In Eleanor’s defense she had a lot on her mind. Having dealt with the state police, only temporarily if she were any judge, she got back into her car and drove off in the general direction of the city with the vague plan of grabbing a quick bite before heading back to the office. She didn’t spot the tail until she was back on 55 heading south. A dark blue crown vic four or five car lengths behind her, completely unremarkable save for an odd feeling of recognition. At first she dismissed it, her thumbs hadn’t pricked, but as she crossed from one lane to another to pass the slower traffic it stayed with her. Frowning she tried joining the slow pokes and the blue car also seemed to lose the haste of moments ago. There was a lot you could tell by the way someone tailed you. A professional team used several cars and rotated through them to stop you from getting suspicious. Cops and feds tended to favor drive bys. Extraction teams wanted to close the distance. This tail appeared to simply be content to follow, staying well back but not doing anything beyond that to conceal its interest. Amateurs? Eleanor was about to make a more serious attempt to shake the tail when her phone played the snippet of Shakira’s ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ which was assigned to Emmaline’s number. Eleanor plugged the phone into the hands free and picked up, her eyes still on her rear view mirror.



“What’s up babe?” she asked, shifting lanes yet again to get in front of a semi-trailer, hoping to lure her playmate into moving closer.



“Are you with Mal?” Emmaline asked without preamble. Eleanor frowned and turned her attention to the phonecall.



“No, why?” she asked, confused as to why Emmaline was asking. She didn’t normally take an active interest in a case unless Eleanor specifically sought her opinion, which she tried not to do unless they were at a dead end.



“He is in danger,” Emmaline declared portentously. Eleanor thought she could hear the mixer running in the background. Danger evidently didn’t include a respite from whatever domestic task Emmaline had in mind for the day.



“How do you know that?” she asked, watching through the mirror as the crown vic moved up to get a look around the big rig. The windows were tinted dark, but the moment it saw she was still there it dropped back again. Too eager, too obvious.



“I’m forecasting him,” Emmaline replied cagily. Forecasting was a type of fortune telling, a sort of predictive surveillance that you could run magically. In the basement of their home Eleanor and Emmaline kept a large clear section of polished marble with naturally occurring veins of silver in its matrix. Using various algorithms one could interpret the returns generated by certain items belonging to an individual, blood and hair worked best. The problem with forecasting was that it had a non-zero effect on the skeins of probability, by observing the future it was easy to change it, no matter how mathematically rigorous you were. The changes induced by a probability function were rarely good ones. It was a tool best used infrequently and with exceeding care.

“Ok... Next question. Why are you forecasting him?” Eleanor asked. There was a long awkward pause.



“Remember that conversation we had last week?” Emmaline asked, her accent sounding more Austrian than usual. A dead giveaway that the blonde witch was nervous. Eleanor goggled in shock.



“Are you serious right now?!” she demanded. “Emmaline Godzilla Von Morganstern!”



Emmaline coughed awkwardly. Eleanor knew she wouldn’t have called unless she was sure of her numbers and felt that the threat was both real and immediate. Unfortunately they couldn’t call Mal directly because doing so would be a direct intervention in the skein of probability Emmaline had just read. That was certain disaster.



“We can talk about it later. Dump the forecasting. I need to work and I don’t want to be entangled,” Eleanor replied, shrinking the call screen to an inset and pulling up her arcanalytics app, hurriedly punching a preset ritual. There was a sound on the other end of the line. You had been in the game way too long when you could recognize the sound of chalk marks being scrubbed out with hair over a phone line.



“It’s done,” Emmaline responded a moment later. Eleanor nodded despite the fact Emmaline couldn’t see the gesture. She shifted over to the far right lane glancing at the thick trees that lined the median as she muttered calculations to herself.



“Is there anything else I can do?” Emmaline asked urgently. Eleanor glanced at the app. A green circle was marked with 88%. Electronic fidelity was much better than a coven of humans chanting, and an order of magnitude faster.



“Can you take up 2 or 3 miliSterns?” Eleanor asked. Sterns were the unit of entropic dissonance that Emmaline and her sisters used to quantify the chaos that all magic depended upon. Their tendency to use variations of their last name for almost everything was both endearing and annoying. The app clicked up to 99 percent as, fifty miles away, Emmaline added her mathematical clarity to the spell. Eleanor pulled a stylus from her console, pricked her thumb and made a few last minute notes on the dash of her car in fresh blood.



“Ill talk to you when I can. Love you.” Eleanor said, taking a few deep meditative breaths.



“Love you too,” Emmaline replied and the call ended. Eleanor hummed gently, the bitter taste of lilac root scratching at the back of her throat. She closed her eyes. Closing one’s eyes while driving was not a wise choice under most circumstances, but it beat the next step all to hell. With deliberate calm Eleanor yanked the wheel hard to the right. Tires screamed as the lexus swerved off the road, going momentarily airborne as it leaped over the shallow ditch between pavement and verge. The car bounced slightly and then plowed straight into the strip of trees which separated 55 south from 55 north. Branches slapped at the windscreen as the lexus crashed through the undergrowth. The odds of missing a tree were a million to one. Actually it was more like six million five hundred thousand to one to within 4 standard deviations, but luck, like fate, could be managed if you knew how the chaos of the universe worked. The interior windows of the car beaded with condensation and every light on the dashboard lit as the arcane backwash played merry hell with quantum mechanics for a few moments. Horns blared and Eleanor felt her tiers thump onto the northbound, she reefed the wheel, fishtailing slightly into positon between a minivan and a delivery truck. Leaves and forest debris flew from the windshield as the wind whipped past, whisking away the smell of burned rubber. Eleanor blew out a breath and killed the app, punching up one of the fake sim cards which Fynn had installed and dialing 911.



“911 what is your emergency?” a voice came back immediately. Eleanor took a few deep breaths as though on the verge of hyperventilating.



“I just saw some men shoving a woman into the trunk of a car… oh god … they had her tied up and…”



“Ma’am,” the dispatcher replied, her voice growing from professional to intent in the single syllable. “Can you tell me where you are?”



“They are pulling onto 55 north near exit 23. It’s a late model crown vic with number plate CD 3455. I need to…” Eleanor dropped the call. Her amateur tail was in for an interesting time when they got of the south bound and tried to follow her north. Every police cruiser would be on the look out for them.



“Amateurs,” she muttered to herself, and gunned the engine, heading back towards the gas station and hoping she would be in time to help.

As Primrose searched, her mind wandered. Back to home, where it often leapt. She recalled an instance when her mother said something peculiar. Primrose was fairly young at the time and did not get good at overhearing her parent's conversations until much later. She was only able to catch snippets of the speech. One that stuck out to her was "voodoo". What her mother was saying about the mythical practice was beyond her. More than likely her mother was condemning it. Her mother often looked down on other forms of magic that were not "pure" in her eyes.

Primrose shook herself back to the present. She needed to move on from them. If she was to be her own person, she needed to not dwell so much in the past. Her eyes locked back on the computer screen and her search. As she did so, she noticed something odd. Or rather, something that stuck out. In every report or article she read using her search terms, one place kept coming up. It wasn't a place she was familiar with (though she hardly ventured far from her usual haunts). Madame Lafitte's in the French Quarter. It appeared to be a lounge of some sort. The French Quarter is no stranger to mystical elements, though she wondered what a club like that had to do with a dead guy in a car with symbols on his body.

As she thought, Fynn knocked on her door and came in, offering her some pizza. The last time she had pizza was in some bougie restaurant that had such toppings as white truffle, escargot, and actual gold flakes. It was absolutely disgusting. "Yes," she said, grabbing a piece. It looked greasy. She took a bit, letting the flavors hit all at once. She was right, it was greasy and messy. In other words, it was perfection. She set it down so as to not inhale the entire piece. "That sounds useful. Tell me, did he stop at any place called Madame Lafitte's? It is some club in the French Quarter. My search led to that place constantly. In fact..." She quickly pulled up the department's files and searched for the club. She found only one result. The report shared very few details. The only thing that stuck out was a small notation made: Aua, das tat weh. "What does that mean?" she asked to no one in particular, but Fynn could see what she was referring to.

"We can check out his residence. This club also seems sketchy. Any idea how Mal and Jaelle are doing? Or Eleanor? She's not back yet."

Mal watched the two approach, his brow raised in an open question. Jaelle was gorgeous, and he didn't mean aesthetically. She had appeared at just the right time, sheparding the two older folks to the back as best she could. The Petersons were innocent folk, and with them gone Mal didn't feel too bad wrecking their livelihoods. Strange how morality and guilt worked. Within the folds of his sleeves, his fingers moved, weaving the flows of magic around them to prepare for whatever was coming. He didn't cast a spell yet, not wanting to give anything away in case they were powerful spellcasters.

When they pulled out the silence pistol, Mal scowled. He moved like a practiced fighter, quick and efficient, left out shooting out and grabbing the gun's barrel with a flow of force, twisting his hand and breaking the gun's barrel. The second man was already aiming with a firearm of his own, Mal's eyes widened, bending his arm until it was position like he was about to pull a seatbelt down over his torso. The gun fired, bullets sparking off an invisible shield Mal had summoned at just the last moment. Bullets crashed into canned food and peanuts.

Mal riposted with a solidified collection of sharpened force, slicing across the two men's necks and beheading them. Or, that's what he had expected. He didn't exactly know what happened when he had used the attack. The razor edge of mystical aether energies turned into heavy molasses to Mal's senses as it passed through the two men. He felt fatigued even trying to run controlled magic across them. He couldn't exactly understand what was happening, and the assailants looked only a bit dazed.

"Back of the store!" Malcador cried to the Petersons. The old man, Liam, had shouldered the door a couple of times. As he went for a fourth attempt, Mal breathed a spell, the door weakening as he hit it. The old man nearly crashed to the floor, but he caught himself and his wife grabbed at him.

"Liam!" She cried. He grumbled and grunted, pushing himself forward. Mal was satisfied, but when he turned back, one of the men ran at him, attempting a tackle. Mal leaped to the left, kicking out with his foot. The blow truly did smart, but it succeeded in sending the guy to the ground. Malcador's heart raced, sweat beading on his brow. He placed his hands over one another, palms facing the ground. He breathed an incantation, not bothering with rhythm or cadence. His voice rose in octaves beyond human capability, and the men within didn't seem too worried, just merely note of Mal performing a spell. If they valued their lives, they would start running.

Blue-white flame coalesced around his hands, burgeoning like a a blow torch. Malcador didn't know who the hell these men were, but this spell was a dwemor that could turn the whole store into a cinder if he didn't control it properly, and even if it was, Mal's immediate vicinity was going to be obliterated. He called it 'Mund-spilli' or 'Destroyer of Worlds.' A bit of a misnomer, but it sufficed for what its intended use was.

“Get down!”

Jaelle needn’t have bothered. Mrs. Peterson was already kneeling, one hand grasped her husband’s waistband, and her other held her up, shaking against the dirty linoleum floor. Liam grunted with each strike of the door, his face flushed. They both looked so pale.

It was times like these when Jaelle felt the most useless. She couldn’t pick up a key, couldn’t help Mal fight off the attackers. No action she took could directly affect the outside world unless it was through influencing someone that could affect the world. So, what options did that leave her?

She could change her appearance— make herself look like something impressive or frightening, but somehow she didn’t think that tactic would work on these men. They were too cold, too unflinching in their attack on Mal. She watched him use magic both defensively and in attack, but neither of the suits blinked. Jaelle’s heartbeat surged in intangible fury; it felt real enough to her.

Mal needed help, and she couldn’t do anything.

The door gave, and Liam Peterson tumbled through it in a spray of limbs. Jaelle turned with them, taking in the shelves and cleaning supplies, and most importantly, the emergency exit. “Through that door!” she hissed. “Get out and head for the tree line! We’ll be right behind you.”

Blue fire began to encircle Mal’s hands, and Jaelle blanched. This was about to get messy—the sort of messy that led to too many questions about strange powers and otherworldly destruction. She hoped he could keep it contained to this space, but just in case Mal couldn’t, Jaelle scrambled for an alternative to the destroyer of worlds.

She ducked into the hallway, waited for the emergency door’s clanging alarm, and then forced herself into a different shape—herself but male, her hair buzzed, her shoulders broader, and her legs longer. She flickered a moment, trying to solidify the deception, but it was difficult to force herself into this different of a shape. By the time she managed it, the spell was nearly ready.

“Stop, or I’ll shoot!” Jaelle leveled an incorporeal gun with steady incorporeal hands at the nearest of the attackers. He promptly shot through her.

Well, so much for that idea.

Jaelle turned and ran back through the hall, letting the illusion fade with the same relief as someone carrying too much weight might put down their burden. It would be up to Mal unless—please God— they got some help. By the time she reached the Petersons, Jaelle looked herself again.

She waved them on, directing them into the woods behind the backcountry gas station. Hopefully, the fear and adrenaline would keep them from noticing that she didn’t disturb the shrubs they passed.

"Madame Lafitte's ? Sounds French..." Fynn would not have been Fynn had he not brought some kind of electronic device with him that was suited to do some more research on the spot, but he found it difficult to fully concentrate on the screen right now. Primrose, she... she had actually liked the pizza ? He had honestly not expected that to happen, but the way she had not hesitated to take the first bite only to then put it onto her desk almost as if she needed to build up some distance between it and her mouth so not to be fully occupied with eating... Interesting!

This was not the right time for doing some data mining on each other's eating habits however and it only took Fynn's hands a few swiping moves to bring up a map of the city with a lot of routes put into the car's navigation system drawn on top of it. Fynn turned the screen around to show it to Primrose, then zoomed in with his fingers onto a particular spot on the map until the name 'Madame Lafitte's' popped up. The line clearly did stop and go from there and more than once.

"Looks like our victim has been there several times indeed. It might be worth investigating even though I'd not be looking forward to it. I'm... not exactly the club kind of guy." Fynn tried to force a smile upon his face, but the utter failure to pull through with that entirely told a story about the truth in his mind. Buildings filled to the brim with cigarette smoke, loud music and probably tons of alcohol where not what he believed to be his forte.

Then he darted a glance onto her workstation's screen and read the words 'Aua, das tat weh.' she had mentioned. "I have no idea what that means, but if I might take a photo of that and dump it into my favorite AI transl... Oh, that was quick! Erm... it's German, and the one who has written this line complains about having endured pain. So... maybe this club is actually dangerous ?"

Of course it was if it had something to do with their case! The guy was dead after all.

"Mal ? Jaelle ? Hm! That's a good question!" Now, of course, he could try and hack into what was pretty much his own software he had installed at least on Eleanor's phone in order to secretly access what her phone knew about her location, but there were options less prone to getting himself into trouble. Just calling her, for example.

Fynn put his phone onto Primrose's desk and activated the speakerphone function. Hopefully their boss would report in quickly, but so far only the usual beeping sound of a connection waiting to be established was to be heard. Slightly nervously, Fynn looked at Primrose and arched one of his eyebrows a little.

Primrose's hunch was right then. The man in the car had been to the club. Multiple times. So that meant the club was the next possible place to go. Still, Primrose felt odd not letting Eleanor in on what they discovered. However she was not....displeased to have Fynn there to help. After all, his expertise helped them find out the man had been to the club. And he translated the words quickly. "That sounds like a warning also. Perhaps it was a message. A message won't do a dead man any good so perhaps it's for someone else. Either way, I think the club will have more information.

She was concerned she hadn't heard from Mal or Jaelle either. But Fynn brought out his phone and dialed Eleanor. It rang. And rang. And continued to do so. Eventually, there was no answer and it went right to voicemail. "Well that's not...good. Eleanor always answers." Primrose now had a bad feeling for Eleanor as well as the other two. But it wouldn't do them any good to drive around trying to find them. "Well, shoot off a message to her and say we are going to the club. No use waiting around here when we already know the dead man had been there multiple times."

Primrose stood up and grabbed her stuff. "We can take my car, if you don't mind. I can get there quickly that way and, while I'm driving, you can see if you can pull up any information about the club. Basic information, sure, but see if you can find any stuff they may have tried to hide. The internet is forever, after all." She scooted around her desk, letting the piece of pizza sit there. She would get back to that later. She had never had cold pizza before but she heard how enjoyable cold, leftover pizza was. She had to admit she was a touch excited about it.

She waited for Fynn to get what he needed before heading to her car.

Eleanor cursed fluidly in several languages, one of which would have caused milk to curdle had there been any nearby. Her phone was buzzing angrily in its cradle but she didn’t dare pick it up. There was no telling who was entangled with Mal at the moment, and the horns that blared as she wove through traffic encouraged her to keep her attention where it belonged. Fortunately she passed no lurking police cars, perhaps a lingering effect of the luck altering spell she had used, as she raced towards the gas station leaving behind the freeway and busy roads. At first she harbored the pitiful delusion that Mal was handling things in a professional manner, but the subtle pricking in her thumbs, and the decidedly less subtle flash of gunfire from within the dirty glass windows, assured her otherwise. She disengaged her steering assist and hauled on the wheel, sliding into the parking lot with a screech of tires, bumping over the covers to the subterranean tanks. A crown vic, identical almost exactly to the one that had been tailing her, was parked infront of the gas station, doors still open. She could see figures inside, two big men with their backs to her in the front of the store. One of them was picking himself up from an avalanche of candy bars and beef jerky. They didn’t appear to have noticed her yet, and she sprang from the car and ran towards the front of the store. She was a half dozen steps from the door and reaching for her pistol when a white light flared from inside.

“Shit,” she breathed and threw herself sideways. The white light lit up like the igniter for Satan’s propane burner. There was an audible wuuuump as air rushed in, rattling the glass, and then a thunderous detonation. Glass fragment blasted out on the shockwave like a million glittering knives, sleeting against the fuel bowsers like angry hail. Eleanor hit the ground hard and rolled, protected from the worst of the blast by the sturdy cinderblock walls of the gas station. Her ears rang and it took a moment of conscious effort to force her stunned diaphragm to resume drawing breath. Debris rained down around her. Burning bags of gummy bears and catchphrase flavored potato chips. A half case of miller lite hissed and spat where it had been blown from a cardboard carton. A can of pringles rolled by forlorn. The ringing in her ears was unbelievable. She drew her weapon, seized with the entirely justifiable urge to shoot Mal in the face. It struck her as somewhat ironic if the danger Emmaline had foreseen was that she would put a bullet into him. A giggle escaped her lips, though she suspected that if she could hear anything it would sound somewhat crazed. Then two figures walked from the inferno. Just walked out as though they were heading back to their car after buying snacks. Both were male and both were naked, the blast having stripped their clothes from their bodies in the same instant it had hurled half the contents of the store into the parking lot. Their hair, eyelashes and eyebrows, had been burned away and their fingernails were smoldering but if they were concerned by this in anyway they didn’t show it.

“Shit,” she repeated as one of the pair turned to regard her. One of its eyes had been transfixed by what looked to be a piece of modular shelving. The heat had cauterized blackened optical tissue around it in a weeping mess. He/it regarded her for a moment and then intoned in a clear pleasant voice which reminded her uncannily of Mr Rogers: “Suffer not the Witch to live.”

“Ohhhkay,” Eleanor wheezed, skootching back a foot or so and pulling her pistol from its holster. It was a custom desert eagle with a pearl and ivory inlaid grip. The words: Ergo augue conjectus, were picked out in simple engraving along the barrel. She fired. Fifty miles away in Eleanor’s basement the massive truck suspension spring which hung from a rafter leaped into the air as it compressed from no visible source, back at the gas station the gun roared but recoiled no more than a child’s bb gun as it thaumaturgically dissipated the massive force of its discharge. The heavy, thumb thick, shell, engraved with the seven orders of banishment with a microlathe, punched through the neck of Evil Mr Rogers. The upward slant of the shot blew the back of the things head to pulp, all but decapitating it. The body pitched sideways and struck one of the bowsers with a dull clang dishing in the Shell Oil logo. Eleanor had a weird moment of clarity in which she was thankful that the fuel pumps themselves hadn’t gone up along with the late and unlamented miller lite. Evil Mr Rogers shifted and tried to lift himself up, the minor inconvenience of having only a few strips of flesh for a head apparently not insurmountable. Then the body slumped and was still, save for an odd undulation at the top of the neck. With a spray of blood and gristle something silvery and cruciform burst free and launched itself at Eleanor, too fast to see. She shouted a macro and flung her hand upward in warding. Whatever it was sailed through the spell without so much as slowing but the barrel of the pistol hit it and knocked it up and over her, sending it sailing away into a pile of empty milk crates. Lurching to her feet, Eleanor dodged the second creature and dived into her lexus. The car alarm was wailing and her phone was still ringing, and while she could probably do to speak with someone about her extended warranty, that would have to wait. The second corpse thing, a beefy looking man with half his fingers blown off was staggering towards her, the explosion having shattered a kneecap. She slammed the accelerator and the powerful vehicle leaped forward and sent him sprawling with an audible crack. The passenger side airbag deployed with a screech and the reek of burning superglue. Feeling the ‘thunk thunk’ as she drove over what she hoped but doubted was a body, she hauled on the wheel, squealing out onto the road. She fired once out the window and was audible reminded of why firing a hand gun in car was a bad idea. The muzzle blast crazed the windshield and shattered one window into neat squares that rained down like a waterfall, and she swerved and nearly lost control. The wheel of the crown vic exploded with a jet of air and a thump throwing pieces of rubber in all directions. Monsters or not they wouldn’t be driving it anywhere. Eleanor got the fishtail under control and accelerated down the road, sticking her head out the window to see past her ruined wind shield. Blood or some other fluid dripped into her eyes and she wiped irritably at her face, her hand coming away red. In the rear view she saw what might or might not have been a man stumbling towards the road but she didn’t slow down.

Hey Eleanor,

Mrs. Primrose and I are on our way to 'Madame Lafitte's' just in case you want to know. Would appreciate if you'd call back because we're worried.

P.S.: You could finally grant me the budget to develop my gun blast recognition software. Like voice recognition, you remember ? Just triggering on shots fired and certain people moaning in agony instead to send automated notifications...

This was so completely unnecessary! People actually having to call others manually in order to inform them of trouble just felt like such an antiquated thing at times. Much less antiquated however was the small drone Fynn started to assemble on his lap while they were driving to the club.

"Nothing like good reconnaissance..." he mumbled as he inserted the battery pack and gave the camera lens a decent cleanup. He could have thrown the thing out the window and used the remote control to guide it all around the traffic jams and red lights to the club directly, but experience dictated that other drivers on the adjacent lane could respond in a rather confused and irritated manner upon flying objects appearing in front fo their wind shield. Also he had somewhat promised Primrose to do some online research as well and couldn't do both at the same time.

With his rather large laptop on his hands, Fynn browsed for the club's own homepage at first. "Seems pretty standard to me, though I can already tell I won't like the music played there. However there's a member login. Maybe they're hiding something behind that ? Could try to find a way in." There also was the darknet, a rather abstract but also vast space Fynn was not unfamiliar with, even though more on the investigative side than anything else. Aside from a bunch of drug dealers stupid enough to openly announce they'd sell their stuff at some dark hours near the club's array of garbage dumps however there was nothing conspicuous to find it seemed.

One of the strangest things about being a wraith was how real Jaelle still felt. When she touched her skin, it felt as warm and alive as it always had. She moved as she used to, breathed as she used to, and when the destroyer of worlds erupted in the center of a back-water gas station, her stomach dropped just like a living person’s might.

Got she hoped Mal had killed them. And not killed himself in the process.

“What was that?” If possible, Debbie Peterson’s voice had doubled in pitch, and her face had gone deathly pale. She reached out as if to grip Jaelle’s arm, but Jaelle stepped back before the other woman realized she wasn’t actually all there. “Were those men terrorists?!”

“I didn’t even see the bomb!” Liam Peterson said.

Jaelle held up her hands. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. I’ll just—“

A spray of gunfire interrupted her, and Jaelle went cold. Mal hadn’t killed them. How was that possible? Nothing could have survived that blast. Nothing. Unless someone else was shooting. Had the police come back? Were they firing on Mal cause they didn’t understand?

Liam pulled his wife down—the most sensible thing either of them had done recently. Jaelle copied the movement as though there was any chance that a stray bullet might actually hurt her. From the road behind them, the sound of squealing tires pierced the thick, Louisiana air, and Debbie looked more horrified by this than anything that had happened so far. “They’re getting away?!”

“We don’t know that,” Jaelle said. “That might have been back up arriving. I’ll go check. You two stay here. You are now important witnesses and your testimony is vital for your country. If you call yourselves patriots, you’ll protect that information by laying low.”

A bit theatrical, perhaps, but Jaelle had half-learned English through Netflix.

It seemed to work for Liam. He gave her a stalwart nod, and Jaelle had to give it to Eleanor. There was magic in a sharp blouse. Something that made you look like you knew what you were doing.

“Alright. I’ll return soon.”

As soon as she was out of sight, Jaelle ran, blurring through trees rather than bothering to go around them. She hit the washed-out concrete in half the time it had taken her to get the Petersons away, once again invisible to the mortal eye. The lot was a wreck. Debris lay everywhere, a rainbow of garish advertising beneath shattered glass, cinderblock, and burning insulation. It smelled horrible.

The black car was still there, one of its tires blown out so that it sagged, lopsided onto a steel wheel. A still corpse lay against one of the pumps, its head gone but the rest of the body untouched. It was male and entirely hairless.

Jaelle couldn’t bring herself to look into the gas station where she had last seen Mal. Couldn’t bring herself to check if his body was still whole or if he had impaled himself on debris from his own explosion.

Compared to that horror, to the return of existing alone while she slowly lost herself to the degradation of mind that awaited a soul without a body, dealing with the corpse was easy. When Jaelle was born, some few hundred years before the current day, people had not been so good at hiding death. They died more often, for one. No more fragile but much worse equipped to deal with the uncertainties of illness and injury. There was not the same availability of chemical preservatives, and families of the Roma cared for the bodies of their deceased.
Jaelle was no stranger to the bodies of the dead.

She crouched down beside it, looking for tattoos or sigils or other identifying marks. There was nothing on his skin that she could make out, but something odd shined from his mangled neck. Silver ichor dripped from wire flashing that seemed to disappear into his spine where nerves ought to have been according to the seventh-grade anatomy home-school course that she’d watched on Youtube. More nodes mixed in the pulverized contents of his skull, a soup of grey matter and machine. Jaelle turned away, reeling. If she could have vomited just then, she would have, but she hadn’t eaten in three centuries.

That left only Mal. Hidden in the remains of the gas station. She was going to have to go in there. There was no one else.

The thing that made feeling real so incredibly odd was that nothing else ever did. The flames still licking around the gas station's ruined entrance did not warm her, and the hanging metal beams did not cut or bar her way. Jaelle moved through it all, this endless dreamland of her not-life, looking for the person who had rescued her from the void.

“Mal! I swear to GOD if you’re dead, I’m going to find your spirit and kill you!” She wouldn’t, really. But still, it was the principle of the thing. “Mal!!!”

The world as he knew it was no more. Death had taken him, in a manner temporary but vastly worrying. Mal had stepped out of the bounds of the universe and strayed beyond the threads of time. He looked at his hand, so vague and yet distinct all at once. He saw with eyes that were not eyes, heard with ears that were not ears. Had he come here as merely a spirit, perhaps he could survive for a time if he was not plucked by one of the dreadful denizens, but as he came here physically, his body began to waste. It was a race against time, like a drowning man that had just sucked in his first lungful of water. And yet, Mal felt a serene calm that beckoned him. Had he been a normal man without arcane knowledge, he would have simply let it take him.

Luckily he was too clever for that.

Briefly he looked up at the world cavern, letting himself take a precious three seconds to admire the horror of the death realm. Rock of some unknown substance filled the horizon as far as any eye could see or grasp, higher than the sky and beyond scope. Great roots the size of small countries snaked out of the broken cavern top, monumental in range and wholly significant beyond Mal's small existence. Had Mal been able to breathe, his breath would have caught. Oddly, he was aware of some cosmic light that kissed the stone and roots, originating to his right. Somehow he thought of it as north, but he knew directions like that were impossible in Hel.

Turning, he saw the maw of the tunnel feeding into some other chamber. The light ebbed and flowed off the wall as if it were alive. Mal had theories to its origin, but he decided he could study such things later. Gripping his talisman, he closed what eyes he felt he had and concentrated, his spirit stirring within his discarnate breast and gathering itself for a final gambit. The light in the chamber pulsed slowly, and he felt something tremble as if it had awoken. Mal called to Odin, his voice noiseless. He knew the God could hear him, regardless. Grimnir had other plans for him, Malcador knew. He had spoken as much. Seconds passed, and as his soul bucked in its death spasms and the light began to grow brighter, Malcador finally felt the tug of his pendant pulling him.

He was hurtled out of Hel and back into the mortal plane faster than light or information, and yet it felt like an eternity.

Malcador gasped, opening his aching eyes. Vaguely he was aware of pavement under his body, but at the moment he was like a newborn babe. He had forgotten how to breathe, and choked for a few key moments until his entire being returned to his vessel and he felt his nerves and body returning to normal, the flesh arising from its labyrinthine prison of the underworld. It was an experience he couldn't describe to anyone, and he hadn't exactly planned for it to happen. He gave a word that succinctly defined his current thoughts of returning to real-space.

"Fuck."

Clutching his chest, he blinked and struggled to push himself from a prone position. Distantly, he heard his name being called by a familiar voice. Jaelle, yes. He remembered Jaelle, but what led him here?

Oh, the spell, and the men irritatingly immune to his magics. That wasn't possible, but somehow they had been. Malcador lifted himself up unsteadily and called out to Jaelle. "I'm here! Over here!" He yelled with gusto, clearing his throat. Damn, he was thirsty, and he felt he could eat a horse. Mental note, if you're going to cast Mund-spilli, make sure you had aetherial ties to the regular plane if you planned on escaping its blast. It's a suicide spell for a reason, he told himself. Briefly, he saw a man across the gas service stations at the convenience store running into the street. He thought it was the same man that had survived his attack. Well, for once in his life, he wished he had a goddamn gun or something.

When Jaelle got there, he would send them both back to headquarters. This place was getting tiresome.

Primrose drove as Fynn worked on his computer. It gave her some time to think and plan the next steps. They were entering unknown territory. Primrose had been to a number of clubs before, but never this one. And she assumed Fynn had never stepped foot in one at all. Primrose had to admit she would have rather had Mal or Jaelle as back-up in there, but she also knew Fynn wasn't a pushover. "No accounting for taste, it seems." If music was all that bothered Fynn about this, then maybe she was in good hands.

"From my own experience, members-only access in these clubs results in one of two things. Either it is an exclusive only perk such as bottle service, private rooms, and privacy or there are some....colorful activities that happen behind closed doors. I'll let your imagination come up with what those might be, but suffice to say I think we are leaning towards the latter if our dead man is any indication."

"I suggest we go in undercover. I can easily create an illusion and look like any random socialite interested in learning about the city's hottest new club. I could throw an illusion around yourself also if you want, but that means you would have to act the part. It can be uncomfortable, but I don't want whoever is in charge suspecting we are there attached to this investigation. Very much like prohibition days, if they are doing anything underhanded, chances are they have a quick way of hiding anything and escaping. Or, and this is more likely, they have the means of handling things their own way. We don't want to end up like our victim. So before I do so, are you comfortable lying?" She assumed Fynn wouldn't be, but they had very little else. There was no way the owner would talk to them on a normal day, let alone two people looking into a crime that connected to their club.

Primrose pulled up to the club and parked in a spot. She turned to Fynn, waiting for his response. "I got your back in there, whatever we decide. I think this is the smart play, but I can understand any apprehension."

“You smell like death.”

Jaelle stood above Mal, half-impaled by a steel rod she couldn’t feel and framed by a halo of fallen insulation. She wrinkled her nose at him, at once relieved and remarkably irritated. He’d basically gotten himself killed, and if the aura pouring off him was anything to judge by, clawed his way back into the mortal plane and his body. The lucky bastard. She was so glad he hadn’t left her behind.

“I think that was the worst idea you’ve had in a while,” she said, crossing her arms. “Just wait until you have to fill out the report.”

He looked surprisingly whole, considering that he’d just about left earth forever, his nice suit tattered but miraculously still hanging onto him. When Mal suggested they hop right back over to headquarters, she stared at him like he’d grown two heads. Of course, to be fair, he had just dealt with a rather forced out-of-body experience—even if he’d done it to himself. Jaelle supposed that could be the sort of thing that might make someone completely forget why they’d gone somewhere in the first place.

“And leave the Petersons stranded in the woods to get offed by the next bunch of creepy magic-resistant weirdos? Come on, Mal. Call Eleanor and get someone to pick us up the mundane way unless you want to file more reports about moving normal people through the folds of inter-dimensional space.”

She knew that probably wasn’t the word Mal would have used for his portals, but she liked it. It had a nice ring.

While he secured their transport, Jaelle trudged back out to her witnesses. Both Liam and Debbie Peterson were still crouched against the ground, huddled together and looking a little worse for wear. Liam’s face was smeared with dirt, and Debbie had a twig in her hair.

“It’s alright,” she told them. “There wasn’t a bomb. I think a stray bullet hit one of the pumps, and there was an explosion. My partner made it, but at least one of the attackers did not.”

“What about Carol?” Mrs. Peterson looked horrified, and Jaelle blanked for a long moment before she remembered the woman that had been standing behind the counter when she came in, the one with curly hair pulled severely back. Her heart sunk.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted, hoping that the woman had managed to run or take cover. “Please come with me. We’re arranging to have you transported somewhere safe.”

Eleanor slowed and pulled over onto the side of the road, leaning forward to lean her forehead on the steering wheel. She smelled of gasoline, cordite and the sharp burnt spice scent of thaumaturgic overload. The suit she was wearing was stained and burned through in several places, though she had managed to snuff out the flames before it had burned her skin. The kept her head down for several minutes, running through a series of meditations to recenter herself. The phone began to play Hips Don’t Lie and she snatched it up.

“Well if it isn’t Atillia von Bismark,” Eleanor answered waspishly. Emmaline let out a sigh of relief that stole some of Eleanor’s pique.

“You're alive, thank the Dark Moon,” Emmaline breathed, “I heard the spring jangling.”



“It worked out, Mal blew up a gas station,” Eleanor replied.

“That doesn't sound like something you should put after ‘it worked out’ Eleanor,” Emmaline pointed out.



“Are we disentangled yet?” Eleanor asked, pulling open Nacho on her phone. The mathematical construct looked to be wound down to something like a normal level.

“O.2 millisterns and dropping,” Emmaline confirmed. The app blinked a notification ‘EvM has ended the spell’ followed by the digits 22 minutes 5 seconds. There was a subtle relaxation in the fabric of reality as Eleanor’s luck returned to the hands of random chance.



“You need to get going,” Emmaline said at the exact moment Eleanor said “I need to get moving.” They shared a laugh which bled some of the tension away.

“Call me if you need me Liben,” Emmaline said and hung up the phone. Eleanor stared at the steering wheel for a few moments and then pulled off her torn and burned jacket, tossing it into the back.



“Hecate, call primrose,” Eleanor said as she pulled back onto the road and turned back towards the gas station. It was getting time to figure out exactly what in the nine hells was going on.

Fynn frowned as he gave his intial answer: "Lying is not so much the issue for me, but making up good and credible lies is. It's not a server we're going to talk to..." He paused as it took him moments to realize something. "Oh, well, erm... I mean yeah it could be a server, but not... the kind of server I'd prefer because lying to the latter can be so much easier than to one with two legs walking around, you know ?"

He suspected that Primrose might not truly understand what he meant and blamed himself for the confusion. "Do your magic!" he made clear, then quickly tossed the surveillance drone out of the car's window before the uneasy feeling in his stomach had a chance to settle in. The flying robot would follow an automated, high-altitude search pattern and photograph pretty much anything within a certain radius. A lot of data to delve into later on, even though Fynn already expected most of it to be perfectly mundane trash. An on-board AI would try and identify anything of potential interest and send the images in question to his phone though.

Madame Lafitte's main entrance somewhat mimicked that of a ship's casino and as the two reinforced doors with large bull's eyes swung open, the person they revealed pretty much looked like a perfect match for such a place. A large, gold-rimmed pair of toned sunglasses put no weight on Fynn's nose, but certainly covered more than just his eyes. No hat was on his head, but the amount of styling gel pumped into the IT specialist's hair seemingly made it more bullet-proof than even a soldier's helmet could anyway. His pitch black, neatly polished leather shoes looked fairly expensive to say the least, but in that regard they still were in tight competition with the white blazer wrapped around Fynn's upper body.

It took Fynn a discomforting array of moments to realize all the extra features Primrose's illusion had added to him, but from a purely analytical point of view looking like a noveau-riche snob with a lot of money to lose actually made sense. The club's employees would surely see the opportunity and try to grab his attention while internally believing he'd be dumb and easy to exploit. A very nice technique, indeed. Double psychology could be so advantageous.

The club was still largely empty as the evening hours had not yet arrived, but a few guests were already there and, more idly than anything else though, dealt with their half-empty cocktails and followed a girl's nice looking curves with obvious greed written in their eyes. Fynn let himself down onto one of the empty bar stools and was not hesitant to order some tequila himself, soon featuring a fresh looking dollar bill he happened to find in his blazer's pocket. Would that thing vanish soon after having been rendered anonymous by being dumped into the register, too ?

His phone vibrated, maybe his drone reporting some finding, but the moment was just too enjoyable to be disturbed. Fynn tilted his head downwards so he could make eye contact with the barman over the upper rim of his sunglasses directly and twinkled in his direction. The man responded to his stupid gesture with professional ignorance, but how long would that last when subjected to stubborn repetition ?

He never got to the point of figuring that out though. Instead, a bunch of bent and even partially broken bar stools just like the one he sat one came into his view. Someone had apparently moved them out of the way in a very makeshift manner and nobody had deemed the heap to be a priority as long as things were far away from full swing.

"Hey! What happened here ?" and Fynn pointed towards the pile. Only now he spotted the Rolex around his wrist.

More professional ignorance. If Primrose had more skill in reading body language however, she'd notice how the barman's intestines momentarily twitched as if being hit by a deep frozen needle.

Fynn let go of a somewhat exaggerated sigh, then went fishing in his magic dollar pocket to extract some... serious overdose of a tip for just a single tequila. Even before the bills had stopped sliding across the polished table, they had already grabbed the barman's full attention. Eager to prevent any non-paying guests from eavesdropping, he started talking in a very low tone: "Some troublemakers. Good thing we have very tough security here for these felt like... not the usual, drunk kind of people. But what do I know ? I'm just the barman here and happy things didn't escalate even further. That poor man though. I thought they'd kill him!"

Fynn exchanged views with Primrose, knowing that he couldn't just say loudly what he was thinking right now. If this was their victim, then it could be worthwhile to get hands on all the club's secrets: security camera footage, internal remarks and reports from employees, anything. Now he really reached for his phone and indeed an aerial image popped up: a clear, somewhat fresh looking set of skid marks on the parking lot. Assuming that the owner of the vehicle had not just wanted to display some insanely good parking skills, he or she had probably had great interest in getting away very rapidly. And... just how much strength was required to bend and even break these bar stools ?

Avoiding to talk, Fynn just texted a message towards Primrose despite her being nearby briefly explaining his thoughts.

---

Malcador brushed himself off, growing irate at the little lecture. He was used to Jaelle, but Gods he had just come back from the literal realm death. He was not in a mood to debate or throw clever jabs.

"Your moral priorities are commendable Jaelle, but the longer we're here, the more danger the Petersons are in. We were the targets, not the bloody couple. If we don't leave now, they might bring in reinforcements or attack with renewed vigor. We're leaving." He said, and the suave mystic opened his eyes to see Jaelle already floating away. He sighed and searched for his cellphone. Had something so esoteric even made it from one dimension to another? Oh wait, his work one had.

Thankfully, it could survive anything. It was a Nokia.

Mal searched through his contacts. Being less than ten, it wasn't difficult to find the delectable person he sought. He found Emmaline in the list entitled "the fun one" and called her up. He cleared his throat, placing a hand on his head to stall what threatened to be an oncoming headache.

"Emmaline? Yes, I'm alive. I'm ok, I swear. No, yes, no I did see Eleanor I think. Oh... Wait, she just... well I regret to say we are in need of a ride. Jaelle and I are stuck here at the explosion site and we need a ride and...perhaps an ambulance? No, not for me. I'm ok! Ok... wait, belay the ambulance. Everyone looks ok that I can see, and the authorities will be here soon anyway. Just make sure we're out before they get here. Aha, you know, I'll keep them entertained as we wait. Alright, bye babe."

He turned the phone off, sliding it back in his trousers. A vast pillar of smoke still billowed into the sky, the mage smelling it even from fifteen meters away from the husk of the gas station. He trudged tiredly across the charred asphalt into the grass thgat had miraculously not been swept up into a wildfire. He dearly hoped the Peterson's had insurance on the place, he thought as he saw the pitiful state they were in. Elders held a special place in Malcador's mind. Wisdom with years was something to be prized, and these two had learned much and worked hard throughout their life.

As self interested as Malcador could be, he did have a heart.

"Someone's on their way," He assured the couple and Jaelle, giving an uplifting smile. "Rough days make rough people. No one could mess with us after this, I bet."

“That’s what I always say, isn’t it, Debbie? Rough times and rough people.” Liam Peterson fumbled for something in his pockets, pulling out a lighter and a crumpled cigarette. “No, wait, is it rough times make tough people? Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter.”

He tried to light it several times to no avail and then put the single cig back into his pocket. Jaelle missed smoking even though, evidently, people had realized it was bad for you now. They’d probably poisoned it with over-manufacturing the way they had chocolate and soap.

Or that’s what she’d read, anyway. It was hard to know for certain when you couldn’t try things out yourself.

Mrs. Peterson had trained her eyes on the wreck of the gas station, the wafting smoke, a few fires still burning half-heartedly within an explosion of candy-colored heart attacks. It smelled horrible. Like melting plastic or burning hair. “You said you didn’t see Carol? How could she have gotten out?”

“She probably ran into the woods, same as we did,” Liam said and shuffled. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands.

“But how would she have gotten out? They were blocking the front door?”

Jaelle was pretty sure that if someone didn’t think of something to say soon, Debbie was going to turn hysterical. She glanced at Mal, wondering if he had anything to add to the unknown fate of the woman who’d been tending the counter, but thankfully, Liam noticed his wife’s distress and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

“You know Carol! That fiery girl knows how to take care of herself. She’s probably hiking over to the old Broussard property behind us.”

Jaelle was about to volunteer to go check when Eleanor’s car pulled into the gas station parking lot, looking a little worse for wear but still functional. She relaxed considerably, and because she didn’t want to deal with the trials of being incorporeal in a moving vehicle, she volunteered to look anyway.

“I’ll see if I can’t find Carol,” Jaelle said cheerfully. “Someone needs to catch up with emergency services when they get here anyway.”

And she really would look in the few moments she had before slipping invisibly back into the red world of Mal’s scepter for the ride back to headquarters.

Eleanor pulled up the car, having circled around behind the gas station. She let out a sigh and pulled the handbrake on before stepping out. Her once fine outfit was ruined with small burns and stains from where drops of gasoline had splashed her. She smelled of petrol and gunsmoke despite the valiant effort of the enchanted air freshener. Mal did manage to look slightly abashed but the two civilians with him, the Petersons she presumed, looked like they were hanging on by a thread.

“Who… who are you?” the woman asked. Suppressing a sigh Eleanor reached into her pocket and produced the geas inlaid card.

“I’m Agent So-and-So from the Department of Whatever,” she told them, feeling the lilac bite of the geas. Both of the Petersons were nodding along. It was almost a mercy, though Eleanor knew that was a dangerous line of thinking. First you thought it would be good if your loved one wasn’t afraid, next you thought it would be ok if you made them happy. Next thing you knew you were running a mental puppet without ever meaning to. It was always a slippery slope.

“If you would get in the car Sir and Ma’am, we will take you to a safe place,” Eleanor coaxed. They both nodded jerkily and climbed into the back seat with Mal taking the front. They drove off ahead of the sirens.



The dropped the Peterson’s off by the side of the road, dazed and confused enough that emergency services would pick them up, but far enough from the actual site of the blast that their unseen enemies were unlikely to bother with them.



“So, a hundred incinerated monster energy drinks aside, what did we find out?” Eleanor asked as she pulled back onto the road.