Lowe was not sure what he had expected from Soar Museum's library. Certainly, his most recent experiences 'behind the scenes' of the massive building had not been pleasant: the ramshackle, dusty corridors and bizarre exhibits had left a lingering effect on Lowe—although he was willing to accept that might have been more to do with the impact of the necrotic slime. However, he could well imagine Nuroon allowing thousands of books to build up in giant, mouldering piles just because he could.

Nevertheless, he was pleasantly surprised. The library was a large, high-ceilinged room on the ground floor. Apart from one wall, which opened out onto the green space of the courtyard beyond, the other three had row upon row of books from the floor to the ceiling. As Lowe watched, the titles shimmered every few seconds, new ones appearing to replace the old. Some sort of version of a bag of holding, he presumed. He wondered if that was a built-in enchantment or if a captive was strapped to a rack somewhere in the Museum's bowels and was being forced to revolve the stock.

The very centre of the room was bare, but it was furnished with a giant banqueting table behind which, on one side, were five ornate leather armchairs. A little group of conspirators sat in these, whose heads turned in one movement at Lowe's entrance. Then, the silence ended abruptly, and the pantomime began.

He had already met one of the men before—Kelvin Kregg, the Bard—and the tall, thin man stood and moved forward with a professional smile. Lowe did not respond in kind. Even without Arebella giving him the lowdown on a man whose hands were apparently the very definition of 'wandering', there was just something about someone whose life was the definition of illusory which set Lowe's teeth on edge. Even as he had that thought, Lowe felt a little mental tug of warmth towards Kregg.

"Mr Kregg, I would ask that you please refrain from using any of your Skills on me. If you were not aware, it is an offence to seek to ensourcel a member of the Security Services going about their business."

If Kregg was embarrassed at being caught in an act which was, at best, thunderously rude, his smiling face did not show it. He gave a wink, and then Lowe felt the slight pressure on his mind fade, and his dislike of the man increased a hundredfold.

"Can't blame a guy for trying," he smirked.

"Actually," Lowe replied, fixing the man with a glare, "I can. Fair warning, you try that again, and it'll be a while before your hands wander anywhere."

"I am sure you are not threatening my client with physical violence," the second of the men in the room said, standing to approach and shake Lowe's hand damply. The little figure had a pinched, hollow face with bug eyes that were now frowning with the confusion of a dog that had been shown an especially difficult card trick. His flaxen hair lay in piles on his shoulder and down his back, and it took every ounce of control Lowe had not to reach out and give it a good yank.

"Is it a threat if I absolutely promise I'll do it?" Lowe asked, withdrawing his hand and ostentatiously wiping it dry on the leg of his trousers. "And you are?"

"Felicitous Gral, at your service. The Museum has retained me to ensure that no . . . misunderstandings occur during their employees's interactions with the Security Services."

"In which case, you might want to ensure your clients do not 'misunderstand' the penalties for attempting mental manipulation on an officer in the course of his duties. I will be punching him in the face if he tries that bollocks again."

A middle-aged woman in the third of the chairs sighed and waved a hand in frustration. "Really, can we dispense with the dick measuring? I am sure all three of you have simply imposing members that any young lady would gladly get her hands wrapped around. However, could we get to the reason we have all been summoned here? Some of us have other things we would rather be doing."

Lowe recognised Liando Verlan, the Chair of the Museum's Board and nodded respectfully. "Apologies, ma'am. I just find it helpful for everyone to know where they stand on such things."

"You'll be standing there without any teeth if you 'ma'am' me again," she snapped back, but there was a hint of a smile in her voice. If what Lowe had heard about Kregg was bad, then the opposite was true of the . Immensely tough but scrupulously fair was the word on the street. Looking at her now, Lowe could believe it.

"My apologies!" he said, turning his attention to the fourth and final member of the little group. "And you are?"

"Trei Levick," the small, round man replied, showing no sign of getting up in greeting. "And I definitely have things I should be getting on with. The mess you spooks have caused around this place beggars belief."

Lowe nodded, hiding his frustration. He had asked for a meeting with the senior staff of the Museum, and in response, he had been given access to the , their PR manager, the Chair of the Museum Board and a fucking lawyer. He doubted anyone in this room had anything helpful to tell him about the circumstances that had caused the deaths of two young .

"Shall we get started?" Gral said, moving to sit back down behind the enormous table. It struck Lowe that the furniture had been configured so he would be forced to stand in front of the interviewees like a naughty schoolboy in the office. Sure, there was a spare chair for him, but if he sat in that - on the extreme left of the group - he wouldn't be able to see anyone other than the lawyer when he asked his questions. "It is very nice to meet you in the flesh, Inspector,” Gral continued. "I have heard so much about your checkered career. Let us hope that your insistence on continuing to look into this matter when the solution is so manifest does not lead to another . . . sanction."

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Lowe was pleased to see Verlan roll her eyes at that. It appeared he was not the only one irked by the strange little man.

"You do not believe there is anything else to uncover here?" he asked.

Gral gave an odd little shrug as if his shoulders were not adequately connected to his spine. "When I hear hooves, Inspector, I think horses, not Minotaurs. What do you actually have here? A crushed to death by a falling exhibit. Awful, awful thing to happen and the girl's family have been very generously compensated. However, other than a rather hysterical who seems to be having a very public nervous breakdown about the whole thing -" Lowe noted that Verlan shuffled uncomfortably at that description. She had employed Karolen to look into the Museum's affairs after all -"there are no witnesses that anything untoward took place. Your own colleague closed the case. An Inspector Wyst? Astute man, I thought."

"Scared man, certainly," Lowe muttered. A faint pressure had settled into the middle of his forehead as if a storm was coming. He glanced at Kregg, wondering if the Bard was trying another Skill-enforced mental push, but if the slimy man was trying something, there was no obvious sign.

"Scared. Sensible. You say 'potato', and I say 'living long enough to see retirement.' The critical point is that, in the absence of any new evidence, I will be instructing my clients to say nothing whatsoever to you about the death of . . . that young lady." Gral snapped his fingers when reaching for Delphina's name. The casualness ramped up Lowe's irritation to another level. "Do you have anything new to share about that nasty occurence?"

Frowning under the weight of his growing headache, Lowe was sharper than he intended in his reply. "It's pretty fucking hard to gather new evidence when everyone seems determined not to talk about what happened!"

Trei Verlick snorted at that. "It's almost like that was Nuroon's plan, ain't it? Why do you think everyone in the Great Hall wiped their memories!"

Gral turned to the and made a strange growling noise. It was such an odd thing to do, Lowe almost laughed at the incongruity. By the sick look on Verlick's face, though, he didn't find it amusing at all.

Gral turned back to Lowe, his giant eyes unblinking. "That brings us to the latest . . . event. To my understanding, you have a dead body in the office, the woman herself is reported to have been seen acting strangely around the time of the murder and then, of course, she has fled the scene. Far be it for me to tell you your business, sir, but is this not the definition of an open and shut case?"

The pressure in Lowe's head was almost too much to bear. He raised a hand and massaged the bridge of his nose. “No. Not to me.”

There was a silence. Kregg appeared to find it embarrassing and cleared his throat noisily. “Well, pardon us if we're not wild about that. We have a museum to run here, and we need you Security types offsite. You're scaring the patrons."

"I would have thought, with two unexplained deaths occurring within a month, everyone within the environs of the Museum would feel much better having us about. Everyone without a guilty conscience, of course."

Kregg, after carefully ensuring Verlan couldn't see him from her vantage point, gave Lowe the bird in reply.

Gral continued, his voice stripped of any emotion. "As far as the Museum is concerned, Inspector. Neither death is unexplained—an unfortunate accident followed by the aftermath of . . . I don't know. It could well have been a love affair gone wrong, could it not? I fail to see any link between the two. And I - and the Museum more generally - am concerned that resources that could be used to locate the murderer, Martha Culloden, are being wasted gawping at our exhibits and intimidating the staff. Essentially, Director Nuroon would like me to ask: 'Is there not something else you all should be doing?'"

Lowe did his best but struggled to focus on the man's words; his head felt like it was about to explode. Desperate, he manually pushed as much mana as possible to Roll with the Punches. The Skill soaked up all the energy offered and returned for more, making Lowe blanch and channel even more its way. He was no stranger to traumatic injuries, but ever since his recent, unexpected ranking up, he had never come close to running out of mana to feed his healing Skill. But he was pretty close right now. And what the fuck was it healing anyway?

Then his vision blurred at the edges, each pulse of his heart sending shockwaves through his skull. Sweat beaded on Lowe's forehead, trickling down his temples as he clenched his jaw, trying to keep the pain at bay. But it was relentless, digging claws into his brain.

Roll with the Punches wasn't touching it! In fact, it felt like all his mana was being fed into something else—something darker, something that felt like it shouldn't be there. The cooling warmth he associated with the activity of his Skill twisted, turned cold, and then hot again, a burning, searing heat that lanced through his mind.

With a gasp, Lowe suddenly clutched at his temples and slipped to the floor. His vision darkened, and the room seemed to warp and twist around him, the walls breathing in and out like some grotesque, living thing. The faces of the four people in front of him distorted into monstrous faces, dripping with . . . was that necrotic slime. Lowe's skull felt like it was splitting open, a thousand jagged fractures tearing through bone and tissue. He could feel his brain, swollen with the pressure, push against the inside of his skull, threatening to burst through. Blood trickled from his nose, a crimson rivulet running over his lips.

And then, with a sickening lurch, Roll with the Punches twisted in his Core and . . . branched out. A new Skill erupted into existence, birthed through his agony and smashing through all the blocks imposed on him Mental Fortress. The name rang out in his mind, but - right now - it brought him no comfort. Lowe's body convulsed, his back arching as the new Skill anchored itself within his Core, breaking through the Council's enforced lock. His vision was suddenly back, but it was tinted red. He could feel the walls of his new passive Skill slamming into place, protecting him from what on Soar had been attacking him.

The headache was gone, but a deep, throbbing emptiness, a hollow ache, was in its place. Lowe's hands trembled as he wiped the blood from his nose, his fingers slick with it as he stumbled back to his feet, his legs weak, barely able to support his weight. There would be a time to consider what had just happened, but that wasn't right now. He glared at the four horrified expressions facing him.

"Okay, so which of you fuckers just tried to mind control me?"