The first challenge with magic is figuring out how an effect is performed.

“It wasn’t a spell,” Tam said, looking over the reports which detailed the loss of the drug shipment.

“How can you tell?” Val asked. She was reading the same reports but was looking for different markers in the data. In her world, things were stolen by people, not magic, so she was searching for a window in which a team of thieves could have lifted the pills while they were in transit.

“Because it happened the same way three times,” Tam said. “Spells aren’t great for repeating the same effect over and over.”

“What other kinds of magic could be in play?” Anna asked.

“We can check with James, he’s better read on the arcane than I am, but if I had to do something like that this, I’d use some of the same effects that I use in my stage show,” Tam said.

“You think someone switched the shipment out with sleight of hand?” Val asked, looking up from her screen.

“More or less, yeah,” Tam said. “The key with most illusions is to direct the audience’s attention away from what’s actually happening and into a narrative that follows a logical path until the moment when you reveal the trick and shatter their expectations.”

“Someone substituted a shipment of rocks for drugs in order to deceive the people transporting the crates,” Anna asked. “Why the deception?”

“Stealing is easier when people don’t know you’ve done it?” Val suggested.

“True, however this wasn’t a job where they took the easy route was it?” Anna said.

“Yeah, if they were looking for easy, then simply taking the shipment and leaving the empty crates behind would have been a lot simpler,” Tam said. “Going to the trouble to replace the crates that were filled with bottles of pills with ones that were filled with bottles of stones couldn’t have been quick or cheap to pull off.”

“Can you pull up the shipping manifests?” Val asked as a thought occurred to her. “I want to see both the departure scan and the arrival one.”

“You’re thinking there will be a discrepancy in weight recorded?” Anna asked.

“Yeah,” Val said. “The most likely candidates to pull this off would be people working for the shipping company. They have the most unsupervised access to the packages.”

“Bad news there,” Tam said as she clicked a pair of documents over to her compatriots. “It looks like the weight measures both outgoing and incoming are the same.”

“How about at the loading docks inbound into the shipping facility?” Val asked.

“That’ll take me a second,” Tam said. “They came in on a truck from the manufacturer along with a bunch of other medications.”

“Does the weight on the shipping manifest correspond to the value on the manufacturer’s invoice?” Anna asked.

“They didn’t weigh the packages individually on the inbound side,” Tam said, “Just the truck’s contents as a whole, and yeah, those match up, but the margin of error is big enough that it’s not conclusive for our packages being exactly the same.”

“We have one possible failure point in the delivery chain then,” Anna said.

“Can you pull up the profiles and credit histories for the people working at the shipping facility?” Val asked. Anna was usually the one who followed the money trail, but Val was a quick study.

“I didn’t see any significant purchases made by any of them recently,” Tam said.

“Look for anyone with considerable amounts of debt,” Anna said.

“That would be everyone there except the senior management,” Tam said.

“So if any of them were bought out, they’re too smart to flaunt it. That makes this a bit harder,” Val said.

“Not necessarily,” Anna said. “We can eliminate many of them from consideration because of the type of debt they are carrying.”

“How so?” Val asked, turning to listen to Anna with the same focused attention she used in listening to teachers whose classes engaged her imagination.

“For the wealthy, debt is something they can juggle and use as a tool,” Anna said. “For the poor, it is an inexorable crushing force which they can either stave off or be driven under by. The workers in the shipping center barely make enough money to afford food and lodging. One had a car breakdown this week. Without going further into debt, he wouldn’t have been able to fix it and without a working car he would have lost his job, beginning a downward spiral which is difficult to recover from. Another is paying for the medical bills for her spouse. If she runs out of money, her spouse will die. Neither they, nor anyone else in their sort of situation, has the luxury of sitting on a windfall.”

“I’ve seen that,” Val said. “But it doesn’t mean that they’re not smart enough to hide the money well. Just because they’re poor doesn’t mean they can’t be clever and smart. The car guy could have paid off the mechanic under the table, and the medical bills lady could have arranged financing which her new boss paid for instead.”

“That is true too,” Anna said. “But there is another reason to clear their names in this; they aren’t the weakest point for someone to work on. Tam could you describe the handling cycle the drugs go through?”

“They’re manufactured at Kleinwell Medical’s lab in Rhode Island,” Tam said. “Before packaging they’re run through a series of spot inspections to verify that the batch is viable.”

“That is one potential failure point,” Anna said.

“Once they’re packaged, they’re loaded onto a truck and shipped to the distribution center,” Tam said.

“Looks like they travel by air, so they’re sent up to Logan airport in Boston?” Val asked.

“Yep, though the distribution center is a few miles from the airport. It makes it easier to collect things I guess,” Tam said.

“That gives us two more points of failure then,” Anna said. “The numbers at the distribution center may be the same for incoming and departing packages because it’s the handlers at the airport who are responsible for the change.”

“There’s one problem with that,” Tam said. “These packages are bonded and sealed, and the ID labels aren’t easy to tamper with. Before the packages leave the distribution center they’re inspected by the FDA and then placed under an official seal which is only broken when they reach their destination.”

“So either someone is able to forge that seal, or the drugs are being replaced after they arrive?” Val asked.

“I wish it was that simple,” Tam said. “In all three cases, the people who reported the problem with the drugs were the inspectors on the arrival end. They were the first people to see the drugs once they were brought off the plane.”

“So the drugs are inspected, they’re placed in a sealed container, and then the next time they’re opened they’ve transformed into rocks,” Val said. “And this isn’t some mystical stuff? Just regular old boring theft.”

“Maybe not all that regular,” Anna said. “Tam, if you had to pull off this effect for a magic show, how would you do it?”

“Do I get to bribe people?” Tam asked. “A lot of effects are easier to do with an assistant.”

“Let’s say no,” Anna suggested. “The more people involved in a crime, the less likely it is to be carried out in secret.”

“Ok, let’s see then,” Tam said. “I’d start with a crew to replace the drugs. Probably three people total. Two for lugging the rocks around, and one, probably me, to run interference if need be.”

“Where would you strike?”

“The easiest spot would be the receiving end,” Tam said. “All the hard work has been done by that point, I’d just need to step in, grab the drugs, and get out of there. Except if I did that, I wouldn’t bother leaving the rocks behind.”

She was silent for a moment before her eyes lit up.

“Oh! That’s very clever! Good job guys, or, I mean, bad job, they’re definitely evil those scumbags. Clever, but evil.”

“What did they do?” Val asked.

“The far end of the delivery chain is the easy spot to snatch the drugs from,” Tam said. “But that’s where everyone is going to be looking. By having the missing drugs turn up there, our magician thieves are directing the audience’s attention as far away from where they’re making the switch as they can.”

“The earliest they can be switching them out is after the inspection though,” Val said. “And you said the drugs are sealed right after that.”

“Right, which is why you switch them out even before then,” Tam said. “A principal with a magic trick is that when you show the audience the cards to prove that the deck isn’t stacked, you do it after the deck has been well and truly stacked.”

“How would they pass the initial inspection though?” Anna asked.

“Let me confirm something,” Tam said and dove into a few more reports on her laptop. “Oh and can you tell Darya that I am in love with the people who wrote these reports. They were so good about including exact details.”

“What sort of details do you need?” Val asked, looking through her own copies of the reports.

“Here we go,” Tam said. “Check out the size of the stones found in the vials.”

“They’re 4.8 millimeters tall and 9.7 millimeters in diameter beads?” Val said. “That’s fairly tiny.”

“Tiny, and very regular,” Tam said.

“Which means they were manufactured,” Anna said.

“Yes, and now look at the dimensions of the original tablets,” Tam said.

“It says they were 5 millimeters tall with a diameter of 10 millimeters,” Val said.

“The rocks fit inside the pills?” Anna said.

“The rocks were the pills,” Tam said. “Someone painted them with a degradable covering – maybe sugar or or cornstarch, something that could be bleached white if need be to match the original pill. I bet if something does a chemical analysis of the vials there will be an agent which devours the covering, a bacteria or something maybe, and thin film of waste product at the bottom of the vials.”

“How would that pass inspection though?” Val asked.

“The FDA is tremendously underfunded,” Tam said. “Inspections, when they even happen, are almost always limited to visual confirmation. Full chemical analysis is too costly and time consuming to use except in instances where fatalities have occurred.”

“Which didn’t happen in this case because the true nature of the pills was discovered before anyone took one. Ok, so is Kleinwell behind this? They were the ones who made the pills right?” Val asked.

“It is unlikely this was their doing,” Anna said. “Regardless of how or when the pills were tampered with, the losses will go back to Kleinwell, as will the responsibility. They have nothing to gain by destroying their own products. At least not in this manner.”

“Yeah, and with PrimaLux as one of their competitors we have a much better candidate for who’s at fault,” Tam said. “My guess is that Prima is swapping out the shipment during its delivery to the distribution center. That’s the moment I would target. Pick up the real drugs in one truck, arrive at the shipping warehouse with another truck with the fake pills already loaded.”

“Nice. Remind me if I ever need to do a crime to have you plan the caper,” Val said.

“That seems to fit,” Anna said. “The replacement allows the theft to go unnoticed for as long as possible, and obscures the moment when it occurred. The next question is, why steal these drugs in the first place?”

“Are they worth much?” Val asked.

“Antiretrovirals are literally life saving drugs,” Tam said. “Their distribution is complicated, but, yeah, they could be worth a lot.”

“Maybe it’s not about the value of the drugs,” Anna said, her voice growing distant. “Look at the agencies which the drugs were being sold to.”

Tam and Val both perused the documents that Anna passed over to them.

“It looks like they’ve had to place new orders,” Val said.

“And none of them reordered from Kleinwell,” Tam said.

“So they’re trying to drive Kleinwell out of business by getting all of the buyers to go elsewhere?” Val asked. “That sounds like Prima.”

“There’s more to it than that,” Anna said. “Look at how much the buyers are paying for their replacement orders.”

“Ok, that is weird,” Tam said.

“It’s less than what Kleinwell was charging?” Val said.

“It’s less than Kleinwell’s cost to produce the drugs,” Tam said.

“This isn’t about driving Kleinwell out of business,” Anna said. “This is about driving everyone out of the antiretroviral business.”

“Why would they do that?” Val asked. “It can’t just be about money.”

“It’s not,” Anna said. “They’re testing a strategy. They’re trying to establish a monopoly on essential pharmaceuticals.”

“Why?” Tam asked. “It would be crushingly expensive to sustain that, and people could break the monopoly as soon as the prices rose.”

“That’s what we need to find out,” Anna said. “Before they put their plan in motion.”

Val had no idea how her scalp could hold as much tension as her lower back. It seemed unreasonable that a simple head massage could melt her body like butter and yet, as she lay on the table and felt her instructor’s hands carefully working up from the base of her neck to the top of her head, Val felt so much stress leaving her body that she was sure the only thing that would be left would be the most relaxed puddle in existence.

“Take you time,” Teresa, her instructor, said when she was done. “I’ll leave a bottle of water on the counter here. When you’re ready, you can get up, slowly like we talked about. Make sure to drink some water, and then get dressed. We’ll review the techniques I showed you afterwards.”

“Thank you,”  Val mumbled through a haze of relaxation as Teresa left the room.

Part of any training regime was getting the care needed to recover from the stress the training placed on the body. Val had used massage therapy before when it was available, and was willing to give back rubs to friends and family whenever they asked, but it had taken more than a little prodding from Anna before Val considered the possibility of getting real training in putting her hands to gentle uses as well as the violent ones she normally specialized in.

Her first thought had been to seek private lessons, in case she turned out to be terrible at it, but Teresa had convinced her that only by working with a group of other students would she gain the diversity of experience she needed to understand people’s differing needs.

“So how was class?” Tam asked when Val got back to the Second Chance Club.

“Pretty good,” Val said, setting down her backpack and grabbing another bottle of water from the common room’s refrigerator. “I didn’t break anybody.”

“Was that a concern?” Anna asked, looking up from the letter she was reading.

“I guess not,” Val said. “I was just worried that my callouses would mess things up. My hands aren’t exactly lily soft.”

“And did anyone complain about that?” Anna asked.

“We haven’t started working on each other yet,” Val said. “That’ll be later. For now I’ve just got some anatomy and physiology homework to go over, plus the lesson notes.”

“How’s it feel being back in school?” Tam asked. She was tinkering with a wrist mounted device which sported a number of barrels that ringed her forearm. Val knew it wasn’t a firearm from a brief glance but what its actual purpose was she could only speculate. Probably something for Tam’s next stage show. Those took roughly a thousand times more work than Val would have imagined and, in Tam’s case, always seemed to involve dozens of new gadgets.

“You know, sitting in a class was a little weird,” Val said. “I remember being so bored most of the time, but this stuff was pretty interesting. Even the homework Teresa assigned doesn’t seem that bad. I mean I always hated homework, but this is stuff I kind of want to know more about. I’m just not used to the idea that school might be fun I guess.”

“If you need any help with your studies, let me know,” Anna said.

“You took Anatomy and Physiology as part of your finance degree?” Val asked, ready to believe that Anna had studied stellar physics and ancient Sumerian too if Anna said she had. The older woman’s breadth of knowledge seemed endless sometimes.

“No, but my daughter did and I acted as her study partner when she was preparing for her examines. That was several years back but I doubt the human body has evolved much since then,” Anna said.

“Oh yeah, how’s Darya doing?” Tam asked, looking up from her work.

“The usual trials and tribulations of medical work,” Anna said.

“Wait, you have a daughter?” Val asked, shaking her head to help the new information settle in properly.

“Two in fact,” Anna said. “Darya is the older.”

“Were you married?” Val asked, her curiosity momentarily eclipsing her normal reserve about prying into people’s lives.

“Yes, a few times, though not to Darya’s father,” Anna said, with a wistful smile.

“I can’t believe I didn’t know that,” Val said.

“This is the first that you’ve asked,” Anna said.

“I don’t think I knew it either,” Tam said. “Did you have to raise Darya on your own then?”

“No, Ishak has always been a part of her life,” Anna said. “He’s still a dear friend, but we were never interested in marriage. His life was in the air and I couldn’t imagine competing with that.”

“How about your other daughter?” Val asked.

“Sonya?” Anna said. “Hers was a different story. Miguel and I married after her birth and were together for a three whole months before I realized what as mistake I’d made. He left our lives shortly after the divorce but I believe Sonya has spoken to him a few times since his grand daughter was born.”

“You have grandchildren?” Val asked, visible stunned.

“Three so far,” Anna said. “Two girls and a boy. Darya’s daughter is older than her cousins. You seem surprised?”

“I guess I’ve never thought of you as old enough to have grandchildren,” Val said.

“I have earned each and every one of these,” Anna said, passing her hand through her silver grey hair.

“Wow,” Val said. “Do they know what you do with the Second Chance Club?”

“They’re familiar with the general details,” Anna said. “I leave out the most unusual aspects of our missions though.”

“It’s a little tough not being able to talk freely about all of this, isn’t it?” Tam asked.

“I thought Charlene didn’t care if we told people about magic and the rest?” Val asked.

“She doesn’t,” Anna said. “But for people who haven’t experienced it, some of the claims we might make can be a little hard to believe.”

“Especially when you factor in the need for discretion in terms of keeping people’s personal information private,” Tam said.

“Ok, I can see that,” Val said. “I can’t exactly tell my sister that the Queen of Unicorns is living in Vancouver as a nanny. I mean I could, but she wouldn’t believe me.”

“She might,” Anna said. “But it would be a disservice to Queen Amaltheia to share too much information about her. You have a good relationship with Elena, so you could probably give your sister enough details to convince her that unicorns were real. You could even tell her they are working to connect with young lives to regain the wonder they need.  The question is whether it would be worth the effort. Especially if you couldn’t tell her more than the generalities about them.”

“Probably not,” Val said. “Just a blanket ‘I work with some weird stuff’ covers most of what she needs to know. Anything else would come off like bragging I think.”

“And if it turns out she does need a unicorn’s help then she’ll probably know to come to you anyways,” Tam said.

“Yeah, anything strange starts happening at home, she’s under orders to hit me up immediately with a red alert,” Val said.

“That’s why Darya writes letters,” Anna said. “She says if it can wait for a letter then it’s nothing I have to worry about. I think she worries that I will take on too many problems if she lets me.”

“So, she’s met you then?” Tam teased.

“I am much better than I used to be,” Anna said. “If you met me before I joined the club, you would have known a very different woman.”

“I’m trying to picture you with less chill,” Val said. “It’s kind of scary.”

“Oh I didn’t scare anyone in those days,” Anna said. “The work I did was all about building relationships. That only works when people trust you, and trust sustained can be an even more dangerous weapon than treachery.”

“So what changed then?” Tam asked.

“I was more focused and driven then,” Anna said. “That sounds like a good thing, but being laser focused on one objective after another? It’s not always a healthy way to live. We need to step back and see the world around us too. There were so many good things in my life that I never noticed, or didn’t appreciate enough until my illness made me slow down.”

“Was that the cancer that you mentioned fighting off?” Val asked. She knew that cancer treatments were lengthy, difficult affairs. She’d watched a grandmother and two uncles go through long battles with it. Somehow in Anna’s case though Val had always pictured Anna as simply growling at the tumor and it spontaneously going into remission because it was afraid of the attracting any more of Anna’s attention.

“Yes,” Anna said. “I had to change a lot of my habits and find a less stressful, and healthier way to live.”

“And now you stalk ghosts, and face down armed gunmen?” Val asked.

“Yes, like I said, healthier and less stressful,” Anna said with a smile that was both sincere and disturbingly honest.

Val had two amazing grandmothers, but adopting Anna as a third was more than a little tempting on occasion.

“So what kind of troubles is Darya having these days?” Tam asked. “She works for Doctors Without Borders now right? Is she in the field?”

“No, she did a stint in Cambodia but she’s back in France at the moment,” Anna said. “Apparently they’ve been having supply issues and she’s trying to work with the manufacturer to get to the root of the problem.”

“Who’s the company she’s talking to?” Tam asked, turning to her laptop.

“Kleinwell Medical,” Anna said, scanning through the letter. “Why do they sound familiar?”

“Because they showed up a report I passed around last week,” Tam said, her brow knitting together.

“The one on PrimaLux?” Val asked. “Were they one of Prima’s shell companies?”

“No, they’re a competitor,” Tam said. “I had them marked as someone who might have more inside information because they’d picked up a few of Prima’s ex-employees.”

“We could be jumping at shadows, but I am not inclined to assume the problems my daughter is facing are due to benign mistakes,” Anna said. “Charlene has asked us to allow her to pursue PrimaLux, but how would the two of you feel about investigating this before we receive an official request?”

“They literally cursed one of my best servers,” Tam said. “I am definitely in.”

“You don’t even have to ask,” Val said. They had her back, she had theirs. It was a simple relationship, and one Val intended to never lose if she could help it.

“Thank you,” Anna said. “We should begin by discovering what the supply problems Darya writes about entail.”

“Not a problem,” Tam said. “I think I’ve got the emails we need here. Also, tell Darya that your name and birthday are a terrible password.”

“You should change it for her,” Val suggested with a smile.

“Nah, no reason for her to have a hard day tomorrow,” Tam said. “I scrambled their IT admin’s password instead. His was even worse. Hopefully it’ll be a learning experience for him that he can share with the whole organization.”

“Clever,” Val said. “So what’s wrong with the supplies?”

“It says here that several shipments of antiretroviral drugs were misplaced,” Tam said.

“Misplaced?” Anna asked.

“Yeah, I’m checking what that means.” Tam read through several emails with a quick glance at each. “Okay. That’s….we definitely need to get ahead of this.”

“What did you find?” Anna asked, putting her letter down.

“Well, ‘misplaced’ is the euphemism they’re using because the actual reports say that the pills left the dock in the U.S. in fine shape but by the time they arrived in Cambodia they had been transformed into black rocks.”

“How does a drug change into rock?” Val asked.

“Magic,” Tam said.

The arrival of the King and Queen of the Sunset Isles was greeted by no fanfare, and no crowds, and yet it was majestic beyond even the most lavish display of wealth and circumstance Anna had ever seen.

They entered in a procession, leading their court and guards, down a long forest path which had been swept clean of leaves and fallen branches. Where their hooves touched the ground the world turned golden and was bathed in a warm, inner light.

The earthly creatures of the forest, one moment boisterous and raucous, stilled their voices to a respectful silence as the chorus of song which accompanied the royal court wafted through the trees and rang off the roots of the forest.

“Am I seeing things or are they glowing?” Val asked in as low a whisper as she could manage.

“They’re luminous creations,” Tam whispered back. “Unicorns have more in common with sunshine and starlight than they do with flesh and blood.”

“And that’s been a large part of their problem,” Anna said.

She watched the stately creatures advance, and allowed the awe and grandeur they were wreathed in to wash over her senses.

The King and Queen were massive, larger than a Clydesdale by several hands. Their court and guards were a more diverse lot, ranging in size from a tiny pony to elegant giants almost on par with their sovereigns. Where the King was the brightest white and the Queen the darkest black, their court ran the gamut of hues and colors, each one mixing a unique set of colors to make the assemblage a glorious rainbow.

When the procession reached the clearing where their Earthly reception was waiting for them, the Queen stepped forward and spoke.

“Greetings children of the Sixth Age,” the Queen said, acknowledging Anna, Tam, and Val with a glance. “You carry the flowers of friendship?”

Anna stepped forward, bowed her head and held forth the Peruvian Lily she’d received only a few minutes prior thanks to an express delivery Jimmy B had coordinated.

“We do Your Majesty,” Anna said. “We offer both these flowers and our vows of amity as a pledge of sincere hearts and kind intentions.”

The language was ritualized, as many ceremonies involving royalty tend to be. It was hard to express true emotions when bound by that form of communication but Duchess Luq had been able to cover the nuances well enough in the time they’d spent together that Anna wasn’t concerned about causing a diplomatic incident in the process of trying to secure an ally.

“We accept your intentions and declare you friends of our court so long as your flowers bloom,” the Queen said, reciting what seemed to be familiar words with a hint of mirth in her voice.

The flower pledge was designed for introductory associations, with both sides bound to non-aggression for a limited period. In cases where the acquaintance would be longer than the days the flower would remain in bloom, the understanding was that a later pledge would be undertaken once the two sides had more familiarity with each other.

“”Duke Wellbagun, Duchess Luq,” the King said, stepping forward as well, “You have made us new allies?”

“Yes sire,” Duke Wellbagun said, bowing to his liege. “May I present Anna Ilyina, Le Li Tam, and Valentina Perez of Charlene Potestates Court.”

“Ah, so not entirely new then I see,” the Queen said. “It has been many years since we last visited the Court of Second Chances.”

“And do tell, Wellbagun, what led you to seek the aid of the Charlene’s troop?” the King said. There was mirth in his tone as well, an unspoken teasing that the Duke and Duchess seemed doomed to endure due to the discrepancy between their reported success and their actual achievements.

“We encountered some difficulties at a late hour and knew of no one else to turn to,” Duke Wellbagun said.

“And the nature of these difficulties were?” the Queen asked.

“Investments which did not provide the expected returns,” Anna said.

“What sort of a loss did we take on these investments?” the King asked.

“None, Your Majesty,” Tam said, stepping forward. “We were able to recover both your initial capital and the early gains which the Duchess and Duke reported to you.”

“I sense that there is a story to be had there,” the King said. “First though we must make provisions for our court.”

“We have made all of the necessary arrangements, Sire,” Duchess Luq said. “Allow us to escort our cousins to their dwellings.”

“Please do,” the Queen said. “We would speak longer with our new friends in Charlene’s troop.”

The Duke and Duchess bowed and led the procession of unicorns away to the buildings hidden under the forest’s leaves. Anna wasn’t sure if the buildings were entirely a part of the normal world. They hadn’t shown up on the aerial surveillance photos JB had provided before the mission and the paths that led to them seemed to share more of the geography of the Sunset Isles than the Canadian wilderness.

It was a strange sensation to be standing so palpably on the border between two worlds. Every childhood dream urged Anna to contrive a reason to run away to the Sunset Isles. A world of light and peace and real unicorns was hard to pass up even decades after she’d said goodbye to her last plush unicorn toy. With an adult heart though, she knew there was too much to keep her within the Earth she knew, and that in any visit to the Sunset Isles, she would never be more than a tourist.

“Walk with us,” the King said, and turned towards one of the wide paths leading out of the clearing. As he moved, he changed. Between one step and the next, the fearsome equine body that he wore became an equally imposing human figure, hair and clothing as white as his coat had been.

The Queen changed as well, taking on an elegant, dark skinned form to match her husbands.

“Please, tell us truthfully,” the Queen said. “Is there hope of rekindling the old wonder we once enjoyed in this world?”

“I believe so,” Anna said. “Duchess Luq has explained some of the situation to us, and shared the initial plans they have made so far.”

“I am afraid the Duchess may not have been aware of the extent of the calamity we face,” the King said.

“She said that your country was under attack from outside it’s farthest borders,” Anna said.

“That is what we thought originally,” the Queen said. “All of the damage we found came from the border regions. It was only later that we discovered the problem originated from within our realm.”

“You had a traitor in your court?” Val asked.

Anna knew that wasn’t likely be true. According to Tam, unicorns could read hearts like a human could read a book. If a member of the royal court had sold out the realm, they would have had a very difficult time keeping it hidden from the others.

“We were not beset by treachery,” the Queen said. “It is our own foolishness which threatens to fell us.”

“Our realm is losing vitality,” the King said. “It is crumbling at the edges as the substance of it fades away. Each day our land becomes less what we dreamed it could be and more a stale and distorted reflection of a past that never truly was.”

“The Duke and Duchess told us something similar, but by their account the change was due to an external aggressor,” Anna said.

“There are external agents working against us,” the Queen said. “In the time before life walked upon the Earth, when many of the now disparate countries were part of one realm, it was laid upon us to fight against things so great that they linger in mortal imaginings to this day.”

“Dragons,” Tam said. “We still have legends of unicorns battling dragons. Are those real?”

“As real as dragons ever were,” the King said. “They were terrible things, just as we were, but where we sought to shelter the fledgling world, they sought to consume it.”

“You can guess how our war turned out,” the Queen said. “Life covers this Earth and so many others. Our victory was not without its costs though. To close the doors on the return of the ancient terrors, the soul of the world had be changed. Both the chaos of the newborn world and great magics of creation and destruction had to be cooled into ice and reason for life to flourish here.”

“All that could remain of us were echoes in the world’s memories,” the King said.

“Or so we thought,” the Queen added. “That was our folly. We left this world we’d fought so hard for, preferring instead the succor of a country where everything was as we imagined to be best.”

“The Sunset Isles weren’t the paradise you hoped they’d be?” Tam asked.

“No, they were every bit what we imagined them to be,” the King said.

“Yes, they were exactly what we imagined. Exactly that and no more,” the Queen said. “An age worth of delights can still grow stale in time. We wrapped ourselves in our bliss and cut off all connection with anyone else, and so bit by bit, we have diminished.”

“We feared the pain that would come from seeing the world we knew change, but without that change we have grown too stagnant, and so our realm crumbles as old joys slowly lose their luster,” the King said.

“We were not given the Grace of starting over, of passing from one life in this world to another, or to one in closer harmony with creation itself,” the Queen said. “For us only eternity or dissolution awaits, and we would stave off the latter for as long as we can.”

“Even a single day is a treasure we will not spurn,” the King said.

“I believe we can do much better than that Your Majesty,” Anna said, smiling with a grin that spoke to just how clever she felt herself to be.

“The original plan which Duchess Luq and Duke Wellbagun put together called for the creation of an extravagant theme park,” Tam said. “It would draw in thousands of people a day, year round, and let you experience, second hand, the joy and wonder they feel as they’re entertained by the rides and attractions.”

“We’ve retrieved the funds that were meant to support this,” Anna said. “The building permits and contractors are lined up as well, so construction can begin as soon as you give your approval.”

Tam nodded in agreement. Tracking down the financier that the Duchess and Duke had worked with had been child’s play. In under an hour she’d had the funds returned to their accounts, a solid case built against the financier and all the information handed over to the authorities in Palm Springs where he had moved. As it turned out, the Sunset Isle nobles were far from the first people he’d swindled and the IRS had a long standing warrant out for his arrest. In Tam’s view, it barely counted as a win when someone made it that easy to take them down.

“If you will permit me though, I believe there is another method whereby you may experience the emotions you have lost, as well as the connections which support them,” Anna said.

“We would be delighted to hear of this,” the Queen said. “What did you have in mind?”

***

Kelly Mashawalaran answered the knock on her door with a bit of apprehension. The nice older lady from the Second Chance Club had dropped by earlier to check in on her and make sure that Andrea was doing well on her first day home from the maternity ward.  Anna had also mentioned that a helper would be coming around later, which Kelly had been glad to hear at the time.

Andrea was a delight, everything that Kelly had imagined a daughter would be, but even with just a few days under her belt, Kelly could also see that being a Mom was going to be a lot of work. Having an extra pair of hands around, even if only for a little while each day, to help carry that burden was going to be a blessing and a half.

That didn’t make meeting someone new any easier though. Especially someone she would need to be able to trust with a newborn infant.

“Hello, I am looking for Kelly Mashawalaran,” the breathtakingly beautiful woman on the other side of the door said.

“That’s me,” Kelly said and stepped aside to let the woman in.

There was a radiance that suffused the woman’s night black skin and an aura that surrounded her that spoke of age, and wisdom, and grace but when she smiled the weight of her presence seemed to vanish and all Kelly could see was a mature woman beaming with delight at the sight of Andrea laying in her crib.

“You’re Amaltheia Queen?” Kelly asked. “You’re here to help me with Andrea?”

“Yes,” the Queen of the Sunset Isles said.

“Thank you!” Kelly said.

“Getting to watch a young life grow is all the thanks I need,” the Queen said.

“I know, babies are amazing aren’t they?” Kelly said.

“Hers isn’t the only life that I look forward to seeing develop,”  the Queen said, smiling fondly at her two new charges.

Surprising a horse is unfortunately easy. Despite their size, horses can be skittish creatures, and startling one is generally a bad idea for all involved.

Talking horses, it turned out, were less anxious than the standard variety and had, Anna decided, the most adorable expressions when they were met with a circumstance they weren’t expecting.

“You are very composed,” the tan horse said, her words slow and considered.

“Are you in fact human?” the dark brown horse asked.

They were gazing at her with their heads twisted slightly to the side, the easier for an animal with side mounted eyes to view someone.

“You are not the first ones to ask that question,” Anna said, declining to answer further as a negotiating tactic. They hadn’t answered her question and until they did she didn’t intend to be overly forthcoming with information.

“Our apologies,” the tan horse said. “Introductions! I am Duchess Luq and my companion is Duke Wellbagun.”

“Our missive arrived successfully?” Duke Wellbagun asked.

“Yes, your courier accomplished their aim precisely,” Anna said. “Both in delivering your letter and piquing our interest. I must confess that I expected to find a rather different layout for your estate though.”

“This is not our estate,” Duchess Luq said. “Our lands are beyond this abode. They begin at the line of the trees you see behind us.”

“Can we discuss your situation freely here or do we need to adjourn to where Ms. Royal cannot see us?” Anna asked, nodding to the farmhouse where the farm’s owner, Teri Royal, Tam and Val had retired to search for a letter from the Sunset Isle.

“Teri knows we are not what we appear to be, but she is not fully informed as to our nature and purpose,” Duke Wellbagun said. “It is easiest for all if we ensure circumstances remain as such.”

“What we have to request will require some delicacy as well,” Duchess Luq said. “If you ask to take us for a walk along the brook path, Teri will understand and we may welcome you properly.”

“While we await her return, perhaps you can describe the general scope of the issues you wish our help with,” Anna said. “Your letter requested aid in political negotiations but the Sunset Isles are not a sovereignty I am familiar with.”

That was a partial truth. James had briefed them on a number of mythical realms that had been referred to as the Sunset Isles but whether any of them were the ones the talking horses hailed from remained an open question.

“Our King and Queen will be arriving here shortly,” Duchess Luq said. “Within a few days. We are their advance guard, and have preceded them by several years. They expect us to have answer to the problem which besets our homeland, but despite our years of research we have made no headway on the issue.”

“We have not been idle though,” Duke Wellbagun said. “We have sought after parties and personages who could aid us since we first set our hooves on this shore. We believed we had made an ally in a human financier but within the last week, just when time became the most essential, he vanished, taking the funds we had developed with him.”

Anna shook her head. Years of planning ruined and only a few days to make up for it? That certainly sounded like a scenario the Second Chance Club would be called in for.

Before she could reply however, she saw Teri leading her two friends back from the main house.

“She was right,” Val said. “The Sunset Isle’s letters are very pretty.” She showed Val a note written in beautiful calligraphy and golden ink.

“The writing is similar to the one we received,” Tam said.

“I see you’ve been making friends,” Teri said, glancing at the horses with a smile.

“Yes, they are finely built,” Anna said. “I see you have some riding trails in the woods. Would we be able to take them out?”

Teri exchange another look with the horses, who both nodded in a very human-like manner.

“If you’re willing to give them some exercise, you’d be saving me a load of work,” Teri said.

Tam and Val exchanged puzzled glances but kept silent, trusting that Anna had her reasons for the request she’d made.

In short order, the two horses were fitted with riding gear and Tam and Val were mounted on them. Teri offered a third horse but Anna protested that she needed to get some walking in herself and instead chose to lead the two horses and their riders back into the ‘brook path’ which Duchess Luq had spoken of.

“You’re lands begin here?” she asked as the party crossed the boundary into the forest.

“Yes,” Duchess Luq said. “Though we will not be upon our own soil for another quarter mile from here.”

Tam simply blinked at the revelation that she was riding a talking horse, where Val’s jaw dropped open in astonishment.

“You mentioned a problem which is afflicting your homeland,” Anna said, confident the other two would be able to catch up to what was going on from the context of what was being said.

“Yes, the Sunset Isles are dying,” Duchess Luq said.

“It is a slow, withering condition, but one which must be addressed,” Duke Wellbagun said.

“Please forgive my manners,” Anna said. “Duchess Luq, and Duke Wellbagun, please meet my associates Ms Le Li Tam, and Ms. Valentina Perez. Tam, Val, Their Graces, the representatives of the Sunset Isles.”

“A pleasure to meet you,” Tam said, replacing a formal bow with a deep nod, which Val copied.

“The pleasure is all ours,” Duchess Luq said.

Typically when one met a personage of note, one was not riding on that person’s back, but any awkwardness in the situation didn’t seem to register on the Duchess or Duke’s consciousness. Each seemed more concerned about the matter at hand than following the proper formalities of rank, whatever those might have been.

“You said that you were working with a financier?” Anna said. “And that he has disappeared with the funds you entrusted to him?”

“Indeed,” Duke Wellbagun said. “We are less concerned with the funds however and more focused on the plans they were meant to support.”

“What purpose was the money supposed to be put towards?” Anna asked.

The brook path was a lovely sun dappled lane, less overgrown that it should have been given the lack of visible pruning or other human maintenance it showed.

“Mr. Steele, our financier, had proposed building an amusement park with the wealth we provided to him,” Duchess Luq said.

Anna was silent for a moment, calculating the scale of the funds involved and the various methods of embezzlement that might have been employed to prevent the money from being reclaimed the instant the theft was noticed.

“Pardon me,” Val asked, taking pains to be clear and polite, “Why were you building an amusement park. What sort of crisis is your home country facing?”

“It will be easier to show you, I believe,” Duchess Luq said. “Around that bend in the path, if you willing travel with us that far, and are willing to step onto our land for a time, we can make our needs much clearer.”

Tam’s gaze instantly shot to Anna, who met her eyes and nodded. Things that led you into the woods were far from always being safe, or sensible, to follow but there was a case to resolve and running away was not going to get the job done.

“We would be delighted to join you as your guests,” Tam said. It wasn’t precisely a magic spell, but the Laws of Hospitality were shared across many cultures and were sometimes stronger and more binding than the most powerful enchantment.

“Thank you,” Duke Wellbagun said.

“As you have no doubt guessed,” Duches Luq said as they approached the bend. “We are not quite as we might appear to you.”

On the far side of the path, the sun fell through the treetops in great gold shafts. The air took on an electric tingle and gained the scents of a thousand distant flowers. Birds with wings splashed in a kaleidoscope of colors flitted from the tree limbs to the bushes and back again. And the horses Tam and Val rode on were horses no more.

Duchess Luq and Duke Wellbagun were still equine in form, but from the center of their foreheads long spiral horns rose, shining with an iridescent light.

Anna wasn’t entirely surprised by the reveal. Once she’d accepted that there were talking horses, making the leap to believe in unicorns required a comparatively small effort. Val’s struggles with comprehending what she was seeing were more difficult, in part perhaps because she’d had less time to assimilate the idea of the Duchess and Duke as being intelligent beings.

Tam, on the other hand, didn’t seem to notice the change in her steed at all.

“We’re not on Earth anymore are we?” she asked, point up to a large hole in the canopy where two suns hung in the sky.

“These lands are a shared realm,” Duchess Luq said, her voice all liquid joy and soft light.

“We established an embassy in this domain,” Duke Wallbagun said, his voice as deep as the rolling ocean and as gentle as a warm blanket. “The sky above us is a shared heaven, just as the ground we walk upon is mixed from parts of your world and parts of ours.”

“How is that possible?” Val asked.

“We are creatures of many worlds, and many forms,” Duchess Luq said. “It is part of our nature to exist in Wonder, and so we shaped this tiny island of home to reflect who we are.”

“This mixed realm is tiny you say?” Anna asked. “Is it the extent of the changes you can make, or can you work an effect like this on a grander scale?”

“If we were illusion casters, the magic spent on this embassy could have covered your world, but that is not our way,” Duke Wellbagun said. “This small piece of home cost us dearly, but has also provided for us well. We can expand it not even a single pace in any direction though.”

“Is that why you wanted to build an amusement park?” Tam asked. “As a spot where you could foster wonder in the world?”

“That was related to our aim,” Duchess Luq said. “The Sunset Isles were a refuge of delight and amazement for ages, but something has been eating away at them, slowing draining the color from their borders and leaving both the living and the inanimate brittle in its wake.”

“We paid no attention to the change at first,” Duke Wellbagun said. “The borders of our realm were so broad and far flung that we rarely visited them, and never concerned ourselves with what might lay beyond. Not until the Great Feasting Hall at Moon’s Landing crumbled and fell into the sea did we perceive the peril that was encroaching upon us.”

“We are not the only ones our King and Queen dispatched to search for a solution,” Duchess Luq said. “All of the nobility were sent out to search the worlds we had left behind. We hoped this Earth might hold the key to breathing new life into ours, but it seems that we have misplayed our one chance.”

“I thought you said the blight was progressing slowly?” Val asked.

“It was growing more pervasive every day when we left,” Duke Wellbagun said.

“More urgently though, with the failure of this enterprise, our King and Queen will never wish to invest time and resources into pursuing a plan here which isn’t guaranteed to work,” Duchess Luq said. “Not after the reports we provided which spoke so glowingly of our chances and the kindness of those we had met.”

“That is what we must request of you,” Duke Wellbagun said. “Will you be our go between and can you find other sponsors who would be willing to support our endeavor?”

“Oh, I believe we can do a good deal more than that,” Anna said, plans and schemes percolating furiously in her mind.

Meeting with foreign dignitaries was a common occurrence for Anna when she worked in high finance. It was always supposed to be a high stakes, high stress affair, but she’d never found the encounters to be particularly challenging or worrisome. Whether they were senior management from a multinational conglomerate or high level government ministers, the wealthy and powerful were still as predictably human as a deli shop manager or a town hall clerk.

Part of her wished she could explain that to her compatriots. Both Tam and Val were trying to appear relaxed but were holding themselves with a subtle rigidity that spoke of a deep seated nervousness. Neither the magically adept stage magician nor the physically superb fighter were in their comfort zone when it came to dealing with diplomatic maneuverings and political deal making.

Fortunately, they both knew they could look to her for guidance and support. It was how they operated, each handling the matters they were best suited for dealing with and trusting that the others wouldn’t cover them for the rest.

Generally the presence of the rest of their team was all the comfort that any of them needed but in this circumstance Anna didn’t fault the other two women for their nerves. The briefing given to them for the case had been sparse to the point of mystery. All Charlene or James had been able to tell them was that a letter had arrived carried in the talons of a pitch black owl.

The letter had requested “the aid of delegates from the Second Chance Club in conducting delicate political negotiations with powers and interests which  have been for an extended time estranged from the common avenues of political discourse”.

Even to Anna’s ears that had sounded overblown, more like something she’d expect to find in a Regency era romance novel than a modern political communique.

Subsequent paragraphs revealed that the Second Chance Club had been recommended to the High King and Celestial Queen of the Sunset Isles, and they were the “powers and interests” who were primarily looking to renew ties with the rest of the world.

Val had been the first to question where “the Sunset Isles” were, but Anna had guessed the answer even before James supplied it. There was no kingdom on Earth named “the Sunset Isles”. That didn’t come as a surprise mostly because Anna was also certain that there were no countries on Earth which relied on magical owls to deliver their correspondence.

James had promised to begin researching the Sunset Isles, with a view to lands of myth and legend, but had warned that the search was likely to turn up too many many potential candidates where the Earth held too few.

Wherever their country lay, and however real their claim on royalty was, after many years of isolation “Their Majesties” were intent on establishing fresh relations in “the New World” (which suggested a European origin, or more likely the affectation of a outdated view of the American continents).

“So this is probably a bunch of people who are pretending to be ‘Ye Olde Fashion Nobles’ from Camelot or something right?” Val had asked. “Should we really be encouraging them?”

“They might be pretending to be nobles, but that owl was as real as it gets,” Tam had pointed out.

And that had been the point which had moved Charlene to send them on the mission to meet with the Duke of Wellbagun and the Duchess of Luq, the two emissaries of the crown who had experience in dealing with the world outside the Sunset Isles.

The Duke and Duchess had a residence to the north of Vancouver. One which had no telephone or internet connection. When Tam looked for it, the closest she was able to find a small farm off the Sea-to-Sky highway that was a neighbor of the Duke and Duchess’s estate.

One plane flight, a small side diversion for Kelly Mashawalaran’s sake, and a car ride in a limousine Jimmy B procured and drove for them, brought the Second Chance team to an odd sight.

The address of the Sunset Isle’s embassy was down a long dirt road, which to all appearance ended at a horse farm.

“Is horse farming common up here?” Tam asked as they got out of the car.

“Not that I was aware of,” Anna said, furrowing her brow in confusion.

“Could our royal friends just be trying to get away from it all?” Val asked, looking at the wilderness around them.

“I do not think so,” Anna said, smelling the familiar farm scents that lay heavy on the air.

“Some rich people like to live far from civilization though right?” Tam asked. “Bill Gates bought an island for himself if I remember correctly.”

“It is not uncommon for the rich and powerful to seek solitude and seclusion,” Anna said. “Especially for homes which are meant to be a sanctuary from the world. The road which leads here though is out of place for one used by a wealthy land holder.”

“Maybe they fly in and out?” Val asked. “This is far enough north that depending on the roads might be a bad idea in the winter.”

“That’s not as much of a problem here,” Tam said. “Vancouver doesn’t get much snow at all. It has the third lowest snowfall of the major cities in Canada.”

“It is not the snow which troubles me about the roads,” Anna said. “As you suggest, it would not be uncommon for someone of sufficient wealth to use private air service, but if that were the case, they would have given us the address of their helicopter’s launching point.”

“Yeah, that would be a more impressive introduction to their place than coming to it like this,” Tam said, gesturing to the farm.

It wasn’t run down or poorly setup, but there was a problem of scale.

Most farms cover sprawling tracts of land, “The Royal Acres Horse Farm” however was a relatively small patch of land which had been carved out of the surrounding forest. There was a decently sized coral and a pair of large barns with a two story house behind them. The house drew their attention as an elderly woman exited just as Tam finished speaking.

“Two questions,” Val said. “First, what’s the chance that someone was playing a prank on us when they brought us here?”

“Very low,” Anna said. “Charlene would not have sent us if it wasn’t a serious matter in some sense. What is your second question?”

“What’s the chance that this is trap?” Val said, shifting her weight just enough for Anna to see how ready she was for trouble to break out at any instant.

“Unknown,” Anna said, watching the old woman approach.

Anna didn’t consider herself an old woman, but she did consider herself dangerous, and she had no intention of losing that trait as she aged. As a result she wasn’t inclined to assume that the old woman approaching them was anything like harmless.

“Welcome friends!” the old woman said. “I’m Teri Royal. How can I help you?”

“Hello,” Anna said, showing a warm smile and a friendly face to match the old woman’s greeting. She felt neither warm, nor friendly, not yet at least, but very little was ever gained from open displays of suspicion or hostility.

People generally showed strangers distrustful expressions out of fear and a desire to have the strangers prove their good intentions. Anna had learned to form her own judgements on people’s intentions and knew that one’s fear could easily become a weapon in an enemies hands.

“We are trying to find the Sunset Isle estates,” she said, switching to a midwestern American accent. Foreign, but also so commonly heard in movies and TV that it was unlikely to arouse concern.

“The Sunset Isle estates? Is that a new development project? I heard we might be getting some condominiums put in this year,” Teri said, looking from one visitor to the next.

“It’s supposed to be a house owned by some foreign dignitaries,” Tam said, and passed Teri a copy of the address they’d been given. Rather than a standard postal code, it had the estate name and a land lot number.

“Well now isn’t that interesting,” Teri said. “We don’t have any place called the Sunset Isle estates around here, but that lot number is real enough.”

“You recognize it?” Val asked.

“I certainly do,” Teri said. “That’s the land back over there.”

She gestured towards the trees at the edge of the Royal Acres clearing.

“I’ve been trying to buy that land for years now, to expand the farm,” Teri said. “The owners have never been willing to sell though. Good market, bad market, doesn’t matter to them. They don’t even do anything with it. No lumbering, no building, I don’t think they even use it for hunting or hiking.”

“How much land do they own?” Anna asked.

“I don’t know,” Teri said. “Quite a lot I guess. I’ve only been interested in the parcel that abuts our land but I think they must be a big land owner or something.”

“Why’s that?” Val asked.

“I’ve never been able to talk to them,” Teri said. “All I ever get are these really fancy notes.”

All three woman just barely managed to stop themselves from asking how the notes were delivered. It was too odd a question to pose, and while the Sunset Isle royalty may have chosen the extravagance of a magic owl for delivery to the Second Chance Club, there was no reason to think they wouldn’t have used the regular mail to deliver more mundane correspondence.

“Do you still have any of those letters?” Tam asked. “I’m just curious if it’s the same kind of stationary we received.”

“Sure, come on into the house and I’ll hunt them up,” Teri said. “I hung on to all of them because they’re so pretty.”

Val looked at Tam and Anna who each exchanged nods.

“Thank you!” Tam said, and Val fell into step beside her.

“I’ll wait out here,” Anna said. “I could use some fresh air after spending all that time cooped up in a plane.”

Fresh farm air wasn’t particularly to Anna’s liking but something was tickling at the back of her head. Something was off about the farm and she knew she needed at least a few moments of observation to work out what it was.

The layout of the farm was reasonably standard, at least as far as Anna’s limited experience with farms went. The fencing around the coral was made of stout wooden posts and beams, some of which showed traces of age but were still in good shape. The bails of hay were similar to what Anna would have expected to see.

And then there were the horses.

The ones who were staring directly at her.

And walking directly towards her with a slow and purposeful gait.

Anna was ready for them to charge the fence. She was conscious that they could also jump it if they were sufficiently motivated. What she did not see coming however was that they would speak to her.

“Hello,” the dark brown horse said. “You must be from the Second Chance Club?”

“We’ve been expecting you,” the light tan horse said. “Thank you for accepting our invitation.”

A million possibilities ran through Anna’s mind, from the horses being extremely clever animatronics to their “voices” being a trick engineered with hidden speaks. In the end however, none of that mattered. Someone was speaking to her, and it would have been both rude and counterproductive not to respond.

“Greetings,” she said. “I am Anna Ilyina. To whom do I have pleasure of speaking?”

If Anna were a younger woman, she might have been thrown off her stride, but with her years came a certain awareness of self. If talking royal horses wished to negotiate with her, then they would find Anna either as gracious or as fierce as their intentions warranted. Rich or poor, human or not, Anna believed there was an equality which all thinking beings shared and she intended to cleave to that belief no matter how peculiar the person she was speaking with appeared to be.

Finding runaways was always a tricky thing. Some kids run away for very good reasons, and others run but not of their own accord. Val was keenly aware of both possibilities as she raced down a dark, rain slicked alley following the last person who’d seen Kelly Mashawalaran before her disappearance.

Her target was fast. All Val could see were long legs and a runner’s physique that despite Val’s fitness training she couldn’t quite match.

“How’s it going?” Tam asked over their earbud phone, crunching on a handful of tortilla chips as she sat warm and dry in the hotel suite they’d setup as their base of operations.

“Peachy,” Val said, conserving breath as best she could.

“Looks like you’re moving at quite a clip. I’ve got a map of Vancouver pulled up here if you need some help navigating?” Tam asked.

“Target’s in sight,” Val said. Unfortunately the target heard that and adrenaline apparently kicked in because she started to leave Val behind.

“Can you track the target with a spell?” Anna asked.

“Not with the ones I have available at the moment,” Tam said. “My current repertoire only has ones where I need to either physically tag the subject myself, or trick them into accepting an item or bit of food from me.”

“That sucks,” Val huffed out.

She didn’t feel ashamed at falling behind, just aggravated. The girl she was chasing, Lily Chen, was a champion track and field star for her school. Val had years of experience on the teenager but Lily’s experience as a runner was all directly relevant to moving quickly, while Val’s fitness routine was focused on producing the kind of all around strength and flexibility a fighter needed.

“Lily! Hold up! We just want to help!” Val called out, for the third time. As with both the first and second time’s she’d tried to reassure the fleet footed girl though Val’s words did nothing to slow Lily’s flight.

In a display that would have seemed like magic if Val wasn’t familiar with what serious athletes could do when motivated, Lily sailed over a chest high fence, vaulting it without slowing her pace noticeably.

“This kid is going to kill me,” Val whispered as she hurled herself over the fence in the middle of the alley. She ran as part of her training program. It was a solid method for building endurance. Endurance running was one thing however. The sort of long distance, flat out, sprinting that Lily was demonstrably capable of was quite another.

Val landed on the other side of the fence just in time to see Lily vanish around the far end of the alley. That was both good and bad.

On the upside, the road on the far end of the alley was fairly empty. There wouldn’t be many places to hide, so Lily would have to keep running if she wanted to stay away from Val.

The downside was that Lily seemed very determined to stay away from Val, and more than willing to run absurdly long distances to make that happen.

Val didn’t want to blame her for that, despite how much running herself out of breath sucked. Lily thought she was protecting her friend and herself.

“Hi, I’d like to talk to you about Kelly Mashawalaran,” Val had said what seemed like hours ago but was closer to twenty minutes if her watch was to be believed.

“What do you want to know about her?” Lily had asked, with the kind of defensive wariness in her eyes that had promised Val it wasn’t going to be an easy night. Val had found her coming out of a McDonalds with a bag of food in one hand and a large Coke in the other.

“She’s missing, and her parents have asked us to help find her,” Val had said, trying to take as gentle and reassuring a tone as she could.

“I don’t know where she is,” Lily had said and tried to walk past Val.

Reaching for Lily’s arm to slow her down had been Val’s first mistake. Her second was revealing exactly why she was asking Lily in particular for Kelly’s whereabouts.

“We have footage of you buying a bus ticket for her,” Val had said and regretted both the words and how she said them the moment they left her mouth.

Lily’s aim with her drink was good. A big splash of Coke in Val’s eyes and nose was enough to buy Lily the precious seconds she needed to put her track and field training to use.

Where Lily was outfitted in sweats and sneakers, Val was faced with the challenge of keeping up in a smartly tailored black business suit and flat heeled shoes.  In retrospect, Val considered how much she looked like an operative from a shadowy government organization and decided that had probably been a strike against her too.

She turned the corner onto the street Lily had fled down and was greeted with the site of a nearly empty thoroughfare. No cars traveling down the street. No one walking along the sidewalks. No teenage girl fleeing faster than the wind.

“I lost her,” Val said, panting and putting her hands on her knees.

“Not at all,” Anna said. “You got her exactly where she needed to be.”

Anna and Lily stepped out of a doorway from an apartment building that was much farther away than Val would have guessed Lily could have traveled in the brief time she was out of sight. Damn she was fast.

Lily was panting and looked about forty percent as miserable as Val felt from the run. Her glare at Anna, who was simply standing beside her, not restraining Lily in any way, spoke of a far greater degree of unhappiness though.

“I don’t know where she is,” Lily repeated when Val walked over to join them.

“Yes, but you know where she is going,” Anna said, without reproach in her voice.

“You saw her get on the bus to Florida didn’t you?” Lily said, scowling.

“That is one possible destination she could have gone to,” Anna said. “There are however no direct busses from Vancouver to Florida. Busses make stops, and when we checked, Lily did not disembark in Orlando when the earliest bus arrived there.”

“From what I can tell, she didn’t even pass through customs getting into the U.S.,” Tam said, though Lily couldn’t hear that.

“Seriously, we are here to help her,” Val said, mostly succeeding in catching her breath.

“Yeah, right,” Lily said.

“Ms. Mashawalaran did not enjoy the best relationship with her parents?” Anna said, more a statement asking for confirmation than an actual question.

“Why don’t you ask them?” Lily said.

“We did,” Val said. “They regret the blow up they had when she told them she was pregnant.”

“They regret it now that she’s out of their control,” Lily said. “That’ll last about five minutes after she comes back though.”

“We are aware of that,” Anna said.

Lily blinked and looked at her with disgust. “And you’re still going to bring her back to them?”

“No,” Val said. “I’m sorry, you didn’t give me time to finish explaining.”

“Ms. Mashawalaran’s parents asked us to find their daughter. We made it clear however that she would only be returning home is that was what she desired,” Anna said.

“Wait, so you just want to know where she is?” Lily asked. “But that’s so you can tell her parents so they can go get her themselves.”

“Nope,” Val said. “We know Kelly’s father threatened to kill her and the baby. That is something we take very seriously. Whether he’s apologetic now or not doesn’t matter. What’s important is that she be healthy, safe, and supported.”

Lily laughed.

“Shame her stupid boyfriend doesn’t feel like that.”

“He has waived all parental rights,” Anna said. “Which I gather will come as a relief to Ms. Mashawalaran?”

“I thought his mother wanted to keep the baby for herself?” Lily said. “She was going to fight Lily for custody of it.”

“That was not his mother’s decision to make,” Val said. “Also, we had a conversation with her so she’s clear on where her rights in this end. If Lily wants to keep the baby and introduce them to their paternal grandparents, that’s fully within her rights. If she wants to flee Vancouver and never look back, that’s also something we can arrange.”

“What do you mean?” Lily asked.

“Kelly’s parents called us in, but we’re not the police, or human services,” Val said. “We took this case because Kelly needed help, and we want to make sure she gets it.”

“I don’t get it, what’s so special about Kelly?” Lily asked.

“Apart from the fact that you love her?” Anna asked. “Her mother wrote us a very compelling letter. She knew what she was asking for, and that our support might very well take her daughter away from her forever. What was important to her though was that her daughter not suffer the same trials that she had.”

“She wanted her daughter to have the second chance that she never got,” Val said.

***

Val stripped out of the sticky, Coke covered suit and made a beeline for the showers as soon as she was back in their suite.

“Sorry about that,” JB said from their room without looking out. “Arranging a side mission for you while you were in diplomatic clothes may not have been the best idea I ever had.”

“It’s fine,” Val said. “I can’t believe how quick her reflexes were though. One second it was simple conversation, the next it was all bubbly soda up in my nose.”

“Kind of my bad too,” Tam said. “I knew she’d bought Kelly the bus ticket. That probably should have been a clue for me to hack Lily’s email too.”

“How would that have helped?” Val asked, leaving the door to the shower room open so she could continue the conversation while she washed off.

“I only checked on Lily’s emails after she took off,”  Tam said, leaning against the outside of the doorway and speaking over the rushing water. “If I’d done that I would have noticed the one where she said she’d do anything to help Kelly and then confessed her feelings. That would have been a tip off that she wasn’t going to react well to questions about where Kelly was.”

“Anna mentioned that too, about Lily being in love with Kelly,” Val asked as she turned the shower off. “What’s the story there?”

“Fairly normal I think. I’m guessing about this from some later emails because I think they actually got together and talked it out – but it looks like there’s no romance there, Kelly’s not interested, but still a damn strong bond on both sides.”

“Good for them,” Val said, toweling herself off. “Anna should be collecting Kelly about now, and she’s going to need some solid people in her corner.”

“Yeah, I wish we could stay around longer and see how this all turns out for her,” Tam said.

“Alas, duty calls,” JB said. “I’ve got another formal suit in your size coming up in a few minutes.”

“Thanks,” Val said. “I’m amazed you were able to find someone at this time of day.”

“I’ll be buying the drinks tonight for my local friend but I think it’s worth it,” JB said. “Charlene gave us an important assignment but that doesn’t mean people like Kelly are unimportant.”

“Charlene said this was bigger than looking into PrimaLux?” Val asked.

“Yeah, I’m going to bet that’s only partially true though,” Tam said. “I get the feeling that PrimaLux is all kinds of dangerous.”

“Wouldn’t that be an even better reason for us to look into them?” Val asked.

“In Charlene’s view? Maybe not,” JB said. “For as long as I’ve worked with her, Charlene has been very aware of the things she asks the club’s associates to do. We take risks for her but she’s dead set against us taking unnecessary ones, or attempting anything suicidally difficult.”

“PrimaLux is that bad?” Val asked.

“Maybe,” Tam said. “Or maybe Charlene just wants to look into them and make sure that they’re not before she asks us to take them down.”

“It’s also possible that she honestly believes this meeting is more important,” JB said. “I mean how often is it that you get a chance to open diplomatic relations between the Second Chance Club and foreign royalty?”

The body that hung before the window was clearly dead. The angle of the neck was one no living person’s spine could support. Also, and perhaps more tellingly, the body was transparent.

“That’s not an illusion is it?” Val asked, each word slower than the last as denial crumbled away despite how tightly she clutched it.

“No, it’s not,” Tam said. She stepped into the room with calm and measured footsteps.

Outside, every door in the hallway slammed open.

There was a rush of children’s laughter and then the lights were blown out like candle flames.

In the ensuing darkness, only the beam from Val’s flashlight remained to illuminate their surroundings. It cast a flickering circle of light on a room that had been long emptied of its contents.

The wind outside gave one last calamitous moan, the voices in it screaming for release audibly human and yet strangled and despairing.

Bring them back to me.

The words blossomed in pulsing red light on the room’s wall, and oozed downwards like they’d been cut into living tissue.

Anna flipped the switch on the wall and the room’s normal lights came back on, dispelling the writing on the wall and the last of the moaning wind.

“So we have a ghost to lay to rest?” she said. “Why did it manifest here?”

“This is probably the room where they died,” Tam said.

“Think JB can find out who died here?” Val asked.

“Probably,” Tam said. “Let’s hope it was only one person though.”

“JB may have trouble turning up the victim’s identity,” Anna said, She was searching around the room, inspecting the walls and the edge of the old carpeting in the room.

“Victim?” Tam asked.

“Yes, his hands were tied together,” Anna said. “What we saw was how he looked when he died, not how he was found.”

“Wow, I didn’t even notice that,” Tam said. “I wasn’t even sure if he was a guy. He was wearing was a nursing uniform.”

“You two were doing better than I was,” Val said. “I only noticed that he was see through and that someone had killed him before they hung him up there.”

“What do you mean?” Anna asked.

“You saw how his neck was broken right? That takes a lot of force. The ceiling in here isn’t that high. There’s not enough room for a fall to a snap a neck like that. Someone broke it first and then strung him up.”

“There’s also the fact that he left a ghost behind I guess,” Tam said. “That’s generally only the result of malice or a grievous accident.”

“So he’s hanging around for revenge then?” Val asked.

“I do not think so,” Anna said. “He spoke to us again, and for the second time he asked for something to be brought back to him.”

“Something or someone,” Tam said.

“His killers?” Val asked. “Does he want us to bring them here so that he can devour their souls or something?”

“It doesn’t work like that exactly,” Tam said. “A part of him would want justice, but I don’t think that’s the part we’re seeing here. He’s not saying ‘Bring me them’, or even ‘Bring them to me’. He’s asking us to bring someone back to him. Rage can fuel a spirit but so can compassion and love. I think he wants to bring someone who was important to him in life here.”

“Hmm, maybe we know who that is? The ghost was calling out to Derrick before right?” Val asked. “Should we have Jimmy B arrange for transportation to get him over here?”

“Not until we understand what the ghost wants with him,” Anna said. “And what happened to his friend Kyle and Rakeem.”

The voices of two men, out of synch with one another, and far distant, echoed up the stairs. They sounded bewildered. Each was asking questions. What was going on? Who had invited them here? What were they supposed to do? What did the house want with them? Both tracks of spectral dialog ended with the same words though, the two voices coming together in perfect harmony.

“Ok. I’ll go.” they said in unison.

“Wait, the ghost is bringing them back so they can go?” Val asked. “What kind of sense does that make?”

The house’s foundations groaned.

“Go where I wonder?” Anna asked.

“They sounded pretty happy to be going, so I’m going to guess it was anywhere but here,” Val said.

“Were they happy, or were they unafraid?” Tam asked.

“They sounded relieved to me,” Anna said. “Like they’d received an instruction or an answer.”

“Answers would be nice to get about now,” Val said.

“Kyle, Rakeem, and Derrick were all a part of the same trial group,” Anna said. “Perhaps it was related to that?”

“Our next step is to find them then,” Tam said. “And I think I know where to start looking.”

***

It was midnight on the following night when people once again gathered in the empty house at 32 Willow St. This time however, Anna, Tam, and Val were not alone.

“This seems like a weird place to meet Ms. Le,” Derrick said. He had a plate of food and a glass of ice tea from the refreshments Jimmy B had arranged for a catering company to bring in.

“You don’t recognize it, do you?” Tam asked. “Do any of you?”

The dozen young men who’d gathered at the house looked every bit as mystified as Derrick.

“I don’t blame you,” Tam said. “The last time you were here, the layout was a bit different and the decorations were a bit more kid friendly.”

“Also, the psychoactive cocktail they fed you here wasn’t that great for long term memory retention,” Val said.

“The what now?” Angelo Garcia, one of the other men, asked.

“You were all a part of a pharmacology study fifteen years ago,” Anna said. “The study lasted for almost two years, but your participation in it varied. Some of you only came once a month, others were here on a weekly basis.”

“Yeah, that’s how I know a lot of the guys here,” Derrick said. “What do you mean about our memory though?”

“The study was focused on finding a ‘cure’ for ADHD,” Tam said. “Or at least that was the reported goal of the study.”

“The real experiment they were running was whether the hyper-focusing aspect of ADHD could be weaponized,” Val said.

“They gave you tests that were a cover for the treatments and exercises they had you perform,” Anna said.

“What kind of treatments?” Derrick asked. “I don’t remember much of what we did, just that I’d get these great raspberry truffles when I did well on a test.”

“Oh yeah! Those were the best!” Angelo said. The rest were nodding their heads in agreement.

“They were also laced with a chemical cousin to LCD,” Tam said. “The idea wasn’t to get you tripping, it was to open your mind up to certain suggestable states. The plan was to build some trigger keys into your psyches they could use whenever they wanted to make you obey their commands without question.”

“Think of it like getting a song stuck in your head, except this one is stuck in your subconscious and because you can hyper focus and it’s stuck in there so deep, it never goes away,” Val said. “Somebody who knows the song can sing a verse and then you can’t hear anything but them, and you’re basically hypnotized at the same time.”

“So what does that mean?” Derrick asked.

“The procedure wasn’t reliable in most of you,” Anna said. “Even for the subjects who didn’t retain the suggestions though, the procedure intensified their attention deficit issues.”

“Great, I’m a space case because the doctors messed me up?” Angelo asked.

“No,” Tam said. “Your ADHD is a natural part of you, but any struggles you’ve had because of your neuropsychology have been exacerbated needlessly for years now. You’ve been working with both the ADHD and a constant subconscious loop that you’ve had to build extra coping mechanisms around, and that’s slowed you down, tired you out, and made you more susceptible to illness and other disorders.”

“And it’s not the doctors who did it,” Val said. “It’s one doctor in particular. Neil Cartman. He was in charge of the hidden part of the research project. The nurses who were part of the program weren’t brought in on the fact that psychotropics were being used, or what Cartman’s personal evaluation sessions entailed.”

“Why would they do that though?” Derrick asked. “I mean, we were just a bunch of kids. What’s the point of weaponizing kids?”

“You were step one in their plan,” Anna said. “If the treatments had worked on you, they would have moved on to developing variations that worked on people with other neuropsychological profiles.”

“Also, children grow up,” Tam said.

“Why’d they stop?” Angelo asked.

“Because one of the nurses, a man named Gary Barts, found out the truth of what was happening and threatened to blow the whistle on them,” Tam said.

“So they just stopped everything?” Derrick asked.

“Only after they killed me,” the ghost of Gary Barts said.

“Oh! What?” Angelo was the first one to speak but not the first out of his chair. Twelve young men leaped up and scrambled backwards, pausing only when they saw the three women who were with them were standing calm and still.

“Hi boys,” Gary said. “Sorry to scare you.”

He was still translucent, but the pale of death was absent. And his neck was straightened out, appearing like it did when he was still using it to breathe.

“Nurse G?” Derrick asked, blinking in shock.

“Derrick, it’s good to see you again slugger,” Gary said.

He held out a closed hand for Derrick to fistbump against but when Derrick tried he passed right through Gary’s fist.

“Oh damn, you really are dead?” Derrick said.

“Yeah, but a bit less so thanks to Ms. Le over there,” Gary said.

“How can you be a bit less dead?” Angelo asked.

“I was kind of scattered,” Gary said. “She helped me pull myself together.”

“Why? Derrick asked.

“So I could talk to you boys,” Gary said. “I had to tell you how sorry I was. I didn’t know what we were really doing to you. And I had to make sure you would get the real help that you needed.”

“That’s where Kyle and Rakeem are by the way,” Val said. “They’re both checked into an in-patient health care facility, where they are doing great, at least from what they said earlier today. Gary managed to get them to come here and then talked them into seeking out some real treatment.”

“I wish I could apologize to them too,” Gary said. “I wasn’t quite as…clear with them as I am now.”

“So does this mean we’ve got our own Casper now?” Angelo asked. “Cause that would be kind of cool.”

“Yeah Nurse G,” Derrick said. “You were always pretty awesome. I don’t remember much of what all happened, but I remember you sitting with me while we waited for some test or other and you read me a book on the birth of Hollywood. I think that’s why I’m a set designer now.”

“I’m sorry boys,” Gary said. “I can’t stay though. I can feel myself drifting away already.”

“Why do you gotta go?” Angelo asked.

“His purpose,” Tam said. “The reason he hung on here, it’s being fulfilled right now.”

“I just had to know you were going to be okay,” Gary said, his voice growing distant as his outline became fuzzy and indistinct.

“What about you though?” Derrick asked, tears freely filling his eyes.

“Me?”Gary asked, his voice almost a whisper. “I’m going to be fine.”

And then he was gone.

***

It was a much later that night before Anna, Tam, and Val were back in the Second Chance Club.

“Jimmy B will arrange for their medical appointments and make arrangements for any in-patient stays which they need,” Charlene said. She was calling in from an aid station in the Middle East, but the connection was remarkably clear.

“Gary’s life insurance spent the last fifteen years in an account gathering interest for those guys,” Val said. “Why didn’t anyone reach out to them sooner?”

“Bureaucratic snafus,” Anna said.

“Yes, very intentional ones,” Tam said. “I poked around a bit and found some familiar faces waiting for us. Or maybe I should say a familiar logo.”

She tapped a button on her laptop and brought up the deed to the research building that JB had uncovered.  The original owner was a shell company whose parent company bore the unmistakable logo of PrimaLux.

“These guys again?” Val asked.

“Yep,” Tam said. “They were the ones who were conducting the trials, and they were the ones who put out the hit on Gary when he uncovered what they were doing.”

“We should perhaps make them something of a priority,” Anna said, her eyes narrowing.

“No,” Charlene said. “Let me worry about PrimaLux for now. This year isn’t the first time I’ve encountered their work. I have another project I need you to work on. One that’s a little bigger than what I’ve given you so far.”

Anna, Tam, and Val settled into their seats, wondering what Charlene could possibly have in mind.

The house at 32 Willow St. was haunted. Tam didn’t need to walk in the door, or cast any spells to figure that out. Just looking inside its empty rooms and feeling the shiver that ran down to the base of her spine was enough to tell her that.

“This is the place that Derrick gave us, right?” Val asked. She was holding a lit flashlight despite the fact that the power was still on to the building and the lights inside were functional.

“It seems to be in better shape than he described,” Anna said. She ran her hand along the trim on the living room’s doorway. Only a thin layer of dust came away on her fingers.

“Yeah, I asked JB to look into that,” Tam said as she stepped inside the building which had once been a home and looked ready to serve that function again with only minimal changes.

“I’m surprised you can’t hack into the town archives and find the info we need?” Val asked.

“Housing deeds are public records,” Tam said. “In theory there’s no need to break into a system that we’re supposed to have access to already. In practice, it would be faster, but there’s the problem that ‘publicly accessible’ doesn’t mean that anyone’s bothered to scan the documents into a central system. A lot of cities are pretty low-tech in how they manage their property records.”

“JB may also be able to find more than is listed in the official forms,” Anna said. “Granted it is well after hours, and the town hall is officially closed, but that’s never slowed them down before.”

“They are pretty talented,” Tam agreed.

“Yeah, I’ll put fifty bucks on JB winding up with the information we need and a date for the weekend in less than an hour,” Val said.

“No bet,” Anna said.

“If their date can help us get to the bottom of this, I’ll pay for dinner for the two of them,” Tam said. “I mean our ghost was polite enough to wait until after my show was done to pull that poltergeist act but I’d rather not chance it for a second night if I didn’t have to.”

“I thought ticket sales went up after the news got out though?” Val asked.

“Sure, because people like the idea of seeing the uncanny and otherworldly,” Tam said. “Actually seeing dead people, or being slashed to ribbons by a glassnado, on the other hand? That tends to drive attendance down just a little bit.”

“I guess I could see that,” Val said. “So, just how bad of a dead person are we talking about here? I take it most ghosts can’t pull off what this one did? Is there a limit to how often they can manage a stunt like that?”

“There is, but it’s wildly different for each spirit,” Tam said.

“Do most people leave ghosts, or is it only the strong ones who do?” Anna asked.

“It’s not about strength entirely,” Tam said. “It more about purpose, if that makes sense?”

“I think I could use more of an explanation,” Val said.

“Ok, well, take what I’m about to say with a grain of salt the size of bus because I’m not an expert on the afterlife,” Tam said. “From what I’ve read and been taught though, a ghost isn’t a person. Think of it like an after-impression that a person leaves behind when they die.”

“So a picture of who they were when they passed?” Val asked.

“Sort of, or more precisely a picture of part of who they were,” Tam said. “In the case of a Haunt, it’s the part of the person which was called to perform some specific task. Or, not even called, that’s not strong enough, maybe ‘consumed’ would be a better description. If there’s something that you’re supposed to do, and expected to do by people who matter to you, and that you deeply want to do, but death interrupts you before you can finish, a Haunt can be the result.”

“But not all the time?” Anna said.

“No, definitely not all the time,” Tam said. “There are people who leave behind tasks and people they were incredibly passionate about and there’s no Haunt that remains.”

“Because they lack the ability to cross back over to the mortal world?” Anna asked, leading them away from the front door and deeper into the house.

“I don’t think that’s the case,” Tam said. “If it was then mystics would leave ghosts of different sorts all the time. I think there’s more happening on the other side of death than any living person is aware of. People with deep family heritages, for example, rarely leave ghosts of any sort behind, except for the families who collect ghosts like other families collect fine china or paintings.”

“So the ghosts are rare,” Val said, shining her flashlight into every corner and shadowed area of the rooms they entered. “That’s good to know, but what can they do?”

The house wasn’t a large one. At least not from the outside. It’s inner dimensions felt somehow distorted, like the rooms were burgeoning outwards, straining to hold in a presence that threatened to shatter barriers far more solid than mere plywood and sheetrock.

“Basically anything,” Tam said. “But it has to be something in the service of the purpose they’ve remained behind to complete. There’s other rules too, I think, because it doesn’t seem like they have completely free reign in the sort of powers they can manifest, or even when or where they can choose to manifest themselves. A ghost bent on revenge, for example, can’t turn their killer into corn chowder, or ground sirloin. Except in the cases where they can. It’s pretty confusing really.”

“So when Sun Tzu said ‘Know Your Enemy’, he obviously hadn’t ever thought about fighting ghosts then I guess,” Val said.

“It’s good advice with ghosts too,” Tam said. “What any particular ghost can do is going to be much more limited than the full range of powers that ghosts in general can manifest. Knowing exactly who they were can help a lot in terms of figuring out what they’re actually likely to do, which is a lot more important than what they could possibly do.”

“Our ghost can cause words to appear, briefly, and can move significant amounts of material around with deadly force,” Anna said.

“Those are both fairly typical abilities,” Tam said. “It’s likely this ghost can do more than that, especially if we make any efforts to contain or disrupt it.”

“Do the powers manifested so far tell us anything special about who we’re dealing with?” Anna asked.

“Manifesting written words, suggests they were a devout reader in life. Likely someone with a lot of formal education, to where they could interact with the written word without conscious awareness,” Tam said. “The telekinesis suggests they were involved in physical work a lot too though. The ghost of an accountant wouldn’t usually manifest poltergeist type abilities unless they were also a devout marathon runner or something similarly physical and all consuming.”

“So they’re someone who used both their mind and body, and they have powers they’re still keeping hidden from us?” Val asked. “Why are we here after midnight again?”

“Because waiting till morning would make it less likely that we would encounter the ghost of this place,” Anna said, leading them to the stairs up to the second floor.

“And this is a bad thing?” Val asked, her flashlight held resolutely in her grip. “You did say they would probably manifest even more powers if we backed them into a corner, right?”

Despite the lights they had turned on, the stairs seemed to darken as they walked up to the next landing.

“Yep,” Tam said. “Which is why we’re not here in the day. In the day the spirit would be more distant, and weaker. If we could find their hiding spot at all, they would be much more likely to lash out at us.”

“They seemed pretty happy to lash out at us while we were in the theater,” Val said.

“I think that’s because they were so far from their primary tether,” Tam said. “This house feels like it’s spent a long time being haunted. It’s probably the spot where the ghost lived when they were alive, and maybe the spot where they died too. If that’s true, the ghost should be strong and secure here. If there’s anywhere that we can talk to it, this should be the place. Anywhere else and they’ll be weak and more likely to flee.”

They reached the top of the landing and where the first floor had seemed like a normal, if empty home, the second was something else entirely.

The stairs rose into the middle of a long hallway. To the left, the hallway ran down past nine doors and to the right there were another nine, with all of the doors closed slabs of dark brown wood in matching wooden frames.

Across the floor, and up the walls, almost reaching the ceiling, there was chipped and cracking paint, and it was covered in words.

Black lines of varying sizes from thick marker tip strokes, to fine ballpoint pen marks spread out like a tattoo run amuck. The phrase “Come Back to Me!” was repeated over and over but there were other words too. “Olanzapine” and “Risperidone” showed up in many places, each one crossed out and each one followed by “2mg” and “4mg” and “16mg”.

The mural of words wasn’t what bothered Val though.

“What the hell are those,” she said, pointing her flashlight’s beam at the runner that ran horizontally down the middle of the wall at waist height.

All along the runner, there were handprints. Small handprints.

“A warning,” Anna said. The house was quiet as her words faded, even the noise of the city outside its walls dropping away to an unbroken stillness.

“And a message,” Tam said, approaching the wall. She reached out for it and the wall seemed to flex outwards trying to meet her touch.

“How do you tell the harmful ghosts from the benign ones?” Anna asked, putting a hand on Tam’s shoulder to hold her back.

“Look for the same things as you do with harmful people and benign ones,” Tam said.

She reached out to touch the wall and the laughter of a child ran past them down the hall to until it reached the sound of a door slamming shut.

The door that it reached was the only door open on the whole floor. It was at the distant end of the hallway.

“That was closed just a second ago,” Val said, taking an involuntary step back down the stairs.

“Maybe the wind blew it open,” Anna said. Her tone left no doubt as to how unlikely she thought that was.

From outside the house, a low moaning picked up. It could have been the wind, or could have been mistaken for the wind, except for the faint echoes of little voices that it carried with it.

“I think we’re being invited somewhere,” Tam said, and took a step towards the room.

As she trailed her fingers along the handprints, more laughter came from other areas of the house. It was distant and distorted though, and not all of it sounded like it came from human throats.

Another few steps and not all of it sounded like laughter anymore either.

“Is this wise?” Val asked, her voice tight and controlled.

The stairs below them creaked, one after the other.

Val turned the flashlight on the steps to reveal the person climbing them.

The creaking stopped the moment the light touched the stairs. Of course no one was there. They were the only living bodies in the house.

“Wisdom comes from experience,” Anna said. “I don’t believe any of us have experienced anything like this before, so come, let us grow wiser.”

Her words carried the icy fatalism of the Russian steppes but they served their purpose of moving everyone forward.

As they walked past the doors to the other rooms, each one in turn cracked open a tiny bit.

“Don’t go into any of those,” Tam said. “Getting sidetracked could be bad.”

“They’re supposed to be empty aren’t they?” Val asked.

“Things aren’t always what they are supposed to be,” Tam replied, her voice sounding like it had traveled a hundred miles as it crossed the half dozen feet between them.

Tam reached inside the room at the end of the hall and flicked on the light within.

Where Val’s flashlight illuminated an empty room though, the lights overhead shown on a fully appointed child’s playroom. It had blocks, and story books, and stuffed animals.

And in the back, a man hung from an overhead pipe, his feet dangling well off the floor.

The show had to go on.

Even with falling lighting fixtures and a glass whirlwind, the stage techs were back at work within a few minutes of the “technical malfunction”. The next performance wasn’t till the following day but cleanup and prep was better done sooner than later. No one asked how Tam had pulled a globe of light too bright to look at from between the palms of her hands. She was a magician, and magicians didn’t tell you how they did their tricks.

“So, what was that, exactly?” Val asked, as the tech who’d passed out was taken away by the ambulance crew that showed up in response to the accident.

“That was a spirit of some kind,” Tam said. Her attention was focused on the tube of water that featured in the final effect of her performance. It hadn’t been hit by the whirling debris but she was probing it’s circuit board with a voltage meter anyways.

“An unhappy one it would appear,” Anna said. She dabbed her suit with a piece of duct tape, drawing off a few small flecks of glass dust that had landed on her.

“Unfortunately many spirits are,” James said. He had borrowed Val and Anna’s cell phone, loaded an app on them and then set the two phones plus his own up to form a triangle around the area where the storm had raged. Val and Anna watched as he adjusted the settings on one of the phones and then checked the readings on the other two, moving in a circle around the phones and repeating the process several times.

“It’d be nice to have some info on what we’re facing here,” Val said. “I haven’t punched many dead people in the face but I’m guessing there’s going to be a trick to it that I’ll need to look into.”

“I’m afraid answering that question will require a great deal of research,” James said.

“The phone arrangement you have there will not tell you?” Anna asked.

“This will tell us if the spirit is still present,” James said. “It may lack a physical form, but it’s quite possible for for an unseen force to remain active in a locale without manifesting in any tangible manner.”

“I spoke with the stage manager,” Anna said. “This is the first time an inexplicable incident has happened in this building since it was built five years ago.”

“Is today the anniversary of the date they started excavating? Or of the first day they opened up?” Val asked.

“No,” Anna said. “From the building’s history that Aly, the manager, could recall, there’s nothing noteworthy about this date. There were no warnings or threats that lead up to it either.”

“So we have no idea what we’re dealing with?” Val asked, wandering around the circle James had drawn to connect the three phones.

“It was a Haunt,” Tam said, stepping away from her death trap. “And I need a new control board by tomorrow night.”

“You found evidence of ectoplasmic residue?” James asked. He turned away from his phone array went over to look at the circuit board in Tam’s hands.

“Very faint, and only on the charged leads,” she said. She held the board out for all of them to see and indicated a few spots on it. At first, they looked no different to Val than any of the other part of the green board but when she leaned in she saw tiny bits of ash around the miniature components which was generally a bad sign.

“And that tells us what was responsible for what we saw?” Val asked.

“Not directly,” Tam said. “A Haunt is basically a type of ghost. They’re what’s left over when someone passes but can’t stop doing the job they were trying to finish in life.”

“And they are the one sort of spirit which leaves the residue you see on your device?” Anna asked.

“Most ghosts can leave a residue behind,” Tam said. “A Haunt is so focused though that they tend to manifest more precisely than other types of supernatural entities. So the clue is less that there’s ectoplasm around and more that there is very little of it.”

“Other sorts of spirits would not leave such residue I presume?” Anna asked.

“Not generally,” Tam said, “I’m not that good in the spirit arts, but from what I understand spirits of the natural world tend to form bodies, if they need them, from the elements they are more familiar with.”

“So we’d be looking for, what, mud if we were hunting a spirit of the earth?” Val asked.

“That, or roots and branches, or stones,” Tam said. “Unless I’m forgetting a class of spirits, I think the rule is that spirits which derive from animals and places generally use aspects of the world for their bodies, while humans and other sapient beings conjure their own spirit matter, or ectoplasm, directly.”

“You are a quick study,” James said. “That is precisely correct.”

“It leaves us with a more pressing concern though,” Anna said. “If this is the work of a deceased human’s spirit, then what did they want on the stage?”

“Also, who killed them?” Val asked.

“No idea on the second question, but I’m willing to bet the first is something we can ask Derrick about,” Tam said.

“Derrick? The guy who passed out?” Val asked.

“Yeah,” Tam said. “He’s one of the regulars here. Nice guy. Fairly quite. A little odd, but then that’s theater for you.”

“Nice, quiet, and odd? So, he’s a serial killer then?” Val asked.

“I do not think so,” Anna said. “Consider the words our ghost chose.”

“It was ‘come back to me’, wasn’t it?” Val asked.

“Yes,” James said. “Which would be an odd message for the victim of a serial killer to choose to convey.”

“Let us see if this Mr. Derrick can recall anyone who passed and had unfinished business with him,” Anna said.

***

Derrick had recovered by the time Tam and the rest found him, or at least he had recovered in the sense of being conscious and relatively coherent. Looking into his eyes, Tam could see hard walls shut down around his emotions in a desperate attempt to hold in the fear that had overwhelmed him and the shame that lingered from losing control.

“Hey Derrick, how are you feeling?” Tam asked.

“I’m ok Ms. Le,” Derrick said. He was sipping from a small bottle of apple juice, the third one since he’d brought into the theater’s office by the paramedics.

“Low blood sugar sucks doesn’t it?” Val asked, nodding at the empty apple juice containers on the counter beside Derrick.

“Yeah,” he forced out a laugh.

“If you need a bit of time, that’s ok,” Tam said. “If you’re up for it though, we’ve got a few questions we were hoping you could help us with.”

“Oh, uh, sure,” Derrick said, taking in the unfamiliar people who were with Tam.

“We’ll get the obvious one out first,” Anna said. “Do you know who that was on the stage?”

“Who? What do you mean?” Derrick asked.

“You saw the words on the curtain, right?” Tam asked. Derrick nodded. “Do you have any idea who could have written them?”

Derrick’s gaze flickered around the room, focusing on the empty spaces rather than the people in front of him.

“I don’t know,” he said, his shoulders scrunched in and both hands clasped on the tiny juice bottle. “It was really weird.”

“You are not wrong about that,” Val said, dropping into one of the seats around the wall of the office waiting area.

“Have you heard that phrase before?” James asked.

“No, I mean not exactly,” Derrick said. “Listen, I’m sorry for losing it like that. I don’t know what happened.”

“It’s not your fault,” Tam said and at his frown of self recrimination and disbelief added, “Anyone mind if I show him some proof?”

Anna nodded at the idea, her expression indicating her acceptance, while Val simply shrugged.

“What do you mean proof?” Derrick asked, concern written all over his face.

“What you saw on the stage curtain wasn’t normal writing,” Tam said. “It was a manifestation of something that shouldn’t have been able to appear here.”

“What does that mean?” Derrick asked.

“Well, there’s magic,” Tam said and reached over to pull a silver dollar from Derrick’s ear. “And then there’s magic”.

In her hands the silver dollar began to glow with a warm, yellow radiance.

“Wow,” Derrick said, entranced by the glowing coin.

“Take this coin,” Tam said. “The glow will fade pretty soon, but it will come back if you need it to.”

“Why would I need it to?” Derrick asked, taking the coin without waiting for the answer.

“I think you passed out because a spirit of the dark was reaching out for you, and the human mind can kind of short circuit when things outside our world start screaming for our attention,” Tam said.

“Oh my god, I’m possessed?” Derrick asked.

“No,” Tam said. “You wouldn’t be able to hold the coin if you were, and I don’t think the spirit we saw is interested in possessing anyone.”

“So what? It wants to drag me to hell or something? Oh my god that’s what happened to Kyle and Rackeem!”

“No, I don’t think this spirit is evil either,” Tam said.

“But you said it was a spirit of the dark?” Derrick said.

“Yeah, sorry, it’s a technical term I guess,” Tam said. “A spirit of the dark is just one whose natural state is to be hidden from sight, rather than disguised, or bound as a part of something like a river or a mountain or a fox. It’s not necessarily bad. For some things ‘dark’ is really good.”

“Our internal organs, for example, sort of enjoy being in the dark,” Val said. “Expose your spleen to the light and it get all kinds of cranky.”

“You mentioned a Kevin and a Rakeem?” Anna asked.

“Yeah,” Derrick said. “They’re some people I know, but they went missing and nobody knows where to find them.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Val said. “Have you talked to the cops?”

“No, we’ve had enough trouble with them,” Derrick said.

“I understand,” Anna said. “If Kevin and Rakeem are related to this, we will try to find them for you.”

“And if they’re not related to this, we’ll still try to find them just to make sure they’re ok,” Val said.

“Thanks, they’re good guys,” Derrick said, looking up from the coin to show a small, grateful smile.

“Where did you meet you them?” Anna asked.

“We were in a program together when we were kids,” Derrick said. “Some of us kept in touch after it was done.”

“What kind of program?” Tam asked.

“A medical thing,” Derrick said. “It was for kids who had problems. You know, like behavior problems.”

“A drug study? Or were they focused on therapy sessions?” Val asked.

“Drugs, and tests,” Derrick said. “It didn’t go anywhere though. Just ran for a while and then got shut down, so we were back out on our own.”

“You mentioned that you hadn’t heard words exactly like the ones on the curtain,” Tam said. “Have you run across anything close to that? Especially with Kevin and Rakeem?”

“Not with those guys, no,” Derrick said. “I did get a card at my house though. It just had an address on it and it said ‘Come back’ written in kind of sloppy handwriting. But not blood or anything weird though.”

“Do you still have the card?” Tam asked.

“Yeah, it’s back at my apartment,” Derrick said. “Is that why I’m being haunted?”

“I don’t think it’s the reason, but it could be related,” Tam said. “What was the address on the card?”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Derrick said. “I didn’t recognize it, but I was kind of curious so I looked it up online and it’s just a house. I tried taking a ride by it on the bus and the place is old. Like broken down and empty old. I don’t think anyone lives there. I don’t even know if anyone ever lived there.”

“There may be no one alive there, but I bet if we drop by, there’ll be someone to greet us once we walk in the door,” Tam said.

Tam was fully submerged, dangling upside down, bound hand and foot for execution and, according to the clock that ticked nearby, her air had run out thirty seconds ago.

Darkness descended, the light dwindling away as her feet twitched their last frantic spasms until only a flickering, choked pool of illumination remained.

Then the first sparkler light, followed by another, and then dozens more, bathing the stage with a brilliant showering of radiance.

Before the audience’s eyes, the dark cloak that lay discarded on the stage began to rise.

The form below the cloak stood slowly, by inches, as a drumroll built to a crescendo. A constellation of small fireworks bloomed across the stage as the music reached its highpoint and the Tam whirled the cloak off herself, no longer chained in the Tank of Inescapable Doom but instead clad in the sparkling green and gold armor the Sovereign of the Seven Seas.

With stabs of her trident, she sent pyrotechnics out over the audience to burst at the edges of the theater, each flash of light revealing one of the pirate crew members she’d managed to “misplace” through the course of the show. Gone were their billowing shirts and cutlasses, replaced instead with iridescent sea fairy costumes.

At her behest, the Sea Fairies then scattered “golden doubloons” in the audience’s outstretched hands, returning the Pirate Booty the show had been themed around to the guests so they could carry its magic out into the world with them.

***

Tam was In her dressing room, scrubbing off the layers of stage make-up when Anna and Val arrived.

“There is no way you weren’t cheating out there,” Val said. “James totally hooked you up with some special glamour for this one didn’t he?”

Tam just shook her head and smiled.

“This is the same show I’ve practiced every night for the past two weeks,” she said. “Do you really think James would let me fritter away the real stuff that much?”

“This is what you’ve been working on for the last year isn’t it?” Anna asked. “I recognized some of the effects from your last show but it seemed like most of the work up there was new.”

“I’ve been trying out bits and pieces of it in the smaller theaters,” Tam said, putting away her costume and changing into her more usual street clothes. “With the small shows there’s usually there’s only time for one significant effect and some lead up to it.”

“I’m impressed with the overall narrative flow you achieved,” Anna said, hanging Tam’s costume on a hanger for her.

“Yeah, you had the audience in the palm of your hand from the first effect,” Val said, packing away the trident Tam had carried as her final prop. It still had the smell of gunpowder on it from the pyro she’d shot off.

“Your assistants seemed well trained too,” Anna said. “Some of the later sequences couldn’t have been easy to coordinate.”

“Thanks, we worked pretty hard on the lead up to this one,” Tam said, locking down the last of her specialized gear. “It’s a larger cast than I normally get to use, but I think they really came together.”

“Are you going out with them for an after party?” Anna asked.

“Normally yes, but a bunch of them are heading off to work a few other shows,” Tam said. “We’ll all catch up after the last show next weekend and have a big bash then.”

“Cool! That means we can take you out!” Val said, offering Tam her coat.

“Indeed. We must thank you for the tickets to your opening night somehow,” Anna said.

“Aww, you folks don’t need to do that,” Tam said. “It’s nice just knowing there’s some friendly faces in the house.”

“With the kind of applause you were getting, I don’t think that’s something you ever need to worry about,” Val said.

“You know, the funny thing is it’s still really hard to take that first step onto the stage,” Tam said.

“For big shows like this?” Val asked.

“Nope. All of them,” Tam said. “You’d think after a few successful shows the stage fright would go away, but that’s not a thing that happens. At least not for me.”

“It is very common, what you describe,” Anna said. “But you manage to perform anyways.”

“There’s all the other people counting on me,” Tam said. “That’s what usually gets me behind the curtain before it rises. If I don’t go out, there’s a ton of people who don’t get paid, and in entertainment that can mean they don’t eat.”

“Wow, that’s pretty harsh,” Val said. “How about for the smaller shows where it’s just you?”

“For those I usually try to talk to the crowd beforehand,” Tam said. “If I can find someone who’s eager to see the show, I look for them in the audience as an excuse to force myself on stage. If not, I think about whoever’s running the venue. Or the next magician who’s going to have to play that spot after me, and how hard it would be on them if I bailed. I know this all probably sounds ridiculous, because I really do like performing, it’s just a weird thing I go through.”

“I think it’s amazing,” James Baughsley said, joining them outside Tam’s dressing room with a bundle of show merchandise in his arms.

“Did you leave any for the rest of the patrons James?” Val asked with a chuckle.

He looked at her in confusion.

“Why would I do that?”

“Thank you James,” Tam said. “But you didn’t have to buy all that. I could have picked you up some swag from whatever was leftover once the shows ends.”

“I think not,” James said. “I collect opening night posters. Waiting for yours would be an insult I have no intention of ever giving.”

“You collect posters?” Val asked, trying to reconcile the very proper British gentleman James always comported himself to be with the notion of someone who collected something as lowbrow as a poster.

“Yes, from any concert I go to, particularly on opening night,” James said.

“Is there something especially magical about opening night posters?” Anna asked. James was their resident arcane scholar, and organized most of the magical support they required or requested.

“Not in a mystical sense,” James said. “I just find them charming.”

“What kind of posters do you have? I’ve never seen any hanging in your room?” Val said.

“They’re not meant for a work environment,” James said. “I keep them in my apartment and rotate the ones I have up occasionally.”

“Now I want to see your apartment,” Anna said.

“You are welcome anytime Ms. Ilyina,” James said, which was met with an answering smile from Anna. “Though I must temper your expectations. I feel my workspace in the Club’s aerie more accurately reflects who I am overall. I am at my apartment rarely enough that it is somewhat disheveled on most occasions.”

“God, now I want to tag along too,” Val said. “I can’t imagine you and disheveled in the same state, never mind the same room.”

“I assure you, I am no better than any other man in that regards,” James said.

“What did you think of the show?” Tam asked.

“It was spectacular,” James said. “I am at a loss for how you pulled off the vanishing escape at the end, especially since there was no hint of actual teleportation magic involved.”

“Thank you,” Tam said. “That one took a while to work out.”

“I must confess though I am somewhat puzzled by the closing effect,” James said.

“The Sea Faeries?” Tam asked.

“No, the glowing letters on the curtain,” James said.

“What glowing letters?” Val asked.

“The ones which read ‘Come Back to Me’. I thought they were an odd addition to the parting message with the doubloons,” James said, his words growing slower as he spoke and watched Tam’s confusion grow. “But none of you saw them, did you?”

He looked around between the Val, Anna, and Tam, searching for recognition in their eyes. There was none to find.

“That wasn’t part of the show,” Tam said, her eyes narrowing. “Where did you see these words?”

“On the curtains after they fell,” James said. “They were just a faint shimmer at first but the letters grew in clarity and brightness as the audience diminished.”

“I wasn’t looking at the stage once the show ended,” Anna said. “I was searching for a gap in the crowds to get back here.”

“Me too,” Val said. “Did anyone else notice the words?”

“No one mentioned them, but the flow of the crowd was out of the theater at that point. I was looking back towards the stage to see if I could see any of the setup work for the next performance. I thought it would help me puzzle out how the effects were accomplished.”

“Could the curtain words be something from the next act?” Val asked.

“No one else is going on tonight, and that doesn’t sound like the sort of thing you’d setup early,” Tam said.

“We should go and have a look at these words,” Anna said.

The other nodded, and they moved as a group back to the stage. When they arrived there though, no glowing words were in evidence on the curtain. Only the stage techs were around, tidying up and putting away the electronics that had been used during the performance.

“I was standing over there when I saw the phrase appear,” James said, indicating the middle of one of the rows near the stage.

Val hopped down and walked to the spot James had pointed to.

“Nothing on the curtains anymore,” she said.

As she turned to look down at the chairs however, the lights in the theater died completely.

For an instant the dark was absolute and empty, but then the silence was broken by the moaning of the wind.

Except no wind was blowing in the theater.

Then the screaming began.

One of the techs started to freak out as words scrawled in pulsing red light were ripped into the curtain on the main stage.

“MINE” the first words read and, as it bled off the curtain, it was replaced with “cOme bACk to mE”.

That was more than the tech could handle. He turned and fled. Straight off the stage.

Val was too far away to save him from the fall.

Anna however was not.

Before he could reach the edge of the stage, she was beside him and managed to knock his feet out from under him so that he skidded to a stop before tumbling off onto either the first row of seats or the concrete in front of them.

That was good for the tech, but seemed to rouse the ire of whatever force had killed the lights and was fingerpainting on the curtains in glowing blood.

A light fell on the stage.

And then another.

Tam had to dodge the second one, and managed to pull James to safety before a third on crashed down on the spot where he’d been standing.

The shattered lights weren’t content to lay on the stage though. The wind which was roaring through the theater without any discernible physical presence was nonetheless able to send the broken shards of the lights swirling into the air.

The tech screamed louder as the hurricane of glass and steel whirled over them all, and Anna covered him with her body.

The intensity of the storm built higher until the darkness was split by a piercing light.

Standing at the center of the storm, Tam held her hands spread before her body, a ball of dazzling sunshine caught between her outstretched fingers.

The storm of glass diminished under the glare of the light and with a final howl, the winds rushed out of the building, and the theater’s remaining lights flooded the room with illumination.

“Sometimes you need more than just special effects,” Tam said, calling the raw magic she held back into her palms.

“Yes, and I believe we have our next case,” Anna said, rising from where the tech had curled into an unconscious fetal ball.