on her arm, not at all in a threatening manner. “I would NEVER hurt her,” he said with complete sincerity. (“He actually seems very sincere, in case any of you missed it,” Frank told them.) “I know that Karen means the world to Cathy,” he continued, “and I think that Karen still has some reservations about me. I understand that it’s hard to see your mom marry another man after your dad’s gone. And I don’t hope to replace Ben in Cathy’s heart,” he added quickly. “Of course, I can’t say that I’m not jealous of him, of the place he holds in her heart; but at my age...to find a woman like her? I’d given up hope! Certainly I’ve had other relationships before. But none of them were ever as serious as this one. I was being quite honest when I said she’s made me the happiest man in the world.” “As long as you’re not talking any of that ‘Mormon’ stuff,” Justin teased half-heartedly. He knew how upset Karen would be about this. “No!” Edward laughed. “We’ll still have a couple of receptions, one for my business acquaintances and another for family...but only this one wedding! And this takes so much stress off Cathy.” Justin laughed. “Ya know, after all that everyone accused US of, because of how sudden OUR wedding was.... I hope you didn’t do this because she’s pregnant!” “No,” Edward chuckled, “I think she’s past that....” “Well, she is still young,” Justin said. “She’s very youthful,” Edward agreed, “but she IS Karen’s mom, and you know better than I how old your wife is.” “Young enough,” Justin said, “but I’ve heard of stranger things than a woman Cathy’s age getting pregnant.” “Yes...well...I can guarantee she’s not,” Edward told him. “We’re just very happy together, and eager to prove our love by committing ourselves to one another in marriage.”

It seemed obvious, even without Frank having to ‘translate’ for them, that Edward understood exactly why Leigh and the others had invited him for lunch. So there was no need for them to threaten him outright. It was also obvious that he was unconcerned, because he did really seem to love Cathy. So they let the matter drop and finished their lunch with pleasant conversation and companionship. And afterwards, when Karen got home from dropping her mom off, the five (Frank had joined them, to collect his surveillance gear from Angie) compared notes. Justin was a little surprised that Karen wasn’t more disturbed by the whole turn of events; and after talking, they discovered that they were beginning to run out of reasons for hating Edward. Yes, the man still felt creepy. But none of them could feel any ongoing Unknown presence around Edward, and they hadn’t ever, not even when he seemed to be receiving some sort of assistance from the Electrical Creature (‘Bob,’ as Frank had called it.) They were beginning to think that maybe it was just the same mundane creepiness that people felt around particularly successful but slimy sales guys and lawyers. But even people like that had families that they truly did love and who loved them in return. Maybe that was all Edward was...a guy who was just a little too good at manipulating others after years of practice. Did that mean that he couldn’t really love Cathy and she him? Karen was starting to doubt the revulsion she’d felt almost two years ago, when she’d first met him. Yes, her mom had changed since meeting him. But they’d never found any evidence that he forced that change by any unnatural means. Maybe as she got older and started looking at the world through a different filter, the filter of the wealth she now enjoyed as Edward’s life partner, she’d just naturally grown more conservative in her views. Karen certainly couldn’t deny that her mom was happier and more lively than she could remember her being in a very long time. Maybe it was time to start being happy for her, and to try to appreciate the good points of the man who’d made her so happy and who really did seem to want only the best for her. At least it would still allow her to keep an eye on him, just in case....

“I’ll do what I can to protect her,” Frank told him. In fact it was the last thing Frank said to Reg before hanging up that evening. Luckily for Reg, the time difference between Detroit and San Francisco meant he had enough time to create the virus Frank asked for and track down the guest list for this event that Claire was going to (and apparently would need protection at) and still make flight and rental car arrangements for himself, even though it meant being up all night. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Frank to protect Claire, but...if whatever was going on was so big that even Frank was worried, then they might need his help, too. He’d only learned bits and pieces of what was going on so far. After being missing for some nine months (even he still didn’t know where he’d been or what had been happening to him during that time), he’d woken up in a hotel at Metro just as the team was beginning to investigate whatever was now coming to a head. It had something to do with a bus full of kids going up in flames; but as soon as his family--and his lawyers--found out he was back, he’d had to leave Detroit again to spend time with them. A few days later, and the headache that was causing him (and some interesting things he found online) brought him back to Detroit again. Somehow, the case the team was investigating had brought them to the attention of the DHS. This was beginning to cause them–and him–trouble, since it had landed most of them on a law enforcement watch-list. He flew back to see what he could do.

It turned out that someone in DC had set up one Mackenzie Stevens to take over the DHS office in Detroit, and Agent Stevens was doing his best to put Frank and the team out of business. Jarred ended up getting caught in the middle, and the team had to help him disappear before he was ‘disappeared’ by whoever was controlling Stevens. Between that, and working up bots and back-doors to help Frank keep track of everything Stevens did, and building some spy drones to investigate another possible lead that had grown out of the Angry White Men angle that Justin was developing, Reg was kept busy over the few days he was in Detroit. Then a hysterical call from Claire, claiming that she’d seen Robert, her husband who was assumed dead in the fire that had seriously injured her and their father, sent him back out to the West Coast; and he hadn’t had time to find out what had happened with the case until now. All he’d been able to get from Frank was that Stevens was out of the picture, and at a concert at the Fox on Halloween night, the team would be confronting the fire creature who’d been causing all this havoc. It didn’t take him long to track down the news reports about the spate of recent fire-related deaths in Detroit. They were far too much like what had happened to Claire and her family. His sister wasn’t going to become just another unexplained fire-related death, if he could help it. Then, as soon as he’d gotten the concert guest list, the stakes got even higher. Reg’s dad Phil and Phil’s lover Audra (who happened to also have been one of Reg’s lovers at one time) were on the guest list too. He forwarded the list to Frank, and he was on his way to Detroit...again.

On the way to the airport (ever since his return from limbo, he’d flown commercial rather than risk flying himself–and disappearing–again), he called his dad. “Dad, it’s Reggie.” “Reggie What’s wrong?” Phil asked. “Nothing, nothing, Dad,” Reg answered. “It’s just...I heard there’s this big concert at the Fox tonight, and....” “Yes Were you invited, too? Audra and I were, and it sounds like it’s going to be quite an event. I talked to a few people I know and it sounds like a lot of big names in the auto industry....” Phil said. “Yeah, Dad, I know,” Reg told him. “A friend told me about it, and I figured that you might have been invited. But...I’m just concerned about you going. It hasn’t been that long since the doctors let you out of rehab, and the place is going to be a zoo, and I’m not sure that you should be putting yourself through that much stress yet, even with Audra there to help you.” “Now, Reggie, I’ll be fine....” “Dad, please...humor me, OK? I was so close to death myself just a year ago, and then I almost lost you and Claire in that fire, and then there was the plane crash and I still...well.... I’m just not comfortable with the chance that you’ll overdo it, and....” Reg let the thought hang there. He couldn’t come out and order his dad not to go. But he wasn’t above playing the guilt card. “OK, Reggie, OK. If it’ll make you feel better, I won’t go. I’m sure Audra will be disappointed, but....” Phil told his son. “There’ll be other concerts, Dad,” Reg said. “I just wanna be sure that you’ll be around to go to many more, once you’re stronger.” Phil laughed. “I just think you’re jealous, Reggie. It sounds to me like you didn’t get invited,” he told Reg, chuckling. “Actually, Dad, I’m staying out here in San Francisco. The girls need me right now, too. You just take care of yourself. Listen, I got a lawyer on the other line, so I gotta go now....” Reg and Phil said goodbye, and Reg hoped that his dad had actually taken to heart what he’d said. And not one word of it had been a lie, except the part about him staying in ‘Frisco...and the lawyer.

Reg’s mind was still whirling when he pulled up behind the Fox about 9:50pm that night. He’d gotten into Metro less than a couple hours ago, with just enough time to drive his rental car out to the place where Marcus, his Land Rover, was stored, and then get from there to the Fox. He hadn’t even had a chance to call any of the others, and he hoped that his turning up wouldn’t throw out of whack whatever plans they’d made. A handful of cash had gotten him the permit he needed to legally park the car as close to the rear of the theater as he could get it, just in case he or the rest of the team needed it. Now all he had to do was get inside. Luckily, there was enough room in Marcus, and the windows were tinted dark enough, that he was able to change into his tux inside it. He stepped out, checked his hair in the outside mirror, straightened his bow tie, and walked calmly around to the front doors. He walked in like he belonged there. Unfortunately he didn’t have the ticket to confirm it. “My sister has them,” he told the guy who stopped him. It was weird. The guy was dressed like a doorman, but he was behaving in a decidedly militaristic fashion. “She was supposed to be waiting in the lobby for me,” he said. The doorman wasn’t quite sure he believed Reg, and yet he was wearing a tux and he did look like most of the other men who’d come through the door. “I’ll have to pat you down, since you haven’t been cleared,” the doorman said, and Reg willingly lifted his arms. He really didn’t have time for this, but to argue would only slow him down further.

Finally, the doorman was finished with him and waved him through. Thankfully, he hadn’t checked Reg’s arms carefully, and he missed the throwing knives strapped tightly to his forearms, the hilts just close enough to the cuffs to be in easy reach if he needed them. As Reg hustled through the lobby, the could see the last few stragglers filing through the auditorium doors. Most of the doors were already shut, so Reg went straight for the last one, which the two ushers were just closing. Again, he noticed the unusually guard-like demeanor of the ushers, which seemed out of place. He headed straight for the narrowing gap between the doors and caught one of them before it dropped shut. He pulled it open and started to step through when the ushers stopped him. “I’m sorry, sir, you can’t....” the usher started to say. “Sorry I’m late,” Reg told him. Reg was scanning the crowd, looking for any friendly face. That was when he spotted Claire. She was just arranging her coat on the back of her seat, and she hadn’t seen him. “Claire!” Reg shouted, waving. “My sister...she has my ticket,” he told the ushers. Then he pushed forward as if they’d given him permission. They looked at one another and shrugged, and decided not to try to stop him. Karen was just settling back into her seat when she swore she’d heard Reg’s voice. There were a number of people still moving around, visiting with friends, and she looked around to see if she could place the voice she’d heard. She knew that Reg’s dad Phil and Audra were on the guest list, and she hoped to God that it wasn’t him that she’d heard.

Reg made his way down to where Claire was and waved at her from the aisle. “Claire, I thought you were saving me a seat!” he said to her, raising his voice enough for her to hear him over the nearby conversations. Claire was genuinely surprised to see him, and didn’t know what to say. She didn’t even know Reg would be there, and for some reason he thought she was supposed to save him a seat? What was going on? Claire opened her mouth to say something, hoping something useful would just spill out on its own. “I had no idea you were coming! Why....” Claire was startled again when Reg turned away to look at someone seated towards the back. Some woman was waving at him.... Oh! She was motioning to an empty seat. Well, that was certainly nice of her.... Karen had finally spotted Reg as he was arguing with Claire. She waved, and since Reg had been scanning the huge room looking for the closest open seat, he saw Karen waving at him. “Listen, Claire, I’ll see if someone will trade seats with you, so that we can sit together,” he told his sister. Then he made his way back up the aisle toward Karen. Along the way, he stopped a couple times to chat with people he knew. Karen had no idea why Reg was there, but it turned out to be a lucky thing that Tony was with the ‘support team,’ leaving Edward’s group with an extra seat. Reg started scooting his way along the row, apologizing for his late arrival. When he got to the empty seat, he greeted Karen and Justin, then asked the man seated in front of Justin if he’d mind trading seats with Claire (he pointed to her still standing, slightly in shock, 10 rows ahead and closer to the center) so that his sister could sit with him.

That was when Justin noticed that the man, an older, portly gentleman, happened to be a distantly related uncle “Uncle George! I didn’t realize that was you,” Justin said. He’d done quite a bit of free customizing work for his uncle over the years, mostly just because he was family. Now it was time to call in the favor. They needed Reg sitting near them. “Why, Justin! I never expected to see you here! Karen, my dear, what a pleasant surprise. Do you know this young man?” Uncle George asked. “Actually, Uncle George, he’s a friend of ours. It’d be really nice if he and his sister could sit up here with Karen and me.... And it looks like his sister does have a much better seat, if it isn’t too much trouble....” “Well...only for you, nephew,” George told him with a smile. He stood and followed Reg back out the row. As Reg escorted him down to Claire’s seat, he apologized profusely for the inconvenience he was causing, first by showing up late, and then by asking him to move just before the concert was to start. And it was indeed. The lights began to go down as Claire moved out to the aisle to let George take her seat. By the time the two had gotten back up to where Karen and Justin were seated, they stumbled a bit trying to avoid stepping on people’s toes getting to their seats. Reg turned and introduced Claire to Justin and Karen and the others in whispers. He’d felt his phone vibrate a couple times in his pocket, so as soon as Claire was comfortable, he slipped it out to see who’d called. The first was a text message from Leigh asked what he was doing there. She'd spotted him as he went down to talk to Claire. He texted back “I’ll xplain L8R.” The second was the same one that Frank, Justin and Aiden were getting at that same moment. It was from Tony, “Welcome to the Hotel CA.”

All the Envoys had noticed by now that the doors were being guarded--every door in the place. Since he already had his phone out, Reg sent a text message to Terry. He hadn’t seen her or Frank anywhere in the place yet, and assumed that the two were outside somewhere. “Marcus out back. Land Rover. Key in holder in rear wheel well. Taser and fire extinguisher inside. Use if U need 2.” Terry sent back “OK.” So, she was definitely outside. The orchestra had stopped playing by the time he was done, and a spot light had focused on the center of the stage. All the Envoys could feel an almost sub-aural hum of the Unknown, and a man dressed in a white tux stepped out from an opening that had widened between the curtains. It was Otto Horst. There was a smattering of applause. It seemed like no one else was quite sure who this guy was, but ‘he must be introducing the opera so maybe we should clap.’ He raised his hands and the audience quieted down. Then he began to speak. Tony checked the sound board. The volume the board was showing made Tony think Horst must be miked, but he couldn't find anything feeding into the system. Justin and Reg were wondering the same thing, because, if Horst was miked then it was hidden very well. If he wasn’t, then he was either extremely good at projecting or he was using some trick. But they couldn’t sense anything but the low-level hum.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. You have all received from me a personal invitation to this gala evening of Wagnerian opera. You were selected because each of you has attended several classical concerts in the past five years, and because most of you are very successful at what you do.

“I am hoping that tonight we will form amongst ourselves an exclusive and special society of those who are devoted to the works of Richard Wagner and the fundamental principles which inspired his music. But more of that later.

“What I have to tell you is that what you are about to witness is not what you ‘thought’ you were going to witness ... not a collection of works by various composers, paying tribute to Richard Wagner. What you are going to witness is a complete and previously unknown opera by Richard Wagner, his last.”

An excited murmur rippled through the crowd at this change in the program. The musicians began shuffling through their sheet music, and the conductor looked confused and nervous as he looked from his score to Horst then back down at the music. Horst smiled down at him. “You practiced the pieces, ja? Good. Then you will be perfect!” he told the conductor and musicians. They straightened their music, but still looked concerned.

“Here then,” Horst continued, speaking again to the audience, “is Richard Wagner's lost masterpiece ‘Junius.’ It tells the story of a Bavarian burghermeister who made a pact with the powers of darkness in return for immortality ... how he was misunderstood by his fellow citizens and sacrificed ... but how he triumphed over death, and how glory and brilliance came out of that darkness, and forged an empire the like of which had never been seen before, but which will rise again!”

Horst’s voice had been rising both in volume and in pitch as he came to the end of his speech. He sounded fanatic and exultant, and the crowd broke into applause again. Karen shivered; it was just like something from “Triumph of the Will.” Ahead of her, Reg was trying to get a feel for what this guy was feeling–anticipation, exultation, triumph...and a certain hunger. And if that wasn’t creepy enough, once Horst stepped back behind the curtains, two things happened simultaneously. The lights went off and the audience was plunged into near-pitch dark, the only light coming from the tiny lamps on the orchestra’s music stands. And the orchestra began to play. The music was wild, almost pagan, and it blasted through the theater like a hurricane. Frank felt the power of it backstage, where he’d managed to remain unnoticed all this time, and Tony and Leigh felt it even though they heard the music only through the sound board.

For the first time since people started filling the seats, the audience was perfectly still. There was no more rustling of the programs, nor checking of pagers or cell phones. They all sat in rapt attention, completely focused on the stage. Almost unseen, the stage curtains had been drawn back as the overture progressed. As the kettle drums set up a rolling, reverberating chorus, torches began to slowly light the stage. A hundred figures dressed in black marched onto the stage, carrying the torches, keeping time with the beat set by the drums, and all singing in German a deep, dirge-like, repetitive chant. The opera had begun. The music was no doubt the best Wagner had ever written; the recordings the Envoys had heard before were like simplistic MIDI files compared to what they now heard. Each could feel his or her heart almost synching up with the rhythm. At the back of the stage stood a line of black-robed figures, impossible to count because of the darkness in which they seemed to hover and the movement of the chorus before them. Karen began to finger Fr. Andrew’s crucifix, which she’d carefully stitched inside her dress right behind where the leaf brooch was pinned. She prayed that God would give her the wisdom to know when she should act. In front of her, Reg forced his mind to recall that last night in Cancun, with Raimon and Leigh, trying to counteract the effect the music was having on the hairs of his arms and neck. Justin fingered the rosary he’d wrapped around his wrist just below the knife he’d also fastened there inside his jacket sleeve. He knew that Edward spoke a number of languages, so he gently nudged Edward’s elbow and asked what the singers were saying. “It’s the Trial of Junius,” Edward whispered back, his attention never leaving the stage. In the sound booth, Leigh was translating for Tony, as well.

“Who has been trading with His Satanic Majesty?
Who has been offering his very soul for sale?
Who has turned his back on the Lord His God?”

It had all the elements of a Nazi rally...darkness, torches, flags, symbols...and chants of triumph that swelled like the ocean at night. The rest of the audience were transfixed by it. It had drummed up their deepest terrors, it had stirred up all of their suppressed prejudices. It had given their hatreds a musical voice. At the end of the first act, as Junius was dragged away to be executed, the orchestra finished with a deafening finale of horns and drums, through which the chorus chanted “Glory! Purity! Power! Strength!” over and over and over again. The Envoys could hear some of the audience chanting it with them. “Glory! Purity! Power! Strength!” By the close of the first act, the audience was in a frenzy of excitement. The music ended suddenly in a deafening crash of drums and cymbals, and the stage went black a second before the curtain dropped. The house lights went up, and for a second, no one moved. Then, in a rush, they rose from their seats and gave the opera company a standing ovation that roared on and on and seemed to rise rather than diminish. Back stage, Frank could see Horst on the far side of the stage, near the dressing rooms. He hadn’t seen even a glimpse of Olga yet, and the robes so thoroughly covered the actors that he couldn’t make out if any of them were majors ‘players’ he would know.

Up in the sound booth, Tony and Leigh argued over when they were supposed to start the Hymn. Tony figured the sooner the better, since it looked to him like the audience was already under some spell. They’d been standing and clapping and cheering for over five minutes already, and there was no sign it was going to let up. But Tony hadn’t been at the seance, Leigh reminded him. Heidi had been quite confident that the Envoys would know when to play it. It hadn’t been written as part of the opera, she explained to Tony, so no matter what had been done to the opera to pervert it into this ritual of destruction, Heidi was sure they would recognize the moment when the Hymn was most necessary. Karen’s arms were getting tired and her hands sore from the clapping. She and Justin, Aiden, Angie and Reg had all stood and cheered like the rest of the audience. Even Edward, who had always seemed the type who never lost control, was swept away by the spectacle. Not a single person made any move to leave for the lobby for intermission. Of course, looking around, the Envoys could see that the guards were all still in place. Either no one would have been allowed to leave, even if they wanted, or Horst had known full well that the music would have this sort of effect, so he hadn’t bothered to have the doors opened. The audience made no effort to stop applauding until the house lights flashed to indicate that Act 2 would be starting. Within a minute, the crowd had settled down and complete silence fell over the auditorium. There was no rustling of programs or coats, no coughing or sniffling, no whispering, nothing. The house lights dimmed and the curtains opened without a sound.

The second act started with a long, quiet passage set in the twilit mountains of Bavaria. The scenery was dimly blue and luminous, and a woman wrapped tightly in a cloak stood at the center of the stage. The voice of the woman, the leading soprano, was as clear and cold as mountain ice. It seemed to glide through the notes with a coldness that you could feel in your bones.

“I have seen with my own eyes
Dead men walking in the streets
Dead men tapping at the children's windows
Not speaking, not calling
But waiting for me at every corner.”

Gradually the aria became another chant, a low-throbbing chant reminiscent of a galley-drum, or the beat to which a Viking longboat might have been rowed. Black-cloaked figures marched onto the stage. A faint strain of music began, hovering just below the chant, and Justin recognized it as the end of the music he heard in Tom’s truck on the way to Horst’s house. This had to be the prelude to the Fire Ritual, the magical chant which prepared a would-be Salamander for the flames. The mountains slid aside to reveal a monstrous bonfire blazing in the center of a barbarian camp. Anyone in the audience would have sworn that it was a real bonfire, it was so well produced, although backstage, Frank could tell that it was all done with lights and fans. That didn’t soften the effect it had on him, since this was his dream, only without the blizzard. With a start, Frank and Karen realized that the faces of the 13 black-robed chorus members were oddly smooth and silvery-gray. Reg had noticed that, too, but had no idea of its importance yet. Leigh was still translating for Tony, and Edward for Justin. The gist of the action was that the woman confronted a shade of Junius, who was not as dead as people thought. Now that she was with others, and the cloak had dropped back from her face enough, the Envoys realized that the woman was Olga, wearing a wig and make-up. She and the shade of Junius began a duet. Basically, Junius was seducing her, and she demanded he prove what he was offering her, that he ‘put his money where his mouth is.’ She walked toward the front of the stage, Junius behind her shoulder. The barbarians continued their dance, surrounding them both. The music dropped to a minor key but a rising note, then cut off abruptly, and the curtains came down on Act 2.

People stood and clapped again as the house lights came up, but this time the doors to the lobby were open, inviting people to go out for intermission. It was 11:20pm. The guards who had been standing inside the auditorium doors had moved to take up similar positions at all of the building’s exterior doors. But it appeared that people were moving quite freely about the lobby as Justin and Reg and the others rose and made their way out, too. People were lining up at the concession windows and carrying away glasses of champagne and small plates of hors d’oeuvres. Other lines were forming at the restrooms. But mostly people were mingling and chatting, or checking for voice messages on their phones. As soon as Reg and Justin had broken free of the crush of people going through the doors, they stopped to properly greet each other, since Reg had arrived so late. Reg asked Justin what he thought about the barbarian weaponry included in the previous Act, and if he’d learned any moves like that in Army basic. The vigorous hand-shaking and back-slapping was only a cover for each to let the other know that they’d managed to make it inside with knives strapped to their wrists, just in case. Edward and Cathy were mingling with the many people there that Edward had become associated with through his work, so Karen chatted sociably with Claire until Reg and Justin rejoined them. While he and Justin chatted, Reg sent a quick text message to Terry that “All the doors have opposition,” and she sent back “Gr8.” Justin noticed and confirmed that Terry was outside, in case a call to DPD was necessary. When they got to where Karen and Claire were standing, Aiden and Angie had found them too. Karen asked quietly if any of the others had noticed the interesting make-up on the chorus.

Justin, Aiden and Angie had looks as blank as Claire’s, so she knew they hadn’t noticed. But Reg’s eyebrows raised. Karen said that she’d just been wondering what the gray faces were supposed to signify. When Aiden, Angie and Justin heard that, they all realized that the 13 chorus members were Salamanders. Good to know. Reg had known that there was something odd about them, but he must not have known that it was what Salamanders looked like. It showed on his face. One of them would have to get him aside for a minute to explain, Karen thought to herself. The group spread out again, mingling, getting refreshments, eavesdropping on other peoples conversations. There were comments about how wonderful the music was, how great it made them feel...and how you don’t get music that extraordinary now since the industry is so dominated by Blacks and Jews. “You just don’t hear any ‘real’ classical music anymore,” one older white man said to another. There were also rumors circulating about how the final aria was supposed to be magnificent beyond belief, and how it would make operatic history. Justin managed to get an opportunity to text Leigh, Tony and Frank about the rumored final aria and the Salamander chorus. Tony texted back, “Just w8 4 the encore.” And Karen bumped into Reg in the concession line and, whispering in his ear like she was sharing some private joke with him, explained that the gray-faced chorus were Salamanders, some of the creatures they were there to fight. When Reg and Justin bumped into each other again after spending an uncomfortable amount of time around racist white men, some of whom were more of Justin’s distant relatives (who he’d been studiously trying to avoid), Justin asked Reg how well his brother-in-law would have fit in there. “He was pretty milk-toast,” Reg said, “but with a huge case of ‘white male entitlement syndrome.’ Ya know, I could almost see him in Michael Douglas’ role in ‘Breaking Down’,” he told Justin.

Back stage, Frank had managed to record a short bit of Olga’s singing to run through a ‘white noise creator’, in case they needed to block any effect she might put into it as she sang in the next Act. Nothing had been said but everyone, Envoys and audience alike, seemed to realize that the next Act was also the last. Frank had watched the Salamander chorus move off-stage toward where Horst had been standing, and he began to move around looking for them, still trying to stay unnoticed. Stage hands were scurrying around moving in the next set, and Horst stood to one side watching them in a detached and yet almost paternal way. Frank wanted to position himself behind Horst, so he could keep a closer eye on him as they neared the end. He maneuvered around cautiously, staying as far back as the walls and set pieces would allow. But as he got directly behind Horst, Horst went unnaturally still...then snapped around and looked straight at Frank, and said something sharply in German. Frank didn’t understand the words, but he knew exactly where the four backstage guards were and caught their movement out of the corner of his eyes. Horst had spoken loudly enough that the few people who had returned to their seats in the first couple of rows could hear him–-which meant that his orders were picked up by the overhead stage mikes that Tony had turned on so he and Leigh could keep track of the opera. Leigh immediately texted Justin and Reg as she told Tony, “Horst is on to Frank and has ordered his guards to capture and kill him.” Reg and Justin passed the word to the others as people began getting herded back to their seats; but it didn’t appear that it affected the number of guards on the other exterior doors.

Frank had gotten to know the layout of the Fox pretty well after several assignments there. Hopefully he knew it better than the guards, he thought to himself as he headed for the basement stairs. There was plenty of stuff down there to hide behind, and Frank was betting that he could neutralize the four guards before they could catch him. But first he had to get them a little confused. He started moving around, making noise then disappearing, leading them back and forth around the basement. Above him, Reg was looking around as he followed Claire down the row. He wanted to find any possible routes from the stage to the back of the theater, which the Salamanders might use to encircle the crowd. And he needed to find something staff-like that he could use as a weapon that would give him a little more reach in hand-to-hand combat than the knives would. Hmmm, there was a guy with a cane 3 rows ahead of him.... Everyone settled into their seats, and the house lights went down. It was 11:50pm on Halloween night. In the sound booth overhead, Tony checked the door one last time, then grabbed Leigh, swung her around into a ‘dip’ and kissed her. She was stunned into silenced for a moment, and then the last act began. The curtains rose to expose a megalithic Aryan city under a threatening sky. Lightning flickered and thunder crashed. The chorus, wearing breastplates and horned helmets, and carrying spears, marched diagonally across the stage. Then formed a semi-circle, linking arms and chanting, “Storm, Storm, Storm, Storm.” It was now moments to midnight. The audience took up the chant.

Olga moved across to center stage, dressed now in black robes and a horned helmet. “Now is the moment of our transformation!” she sang. “Now is the moment that men become gods!” The chant continued, getting louder and louder. The audience, carried away by the spectacle and their own enthusiasm, stood, raising their arms, chanting along with the chorus. “Now is the moment of our triumph!” Olga sang. “Now is the moment that all will fall before us!” Her voice had reached an unheard of pitch, the E-flat above high C. Thin whisps of smoke began to rise from the raised arms of people in the front-most rows. That was when Leigh hit the button to start the Hymn. At first, neither she nor Tony was sure that it was working. All they could hear was Olga. Lightning danced in the painted sky to a sound not human at all but like that of an unimaginable instrument. The sound broadened, swelled. The chorus threw back their robes and stood naked like living statues of cool gray stone. “Glory, Purity, Power, Strength,” they chanted, in English now. The theater began to shake, dropping plaster for the beautifully painted ceiling onto the heads of an audience too ecstatic to notice. Then...the voice of an angel, Heidi’s voice, sang out over it all, and the shaking stopped. Olga SCREAMED in an exhalation of agony. Tearing at her head, she pulled the helmet off and the wig with it. “Where is that music?!” she screamed in German. “Make it STOP!” She clutched her head as she began to glow from within, and her skin began to crack like overheated porcelain. The chorus just stared as pieces of her broke away and flames once contained erupted forth. The audience, which moments before had been chanting along exultantly with the chorus, began to scream in fear.

In a split second, Reg recognized Robert at the end of the chorus line. He grabbed Claire and pulled her to his chest to prevent her from seeing her husband, thought dead. But it was too late. “Get down!” Justin hollered over the din at Cathy and Edward. He grabbed Edward’s arm and pulled him down towards the floor. Karen stood watching in amazement until Justin nudged her and she pulled her mom down, too. “Something’s gone wrong with the special effects!” Justin hollered. “Just stay down so you don’t get hurt!” Everywhere in the crowded theater, people pushed for the aisles, screaming and leaving their belongings behind. Horst ran out onto the stage in his white tails shouting, “NO! NO!” Olga reached out to him...and one of her arms dropped to the stage. Horst ran past her, to the spot where Frank had been standing earlier. Suddenly the lights went down. The scene of chaos was made otherworldly in the glow of the flames burning Olga from the inside out. The sound system cut out a second later, cutting off the angelic singing which had saved the panicked crowd. Horst had cut power to the whole stage. Tony started hitting buttons, unsure which were the ones he wanted. He needed to get the sound switched over to the booth! Then he punched the switch to blow the det-cord and perfect circular holes fell out of the windows. The sound of Heidi’s voice began pouring through the small openings, but it wasn’t enough. “Reroute to the PA,” Reg texted to Tony and Leigh. Tony just wished he knew which button did that.

The orchestra was discombobulated by now, and had broken off completely as they joined the press of people trying to escape the horror. Justin and Reg began working their way down to the stage, hopping seats, and pushing down the aisle through any holes they could find in the mass of hysterical guests. Tony punched one button, then another, then heard the music cut off from the booth speakers to pour out the PA system in the auditorium. One by one, the 13 members of the chorus went up in puffs of smoke. Horst stormed back out onto the stage, looked up toward the spotlight, then looked directly at Tony and Leigh. Tony had been just about to adjust the spot to shine directly into Horst’s eyes, when Horst raised his hand and a bolt of flame went streaking toward them. Leigh and Tony dove aside, as the flame hit the wall behind them and exploded. A second later, a dagger sprouted from Horst’s right eye socket. Reg had seen Horst targeting something and had stopped to throw it. Now he continued down as Horst pulled the knife from his eye, blood pouring down his face. Justin had gotten a little ahead of Reg, and he flew onto the stage, throwing himself at Horst in a controlled tackle, pushing him back toward the fire curtains as the two of them fell to the stage floor. Reg bolted onto the stage a few steps behind and grabbed a spear dropped by one of the chorus. “Load a grey,” Tony ordered Leigh, pulling the caps off his homemade bazooka. She dropped one of the grey-tipped smoke rockets into the breech and stepped aside as Tony took aim through the small hole in the window in front of him. He wanted to obscure what was happening on the stage from whatever was left of the audience.

It was a perfect hit. Smoke billowed up and across the stage. Then he calmly set down the bazooka and picked up the mike. “Attention, attention please. I am sorry to announce that we are experiencing some technical difficulties. Tonight’s show is cancelled. Please make your way to the exits in a calm and orderly fashion. Again, we apologize for the inconvenience, and hope you have a good evening.” How Tony could say that with a straight face, Leigh just really wasn’t sure. Below them, people were running and screaming, trampling anyone moving slower than themselves. Unfortunately, that included Angie. When she saw Reg and Justin start down toward the stage, she hopped over the seats to the row ahead of them and headed for the aisle. Pushing past Claire, she jumped the last seat and landed in the aisle...right in front of a charging rhino of a man. He smashed into the strong but still petite cop, and she bounced backwards before crashing to the floor...where the last thing she saw was the pointed toe of a very pretty red shoe. Aiden had been behind her but moving more cautiously, and he pushed his way into the aisle ‘down-stream’ of Angie, standing firm in the middle of the river of frightened people, breaking the current around her. It wasn’t far from where they were seated to the doors, so Karen helped her mom and Edward and Claire slide out of the row and into the stream of people pushing up the aisle, then took Aiden’s place so that he could work on Angie. When the three were safely on their way up toward the exits, Karen scanned the room for anyone who’d caught on fire before the Hymn had started playing. She assumed that the Hymn would have stopped it in the same way that a Sphere would, but she needed to be sure. When she couldn’t find anyone else, any mundane person, who needed her help, she looked at Aiden crouched over Angie. He waved Karen off; he could handle this by himself now, since Angie’s injury wasn’t life-threatening. So Karen began to make her way toward the stage, her view of the action there obscured by Tony’s smoke rocket.

“Hold him!” Reg shouted at Justin, raising the spear over his head. Justin wrapped his arms and legs around Horst’s writhing body so that he wasn’t in Reg’s way, and Reg thrust downward with all his strength, stabbing Horst clean through and pinning him to the stage. What began welling up out of Horst’s wound was not blood. It was black and thick and lava-hot, and sparks of red glowed within the ooze. Justin released his hold on Horst and rolled to his knees, grabbing the fire curtains above them to pull himself up. Then he closed his eyes for a second and prayed that this worked. Pulling with everything he had, Justin used a Feat of Strength to pull the fire curtain down onto Horst’s prone body. There was a deep tearing sound as the chains that held the two-story curtain in place snapped and the thick heavy curtain began to crumple down onto the stage...and Horst...and Justin and Reg. Justin kicked out with his legs, pushing Reg one way and using the impact to throw himself the other way. Both landed clear of the curtain, and rolled to their knees. “Leigh, load a yellow,” Tony ordered, shouldering the bazooka. From the stage, they heard a roar of pain and rage, muffled by the curtain, which was heavy enough that it would have crushed to death any normal person caught under it. Then the curtain began to rise at the center. Justin got to his feet and lifted the nearest edge of the curtain, pulled his gun and began firing under the curtain in the general direction of Horst’s body. The sound of the gunfire made the remaining crowd surge away from the stage. Reg was trying to figure out where the smoke was coming from and where he could find a hose to put out the fire.

That was when he looked up and saw Tony, aiming what looked like a bazooka out the window of the sound booth. “Easy...easy...” Tony said to himself. When the curtain had risen several feet from the stage, Tony fired, and Karen was close enough by now to see the ‘kinetic impact round’ (as Tony called it) hit the curtain and 'exploded.' There was a grunt and then another roar of rage as the curtain dropped back down a couple feet from the force of the round. Justin was diving for the nearest firehose as Tony said over his shoulder, “Leigh, load another yellow!” Leigh had gone back to check the damage done by Horst’s fireball, and had her hand on the booth door when she felt more than heard a FOOMPF. “Uh, load it yourself,” she said back over her own shoulder, leaning against the door with a worried look on her face. “I’m holding the door.” On the stage, Reg was gathering the rest of the spears and using them to pin the curtain to the stage. The security guys had figured out after the second rocket that they were being launched from the sound booth, and they had come up to stop whoever was in there. Tony looked out the window. It was about a story and a half from the booth windows to the auditorium floor. He looked back at Leigh. “Um...we forgot a rope.” Leigh just stared at him, her mouth open but no sound coming out. Tony glanced around the booth, looking for something they could use to jam the door. That’s when he noticed the ladder that led up through a trap-door to the lighting catwalks. He grinned ear to ear as he pulled a length of det-cord from his box. He fastened the cord around the door, then set a trigger wire across the door, so it would blow if the door was breeched. Then he closed up all his equipment, loaded himself up, and climbed up to open the trap door. “Leigh!” he shouted, leaning back down from the catwalk, his arm out to grab hers. Leigh bolted from the door to the ladder and with Tony’s pull was up in a second. They slammed the trap shut again, slipped a wrench in to lock it, and moved off toward the emergency ladder down.

By now, the Hymn had finished playing, and there was no way for Tony to restart it. Justin gave the fire hose a good yank and it began unreeling. “Reg, get the MP3 from my jacket pocket! The electronics board is over there,” he said, tipping his head toward the other end of the stage. He was really glad he'd spent so much time studying Frank's drawings. The only thing on the player was the Hymn, and when Reg flipped the power switch (which Horst had simply turned off to cut power to the stage earlier) and patched in the player, Heidi’s voice began pouring out the PA system once again. Justin had begun spraying down the curtain, and steam was rising from it wherever the water struck. There was an unearthly howling from under the curtain, and the sound of cursing in some language no one recognized...until Tony recognized sounds from a snippet of a recording he’d heard in the Vatican Library. Boy, the priests were upset when they found out he’d heard that! It must have been Infernal! Karen had been watching what was happening on the stage, unsure of what to do to help. She moved up onto the stage, positioned herself so that Horst would have no where to escape, and put up a Sphere. For 5 seconds, the stage grew absolutely quiet except for the hiss of the steam. Then there was another unearthly shriek, like all the nails on all the chalkboards in all the world, like all the most unbearable sounds ever heard by man.

The curtain rose again, and claws emerged, ripping through the fabric. Horst...or what had once disguised itself as Horst, stood straight up, shredding the heavy curtain. The thing had a humanoid-ish form that looked like it had black and red melting, dripping wax for skin. Steam continued to rise from it as Justin kept the hose aimed at it. The creature’s skin looked like it was bubbling and boiling and constantly reshaping itself. And yet, its tux was still intact. It was a 5'6" Demon in white tails. Reg held the last spear in his hands and moved around the thing while Justin kept its attention with a stream of water in its gut. Reg thrust forward with the spear, piercing it through the back and trying to force its face down into the water. The demon tried to twist around, reaching back with one claw to grab the spear. Tony and Leigh were watching from the catwalk and Tony began to freak out at the sight of the thing, which had finally registered as DEMON! in his brain. Leigh grabbed his t-shirt and pulled him close, kissing him full on the lips. When Tony started to kiss back, Leigh let go and stepped back. “We are NOT giving up!” she told him. Tony grinned ear to ear. “Oh, by the way,” he said, turning and moving again, “that’s a demon.” To take the thing’s attention off the spear, Karen raised another Sphere. The demon howled in pain and staggered away from her. Justin took the opening. Holding the nozzle tight, he jumped on the thing and wrapped one arm tight around its neck. Then he pushed the nozzle into its mouth. The creature threw back its head, its howls reduced to gurgling, and clawed at the hose. Reg pushed from the back and the demon dropped to its knees, still trying to bend away from the nozzle. Bent fully backwards now, back flat against the backs of its legs, the thing grabbed at Reg, who dove aside. Then the pressure of the water building up inside it got to be too much.

There was a BLUMPH like explosives going off underwater, and the Horst creature exploded, water, steam and firey bits spraying the stage. At the same instant, there was a BOOM from the sound booth, and the sound of glass falling to the floor below. And then a CRASH as Terry pulled the stage doors off their hinges using Marcus’ winch. Tony and Leigh hurried the rest of the way down from the catwalks, and Terry unhooked the broken doors so the Envoys could make an escape as soon as everyone was located. Karen, Reg and Justin lay dazed on the stage. Or more than dazed. As Karen and Justin shook off the stun of the explosion, they saw Reg lying motionless. Justin crawled the short way over to Reg, pushing with his knees and pulling with his less-burnt arm. The other was obviously charred from contact with the Horst-demon. “You’re not going yet,” Justin grunted, reaching out to put his hand on Reg’s arm. Karen stood and screamed “Aiden!” at the top of her lungs. Aiden turned, to see the smoke beginning to clear from the front of the stage. When he saw the devastation on the stage, he ran down the aisle and up the stairs at the end of the stage. “God...who’s worse?” Aiden asked, looking from Karen, who’d been sprayed with boiling water and demon bits, to Justin, who was quite toasty from hugging the demon, to Reg, who.... Justin had used some of the strength he had left to keep Reg from going under, but he was out cold and unresponsive. Justin pointed weakly at Reg, as Karen moved around to help Justin up off the stage. Aiden dropped to his knees amid the destruction and placed his hands on Reg’s chest. His hands began to glow golden, a sight only a couple of them had seen before and Karen immediately recognized.

Oddly enough, Tony and Leigh weren't pursued. The more Tony thought about it, the more he thought maybe he'd overloaded the charge a little. He felt a little bad about it, but then, those guy probably wouldn’t have been too nice to him and Leigh, if they’d caught them. When they got all the way down, they saw Angie just starting to pull herself up off the floor. There was a huge bruise covering half her face. “What happened?” Angie asked them as they came over to her, and looking around in amazement. “Apparently I was unconscious for most of it.” “Well,” Leigh started, helping Angie up and towards the stage. “Frank got spotted and was running from Horst's guards. Justin and Reg took out Horst, who turned into a demon. And Tony unloaded a couple rounds onto the stage to help.” “Wait,” Angie interrupted. “Frank was spotted?! Where is he?” “We ain't sure right now. He ain't been talkin',” Tony told her. In the basement, the guards hadn’t been able to get close enough for a good shot at Frank yet. Once he had them spread out where he wanted them, it was simple enough to move around behind each one and tag him with the taser. None of them saw it coming. During the course of his little dance with the four, he could hear bits and pieces of what was happening upstairs. He heard the orchestra begin playing, then Heidi’s voice rise above it. Screaming, first from Olga and then from the thousands of people in the audience. A couple explosions, a couple of what sounded like mortar rounds being shot off, and the sounds of all those feet stampeding up the aisles. The sound of ripping metal. And a sound that, even muffled by the stage flooring, hurt his ears. Over the comm unit, he could hear Tony doing most of the talking. Telling Leigh to load bazooka rounds, making his ‘public service announcement,’ commenting that he’d forgotten to bring rope. He could hear the sound of boots on metal, then Tony freaking out about something happening up there, and the sound of kissing. “We are NOT giving up,” from Leigh, and “Oh, by the way, that’s a demon,” from Tony. All of it made him wish that he could do something to help the others, instead of having to save his own ass. If any of them died because he wasn’t there.... But he didn’t have the luxury of worrying about it right now. Leaving any of these four unaccounted for could end up being worse in the long run.

Frank had just finished zip-tying the last of his pursuers when he heard Angie’s voice calling down from the top of the stairs, “Frank?! Frank, you down there?!” He made his way back to the stairway and started up. “Coming, dear,” he teased Angie. He figured that things must be pretty well over up there now, since he wasn’t hearing much over the ear bud and Angie had the time to come looking for him. “So, what....” The sight of Angie’s face in the glare from the bare bulb at the top of the stairs cut him off. “I don’t know what happened,” Angie told him, knowing what he’d been about to ask. “I was out cold for most of it.” Frank opened his mouth to ask, and Angie cut him off again, raising one hand, “Don’t ask.” Back up on the stage, Leigh was kneeling over Reg’s prone body, and Tony had one arm wrapped around Aiden, who was doing the wobble-walk of having ‘discharged’ twice. Justin looked pretty toasty, which was interesting considering he was dripping wet, and he was mumbling something about “I can’t believe I saved his ass.” Karen was standing solicitously near him, her dress dripping wet, too, and pockmarked with burn spots. Terry was trying to herd them all toward the stage doors, which were canted outward at very interesting angles. As Frank and Angie moved toward the group, Frank could see that the floor of the stage, and most of the pieces of set, and the walls, and what was left of the curtains, were covered or spattered with red and black goo and lots of water. There were burn spots of various sizes marking anything that was remotely flammable, though there were no active fires burning. Terry and Leigh were lifting Reg from the floor, so Frank and Angie went over to help. Terry left Reg to the three and went out to toss the tow chains back into the back of Marcus. The other four followed behind, scanning the stage for anything they might not want left behind if they could help it. “So...you want the long form or the short form,” Angie asked. “Skip it for now,” Frank told her. “Let’s just get out of here.” Terry slid into the driver’s seat while the others squeezed in however they could. Then they pulled away and off into the night, unwilling to hang around to explain to the authorities.

Early the next morning, Frank told the others about Reg’s sister being invited to the concert, too. “But I thought she was out in San Francisco,” Karen said. “Are Reg’s dad or Audra going too?” she asked. “Reg didn’t know,” Frank told them. “But it makes you wonder who else is on the guest list,” Leigh said. “I was thinking the same thing,” Frank said, “so I asked Reg to see if he could find the guest list for us. I also asked him to create a virus for the Fox sound system. He already had that in my email when I logged in this morning,” Frank told them. “Hey, youse have any idea, is’ere sum way I can secrete myself in da Fox ahead’a time?” Tony asked Frank. “I really don’t wanna know about your ‘secretions’,” Karen laughed. The other three women started laughing too. “Besides, I thought you were going in with me and Justin and Angie and Aiden,” Karen said. “I t’ought I wuz gonna be wit da outside team ” Tony complained. “How else am I gonna get my new bazooka inside?” “Well, you can’t very well hide it down your tux pants,” Karen joked. “Hey Is that your new bazooka or are you just happy to see me? ” Everyone started laughing. “Well, I could try dat....” Tony grinned. More laughter. “No. Seriously...” Tony said, “How am I gonna get it inside? T’ink I could hide it outside one’a da fire doors?” “Oh, sure ” Terry said. “I can just see some drug dealer stumbling across it before you retrieve it. That’ll go over well with the chief.” “I can just see him trying to get back inside with it,” Frank said, “since opening the door trips the fire alarm.” “Wouldn’t he get locked out?” Justin asked. “It’s not that,” Frank replied, “it’s more...” “Like a salmon swimming upstream,” Karen finished, laughing. “More like up a waterfall,” Frank said.

“So, where are da rest’a youse gonna be?” Tony asked. “I’m still working on that,” Frank told them. “In fact, I thought I might go over there this morning to check the place out again. But first....” He tapped a few keys and brought up the Fox’s internal network. He wanted to know just what sort of security team he’d be working with tonight. “Well, just in case,” Tony told the others, “I t’ink youse all ought’a know where all the fire hoses an’ extinguishers are in dere.” “Not a bad idea,” Justin agreed. He unrolled the floor plans Frank had sketched out, and everyone leaned over the table to study them. “At da very least,” Tony told them, “I’ll be carryin’ a couple’a smoke bombs in my pockets, just in case.” The women looked at one another and started snickering. Tony ignored them. Frank was having to dig deeper than he expected to find out who was providing tonight’s security. It wasn’t the State Police or the Detroit Police. Eventually he found out that it was being provided by the event’s sponsors, Horst’s company--Life Actualization Associates. Well, that was both interesting and unusual. Usually, the Fox would request assistance from the DPD for something like this. Oddly enough, Frank found, the DHS had cleared Horst’s people to provide the security; and it seemed there had been a memo sent to the DPD, the State Police, and even the Fox’s regular contract security company that the sponsor would be covering all aspects of security for the event, and the presence of any of those other agencies was not required. Well...that threw a wrench into his plans. He’d been planning on sneaking in the ‘support team’ disguised as members of security....

Everyone had been up for a few hours already when Frank got another email from Reg. “I find this very troubling,” he wrote. “I think you will, too. I worked all night to get it.” Attached to the email was the concert’s guest list, and there were in the neighborhood of 4000 names on it. Frank didn’t want to know how Reg had managed to come by it. He’d had a hard enough time tracking down the security information. He printed the list out and each Envoy took a few sheets to scan through. Every few minutes, someone would read aloud a name he or she recognized. There were a large number of executives from the auto industry, from State government, admin. types from the major universities in the state. Even Governor Granholm had been invited. “Bet she’s already sent her regrets,” Frank said. “I’m sure she gets invited to lots of stuff,” Karen said, with mock haughtiness. “She can’t make everything.” It turned out that all the people that Reg had put on the terrorist watch-lists were invited, too. High-level people from the bio-tech and computer tech industries, and a fairly large number of influential press people. And some fairly prominent fundamentalist religious leaders, many from the South, including LeHay and his cronies. In addition to the names on the list, there were a number of entries like “Edward Harrington, party of 7.” So there was no way to get the name of every person who would be there. “I didn’t hear Kwame’s name,” Karen said, referring to the mayor of Detroit. There was a sudden shuffling of paper as the Envoys scanned through the list. No, he wasn’t on the guest list. In fact, there were no African-Americans or Hispanics on the list at all. And only a handful of Asians. Almost everyone on the list was white, and all were Republicans. There were even some Senators and Congressmen invited. And still, in spite of the huge red flags that appeared obvious to the Envoys, all the security had been cleared by someone in DC to be provided by Life Actualization.

“Well, I’d been planning on getting the support team in as members of security,” Frank said. “But I’ll have to see if that’s still going to work.” “I’m part’a da support team, right?” Tony asked. “Don’t worry,” Karen told him. “I’ll just give my mom and Edward your regrets. I’ll tell them that when you found out that it was going to be classical music instead of a costume party, you made this little gagging noise....” She laughed. “Hey I like classical music ” Tony objected. “It’s just...my bazooka....” Everyone laughed. “I wonder if Reg would be able to develop a program that would cancel out portions of the music,” Frank pondered aloud. “Something that everyone could put on their MP3 players and use to counteract the music and create a sort of ‘safe-zone’ around each of us?” “Don’t you have earphones that do something like that, Justin?” Leigh asked. “Yeah. They’re ear plugs, actually, like what the ground crew uses at airports. They block a range of sounds so that you can still talk to your team but not go deaf from the plane engines,” Justin told them. “But...if this involves any sort of demonic creature,” Tony said, “then the effects won’t be carried just in the music itself.” “There would be a significant supernatural component to the effect,” Leigh added. “Which means that technological answers alone won’t completely cancel the effects.” “Which leaves us you two,” Frank said, looking at Karen and Leigh. “And Aiden,” Karen said. “I’m sure he can raise a Mental Shield, too. I just hope that these creatures can’t do that Haywire thing, too...or we’re screwed.” Frank thought about that as he handed each of the others tiny MP3 players with the Hymn loaded on them.

Frank was looking back down at the guest list a couple minutes later, when an evil grin spread across his face. “Who do you think should get a copy of this list?” he asked the others. “The ACLU, maybe? And Louis Farrakhan?” “How ‘bout the Democratic National Committee?” Tony suggested. “Bet dey’d love ta know what da Republicans are up to ” “Jesse Jackson...and who’s the other one?” Frank said. “Al Sharpton?” Karen offered. “Yeah That’s the one,” Frank said. “What about Oprah?” Leigh asked. “It looks like women are pretty well excluded from this event, except for the ones who come as guests of a man.” “Oh, that reminds me,” Frank said, adding all the names to his ‘Send to’ list. “There are a number of prominent Detroit news-people who aren’t invited....” They all understood right away what Frank was doing, though maybe not the end he was aiming at. He was going to play the race card to draw attention to the event, since Horst seemed to be doing everything he could to keep it a secret. “If we can get some protestors to show up, get a little media coverage, maybe it’ll cut attendance because some people–especially those up for election in a week–may not want to be photographed going in, so we’ll have fewer people to protect,” Frank explained. “And more attention, or at least the potential for it, should force the DPD and State Police to be called in to deal with the crowds. That might give us cover to get inside.” The others nodded agreement. It was a good plan, if it worked. “I think the ACLU will send this ‘FYI’ memo out,” he told them, tapping a few keys. “That ought to get it the attention it deserves.” It was past 9am when Frank had the ‘memo’ ready to go, too late to make the Freep but in plenty of time to be on the noon newscasts and in that afternoon’s News. He scanned through the online news reports but couldn’t find anything about Stevens’ death. Still, he needed to get inside the Fox one more time before the team went in that night, so he’d have to risk playing a DHS agent again and hope he could bluff his way inside.

“Leigh, wanna play my sidekick again?” Frank asked, grabbing his coat. “Sure,” Leigh replied. “Need me?” Terry asked a little too eagerly. She’d been held hostage in her office for most of a day by Stevens. Now that she was out and well-rested, she wanted to get back in action. “I’d rather keep you in reserve,” Frank said. Terry’s face fell just a little before she masked her disappointment. “They still think you’re in the Burn Ward. And we may still need a friend in the DPD if things start to go wrong. So I don’t want you getting caught impersonating a Federal agent.” That was probably the most explanation Frank had ever given anyone for one of his decisions. He wasn’t in the habit of explaining himself to anyone but his superiors, but he could tell that Terry wasn’t happy about being left behind. She deserved that much. As Frank and Leigh headed out the back door, Terry grabbed Angie and said, “So, show me how you play this Catamari game.” “Uh-oh...,” Justin groaned. “I don’t wanna be anywhere around when you two go head-to-head.” Aiden had just come downstairs and gotten some coffee, so Justin picked Karen up and headed for the stairs. They might as well enjoy themselves until Frank and Leigh got back.

It was about 10am when Frank and Leigh pulled up in front of the Fox. They walked toward the box office, Frank in the lead, but quickly saw that it was closed. They moved to the front doors and found those locked too. Inside, they could see a big, beefy-looking white guy in a security guard uniform. Frank knocked on the glass door to get his attention. The guy came over. “Can I help you?” he asked, poking only his head out the door. “My name is Agent Jones. I’m with the DHS,” Frank said, flashing his badge. “There may be a security issue regarding tonight’s event. I’ll need to talk with your supervisor.” “You might want to talk to your own,” the guard replied brusquely. “Security’s been cleared.” “I did, or I wouldn’t be here,” Frank told him, clearly showing that he was losing his patience. “Well, I am the supervisor here–and it’s been cleared,” the guard said, short on patience himself by now. Frank sighed like he was ordered to explain quantum physics to a five-year-old. “Look...there will be picketers here in a few hours because news of the event has been leaked to the media. I have to do a walk-through so I can tell my supervisors I’ve done the job I was assigned.” The look on the guard’s face told Frank that while he might sympathize with Frank’s position, he had his own orders and those were to not let anyone in. “I’m sorry, I can’t do that,” he told Frank. “Very well,” Frank said, exasperated, “then please step out and put your hands behind your back. You’re under arrest.” “Can’t do that,” the guard said. Then he quickly pushed the door shut and flipped the lock. But he wasn’t blowing Frank off completely. Once the door had been locked, he lifted his index finger, indicating that Frank should wait, and he headed in the direction of the office.

As soon as the guard was out of sight, Frank pulled out his phone and called the Fox’s main office number. A female voice answered, “Fox Theater. How may I help you?” “Ma’am, my name is Agent Jones, DHS. I need to talk with the head of your security and maintenance department regarding tonight’s event.” “That number is 555-1234,” she told him. Frank recognized the number immediately as the one listed for Life Actualization. “Ma’am, there’s a liability issue at risk here, and it would be better if I could talk to the Fox’s security provider, not the event sponsor.” “Please hold one moment,” she replied. Classical music began playing before Frank could even agree to wait. A couple minutes later, a male voice answered, “Mr. Parker. What can I do for you Agent Jones?” “Mr. Parker, whoever you’ve contracted out with to provide security for tonight’s event is denying me access for a walk-through,” Frank explained calmly. “Agent Jones, I have a memo here on my desk from Agent Stevens that everything has been cleared,” Parker replied. “Let me cut right to the chase,” Frank told him. “The situation has changed since yesterday. There are going to be national media here tonight, and I need to do a walk-through.” “But a walk-through is scheduled to be done later by Life Actualization,” Parker countered. “Mr. Parker...” Frank said, his voice calm but tense, “Agent Stevens is no longer the Special Agent in charge. That was yesterday. I am now the Agent in charge and that’s why I’m here at 10am on a Tuesday morning. I don’t want to have to use all the power of the Patriot Act to send people to Gitmo because I can’t get into a theater because I’m getting the run-around from you and the people on the site.” Frank was carefully enunciating every syllable, his voice rising slightly with each word.

After a short but weighty pause, Parker asked Frank for a number he could be reached at. “I’ll make the arrangements and call you right back,” he told Frank. The guy must’ve been shitting his pants, Frank figured. He was basically between a rock and a hard place. Does he do what he’s been told by his bosses and go to Gitmo? Or does he do what Frank tells him to and get fired? Either way he was screwed. Frank figured Parker wouldn’t take more than 10 minutes to make his decision. Longer than that, and the decision would no longer be his to make. The tone of Frank’s voice told Parker that too long a delay and Frank would get the DPD to break down the doors. Nine and a half minutes after Frank had ended the call, his phone rang. Parker used every second he could, mostly likely only finding out that Stevens was dead and there was no supervisor for ‘Agent Jones.’ Frank smirked as he answered, “Jones.” “Agent Jones,” Parker said sounding out of breath, “Someone will be there to help you in half an hour.” “Thank you, Mr. Parker,” Frank said, then closed his phone. Leigh had covered her mouth to keep her laugh from slipping out while Frank was on the phone. When he finished she chuckled. “Let’s go wait back in the car,” Frank suggested. From there, they could watch whatever happened in the meantime without being watched themselves from inside.

About 20 minutes had passed when Frank and Leigh saw a bunch of white men go scurrying through the lobby. Then the same guard Frank had talked to earlier came to the door. He stuck his head out and looked both ways for Frank and Leigh but didn’t see them. A minute later, Frank’s phone rang again. “Jones,” Frank answered. “If you’re ready Agent Jones, I can escort you on your walk-through now,” the guard told him. “Good,” was all that Frank said. He closed the phone and appeared at the front doors a moment later, Leigh beside him. The guard opened the door and let them in, then closed and locked it again. “Paul Victors,” he said, holding out his hand to Frank and then Leigh. “This way.” He led them out of the lobby to begin the walk-through. From this point on, the guy was nothing if not the consummate professional. For every question Frank asked, Victors had an answer. And from the sounds of the answers, Frank figured that Victors had studied the original reports from the couple times Frank had been called in to run security for special events. As he and Leigh were led through the theater, it was apparent that all of Frank’s suggestions in those reports had been followed, too. In return for the man’s competence and professional treatment, Frank treated him as an equal. “How many people do you have on staff for the event?” Frank asked him. “I had scheduled 80, but in light of the circumstances, I’ve called in more. We’ll have approximately 100 on duty now,” Victors answered. “The Governor already sent her regrets, so that lightens the burden. If you don’t mind my asking, why are the media involved?” he asked Frank. “Because a number of rich Detroiters are involved, and someone leaked the guest list to the media, and it got to people who want to make a big deal out of the racial make-up of the crowd,” Frank told him. He let just enough emotion through in his voice to give Victors the impression that the whole thing irritated him, especially the focus on race. “Oh,” Victors said. “I wasn’t aware of anything unusual about the guest list, beyond all the guests being rich and powerful.”

Next, Frank asked about the fire suppression system. “I heard that there was an incident yesterday...” Frank let the question hang there. “The system has been recharged and is fully functional,” Victors told him. “As near as they can figure out, it was a prank. But until they can figure out how it happened, the system will remain disconnected from the internet. The Life Actualization people will be in charge of it tonight.” “Could I have their names?” Frank asked him. “In fact, I’ll need the names of all the staff being supplied by Life Actualization.” “Background checks were already done, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Victors told him, hesitating ever so slightly. “I just need to verify it for my boss,” Frank said. Victors held out his clipboard so that both he and Frank could look at it, and he pointed out the names of the security people and the technical crew. “We’ll be checking picture IDs for everyone, and they’ve all been issued photo ID passes for the night,” Victors said. “And I know the tech people on the list. They’ll be getting here about 1pm to start setting things up.” Frank thanked Victors for his help. “I’m sorry if I caused any trouble for you,” Frank told him. “It’s all because Agent Stevens is no longer available.” “Yeah,” Victors said, “I heard he was in a car accident and burned to death. That’s an awful way to go.” Victors shuddered slightly. When the three got back up to the front doors, Victors shook Frank and Leigh’s hands again and opened the door for them. When they stepped out, he shut and locked the door, and gave them a friendly wave before returning to his original post.

As the two Envoys headed back to the car, they could see 5 or 6 people hanging out across the street, all of ‘darker complexion,’ all wondering exactly why they were there and looking like they were waiting for their leader. “So, you think Mr. Victors is just a guy doing a job?” Frank asked Leigh, tossing her the keys and sliding into the passenger seat. “No,” she answered. “A guy just doing a job wouldn’t slam the door in the face of a DHS agent.” “Nope,” Frank agreed, “that guy is a true believer.” Frank leaned over the seat and pulled his laptop from its bag. It was 11:30am, and the techies would be showing up in less than two hours. He had to find them first and figure out how to intercept them. At this point, it might be their only chance to get someone inside. He typed in the names he’d gotten from Victors’ list and tried to find out where they were staying. None of them were registered at any of the area hotels or motels. These guys (and they were all male) were too important to Horst for pulling off his ‘show,’ to be left to stay in some dive. They were probably at Horst’s house or one of his other hidey-holes. Well, he knew where they’d be at 1pm.... He called Terry. “See, now this is why I wanted to keep you in reserve,” he told her warmly. “There are some people that I believe the DPD has warrants for who will be showing up at the Fox in a little over an hour.” He could hear her take in a long breath. “Do you realize that I could lose my job for that... and worse?” she asked him. She paused and sighed, then asked, “What for?” “It’s a union call,” Frank told her. “These guys are not union electricians, and their licenses are out of date.” “Names?” Frank gave her the 4 names from Victors’ list. “I know just the guys to serve these warrants,” Terry told him. “And you can make it up to me later.” She no sooner hung up the phone than Frank and Leigh came in the back door.

“Tony!” Frank hollered down into the basement when he came in. “Yo! Be up in a sec!” Tony yelled back. Frank was sitting at his computer when Tony came upstairs. Of the 4 ‘support team members,’ he and Leigh were already familiar to the head security guy, and he wanted Terry on the outside in case things went wrong and they needed the ‘white horse.’ That left Tony. And he might just have enough New York bluster to pull this off. “Tony, your name is now Phillip James LeFleur, sound technician,” Frank told him. Frank had seen the security pass that Victors was wearing, and it was a simple enough design for him to fake. Luckily, the list that Victors had on his clipboard, that IDs would be checked against, didn’t have photos on it. “You have to be at the Fox in about an hour,” Frank said. “You’re going to be uploading the virus to the sound board. Get together everything you’re going to need in there. There were supposed to be 4 of you. The other three guys are Joseph Rubinsky, Robert Lindberg, and Steven Foster. Make up whatever story you want to explain why they all just got picked up by the cops. I’ll try to figure out a way to get Leigh and myself in later. “Yo! I gotta lotta work to do all by myself now, so out’a da way!” Tony said, already working on his cover story as he headed to the basement to pack up his ‘tools and stuff.’ “The funny thing is,” he thought to himself, “I actually do have a Master Electrician’s license!”

Tony came up from the basement a few minutes later with a large tool box, a laptop bag, and what looked like a very large thermos. He held it up and grinned ear to ear. “Coffee,” he laughed. “I do gotta be dere all night.” It was his precious bazooka, in a very believable disguise. Frank handed him the freshly printed security pass, made sure he was wearing his comm unit, and turned on the TV to watch the noon news. “Yo, can someone get da door behind me!” Tony said. And he was on his way, humping his ‘equipment’ out to where he’d left his car. Angie closed and secured the door behind him. The noon news was pretty much what they all expected–‘there’s something happenin’ here, but what it is ain’t exactly clear.’ The segment the team was waiting for came near the very end of the half-hour broadcast. The reporter stated that there was an exclusive event going on at the Fox that night, and it seemed that some people were upset about being excluded. (Karen and Leigh glanced at one another and smirked. Obviously it never occurred to the reporter that an “exclusive event” by definition “excluded” people.) The camera panned over not quite two dozen people, all people ‘of color.’ About 10 uniformed Detroit Police officers had wandered onto the scene, and were chatting amiably with the ‘protesters.’ As the camera continued to pan back and forth over the scene, they saw one of the cops lift his radio to his ear. A moment later a limo approached the drop-off lane. The cop with the radio signaled 3 other officers, 2 black and 1 white, all over 50, who walked over and blocked the limo’s path. All of a sudden, the guys inside it were being told to get out of the car, were cuffed and then gently pushed into patrol cars that had just pulled up alongside.

And...cue Phillip James LeFleur. As the patrol cars pulled away, leaving the now-empty limo behind, Tony strode past the limo carrying his equipment as if he’d just gotten out on the far side of the vehicle. He set his stuff down on the ground and raised his hand to knock on the door, when one of the security men opened the door. Tony held out his pass and his ID, “Youse can call me PJ.” The security guard glanced at his clipboard. “I thought there were four of you guys,” he said, eyeing Tony, then his pass. “Yeah, well, Joe and Bob called in sick, and Stevie...well...strippers need a little lovin’ too,” Tony told him. The rest of the team burst out laughing when they heard what he said. Tony stood there tapping his foot like he was impatient to get started. “Ya know, I gotta lotta work to do, and I’m doing it all alone now,” he told the guard. The guard made a couple notes on his clipboard, then escorted Tony and his gear inside. He led Tony up to the sound booth, and Tony immediately dropped his gear and started looking over the notes left on the board for the techs, along with a thumb drive that supposedly had the lighting cues. “Hmm, doesn’t say anything about flashpots on the stage,” he mumbled to himself, forgetting that the comm unit was on. “But that doesn’t mean there won’t be any up there tonight,” Justin laughed.

Once Tony was safely inside the Fox, Karen and Angie drove down to the Whitney to pick up the ‘inside team’s’ wardrobe for the evening. When they got back, they quickly ran upstairs and pulled off the wrappings to admire their new clothes. Angie’s dress was almost an obscenity. It was a backless number, in the most amazing garnet red. And when Angie tried it on, it fit her like a lover’s caress. Karen’s dress was the embodiment of elegance, off one shoulder, in a deep emerald green that shimmered under the lights, with a faux-emerald leaf brooch at the shoulder. Hers fit perfectly, too. And as little as either of the women were looking forward to the evening’s ‘festivities,’ they were both actually excited about having the chance to dress up. They had to keep shooing the guys away so that they’d be surprised by the dresses when they finally saw them later. Only Leigh was allowed to go upstairs and see them, and it made her a little jealous that she wasn’t dressing up for the evening, too. When the women had finished checking the fit of their clothes, the guys went up to try on theirs. Aiden and Justin had tuxes with cummerbunds that matched the girls’ dresses. Those fit perfectly as well, and Peter had even remembered to make an allowance in Justin’s jacket for his gun and holster. In fact, when Justin tried it on, he found that Peter must have been tweaking the darts to perfect the fit. The weapon was practically invisible underneath now.

A semi pulled up to the stage doors in back, and a crowd of stage hands swarmed out and began unloading the set pieces. Tony looked out the windows that stretched across the stage-side of the booth to see a guy down on the stage waving at him, then signaling for him to put on his headphones. Tony looked around the booth and found two sets, then waved back down to the stage manager. “Where are the others?” the guy asked, his tension level obviously rising. “Oh, dey’ve been detained,” Tony told him. The guy hung his head and shook it like this was just the first in what he expected to be a whole raft of screw-ups that afternoon. He looked back up at Tony. “I might be able to spare a couple hands, if you’re gonna need ‘em,” he told Tony. Tony could hear in his voice that he couldn’t really spare them and was hoping that Tony would take a pass on the offer. “I’ll let you know,” Tony replied. “Good. Gimme an hour and I’ll be ready to have you set up the lights,” the guy told him. Then he turned and started barking orders at the hands carrying in the set. Tony switched off the headset. He’d been looking over the sound board, but he honestly had no idea where to start. While he was a great electrician, he’d never seen a theater sound board before in his life. “Yo, Frank,” he said into the comm unit’s mike. “T’ink you could download da support software from the sound board company’s website?” “I’ll do what I can,” Frank told him. “Here’s da model and serial numbers,” Tony said, rattling off a series of letters and numbers. Frank got what Tony needed and let him know when it had been sent to his laptop. Tony linked his laptop into the sound board, and loaded the thumb drive that had the cues. He found that it didn’t have coding for the super-titling scroller, nor did it include the libretto of the opera.

When everything was set, Tony checked the door and walls of the sound booth. The door was only moderately sturdy. It would protect against fire, whether it was inside or out, but it wouldn’t hold up against a determined attempt to break through. The walls had a thick layer of sound-proofing, which made sense, and a layer of fire protection as well. But there was no way he could really ‘bunker-up’ the place. Then it was back to ‘work.’ The stage manager called him down to get the stage lighting set up, and Tony trotted down to the stage. They had a nice system that allowed Tony to make all the adjustments right on the stage, using pulleys to lower each rack of lights one at a time. Then it was up into the catwalks above the sound booth and tucked in at either end of the boxes in the Mezzanine to adjust the spots. When that was done, the stage manager had him do the sound check. Tony went back to the booth and cued up Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. He was pretty sure that the guy wasn’t going to get the joke, but he liked that piece anyway. Tony was just starting to get into the music when he saw the stage manager waving again to get his attention. “That’s good,” the guy told him. He sounded a little exasperated. “Huh, not much of a Wagner fan,” Tony grumped, turning down the music. Frank had been hearing Tony’s chatter with the stage manager over the headset and it occurred to him that it might be good to know what that frequency was, too. He pinged Tony on the comm unit, and Tony checked the headset and gave him the frequency.

As the afternoon progressed, the crowd outside the Fox got larger. Signs had begun to appear: “Classical Music is For Everyone,” “Elitism IS Segregation,” “Motown=Music,” even one that said “MY Sword and Helmet TOO!” Since the event was private, the crowd really had no grounds for a protest, other than the chance to agitate. But the crowd was still behaving peacefully. The police had gotten there early and had gotten friendly with the protesters right away, sympathizing with their concerns and laying out the rules. Neither side really wanted trouble, so they were all, protesters and police alike, willing to keep it calm and civilized. Once Tony had the light cues loaded, and he’d gotten the Hymn of Redemption loaded and cued, ready for him to trigger at will, he laid out a few personal items. Since there would be a live orchestra playing the music for the opera, Tony had packed his noise-cancelling headphones, in case there was some musical component to the spell. He wasn’t going to be in range of anyone’s Spheres or Shields, as far as he knew, so he had to protect himself. Then he organized the rockets, so he could quickly choose the type he needed. They were stacked in the tool box so that if anyone came in unexpectedly, he could drop the lid to hide them. He left the launcher itself disguised as the thermos. It would be easy enough to pull the caps off it if or when he needed to use it.

The men were properly dazzled when Angie and Karen came down primped and ready to leave. And Aiden and Justin cleaned up pretty well too. The four left about 4:30pm, since they were meeting Edward and Cathy at Edward’s house for cocktails at 5pm, before taking the limo to dinner. Cathy looked splendid, and she truly did look younger than her 63 years. She and Edward met the four at the door. Cathy kissed and hugged both Karen and Justin, but she was never comfortable about hugging Angie so she settled for patting her warmly on the arm. Aiden, ever the gentleman with women, bowed and kissed her hand, making her giggle like a schoolgirl. Edward shook the hands of both men, and kissed the women, giving Angie a light peck on the cheek and Karen an almost fatherly kiss on the forehead. “Mom, Edward, I have to apologize for Tony’s absence,” Karen said as Justin helped her off with her coat. “I hope you aren’t too upset, but... when I told him that the plans for this evening had changed and we’d be going to a classical concert instead of a costume party, Tony... well, he made this gurgling noise....” Karen grinned and shrugged. “I guess he’s not much of a classical music fan.” “Oh, that’s perfectly OK, dear,” Cathy told her, patting her arm. “Well, it’s too bad he’ll have to miss it,” Edward said, “but no trouble at all.” He offered drinks to everyone, and Justin insisted on just a bottle of beer straight from the ‘fridge. He joked about the odd habits he’d picked up in the Army, like only drinking beer he’d opened himself, to cover his distrust. They still had no idea exactly how Edward had caused the changes in Karen’s mom, and he wasn’t taking any chances that drugging was involved. Cathy asked how Karen was doing and what she’d been up to lately, and Edward asked Justin how business was going. He asked if Justin had ever thought about bringing in an outside consultant to run team-building activities, to increase efficiency and productivity. “I’m not so sure that the guys I work with would respond well to touchy-feely team-building stuff,” Justin laughed

“You never know until you try,” Edward told him. “You’d be surprised at the wide variety of people I’ve worked with, and they all seemed to really enjoy the programs. But more than that, the companies I’ve dealt with all agree that the programs have helped in ways they never anticipated.” (“I’ll bet!” Justin thought to himself. “The hell if I’m ever letting you get anywhere near Jerry and the other guys!”) Justin smiled and told Edward he’d have to think about it and run the idea past the guys sometime, to see what they thought. Aiden stood quietly near Angie, fiddling with his drink glass. It was almost like he’d forgotten how to make small talk. But Angie! Justin and Karen had never seen her like this before. She’d been listening attentively while Edward talked to Justin, and when she got the chance, she turned on a level of charm they had no idea she had. She began chattering away with Edward about doing presentations, soliciting his advice on how to make them more memorable for her audience. The two were connecting over work-talk, and Edward seemed truly engaged in the conversation. Their little Marine bomb disposal expert had turned into a social butterfly! Well...not exactly. It didn’t take the other three long to figure out that Angie was behaving just like a Marine–she was throwing herself on the grenade to save her friends. Her keeping Edward busy allowed Karen some privacy to talk to her mom without Edward hovering over her. And it gave Justin a way to avoid dealing with Edward without being rude, a little breathing space to keep his head from exploding. Cathy and Karen had settled on the sofa. Karen was trying to convince her mom that everything was fine and that she’d just been doing the usual stuff--teaching, grading exams, planning for the next summer’s dig.

Cathy leaned in close to Karen, and lifted her left hand slightly to draw Karen’s attention. That’s when Karen saw the ring. She looked up at her mom, and Cathy put a finger to her lips, telling Karen not to make a big deal of what she was showing her. Then she twisted the ring around to show Karen the diamond. And what a diamond it was! Karen wasn’t a great judge of gems, but she’d have guessed that the stone was worth at least 50 or 60 grand. “Mom! Did he...?” Karen asked in a hushed voice. Cathy was glowing. She nodded. “I’ve been wearing it with the diamond turned under. I don’t want to show it off until Edward’s made the official announcement–tonight!” Cathy could barely contain her excitement. “Have you set a date?” Karen asked. She was hoping that her mom was still putting Edward off, dodging any attempts to make concrete plans. She needed more time for the team to figure out just what Edward was and what he was doing and how they could stop him.“I know churches are usually booked a good year ahead, although I suppose Justin’s Uncle Jerzy could....” Cathy shook her head, cutting off Karen’s thought. “I wasn’t really planning on a church wedding,” Cathy told her. Karen grinned. “Oh! Running off to Vegas?!” Cathy smiled but Karen could tell that she’d been putting some serious thought into this and wasn’t fooling around. “Well, I wanted you and your brothers and sister to be there, and...I was thinking about having the wedding at Christmas,” Cathy told her. Karen could hear the concern in her mom’s voice. “Wait... You mean THIS Christmas?” Karen asked. Her mom was worried about having the wedding at a time when they’d all be able to make it–but she obviously had no more doubts about marrying Edward. Cathy hesitated, then nodded. She hoped that Karen wouldn’t be upset about it being so sudden, or about it not being in the Church, and that she’d be able to make it. All Karen was worried about was how little time she had to find a way to prevent it altogether. “I don’t see why that would be a problem, Mom. I’ll be off for the holidays, and unless Sean was planning on jetting off somewhere with whoever he’s seeing now, the others should be around too. I think it’ll be great!” Karen’s head was spinning, and for a second she almost hoped that her drink had been drugged and this was all a massive hallucination. She grinned and hugged her mom, biting her lip to keep from saying something she might regret.

“I believe our carriage awaits,” Edward said grandly. It was about 5:30pm, and Karen still didn’t know where they were going for dinner. A couple of the servants that had been there last Christmas appeared as if from thin air to collect their glasses and help with everyone’s coats. The driver was already standing beside the open limo door, waiting to usher them in and whisk them away to dinner. Karen could understand how regular treatment like this could dazzle a woman so much that she might begin to ignore her own doubts about a man. Edward was very solicitous of Cathy, treating her like she was a precious porcelain doll. And her mom was blooming like a hothouse flower, the result of his care and attention. Part of Karen was so happy for her mom, that she’d found someone who seemed to love her so much and shower her with all the things she deserved. But another part was ready to be sick, knowing that there was something just not right, something decidedly dangerous about the man who’d swept her mom off her feet. Karen imagined that this must be what it was like for the women (and the people who loved them) who drew the attention of drug lords and Mafia bosses. The limo pulled up in front of the Whitney, and the driver held the door as each man helped his lady out and escorted her inside. They had a private room for dinner, smaller than the ballroom they’d been in last Christmas but still quite beautiful. A bottle of wine was brought in almost as soon as they were seated, and the cork and small sip in a perfect crystal glass were presented to Edward. Karen hadn’t seen him speak to anyone on the way in, so he must have chosen the wine when he made the reservations.

Edward sniffed the cork, then swirled and sniffed the wine. A taste...and he smiled and nodded at the steward, who filled Edward’s glass, then went around the table filling glasses for each of the others. Cathy just beamed, evidently charmed by the elegance and worldliness of this wonderful man. “Please, order whatever you’d like,” Edward urged them as they perused the menus. The wine was excellent, as was the meal that followed. The waiters were almost invisible as they timed each movement to make themselves as unobtrusive as they could manage. Karen had finished the last bite of her salad, set down her fork to take a sip of wine, and her plate disappeared in an instant. Moments later, as she turned to say something to her mom, the next course appeared, slipped in so skillfully that Karen hadn’t noticed the waiter beside her. Angie continued to chat with Edward, doing almost as good a job as Edward himself might have at weaving the conversation so that no one was left out but, at the same time, no one else was burdened with any unwanted attention from Edward. As they finished the last bites of their desserts, about 9pm, Edward stood and waited patiently as the others set down their forks and wiped their mouths with their napkins. When he had everyone’s attention, he held out his hand to Cathy, who stood up beside him. Putting his right arm around her shoulders, and lifting her left hand with his, he said, “Cathy has made me the happiest man in the world, by accepting my proposal of marriage.” He beamed down at Cathy’s upturned face and gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze. Cathy lit up like the most perfectly decorated Christmas tree, and held out her hand so that everyone could see the exquisite ring on the third finger of her left hand. The four Envoys smiled and clapped, rising from their seats to congratulate the happy couple with hugs and handshakes and kisses. But the happiness and good cheer never fully reached their eyes. Edward kissed Cathy, and the men held the women’s coats for them. Then they were off again, the limo carrying them to the Fox to cap off their evening with music.

By dusk, the crowd outside the Fox had grown considerably. On the evening news, one protester told the reporter that they were protesting because “this cultural event is closed to African-Americans and other people of color.” But none of them, protesters, reporters or police, actually knew what “this cultural event” was. Tony had called Frank, who helped him tap into the outside security cameras. “Yo, Frank. Dis place got an outside PA system?” Tony asked. “Nooo...” Frank said with some trepidation. “Oh. Too bad. ‘Cause a few choice epitaphs could incite a riot, ya know...if we needed a distraction,” Tony told him. Given the way Tony said “incite a riot,” Frank wondered if he’d somehow missed a charge for that offense when he’d searched Tony’s background. He didn’t bother trying to explain that the word Tony should have used was “epithet” not “epitaph.” Using proper English, even in its Americanized form, wasn’t Tony’s strongest suit. “So, youse guys figured out how ta get inside yet?” Tony asked. “‘Cause I gotta idea.” Frank had expected it to involve explosives, so he was pleasantly surprised when he heard Tony call the stage manager on his headset. “Yo, I jus’ found out, Joe, Bob and Stevie got t’rown in da hoosegow. But da union’s got a couple’a guys dat can replace ‘em. Hope it’s OK dat one’a dem’s a girl,” Tony told the guy. Guests would begin arriving in just a few hours, and the curtains would be going up at 10pm precisely. They were having trouble with the rollers on one of the set pieces, some idiot had misplaced some absolutely necessary props, and this guy was worried about a GIRL?! “Yeah, yeah, whatever!” the stage manager mumbled into the headset. “Tell ‘em to come around to the stage door when they get here. HEY! YOU! Yeah–with the robes! Those go in the dressing rooms! God, why do they always send me the idiots....” Tony clicked off the headset, grinning.

“Good job, Tony,” Frank told him. He turned to Leigh and Terry. “Terry, I know you want to be inside, but I want to keep you in reserve. I’ll signal you if we need to call in reinforcements,” he told her. “I want to cover your back, ya know,” Terry said disappointedly. “But I do understand. This is covering your back in a way.” Frank nodded, then turned to Leigh. “Do your best to look like a theater sound and light tech, and do it fast,” he told her. “We’re going in as soon as we can get over there.” A short time later, just after dark, Terry dropped the two off at the far end of the alley that ran behind the Fox. Alley was actually an understatement, since it was wide enough to allow two semis to pass. Then Terry drove off to find a spot where she could observe the scene without being noticed, and Frank and Leigh walked down to the back stage door. Frank knocked, and what they could see of the inside when the door was opened looked like utter chaos. A dozen people dressed all in black, right down to their rubber-soled shoes, were running back and forth, with lights going up and down so that just when their eyes adjusted, the light level changed again. They could hear someone shouting orders at the hands, the banging of a last minute repair being made, and the buzz of the lights. If there hadn’t been guards inside the stage door, Frank and Leigh might not have gotten inside because no one would have been able to hear the knocking. “You the two replacement techs?” the one guard asked them. “Yeah,” Frank answered, and the two held out their fake IDs. “Sorry, but since you weren’t background-checked before,” the guard said, “we need to frisk you.” He was actually quite polite when he said this. Leigh looked around, expecting to see at least one female security person; but obviously this was one eventuality that Horst’s people hadn’t anticipated. However, the guard was very professional as he patted Leigh down, being as thorough as he’d been with Frank without being in any way offensive as he went about the process. Leigh couldn’t help but notice that the guy was very handsome...and very Aryan. So Leigh returned the favor, not raising a fuss about being frisked by a man, and remaining professional in her demeanor. Luckily, the search didn’t turn up the taser Frank had hidden inside a pocket.

When both had been cleared, the other guard handed them temporary security passes and Frank led Leigh out toward the sound booth, weaving expertly between and around the stage hands, who were too busy doing a last-minute rehearsal of the scene changes to notice the two go by. Tony had been carefully applying det-cord to the windows of the booth, which overlooked the auditorium and gave him a clear view of the stage. So he saw Frank leading Leigh across the stage and out to the side hallway that ran the length of the ‘house.’ Tony had realized a couple of things as he sat up there killing time earlier. First, that if Horst had some way of shutting down the speakers, he’d need to be able to project the sound of the Hymn from inside the booth. Since it was sound-proofed, the only way to do that was to open the windows. Second, if he didn’t have some sort of ready-made opening in the windows, he’d have to bust them out to fire the bazooka at whatever needed killin’. So he’d spent the past hour carefully calculating just how strong a shaped-charge he’d need to open a couple small holes in the windows without blowing them completely and showering the seats and floor below with shattered glass. This way, if he needed the holes, a quick push of a button would set off the cord and crack the glass in such a way that the tiny fragments should fall harmlessly onto the ledge below the windows. And if things went well, he could quickly strip off the cord and no one would be the wiser.

Rather than draw attention having to pound on the heavy door, Frank ‘radioed’ Tony as they approached the booth, and Tony was at the door ready to let them in when they got up there. “I’ll be back stage,” Frank told them. “Keep in constant contact during the event, but no useless chatter.” The two nodded, and Frank headed back down, to position himself by the stage electronics board and the nearest fire alarm. A short time later, the crew got everything into place for the beginning of the show, and broke for a quick meal of catered Tubby’s subs. Frank’s position by the electronics board meant that his view of the stage doors and dressing rooms was blocked by large pieces of the set, so he wouldn’t see the cast or Horst arrive. But he realized, as the crew took up their assigned positions and the stage manager signaled the ushers to open the doors, that they must have arrived at some point already. For all he knew, they’d been in the dressing rooms the entire time since he and Leigh had finished their walk-through with Victors. He suspected that he would have felt Horst’s presence, if he’d been in the theater during the walk-through; but he hadn’t, and Leigh didn’t mention anything about it either. Frank didn’t want to draw attention to himself by wandering around to check, so he limited his movement to occasional peaks around the curtain to watch the audience as it started to trickle in. And he tried to make himself as invisible as he could, otherwise.

Leigh and Tony had a better vantage point for watching the audience, as Tony explained what was where to Leigh. He needed her to know exactly what to do, in case he was incapacitated. They saw the pit orchestra come in from the side hallway, but the only way the two could hear them as they warmed up and tuned their instruments one last time was to turn on the intercom system. From the stage, Frank could hear them, and as the first few guests were led to their seats, the orchestra began playing some incidental music and Frank sent a text message to Justin. The support team still had no idea where the ‘inside team’ would be sitting, and Frank needed Justin to let him know that as soon as possible. Out in the lobby, the crowd grew as guests arrived and waited cheerfully for their tickets at the Will Call windows. The limo dropped Edward Harrington’s party of 6 in front of the Fox, and they emerged from their ‘cocoon’ to find a red carpet rolled out to the curb for the arriving guests. No one had actually been sent their tickets ahead of time, Edward explained to them as he went to stand in the queue, just a confirmation letter to be turned in at the box office the night of the show. But the lines moved quickly, and soon they were holding flutes of champagne and toasting, again, the good news of Edward and Cathy’s engagement. People milled around, wanting to see and be seen; and the hum of excited conversations rose and fell like waves on a beach. At one point, the three women excused themselves to ‘freshen up’ before they took their seats.

The Envoys scanned the crowd the whole time, trailing behind Edward and Cathy like ducklings, smiling and nodding as Edward greeted friends and associates, introducing Cathy and the others and sharing the news of his engagement. Not a single person in the place was any darker than a newly-achieved tan fresh from the Caribbean, not even the staff, ushers, or doormen. There were more men than women, as far as they could tell. And the men tended to be older, the women slightly younger. They slowly made their way toward the auditorium doors, where they were greeted, handed programs, and their tickets were taken, torn in half and the stubs returned to them. Then an usher led them to their seats. They’d no sooner been seated, than Justin rose and excused himself. “I don’t want to miss anything,” he apologized to Edward and Karen. But the look he gave Karen as he edged past her told her that it was something else entirely. Justin had set his phone to vibrate just before the limo had pulled up to the Fox, and he felt it do so as they shuffled along the row to their seats. When he got to the bathroom, he took a stall and shut the door, then quickly opened his phone. There was a new text message from Frank, sent only a few minutes before. “When U get here, tell me where U R seated. F.” The Envoys had actually been surprised at how far back Edward’s seats were. They were in Section F2, row KK, seats 211-216. That was far enough back that they were underneath the overhanging balcony. There weren’t any bad seats in the Fox, though these weren’t among the best. But considering how highly connected Edward seemed to be, that meant there must be a very large number of extremely important people in the theater tonight.

Justin texted back to Frank their seat location, and the order they were seated in, in case it was important. Aiden was the farthest left, with Angie to his right, then Edward, Justin, Karen and Cathy. Cathy was just two seats in from the aisle seat. When Justin came out of the bathroom, he saw that the crowd in the lobby was thinning. He hurried back to his seat, and could see a sea of white faces, mostly looking around to see who else was there that they hadn’t seen in the lobby already. Karen was one of those people. She’d already spotted Reg’s sister Claire, in the next section over to the right and about 10 rows ahead of them. She’d never met Claire herself, but she recognized her from pictures she’d seen at Reg’s house. Claire was still standing, her coat draped over her arm, looking around not in the casual way most of the people were, but as if she were looking for someone she’d been expecting to see there and wasn’t finding the person. But there were no empty seats anywhere near her. In fact, as the last arrivals were filing down the aisles being guided to their seats, they could all see that the theater was nearly full. There were just a few empty seats here and there, like the one in front of Karen that would have been Tony’s if he hadn’t chosen to be with the ‘support team.’ Karen chatted with her mom as they both scanned the crowd, each stopping now and then to point out to the other someone they recognized, from photos in the newspaper or being interviewed on the news or, in a couple cases, someone that Karen had rubbed elbows with once at some University function. When Justin had settled back into his seat, Karen quietly pointed out where Claire was. And the fact that she’d seen no sign of Reg’s dad or Audra. Luckily, with Karen on his right, Justin could slip his hand into his pocket to text Frank again with that information, without Edward even noticing. Good thing he’d done enough texting to be able to do it blind, though it wasn’t his first or even second choice as a method of communication.

As Frank got the information from Justin, he passed it along to Tony and Leigh in the sound booth and to Terry, wherever she was outside, poised to come riding in on her ‘white charger.’ “Didn’t even see ‘em come in,” Tony said over the comm unit, when Frank told them where the ‘inside team’ was. Tony pressed his face against the window and craned his neck to try to see them, but they were too far back. A moment later, when Frank gave them Claire’s location, the two were able to find her, her seat being just far enough out from under the balcony to spot it. In spite of the low hum of conversation, everyone could hear the ‘Bing Bing Bing’ that warned those still mingling in the lobby that they had five minutes to find their seats before the auditorium doors would be shut and the show would begin. That began a sudden rush of stragglers pouring in, and the ushers had their hands full for the next few minutes. Then, all around the theater, the doors began to close. As they were shut, the Envoys could see that the ‘ushers’ took positions standing in pairs just inside each set of closed doors. They looked exactly like guards posted to prevent escape. Frank noticed that all the doors that accessed the stage had guards as well. He let Tony and Leigh know. It appeared that from this point on, no one was going in or out without at least drawing attention. Tony figured that if they were going to be that way about it, so was he. He double-checked the door to the booth, then pulled out another strip of det-code. He didn’t have any time for finesse, so he was either walking out of there of his own volition, or he was going to at least slow down anyone who tried to get in--if not take some of them out completely.

Frank was prepared to drive around for an hour if he had to. It turned out he didn’t have to. He’d been driving for about 20 minutes when he spotted the first tail. Leigh and Terry both said, “We picked up a tail,” at almost the same time. It was behind them, a black SUV, and it wasn’t being very subtle. Maybe they had hoped that Frank would be so concerned about evading that one that he wouldn’t notice the other two. Again, the three noticed it about the same time, a brown late-model sedan paralleling them one block to the left. Terry was busy looking for another shadow moving a block to the right when Frank commented that the guy in front of them actually had some skill at this game. When she turned to see what Frank was talking about, Leigh pointed to a beat-up pick-up that had been ‘tailing’ them from in front. “Wow ” Angie said with some respect, “that isn’t easy to do ” “I only noticed when we went under a street light,” Leigh told her. “The two guys are wearing suits.” Angie shook her head. It was kind of an amateurish mistake for someone who was good enough to tail from ahead. But everyone made mistakes. Terry saw the hint of a grin wrinkle the corners of Frank’s mouth. She tapped Leigh on the shoulder and pointed to the ‘Jesus bar.’ Leigh grabbed that and Terry grabbed the backs of the front seats, just in time for Frank’s sudden U-turn.

The junker in front turned right at the next corner, and the SUV continued on straight. Frank turned right, and the brown car that had been paralleling them did its own U-turn when the driver saw Frank’s car cross behind him. As soon as Frank saw the brown car do a U-ie, he turned again at the next street he came to. From that point, the tailing cars began a mad scramble to catch up with Frank again, as Frank did the land-based equivalent of a series of Crazy Ivans to mess them up. It was like something out of a cartoon, or a Benny Hill episode, as Frank led the 3 tails back and forth, criss-crossing their paths. The really funny thing was that he wasn’t trying to lose them. He was trying to get the SUV, which he suspected was Stevens’, to do something illegal in front of a cop. Terry was watching out the back window, and Leigh kept scanning to the front and right. Terry spotted the SUV starting a wide sweep around to get ahead of Frank. The beater pick-up was still being relatively subtle. But they’d lost track of the brown car with too many buildings getting in the way of keeping an eye on it. So it surprised them a little when the brown car slid up alongside them as the SUV slid to an angled stop across their path about a half-block ahead.

As Frank looked around for an escape route, Terry and Leigh kept an eye on the cars that had bracketed them. The SUV was angled so that the passenger door was facing Frank’s car, and the women warned Frank when they saw movement inside it. There was just enough light from the streetlight hanging over the vehicle to see that the man in the passenger seat was indeed Stevens. Then Frank spotted something that sent a chill up his spine–the faintest flicker of flame inside the SUV. Both front doors of the SUV were flung open, and they could see Stevens stumble out the door. He was reaching for his gun, and Frank could clearly see the wispy tendril of smoke rising up from his right hand as he pulled the gun from its holster. Stevens dropped the gun and frantically tried to pat out the fire with his other hand. But that only caused his left hand to catch on fire, too. Frank glanced around and spotted a white Mercedes just around the corner to the left, beyond the SUV. So...whoever was toasting people did have to be in relatively close proximity to the target in order to start the fire. The driver of the SUV came around the vehicle, pulling his jacket off, and he tried to pat down the flames on Stevens’ hands and arms. Frank watched the Mercedes back up until it was blocked from view by the building on the corner. The women watched in growing horror as the driver’s jacket burst into flames. He tossed it to the ground and tried to use his hands, but they caught fire as well. And when he tried to smother them out in his armpits, a good idea in any other situation, his arms caught the flame, too.

Stevens was howling in pain and fear now, and he staggered toward Frank’s car. As he got closer, they could see that his feet were on fire, too, and one simply burnt through and broke off at the ankle when he took a step. Stevens crumpled to the pavement, and Leigh and Terry covered their ears to try to block out his cries. In spite of the pain he must have been in, with his own hands and arms burning, the driver ran to the back of the SUV and popped the hatch to grab the fire extinguisher. The two guys from the brown sedan had gotten out of their car by now and they started forward to help Stevens and his driver. But the driver hollered at them to back off. Leigh couldn’t get over how truly heroic this guy was. In spite of his own pain and fear, he was still trying to help Stevens, and he still kept his wits about him well enough to warn the others away from a situation they obviously weren’t going to be able to control. With the drivers of two of the tail cars out on the street, Frank took his opportunity to maneuver out of the trap. As he circled around the SUV, he suggested that Leigh use a Sphere of Protection to help the driver. They could all see that there wasn’t much they could do to help Stevens anymore. He was still alive, but he was writhing on the ground, screaming in pain. His body was engulfed in flames, both feet and a leg already burnt to ash and crumbling off, his face a charred mass of molten flesh.

As they passed the back of the SUV, Leigh focused her thoughts to block out Stevens’ screams, and put up the Sphere. The flames on the driver were immediately snuffed out. His hands were charred, but he still wrapped his arms around the extinguisher and struggled to manipulate it into position as he staggered toward Stevens. Leigh shook her head. She wished there was more she could do for that guy, loyal to the end to his boss, even though she would guess that Stevens treated him like nothing more than hired help and a meat shield. Stevens? Well, she felt sorry for him, too. Nobody should have to die like that. But Frank had offered him help and Stevens had not only rejected the offer, he’d tried to trap Frank, too. None of them had expected Stevens to offer any thanks, but he could have at least tried to avoid such outrageous ingratitude. As Frank pulled away, hoping to catch a look at the Mercedes’ license plate, they could all still hear Stevens’ howls, until the scream of the approaching sirens drowned him out. Frank was pretty sure there wouldn’t be anything left of Stevens but a little smudge of suit on the pavement. All Terry hoped for was that she could get the sight and sound of his horrible death out of her head. Frank turned the corner, but there was no sign of the Mercedes. This had been their first concrete indication that this fire attack was an ability like Leigh’s and Karen’s Sphere, something that require the person to trigger it and have line of sight to the target.

“Hmmm, I wonder if maybe we oughta ditch the car,” Frank thought out loud. “Ya think? ” Terry asked sarcastically. He headed away from the scene, but he obviously had a destination in mind this time. All three kept their eyes open for more tails, especially a white Mercedes. Frank pulled over, and it took a second before Terry and Leigh realized why. He rolled up to the curbside mailbox and dropped his cell phone in it. Right. Damned hard for anyone to explain why they’re breaking into a mailbox, even someone from DHS. And getting something out of it legally was more trouble than the people they were dealing with would go to right now. “Ya know what’s coming up, don’t you?” Frank asked Terry. She shot him a puzzled look over the back of the seat. “The end of my leave of absence,” he told her. “Interesting timing, don’t you think.” It was indeed. Frank turned into a ‘lock and store’ place. It took Terry a minute to recognize the address. Just a couple years ago, there had been a crack house there. At least occasionally someone did a little something to try to make the city a better place. Even if it was building a self-storage place that people used to hide ‘throw-away’ vehicles or rolling meth labs. Frank pulled around to a door that was hidden from view from the street. All three climbed out of the car, and Frank opened the lock and pushed up the door. Inside the locker was another non-descript sedan. He pulled that one out, then carefully backed in the one they’d been using, so that the license plate was facing the back wall of the locker.

As Frank was pulling down the door, Terry suddenly dashed for the far end of the building. She’d barely gotten around the corner when Frank and Leigh could hear dinner and everything else Terry had ingested that day finding a new home. Frank fastened the lock, and Leigh kept an eye on Terry as she walked slowly back along the row of lockers. “Gimme your flask,” Terry told Frank, holding her hand out as she came up. Frank pulled a silver flask from his coat pocket and handed it to her. She screwed off the top and pulled a long swig from it. Then she carefully screwed the top back on and handed it back to Frank. He looked down to slip it back into his pocket, and Terry stepped forward and grabbed his lapels so that he had no choice but to wrap his arms around her. She was clutching the lapels so hard it was going to leave permanent wrinkles, but she was shaking so bad that Frank didn’t really care just then. “Ya know, it’s one thing to be kidnapped by a flying snake...” Terry said. “Another to watch a sadistic burning death,” Frank finished for her. He felt her head nod against his chest.

Leigh was standing with her arms wrapped tightly around herself, both wishing Reg were there right then and glad that he wasn’t, for his sake. “If that EVER happens again, no matter who it is, I’m stopping it for whoever is closest,” she stated. She was sickened as much by the fact that she’d had to choose to let Stevens get what he had coming (though nobody could really deserve torture like that) as by the actual sight and smell and sound of his hideous death. “Put a bullet in my head if that ever happens to me,” Terry said almost angrily. “Do you mean that?” Leigh asked. She wasn’t sure she could do that, even for a friend, unless there was really no other way. “If they’re worth saving, then save them,” Frank said. Both women understood that he wasn’t talking about moral judgements, but whether the effort would leave the person with a life worth living. “Otherwise, shoot me,” Terry said again. She looked up at Frank. “It’s too late now, but you were right, Frank–I really didn’t want to know. The guy was a jerk, but nobody deserves that. What kind of a monster can do that?” “From what I can gather, it was present at Auschwitz,” he told her. The women looked at one another and wrinkled their noses. “That would explain what happened when the gas chambers couldn’t keep up,” Leigh said. “Maybe I’ll become a vegetarian,” Terry groaned. “Eat enough carrots and you won’t need to go in the sun to tan,” Frank teased her. “I think I’ll need to sit in the front on the way back,” Terry told Leigh as the three walked to the ‘new’ car. Leigh nodded, and they all got in.

It was closing in on midnight, and Frank, Leigh and Terry had been gone for about an hour. Justin was playing a video game and Karen was dozing on the couch next to him when they heard the key in the back door lock. Justin slipped his gun out of the holster that was laying on the table in front of him, just in case. He slid it back into place when Terry came out of the kitchen and flopped down in one of the ‘comfy chairs.’ She looked like shit. “Sorry we took so long,” she said. “But we had to stop for booze and salt. You can never have too much booze and salt.” Justin and Karen could hear a plastic bag rustling in the kitchen as Frank unpacked it. “I take it you picked up a tail?” Justin asked. Frank came into the front room carrying a bottle of Scotch and a couple glasses, followed by Leigh. “Ever seen a white Mercedes where you wouldn’t expect it?” Frank said in response to Justin’s question. Justin thought for a second. He’d just seen one somewhere.... “Yeah, there was one at Horst’s house that day...” Justin told him. “That’s right,” Frank agreed. “I thought I’d seen it there. Agent Stevens chose not to take my advice....” “And he tried to ‘capture’ us instead,” Leigh said, continuing the thought. “And ‘They’ found him,” Terry finished. “It’s not every day you see a man light up like a 4th of July rocket,” she added. “It was like he had napalm on his hands and feet...and everything he did to put it out only spread it.” She shuddered at the memory. The three described the whole thing to Justin and Karen. “I really need a shower,” Leigh told them when they’d finished. She was heading for the stairs, but Frank beat her there. He’d had a sudden idea, as Leigh described how heroic Stevens’ driver had been. He started up the stairs, moving fast enough that Angie would hear him coming, but not so fast that she was liable to shoot first and ask questions later. She was awake and glaring at Frank when he bent over Aiden and shook him gently.

“Wha? We doin’ the seance now?” Aiden asked groggily. He’d only been asleep for about half an hour, since he and Angie had needed to get ‘reacquainted’ first. “No,” Frank answered. “I have to ask a favor. There’s someone at the hospital...he needs some special help.” As Leigh was telling Justin and Karen about how the driver had tried to help Stevens even though his own hands and arms had been severely burned, Frank realized that Aiden might be the only person who could repair some of the damage, since it was caused by a creature of the Unknown. He wasn’t sure just how much Aiden could do for the guy, but it had to be better than anyone else could do in this situation. Aiden wasn’t quite sure exactly why he was getting up, but he rolled out of bed and started getting dressed. Angie tried to burn holes in Frank’s back when he went back downstairs, and he asked Terry to find out where the driver had been taken. A couple minutes later, Angie came down the stairs first, so that she could catch Aiden if he missed a step. Justin had already gotten a pot of coffee going, and he met Aiden at the bottom of the stairs with a mug full. The coffee, and the ‘energy boost’ Justin gave him when he wrapped Aiden’s hand around the handle, got Aiden as close to awake as was possible without a shot of pure adrenalin. “Conveniently,” Terry told them, “he’s been taken to Receiving.” Aiden still didn’t understand what was going on. “Maybe someone else oughta drive him over there,” Justin suggested. “Nah..nah...I got it,” Aiden slurred. “I jus’ gotta ‘member where I parked the truck....”

“I’ll take him.” All the Envoys offered at once. But while they argued over who should or shouldn’t be out driving around Detroit just then, since Terry was supposedly in the Burn Unit at Receiving and Justin was still a likely target for Horst, Frank led Aiden out the door. “Just get ready for the seance,” Frank said before shutting the door behind himself and Aiden. On the way, he tried to explain to Aiden what had happened, while Terry and Leigh were doing the same for Angie. And Karen got set up for the seance. She wanted everything just right; the information they got from Heidi might make the difference between stopping Horst, and a whole lot of people, herself and Justin included, going up in smoke. It wasn’t far to Receiving, but Frank was cautious, taking a slightly circuitous route to avoid picking up another tail. Most likely, the remaining DHS guys were scurrying around trying to figure out what to do now that Stevens was dead, too busy to worry about Frank and the others right now. But he wasn’t taking any chances. Frank pulled up outside the ER entrance just as the ambulance with the driver did. Aiden went straight over to the back of the ambulance and helped unload the gurney. Frank followed Aiden inside, scanning the ER for anyone who looked like he was taking too much interest in Aiden.

Another car pulled up outside, and several DHS agents rushed in, trying to follow their injured comrade. Frank moved to an inconspicuous position, watching but avoiding notice himself. “Didn’t you just leave?” one of the ER nurses asked Aiden as he rushed by at the side of this new patient. He waved. “I got this one!” he told her, as if it answered her question. He hadn’t even actually heard what she’d said. He was busy getting the guy’s vitals from the EMTs and signaling ER security. He motioned to one of the exam cubicles, and the EMTs pushed away Stevens’ driver while Aiden stopped to intercept his teammates. “I’m sorry. You’ll all have to wait out here,” he told them. Before they could argue, a nurse and a security man were directing them over to the waiting area. Because he was the senior resident at Receiving, and he’d worked with the EMTs before, no one questioned his taking charge of this patient. As Aiden turned to go into the exam cubicle, Frank overheard him joking with a nurse about having forgotten something in his locker and how this would teach him to forget stuff. Once Aiden was safely hidden behind the curtains, Frank slipped back out to his car. And he made sure that he wasn’t followed back to the safe house.

“Everything go OK?” Angie asked Frank when he came back in. Frank told them all that he’d gotten Aiden to the hospital safely, that Stevens’ driver had just been arriving when they got there, that Aiden wasn’t challenged when he took over the guy’s case, and that he wasn’t followed back by anyone. “Everything ready here?” Frank asked them. Leigh nodded. They’d already decided that, if Frank didn’t object, he and Justin would stay outside the circle. Terry, Leigh, and Angie would join Karen inside. It seemed like a good idea for Leigh to be in the circle since Heidi knew her; it might make Heidi more comfortable. Plus, Leigh spoke German. She thought that Heidi spoke English well enough to understand Karen’s questions and to answer in English; but they didn’t want to take any chances, in case Heidi’s psyche had been so damaged by her death that she didn’t remember her English. And Leigh should still be able to raise a Shield or a Sphere if they needed it during the seance, without breaking the circle. That was important, since Karen couldn’t do anything else while she called the spirit and held the circle together. They had asked Tony if he wanted to take part in the seance, but he was at a very delicate point in making the rest of his ‘specialty rockets.’ He couldn’t walk away from the project right then without wasting all his work and having to start over.

When the women were settled at the table and Justin and Frank had chosen where they wanted to position themselves, Karen nodded at Justin and he cut the lights. “Heidi...Heidi Fiedler? I need you to join us here. We need your help. Heidi Fiedler, please...join our circle. Heidi, we need your help....” Karen had been centering herself, focusing her attention from the moment she started setting up the room for the seance. Rather than using candles, since the spirit she was calling had burned to death, she collected all the mini-flashlights in the house to use as her focus on the table. She though it would be cruel to use open flames, and they needed Heidi’s help too much to risk offending or scaring her. There was a flicker that grew to a glowing presence, but it wasn’t over the center of the table like usually happened. It was between Karen and Leigh. Suddenly, the glow coalesced into Heidi, seated between the two women. “Wo...wo bin ich?” Heidi asked. Though Leigh easily recognized her, Heidi’s spirit carried the scars of her horrible death. The skin of her face and hands was blistered and charred. Karen looked over to Leigh and nodded. “You’re in America, Heidi...in Michigan,” Leigh told her. She tried English first, hoping that Heidi would be able to converse with them in that language so that Leigh didn’t have to translate. “I was...I was in Michigan, when I....” Suddenly Heidi went off on a tear in German. Leigh didn’t even try to translate. The words came out so fast, with such vehemence...no translation was needed to know that Heidi was angry at how she’d been treated.

“That...that schweinhund! He lied! He murdered me!” Heidi had finally calmed down enough to continue in English, though she used a smattering of German words when she couldn’t find an English one that expressed what she felt. “I have been in a terrible place. Ach! My Heinrich! Dying in my arms over and over again!” “Her husband,” Leigh whispered to the others. “He died about ten years ago...and then she miscarried.” Leigh didn’t have to say any more than that. Whether it was caused by the manner of her death or just its untimely nature, Heidi had been forced to relive the most painful portion of her life, over and over. Karen had often wondered if that was what Hell was, rather than burning fires and torture by Satan’s minions. Maybe each person created his or her own Heaven or Hell. Go one way and you relive the best moments of your life over and over. Go the other, and.... “But...Leigh...are you also...?” Heidi asked tentatively, not sure if they had met again in Hell or some other place. “No, no. We summoned your spirit here to help us. To help us stop the man who did this to you,” Leigh answered her. “Ach, I realized only at the very end. I was so caught up in the music,” Heidi told them. “It was Wagner, his final piece, thought lost. He wrote it in 1883, just before he died. The music is savage...pagan....” “But as beautiful and majestic as all his works,” Leigh said. “Very moving--I’ve heard it.” “What?! But...it hasn’t been performed, has it?!” There was fear in Heidi’s voice. “No! I’ve heard it only in dreams,” Leigh answered her quickly, to calm her fears. “And bits and pieces of the music without the words, saved on CDs.”

Though Heidi’s form wasn’t quite solid, they could all see the relief in her posture and in the look on her face, when she learned that it wasn’t too late to stop Horst’s plan. “It is more than music to control a person’s mind. It is witchcraft! It is wild and dark, to make people into something else,” Heidi warned them. “Creatures of smoke and fire,” Leigh said, and Heidi nodded. “But he doesn’t know that I translated the hymn,” Heidi told them, sounding almost smug. “I sent a copy to myself, in case something should happen.” “You mailed it?” Leigh asked her. Heidi laughed. “My dear, the music may have been lost over a hundred years ago; I have not been! I scanned it and emailed myself the file!” She laughed again, then grew serious. “It was at the very end, a hymn of redemption, renewal, rest. It can unmake the thing that the spell makes.” “Can you give us your password?” Leigh asked her. Heidi smiled. “I can do better than that. I will sing it for you.” Her spirit stood, and Frank grabbed a digital voice recorder and pressed the Record button. Heidi began to sing. As Greta had recalled in her letter to Leigh, Heidi had the voice of an angel. Her spirit began to glow with a golden light as she sang, in German as Wagner had written it. The hymn had a visceral effect on the Envoys. Though they didn’t understand the words, they could feel both the sadness and joy in them.

Heidi sang for about ten minutes. The song brought tears to her listeners’ eyes, but a lightness to their hearts. They could feel the power in the song, similar in a way to the power they felt in the prayers sung at Fr. Andrew’s funeral. This was more than just a song; it was the Art. As Heidi finished singing, they could see that she was much more peaceful than she’d been before. She was shining, and all of the burns had disappeared from her skin. She looked as if she were 20 years old again, at the height of her life. She looked over at Frank as she sat back down, and asked him to play back what he’d recorded, so she could be sure that Leigh and her friends had it all. As it played back, Leigh translated. “Now is the time to lay down the weapons of war. Now is the time to embrace the completeness of things.... It is so perfect. Death and life in their proper places.... Nothing is meant to be immortal. All things must die so that others may be born....” “This is the antidote for your needs,” Heidi told them. “I fear that the first time the opera is performed.... Well, it is not the first time, but...those who hear it will become, as you said,” Heidi glanced at Leigh, “creatures of smoke and fire. Those who are already like that will become like Horst and his...thing.” Heidi didn’t know the name for whatever Olga was, but she didn’t need to for the Envoys to understand. “She was a fire spirit, and changed again. Those are the ones it will unmake.” Heidi looked around solemnly at the six Envoys, checking that they understood the importance of what she was about to say. “Make sure Junius is not played, and that this is played instead.” They all nodded

“Is there anything else I can do to help you?” she asked them. “Do you know if there are any other copies of the music?” Leigh asked her. “I don’t know what Horst has done with what I gave him. I hope that he has not made copies, but I would not trust that he hasn’t,” Heidi answered. Leigh looked at Karen. Karen shook her head. Without even having to ask, Heidi had answered all the questions they had wanted to ask her. “Can you give me your password?” Leigh asked, and Heidi leaned over and whispered it in Leigh’s ear. Then she stood and leaned down and kissed Leigh on the cheek. She stepped behind Karen and put her hands on Karen’s shoulders, and Karen felt a warm glow flow through her body. Heidi looked up as if she were seeing something high above her, then her form defused like motes in a beam of light, and she was gone. Karen looked around at the other three women and nodded, and they each loosened their grip on each others’ hands. Justin started turning lights on one at a time, so that everyone’s eyes had time to get used to the brightness. They were all startled when Angie’s cell rang. She checked the caller ID. “It’s Aiden,” she told the others. “Unhuh.... Unhuh.... Yeah, we’re done. Be there in five minutes.” She closed the phone and laughed. “He went out to the parking lot to get in his truck and remembered it’s not there. But the guy will recover.”

“So, does he have underwear that says ‘I work miracles’?” Justin teased Angie. “No,” she replied, exasperated. “Heh. Then maybe we should get him some. I’m sure there’s a place that could do custom work,” Justin laughed. “I don’t think so,” Angie told him. “Sure! Wha’d’ya think of ‘Home of the Whopper’?” Justin asked. Karen groaned. “Nah, you’re right. Doesn’t work. How about ‘God’s Little Miracle’?” Karen, Leigh and Terry rolled their eyes. Angie just glared. “Right. Nope. How about....” Angie interrupted Justin, saying “You’re just jealous. I’m not advertising, because I don’t share.” “Just a little halo over a smiley face?” Justin asked. “I can hurt you,” Angie growled. “I bet Aiden would think it’s funny,” Justin complained. “I can hurt you for him,” Angie warned, “just because he’s too nice to.” “Not just because he’s nice,” Karen laughed. “But because then he’d just have to fix him up, too.” The others were laughing so hard that they didn’t notice Frank leave to get Aiden himself. When the two got back, Justin and Angie were still arguing. Aiden slumped over to the couch and fell back onto it. “Lucky I wasn’t there this time,” Leigh teased him. “I wouldn’t leave your butt too accessible,” Frank warned him. “Justin’s been feeling a little strangely.”

“How about on the back–‘My Girlfriend Says I Can Do Miracles’?” Justin laughed as he ducked around to the other side of the table, away from Angie. They could tell that Angie wasn’t trying too hard to actually hit Justin, or she would’ve just gone over the table. “Aw, your butt isn’t big enough for that many words,” Justin said to Aiden. Aiden had no idea what Justin was talking about. “Why don’t you come over here with me,” Aiden suggested to Angie. Angie immediately left off threatening to pound Justin and dropped onto Aiden’s prone body. Aiden let out a groan that was somewhere between pleasure and pain. “I had to hit the guy twice,” he told the others. “But he’ll be OK.” “Wow...and you’re still standing! Or were, at least,” Justin exclaimed. “You’re getting better at that!” Aiden didn’t hear him. He was already fast asleep and snoring. Karen smacked her hand against her forehead. “We still have to pick up our clothes for tomorrow night!” she said, more to Angie than the guys. She figured that Justin and Aiden would have been just as happy to forget them and go in jeans and t-shirts. They couldn’t just have the tuxes and dresses ‘Princess’ had gotten them delivered to the safe house; and several of them still couldn’t go roaming around freely, because people were still looking for them. They’d talked about having them delivered to Aiden and Angie’s place, but both had been tailed earlier. And they’d thought about having them delivered to the hospital for Aiden to bring back, but he’d be out cold until tomorrow and it would be cruel to wake him again.

“Why not just have them delivered to the Westin?” Frank suggested. He was already online looking to see how things were with the DHS agents, now that Stevens was out of the picture. “There are plenty of delivery services in Detroit who’ll do it, no questions asked.” Karen already had out the phone book. She jotted down a couple numbers to call first thing in the morning. By now, Frank had retroactively canceled the BOLOs on himself and Justin. He checked the watch lists, and found that the team members were no longer ‘persons of interest,’ either. He pulled up the video feeds from the precinct house. Things there seemed to be getting back to normal there. Terry was still listed in critical condition in the Burn Ward at Receiving, but Frank figured it would be easy enough to explain her ‘miraculous’ recovery as some sort of patient and paperwork mix-up. The DHS guys would probably be off the team’s back for at least a few days. Things would be in a bit of disarray, since Stevens was a micro-manager whose people never made a move without clearing it with him first. And it would take a little while for the 3 guys who saw what happened to Stevens to process the event so that it could be logically explained.

Frank sent an email to Dr. Virginia Collins, letting her know that she was free to release her report about Stevens’ attempted cover-up of the bus fire. It shouldn’t jeopardize the careers of anyone else, since all Stevens’ people would confirm that he played things close to his vest and kept everything on a strictly ‘need to know’ basis. Then he tried to tap into Stevens’ computer. It might be interesting to find out just what Stevens did know. He may have been too paranoid to share information with anyone else, but he was also pretty incompetent. There was a good chance that he may have left behind some evidence of what he’d been doing. And Reg had been good enough to find Stevens’ passwords for Frank already. “Hmm...somebody is really on top of things,” he murmured to himself. He found that there was no longer a computer at the node where Stevens’ should have been. He tunneled around a little longer, but Stevens’ computer was either disconnected from the network, or something else had been done to hide it. Whoever Stevens had been getting orders from had moved very quickly to cut all possible links to himself. As Frank suspected, Stevens had been set up to take the fall all alone if things had gone wrong.

By now, all the others had wandered off to bed. But Frank had one more thing to take care of. He speed-dialed Reg’s number. “Hello?” Reg answered. “Reg, it’s Frank. I need a virus.” “What do you need it to do?” Reg asked him. Frank explained that he needed something that could override everything else in the Fox Theater’s sound system, lock out any other external control, and play the MP3 file that he’d recorded. “And I need it by tomorrow morning,” Frank finished. “Well...it’s short notice...but I’ll do the best I can,” Reg told him. “And if I have the time, I’ll even make it disappear when it’s done running.” “That’d be great,” Frank said. “I really appreciate it.” “So...what’s it for?” Reg asked, realizing that Frank might not be able to explain over the phone. Frank explained as briefly as he could that there was a concert at the Fox the next night, and that it was a cover for something far more sinister. The team needed to stop the ‘scheduled program,’ and replace it with their own piece of music. “That’s funny,” Reg said. “I thought my sister said that she had been invited to some concert at the Fox on Halloween night.” But neither of the men were laughing. “Was your father or Audra invited too?” Frank asked him. “Not that I know of,” Reg answered. But he was worried. He now had a lot more incentive to get Frank the program he needed, as soon as possible. “I’ll send it to you as soon as I get it done,” he told Frank. “We’ll do everything we can to protect her,” Frank reassured him. Then Frank finally went to bed...and Reg got to work.

Everyone was busy with their 'projects', but most of them kept one eye on Frank, expecting that at any minute he would see Terry come out of the precinct house. When Tony came upstairs from the basement carrying a grey-tipped rocket and asked if Frank knew how to trigger the fire suppression system the theater had, everyone got a little nervous. “You mean besides a lighter?” Karen asked with a laugh. Frank told Tony that the halon 'sprinklers' could be turned on from the manager's office, the lighting booth and two places backstage. Frank marked the switches on the plans Justin was looking at, and Justin asked Tony what the rockets were and what they had to do with the theater's sprinklers. “Smoke rockets!” Tony said almost gleefully. “That's why they have grey tips!” He grinned and headed back down to his work bench. A little after noon, Angie grabbed the 'teaching aids' she'd been working on and told the others she was heading out to teach her class. Karen reminded her that they'd need to call Peter Jacob, “Princess”, that evening when she got back, to arrange clothes for the concert the next evening.

A short time later, Frank watched Angie swagger past the cameras and into the precinct house, the same one that Terry's office was in, and the same one that the MiBs had taken over yesterday. She disappeared up the hallway that led to Terry's office, and no more than 5 seconds later reappeared on the nearest camera, being rapidly escorted toward the front door by two of the DHS guys. They weren't actually touching her, but they were poised at her elbows, obviously ready to grab her if she made any move to go back. “Uh oh,” was all Frank said, and Leigh, Karen, Justin, and Tony, who'd just come up to make himself a sandwich, all gathered around the computer. Angie was arguing with the two men, and it appeared that she had been the entire time since they'd intercepted her. The MiBs were just about to put her out the front door when she stopped and angrily pointed back toward where they'd come from. The two MiBs looked at one another, then one went back and disappeared from the camera while the other waited with Angie just inside the front door. A minute later the one was back with Angie's big black duffel bag. Angie took it impatiently and stormed out the front door without the MiBs saying a word. Frank glanced at his watch, held up a hand and started counting off the seconds. “One... Two... Three...” His phone rang and all five of the Envoys grinned. Angie didn't even wait to hear who had answered. “I was headed for Terry's office when Mutt and Jeff waylaid me,” she told Frank. “'DHS needed this squad room,' they said,” Angie continued, “and 'we're sorry, but you're not allowed in there right now.' I didn't see any of our people in there,” she finished, meaning Detroit Police personnel. “What did you see?” Frank asked her. “Terry's office door is closed, no sign of Stevens, and about 12 MiBs sitting on their thumbs in our squad room,” Angie told him with disgust. “I'm going to teach my class,” she said, and before she closed her phone Frank could hear her muttering in Arabic. He didn't know precisely what she said, but Arabic was a wonderful language for cursing; and he recognized cursing no matter what language it was in.

Frank stared at the computer monitor and pondered the situation. He tapped a couple keys and brought up Stevens' phone number to see who he'd called or been called by lately. It looked like either Stevens actually had a brain, or he was even more paranoid than Frank himself, because he'd dumped his old phone number. “If any of us try to call her, they'll probably try to trace the call....” Frank thought out loud. “Maybe we could call Mark and have him try calling her,” Justin suggested. “He's completely unconnected to us at the moment.” Frank shook his head. He didn't want to drag anyone else into this quite yet, not if he could help it. “Hmmm...I wonder if she'd kill me for rescuing her...again,” Frank mused. “Hey, youse know which office window's Terry's?” Tony asked. “If youse want, I could lob one'a my new smoke rockets trew da window so's you could go in an' rescue her wid'out bein' seen.” Frank looked over at Tony and rolled his eyes. Everything seemed to lead to explosives with Tony. Tony shrugged. “It was jus'a t'ought.” But every once in a while, something Tony said did make some sense, Frank “t'ought” to himself. He leaned toward the keyboard and started typing. “Hmmm...I think I'll start in Outer Mongolia,” he mumbled to himself. He was going to route a voice-over-internet call to Terry's office phone through as many different countries as he could manage. He managed 15. The phone rang twice before it was picked up. “Detective Lt. Terry Worth's office,” an officious-sounding male voice answered. Frank was a little surprised that Terry wasn't even allowed to answer her own phone now, but he didn't let that show in his voice. “Can I speak to Detective Worth?” Frank asked. “She can't come to the phone right now. Can I take a message?” the man replied. Before Frank could answer, he heard the 'hum' of background noise disappear from the line. He recognized that lack of sound; it usually meant that the other speaker had muted the phone and was asking someone to begin tracing the call. “Tell her that someone called for her help in getting through to Agent Mackenzie Stevens, but since she can't help right now, he'll call back,” Frank told the man. Then he hung up before his call could be traced. Not that it would have been. He'd done a damn fine job of rerouting it, even if he did think so himself.

“I think the next one will come from Macedonia,” Frank mused. He checked his watch and decided to give Stevens ten minutes to prepare. Terry's phone was ringing again precisely ten minutes later. She picked it up before it could ring a second time, “Detective Lt. Worth.” Frank could hear the tension in her voice; Stevens had to be sitting right there next to her. “Can you hand the phone to Mackenzie, please?” he asked her too politely. Terry made this inarticulate noise somewhere between suppressed cursing and strangulation, and Frank heard a THUNK that sounded like she'd thrown the handset against some hard. Then he heard, “Stevens.” “Agent Mackenzie Stevens, you're a hard man to get a hold of,” Frank said. “Agent Muelder...EX-Agent Muelder...I've been wanting to talk to you,” Stevens replied smoothly. “Good, because I was hoping we could meet somewhere to talk, just you and I,” Frank told him. “Fine. Where?” Stevens asked him. “I'll email you a location,” Frank said. And before Stevens could say another word, or finish the trace, Frank hung up. He emailed Stevens the address of the Fox Theater—without telling him that's what it was—from a faked IP address routed through as many nodes as he could manage. He didn't bother giving Stevens a time, since he wasn't planning on actually meeting him anyway. This was just a ploy to give Terry an opportunity to escape. He trusted that Terry would recognize that. Then, using all the laptops they had that weren't being used for other stuff at the moment, he opened every camera link he had, to see what happened next.

It was like whacking a beehive with a stick! Within minutes of Frank sending the email, the team watched as 9 MiBs swarmed out of the building. But they didn't move haphazardly. It was as if they were sweeping the building along the way. Stevens was paranoid enough to think that Frank had called and sent the email from somewhere within the precinct house. “Hey,” Justin said as they watched the MIBs. “What do you think would happen if I turned up, too?” Karen's eyes got wide. He wasn't really planning on sacrificing himself to get Terry free, was he?! But the wicked grin on Justin's face told her that he had something else in mind. “I've got a few cousins who just happen to look enough like me that I bet Stevens' men wouldn't know the difference at first,” he told them. Frank understood right away where Justin was going with this. If “Justin” just happened to be out running some errands, it might tie up some of Stevens' manpower when “he” was spotted. Frank nodded and Justin went across the room and started making phone calls. He actually had a dozen cousins from both sides of the family who looked enough like him that they'd been mistaken for one another over the years. He managed to get a hold of about half of them, and four of them had nothing better to do than help him out with 'running a few errands so that he could arrange a nice surprise for Karen.' One of them, his cousin Mikey, who just happened to have his hair cut fairly short right now, was going to pick up a pair of tickets for an upcoming show at the Fox. He sent the other three out on other mundane errands, in three completely different parts of the Metro area. Justin chuckled as he rejoined the others watching the monitors. That ought to throw the MiBs into a tizzy.

Justin got back to the table just in time to see one of the nine agents speak into his cuff. A moment later, Stevens came out the front door, Terry at his side, his hand firmly gripping her elbow. They could all see that Terry was seething. Frank could almost picture the black cloud hanging over her head. And she had every reason to be angry. Stevens had kept her holed up all day, being 'questioned.' As if she didn't know every trick he tried! She'd been sitting, arms crossed, refusing all offers of beverages--a prisoner in her own damned office!--since she'd gone in there last night. She hadn't had any sleep but the cat naps she was able to steal when Stevens left her alone for a few minutes. And during those short breaks, she couldn't even use her phone or computer to let Frank know what had happened, knowing full well that Stevens would try to trace the communication in order to capture Frank and the others. A black SUV pulled up in front of the precinct house. The MiB driving it came around and held the passenger door open for Terry as Stevens 'helped' her in. Then Stevens went around to the driver's seat, and the SUV pulled away and headed for the Fox. As Frank switched cameras, tracking Stevens and his MiBs with traffic and ATM cameras, Justin jotted down which cousin was going where, in case Frank wanted to keep track of them.

Frank had to give the MiBs credit; at least they didn't all show up in matching black SUVs that screamed “Feds!” Some of them were in cars that most people wouldn't have noticed at all, much less recognized as cops. About 10 minutes after they'd left the precinct house, they started showing up around the Fox. Stevens had even scrambled the DPD's SWAT team, which set up their command post behind the theater; and Frank caught just a couple glimpses of snipers positioning themselves on nearby buildings. Only when everyone else was deployed did Stevens' SUV pull up in the drop-off lane in front of the theater. Frank couldn't get a good look at the passenger through the smoked windows, but he could tell that Stevens was the person in the driver's seat and that there was a second person next to him. For the next ten minutes, everyone just held position. Then, finally, the passenger door opened and Terry got out. A second later, Stevens got out behind her. The paranoid SOB must've slid across the seat so he could use Terry as a shield. He took Terry's elbow, and Frank could see Terry tense as Stevens touched her. She jerked her arm out of his hand. Stevens' face clouded and he said something to her. When he grabbed her elbow again, she let him.

Stevens guided Terry toward the front of the building, keeping her slightly in front of him, and they stopped under the awning that covered the entryway. Then they stood there. Frank wondered just how long Stevens would wait. Ten minutes passed. Terry was getting bored and Stevens was getting irritated, but they continued to wait. Another ten minutes went by. Stevens was fuming when he pushed Terry back toward the SUV, opened the door and all but shoved her in. He slammed the door and went around to the driver's door, no longer worrying about being a target, sure that Frank was only jerking him around. Frank was already typing, routing his call through cell towers in a bizarre pattern that would take Stevens' people at least 30 seconds to trace. Stevens slammed his own door shut, and they saw the tail-lights go on. As the lights flashed from Park to Reverse to Drive, Frank initiated the call. Inside the SUV, Terry's cell phone rang just as Stevens let his foot off the brake to pull away. The SUV jerked to a stop as Stevens stomped on the brakes, and the Envoys could see the two figures in the car move and seem to struggle for a second. As the phone opened, Frank heard Terry say “It's MY PHONE!” Then, at a lower volume but no less agitated, she answered, “Worth.” “Can you either give me Agent Stevens' cell number or let him use your phone?” Frank asked calmly.

Terry gritted her teeth. She had a suspicion that Frank was doing all this to throw Stevens off balance, to get him flustered enough that he would make a mistake. But she really didn't like being in the middle of this battle of wits and wills. “It's for you,” she said to Stevens through her clenched teeth, holding out the phone. “I'm not really in the mood for this crap today, Muelder,” Stevens said, his own voice tense with anger. “And I'm not in the mood to get all shot up by snipers,” Frank replied sweetly. “Meet me inside, and then we'll talk.” “It's locked!” Stevens grunted. But all he heard was silence, and when he looked at the phone it told him that the call had ended at 29 seconds. He pressed the redial button, but the display said Frank's number was unavailable. Stevens slammed his fist against the window, and Justin was surprised it didn't go right through. Then he snickered. “Guess it was outfitted with bullet-proof windows, huh,” he laughed. Except for Frank's, all eyes had been on Stevens, even the snipers' by that time; so no one but Frank had really noticed that another car had parked in the lot next to the building and a man had gone up to the ticket window. The lights on the SUV went out as Stevens turned the vehicle off again. The passenger door swung open, but at first no one got out. They could see movement inside, and a second later Terry almost fell out, shoved by Stevens. She knew that he was starting to unravel, and she was no longer in any mood to be cooperative. Stevens climbed out right behind her, grabbed her elbow again, and stalked toward the entryway. That's when he finally noticed the poor sucker at the ticket window.

Stevens let go of Terry and pulled his gun in one smooth movement, and they could see him yelling “Get down!” at the man. MiBs and SWAT swarmed in from every direction, surrounding the guy, pushing him to the pavement, and cuffing him. No one took the time to look closely at 'Justin,' so no one noticed that it wasn't actually him. An unmarked cop car pulled up in front, and Justin's cousin Mikey was unceremoniously dumped into the back seat of the car. Two of the SWAT guys got in too, one on either side of 'Justin.' Stevens' men were already pulling on latex gloves and beginning to sweep the area around the ticket window for 'evidence.' Evidence of what? The Envoys weren't really sure, but the MiBs seemed very earnest as they went about their work. As the two vehicles drove away, Terry's phone rang. “That's not inside,” Frank said calmly, when Stevens opened the phone. Stevens' face turned beet red. Before Terry could react, he hurled the phone at the ground. It bounced twice, then hit the wall. Terry didn't even see the two halves of the phone go skittering in opposite directions. She was too busy screaming at Stevens about him breaking HER phone. Frank scanned the scene, then chuckled. “Justin, do you happen to have your cousin's cell number handy?” he asked. “Yeah, but...” Justin wasn't sure how that could help, since his cousin had just been hauled away in a cop car. Frank grinned and pointed at the view of a clump of bushes beside the entryway. There in the dirt was a cell phone in a holder, the belt clip snapped off. It must've come off when Mikey was pushed to the ground, and gotten kicked in the commotion of getting the 'dangerous criminal' cuffed. Justin laughed and jotted down the number for Frank. A moment later, it was ringing.

The MiB closest to the phone looked around tentatively, hoping there was someone else nearby who could pick it up. Stevens had Terry by the arm on the opposite side of the wide entryway. He was shouting at the SWAT team leader that he and his remaining men could go, and he'd just turned to drag Terry back to the SUV. He stopped and looked around to see whose phone was ringing. With a look of resignation, the MiB bent down and picked it up. He opened the phone and put it carefully to his ear, as if he expected it to bite him. “It looks like Agent Stevens broke his other phone,” Frank said, his voice almost apologetic; “Could you hand him this one?” A look of trepidation crossed the underling's face as he held the open phone out to Stevens. Stevens' face was grim with anger. Before he could stop it, his arm raised up, hand open to hit Terry. She stood firm, and the look on her face warned of the awful consequences if he went through with it. His hand hovered there in the air for a second, then curled slowly into a fist and dropped deliberately to his side as Stevens visibly reined in the impulse. Terry doubled over and stumbled backwards away from Stevens, and for a second the five Envoys were worried that she'd been hurt. She bumped into the wall, and when she straightened up they could see she was laughing hysterically.

Stevens turned away from her, and the guy with the phone flinched as Stevens' gaze passed over him. Stevens paced for a few minutes, working to control his anger. The MiB closed Mikey's phone and dropped it into an evidence bag, pretending not to have noticed Stevens' anger. Then Justin thought about his cousin being roughed up by the cops. “Shit,” he grunted. He pulled out his phone and called Mark. He figured Mark knew at least a few of the local defense lawyers. Maybe he could recommend a really good one for Mikey. At the very least he owed his cousin the best lawyer money could buy. Maybe Fieger.... That guy really knew how to work the media angle. Mikey'd own the DPD by the time Fieger was done with them. Justin must have been thinking that out loud, because as he was listening to Mark's phone ring, Frank suggested that they not make a big media event out of Mikey's 'arrest.' That might draw more attention to the team than they wanted or needed right now. Mark finally answered, and Justin gave him a quick run-down of what had happened, without going into any details about the rest of the 'case.' “I believe I know just the man for the job,” Mark told Justin. “Good, but not too slimy. And he knows how to handle the media if they do get wind of the case. I'll give him a call myself.” Mark gave Justin the lawyer's name and contact info, so he could pass it to Mikey as soon as he could.

“Ya know, I've got a cousin who's SWAT,” Justin said to Frank. “He must be off today, but do you think I oughta give him a call to get Mikey sprung?” Frank shook his head. “They'll figure it out sooner or later,” he told Justin. “Better to keep your cousin in SWAT in our back pocket for now...until we really need him.” Stevens had gone back to pacing angrily back and forth in front of the Fox's doors. It had been about 20 minutes since Mikey was taken away, when one of the SWAT team leaders pulled back up behind Stevens' SUV. He got out and went over to Stevens, standing in his 'path' so that Stevens had no choice but to stop pacing. Stevens looked none too happy at having yet another person blocking his way, this time literally. But the SWAT leader didn't seem to care much about Stevens' problems. In fact, he was no longer showing any sort of deference to Stevens at all. He said something to Stevens, Stevens looked exceedingly angry, and the SWAT leader turned on his heel and walked away with an insouciance that told Frank that Stevens was quickly loosing any semblance of control over the DPD personnel. He wasn't surprised. Instead of asking for their help politely and showing some indication that he appreciated it, Stevens had waltzed into Detroit and acted like he owned the place. The Detroit SWAT had essentially been commandeered, and they weren't happy about it. Frank suspected that this guy would only be the first to show it openly.

“I wonder just what he said to Stevens?” Frank pondered aloud. “Karen's been practicing her lip reading,” Justin offered. “Maybe she can tell.” Karen looked up when she heard her name, and the two men waved her over. Frank backed up the recording, and Karen studied the man's face as he spoke. “It's not Kazotchek,” the team leader said to Stevens. “It is a cousin, but he doesn't even have the same last name.” Karen laughed when the man sneered at Stevens as he turned away. Frank flipped back to the current scene, and saw the MiBs packing up the 'evidence' from Mikey's arrest. Stevens strode to the door like he'd just made up his mind about something. Frank grinned. He dialed Mikey's phone again as Stevens put his hand on the door handle. The MiB holding the evidence bag simply held it out to Stevens, who snatched it and ripped it open. “What's taking so long?” Frank said. Then he hung up. Stevens closed the phone and raised his arm as if to hurl it into the bushes. Instead, he carefully lowered his arm and slipped the phone into his pocket, dropping the empty evidence bag on the concrete. He yanked the door open and shot a look at Terry that might have curdled fresh cream in an instant. Terry shrugged and went into the lobby. Stevens followed immediately behind her. Frank tapped the keyboard and a window with the view from the lobby security cameras popped open on the screen.

Inside, an 'official-looking' man, probably the house manager, approached the two. Stevens waved the man off, the look he gave the man a warning that he shouldn't interfere. Stevens lifted his arm and spoke into his cuff again. “Must be directing his men to surround the place,” Frank chuckled. “Ya know, I wonder if we could tap into his frequency,” Justin suggested. “Not with the computer,” Frank said. It was a good idea, but he couldn't think of anything around the safe house that they could use to capture Stevens radio signal. “Yo, I got a couple'a hand-held units dat I use on job sites,” Tony offered. “Maybe I can tweek 'em.” Tony disappeared back into the basement. On the monitor, the others watched Stevens go to take Terry's elbow again. She yanked it away as his fingers touched her, turned, and sat down on one of the benches scattered around the lobby. Frank grinned as he pulled up the phone number of the Fox box office. It rang and the woman at the desk answered, “Fox Theater, how may I help you?” “Could you please let me speak to the Federal agent in the lobby?” Frank asked politely. The woman stood and held the phone out toward Stevens. “The man on the phone would like to speak to you, sir,” she said. Stevens suppressed a grimace and took the phone from the woman's hand. “I wanted you to go into the theater,” Frank said blandly, when Stevens raised the phone to his ear. “I am,” Stevens told him through clenched teeth. “No, you're in the lobby,” Frank replied. He paused. “Look...” Frank said with a sigh, “there's no one else I can speak to.” He put just enough emphasis on the word 'else' that Stevens would know he meant 'no one who out-ranks you.' “So...” Frank continued, “Go into the THEATER, up to the stage.” Before Stevens could say anything, Frank again hung up.

Stevens closed his eyes and forced all emotion from his face. When he opened his eyes again, he leaned into the box office and very deliberately set the phone back into its cradle. Then he walked over to Terry. He stopped directly in front of her and she stood. He motioned to the nearest set of doors into the theater, indicating that Terry should go first. Terry looked him straight in the eyes and said, “You know, if he wanted to hit you, he could...even if I was in front of you.” She knew exactly what Frank was doing, and she could see that Stevens was almost ready to crack. When he did, he'd either make a mistake that would give her the chance to escape...or he'd kill her because he couldn't get his hands on Frank—or maybe to get back at Frank. But she knew that Frank had to be watching her and Stevens somehow. He wouldn't have put her in that kind of danger without having some way to monitor the situation, and he couldn't have known precisely when to call without being able to see Stevens' reactions. She'd already scoped out where the security cameras were, and she made sure that Frank could see what she said to Stevens. Every little bit would help in pushing Stevens over the edge. She just hoped he wouldn't be taking her with him when he fell.

Stevens eyes flared and he shoved Terry at the double doors. She stumbled into them, catching herself by grabbing the handles, then pulled one of the pair open and walked through, letting go so that Stevens had to grab the door to keep from walking into it as it shut. They could all see the smirk on her face. Frank switched camera views again, flipping to the camera mounted in the control booth. Terry and Stevens popped into view again as they walked down the aisle, appearing from under the balcony. Stevens was looking around incessantly, sure that Frank was somewhere in the theater watching him, waiting to do...something. Frank let them stand there in front of the stage for a moment before he called Mikey's phone again “You really should be careful whose tune you dance to,” Frank said when Stevens opened the phone. “See you for Wagner!” Frank hung up. Stevens flushed red from the tips of his ears to well past his collar. He hurled the phone onto the stage and it bounced off somewhere beyond the back curtain. Terry collapsed to the floor, and they could see that she was laughing uncontrollably. She didn't know what Frank said to Stevens, but it must have been a doozy! Stevens slammed his fist onto the stage, then grabbed the fist with his other hand, spewing what must have been an incredible stream of expletives as he cradled it in pain. Looked like the stage won.

“Looks like things are getting a little too hot in there,” Frank commented. Then he triggered the theater's fire alarm. Immediately, halon started squirting out of the sprinklers above the stage. “That's really going to screw up tonight's show,” Leigh said, grinning. Stevens stalked back up the aisle, through the lobby and out the front doors. The only 'law enforcement' left were his MiBs, since he'd sent the SWAT team away and the DPD 'uniforms' hadn't arrived yet in response to the fire alarm. It took Terry another moment to realize that there was halon drifting down onto her. Still laughing, she grabbed the edge of the stage and pulled herself up. She looked around, then spotted the camera lens poking out of the control booth. She gave Frank a 'thumbs up,' then held her hand to the side of her head in the universal signal for 'call me.' Then she headed for one of the side exits, coughing. She stumbled through a door that led directly into the side parking lot, and right into the arms of a fireman who was responding to the alarm. He put his arm around her and led her over to a waiting ambulance, where two EMTs made her sit on a gurney while they checked her over. The fireman rejoined his team and they went in the door she'd just come out. Stevens was already long gone, having squealed away before Terry even got to the door, taking his MiBs with him. Terry asked if she could be taken to Receiving to be checked over, and the EMTs had no problem with that. They recognized her as one of Aiden's friends, and they even called ahead to let him know she was coming. Aiden met her at the door, and whisked her off to a cubicle, quickly pulling the curtain shut behind them.

Frank began shutting down some of the video links, leaving open the ones at the precinct house to see what Stevens did next. By now, the bot Frank had set to work finding Stevens' new cell number had completed its assignment. So Frank also opened windows to track activity on both Stevens' and Horst's phones. It was good timing. Before Stevens had gotten back to the precinct, he placed a call to a DC number. Frank tapped into it as quickly as he could and began taping the conversation. “...He's turning out to be a real problem,” Stevens was saying. “And you expect me to do what?” a male voice asked. Frank couldn't place the voice. “I...I need to take care of him,” Stevens answered. “He's interfering with the project I'm here for. More than that, he knows too much,” Stevens continued. “How much does he know,” the other man asked. “I've been trying to find that out,” Stevens replied. “But you don't know,” the man interrupted, disapprovingly. “I...I'm pretty sure. But I need to call on bigger resources than I have here,” Stevens said quickly. “So, you're saying you can't handle this yourself,” the man replied. There was a long pause. Stevens had really gotten himself into an uncomfortable position. “That's not what I'm saying,” he finally told the man. He paused again. “I'll take care of it,” Stevens finally finished.

Leigh and Karen had drifted back to what they'd been doing before the 'show' started, which was working on what they might want to ask Heidi when Karen called back her spirit; and Justin had pulled out his phone to check on his cousins. It turned out that the other three 'decoys' were able to finish their errands without a problem. Once the SWAT team had 'Justin,' the BOLO had been canceled. By the time it was re-issued, after they found out they didn't have Justin, his other cousins were safely off the streets. A short time later, his cousin Mike called him. “You owe me!” he shouted at Justin. “You owe me a pair of jeans, an anniversary Tigers jacket...and a cell phone! Shit, I don't even know where that is! They ripped the hell out of my jeans and jacket! What the hell did you DO?! I was just picked up by Homeland Security, for God's sake! And they weren't exactly gentle!” Mikey's volume still hadn't dropped, and Justin had to hold the phone a couple inches away from his ear. When Mikey finally stopped to take a breath, Justin gave him the name of the lawyer Mark was going to contact. “He'll be calling you,” Justin said. “Just do whatever he tells you to. Don't worry...I'm covering it.” “Damn straight you are!” Mikey replied, his volume finally down to a more reasonable level. “In fact...you're gonna give me that Trans of yours, too. The one with the 454 in it.” “That one? I switched that engine out of it,” Justin told him. He didn't realize anyone even remembered he had it. He never drove the thing, and he wasn't even sure why he'd bothered to keep it. “Well, I guess you'll be switching it back IN,” Mikey said. “Why that one?” Justin asked him. “It isn't even rare. And the only people who like the looks of it are women.” Mike didn't say anything, and it took a second before Justin realized that that was the point. Right...chick magnet...of course. “Sure, no problem,” he told his cousin. “Listen, I'm really sorry.” “You should be,” Mikey shot back. “You knew that was going to happen.” Justin didn't say anything for a few seconds, wondering if he could get away with lying to a relative if they couldn't see his face to tell. But the pause itself gave him away. “I knew it! You did!!” Mikey shouted at him. Justin's head drooped. How the hell was he going to get out of this one? It wasn't going to be long before everyone in the family knew that the DHS was looking for him. He wondered how long it would be before either Marie or Uncle Jerzy...or both...would be calling.

Stevens' call had no sooner ended than Frank saw that Horst was getting a call. Frank realized right away that this call was being encrypted, so he shunted it through a decryption program and taped it. When it was over, he played it back. It was in German, and the sound faded in and out. Frank waved Leigh over to translate the conversation. The gist of the first bit, Leigh told him, was that Stevens was no longer an asset. “They're speaking guardedly,” Leigh said. “Neither man calls Stevens by name. In fact, one of Horst's comments is 'my puppet has become an encumbrance'.” Leigh continued translating.... “It is possible that our plan has been compromised,” an unknown voice said to Horst. “It's too late to change it now,” Horst replied. “Just take care of the problem,” the other voice told him. “You know what to do.” “It will be a pleasure,” Horst said with well-controlled enthusiasm. “You will obtain another number,” the unknown voice continued. “This number will no longer be used.” “Jawohl!” Horst answered. Frank understood that part, and he could almost imagine Horst clicking his heels together and saluting as he said it. Like a good Nazi officer. The number that called Horst was that same untraceable DC number that they'd run into before. Whoever was on the other end of it had the same effect on Horst that Horst had on Tom Harper. Who was that guy?

When Leigh was done translating, she asked the three men to join her and Karen, then asked what they thought were the most important things to ask Heidi when Karen did the séance. In fact, did they agree that Heidi was the person Karen should call, or was there someone else who might be a better target? There were certainly enough other dead involved in this whole thing, and they could easily get enough information about almost any one of them to 'call' them. No, they all agreed, Heidi was probably their best option, since she was the only one that they could count on to be friendly toward them. Well, her or Bethany, Karen reminded them. But she really didn't want to disturb Bethany again unless they had to; and while she would know more about the bus fire, she might not be as helpful regarding Horst and the Salamander. And Leigh was pretty sure that Heidi would know about the superstition that people who are burned alive are doomed to Hell unless they're martyred or the proper rituals were done before and/or during their deaths. So she would have even more incentive to help them. The five brainstormed questions for Heidi, then prioritized them when they couldn't come up with any more. They ended up with four: First, what do you know about the fire creatures and how to defeat them? Second, tell us about the project you were working on. Third, what happened to you? And last, how do we avenge your death? They were done with that project about 6pm, and began to wonder when their other team mates would be showing back up. Angie would have been finishing her class about 5:30, and Aiden would be getting off-shift about 6 as long as he wasn't in the middle of someone.

It was 6:15 when they heard the back door opening, and Justin and Frank both had their hands on their guns when they turned to see who was coming in. It was Angie, and she was juggling a big grocery bag as she tried to shut the door behind herself. Tony was just coming up from the basement with the modified walkie-talkies, and he took care of the door while Angie set the bag on the counter. Tony grabbed and opened one of the beers that Angie had brought. She was busy pulling off her hoodie on her way into the front room, and he followed her with a couple more beers for anyone else who might want some. They all realized that they didn't hear her bike pull up, so she must have parked further away and walked over. Something was up. “So, what the hell did you do?” she asked Frank with a grin. “Class was letting out just as the uni's were getting back from the 'fire' at the Fox. All the talk was about some crazy Fed who'd been pitching a fit...so I knew that you must have done something.” Angie paused, waiting for Frank to start talking. Instead he waved her over to the computer and started running the recording he'd made of the whole thing. She started giggling almost immediately. “Oh, this is rich!” Frank skipped ahead to the most entertaining parts. More giggling, which turned into outright laughter as the tape played on. “The scuttlebutt among the uni's was that he took over Terry's office and kicked everyone else out....” More laughter. Angie was practically in tears from laughing so hard. “God help the man if his car ever breaks down in Detroit. There won't be a cop in the city to help him,” Angie said as the recording ended. “Or a mechanic,” Justin added. “He seems to have forgotten a cardinal rule--'Never fuck with a profiler.' But...couldn't you have just gotten his new cell number?” Angie asked Frank. “I was working on it at the time,” he answered. “But do we really want them to know how far into DHS we can reach?” Angie nodded. Good point.

Frank turned back to the laptop and touched a few keys. A window opened with the view from the security cameras at Receiving. He knew that Terry would have the sense to go there from the 'fire.' “Hmm...no sign of either Terry or Aiden,” he told the others. Just then it suddenly occurred to them that Angie wasn't dressed in her usual style. No jeans, no leather jacket. She was wearing sweats, head to toe. Frank raised one eyebrow. Angie glanced down and realized what Frank was asking. “Someone followed me home,” she explained. “I didn't want them to follow me back here.” She pulled out her phone and speed-dialed Aiden's. “Hey, where are you?” There was a pause, while Aiden told her that he and Terry were taking a 'tour' of Detroit. “Oh. You've got a tail, too? Think you can lose it?” Another pause while Aiden explained that Terry had actually spotted the tail. “Well, let her drive. She'll be able to shake 'em.” Aiden started to make a comment about not wanting to let Terry drive HIS truck, but it was cut off with an “Ow! Hey!” and the sound of someone being punched in the arm. “Don't hurt him!” Angie shouted into the phone. “He's mine!” She started laughing. “See you when you lose 'em!” She was in a jovial mood, prompted by the entertaining gossip she'd picked up from the uni's, which was confirmed by the video and commentary from Frank and the others. “Oh, by the way,” Justin told her, hoping that she was in a good enough mood that she wouldn't hit him, “I beat your score on Angel 6.” That was her favorite video game. “Not for long!” she shot back as she hopped over the back of the couch, grabbing the game controller before Justin could get there. He joined her on the couch and started chatting about some of the other players of the online game, including some jerk that Justin had concluded must be a 15 year old from Florida.

It was almost 7pm when everyone was startled to hear a key in the back door's lock. Again, they hadn't heard a vehicle pull up. This time it was Aiden and Terry. Aiden was carrying two grocery bags of stuff, and Terry was a few steps behind him, checking to make sure they weren't followed from wherever they parked the truck. She locked the door carefully behind her when she came in. Aiden set the bags on the counter and headed toward the couch...and Angie. When Terry was sure that the door was secure, she turned and strode into the front room, holstering her weapon as she went. She stopped directly in front of Frank, grabbed him by the collar with both hands, and planted a kiss right on his mouth. Then she let go, looked him straight in the eyes and said, “I oughta just kill you.” “Hey, I thought I was going to have to rescue you!” Frank objected. “That was a pretty sophisticated rescue....” Terry admitted. “And the show was worth the Trans Am,” Justin told her. She looked quizzically from Frank to Justin and back, and Frank told her “Have a seat,” as he motioned to the couch. Justin got up to give her some room. Frank ran a cable from his laptop to the TV, and as Terry settled in she said, “I'm on the lam now, too.” Frank nodded then hit Play. Before long, Terry was sliding off the couch laughing. “Hey, be careful!” Aiden told her, laughing too. “Remember, you're horribly burned—because Stevens left you behind in the burning theater.” The others joined in the laughter. “I have her in the ICU,” Aiden told them. “And 'she's' wrapped in gauze. Though I suppose that sooner or later someone's gonna notice that Respiration Annie is missing....” No one watching them would have been able to tell that the eight people in the room were in serious trouble with both the Feds and some supernatural fire creature and its minions.

“So what did you mean about it being 'worth the Trans Am'?” Terry asked Justin. “Oh, I owe my cousin big time for sending him over to the Fox,” Justin told her. “So that guy WAS related to you!” Terry said. “I knew right away that it wasn't you, but I understand how they could make that mistake. What I wasn't sure about was whether it was just a well-timed accident that he showed up right then, or if you had something to do with it,” she said looking at Frank. Frank shrugged, then grinned. “It was Justin's idea,” he told her. “At least I blurred your face in the copy of the recording that I'll be posting on the internet!” Terry shook her head. Hopefully she'd still have a job when all this was over. “Well, I'm sorry about letting him get roughed up,” she said to Justin. “I was almost afraid that Stevens might shoot him. If he'd made any move to, I would've tried to stop him. Ya know, Stevens was sitting on me this whole time.” They all nodded. They'd figured as much. She went into the kitchen and pulled a bottle of single-malt Scotch out of one of the bags, and brought it and a handful of glasses back to the table. “Oh, there's BOLOs out on you two,” she said, looking at Frank and Justin. “I told you that, right?” She couldn't really remember when she'd actually talked to Frank last. The men nodded. Frank probably knew about it before Terry did, but there was no point in quibbling over details.

Karen and Leigh started putting the new groceries away and fixing some food for everyone, as they all spent a little time bringing Terry and Aiden up to speed on everything that had happened since the last time they'd been free, including Heidi Fiedler's death. “I decided early on not to say a thing to Stevens,” Terry told them when they were finished. “That really cheesed him off, but he knew better than to raise a hand to me in my own office. I'm just glad now that I didn't climb up on other people's heads. I've made a few friends along the way, and that's helped. Stevens has some kind of operation going on here, and he's sure you're going to do something to put the kibosh on it, Frank. But I'm confident that he has no idea that there's anything supernatural going on. He seems to be getting his directions from someone in DC. I was able to get that much from my phone the couple times he left me alone. But I didn't want to call you, in case Stevens' people were waiting to trace the call.” Frank nodded. “I've been keeping track of Stevens' calls since he left the Fox, too,” he told her. “And Horst's. I'm debating what to do with the information right now.” Then he played back the conversations he'd recorded, and had Leigh again translate Horst's. Terry nodded thoughtfully as she listened. “I'm thinking of seeing if I can use this to flip Stevens...or at least get him off our asses,” Frank told them all. “But it could be risky.” “Riskier than anything else so far?” Angie asked, grinning.

So Frank dialed Stevens' new number. “There's something you need to hear,” Frank said, and he started the recordings before Stevens' brain could register that it was him and hang up. Frank could tell that Stevens listened to everything, because the connection stayed open. “If you...” Frank didn't get any further before Stevens hung up on him. “Well.... I didn't have a chance to disguise my number or reroute the call,” Frank told the others. “So I think I'll go for a drive...in case Stevens tries to track the phone.” “Need any help?” Leigh and Terry asked at the same time. “Sure,” Frank answered. “You,” he pointed at Leigh, “in case Stevens comes looking for me and needs protection from something Unknown...and you,” he pointed at Terry, “in case he decides he doesn't want my help and sends someone to tail me instead.” Angie stood and pulled Aiden off the couch. “You need to get some sleep,” she told him, and the two headed for the stairs. Tony was already heading back toward the basement. “Need anyone else,” Justin asked. Frank shook his head. “She needs to save her strength for doing the séance later,” he said pointing at Karen, “and someone needs to stay here and keep Tony from blowing the place up.” Frank grinned and the three headed for the back door. Justin was right behind them, ready to lock the place up tight when they were out of sight.

Before the four Envoys headed back to the safe house, they discussed what tools Karen would need to study the bones they’d dug up. She had everything she would need at the lab on campus; but Frank, over the comm unit, quickly dismissed the idea of their going there. Stevens wanted Justin, so he would have someone watching all the places Karen might frequent, so he could have her either picked up or tailed. Leigh asked if the med kit that Aiden usually carried would have enough stuff to be useful. Karen and Frank didn’t see why not. With the medical tools in the kit, and a little ingenuity, the two of them should be able to figure out what killed the guy, at least. But the kit was heavier than hell, and Angie didn’t relish the thought of lugging it back to the safe house by herself. The four looked at one another. Justin was the strongest of them, but they weren’t sure if it would be safe for him to go to Aiden and Angie’s place to help. Frank quickly checked the ‘wanted’ status of all of them. Tony, Angie and Aiden didn’t seem to have any BOLOs, so Frank figured that Aiden and Angie’s place wasn’t being watched. It’d probably be safe enough for Justin to make a very brief stop there with Angie to get the kit.

So Leigh joined Karen in the Jeep, and the two headed straight back to the safe house while Justin and Angie made their detour. Leigh and Karen arrived about 2:30am, and they and Frank and Tony started carrying in the tarp-wrapped bones and the other items that had been moved from the houses to the Jeep. Justin and Angie had the guns and ammo, and the rest of the stuff, in Frank’s car. They got back to the safe house about 10 minutes after Leigh and Karen. While Karen cleared off the large ‘dining’ table and opened the tarp to start working on the skeleton, the other five finished emptying the Jeep and Frank’s car. It took Karen about a half hour just to get the bones laid out properly, before she could start studying them and making notes. She already knew the skeleton was of a male, and that he’d been dead about 5 years. A few quick measurements told her that he’d been about six feet tall. A few measurements of the skull suggested that he was Caucasian, and the hairs they’d found under and around the skull were blonde. She estimated his age at 25-30 years old. The general condition of his bones and teeth indicated that he was in relatively good health at the time of death There was no evidence of cutting or stabbing injuries on the bones. His right arm had been broken in the past and was fully healed before his death. The left foot had also been injured in the past, and showed the early signs of arthritis.

The right leg had been broken shortly before the time of death, snapped as if it was twisted while running. Several bones of the left hand were also broken, it appeared from blunt force trauma. The hyoid bone was intact, so the man most likely hadn’t been strangled. But the back of the skull and several of the cervical vertabrae showed damage from blunt force trauma as well. Frank had gone straight to work on the laptop the team had discovered in the Airstream, but downloading everything to his laptop and making back-ups would take a little time before he was able to do any serious snooping on it. So he came over to see how Karen was doing. Frank had managed to squeeze in a few forensics classes as electives when he was finishing up his psych degree, so he had a different perspective from which to look at the bones. He glanced through Karen’s notes, but the skull immediately caught his attention as Karen turned it to set it back on the table. “Looks like your guy here was hit with a shovel,” Frank commented. “Probably a few times.” He looked through the notes again, and began to picture the scene. “He probably tried to run, tripped, and broke his leg. As he was trying to crawl away from his attacker, he fended off another blow with his left hand. And then it took a couple more blows to the back of his head and neck to finish him off.”

Karen and the others nodded. It sounded plausible, but it was still an awful way to die. There was no easy way to get a positive ID, since they didn’t have ready access to DNA testing equipment, a reference sample, or the dental records of Josh Johnson. But the scenario made sense, and comparing what Karen had been able to learn from the skeleton to the photo they had of Josh and Melinda, it seemed like this was Josh. Then Justin asked if there wasn’t some way to reconstruct the guy’s face, like they did on the forensic shows on TV. Frank suddenly had one of those ‘smack your forehead’ moments. With a few digital photos and some measurements to input, he should be able to run the skull through the FBI’s facial reconstruction program and get a good approximation of the man’s face. He set the others to sorting through the rest of the stuff they’d collected, and he and Karen got the photos and measurements he needed. “Make sure to take any photos out of their frames,” Frank reminded the others over his shoulder. It was close to 5am by the time Frank was satisfied with the data he’d inputted into the program and Karen had carefully wrapped the bones up. There wasn’t much else they could do at that hour of the morning, and several members of the team were looking pretty ragged, so he suggested they all get some sleep.

As they headed up the stairs, Karen commented that it was a good thing that she was just giving mid-term exams the next day, since she’d be so short on sleep. Frank asked if she thought it was wise to go into work, since there would probably be one of Stevens’ men there waiting to follow her back to find Justin. “If we know they’re coming, can’t we just be ready for them?” Karen asked. She hated the idea of skipping work. Considering what her students paid to take her classes, it just didn’t feel right. Besides, wouldn’t it confuse Stevens more if she went on like everything was normal? Frank said that he wasn’t going to tell her what to do, the choice was hers. But if she was going, he wanted someone to go with her. Frank went back down to his computer, and the others followed him. He checked their ‘wanted’ status again. There were no arrest warrants issued, but Stevens had issued a BOLO for Justin and another for Frank. But Frank’s was more along the lines of a cop ‘Amber alert’–it suggested that Frank might be in trouble and unable to request assistance. Stevens had already been leaving messages for Frank everywhere that he knew Frank frequented. Leigh was listed as an ‘alien of interest.’ That left just Angie and Tony. Angie told them that she had a ‘class’ of her own to teach that afternoon, so she couldn’t do it. Plus, she was the only one, at the moment, who would be able to move freely in and out of DPD headquarters. Karen sighed. With most of the team unable to move around freely, and the probable risk of Stevens and his men following her back to the safe house (which would then no longer be ‘safe’), she knew that going in to work would be a bad and possibly dangerous idea.

Karen popped open her laptop and pulled up the mid-term exams, and emailed them in to the department office. Then she called in sick and let the secretaries know that she’d emailed in her exams and they’d need to be printed off and either Jaime or Chris would need to administer them. It was a little after 5am when Karen trudged back upstairs, and Justin, Angie, Tony and Frank were already in varying stages of preparing for bed. Leigh was still downstairs. She didn’t want to disturb the others, but she wanted to check her phone messages at home before she went to bed. She called her business line first, and found 14 messages in that voice-mailbox. Seven were from people either requesting her help with translation work, or students looking for internship opportunities. Two more were from fellow professors, both male, who said they hadn’t seen her around campus for a while and were wondering when she might be back. She knew that one of them was married and the other was not. Both were obviously hinting at something other than professional interest in her. The other 5 messages were from Professor Fruehauf. She sounded rather disturbed in the first one, saying that she had some distressing news and asking where Leigh was. Each successive message sounded increasingly distressed, and each one included Greta’s phone number, down to the ‘country code,’ and a request for Leigh to call her as soon as possible. The eight messages Leigh found on her personal line were all from Greta as well, and all were similar to the ones on her other line. As Leigh went out to the kitchen and started up the espresso machine, she calculated that it was about 11am in Germany. At least she wouldn’t be waking Greta.

“Liebchen, I’ve been so worried about you!” Greta exclaimed as she heard Leigh’s voice. Leigh tried to make the question sound nonchalant when she asked what had her mentor and friend so worried that she’d called and left 13 messages, as if there were nothing in particular about her life there in Detroit that could possibly prompt concern. It was Heidi, Greta told her. She had died in a fire in Michigan just a few days ago. Wasn’t Leigh in Michigan, too? And now she was having premonitions about Leigh dying horribly in a fire too. Leigh tried to clarify–was Greta just talking about really bad nightmares or was she...? These were not just nightmares, Greta explained. The dreams were quite vivid and they left little room for varied interpretations. She couldn’t explain it, since it didn’t really make any sense to her. But the visions were definitely some sort of a warning, and they had her very concerned for Leigh’s safety. “Are you involved in something dangerous?” Greta asked her. Leigh hemmed and hawed for a moment, about how all she was doing was translations and teaching the occasional class. But she could tell that Greta wasn’t buying it; Greta had known Leigh for too many years, including some of the worst as Leigh dealt with her husband’s ‘death.’ “It may be related to my research,” Leigh finally admitted. “Perhaps you should stop then,” Greta advised, sounding almost motherly. “Some things should not be disturbed.

Greta was a scientist before all else, but she was still very ‘Old World’ in her relationship with the world around her. She didn’t actually BELIEVE all the old wives’ tales that she studied, but she wasn’t above tossing a pinch of salt over her shoulder, or saying “Gesundheit” when someone sneezed. If there wasn’t something to those superstitions, then they would never have persisted for so long. As a scientist, it was just up to her to figure out the truth of the matter. That was what attracted Leigh to Greta in the first place. “Unfortunately, some things cannot just be ignored,” Leigh replied. “That isn’t exactly allaying my fears, dear,” Greta told her. Leigh sighed. “I never could avoid the truth with you,” she said to Greta, warm affection in her voice. “It is dangerous. But I have friends who are helping me, so you mustn’t worry.” “I cannot promise that,” Greta told her with a chuckle. “But I can promise to wait patiently to hear from you again when you have finished this business. And you must promise me that you will be careful, and that you will tell me everything at some point.” “I promise that I will tell you everything that you wish to hear, everything that I can,” Leigh agreed. “I have one more favor to ask of you, Liebchen,” Greta said. “Of course,” Leigh replied, “Anything.” “Please look into getting Heidi’s remains returned home,” Greta continued. “Her family would be so grateful for that.” “I will call the embassy as soon as I can,” Leigh assured her. When they’d said goodbye, Leigh finally climbed the stairs to head for bed. Everyone else was sleeping peacefully already, even Frank. Leigh settled into bed and hoped that her sleep would be just as quiet. She drifted off, and at first didn’t dream at all.

Justin’s internal alarm had woken him at 7am. A little later than his usual 6:30am, but considering he’d only gone to bed at about 5am, he wasn’t concerned. Listening to Karen snoring softly beside him, he was more concerned about how he was going to keep from waking her. She’d been pretty wiped out already by the time they got back from the cultists’ house and trailer in the wee hours of the morning; and there was nothing he could do to help her out because he’d already given her an ‘energy boost’ earlier yesterday morning. He laid there quietly, listening to the others in the room breathing. He rolled onto his side and watched Karen’s shoulder rise and fall, the movement almost imperceptible under the blankets, and he willed himself to fall back to sleep...just for a little bit longer...for her sake.... His eyes popped open again and he shifted to look at his watch lying on the night stand beside the bed. 9am. He was pretty sure that he was up to stay this time, so he rolled to the edge of the bed. Checking first to make sure that he hadn’t disturbed Karen, he swung his feet to the floor and tucked the covers down along Karen’s side as he sat up. Looked like everyone else was still asleep. Justin grabbed what he needed and headed to the bathroom, closing the door softly behind himself before he turned on the light. When he was done, he went downstairs and plugged the headphones into the PS2 box, hit the Mute button on the remote a second after he turned the TV on, and got comfortable on the couch as the game loaded.

As Leigh slept, her mind began to flip through some of the events of the past few days and process some of the information the team had discovered. Suddenly she realized that she was sitting in the balcony of an enormous theater. She looked around at the others sharing the balcony with her, then down to the seats fanned out below. The place was packed, and the air was filled with the quiet murmur of conversation. Everyone was in evening clothes, and when she looked down at her own clothes she saw that she was dressed up for a special event as well. She looked around at the theater itself. The decoration was in a Rococo style–red velvet curtains and seats, an intricate painting covering the ceiling, details picked out in real gold leaf. The buzz of conversation slowly dwindled away as the house lights dimmed; and Leigh and the other people in the theater looked to the stage, where a spotlight focused onto the center of the curtain. There was a ripple of movement and a handsome, German-looking man stepped out from a thin gap between the heavy sheets of velvet. Leigh realized immediately that it was Otto Horst.

He raised his hands and the last remaining whispers were silenced. “I would like to thank you all for coming here tonight,” Horst began. Somehow, though he didn’t appear to be miked or to be making any special effort, his voice filled the large room. “Tonight is a very special evening. Tonight, you will be the first to hear Wagner’s ‘lost’ opera–Junius.” The room erupted again with excited whispers. “I hope that you will be as pleased with this performance as I, and I thank you again for joining me on this momentous occasion.” Horst bowed with a flourish, and kept pace with the curtains as they separated and slid almost silently open. The house lights faded out, and the pit orchestra began to play, the first notes stirring Leigh’s memory. It was the same music she had heard in the other nightmares she’d had since the team began this job. The stage lights slowly brightened. At the back of the stage stood the chorus, silvery-grey under their white, hooded cloaks. Leigh counted 20 of them. And then she was swept up by the music. She had no idea how long she listened, not even noticing what was going on on the stage. Then she thought she smelled smoke. She opened her eyes to look around, expecting alarms at any moment and found herself lying in her bed in the safe house.

Leigh threw back the covers and sat up on the edge of the bed. She glanced around the room trying not to panic. Angie...Frank...Tony...Karen. In the dim light coming from the stairwell she could see the other four lying almost as they had been when she’d come upstairs about four hours ago. Justin.... He was the only one missing. She could see the tiny red light of the smoke detector on the ceiling of the stairwell. She rose and padded across the room, no longer quite sure if she could smell smoke or not. As she got to the bottom of the stairs, she could see Justin hunched forward on the couch, headphones on and a game controller in his hands, playing one of the video games he and Angie seemed to favor. Looking up toward the front door, Leigh could see the light of another of the smoke detectors glowing unwaveringly. A glance at the clock in the corner of the TV screen told her that it was a few minutes after 10am. She went to the kitchen, and the smoke detector at the top of the basement stairs appeared to be working too. Surely at least one of them would have gone off if there was smoke here in the safe house. So it was only in her dream. If the dream hadn’t been so vivid, she would have been relieved. Instead, she felt slightly on edge. She opened the cabinets looking for something that would make her feel better. Of course...oatmeal. Warm, comforting. As she set a pan of water on the stove to heat up, the sound of the steel-cut oats pouring over the edge of the canister and into the measuring cup brought back happier memories of her childhood....

One by one, the others began to wake during the next hour. Karen’s brain was creeping toward consciousness as she realized that Justin wasn’t lying next to her. Even though he almost always was up before her in the morning, that realization was still the first thing that came to her mind as she woke. She was pondering that when the first ring of her ‘throw-away’ phone startled her the rest of the way awake. She still wasn’t used to that ring-tone. But they were cheap phones and she had little else to choose from. She fumbled for it as she sat up, and rubbed her eyes with one hand as she flipped open the phone. “Karen, honey,” her mom’s voice said cheerfully, “I hope I’m not interrupting your class.” “Unh, no, Mom,” Karen replied. “Actually, I called in sick today.” “Oh, dear,” Cathy’s voice said with concern. “Are you OK?” “Yeah,” Karen told her. “I was just up a little late putting the finishing touches on the exams. And since all I had planned for my classes today was the tests....” “Oh good!” Cathy sighed with relief. “As long as you’re alright. Anyway, what I called about.... There’s been a change of plans. Edward, the dear, didn’t check with me.... He’s gotten tickets to an invitation-only concert, something classical, at the Fox tomorrow night. Since we were supposed to be having the Halloween party, I asked if he could get extra tickets for you and your friends....” Cathy paused, obviously waiting for a response from Karen. “Wow, Mom, that sounds really nice....” Karen said. “I hoped you wouldn’t be too disappointed,” Cathy told her, buoyed by the false excitement in Karen’s voice. Classical was never her thing. Of course, neither was the idea of a costume Halloween party at Edward’s house.... God, she really needed to figure out how to get her mom away from Edward.

“I was thinking that maybe we could have dinner together before hand...and all ride together to the theater in the limo,” Cathy went on. “Oh, yes... Did I mentioned that Edward rented a limo? He really does spoil me!” “You deserve it, Mom,” Karen told her...and she meant that. “Dinner before would be great. What time should we be there?” Karen asked her. “Well, the concert begins at 10pm....” Cathy said. “Gosh, that’s kind of late for a concert, isn’t it?” Karen asked, interrupting her mom. “That’s exactly what I said to Edward,” Cathy answered. “But he said that it’s a very special event....” “Well, I suppose that the people who get invited to something like this really don’t have to worry about being up for work the next morning,” Karen said. “No, I guess not,” her mom agreed. “Does Justin have a tux or a nice suit?” she asked Karen. “Both, I think,” Karen told her, “assuming my lack of cooking skills hasn’t caused him to lose too much weight.” The two laughed. “But I guess this means I’ll need to go out to do a little shopping for myself,” Karen said, more false excitement coloring her voice. She hated clothes-shopping. That, more than her lack of fashion-sense, was probably the biggest reason her ‘pre-Justin’ wardrobe consisted mostly of denim and flannel. “I had a feeling you would,” Cathy said cheerfully. “Maybe I’ll drag Angie along,” Karen added. “Well, you just let me know if any of your other friends have a change of plans and want to go too,” Cathy told her. “Edward only got five extra tickets, but I’m sure he could get a few more.” “I will, Mom,” Karen said, and the two said goodbye.

When Karen got downstairs, she looked wide awake and not entirely happy. Using the same fake-cheerful voice she used with her mom, she told the others about the change in plans. Leigh almost choked on the spoonful of oatmeal she’d just put in her mouth. “Frank, I think that I must have picked up a little something from you about having those prescient dreams,” Leigh said after she swallowed. She went on to describe to the others the dream she’d had. As she described the theater, Frank brought up the Fox Theater website. When he scrolled down to the photos of the interior, Leigh told them that it was exactly like in her dream. “Horst said it was Wagner’s lost opera ‘Junius’,” Leigh said, but Karen could see that none of the others had recognized the name. “That’s the same as the name of the guy in the story Professor Fruehauf mentioned in her letter,” Karen reminded them. The others looked puzzled. “Remember? The guy who torched kittens and puppies? His neighbors accused him of witchcraft?” Suddenly the ‘light bulbs went on’ as everyone’s memories were jogged. The connection didn’t bode well for the concert attendees. Leigh began to try and describe the music, telling the others that she’d heard it in her other nightmares as well. “That sounds just like what Tom was playing in his truck,” Justin said, “on the way to Horst’s house. Kind of rousing, uplifting stuff.” Frank didn’t say a thing as he shuffled aside some of the papers sitting beside his laptop and picked up one of the unlabeled, homemade CDs and dropped it into the open drive. A moment later, sound began to pour out of the laptop’s speakers and the light of recognition went on in Leigh, Justin and Frank’s eyes. It was the same music each had heard before.

“Hey! We’re not being brainwashed by that stuff, are we?!” Justin asked, sounding concerned. Leigh didn’t say anything, but Frank could see that the music was disturbing her, too. He stopped the disk, then pulled up an acoustic pattern-recognition program. It would be good to know if this stuff could ‘brainwash’ them. He plugged in a small set of earphones and pushed the buds into his ears as he hit the Play button again. As Frank studied the signal for any pattern he couldn’t hear, something in a range below human hearing that could carry a subliminal message, Justin opened a box and pulled out a pair of expensive-looking ear plugs and a tiny screwdriver. The ear plugs were the type used in construction and by the ground crews at airports. They were adjustable, so that a person could block sounds at a particular wave-length or decibel-range but still hear things outside that range. Justin fiddled with the ear plugs, and Frank hummed along with the melody. “How did I ever think this was Mozart?” Frank mumbled to himself. “I must’ve been asleep.” He grinned at his private joke. It was the same music he’d heard in his dreams, too. The music was played on a synthesizer. It wasn’t the greatest quality, but it was obviously Wagner, very moving, very Nordic. It just was not any Wagner any of them had heard before they started this investigation.

Next, Leigh haltingly began to tell them about her conversation with Greta. She wasn’t quite willing to just blurt out that Heidi had gone up in flames a few nights ago too, but Karen caught her drift. “She’s a crispy critter too, isn’t she?” Karen asked her. Leigh just nodded. Karen shook her head. She’d had a feeling that might happen. The thought of Heidi having been ‘disposed of’ just like all those others early Sunday morning sparked another thought in Karen’s mind. “Where’s Terry?” she asked Frank, hoping that maybe she’d called him and he just hadn’t thought to mention it. No such luck. She could tell by his silence and the silence of the others that they’d all just realized, too, that Terry hadn’t come back last night. They hadn’t seen or heard from her since she’d gone in to turn over her case notes on the fire-deaths. “Can you check the Police HQ again?” Justin asked. “Maybe she’s still doing cop stuff,” he said hopefully. Frank checked the security cameras. Unfortunately, the DPD couldn’t afford to put them everywhere in the building, so they were carefully portioned out to the most vulnerable spots, the holding cells, the entrances, booking. Other spots just had dummy cameras put up, like in the squad room. Luckily, there was a camera just outside the squad room that caught a little of the inside, through the doorway. They could see that the ‘Men in Black’ were still all over the place, but there was no sign of Terry. Frank accessed the recordings from the cameras at about the time Terry headed over there last night, and they watched her go in and head up toward her office. But there was no sign of her after that.

“Could you find out where Heidi’s body is?” Leigh asked, after they’d looked for Terry through all the video footage Frank could download. “Greta was hoping that I could help get it returned to her family.” Frank did a quick search of area ME records for all fire-related deaths. As he was working on that, Justin and Tony were having a discussion in another part of the room about the potential for making fire-suppressing rounds for the paint-ball-style guns that Justin had designed. Tony wasn’t sure if, given the relatively small size of the rounds, they’d be useful or not. Frank sorted through the files as they came in, and finally stopped at one record. “She might be this Jane Doe from a week ago,” he told them. He scanned through the file. “The case doesn’t seem to fit with any of the other incidents, but it looks like they’ve flagged all burning deaths to be rechecked.” He looked some more, opening and closing a couple files, then stopping at another. It was the coroner’s report. “Looks like the flesh burned at a very high temp...unusually high for the circumstances. The body was found in a hotel room. The arson investigator found evidence of cigarettes and a melted lighter, and called it an accidental fire.” Leigh thought for a moment. “She did smoke, if I remember correctly,” she told the others. “But she was far too conscientious to have left a cigarette burning or to have smoked in bed. Wasn’t there any ID found in the room?” Frank looked through the file. “She was checked into the hotel under her own name,” he said, “but they couldn’t find anything concrete in the room or on the remains to confirm her identity. Until they can get the dental and medical records from Germany, they have to keep her listed as a ‘Jane Doe’ and keep her remains in the freezer at the morgue.”

“So...are we going to the concert tomorrow,” Karen asked. She said it in a way that sounded like she was asking Justin, Angie and Tony. But she was looking straight at Frank when she spoke. She trusted his instincts about situations like that implicitly, and would have called her mom and cancelled immediately if Frank had suggested that going might be a bad idea. Frank shrugged. “No worse than a Halloween party,” was all he offered. “Think you can get the plans, especially for security measures, for the Fox?” Justin asked him. “I’d like to know what we’ll be dealing with if we’re stuck in there.” The hint of a grin crept across Frank’s face. “I suppose I could get you something,” he told Justin, “considering I swept the place a few times before special events, when I was still with DHS.” He started to recreate the layout on another of the laptops in the room. “We need to figure out how to get clothes for this, too,” Karen said. “Huh, yeah,” Justin agreed. “My tux and suits weren’t any of the things I had Frank and Leigh bring back here from the house.” “Maybe ‘Princess’ could help,” Leigh suggested. “He does have good taste, and he should still have the measurements he took for your wedding.” “Yeah,” Karen agreed. “Maybe he could pick out stuff for everyone and have it delivered to Aiden and Angie’s place, since that’s not being watched. Because we can’t go to him. I won’t put him in that kind of danger.” “Sure,” Angie added. “I could just pick it up after work and bring it back here.” “I just hope I haven’t gotten too much bigger since the wedding,” Karen groaned. “It wouldn’t matter to me if you had,” Justin said, coming up and hugging her from behind. “Hey, if you’ve changed your mind about going,” Karen said to Frank, nodding at both him and Leigh, “I’ll have to call my mom and see if Edward can still get you tickets.” “Oh...I’m sure he can...” Frank said with a smirk.

Justin and Tony went back to their discussion while Frank worked on the floor-plans for the Fox. “Do you think it would be helpful to talk to Heidi,” Leigh asked Karen, suggesting a seance in not so many words. “Or, maybe Josh?” Justin suggested. “Maybe Tom, too,” Karen said thoughtfully. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to do that many seances in one day, but each one might have something useful to say, to help them figure out how to stop whatever was going to happen tomorrow night. But if she had to guess, she’d have said that Heidi was the one most likely to help them. Josh might not have the most pertinent information since he’d died 5 years ago. And Tom would probably be unwilling to help any more than Karen was able to force him to. Maybe Bethany Holmes could help them, too. But she might not know anything about the bigger picture about Salamanders. It seemed like the ‘cultist families’ lived a pretty insulated life in their little compound. She thought about it a little more, as everyone else worked on their own projects–Frank, the laptop and the plans for Justin; Justin, plans for killing the Salamanders, however many there were, without destroying the Fox; Angie, getting ready for the IED training she’d be teaching that afternoon; Tony, his bazookas; and Leigh, an anonymous letter to the German consulate regarding Heidi’s death and getting her remains returned home. They all hoped that, wherever Terry was, she was safe.