A wooden knocker sat on Lione’s front door. Just as Momo was about to slam it hard on the plaque, her bracelet did something unexpected — it spoke.

“Report, Bellafor?”

Momo froze, her knuckles stilling on the doorway. An immediate chill rocketed down her spine; that was Nia’s voice, unmistakably. Momo went immediately silent, motioning to Nyk to do the same with a finger over her mouth. The dokkaebi rolled her eyes and tapped her wrist as if it was wearing a watch, but she ultimately complied. Outside of her and Momo, the alleyway was as eerily quiet as a rundown mall. Not even a bird was chirping.

“Ugh – Gods, come on, Viv,” Nia said. “Just answer me already, damn it. Stop being so petty.”

Nia’s voice was strained. It seemed exhausted. Momo was momentarily confused how she was receiving this transmission at all, until she remembered how the devices operated. These things are like cell phones without block lists. As long as you had someone’s Nether phone number, you could always and forever send them a transmission. All Zephyra had done was add a new address to the bracelet’s personal address book, not remove any. Everyone who had previously contacted Vivienne was still able to do so.

“Come on, Viv,” Nia repeated after a moment, her voice smaller than before. “This whole operation is a mess without you. You know I’m shit at running things. The new kid, Trent, he’s a straight up bad press machine – he beats up everything indiscriminately: necromancers, knights, pet chickens – he’s tanking our approval ratings with the populace like crazy. Sera can’t stand him, tried to strike him with lightning the other day, but he danced out of the way at the last second. There’s so much useless internal politics going on, it’s making me nostalgic for when Sera’s biggest plans were trying to blow up our neighbors.”

I guess that confirms where Trent ran off to. Momo shook her head. Part of her desperately wanted to tell Nia the truth: that Vivienne wanted to reconcile, that she had only left the Holy Resistance to protect her, hoping she’d follow her out. A considerably larger part of Momo was just grateful to hear the movement was in shambles. It was one less thing on Momo’s giant platter of anxieties. She stayed silent.

“I’ve got to go,” Nia said. Momo heard commotion in the background. It sounded like the clopping of hooves. “Also, don’t think I can’t hear you heavy breathing on the other side. You sound like a wheezing gorilla. You should probably get that checked out.”

Momo blushed in embarrassment and held her breath. Nia chuckled amusedly to herself, then paused. The other side of the line went momentarily silent.

“Okay. Look, I’m still pissed at you. But I feel the need to tell you this, for whatever fucking reason. That article you interviewed for? It never left the presses,” Nia said. “Komodo has connections down at the Gazette, so you can bet Sera caught wind of it. A head full of snakes washed up on the shores of Mekna the next morning. The whole town thinks some pirate crew did it – some shmucks called the Mandrake’s Revenge. Apparently the boat left the shores around the same time as Kelly’s pretty little head bobbed up to the beachside. The Mekna Watch has a twenty-four seven crew out there with crossbows and pitchforks just waiting for the ship to dock again. So if that was you on that boat, you better not think of taking it back home. They’ll have your head, too.”

Another beat of silence. Momo’s neck bobbed as she desperately held her breath.

“I made Sera promise she wouldn’t kill you,” Nia whispered. “But I can’t stop someone else from trying. So, I don’t know, stay safe, okay? And if you want to come back, if you want to finish what we started…”

A clattering, metallic sound came from Nia’s side of the call. She mumbled shit, then the line went dark, leaving Momo motionless in the silent alleyway. Her mind reeled at Nia’s words.

“Oh my god,” Momo mumbled when her voice finally returned. “Sera killed Kelly Kraken.”

“Kelly who?” Nyk said. “What kind of name is Kraken?”

“She was a journalist at the Mekna Gazette. The one Vivienne and I both gave interviews to,” Momo said, dread climbing up her neck. “And if Viv’s article didn’t go out, mine definitely went down the gutter. Sera would have made sure of that. Oh man. This is bad. Really bad.”

Momo dug her hands through her hair. She squinted painfully. Her head throbbed.

“Gods, can you please chill out? You’re wound up so tight it’s giving me indigestion by association,” Nyk said, giving Momo an almost pitying look. “What was so important about your little interview?”

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“It was my announcement that I was canceling my tour,” Momo said miserably, her eyes still shut tight. “And my whole coverup plan. Without it, it looks like I just silently abandoned the people of Aloysius, stole off back to Morganium, and never showed my face again. I – I don’t even want to look at my approval numbers. No wonder Jarva started sending scouting parties towards the capital. He must think I ghosted the place and left it defenseless.”

Nyk bit her lip.

“Alright, yeah, I’ll give it to you. That’s not ideal.”

With a deafening explosion, the door to Lione’s apartment flew off its hinges and lit up into smoke. Its burnt, prickly lumber shot towards Momo, sending her barreling backwards. Her spine collided directly with the opposite wall. Black, greasy smoke puffed throughout the entire alleyway. Nyk grimaced, brushing stray pieces of debris off her shoulder.

“Robert!” an exhausted feminine voice called out. “Damnit, I just got that door put back on.”

“Uurgh,” Momo groaned, her ears ringing as if she’d just been hit by a missile.

A ten foot tall, vaguely human-shaped glob of green gelatin bent over, stuck his head through the door-hole, and then exited into the alleyway. He had no nose or mouth, no extremities like fingers or toes. His only defining feature was the shirt that was wrapped around his undulating torso, with the writing SERVICE DOG: DO NOT PET embroidered on the front.

From behind him came a woman, as prim and proper as the Queen of England, with her shining blonde hair and a face completely plastered with smoking ash.

“Oh, Momo,” she said, with the least amount of surprise. “It’s only you. Why didn’t you just knock?”

—

Lione led them inside, dragging Robert back in by his slimy right hand. They were brought into a simple and modest foyer, which had a bench, a hanger for coats, a shoe rack, and a guest book. No names had been written in the guest book. Another door led to what Momo presumed to be the rest of the apartment, but Lione didn’t lead them through it. It was blockaded by a wooden plank that had to be lifted out of the way.

“What can I do for you?” she said, forcing Robert to sit on the bench as she stared at Momo and Nyk. “I can only assume it’s because Sera has done something irrevocably terrible, but my therapist has repeatedly suggested that I take a more optimistic approach to things.”

“Oh, um,” Momo said, briefly floundering. Her head was still pounding with the combination of pain, nausea, and anxiety. Nia’s unpleasant revelations plus getting nailed into a sandstone wall were not a particularly fond mixture. “Well…”

“Your therapist sounds like an idiot,” Nyk interjected, impatient. “You’re correct. Sera is building something that’s going to turn Morgana’s domain into a ghost town.” She frowned, seemingly annoyed with herself. “Pun not intended. Anyway. My new and chronically inefficient cousin here has been tasked with trying to stop that from happening. I’ve been tasked with making sure she doesn’t blow up. Can you help, or not?”

“Is that so?” Lione said quietly. “The things in my letter really did come to pass?”

“Unfortunately,” Momo murmured. “But we think we can still stop it. If we act fast.”

Lione stared blankly ahead for a moment. A shadow of something fell over her impassive face. Momo couldn’t decipher exactly what it was—glee? Terror? Distrust?—either way, it passed as quickly as it came. The woman turned to Robert, and gestured towards the doorway.

“Robbie. Be a dear and remove the plank,” she instructed. “We have matters to discuss that require a little more space than this foyer allows.”

—

“Your place. It’s, um…” Momo trailed off. “Homey.”

It was clear that the foyer had been a front. A very convincing front, so much so that Momo nearly let out a shrill gasp when they traveled down the stairs into the basement floor of the apartment. It was a neat person’s nightmare. The floors were cluttered with paper, namely ginormous, five by five foot blueprints, heaps of scientific notebooks, artistic scrawlings, and crumpled alchemic recipes. Above the mess of paper were tables, equally stacked with scientific instruments and heavy looking water tanks. The entire place smelled of salt and sulfur.

There was no bed, at least not one that Momo could see. No couch or fridge or chest or dinner table. If Lione had been trying to escape her past life, she had utterly failed. All that was missing was a giant mansion and a few zombies. And at least in Baumfreund Manor, her crazy had enough space to stretch its legs – here, it was compacted into a landfill of derangement.

Lione pushed the trash away just enough to reveal a set of wooden chairs.

“Sit,” she instructed. “I’ll bring out some tea.”

At a complete loss for words, Momo sat. Robert sat across from her, taking up two seats. Nyk opted to stand.

“This is the woman we’re trusting the death box with?” Nyk muttered immediately as Lione was out of earshot. “I’ve seen a lot of crazy in the Nether—and I mean a lot—but this is just an entire heaping mess of red flags. Not to mention Mr. Goo Guy over here.”

Robert stared politely at Nyk, offering no defense. Part of his arm drizzled onto the floor.

“Don’t be like that. She’s reformed,” Momo said defensively, thinking back to the letter. “I think,” she added weakly. The room wasn’t inspiring much confidence. Still, Momo didn’t exactly have any other options. There was a possibility that Azrael might know something, but his loyalties remained unclear to Momo. And the possibility of even getting him on the phone was slim.

“Look, she’s the closest thing we have to talking directly to Sera,” Momo continued. “Deranged or not, she’ll have crucial information. We just have to pick our words carefully.”

“Or pick our weapon carefully,” Nyk grumbled.

Just as Momo was about to scold her, Lione appeared in front of them again, holding a wide saucer with three cups of fizzling green liquid. The tea smelled like a corpse that had been boiled in a rice cooker. Lione smiled with all her pearly white teeth as she set the plate down in front of them.

“Now,” she said, taking a seat next to Robert. “Where should we begin?”