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> “But this was a different sort of conflict. Old wounds on all sides had been left to fester for too long.”

“We’re fucked.”

I stood with Beatrice at the back of our new coffee hangout: a massive food market in the Garment District, like a bodega on 17 rounds of steroids. Even at 10 p.m., the place was mobbed, with tourists filtering in from further north in Times Square to fill plastic containers with the multitude of food laid out in big buffet trays.

“Why do you say that?” I asked her.

“Because,” she said, “in all my years of Questing, I’ve never heard of anyone being summoned to the Council. I didn’t even think it did anything!”

“Maybe they just want to commend us on all our hard work,” I offered half-heartedly.

Beatrice glared at me before taking a sip of the decaf coffee she had loaded with several packets of sugar. We were a block away from the Council meeting, which was seemingly housed at the same address as a denim manufacturer. It may have been the last one left standing in the city. I guess that’s why it was a good place to hide a clandestine meeting of the governing board of a secret magical society.

“You brought the Medoblad?”

I nodded, tapping my purse. It had been the first time since that night in the lighthouse that I had held the wretched thing, but I understood the necessity of arming ourselves appropriately as we entered the lion’s den. Not that I thought we would actually use it. Speed would be a far better ally than the blade. Or our own glamour, if we had one.

“How come you never told me about glamour alchemy?” I said, as Beatrice refilled her coffee cup for the sixth time.

“I didn’t want to overwhelm you with too much at once,” Beatrice said. “Plus I’ve never been able to get my hands on one, so it seemed pointless to tell you about it. Come on, we’re going to be late.”

“OK.”

We walked out of the market into the cold night. Beatrice chugged the rest of her coffee as we slowly made our way down 7th Avenue until we reached 36th Street and hung a right. Colorful bolts of fabric lined the windows on the block and my thoughts drifted to Lisa, who would have loved spending entire weekend afternoons browsing through the various shops in the district. At the moment, I wasn’t sure if I was more nervous for the Council meeting or for that eventual confrontation.

“You think they know about the Met? The lighthouse? The cave?” I said quietly, as we approached our destination.

“I’ve got no fucking clue,” said Beatrice. “But if I had to guess, Gilbert’s had a few weeks to stew over failing to kill us, so he pressed the Council to confiscate all of our stuff. Which is hopefully beyond their reach at the moment.”

After the Council summons had arrived yesterday morning, Beatrice had returned to the office five minutes later, her face beet red. Between the three of us, we had ferried every single box through the portal and stowed them safely in the island house. Polly had vomited immediately upon exiting the door the first time and had nearly refused to go back through. Again, Beatrice had pointed to the boat moored out front, and the girl had quickly sucked it up and made the return trip. But I gathered from our parting late morning that it would be a long time before Polly would agree to do another favor.

We reached the factory and I peered through the big glass windows that lined the front of the building. The hulking metal machinery stood quiet and if there were any signs of the Council inside, I didn’t see them.

I walked over the sidewalk cellar door and tried to pull the front door open, but it wouldn’t budge. Then I noticed a small intercom to the left with seven rows of buttons, each corresponding to a different office in the building. Unsurprisingly, none of the office names said “Questing Council” and none of them listed a Suite 4312.

“Now what?” I said to Beatrice, who was silently considering her clenched right fist in front of the windows. “You’re not thinking of-”

“No,” she said, walking away from the glass. “I’ve used the ring too much already. Besides, we’re smarter than that. Maybe if we just knocked.”

I nodded and banged on the door three times. No one answered and I knocked again. Still nothing.

“Try one of the buzzers,” said Beatrice.

I complied, working my way down the intercom after a few-second pause in between. Each buzz was greeted with silence, except the last one, where I was hit with a string of expletives before the intercom abruptly cut off.

I looked over the intercom directory again to see if there was some sort of message hidden amongst the office names. Was finding the Council meeting the whole purpose of our summons? And if we passed, we would be granted a great reward for our ingenuity?

“Suite 4312, what if it’s not an office number, but a sequence?” I said, a surge of excitement in my voice. Without waiting for Beatrice to respond, I pressed the intercom buttons again in quick succession, but in the order of the suite number.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

No sooner had I hit button 2 than a soft beep chimed from the intercom, followed by a clinking sound next to my feet. It was the sidewalk cellar door, which, much to my astonishment, began opening on its own, revealing a set of stairs down into the dark.

“Well, that’s not foreboding at all,” said Beatrice, who crouched down next to the newly revealed set of stairs. “Can’t see much, but doesn’t look like a bloodthirsty mob is waiting for us at the bottom.” She stood up and descended into the basement and I followed.

We were in a long, narrow hallway, the only light coming from a single bulb hanging from the ceiling at the end. It took only a minute to reach the terminus, where a large wooden door with an ornate metal door knocker in the middle waited for us. I looked at Beatrice, who shrugged her shoulders and then rapped the metal against the door several times. At the fourth knock, the door slowly opened inward a few inches, the sounds of ambient chatter spilling forth.

I pushed the heavy door forward and walked through, only to be greeted by a hundred people seated in neat rows of chairs facing a long front table all turn their heads in unison to stare at me.

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“The next meeting of the Council will be held on April 10, same time, at the MacDougal Street location.”

A heavyset man with graying hair and spectacles banged a gavel on the front table and the throngs of people began slowly exiting, only as we had just sat down in the back row. Two women were seated abreast of him: one who looked like she could be his wife and another who I could have sworn was a finalist on some terrible reality show a few years back and maybe now sold kitschy motivational artwork on Instagram.

“How are we this late?” I whispered to Beatrice. “We weren’t fumbling with the door that long.”

“Dunno,” she said. “Maybe they just wanted to ID us for later. Let’s get out of here while we can make a stealthy exit.”

Beatrice got up quickly from her chair and I followed, but no sooner had we done so did the man at the table’s gaze lock in on us with his beady eyes.

“You two, stay,” he said, pointing his gavel at us, and we slunk back down in our seats and waited as the room slowly emptied.

I watched the attendees filter out through at least four other doors scattered around the large room and realized that despite my 13 months in the Questing world, up until this point I only had known a handful of people who had taken the same crazy plunge as me. And one of them was heading right toward us.

“Hi Jade,” said the girl with a smile. She was wearing that same jean jacket decorated with dozens of pieces of flair, but her hands were missing the stacks of rings from our first encounter at the Raid Board.

“Hi,” I said, as Beatrice turned to stare at me with daggers.

“Who’s your friend?”

“Molly,” said Beatrice, cutting in before I could answer. “Molly Vestrit. And you are?”

“Ty Anzio. Nice to meet you,” said the girl. “How’d that Raid work out for you, Jade?”

Ty sat down in the chair in front of us and swiveled around, blocking my view of the front dais.

“Umm,” I said, my mind racing back to that brief encounter at the elementary school. “I ended up not taking it, too much going on at work that week.”

“Ah,” she said. “I hear they’re moving the Board next week. You missed a rousing debate over the possible new locations. The crowd wants another school, this time on the Lower East Side, but those three up there have other ideas.”

“Well, that’s all very interesting,” said Beatrice, “but we reall-”

“Skylarose101 and JadePhoenix42, come forward.”

I turned and looked at Beatrice.

“Skylarose101? Really?”

“What?” she said. “It was a long time ago.”

We shuffled out of the row, away from Ty, who had a big smirk on her face.

“Oooh, what did you two do?”

“None of your business,” said Beatrice curtly as she walked to the front of the room.

“Your friend is nice,” said Ty, shaking her head. “Well, if you guys ever need help, here’s my card.” She reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out a black rectangle with gold writing on it, and handed it to me.

“I didn’t know 16-year olds today carried business cards. Or knew what they were,” I said. “But thanks. Hopefully we’re not in-”

“Let’s go!” said Beatrice from the front of the room.

“Sorry about her,” I said, turning back to Ty, but she was gone.

I quickly joined Beatrice in the center of the first row. The table stood only a few feet in front of us, which meant that the horrible body odor from the rotund man in the middle had nowhere to go before it reached us. I winced at the smell and Beatrice elbowed me in the ribs before giving me a dirty look.

“Ahem,” said the man. “Let’s get down to business. You two know why you are here?”

“No clue,” said Beatrice.

“No, sir,” I said, as if I was addressing my old boss at the library.

“Gerald, get on with it, already,” said the reality TV starlet. “Just read it to them so we can get out of here. I have a million things I need to be doing.”

Gerald’s maybe-wife glared at the younger woman.

“Hold your tongue, Sara. This is important! It’s not every day that the Guild asks us t-”

“They’ve asked us to read a piece of paper, you dolt. It’s not a test for a Guild seat. So just-”

“Enough, both of you!” said Gerald, banging his gavel before shuffling some papers around on the table. “Now, where was I? So. You two have been summoned here today so that we, as the esteemed Council member to my left was so inartfully saying, can deliver a message from the Guild.”

My eyes widened and I turned to gauge Beatrice’s reaction, but she just kept staring ahead at the three Council members, unfazed.

“Skylarose101 and JadePhoenix42,” Gerald said, reading off a brown piece of parchment, “you are hereby charged by the Board of the Dutch West India Company, doing business as the Worshipful Company of Alchemists, i.e. the Guild, with the kidnapping of a Guild asset and theft of Guild property. Return the kidnapped asset and stolen property listed in Schedule A within one week of this summons, or you will be indefinitely banned from participating in any Quests or Raids, along with forfeiture of all tokens. Call 679-241-5125 for drop-off location when ready.”

Gerald put down the parchment, picked up an envelope, and held it out in front of him. Beatrice quickly rose from her chair and snapped it from his hands before tearing it open savagely and pulling out a piece of computer paper with small black text printed on it.

I peered over her shoulder and quickly read the words, and my heart started palpitating.

“Schedule A,” it said in printed black letters at the top. Below that were two underlined column headers, each with a single line underneath.

“Guild Asset,” said the first, and below that was printed “Francesca Lewis.”

“Guild Property,” said the second, and below that was printed “One wooden box, 2 feet by 2 feet by 2 feet, with a metal latch.”

My eyes met Beatrice’s and she slowly shook her head.

“Like I said,” said Beatrice. “We’re fucked.”

Next: Jen tries to clean up some unfinished business before dealing with the latest crisis.