There’s a certain cognitive dissonance in seeing a mirror which contains something which isn’t in the area its reflecting.

“Hello, who would you be?” Connie asked in a calm, unaffected tone, because the situation she was in was growing weirder by the moment and fully acknowledging that was not a great survival strategy in her experience.

“I’m Sarah Friedman,” the reflection in the mirror said. “Or one of them anyways. My other self is holding the mirror isn’t she?”

“Yeah, hi Sarah,” the Sarah Friedman sitting in the room with Connie said. “Any signs of the Mind Devourers there?”

“Nope,” Mirror Sarah said. “Santiago’s room is as cut off as he claimed it would be. To get in here they’d need to be able to batter through the shields in your world first, and from the outside you can’t even see that they’re in place.”

“How did Santiago build such a sanctum?” Anna asked, glancing around the room and admiring the subtle spider web of carvings that adorned the walls.

“He stole it,” Sarah said. “This originally belonged to a Persian mathematician. Santiago ‘liberated’ it about a decade ago from Iraq. He had the whole room shipped to Madrid and built this house around it.”

“The interest in the arcane is new, but that does sound like Santiago,” Anna said.

“Why would he be concerned about having a magical panic room installed before he knew about Brother Davos’ book though?” Connie asked. “Did he make an enemy of a wizard or something?”

“Knowing Santiago? I would guess he made several mystics into enemies, most likely starting the same day he became aware of the occult,” Anna said.

“For someone as successful as he is, he’s surprisingly inept and easy to fool,” Sarah said. “I mean I had a whole scheme laid out and he bought into it in the first five minute of my pitch. It was disappointing really.”

“Never underestimate the power of inherited wealth and sociopathic levels of misplaced confidence in one’s own abilities,” Anna said.

“I try not to, but then I suppose some people might accuse me of similar levels of overconfidence,” Sarah said.

“You are trapped in a panic room, surrounded by hostile armed guards,” Connie observed.

“And cut off from magical means of escape,” Anna added.

“Which, I admit, would be a problem if I wanted to escape,” Sarah said. “As it is though, all I need to do is hold that door closed when Santiago starts banging on it and my problems will largely sort themselves out.”

“How long do you presume the Mind Devourers will remain in our world searching for the Golden Record?” Anna asked.

“The air here is toxic to them, and there are creatures in our world who find them to be delicious, so I doubt they’ll last till dawn tomorrow,” Sarah said. “It’s not ideal, but I’ve spent a plenty of nights locked up before, and at least this time I have company to talk to.”

“As agreeable as that sounds, I believe there are certain problems we may encounter,” Anna said, walking to one of the walls and tracing her finger over the grooves.

“Will we? I thought I had this fairly well thought through?” Sarah said.

“Yeah, we talked it over for about a week before she put the plan into motion,” Mirror Sarah said.

“Part of the plan depends on the Mind Devourer’s removing the threat of Santiago and his goons, correct?” Anna asked.

“Yes, either permanently, or driving them off long enough that we can vanish before they return,” Sarah said.

“And what if Santiago and his men wait out the Devourer siege in safety?” Anna asked.

“I can hold them out of this room,” Sarah said. “Magic can’t cross the boundary of the walls, but inside here a Seal of Janus will render the door just as unopenable as it would anywhere else.

“And when they realize that and retreat to the other panic room?” Anna asked.

“There is no other panic room,” Sarah said, though with a trace of uncertainty in her voice.

“That does not sound like Santiago,” Anna said. “Nor does this room look like it belonged to a Persian mathematician.”

“What? Of course it did,” Sarah said. “This is the most hidden room in this building and those carvings on the walls are absolutely Sina Kashkouli’s Seventh Equation. That was the first thing I double checked.”

“Also this room is magically sealed,” Mirror Sarah said. “I can vouch for that.”

“I have no doubt all of that is true,” Anna said. “Come here though and look at the inside of this crack.”

Connie followed along, unsure what she would be looking for but curious nonetheless.

“Ok, it’s a bit of damage to the plaster,” Sarah said. “It’s fine though, it’s not obscuring any part of the Equation.”

“Which is why it wasn’t repaired,” Anna said. “It’s not the damage which is important though. Consider the material the damage reveals.”

Sarah leaned in close and studied the crack for another minute before pulling back and cursing.

“It’s plastic! He had a replica made with the same dimensions and markings as the original!”

“Which makes this the second most secret room in the house,” Anna said. “I’m sure the original chamber is here as well, but that will be reserved for Santiago’s own use.”

“I can’t believe he fooled me!” Sarah said. “I was sure he would put me in his anti-magic chamber after I showed him how I could slip away from any other cage he put me in. It just didn’t occur to me that the jerk would have two rooms set up like that.”

“I’m sure the cost was prohibitively unreasonable,” Anna said. “And it’s the sort of thing that only a desperate and paranoid and very wealthy individual would do. The cost aside though, I’m honestly impressed he found someone capable of replicating the original with a functional level of fidelity.”

“This changes the plan drastically,” Sarah said. “We need to get out of here. Now.”

“Why?” Connie asked, noticing how, with the door closed, the walls looked almost perfectly smooth with no means of egress available.

“With only one safe room, Santiago wasn’t about to dynamite the walls and ruin it,” Sarah said. “If this is a spare though, and he figures out how I played him, there’s very little chance that he’s not going to do something unpleasant about it.”

“If we leave the room however, the Mind Devourers will find us once the sun goes down,” Anna said. “And that is in roughly fifteen minutes I believe.”

“Can Tam fix that? Fix them finding us that is?” Connie asked.

“She won’t be landing for another two hours,” Anna said. “Also, if there was something she could do, then I presume Sarah could manage it as well. Tam has said Sarah is likely a stronger caster than she is.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Sarah said. “But I can say that I don’t have many tools at my disposal at the moment that will deal with even a single Mind Devourer, much less the hunting party that’s likely to burst through the veil between worlds as soon as it thins out.”

“Ok, well then, we look for other options,” Connie said. “Is there another place where we can be invisible to them?”

“The original room Santiago stole,” Anna said. “But that isn’t practical. He will have it defended well.”

“Can we fight for it?” Connie asked.

“Also doubtful,” Anna said. “Anyone guarding that room will have shoot on sight orders and will be behind several security arrangements.”

“Damn. I think I know where it is then,” Sarah said. “You just described his master bedroom. There’s a shower and jacuzzi area within it but if the plumbing is actually fake then it would be just the right size for the original Chamber of the 7th Equation.”

“What about stealth? Can we sneak into it?” Connie asked.

“I can’t,” Sarah said. “I’ve worked with the guards before. I don’t have the right leverage on them to work with anymore. How about you Anna?”

“No, Santiago will have given his security explicit orders concerning me,” Anna said.

“Ok, then what are our options for stopping the Mind Devourers from arriving in the first place?” Connie asked. “You said they’re here already. Can we negotiate with them?”

“Our only bargaining chips are the book, which they cannot, under any circumstances, be allowed to retrieve, and our minds, which they would want for dinner,” Sarah said. “I’ve worked from worse positions before, but let’s put that option somewhere lower on the list than our first choice shall we?”

“You mentioned the air here is toxic to them, can we use that to fight?” Connie asked.

“We could if they didn’t know where they were going,” Sarah said. “Tricking them onto this plane would be a fantastic method of incapacitating them. Since they know where they’re going though, they’ll be cloaked in encounter suits, which means they’ll be able to last here for hours.”

“What about the creatures that find them delicious?” Connie asked.

“Cats and Ichthyoids,” Sarah said. “If we could wrangle enough of either or both that would be effective at driving the Mind Devourers away, but against a hunting party we would need dozens of cats, or at least three octopi.”

“Mind Devourers don’t like octopuses?” Connie asked.

“It’s more a matter that they can’t see the minds of either Ichthyoids or Cats, and both can see Mind Devourers clearly even when they’re not manifested on the physical plane. Cats object to the Devourers presence and will kill them like they would kill other vermin, eating them mostly for the intoxicating effect the Devourer’s corpses produce. Octopi are…less pleasant. They consume the Devourer’s psychic energy and grow smarter with each one they ingest. There is a good reason Mind Devourer’s avoid the oceans, even within the psychic plane.”

“Sadly, we do not have a ready supply or either animal,” Anna said.

“What about stopping them from arriving in the first place?” Connie asked. “You said they can only enter our world because a part of them is bound into the book and while it’s here so are they.”

“It’s somewhat more complicated than that,” Sarah said, “but that is the basic problem we have.”

“How do we cleanse the book then?” Connie asked. “Without destroying it. We still need the recipe in there to cure the Living Husks.”

“Fire,” Sarah said. “Specifically Holy Fire. Brother Davos placed a bunch of blessings on the Golden Record, and a big one was that it couldn’t be burnt. Given the church of his day, I’m sure it’s fairly obvious why that was a concern.”

“Unfortunately we don’t have that as an option either,” Anna said. “Santiago is rather far from a pious enough man to include a chapel in his house.”

“We’re in Madrid,” Connie said. “There are churches everywhere here.”

“None close enough to get to before sundown, not even with my driving,” Anna said.

“I can do it,” Connie said.

“We can’t risk the book…” Sarah started to say but Connie cut her off.

“I can do it. Give me the book.” Connie didn’t waste time with additional arguments. Time was ticking, each precious second an unrecoverable instant that could spell the difference between disaster and triumph.

Sarah looked into her mirror, pained indecision splashed across her face.

“I don’t have a better idea,” Mirror Sarah said and held out the book towards the glass on her side.

Sarah gave Connie one last probing look, swallowed and reached into the mirror to grab the Golden Record.

“Move fast,” she said.

***

The wheels of the stolen motorcycle caught fire as Connie finished skidding to a halt.

Getting out of the secondary panic room had been trivial with Anna’s help. Escaping the guards had been only moderately challenging thanks to Sarah’s interface with their efforts to apprehend the escaping prisoners. Once Connie was out of the door to Santiago Martin’s house though things had gotten difficult.

She was much too far away to make it to the nearest church before the sunset. At least if she followed anything like the roads that were in place, or gave the slightest care for personal property or general public safety.

The motorcycle she arrived at the church with wasn’t the first one she’d stolen on that trip. The two earlier ones were either smashed beyond recognition or crumpled into flaming balls of wreckage. There was a crashed car along her route too but the only injuries anyone suffered were minor ones where she’d knocked down, or in some cases vaulted over, pedestrians who were in her path.

With the last rays of the sun sinking below the horizon, Connie felt a dreadful weight reaching out and pressing on her mind.

That meant it was time for fire!

The gas tank from an otherwise unrelated truck was difficult to run with but she managed to splash roughly the portion of petrol onto the book that she intended to before bursting into the Basilica De San Francisco El Grande while a mass was underway.

A flame from a votive on one of the side tables leapt as she ran past it and passed the book over it. The small flame lit a conflagration around the Golden Record, forcing Connie to drop it to the end of the chain she’d snagged for that exact occasion.

For all the excitement the unexpected gout of fire caused in the congregation, the light around the book didn’t drive away the shadow that was taking shape. If anything it made the Devourers that much more desperate to reclaim their prize, and the interior of the enormous cathedral began to sink into darkness as the Devourers moved across the gap between the worlds.

Whirling the book over her head, Connie launched it towards the altar where the priest was gazing at her like she was a mad woman.

“Bless the flames!” she yelled, planning to pick up the book and carry it to the sacred candle on the altar if need be.

The priest, perplexed but cognizant of the darkness that was consuming his church made a simple sign of the cross over the book and the fire on it surged to a bright, stunning, white.

By the time Connie arrived at the altar, the fire had snuffed out, leaving the book in pristine condition, it’s old cover burnished to a shiny gold by the glow of the magics it held while the darkness in the cathedral had vanished leaving only a fading memory of its presence behind.

She’d done it. The Living Husks were going to get their second chance.

Automatic weapons in untrained hands have generally terrible accuracy. At a distance of ten feet however, accuracy is not of paramount importance. Since the guards were at most six feet away from them, Connie was reasonably certain she and Anna were effectively sitting ducks. Also, Santiago Martin’s men were far from untrained in handling their weapons, so adding in a few feet by running away had a very low likelihood of helping.

“Are you going to invite us in?” Anna asked, offering the chief of security a predatory grin.

Connie didn’t envy the man. She could feel a hungry chill radiating off Anna that spoke of a predator cloaked in frost and snow. Even before Connie had seen confirmation of magic in the world, she would have known instinctively to be wary of something with that sort of demeanor which turned up at her front door and asked patiently to be invited inside.

“Mr. Martin says you’re supposed to come in,” Hector, the chief of security said. It was supposed to be threatening. Combined with the menace of a deadly weapon in his hands it was supposed to signal to the listener that they were being captured. What it was not supposed to do is place a pleased expression on the listener’s face.

Connie followed Anna inside, neither hiding nor attempting to add to Anna’s menace. Val had a particularly kinetic method of dealing with armed security guards, one which Connie felt comfortable playing along with.  Anna’s tactics were different story though and Connie was certain she couldn’t play that game anywhere near well enough to be a help.

“You may go and tell Santiago we’ve arrived,” Anna said. “I’m sure your friends can keep us entertained in the interim.”

Hector started to refuse, but checked himself. Connie guessed he had to report back to Santiago anyways once the she and Anna were apprehended, and so couldn’t defy Anna’s order without also defying Santiago’s wishes. Connie knew bosses who acted like that. If Santiago Martin followed the general inclinations of the breed, he wouldn’t have specified how to handle the guests beyond ‘make sure they’re alone’, and even if he intended to shoot Anna and herself  in the lobby, he wouldn’t approve of Hector, or any of his henchmen, acting on their own initiative. When bosses like that wanted something done (or in this case somebody killed), they were very particular about who did the deed and how it was performed.

With a sneer of disapproval, Hector left and Anna turned to the other two security guards.

“Interesting,” was all that she said after looking them up and down.

When she tried to reach into her coat pocket to pull out a cell phone one of the guards stepped forward and poked her in the ribs with the barrel of his rifle.

Anna looked slowly down at the barrel and then back up to meet the man’s eyes.

Whatever the man saw in her eyes made him take a step back which allowed him to fade from Anna’s apparent attention as she turned to check her email.

“Ilyina”, Santiago Martin said, emerging a minute later from a hallway behind his chief of security. “Why are you here?”

“Not even a hello Santiago?” Anna asked. “It’s been close to twenty years now hasn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t remember,” Santiago said, violently chewing on the end of a cigar. “Why are you here?”

“Can’t I be dropping by to visit an old friend?” Anna asked.

“No, you can’t,” Santiago said. “Not today. Why are you here?”

“Ah, the eternal question of life,” Anna said. “Though in this case, it is a bit clearer than in others. You have acquired a new book. And its owner. I want them both.”

Santiago stopped chewing. His men looked at him for some sign of what to do but it took him a good long moment before he was able to sputter anything out.

“How,” Santiago sounded pained when he finally spoke. “How do you know this?”

“Santiago, my friend, when have I ever not known more than you about something secret?” Anna said. “I think the question you should ask is how you thought you were going to keep this hidden from me?”

“Should I kill her?” Hector asked, raising his weapon to aim it at Anna’s head.

“No, don’t be a fool,” Santiago said. “Shooting her is probably just what she wants. Put her in with the other one.”

“Yes, by all means, gather us all in one place,” Anna said said. “You’ll be able to keep a much better eye on us.”

Santiago scowled. He didn’t try to step forward though, or even to the side of his bodyguard’s protective shadow. He didn’t like Anna playing with him, but his fear of her seemed sufficient to keep him from taking risks just for the sake of salvaging a scrap of his pride.

The guards took a moment to process the idea that they were intended to escort Anna and Connie somewhere. Normally that would have been followed up by a bit of bluster and a show of strength but, before they could get to that, Anna began walking in the direction they were supposed to escort her with Connie following close behind. With nothing else to do they settled for falling in step behind her and Connie, though they kept their weapons trained on both of the women.

The guards mumbled to each other, trying to sort out how they weren’t in the lead. Their confusion wasn’t surprising, Anna took a series of turns through the house as though she omnisciently knew where they were taking her before they offered any directions at all. Unlike the guards, Connie knew Anna wasn’t actually omniscient, she was simply well informed by a knowledgeable source and a good understanding of their hosts tendencies.

Once Connie had discovered the address where the book was being held, she and Tam had ‘procured’ the floor plans of the building and Anna had called out the various uses Santiago would be making of the different rooms in the house. There were at least three where he might be hiding the book’s owner, with a possible fourth if he’d remodeled without filing the proper building plans. Knowing Santiago as she did, Anna chose to walk towards the most likely “fourth” room, and from the guard’s response  Connie saw that it had been the correct choice.

“Do you think Val’s going to have any problem getting us out?” Connie asked in English as they walked down a hallway with carpeting that cost more than Connie’s yearly salary as a librarian.

“I doubt we’ll be here long enough to trouble her with that,” Anna said, pausing at a blank section of wall and waiting for the guards to catch up.

Connie had to suppress a smile of her own when she saw the look on their faces. The wall was featureless and uninteresting, at least until one of the guards pressed his palm to a panel which lit up and scanned his hand. A moment later a section of the wall slide inwards and pulled to the side.

Beyond the opening lay a room containing only a light bulb, two chairs, and a woman tied to one of the chairs.

Before the guard could order them to “get in there”, Anna and Connie had walked into the small room and Anna had taken the seat opposite the bound and blindfolded woman.

“Hello,” Anna said after the guards closed the door to the room. “You can let go of the ropes whenever you like.”

With a laugh the woman rolled her shoulders and the ropes which had appeared to be tied painfully tight fell away into a clump on the floor.

“You are disturbingly observant,” the woman said as she removed her blindfold.

“And you would be Sarah Friedman unless I’m mistaken?” Anna said.

Connie blinked at that. Her briefing hadn’t been able to turn up anything about who the book owner might be, and there wasn’t anything shockingly unusual about Sarah (assuming Anna was correct) that would make identifying her a trivial task.

“And now you’re just disturbing,” Sarah said. “Which is a good quality for one of Martin’s minions I suppose,” she paused, met Anna’s eyes and added, “but you’re too clever to be working for him aren’t you?”

“You’re quite observant yourself,” Anna said. “Le Li Tam sends her regards.”

“Oh! Tam’s here? That’s wonderful!” Sarah said. “Wait, no, Martin got his hands on Tam? That seems pretty unlikely.”

“It is,” Anna said. “Tam and one of our other associates are still inbound. My name is Anna Ilyina and this is my associate Constance Cruz. We’re affiliated with the Second Chance Club.”

“Ilyina? Interesting. I thought you were still doing development work in impoverished areas?” Sarah said.

“The programs that I setup are still running, but the day to day work is handled by others,” Anna said.

“Now you’ve move to personal rescue work I take it?” Sarah said.

“I’m not sure,” Anna said. “Are you in need of a rescue?”

“Well, I am being held captive and bound in an unknown location, inside a mystically neutral room,” Sarah said.

“Yes, but Tam has mentioned you a few times,” Anna said. “So I must ask again, do you have any need of a rescue?”

“Not really,” Sarah said. “For the moment this room is both convenient and comfortable.”

“How long will it remain so?” Anna asked.

“I would venture to guess about two minutes after sundown,” Sarah said.

“What happens then?” Connie asked, knowing that things tied to the day/night cycle that closely didn’t tend to be overly pleasant.

“Mr Martin is going to receive some visitors,” Sarah said. “I have something which they will be able to trace here, but, as long as I’m inside this room, they will be blind to my presence. Santiago’s presence on the other hand? That will be somewhat more obvious.”

“These visitors, would they be looking for the journal of a 17th century Benedictine monk?” Anna asked.

“Also called “The Golden Record”, yes, that is their quarry,” Sarah said.

“That’s not the title the Index had it under,” Connie said.

“It wasn’t the journal’s original title,” Sarah side. “An aquan scholar in 1850 catalogued it as that after they discovered that it contained a recipe for the Elixir of Life.”

“The Elixir of Life? Are you sure this is the same book as the journal Brother Davos wrote?” Connie asked.

“According to Brother Davos it is,” Sarah said.

“But the Brother Davos we’re looking for never wrote any other books,” Connie said.

“Correct. I didn’t say according to Brother Davos’ writing though,” Sarah said.

“You’ve spoken with the Benedictine personally?” Anna asked.

“He’s the one I’m retrieving the journal for,” Sarah said.

“Then the Elixir works? I thought there were fundamental issues with creating immortality potions?” Anna asked.

“There are, and the recipe in the book isn’t what it claims to be,” Sarah said. “Brother Davos is not immortal, but he is sequestered in a pocket realm which is out of sync with our time. For him the year is still 1683 and it has only been a week since his journal was lost.”

“How does Santiago factor into this?” Connie asked.

“He knows the book is supposed to possess the secret to eternal life,” Sarah said. “He thinks he can make it work because he thinks he knows how to find the original cipher for some of the coded sections in it.”

“He would think this because?” Anna asked.

“Over the centuries the journal has changed hands hundreds of times,” Sarah said. “Brother Davos didn’t put a curse on it, but between the magics he wrote into it and the ceaseless travels he undertook, the book wasn’t well suited to staying put. The most recent possessors tried to fix that by binding it to their minds, which meant it was impractical to reclaim it without their awareness. Santiago Martin didn’t care about that and was more than willing to run through the traps and snares that were laid out guarding the book once he was shown the right bait. That then made it easier to follow along and snatch the Golden Record from his grasp at the last moment.”

“Who were the previous possessors of the book?” Anna asked.

“A sect of Mind Devourers,” Sarah said. “They’re not usually able to enter this plane, except being bound to the book means when its here a part of them is as well, and the rest can follow.”

“Mind Devourers?” Connie asked. “And they’re coming here?”

“They’re already here, in a sense,” Sarah said. “They’re waiting on the psychic plane, clawing at the walls between worlds. At sundown the walls will thin and they will be able to surge through to claim vengeance on those who took what wasn’t the Devourer’s possession in the first place. Not that the distinction matters to them.”

“Why didn’t Santiago take the book from you when he captured you?” Anna asked.

“I don’t have the Golden Record,” Sarah said. From her pocket she drew forth a small mirror. “She does.”

She turned the mirror to face Anna and in its surface Connie saw Sarah’s reflection, which should have been impossible given the angle, holding an ancient tome, which Sarah clearly didn’t possess.

Connie hated remote controls. As the nadir of human design efforts, they represented a breed of device that tested the patience of even the most tech savvy of users. Tam, being considerate of her new teammate, had thought ahead however and rigged a more user friendly version of the standard remote by ripping off the keys which were never going to serve a useful purpose. That left only a few keys on the remote Connie was expected to control the various projectors and monitors she had at her disposal for the meeting, which made the whole presentation a more manageable problem.

“This is an impressive amount of information you’ve compiled on someone who we know nothing about,” Anna said, gesturing to the thick packet of information Connie had placed in front of them all.

“Thank you,” Connie said. “I know it’s probably too much to read through, so I thought we’d go through the summary page on top and you could ask questions from there. The rest of the packet is in case you need help falling asleep on the flight out.”

“Where are we going to be flying?” Val asked, skimming through the packet more care and attention to it than Connie had expected.

“Madrid,” Connie said. “At least if you all agree with the research I did.”

“I can promise you her research is solid,” Tam said. “These dossiers are bigger than the ones I usually give because she tracked down a ton of things I don’t usually look for.”

“We know so little about what’s actually going on I felt like I had to go pretty far afield,” Connie said.

“Why don’t you bring us up to speed then,” Anna said. “I gather that our previous mission included locating several individuals who were afflicted with an unusual disease?”

“The Living Husk effect is a curse rather than a disease, which means we can’t rely on the usual medical options for affecting a cure,” Connie said. “Instead we have to turn to the supernatural. I can claim I’ve brushed up against some magical things, but nothing like what you folks deal with regularly, so if I get any of the magic stuff wrong, please correct me.”

“No worries,” Tam said. “There’s a lot to take in there. I ask James to fact check for me all the time.”

“Ok, so, we’ve got about fifty seven people afflicted with a curse that they ingested when they were left to starve in a series of subterranean catacombs. The curse selectively shuts down their higher brain functions, and causes their bodies to appear withered, while at the same time sustaining them at full motor efficiency for an undetermined period without food, water, or sleep.”

“It sounds like that could have some useful applications,” Val said, looking up from the dossier.

“It could, if reversing the effect didn’t generally kill the victim,” Connie said. “But, thanks to Tam’s index, we’ve found a viable recipe for fixing the condition. Or rather we’ve got a line on a book which has a recipe like that. The only problem is that the book is lost.”

“Can we find another copy of it somewhere?” Val asked.

“According to the index? No,” Connie said. “The book we’re looking for was the personal journal of a Benedictine monk, and wizard, who traveled to New World in the 1600s. While there he roamed a lot farther than any official explorers traveled, and encountered the Living Husks during his passage across the Andes. His guides though they were a bad omen and confused them with a number of different demons and monsters, but Brother Davos saw the humanity that remained in the husks and managed to create a cure for the condition.”

“He didn’t leave any record of it?” Val asked.

“It’s not a strictly nature cure. The summary didn’t list much beyond the fact the meal requires a skilled wizard to prepare. Being a Benedictine monk, Brother Davos wasn’t terribly interested in spreading around the idea that he could also work magic, so the original journal is the only copy of the cure that the index knows of.”

“Does the index have a listing of all the books that have been made?” Val asked.

“No,” Tam said. “It’s only interested in books that contain information on magic and even then it’s far from complete. If a book’s not registered with the index directly, or recorded in a ledger the index can access, the index won’t have any connection to it. So there might be another copy of Brother Davos’ journal out there, there might even be a hundred, but we’ve got no leads on them if so.”

“That’s about typical isn’t it?” Val said and went back to reading.

“Fortunately we do have a lead on this copy,” Connie said. “It’s lost!”

“That sounds less like a lead and more like the definition of the absence of one,” Anna said. Connie expected her to look at Tam, but Anna didn’t. She was focused solely on Connie.

“I would agree, but the index knows where all of the books it catalogues are,” Connie said. “So a book that’s ‘lost’ wouldn’t be listed in the index, unless the book itself wasn’t lost, meaning it’s owner knows where it is. The lost designation doesn’t refer to the book therefore, it refers to the owner. Or at least that’s what I was able to piece together after talking with the book for a while.”

“They’re lost in Madrid?” Val asked.

“Yep, and since it’s kind of hard to be lost in a city these days, we had to look for another explanation beside ‘they’re roaming around the streets in a drunken stupor’,” Connie said. “It turns out asking the right questions is enough for the Index to solve that particular riddle.”

“You asked it what other books the owner had and where they were?” Val guessed.

“That was my first thought, although that didn’t give me the answer we were looking for,” Connie said. “It turns out they own books in several cities around the world. Kind of a disturbing number in fact.”

“Why disturbing?” Anna asked.

“Anyone wealthy enough to have multiple homes around the world should be wealthy enough to afford a smartphone with GPS to tell them how to get where they need to go,” Connie said. “A more likely alternative, in light of their wealth, was the possibility of their being kidnapped, possibly for ransom, or possibly for something relating to the book, since its apparently still with them.”

“Easy enough to believe,” Anna said. “Though Madrid’s not a particularly common spot for kidnappings to occur.”

“Only takes one to mess up a given person’s day,” Val said.

“It gets weirder,” Connie said. “The houses where the owner stores their other books don’t actually exist. At least not on this Earth.”

“And this is where we usually call in James,” Val said.

“Yep, he’s still working on tracking down what the story is with our missing person’s homes,” Connie said. “Since I couldn’t help with that, I kept digging and that’s how I turned up Madrid. See the other thing the index could do is say which book is closest to the book you’re asking about. I think it usually answers that in terms of content – basically suggesting a book that’s most like the one you asked about. In this case though it was able to tell us the closest physical book to the one we need, hence why we’re going to Madrid.”

“How precise was the index able to be?” Anna asked.

“I have a street address and apartment number,” Connie said.

“Jimmy B has our tickets ready I presume?” Anna asked.

“Two tickets for the next flight out and as many as we need for the one after that,” Tam said.

“Excellent. Connie, you’re with me. Let’s find our missing book and its owner,” Anna said.

***

The Madrid-Barajas Airport took more time to leave than it had taken the inbound flight to get there, though in a large part that was because both Anna and Connie made separate stops to help English speaking tourists navigate the confusion of one of the world’s largest international airports.

In one case, a bus load of children from New Jersey had somehow managed to get separated from their chaperones. The children weren’t displeased with this but the chaperones were in a panic until Anna helped them communicate with the airport staff. Reuniting with the children was more time consuming than expected as a resourceful young boy had taken it on himself to arrange transportation to their hotel, reasoning that the chaperones would find them there and it would be a fun joke to be the first to arrive.

The chaperones saw the matter in a somewhat less amusing light. With Anna’s help the found the children just as they were boarding a private shuttle which was being billed to one of the chaperones credit cards.

The other delay involved Connie playing translator for a group of women heading to a fabric arts tour of Spain. The customs official wasn’t happy with the crafting implements they brought and thought their story was suspicious until Connie was able to convey that they weren’t looking to travel around the countryside stabbing interesting people but rather looking for locally produced fabrics they could bring samples of back for their various projects.

“Now for a long slow drive into the city,” Connie said as they stepped into the car rental agency where Jimmy B had a vehicle waiting for them.

“Don’t worry about that,” Anna said. “I know a shortcut.”

***

Connie didn’t get motion sick. As far as she knew she was biologically incapable of experiencing motion sickness due to a quirk in how her inner ears worked. That still seemed to be true, but it didn’t really help make Anna’s driving any less terrifying.

“I get to drive back,” she said as she staggered out the car.

“Certainly,” Anna said, hiding a small smile. “If we wind up having a car to drive.”

“Why wouldn’t we have a car?” Connie asked.

“These sort of affairs tend to end unpredictably,” Anna said. “I like to avoid making assumptions, or getting my hopes up.”

“Fair enough,” Connie said, examining the building they’d parked beside. It was a newer structure for the road it was on, having been remodeled within the last six months from what Connie’s research turned up.

The remodeling had cost a small fortune. Since it’s owner had several large fortunes that hadn’t proved to be a problem, but Connie had to question his taste. The accents and styling of the buildings sharp angles and harsh color palette screamed of a need to be noticed and recognized as special in the same manner than a five year old might make that demand.

“It’s nice to see that Santiago hasn’t changed in the last twenty years,” Anna said, clicking the automatic locks on the car as she headed towards the front door.

“I still can’t believe that you know Santiago Martin,” Connie said. “Or that he’s the one who owns this place. I was only able to track it back to a holding company.”

“Santiago has a complicated relationship with taxes and personal liability,” Anna said. “When I knew him, he was still creating the layers of isolation that were required to allow him retain the phenomenal wealth he’d inherited.”

“You said you worked in finance before being part of the club. Is that how you knew him?” Connie asked.

“No, we met through a mutual friend who thought we would hit it off,” Anna said. “Nothing ever came of it though. Santiago was charming, but not the right kind of charming I’m afraid.”

“Will he remember you?” Connie asked.

“I should hope so,” Anna said. “If not for me he’d be in a Polish prison still.”

“What had he done wrong then?” Connie asked.

“Not kidnapping,” Anna said. “Which means if he has indeed abducted our book owner, this will be a new venture for him, but it seems out of character for the man I knew.”

She knocked on the door and the speaker next to it squawked to life.

“Yes?” a burly voice asked in Catalan.

“We’re here to see Santiago,” Anna said. “Please tell him Anna Ilyina and a guest are here.”

“One minute,” the man said.

Precisely sixty seconds later the door opened. Inside stood three armed men with automatic weapons pointing at Anna.

“Oh good, he does remember me,” she said.

Connie was surrounded by more technology than she’d ever imagined existed in one place, very little of which she could guess the function of. That wasn’t what worried her though. What concerned the otherwise stalwart adventurer was the fact that a hard drive was growling at her. It wasn’t inside a computer. It wasn’t connected to anything in fact. But it was growling at her.

“Don’t worry about Yeltzi,” Tam said. “She gets nervous anytime she sees someone not wearing a grounding strap.”

“The hard drive gets nervous?” Connie asked, stepping carefully around the shelf where the other components were starting to become restless.

“The hard drive’s just her shell,” Tam said. “Yeltzie’s a lightning elemental. Normally they don’t stay bound to a material object long, but Yeltzie got stuck in the drive last time someone tried to fry my systems and it took long enough for her to recuperate that she grew attached to it.”

“Is the rest of your lab alive like that?” Connie asked, taking stock of the escape paths that were open and how they were likely to change if parts of the room started moving.

“It varies,” Tam said, brushing away a circle of silver sand on her workbench to make room for leather bound tome she was carrying. “I do more of the arcane work down here than I really should, and sometimes the spells get a bit messy.”

“It still seems a bit unreal that you’re a stage magician who does real magic. And you do all the data handling work?”

“Not all of it,” Tam said. “JB manages a fair share too, especially on the ‘dealing with people’ end of things. And there’s James, he handles most of the really esoteric stuff.”

“Still, when do you sleep?” Connie asked.

“I’ve had the stage show on hold for the last few months,” Tam said. “So that’s made things a little easier. I keep hoping that things will slow down but it seems like everyday there’s a new problem coming out of nowhere.”

“Ok, what part can I help with?” Connie asked, looking around, unsure what any of the systems she could see did, much less which of them she should begin working on.

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Tam said. “Remember the Living Husks from the catacombs?”

“Yeah, you said there were others who had been put to work already right?” Connie said.

“More than there were still left in the catacombs,” Tam said. “Anna tracked them down though and we have them being flown to a hospital outside of Lima. Our job is to find the book that has the recipe to cure them.”

“Recipe?” Connie asked. “I thought it would be something like a spell?”

“It is,” Tam said, flipping open the book to a random page in the middle. “Spells take a lot of forms though. One of the most basic is simply knowledge that’s written down.”

“That’s just a book though,” Connie said.

“Think about what books were like when the written word had just been invented,” Tam said. “Before that, knowledge had to be passed from person to person. Oral traditions can be incredibly powerful, but there are things the written word can do that the spoken one just can’t match.”

“So it’s a spell as in a literal spelling out of what to do?” Connie asked.

“Possibly,” Tam said. “The Living Husk condition isn’t a biological effect – I mean, it affects their biology obviously, but it’s not brought about by a bacteria or anything like that. The transformation it invokes is definitely magical in nature. Since it’s tied to eating though, the magics we’re looking for to reverse or counteract it are probably culinary ones.”

“We’re not going to need to steal Idun’s apples are we?” Connie asked. “Which sounds ridiculous when I say it, but if you tell me that we need to visit a Norse Goddess it won’t even hit the Top 5 list of weird things I’ve seen so far today.”

“Idun’s apples would be a bit overkill for this,” Tam said. “I hope.”

“Wait, Idun’s real? I was just joking there,” Connie said.

“The best bet with mythology is to assume it’s at least partially true, if not in the this world, then in one that’s incredibly hard to reach when you want to get there and incredibly easy to fall into when you don’t,” Tam said.

“So noted,” Connie said. “Now how to I help? This looks like it’s in Sumerian? Or, no, Medieval French?  Or Esperanto? I’m seeing bits of each of those on different pages.”

“This particular book is an index. The entries are in the native language each book was written in,” Tam said. “I would love to have it scanned but there are enchantments on it that I couldn’t replicate in a virtual environment.”

“It looks like the index covers a summary of the books, notes on the author, and the books’ locations?” Connie asked, trying to puzzle out an entry in Ancient Greek. “I take it you want me to read through it and see if I can find one of the books that mentions Living Husks?”

“Not exactly ‘read through it’,” Tam said. “One of the enchantments on the book is that it updates what’s inside in real time.”

Connie watched as the letters on the page started to squiggle, the location of one of the books changing from “Private Library, Houston, TX, USA” to “Aboard a plane bound for Singapore”.

“It feels like it’s adding pages too,” Connie said.

“It is, and they don’t all go in at the end,” Tam said. “The key with this book isn’t to absorb it all, it’s to look for the clues it will show you to lead you to the right listing, without getting distracted by the other questions you’re searching for answers to.”

“That sounds easy enough,” Connie said. “I mean, that’s basically one of about a thousand things I do on a normal day. Give me ten minutes!”

***

Tam checked the clock and noticed that two hours had gone by while she was lost in catching up on a few of the message forums she frequented.

“How’s it going Connie?” she called, without looking up.

“There’s a spell for boiling the poison out of a snake,” Connie said. “While it’s still alive. And it doesn’t harm the snake.”

“Yep.”

“Why would you boil the poison out of a snake?” Connie asked.

“Pet Cobra? Or you need the purified snake as the ingredient in a larger spell,” Tam said. “How’s it going finding the recipe to cure the Living Husks?”

“The what? Oh god! Right! That! Sorry, I got distracted somehow,” Connie said.

***

An hour later Tam got up to get something to drink.

“Can I get you anything Connie?” she asked.

“There’s a book of billing receipts that were paid by god,” she said. “It says it covers the setup cost of creation. Why would god keep the receipts on creation?”

“Maybe we’re still under warranty?” Tam said. “Let me see.”

She sat down next Connie and read the entry Connie had found, struggling through the ancient Chinese to glean what she could from the summary the index had on the book.

“Am I mistranslating that?” Connie asked. “And is it real?”

“No and yes,” Tam said. “It is a book of receipts for creation, but the creation in question is only a minor shadow of Earth, think of it like adding an extension onto your house. Also, it wasn’t an all powerful creator who fashioned it. The Realm of Melting Stars was made by a mid-tier deity it looks like. So, yes, it’s real, but that’s kind of in the sense that a painting is real. We can look at it, admire its beauty but to step inside it, you’d need to be able to bend reality which sort of fuzzes the line on what’s ‘real’.”

“There is so much stuff in here like that,” Connie said. “How do you keep all of this in your head? I feel like my brain is about to explode.”

“I’m not surprised,” Tam said. “You’ve been at this for three hours now! Come on, let’s take a break and I’ll tell you the secret of how it works.”

***

It was so much later in the day when they stepped outside that Connie felt like she’d fallen through a time warp – which she had discovered were a real thing and had a catalogue of Vacation Destination books written about them for “the traveling quasels on a budget”. She still had no idea what a quasel was, or what sort of budget would allow one to casually wander through time, but something was trying to remind her that she had other, more critical things, to worry about.

“Ahhh! The Living Husks!”

It probably wasn’t the sort of thing she should have screamed as they walked in the door to the first coffee shop they passed, but for some reason none of the patrons did more than glance in her direction and shrug.

“It’s been a long ten minutes, right?” Tam asked, struggling to suppress a smile.

“I completely forgot about them,” Connie said. “That never happens though!”

“Not with regular books maybe,” Tam said. “Magical indexes though? Those you need to be a bit more careful with.”

“So, what did I do wrong?” Connie asked, as Tam looked over the menu behind the ordering counter.

“You tried to force a path through to the answer,” Tam said. “You wanted to know something, and so the book shifted its contents around trying to provide something that you would want to find. The problem is, the book can feel your intent, but it can’t read your mind, so it makes a bunch of guesses based on what it feels you reacting to. It’s like the magical equivalent of clickbait. It throw index entries at you until you bite on one and then it assumes that’s what you were interested in, even if you only read a few words of it because the title was really eye catching.”

“Ok, that’s weird. What was I supposed to do though?” Connie asked.

“Work with the book,” Tam said. “Magical things have a life to them. With a magical book you want to have something like a dialog, rather than just expecting it to statically provide information to you.”

“So I need to talk to it?” Connie asked. “Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”

“Everyone practices magic in their own way,” Tam said. “Part of it was trying to see what might work for you, and part of it was being curious what you would find in the index.”

“What else could I have found?” Connie asked.

“I don’t know,” Tam said. “That’s the trick I was talking about earlier. There’s too much information to absorb it all. I’ve only been able to handle it this far by learning where to look for general things I need, gathering the basics together, and then researching the specific bits that I need as I go. That might not be the system that works for you. You might need to build your own equivalent of a magical index in your head, or maybe you can memorize huge chunks of information at once and trade out the chunks as you need them. I’m betting you’ve already have a good idea what sort of learning works best for you, the trick is applying that in a situation where the knowledge set you need is highly situational and fluid even within a given set of parameters.”

“Interesting,” Connie said, mulling over the idea. “I think I can do that. In fact, I’m going to head back now. I think I see how I can get the index on my side. I just need to find some common ground with it. Thanks!”

***

Tam took her time with her coffee break. She’d timed it for right around when Cynthia was getting off work and so was able to waylay her girlfriend with fresh pastries, hot chocolate and kisses, in roughly that order.

“You seem pretty chipper for a long day’s work,” Cynthia said as they sat down at the booth Tam had saved.

“We’ve got our new associate, Connie, starting today,” Tam said. “So I get to offload some of the research work onto her now.”

“I think I love her,” Cynthia said.

“Hopefully the magic book I left her with won’t eat her,” Tam said.

“You mean that in a figurative sense of course,” Cynthia said.

“Mostly,” Tam agreed with a smile. “An index like that could literally pull her in, but the gift of walking into books is incredibly rare and if Connie has it, it would be really good to know that sooner rather than later.”

“Assuming she’s not eaten by the book, what did you have her researching?” Cynthia asked.

“A cure for a particularly weird transformation,” Tam said. “It basically turns people into super docile, low maintenance zombies. Reversing it is really tricky though. Most of the options just leave you with corpses, which is not what we’re going for.”

“I think I found it!” Connie said, bursting into the coffee shop with the book held open to one of the back pages.

“You found the cure?” Tam asked.

“Oh yeah, Spiney and me found about a dozen of them once I knew how to ask for what I wanted,” Connie said. “Most of them aren’t really practical of course. I mean where are we supposed to get the ground bones of a unicorn from? There was one that seemed really simple, but its book was listed as ‘lost’.”

“How is something ‘lost’ from the index?” Tam asked. “It knows where all the books it catalogues are, that’s it’s whole point.”

“That’s what we thought too, until we realized, it’s not the book that’s lost, it’s the person who has the book!”

“How does that help us?” Tam asked.

“Simple. They’re lost because they’ve been abducted. So all we need to do to save the Living Husks is to save this person too!”

“Who are they?” Cynthia asked.

“Oh, I have no idea, but I do know where we can find them!”

“So, we’re going to go in blind, to rescue someone from an uncertain fate and fight an enemy we know nothing about?” Tam asked.

“Pretty much, yeah.”

Connie focused on the gun pointed in her direction. It was hard not to since the man behind it seemed all too eager to pull the trigger.

“Looks like we might be about to have some fun right now,” Val said. The swagger in her voice broke Connie’s gaze free from the threat of death that was pointing at them.

Val was smiling.

She was relaxed.

For a moment, Connie wondered if she knew the men who had found them, but then she saw the leers on the men’s faces. This wasn’t a friendly encounter, and it was going to end quite badly.

Connie smile and relaxed as well. Bad situations were her stock in trade.

“How many do you want?” she asked Val. There were a total of five men with rifles they could see in the passageway that led away from the bridge they were standing on. The corridor took a turn where the man farthest back was standing though, which suggested there could be more waiting around the corner.

Connie rather hoped there were.

“Three or four,” Val said, cracking her knuckles. “If that’s not being too greedy?”

Val clearly wanted to take a crack at all of them men in front of them. Or was it crack all of the men in front of them? Connie couldn’t picture things being resolved without a plethora of broken bones.

“That’ll be fine,” Connie said, gauging which of their opponents she would be able to get to first.

Since the men hadn’t opened fire the moment they saw Val and Connie, getting into striking range could have been as easy as letting the men come to them. Val’s words suggested she had something else in mind though, and as far as Connie was concerned, anyone who could appear out of nowhere in a forgotten dungeon in an inaccessible area of the Peruvian Andes was owed the benefit of the doubt in terms of being able to handle a bunch of half drunk guys who didn’t look like they could spell “gun” much less use one.

“Pretty girl thinks she can handle us?” the biggest guy said. “You can’t handle nothing, I’ll make you…”

Connie never got to hear what the guy was going to make Val do. There was a thundercrack that shook the bridge and swallowed the meaty, shattering sound of the leader’s rifle being slammed into his face hard enough to fracture his jaw into millimeter long bone fragments.

Val was standing beside him. She’d moved in the blink of an eye to close the distance and engage with their foes. Connie wasn’t sure how that was possible, but she wasn’t about to object to it either.

A band of disciplined men might have reacted properly to an enemy appearing in the midst. With coordinated fire, they could have caught Val with a few rounds and started to turn the tide in their favor. A bullet wound or two might not have killed her but it would certainly have slowed her down. Even a simple retreat might have bought them the time they needed, as the silver fire of the magic Val unleashed was sputtering out as fast as it had flared up.

The hired goons were not a disciplined fighting force though, which wasn’t surprising. They weren’t hired for for their skills or aptitude. Their value came from the facts that they asked no questions about their assignments and were willing to hurt, maim, or kill when ordered, without complaint. Even more importantly though, they were loyal, and would take that loyalty to the grave if need be (mostly because they knew they would wind up in the grave if they proved disloyal and being dead with their pride was better than being dead without it.)

Fortunately for them neither Val nor Connie were going to make them choose between loyalty and death. Unfortunately for the men, that wasn’t a kindness. Kindness was for later, when their lives were no longer endangered.

The leader with the shattered jaw blacked out from the pain and the severe head and neck trauma the strike to his face caused. He would recover but it would take over a year and he would never again be able to hold a gun due to the damage his hands suffered. While he recuperated, a missionary would visit him every day and read to him. Theirs would become a lifelong friendship which would eventually lead to the broken jawed leader taking up vows and living a life of service.

The rest of the men suffered similar fates, though their long term prospects differed based on their ability to take the chances life offered them.

The second biggest man fired his rifle the moment Val struck but it was pointing up at the ceiling. He hadn’t meant to keep it clear of his friends, but luck was on his side. It was somewhat less lucky that the unexpected recoil made him drop the rifle and that as he bent down to grab it he met Val’s rising knee with his face and then her descending elbow with the back of his head.

That took the fight out of him by virtue of shutting off his consciousness for a long enough period that the fight was quite over by the time he opened his eyes. He could, at that point, have risen and charged after them, but the head trauma and unconsciousness left him weak and nauseous to the point where laying down and trying not to fall off the swirling ground was an overwhelmingly agreeable option.

His recovery was faster, in part because he moved back home to be with his family, and spent long enough feeling lost and confused that he was willing to listen, at last, to what his grandmother had to say. The life that him found after that as a fruit seller lacked the action he desired as a youth, so he supplemented it by opening a boxing gym, though he never got in the ring himself, prefering to coach and guide people the way his grandmother had guided him back onto the path of charity of the soul.

The third, fourth, and fifth guards were all in range to strike back at Val after her initial onslaught and she only had two hands to brush their guns aside with. As Val had planned though, Connie was there.

As the guard to Val’s right rushed to get his rifle pointed at her, and not at his two friends, Connie stepped up and caught him with an open hand chop to the throat.

He tried to gasp for air but couldn’t. He tried to look for help, but his eyes were streaming with tears from the pain. He collapsed to his knees and shivered at the icy clutch of death that gripped his heart, but he didn’t perish.

The strike to his throat didn’t crush his larynx. In another moment he was able to draw breath, though that was the moment after Connie landed a crushing hammerblow to the his temple.

Val dispatched the remaining guards with simple Muay Thai kicks and elbow strikes, limiting the permanent damage she did, but ensuring that each blow would cause a debilitating amount of pain.

The three guards would recover and later try to find employment together, working as hired thugs again, until the youngest of them was shot. It was a wound that should have been fatal, the bullet passing through his left lung and grazing his heart, but thanks to a miracle of surgical skill, the young man pulled through. The other two were shocked to discover how much the cared for their young friend, and how little interest they retained in lives that could only end in violence. With their prayers answered by his recovery, the three fled across the Pacific and became the crew of their own fishing boat based out of Vietnam. The youngest married one of the locals and together they all formed an unusual but supportive little family.

“We should get going,” Val said once the five men in the corridor and the three around the corner were down.

“What is with these guys?” Connie asked. “Where did they come from?”

“Funny story that,” Val said, leading them downwards as best she could. “From what Tam told me, there were apparently people who found these ruins before you did.”

“Why didn’t they publish anything about their find? This whole place is a goldmine!” Connie said.

“Not for the kind of gold they wanted,” Val said. “See it turns out that hidden ruins that no one knows about are a great place to stockpile all sorts of illegal things.”

“But the treasures here are literally priceless!” Connie didn’t try to lower her voice even though she knew it would be far wiser to.

“It’s old pots and funny scribbles on the walls from what they can see,” Val said. “Or it mostly is. The catacombs they have some serious respect for.”

“The ones they put us in? Why’s that?” Connie asked.

“They’ve observed that if you stick someone inside the catacombs they eventually turn into living husks,” Val said. “Let them out after they’re fully turned and you’ve got a mindless but highly obedient workforce who can never answer questions or incriminate anyone.”

“That’s what they intended to do to us? Wait, that’s what’s happening to Joe and Tam?” Connie asked.

“Nah, the husking process is an effect of eating the glowing fungus down there. Without any other food, people trapped in the catacombs eventually turn to that and it turns them into the things you saw.”

“Can they be turned back?” Connie asked.

“Tam thinks so, but it’s not necessarily easy, especially not if the guys running this place catch wind of it. If they think these people can speak about what’s been done to them then the only option for keeping the husks silent will be to kill all of them.”

“How do we stop that from happening?” Connie asked. “We’re in the middle of nowhere and I’m guessing they have a lot more guys than those eight.”

“Yeah, there’s a small army here,” Val said. “Fortunately, we have an answer for that. Our first step though is to rescue Tam and Joe.”

The trip down to the lower bridge involved only three more brawls, but each one raised the time pressure they were under in Connie’s mind. Sooner or later, probably much sooner, someone would notice the pile of unconscious bodies they were leaving in their wake and then a general alarm would be raised.

For as amazing a fighter as Val looked to be, and even with her own bare knuckle prowess added to that, Connie was reasonably certain that they couldn’t beat an entire army on their own.

“You said you needed my help earlier?” Connie asked when they reached the right level for the catacombs.

“Yeah, Tam’s our info person and she’s a bit overworked,” Val said. “We’re hoping you’ll agree to join us and take some of the load off her.”

“I’ve already got a job though,” Connie said.

“So does she,” Val said. “Associates can pursue their own interests in addition to working for the Second Chance Club. Oh, though in your case? Your old job might not be something you want to go back to.”

“Why?” Connie asked, her eyes narrowing.

“You know how the private library you work for helped fund your expedition? Well, it turns out they were hoping you’d fail and declare this area clear of any interesting ruins.”

“That’s not quite how things work, but why would they do that?”

“They’re kind of in league with the cartel that’s running this place,” Val said. “The articles that you found that led you here? Those weren’t supposed to be published, but it happened and now they’re trying to limit the damage done to their operation.”

“They expected me to fail?”

“The coordinates you originally had were a bit off,” Val said. “Apparently they thought you’d give up before you went too far afield and found the stuff they didn’t want you to see.”

“Yeah, but I told them about our breakthrough,” Connie said. “I…oh…I told them that we’d discovered we weren’t at the right digsite, but that we’d find the right coordinates and that we’d be moving the exploration tomorrow.”

“And that’s when they sent in the goons,” Val said, leading them over the bridge to the vault.

“Note to self: resign with extreme prejudice when I get back,” Connie said.

“What does that mean?” Val asked.

“I’m not sure yet, I think I’ll just get creative when the time comes.”

“Looks like we’ll need a bit of creativity now,” Val said, stopping before the vault door. “I was kind of hoping this would be easier to open from this side.”

“Oh, it is,” Connie said.

“You can crack safes?” Val asked.

“It’s a hobby,” Connie said. “I’ve got a lot of hobbies.”

She stepped up to the vault door and with a dramatic flourish, pulled on its handle and watched it slide effortlessly open.

“The lock wasn’t engaged,” she said. “You can’t open it from the otherside if it’s closed but from this side all you’ve got to do is pull.”

“Darn,” Tam said. “I could have used a bit more practice time. How did it go getting here?”

“Only hit a few guards,” Val said. “Plenty left though.”

“Yeah, you said there’s an army of them, but we had an answer for that?” Connie asked.

“That we do,” Tam said and whistled.

From the quickness with which she stepped aside Connie was convinced to make room so the door would be clear. That proved to be a fantastic idea as a moment later a giant pack of wolves came charging out of the darkness and out towards the ruins Val and Connie had just snuck through.

Or not a giant pack of wolves but rather a pack of giant wolves. Or both? And were some of them a bit more bipedal than a wolf really should be?

“This is going to sound crazy, but were those werewolves?” Connie asked.

“Yeah, and funny thing, the army upstairs? They’re not packing silver bullets. I checked,” Val said.

“Let’s get you folks and the Living Husks to safety,” Tam said.

“But what about all of relics?” Connie asked, horror struck at the idea of the artifacts being collateral damage.

“Oh, most of the werewolves are archaeologists,” Tam said. “They’ll take care that nothing’s damaged too badly.”

“They’re what now?” Connie asked.

“Archaeologists, I mean anyone can have a hobby right?”

Watching Connie climb up the natural chimney that lead out of the cavern they’d been trapped in, Val found herself wondering where a librarian had gotten muscles so amazingly toned. Not that lifting weights hadn’t done the same for Val, but if shelving heavy books could give definition like Connie had then Val wanted to look into the benefits cross training could provide.

Of course first they had to get home safely.

For a change they seemed to be off to a good start on that. Once they left the crevasse Connie and Joe had hidden in, they’d found a warren of natural and carved caves connected by irregular, time-worn tunnels. Avoiding the “zombies” as Connie called them proved to be easy. They tended to scurry away from light that Tam carried, rather than shambling forward like any other self respecting undead menace would.

With their travel unhindered, Connie was able to lead the rest to the exit to the higher levels of the ruins. She explained the significance of the various inscribed artwork as they went and made guesses as to each chamber’s purpose. That was mildly interesting to Val, but what really caught her attention was the well maintained vault door that sealed what Connie deemed to be the exit tunnel.

Someone far more modern than the original builders had remodeled the ruins to their own ends, which wasn’t too surprising. Val had a decent idea who might be responsible based on the briefing Tam had assembled and, if luck was on her side, she hoped she’d get a chance to meet them face-to-face before the current dungeon crawl was done.

“You doing okay up there Connie?” Joe asked in a whisper. He’d recovered from his fainting spell and looked horribly embarrassed by it, despite Connie and Val’s reassurances that it wasn’t his fault.

Extreme stress did nasty things to humans, both physically and psychologically. No matter how brave you were, even a relatively small shock could knock the wind out of your sails if it hit you right. That Joe was able to keep moving forward was a more important measure of his resiliency than anything else, but Joe had a lifetime of cultural programming that told him any sign of weakness proved him to be unfit as a man, and no rational argument was going to completely wipe away the effects of that, especially not while he was still under a life threatening amount of stress.

“I’ve been better,” Connie said, grunting as she grabbed another handhold and pulled herself up another foot in the natural chimney. “But been a lot worse too. We’ll call today a ‘5’ or so I’d say.”

With the primary exit blocked, it had been up to Tam to find them an option for escaping the cave complex. As far as Val could tell Tam hadn’t used any actual magic to do so. The spell to transport them through the shadows between the Second Chance Club in North America and a long forgotten cavern in Peru had left Tam ‘chilled’ in her own words.

To Val, Tam’s hands had felt as warm as they normally were but there was a slight frost that followed each puff of breath that Tam took. Val didn’t want to guess what other costs the spell had exacted. It was enough to know that Tam wasn’t at 100% and that she was relying on Val to carry the load until the mystic consequences of getting them to Peru wore off.

“Do you need a hand?” Joe asked.

“No applause please,” Connie said. “This isn’t as difficult as our star is making it look. She’s just a bit out of practice. And possibly still drugged.”

Connie rose another few feet as she spoke, putting her about twenty feet above them, and roughly half the distance up the chimney. Her movements were neither sluggish from drugs, nor particularly weak or uncertain though. Any claims of difficulty she made seemed to be for dramatic effect or to convince Joe not to worry about following her.

That was a kind gesture. The climb itself wasn’t trivial, and Val guessed it might have stymied either Tam or Joe. Connie was already extending her limbs far enough to show a visible strain while she climbs. Tam and Joe, both being shorter than her, would have had to extend farther and hold their weight at a more difficult angle. Connie’s angles weren’t optimal ones either, but she handled her movements and transitions with a reassuring ease, which was what Val had been interested in observing. Val could have gone first but Charlene was hoping to recruit Connie as a new associate for the club, and it was always a good idea to know what you could expect from your teammates.

“I think I’m right,” Tam said, as she examined the carving on the wall of the chamber they were  standing in. “This should lead up a bath chamber in one of the sealed areas of the ruins above.”

“We’re climbing up into a bathroom?” Val asked. “This is kinda big to be a toilet isn’t it?”

“Not a bath like that,” Connie said from above them. “We think it had ritual significance. The room you’re in is a memorial chamber. The ashes of dead were interred in the catacombs below the city. That’s basically where you are. Up here, the people would cleanse themselves and then speak their ancestors and offer them gifts.”

“Like a giant wishing well? Why not just come down here?” Val asked.

“The lower caves were a sacred place, we think,” Connie said. “Of course whenever we don’t understand what people were doing we assume it was had some religious significance. It could be that they just liked rock climbing a lot, and I’m using this chimney as the makers intended all along.”

“What happens if she falls?” Joe asked, trying to be quiet enough that Connie couldn’t hear him. He failed. It wasn’t his fault, Val thought, Connie just had fantastically good hearing.

“You all get to see how high I can bounce,” she said. “Put me in the betting pool for a good six inches on that one.”

“I’ll catch her,” Val said, offering Joe a reassuring smile.

“That’s a bad idea,” Connie said. “Not that I’m going to fall, but trust me you do not want to try to catch me at the bottom of a forty foot drop. I don’t want to kill the both of us if I slip.”

“I’d suggest not slipping then,” Val said. Connie was right, catching someone from a forty foot fall was an excellent method of producing two shattered bodies rather than one, but Val hadn’t come on the trip without a few mystic enhancements of her own. It wouldn’t be fun to act as a breakfall for Connie but it would be a lot more fun than letting her go splat on the hard stone.

“You’re in luck,” Connie said as she reached the top of the chimney. “Today it’s Connie 1, gravity 0. Anyone else want to try their luck against a fundamental force of nature?”

“I’m next,” Val said. “Tam, will you be okay down here while we get that vault door open?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” she said. “I’m starting to thaw a little, and I’ll have Joe to keep me company.”

“We’re not going up too?” Joe asked, a mixture of worry and relief swirling across his face.

“I’m not in the best shape for a climb like that,” Tam said. “And I’d prefer not to be alone with the things down here.”

It was a gentle lie, arranged between Tam and Val with nothing more than small glances and nods. Joe’s fainting was, at least in part, due to the drugs his kidnappers had pumped into him. He was mobile but far from full strength and a relapse midway up the chimney would have disastrous results. At the time same time though, leaving him behind and alone wasn’t likely to end well either.

There was also a kernel of truth in Tam’s reluctance to make the climb. The shadow walk spell had taken a toll on her and the extra time to rest was something she would appreciate. Plus it would be easier for two people to scout the ruins than for four.

“You two hang tight then,” Val said. “We’ll be back once we’ve found a safe route out.”

“How long should we wait?” Joe asked. “In case you don’t I mean.”

“I need to spend a couple hours working on some sleight of hand tricks,” Tam said, pulling a deck of cards from a pocket that Val was reasonably certain had been empty a few moments earlier. “If they’re not back by then, we’ll give the chimney a shot.”

“I’ll be in touch if something comes up,” Val said, tapping the earring she wore before leaping up to start as high in the chimney as she could.

She held off using any of the enchantments she was carrying. It was fun to show off but there were enough dangerous people in the ruins above that she wasn’t ready to spend any of her resource if she didn’t have to, and even without magical aid she was able to ascend the forty feet in under half a minute. Far from Olympic time, she knew, but then Olympic times tended to be under more favorable conditions and by people more practiced in speed climbing.

“So, Tam said we’re in part of the ruins that are still sealed,” Val said. “How do we get to the other side of where the vault door is?”

“We’ll need to find the main path that leads down to the lower catacombs,” Connie said. “How does Tam know about this place though? We came here hoping to discover it based on some random notes I found that an 18th century monk wrote. No one thought there was anything here, and she somehow has the blueprints for it?”

“More like a rough sketch of the setup,” Val said.

“Yeah, but where did she even get that?” Connie asked. “I mean if this place is well known, then somebody would have published something about it. There’s enough here to explore and catalogue to justify a lifetime worth of grants.”

“She talked to the people in the city below the catacombs,” Val said. “It’s how we found where you were.”

“Wait, the what now?” Connie asked.

“It’s probably something I should explain later,” Val said. “The short form is; the world is stranger than most people know, and some of the strangeness wants it to stay like that.”

“So you’re saying there’s a city’s worth of human beings who’ve lived deep beneath the Earth’s surface for years? Generations? Millenia? And you somehow have their phone number?”

“No,” Val said. “I mean, they don’t have phones, obviously, and also they’re not human. More like lava people I think? We didn’t have a lot of time to go over that, and Tam was very clear that bothering them in person would be a bad idea.”

“Lava people?” Connie asked.

“Yeah,” Val said and waited for the inevitable cry of ‘but that’s impossible.’

“Hmm, ok, that makes more sense,” Connie said with a shrug.

“It does?” Val asked.

“Yeah. Humans living exclusively underground for generations would have all sorts of problems, from fresh air, to viable food and water, to heat and pressure issues depending on how deep they were. Lava people probably don’t have to worry about any of that.”

Val watched as Connie inspected a section of the wall and slid it smoothly out of place, revealing it to be a long unused door.

Acclimating to the stranger aspects of working with the Second Chance Club hadn’t been too bad for Val, but that was largely because Tam and Anna had introduced her to the more fantastical elements they dealt with slowly. Connie didn’t seem to need any of that, or, Val wondered, had the crisis they were in rattled Connie’s hold on reality enough that anything seemed reasonable?

She watched Connie for signs of mania or dissociation, knowing that she might easily miss the clues due to her lack of training as a psychologist. Connie, for her part, was busy examining the carvings on the walls as they walked down a passageway that was flanked by empty rooms. She seemed normal, or at least what passed for normal in the short time Val had known her.

“I think the religious idea was right,” she said. “The carvings here look like they’re related to ones commonly found on tombs, which means this area we’re in was a reserved space, I think, separate from the rest of the living and work areas.”

They turned a corner to find a wide archway leading out to a large chasm. Once upon a time a bridge had spanned the chasm, but only a partial arch worked stone was left on each side, the center having fallen away completely. As methods of sealing one area of a complex off from the rest went, it seemed a pretty solid option.

“There’s another bridge below us,” Connie said. “That must lead to the catacombs Joe and Tam are in.”

“So we need to get to the other side to get down there?” Val asked.

“We could try climbing down, but I don’t like how the walls arc inward from here,” Connie said.

“Yeah, me either. Also, we don’t know if we can get out from that level either,” Val said.

“Only one way to go then!” Connie said and backed up a few paces.

“Wait that’s…” but Val didn’t get to finish speaking before Connie bolted forward like a shot.

It was an impressive leap by any measure. The gap in the bridge was wide enough that crossing it would have been impossible for most people. Where they would have fallen to their death though, Connie managed to make it far enough to hit the edge of the bridge and then grab on before falling back into the abyss below.

With a grunt and some annoyance at the pain, she began to pull herself up.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s a bit farther than it looks.”

She was trying to protect Val. Val could see that. One person could sneak easier than two, and Connie looked to be the type who didn’t let others take on dangers when she could handle the danger for them. It was a nice thought. Val had a better one though.

With a few quick steps, she breathed in the scent of a spring meadow and bounded forwards with the proportional speed and strength of a jack rabbit. Her leap carried her across the gap, and down the far side of the bridge where she somersaulted to a graceful landing before scurrying back to the edge of the bridge and helping Connie get up safely.

“That was a good leap,” a man said in Spanish. “Maybe we can have some fun later?”

Val turned and noticed two important things. The man in the corridor beyond the bridge wasn’t alone, and he and his friends were all pointing their rifles at her.

Connie wasn’t sure how she felt about being buried alive. On the one hand, it wasn’t exactly how she wanted to go. Too cramped and stuffy and no chance to say any last goodbyes. On the other hand, getting lost while on a secret archaeological dig was a pretty mysterious fate and, if she was ever found, there were so many amazing artifacts around her that she would be an instant celebrity.

“Something is moving out there,” Joe said. Joe had been hearing strange things every since they arrived at the dig site. He claimed that as a porter, site security was one of his responsibilities, and so he had to be extra alert. That didn’t explain why he spent half the night jumping at shadows, but also didn’t mean that he wasn’t occasionally right.

“More than one thing, I think,” Connie said. She didn’t want to panic the guy who was potentially the last surviving member of her expedition more than necessary, but given that they were holed up in a tiny crevice, deep within a hitherto unexplored cavern complex in the Peruvian Andes, and there seemed to be several zombies hunting for their blood, a fairly extreme amount of panic seemed quite reasonable.

Nails hard as steel scrapped on walls of the small passageway outside their crevice. Connie covered Joe’s mouth with her hand. The zombies, or whatever they were, didn’t seem to react to sound much but Connie wasn’t in the mood to take a lot of chances.

Inch by inch, in stuttering rasps, the scraping advanced, as though the creature dragging its claws across the stone was struggling through a great agony to move. It drew closer for several long moments before stopping and sniffing the air with a congested inhalation. Whatever it was looking for, it didn’t appear to find. Instead, it turned and began scraping away into the distance.

“What was that?” Joe asked, his face only saved from being ghostly white by the weird green illumination of the phosphorescent slime that grew in odd patches along the walls and provided the only light in the darkened caves.

“That was not our problem,” Connie said. “Whatever lives down here, was here before we arrived and will probably be here long after we leave.”

“Leave?” Joe held his voice below a scream but only with a visible exertion of will. “How are we going to leave? There’s no way out!”

“We got in, we can get out,” Connie said.

“Do you remember how we got here then?” Joe asked. “Because the last thing I remember was crawling into my sleeping bag and hoping I wouldn’t miss breakfast again.”

“Yeah, whoever, or whatever, took us did it in the middle of the night,” Connie said. “But, they kept us alive which means they want something from us.”

“Or they just want us to be lunch for whatever these things are,” Joe said.

“If we’re supposed to be food then we’d do just as good a job whether we were dead or alive, and dead would mean there’d be a lot less chance that we could get away,” Connie said.

She refrained from pointing out that there were several animal species which would only eat live food. If they were meant to feed things that were put off by the smell of carrion flesh then there’d be an excellent reason to leave them alive. That seemed unlikely enough that she didn’t need to worry Joe by sharing the information.

“Do we even know where we are?” Joe asked.

“In a cave,” Connie said, knowing it wasn’t a helpful response. “We can’t be far from the dig though.”

“How can you know that?” Joe lets his voice get louder, panic blinding him to the danger he was putting them in.

“They took us while we were sleeping,” Connie said. “I’m not a deep enough sleeper that they could have done that without drugs, and if we’d been drugged unconscious for a lengthy period of time we’d still be feeling it. Whatever compound they used has to be a short term thing. Also, I’m not starving. If we’d been out of it for days we’d be weak and hungry.”

“I just feel sick,” Joe said, his voice back to a miserable whisper.

“We’re going to be ok,” Connie said, patting him on the shoulder and giving him a confident smile.

“This doesn’t really feel anything like ok.”

“Believe it or not, I’ve been in worse scrapes before. There was this one time I fell through the ice in Antarctica and wound up trapped in freezing water beneath a glacier and surrounded by three giant squid.”

“What? Really?”

“Girl scouts honor,” Connie said. “Then there was the time I was skydiving and the plane I was on exploded before I got into my parachute.”

“Wait, I thought you were an archaeologist, why were you skydiving?” Joe asked.

“People can have hobbies,” Connie said. “And I’m not an archaeologist. I’m a librarian.”

Joe blinked and sputtered in confusion, before Connie held up a hand to explain.

“I was a dual major,” she said. “I know. It’s super nerdy, but I really like doing research. Technically I guess I’m both, but since  it my library position that pays a salary which I then spend on things like this, I get to call myself a librarian.”

“That’s…that’s not how libraries work is it?” Joe asked.

“There’s a secret to getting the job you want,” Connie said. “It’s real simple – basically know the right people and invent it for yourself. I wanted to be a archeologist librarian, and with years of study, the right friendly contacts, and a ludicrous amount student loan debt, that’s what I became.”

“So how did you survive?” Joe asked.

“Far too much Red Bull and almost enough full body massages,” Connie said. “Plus I stretched out the course work over another year so I could fit everything in.”

“No, I mean the plane,” Joe said. “How’d you survive it exploding?”

“Oh! Yeah, that was fun,” Connie said. “Well, I guess it’s more fair to say it disintegrated after it hit another plane, so that bought me about a half second. Wasn’t enough to get into the parachute but at least I had enough time to see where one was.”

“Why didn’t you have it on?” Joe asked.

“Because I wasn’t supposed to be skydiving that day,” Connie said. “So we crash, mid-air, thanks to the other guy being an idiot after the shortest half second in my life, the fuselage rips open and Mr. Air Currents say that outside is the place to be. I’m falling, our pilot’s falling, all of the divers are falling, and all our stuff is falling. The divers of course all popped their chutes because they’re not stupid. I was close enough to get to one of the falling chutes and get it strapped on enough to be functional. It’s really good I was a theater kid, I’d never have been able to change that fast otherwise.”

“What about the pilot?” Joe asked.

“Well, I was the only one who hadn’t opened their chute, so I got to dive for him,” Connie said. “Again, we were seriously lucky there. Derrick looked like the photoshopped version of a supermodel. He could only break into the triple digits for weight by wearing a wet parka.”

“You caught him?” Joe asked.

“Of course,” Connie said. “I don’t leave people behind.” She bapped him on the shoulder. “Even ones who are screaming in my ear the whole time.”

Joe managed a weak chuckle at that.

“So how do we get out of here?” he asked.

“Well, we start with what we know,” Connie said. “We were looking for some ruins. These are probably them. The room we woke up in had all kinds of amazing pottery in alcoves and the walls have the most fantastic art. So odds are good we’re somewhere below the dig site we were working on.”

“That makes sense. That means we go up?” Joe asked.

“Probably not,” Connie said. “Or at least not right away. Whoever caught us, put us down here for a reason. I’m going to guess the reason for that is because we were poking around somewhere they had something to hide.”

“Why not just kill us?” Joe asked.

“As a guess?” Connie said. “We don’t look that important. Gerald’s the dig site lead. The people who caught us probably want to know what he’s told the outside world about what we’re doing. We’re useful as a bargaining chip or to get answers from if Gerald won’t talk.”

“That means they can come and get us whenever they want,” An edge of panic crept back into Joe’s voice.

“Yeah, which is excellent,” Connie said. “If they can get us, that means we can get out. And if they’re intending to use us for leverage then they don’t think that the zombies in here will eat us right away, so we’re probably safe to move around.”

“But if they left us here doesn’t that mean they don’t think we can get out?” Joe asked.

“Well, they probably weren’t expecting us to get out of the ropes they tied us up in,” Connie said.

“They tied us up?” Joe asked.

“Yeah, you were still out when I came to,” Connie said. “I figured you’d be happier waking up and not finding yourself hogtied. Then I heard the zombies.”

“Umm, thanks,” Joe said.

“Let’s see if we can find how to get out of here, shall we?” Connie asked.

“I think we can help with that.”

Connie regretted the punch that she threw the moment the words finished registering in her mind. Appearances to the contrary though, her nerves were a bit too high strung for her not to lash out at an unexpected voice coming from deeper in the crevice.

Tam wasn’t surprised by the punch. She knew she was playing with fire by making a dramatic entrance. Connie had to punch past Joe to reach her though so she had plenty of time to step back and continue speaking before things got ugly.

“Sorry, that was mean to startle you like that,” Tam said. “You’re Constance Cruz and Joseph Guilder right? My name is Le Li Tam and I’m here to help.”

Connie’s brain wanted to lock up but she kicked her mental gears into action and they spun up a match on the name she’d been given.

“The magician?” she asked. “Like from Las Vegas?”

“I haven’t played in Vegas in a little while,” Tam said. “But, yeah, that one. I brought a friend too.”

“Is this glowing stuff radioactive?” Val asked.

In the dim light cast by the green slime, Connie saw an Asian woman and a Latina woman pressed into the deeper reaches of the crevasse.

“How did you get here?” Connie asked, reasonably certain no one had been in the crevasse when she’d pushed Joe into it. “Does this lead to the outside?”

“Not exactly,” Tam said. “I think the only path out is to either go down to the ancient city below us, which is probably a terrible idea, or to go back up through the ruins above, which will have its own set of problems.”

“Can we maybe move a bit?” Val asked. “I’m getting a rock wedgie standing here.”

Connie started to walk backwards and felt Joe slump against her. He’d passed out and was a lot heavier than he’d been when he was recovering from their drugging and had been able to partially stand on his own feet.

With a grunt, she supported his weight and dragged him out to the cavern tunnel outside the crevasse. Tam and Val joined them moments later as Joe began to come round again.

“So, you’ve got a lot of questions,” Tam said. “The important ones are why are we here, and how are we going to get out. The answers are; to help you because we need your talents, and with as much stealth as we can manage.”

“Stealth? Was I wrong about the zombies?” Connie asked. “Do they want to eat us?”

“Well, they’re not zombies, but they’re not the problem,” Tam said. “It turns out there’s a small army just a few hundred feet above us in the ruins you were looking for, they’re all armed, all pretty cranky, and all ready to shoot anything that comes out of this place.”

“No! That would be terrible!” Connie said.”They might hit some of the relics!”

For Anna, walking through the oncology ward was like walking through a whole night of bad dreams. As she passed empty beds and heard the quiet and all too familiar sounds of the monitoring machines at work a host of bad memories leapt out at her. They belonged only to her past, they held no claim on her anymore, but the echoes of old terrors and pains hadn’t faded away despite the decade that separated her from laying in one of those beds herself and hearing those monitors tick away her fading life.

That she came bearing good news gave her strides purpose and strength but there were too many full rooms she had to pass by for her to retain any illusion that the second chance she carried wasn’t just as needed by so many others.

“The Garcias will be happy to see you,”  Chantel, Anna’s primary contact among the nurses, said.

“Getting to present news like this is it’s own reward,” Anna said. “I feel like you should be the one to give it to them though.”

“I think Maria will believe it more if it comes from you,” Chantel said. “I’ve had to tell her that a shot wouldn’t hurt too much one too many times now.”

They arrived at a room where a family had gathered around a young girl who was hooked up an IV.

“Auntie Anna!” Maria said as soon as she caught sight of Anna’s white hair. “Did it come in yet?”

“Maybe,” Anna said, allowing a heartfelt smile to crack the frown that had clutched her lips. She waggled an envelope without looking at it, before smiling again and passing it over to Maria directly.

“Is it good news?” Sylvia, Maria’s mother, asked.

“Yes,” Anna said. “Maria’s tumor matched the genetic profile they were looking for. She’s a viable candidate for the gene therapy treatment.”

There was a round of cheers from the family, excepting only Syvlia who was too overcome to speak. She turned to sit on the bedside chair, covering her eyes, as silent sobs of relief shook her shoulders.

“This means I’m going to get all better right? So I can take ballet then, can’t I?” Maria asked.

“Get well is still going to be a journey, it’s still going to take a lot of work and being really brave to get well” Anna said. “But this is like putting you in a race car!”

“What about a motorcycle?” Maria asked. “You said you ride a motorcycle, and you beat your cancer, so I want to be like you!”

“You’ll have to ask your mom about riding a motorcycle,” Anna said. “But I think we can arrange for some ballet training sooner than that.”

“How soon?” Maria asked, with just as much patience as a healthy six year old would have shown.

“I don’t know mom,” Anna said, turning to Sylvia, who had recovered but was still torn between crying and smiling, “Think you can spare her tomorrow afternoon?”

“What? So soon?” Sylvia asked.

“Well, the Bolshoi is only going to be in town for a couple of days,” Anna said, to which Maria squealed in delight.

Plans immediately began to be formed around seeing the world famous ballet company, which let Anna step out of the room with Chantel to give the Garcias time to absorb the happy news they’d been given.

“It’s days like this that make it worth it,” Chantel said, the proximity to the Garcia’s joy putting a warm smile on her face.

“I wish I could do the same for everyone here,” Anna said. “No one should have to fight a battle like that.”

“Yeah, but remember, we are fighting it,” Chantel said. “I don’t come in here every day because I have a ward full of people dying on me. I come in because little by little we’re beating this thing. I’m not going to lie, some days we don’t win, and those are hard. But every year we make things a little better. Used to be nobody walked out of a place like this. Now? It happens more often than it doesn’t, and that matters. Each time we win it matters, and each time we lose we grieve, but we keep moving forward and someday we’re going to kick cancer’s ass so hard that it won’t be any worse than getting the sniffles.”

“The future you see is wonderful, I want to be a part of it,” Anna said. “Until then though, if there’s anyone else like Maria who needs some help getting through all the red tape and financials, don’t hesitate to call me ok?”

“Of course,” Chantel said. “I already got my second chance, gotta make sure to share the love as much as I can.”

***

Zoe was waiting for Anna in the parking lot, the rental car purring as Zoe pulled it into place just as Anna reached the sidewalk pick up point.

“You look a little more relaxed,” Zoe said. “I take it Maria was happy with the news?”

“It’s hard to say if the treatment was the real winner, or the backstage access with the Bolshois,” Anna said. “Thank you for setting that up.”

“Thank you,” Zoe said. “It’s nice to get to use my connections for something good for a change.”

“One little signature and you could be doing this sort of thing all the time,” Anna said, buckling in as Zoe pulled away from the curb.

“It’s tempting,” Zoe said, traffic parting for her as though she were a visiting head of state. “You’ve made a wonderful case for the virtues of your club.”

“But not wonderful enough?” Anna asked, knowing the answer but curious as to the reason.

“Perhaps too much so,” Zoe said. “Your damnable honesty is wearing off on me. I’m finding it harder to deceive myself than it used to be.”

“What deception can you no longer cling to?” Anna asked.

“When I worked for PrimaLux, I convinced myself that what I did was what anyone would have done. That my actions were right and necessary for the circumstances I was in,” Zoe said. “There was just enough truth in that to shield me from the deeper reality. I didn’t have to see that I was happy to play the game and destroy those who could present a challenge to what I held because I value myself above all else.”

“That doesn’t need to be mutually exclusive with giving to others,” Anna said. She sought for a feeling of disappointment but her heart knew Zoe well enough after months of companionship that there was no surprise in Zoe’s refusal to join the Second Chance Club. All that rose from the depths when Anna looked into her heart was a subtle pleasure at seeing Zoe’s growing awareness of her own desires and truth.

“Yes, but while I find acts like helping Maria delightful, I know it’s not what calls to me,” Zoe said. Her easy tone spoke of confidence and certainty, but she had worn those feelings as a facade for so long that they were as true as any other element of her persona. In a few lingering pauses though, Anna could hear the whispers of worry that crept in the shadows of Zoe’s mind.

“Have you decided what lies ahead for you then?” Anna asked. Zoe had drifted after the fall of PrimaLux, content for a while to watch life as an outsider after Anna had cracked the foundations Zoe’d built a career and life upon.

“I enjoyed being your rival for the brief time we fought,” Zoe said. “So I think that’s what I’m going to do again.”

There was a sly undercurrent to her words. It carried both an unspoken challenge and a wordless hope.

“Interesting,” Anna said. “I suppose you could pick up the piece of PrimaLux, weld them back together into a small and yet no less dangerous entity, but I believe you’ve moved past that.”

Zoe was silent but her smile confirmed Anna’s statement.

“You want to form your own club then?” Anna said. “One that will outshine the Second Chance Club and all the work I do?”

“You’ve shown me how rewarding helping people can be,” Zoe said. “I can do the same, but I need to be helping my people. I don’t mean to own them. I mean for them to be my people because the effort comes from me, because I have chosen to include them in the world I’m building.”

“And what about those you chose to leave out?” Anna asked.

“To win, I can’t leave out anyone who needs me,” Zoe said. “The people aren’t what is important to me though. Their happiness is simply the coin I can collect to compete with you.”

“And what happens if you should win?” Anna asked. “Will that be the end of your good works?”

“I can only win once we are both passed on,” Zoe said. “So yes, once I am gone my works will end and a final tally can be made. It won’t balance out what I did for PrimaLux, but that won’t take away from the victory I intend to claim.”

“My best part in your life will be as an enemy then?” Anna asked, unsure of the answer she was hoping for.

“No,” Zoe said. “As a rival. I…you are not someone I want to be enemies with.”

“Have a left you afraid of me?” Anna asked.

“I’m not afraid,” Zoe said, “Except of losing you.”

“I’m not sure we can ever be just rivals,” Anna said, and saw a flash of worry ripple across Zoe’s face. “I have friends I am close to, people who are dear to me, but there are only a few that I’m able to invite into all the parts of my life.”

“Is that what I am to you?” Zoe asked, her voice softer than it had been.

“I think I would like to see if you are,” Anna said. “If you’re inclined to be both rivals and something more?”

Zoe relaxed and allowed a sunny smile to lit on her lips.

“I believe I am,” she said. “Being your rival inspires me to be more than I am and whatever our ‘something more’ might be, I think I’d like to discover it with you.”

***

Anna was late the next morning getting to the Second Chance Club’s staff meeting. That proved to be fortuitous as it meant that Tam had the extra time she needed to assemble the presentation they were reviewing.

“Sorry,” Tam said, and clicked ‘Send’ to deliver the slides to everyone else’s laptops. “I got derailed on this for a bit dealing a bank standoff.”

“That sounds dangerous to tackle alone,” Val said, starting to review the slides.

“Oh, this was in Montreal,” Tam said. “I just gave some of our members who were on site the info they needed to talk the hostage taker down.”

“That is part of the reason I asked you all to come in to day,” Charlene said from the speaker phone in the center of the table they were sitting around. From the background sounds, she was still in Puerto Rico helping with the rebuilding efforts to restore power to the island.  “I’ve been tasking you all, and Tam especially, too much lately.”

“Thanks,” Tam said. “But it’s ok. The work we’re doing really can’t wait.”

“That is also true,” Charlene said. “But it doesn’t mean you need to do it alone.”

“I’ve been bringing in the Club’s members on as many projects as I can,” JB said.

“They’re a resource we will continue to need to utilize,” Charlene said. “Ultimately however, we need more than they can provide. That is why I’ve been searching for candidates to form another team of associates.”

“We’re going to bring on another Tam?” Val asked. “Is there really anyone like that anywhere though?”

“No, not another Tam,” Charlene said. “You all have unique gifts and talents. None of you are replaceable. There are however different options for how a job can be done, and other people who can help carry the load that you’ve been shouldering so far.”

“Have you found any promising candidates yet?” Anna asked. The prospect of having some more free time than they’d enjoyed in recent months wasn’t entirely unappealing in light of the new phase her relationship with Zoe was entering.

“I have, her name is Constance Cruz, and I believe she can help relieve the strain Tam is under,” Charlene said. “There’s only one problem. As of noon today, she was reported missing from the dig site she was working at in Peru. In fact no one was found at the dig site at all when their supply van arrived. Just their tools and supplies. Everything else and everyone else was gone.”

There were two hours left until Anna arrived with the former citizens of Bright Springs. Statistically speaking, there was almost no chance that a disaster would occur the moment they arrived. Tam was sure of the math on that. She was just as certain though that whatever strands of magic had led to the Mare Luna Estates being the townsfolks new home weren’t going to ground themselves out harmlessly without a bit of help.

“How are these people moving in here tonight?” June asked. “There haven’t been any sales yet. Are they just going to be squatting in the houses until everything  gets put together properly? Will everything get put together properly?”

Tam didn’t fault her for asking. Werewolf or no, June still had to consider the property value of her house if she was going to put three kids through school.

“That would be my fault,” Jimmy B said. He’d joined them as soon as he could but between being farther away and not quite as fearless a driver as Tam was, he’d lagged a good bit behind them. That the delay also meant he wasn’t on the front line for facing the werewolves and didn’t have to enter the scene until any hostilities were resolved was, almost certainly, just a side benefit.

“You talked with the developers?” Henry asked. Tam could see the incredulity in his eyes. Housing developers were difficult to get ahold of under the best of circumstances, and should have been impossible to contact after business hours closed, not to mention the various other parties that would need to be brought in to complete a deal of that scope. Jimmy B had a gift though.

“Yeah, Marty sends his regards,” Jimmy said. “I guess they’ve been having a hard time moving this units, so getting the houses offloaded all at once like this is going to keep him afloat through the balance of the year and beyond.”

“When did you start putting this together?” June asked.

“Around 6:00 I think?” Jimmy said.

“This morning?” Henry asked, astounded.

“Oh no, that would have been easy,” Jimmy said. “Tam gave me the call around 5:30 tonight.”

“But that was only a few hours ago,” June said. “Real estate doesn’t move that fast.”

“It helps to have friends in the right places,” Jimmy said. “And a real estate lawyer on speed dial.”

“Can you work some more of that magic and see about getting the basic supplies they’ll need?” Tam said. “We can worry about clothes later, but food, water, soap, towels, toilet paper…”

“Already ordered and on a truck,” Jimmy said. “I need to check in with some folks, but it should get here just before they do.”

“Excellent, then that leaves paying a visit to Tartarus Technologies,” Tam said, and picked up her racing jacket.

“I’m with you,” Cynthia said, standing to join her.

“Thank you for all this,” Tam said, addressing Henry, June and the kids.

“We haven’t done anything though,” June said.

“You listened,” Tam said. “That counts for a lot.”

***

The Tartarus Technologies grounds weren’t just landscaped. Every green and growing thing on the lawn leading to their research building was sculpted and constrained, wires choking off the growth of trees, hedges trimmed into perfectly regular shapes which might have held artistry if they weren’t drenched in an omnipresent sense of constraint and control. Nature was allowed on the premise only in servitude to the will of its corporate master.

“Who are you here to see?” the guard at the checkpoint leading into the facility asked.

“Kevin Weist,” Tam said, naming the facility’s Director of Research and Development.

“Ms. Greensmith?” The guard asked after finding their name on a name on the approved guests list for the evening. That should have been enough but he looked at the bike and Tam’s passenger for a long moment.

Tam paid no mind to how strange she and Cynthia appeared, she was certain weirder people had shown up at the facility before, and instead nodded at the fake name.

“Mr. Weist is in the main building,” the guard said and passed them through. His job was not to question the whims of his superiors just to do what the system told him to do.

There would be photos of their arrival. Those photos would, sadly, be lost in a hard drive crash in two hours. Tam didn’t have any particular reason to secure her identity against Tartarus but given PrimaLux’s track record she didn’t see the need to take any chances either.

Weist wasn’t waiting for them at the door, which didn’t surprise Tam. He wasn’t aware they were coming. She could have included him on the meeting that she booked for them, but something told her he would have been conveniently unavailable if he caught wind of who wanted to see him.

She signed in herself and Cynthia at the main desk and collected their badges before claiming a space in one of the boardrooms.

***

It was late at night, far past working hours, so when Kevin Weist got a high priority meeting reminder telling him that he had fifteen minutes to be in Boardroom A, he at first dismissed it as a glitch.

Five minutes later it reappeared and he read it but dismissed it again, thinking someone had entered the wrong time for a meeting the following day.

Five minutes after that, the meeting reminder appeared again but this time when he tried to dismiss it his computer froze and a woman’s voice said “don’t keep us waiting any longer Weist.”

Boardroom A was on the ground floor, but Kevin managed to make it there before the final five minutes ran out. When he caught sight of Tam and Cynthia, clad in motorcycle gear, with their helmets on the table, waiting for him, he pulled up short.

“What is this? Who are you?” he asked.

“Zoe Skillings and Claudia Goodwin sends their regards,” Tam said and was delighted to see the names of the former Director of PrimaLux security and Vice President of R&D still held weight with their subsidiaries.

“We’re not affiliated with PrimaLux anymore,” Weist said.

“No, you’re not,” Tam said. “Which means you’re also not affiliated with their investment backing anymore either. From what I can see in your ledgers you haven’t been operating without anything like a sustainable amount of revenue since Tartarus was founded, and the investment nest egg you did have is pretty well dried up isn’t it?”

“Our accounts are not publicly available,” Weist said.

“It’s adorable you think that,” Tam said, “But it doesn’t change that you’re out of money and scrambling for anything that might let you keep the lights on until about next Thursday or so I believe?”

“Why are you here?” Weist asked. “Is this a buyout offer?”

“A midnight buyout?” Tam said. “That would be fairly classic I suppose, but, no, we’re here about another matter. You are primarily a bio-tech researcher company, which means you have access to all sorts of legitimate specimen samples, so can you tell me why you’re stealing cows?”

“I’m sorry, what?” Weist asked.

“Cows,” Cynthia said. “Several have gone missing from local farms. It’s caused at least one that was on the edge to close, and we’ve got tire tracks from the most recent one which match the tracks for your fleet trucks.”

“Why would we steal cows?” Weist asked, genuine confusion clouding his face.

“Bio-weapon research?” Tam said. “I know that’s not on the official corporate prospectus but it didn’t take much digging to find that you have a number of bio-weapon programs currently under development.”

Weist looked back and forth between the two women, his night turning into one of the few nightmares that hadn’t been plaguing his sleep recently. The weight of the failing company bore down on him, crushing his resolve, and his instinctual refusal to acknowledge Tam’s claim crumbled with it.

“No,” he said. “It can’t be them.”

“Are you sure?” Tam asked.

He rose and went to the door before saying “Come with me.”

Tam and Cynthia were treated to an elevator ride down to an unmarked sub-basement. When the doors opened, a broad and well lit lab was laid out before them with a few techs still inside, behind partitions which could stop an armored tank from breaking through. The techs inside were clad in the sort of environment isolation suits that made Cynthia curl her toes in jealousy.

Weist spent the next fifteen minutes pointing out the security features, their backups, the backups to the backups, the failsafes for when all the backups failed, and the monitoring systems which monitored the monitoring systems that ensured everyone was following proper protocols every second of the day.

“This is not the kind of work someone plays around with,” Weist said.

“What sort of plagues are you developing?” Tam asked.

“All of them,” Weist said. “Potentially. Our focus is actually on developing cures, but we can’t do that without active test specimens. Typically those are laboratory breed mice, but we also work with bird specimens and chickens. Cows however do not fit within the control requirements for the research we’re doing.”

“Why not?” Cynthia asked.

“Because we can’t guarantee that we can keep control of sick animals of that scale in this facility and without the guarantee of keeping the animals isolated we can’t risk exposing them to the pathogens we’re developing treatments for.”

“And no one’s cutting corners thanks to the budget woes?” Tam asked.

“No,” Weist said. “We’d never get FDA approval to move onto a new testing stage unless we could show that we conformed to the proper standards.”

“And what about the products which don’t require FDA approval?” Tam asked.

“Well for those we have a different…” Weist trailed off as the answer came to him, “facility.”

“Need to make a phone call?” Tam asked.

***

They arrived at the Tartarus Technologies Agricultural Products Research Center less than thirty minutes later. Unlike the main corporate office, the Agricultural Products building was little more than a renovated farmhouse and barn tucked away on an open patch of land in the Vermont woods. It had a few cars in it’s small parking lot, a hen house which was presumably full of sleeping hens, and glowing cows.

“Should those be doing that?” Cynthia asked, pointing at the frankly adorable bovines that shone with various pastel lights.

“I’m going to guess that this is their big new breakthrough?” Tam said.

One of the researchers picked that moment to exit the farmhouse and, seeing Weist advancing with a murderous look in his eyes, exclaimed “Wait, boss, I can explain everything!”

***

“And could he?” Anna asked.

“Not well enough to keep from being fired,” Cynthia said.

“Apparently the Agricultural Products division’s great idea for keeping the company solvent was to diversify out into performance enhancing drugs which could escape detection by the current suite of monitoring tests,” Tam said.

“It’s a sadly lucrative market,” Anna said. “But, glowing cows?”

“They were testing the effects on cows before they went to human trials,” Tam said. “I don’t know why they picked cows, maybe it was just intuition that something was wrong in the formula? Or maybe just desperation? In any case, the stolen cows began mutating. Fortunately the mutation is a fairly benign one, unfortunately it rendered the cows useless from a testing perspective and difficult to dispose of.”

“It sounded like they were still hoping to figure out what went wrong from them too,” Cynthia said.

“So what will become of the cows now?” Anna asked.

“They’re going back to their owners,” Tam said. “Weist thinks they’ll spark some tourism and there’s probably a few papers to be published around them. Tartarus won’t be the ones to get the credit there though. They’re essentially bankrupt now.”

“Yes, I mentioned that to Zoe,” Anna said. “I believe some new investors will be stepping in tomorrow before their experiments need to be shut down and destroyed.”

“Sounds like Zoe’s getting a bio-tech company at a bargain price then,” Tam said. “Was she setting us up for this?”

“I’m not sure,” Anna said. “I’ll have to ask her at the ballet next week.”

“Would she tell you something like that?” Tam asked.

“I believe she would,” Anna said. “That’s part of what we’ll be working out I think.”

“Wasn’t she your mortal enemy a few months ago?” Cynthia asked.

“Yes, but everyone deserves a second chance,” Anna said.