I tiptoed into the precinct where Cara was being held. The tiptoeing was gratuitous and suspicious and unnecessary. I knew it, Joni knew it, Joni made sure I knew it multiple times, Christopher knew it enough to confirm Joni’s suspicions, even Blair knew it by the end. But it was hard not to tiptoe. I was surrounded by frickin cops covered in badges and blue cop hats and shit, while wearing a designer-logo-emblazoned outfit that was, as always seemed to be the case, stained with blood. Plus police stations are just weird. They have a weird energy. If you just used your nose, you’d think you were in a coffee shop. But if you listen into any conversation, suddenly you’re overhearing something about a robbery or murder or something. And then there’s the weapons that everyone is just armed to the teeth with.

But Cara was here. That’s what the man at the front had told me when I told him I was here to interrogate her.

I got plenty of weird stares, but I just kept nervously stammering that I was the ‘out of state detective assigned to the Cara case’ and that smoothed things over.

Finally I found her cell. Cara was lying in a sad lump on the bed, facing away from the door.

I tapped on the bars.

Cara sat bolt upright, face immediately going pale from the sudden shift. Her hair stuck out at random directions, her cheeks were stained with mascara streaks, and she had bags under her eyes big enough to store all the useless CD players she’d shoplifted the day before.

Her chest rose in heaving pants as she blinked a few times, trying to adjust to the dim light. When she finally recognized me, she let out a sigh of relief.

“Oh. Oh it’s you. Thank God.” She rubbed her eyes. “I was hoping for…”

As quickly as it came, the recognition faded from her face.

“Wait,” she said. “How do I even know you? You just kinda showed up at the TechShack, like, yesterday and told me I had to steal some shit to sell to Henry Miller? Who the fuck is Henry Miller? And who the fuck are you? Who was that kid who got shot yesterday? Why the fuck–”

My instinct was to parrot what I’d been telling all the police officers. That I was the out of state detective working her case. But how long would it be until that wore off? How long would it be until Cara just decided she was going crazy?

“Look,” I said, hands out and down in the way you’d gesture at a rabid dog or feral cat. “You must be freaked out, but there’s a good explanation for all of this.” It was a weak, temporary lie, but we could burn that bridge when we got to it. “Right now, I just wanna get you out of here, cause we both know you weren’t the one who shot Noah.”

She burst into tears at this, and my whole body went rigid. Right, trauma trauma trauma. Her life had been turned upside down. Like mine, but she didn’t have immortality or magic or cool ghost friends. Just a lifetime of jail or something.

“They say they have my fingerprints on the gun,” she managed through heaving sobs.

Oh crap. My memory was now recalling me handing the gun over to Cara last night. I shoulda just left it on the ground.

I glared accusatorily at Joni, who gave me a look that was both 100% bafflement and 100% rage at my accusatory glare. It was a very loud look.

“Literally how is this my fault?” she hissed.

“You could have told me not to pick up the gun!”

“I didn’t know.” Cara rubbed at her eyes again, dragging makeup further down her face.

“Oh, uh, sorry.” I pointed at my airpods. “That wasn’t directed at you.”

“Oh. Uh. What?” My answer seemed to have briefly shocked Cara out of her tears. “Who are you on the phone with?”

“My, uh… Your lawyers?” I gave Joni an oopsie grimace, and she gave a real snarly sigh. “Look, Cara, yeah you’re right, your fingerprints are on that gun. But so are Henry’s. Do you… do you know if they have him?’

“How should I know?” Cara said. “They’ve barely told me anything. Just enough to try to get me to fess.”

I nodded. “Okay. Okay. Looks like that’s where we gotta start.”

And as if triggered by my words, I suddenly noticed a glowing light in the corner of my vision.

–

SCHEME INITIATED:

Type: Grand Quest

Difficulty Level: Purple

Participants: Cara Geraldo, Henry Miller, Self

Status: Initiated

Sub-Schemes*:

Free Cara from custody

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Clear Cara’s name

Seek revenge on Henry Miller

*Tip! Not all sub-schemes must be completed to complete Grand Quest. The sub-schemes will update as progress is made. If sufficient schemes fail, the Grand Quest will fail.

SCHEME INITIATED:

Type: Breakout

Difficulty Level: Blue

Participants: Cara Geraldo

Status: Initiated

Details: Cara Geraldo is currently locked in a jail cell at Northbridge Police station, under custody regarding her involvement in the shooting of Noah Cesair. Release her from police custody and find a safe location for her.

–

There was more. There was a whole Scheme rundown for each of the sub-schemes. But I was already overwhelmed at the idea of needing to complete a Grand Quest, so I waved away the display after reading the first quest’s details. I could take this one step at a time. That’s how I worked best.

“Oooh, she’s got a new quest,” Blair said. “Her eyes always go blank like that when she’s reading. Like she’s focusing really hard.”

“My eyes don’t go blank.”

“What?” Cara asked.

I tapped my airpods again. “Sorry, just on the phone. Uh, so, lawyers.” The word was accompanied by a heavy look at the three ghosts. “It looks like our first step here is to find out Henry Miller’s whereabouts. Starting with the station I think. Maybe see if you can make some calls to figure out if he’s in any of these cells.”

Blair zoomed upright, saluting sharply. “Blair Yan Esquire is on the case,” she said, before zooming through a wall to check out the rest of the precinct, Joni hot on her heels.

“Dope,” Christopher said. “I always wanted to be a lawyer.”

I was learning all kinds of things about my friends.

So that was step 1: either find Henry or rule out the possibility of him being in jail. If he was here, it’d be easy mode. Get him to confess. He actually did it, so it’s not like they’d find evidence to mark him as innocent. Literally a get out of jail free card. Or go into jail free card, depending on your perspective.

But I was getting the sneaking worry that this wouldn’t be easy mode. Given the last thing I’d told Henry was that he wanted to join a monastery, odds were kinda low he’d stuck around long enough to get arrested. I did have to rule it out, though, just in case. Then we could move to step 2.

Step 2 would be figuring out what the next legal steps would be. I wrinkled my nose at that, though, cause boy did that sound like a slog. Unlike Christopher, I’d never wanted to be a lawyer or anything involving the law. My third grade “When I grow up” had always been something lowkey. Bus driver, cake baker, zookeeper. Something easy and fun.

So maybe that could be Christopher’s job. I could delegate.

“What are they saying?” Cara asked.

I jumped, half forgetting she was still there.

“Huh?”

“The lawyers? It looked like you were listening to them for a while. Do they know where Henry is?”

I twisted my lips, trying to figure out what to say. “Oh, no, not yet. They’re looking up what’ll happen to you in the next few days.” Maybe Cara had already been told the next steps?

“Ugh.” Cara threw herself back down on her crappy little bed. “Here til someone posts bail. But my family doesn’t even live in the same fucking timezone and honestly, I don’t know what’s more unlikely. My deadbeat brother posting bail or my dad doing it. I’m like, lowkey disowned. I can’t see either being like ‘yeah, cool, let me wire loser Cara fifty grand cause she got herself locked up for attempted murder.’”

“Technically would be battery at this point I think.” Christopher had poked his head back into her cell. “Definitely not first-degree murder, even if Noah does kick it, cause it wasn’t premeditated.”

I scowled, half because I hadn’t known there were degrees of murder, half because Christopher was back a lot sooner than I’d expected.

“Find him?” I whispered.

“Naw.” Christopher waved off my question. “Worse. Well, for you technically I guess. Better for Cara just cause this whole thing is about to get a lot more complicated.”

“Wait, why’s that?” Worse for me? How was this getting worse for me? “And why couldn’t this have waited? One thing at a time and all, you know I have a hard time processing things out of order.”

“So, like, I stumbled into a room where some cops and shit were discussing, you know, proceedings and stuff,” Christopher started. “Guess there was a third set of prints on the gun. Prints that match an odd case opened yesterday morning.” He gave me a cheeky grin, as if referencing an inside joke. I just nodded mutely. “Car with three dead passengers. Driver missing. Seemed at first to be just, you know, classic case of a fatal accident where an injured occupant stumbled off to get help and probably died. Cept the fingerprints on the steering wheel match fresh ones on this gun.”

I really shouldn’t have handed that gun to Cara last night.

“To make things worse,” Christopher said, lazy grin not catching onto the growing sense of horror on my face, “they’ve pulled up the ID of the owner of the car. You, obviously. And they got pictures of the owner–you–and guess what?”

I groaned. “They’re matching them to my various thefts and shit across town?” I asked, voice weak.

“Thefts?” Cara asked.

“Naw, dude, worse. They’re matching the pictures to the face of the detective that just entered Cara’s cell.”

Oh. Oh shit. Yeah, that was worse. That was so many lightyears worse. A bead of sweat rolled down the back of my neck.

“So. Yeah. Okay. That can’t wait. How long do we have?” I gave Cara a faint smile and pointed to my airpods, a gesture that was making increasingly less sense.

“I dunno, like five minutes?” Christopher finally seemed to have caught on to my stress. “It’ll be, like, okay and all. Just lie and shit.”

“Cara needs bail money posted so she doesn’t have to spend the rest of the trial in jail, though,” I said, voice starting to spike in panic. “I can’t do that if I’m in a cell next to hers!”

“Wait, are you in trouble now?” Cara asked. Her voice sounded almost as panicked as mine, which was almost nice because at least someone else was realizing what a bad deal this was.

“Uh. Huh. Maybe lie about it?”

Right. Magic lies. That was obviously the only way to get out of this but without Joni’s coaching, I was a little worried I’d blow it.

Okay, focus Sammi. Don’t panic, Sammi. Joni wasn’t much smarter than I was, just more level-headed. I could be level-headed. I just needed to think this through. What were the core things I needed to convey, and what were the core things I needed to avoid?

I could do this.