Josie dipped the vanilla ice cream out for the girls, Elaine and herself. She took her

seat at the table last. The rest had already dug in. Jack got up and got a third serving

as she watched him.

“I can’t believe you got the ice cream and didn’t plan to share it,” said Melanie.

“Losers shouldn’t get rewarded,” said Jack. “If you’re not number one, you’re number

two.”

“Obviously,” said Laura.

“Don’t explain,” said Josie. “They don’t need to know, and you don’t need to rub it

in. Be gracious in your victory.”

“I don’t get paid for that,” said Jack. He grinned at her.

“You’re independently wealthy,” said Josie. “You don’t get paid at all.”

“What don’t we need to know?,” asked Matilda.

“If you needed to know, I would tell you,” said Josie. “But you don’t, so I won’t. Eat

your ice cream, and then we have to go over the lessons.”

“Not lessons,” said Melanie.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” said Josie. “And yes, you have to go over your lessons.”

“We should decide what books you want to read,” said Elaine. “That will help with

the lessons.”

“Maybe you should discuss what you read to help with the report writing,” said Josie.

“Do we have to write five hundred words?,” asked Melanie.

“Yes,” said Jack. “It will teach you about putting things together for employers.”

“We’re not going to be able to leave you a dragon hoard,” said Josie. “You need to

think about what kind of job you want when we’re gone.”

“But what we should really think about is how do we get chocolate for this ice

cream,” said Jack.

“We would have to grind the beans if we can find any,” said Josie. “I didn’t see any

in the places in the market.”

“Maybe need sugar,” said Jack. “Maybe we could get fruits to crush for the juice.”

“That would be good?,” said Angelica. “What kind of fruit? Strawberries, blueberries,

watermelon?”

“I don’t know but any of those should be good,” said Jack.

“Sounds good,” said Beatrice. “I think Angelica should be a professional cook. She

loves food.”

“What do you think, hon?,” asked Josie. “You would need to learn how to do recipes

and how to make food fast and neat.”

“I don’t know, but it sounds good,” said Angelica. “Could you help me?”

“If you want to set up a shop, you’re going to have to get trained,” said Josie. “I think

we can look around for a school for you.”

“She might have to work in a restaurant for a while,” said Jack.

“An internship could be a thing,” said Josie. “We might have to look into it.”

“All right,” said Jack. “We have a few hours before dinner time. If you girls would

clean up these bowls, and think about what you want to cook, now is the time. Elaine,

Josie, let’s talk about this raid you guys want to do upstairs.”

Jack placed his empty bowl in Alicia’s empty bowl. She squinted up at him.

“Number two,” he said with a grin.

“Don’t taunt the girl,” Josie said. “It’s no wonder your sisters beat you up all the

time.”

“They didn’t all the time,” said Jack. He waved for her to follow him upstairs. “I gave

as good as I got.”

“Tell yourself whatever helps you sleep in the night,” said Josie. “Come on, girls.”

Josie helped the girls wash the bowls out and put them up to dry before heading

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upstairs to the office. She made sure they pulled out the paper and graphite pens

Elaine had procured for them to study. She headed upstairs.

She found Elaine and Jack taking up chairs while they waited for her to make her

pitch. She closed the door and went to the board. She took down the pictures for the

Dark Rider and Lorelei and put them in a box. She left up the crude map of the

continent as she gave some thought to their problem.

“We need a better map,” said Josie as she looked at it. She turned to face her

colleagues. “What do we know about Montrose and the Exchange?”

“We know they enslave women and traffic them,” said Jack. “We know they paid

protection to Guin to be left alone. We know they use spotters for the women they

want. We know the Exchange owns the building we raided for Natalie Pear. We don’t

know if they traffic men or children, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.”

“We know the Exchange claims to have twenty five offices around the country to

do their public work,” said Josie.

“We know the Montrose secured their victims’ cooperation through alchemy whether

by the potion for the slaves or poisoning the loved ones of their support in the street,”

said Elaine.

“And all their members are marked for us,” said Josie. “I expect we can’t depend on

any law to turn these people over to here.”

“Any court would look at you, and any member of the Montrose, and you would be

laughed at unless the Montrose offended the judge,” said Elaine.

“Which is probably part of the reason the Society uses outsiders to do what we are

expected to do,” said Jack. “They can’t depend on the locals to do the deeds.”

“Or the locals are dependent on the people they have to live with when the emergency

is over,” said Josie. “Someone from Accordly is not going to throw his life away

stopping his dark god from showing up and dropping down on their neighbors.”

“Point,” said Jack. “What do you want to do? If we escalate to destroying the

Exchange, we might have to face the whole continent. Are you ready to do that with

Elaine and the kids in the way?”

“No,” said Josie. “Not in a full scale assault. I would rather Leverage them, but I

don’t think we have the expertise between us. We can break in, we can murder

people, but we can’t make them do something stupid so that everyone turns against

them.”

“We’re not that sneaky,” agreed Jack.

“So what can we do?,” asked Josie. She frowned at her partner, and their assistant.

“How do we rip them apart while keeping the girls and Elaine safe?”

“We need information,” said Elaine. “We should see if we can talk to someone inside

the Exchange. We might be able to talk to one of the clerks if they are free.”

“We also need to know how far the hex went,” said Josie. “I found two guys as far

away as Kernly.”

“We can’t do that,” said Jack. “Unless we invent faster transportation. Makkari is fast,

but for only about ten-fifteen minutes at a time.”

“Teleporting is good but about here is all I can reach with one go,” said Josie. She

pointed to a spot on the map halfway to the marked Kernly. “If we have to travel

beyond two jumps, then we are going to have problems.”

“So we need to target the Montrose here in the city, look at the bank, and try to get

assets transferred to people we trust,” said Jack. “How would you like to be a banker,

Elaine?”

“I think people would know I was a fraud almost immediately,” said Elaine.

“I don’t know if we can turn this all over to Guin and hope for the best,” said Jack.

“We do need his resources for the local things, and whatever he can reach outside of

the city.”

“Guin didn’t know he was dealing with the Montrose, so he’s not marked, but why

was he collecting money from the people using this station?,” asked Josie.

“And we have to look at supply lines and communication and command,” said Jack.

“How do they know where to sell the women they abduct?”

“Messages are carried by courier, as well as general post,” said Elaine. “Adventurers

can be asked to deliver messages to out of the way places for a fee.”

“There’s no way for us to check on that, is there?,” asked Josie.

“I expect not through the usual means,” said Elaine. “No one would want to reveal

what they had sent with the adventurers, so I doubt they told the guild, plus

adventurers can be hired as guards for caravans if it was impossible they could look

at what they are guarding.”

“You said that some adventurers burned down the Bell Tower when they saw people

being marked,” said Jack.

“No, they killed some of the marked people when you sent out your call,” said Elaine.

“I burned down the Bell Tower.”

“All right then,” said Jack. “Good job on that.”

Josie made a face of bemusement. The last thing she had expected to hear was her

buttoned down secretary/aide/almost friend had burned down her last place of work.

“I thought so,” said Elaine. “I think the adventurers had lost some of their members

and decided to attack the ones they thought were responsible.”

“Do you know them?,” asked Josie.

“Only by sight,” said Elaine. “I haven’t seen them at the hall on our visits.”

“They might be out on a job somewhere,” said Jack. “We’ll put that on the

backburner.”

“We can actually do something about that,” said Josie. “Something small because we

don’t know who we’re looking for at the moment.”

“These guys might be our hunter,” said Jack.

Josie nodded at that. Someone else was killing members of the Montrose. It was a

small possibility that the group, or one of its members, had decided to take justice in

his/her hands like she had decided to do.

She saw no reason not to help them with that if she could.

“So how do we get started on cracking Montrose for real without turning it into such

a war we have to burn the city down?,” asked Josie.

“If we could seize the members’ assets, we could hire adventurers to help us with part

of the job,” said Jack. “But that dips into crimes we’re not suited to commit.”

“Following the money is good, but there are places where there is no money to

follow,” said Elaine. “The organization could be camped somewhere in the forest

with armed guards and no way to find them for some of the places we would have to

locate if we wanted to free their victims.”

“So we need to look at their books and we need to find every place they are

operating,” said Josie. “I hate to let the people living here in the city live but we can’t

let things get so bad that the girls can’t have a normal life.”

“And now we know why superheroes wear masks,” said Jack.

Josie nodded.