The laundromat we were directed to had perhaps one of the laziest names in all of Carousel: The Laundromat.

Perhaps that was supposed to be ironic because, secretly, it wasn't just a laundromat, and therefore, just calling it that was funny.

I wasn't sure, but by all accounts, it looked like an average laundromat to me. People were inside doing their washing and drying. There was a woman inside of a little office who would take your suits or dresses to have them dry cleaned, which was a nice thing to have at a laundromat.

We ignored them all and walked to the back. As we followed the hall further into the building, we eventually found a large man standing next to a door whose only notable quality was that it was made out of thick metal and opened with a huge handle that might have been found on a door to a drug kingpin's compound.

It was surrounded by industrial-sized washers and dryers.

The man didn't say anything to us, but Antoine coolly said, "Pyrite."

The man didn't respond, and for a moment, all we could hear was the laundry machines going as he looked us up and down and reached over to open the door with a metal squeal, revealing a freight elevator.

"I'm sure it's normal to have a freight elevator in a one-story building," Isaac said.

The man didn't respond.

"Yeah, like we'd get into an elevator without a light," Isaac said—and he was right; there was no light inside the elevator.

"Isaac," I said, "there's no omen. You can stop checking."

He was calling out strange details, hoping to unveil an omen because that's how his scouting trope worked, but mine said nothing was going on, and the baby wasn't crying, so we were probably good.

Probably.

We stepped into the elevator, and as we did, a light flickered on. There was only one button in the elevator, so we pressed it.

The trip down was jittery and frankly quite terrifying because, with all the shaking, it became possible that we were walking to our deaths despite all the evidence that we would be safe. That fear pushed itself into my mind.

But then it stopped. There was a small gate between the elevator and the floor, and another goonish-looking guy was there to open it for us.

Beyond that was a hallway with detailed red wallpaper—not the red wallpaper we saw in our heads, but similar.

We loaded out into the hallway, and carefully, I led us down to the sound of music in the distance.

Jazz music.

The further we walked, the more sounds we heard—people dancing and laughing. There was an energy and a buzz in the air.

As we finally reached the end of the hallway and turned to look, we saw a 1920s Speakeasy absolutely alive with a couple dozen NPCs. The cocktail waitresses and the bartender were wearing outfits to fit the theme and era. People were gambling at blackjack and roulette.

The bartender specifically caught my attention because not only did he have a wiry, muscular frame and sharp, penetrating eyes, but he also had a Plot Armor of 50 and a bunch of tropes I couldn't see.

On the red wallpaper, his name was Vic Malone, but as I watched, his first name changed. It started at Vic and then became Roger and then John, and every few seconds, it would change.

He spotted us the moment we rounded the corner. He didn't exactly smile, but there was something inviting about the way he looked at us—a sort of sardonic amusement.

I couldn't spend all of my attention on him; there was just so much to see.

"Check out the two people dancing over by the piano," Dina said. Her Outsider's Perspective trope allowed her to notice strange things quickly, and she had undoubtedly noticed something strange.

The two people who were dancing were dressed to the gills and wearing masquerade masks. They didn't register as enemies but rather as NPCs, and they didn't seem to care that we were there. But I recognized the style of those masks, and I knew for sure what storyline they were from. Miss Brunette and Mr. Cobalt ignored us and danced like that was the only thing that mattered to them.

That couldn’t have been a coincidence. Nothing ever was.

There was a man named “Cauliflower Bill” set up at a table in the far corner with an easel, and he had a sign out that said, "Caricatures 10 dollars." He was marked as an NPC, too, but his sign had a picture on it of a collection of clowns at a circus, and I swore as I looked at that picture that one of those clowns seemed to be looking back at me.

It was a terrifying clown that almost looked like it had another face painted above its real face with makeup.

I had to look away.

"Does anyone else get the feeling that everyone here is an enemy?" Antoine asked.

"I think you might be on to something," I said.

And sure enough, as we looked around at the room filled with smoke and jazz, everyone who wasn't an employee did have a sort of dark look over them—a haunting gaze. Danger leaked from their aura, and even though I couldn't see any confirmation of this on the red wallpaper, my Hysteric scouting trope I Don't Like It Here was making me feel very anxious.

The collection included all sorts of people—some carrying obvious weapons, others looking like ordinary folk.

"Should we leave?" Kimberly asked, clearly unsure of whether we should be here.

I had no idea. The baby wasn't crying, so there was no danger that we weren't aware of, but at the same time, there were plenty of dangers that we were aware of, and for some reason, they were all pretending to be NPCs.

"Let's talk to the Paragon over here behind the bar," I said.

Tar had hinted that the Speakeasy took in all types, but this was ridiculous.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Antoine was quick to talk to the bartender, and he didn't waste words.

"Are we safe here?" he asked of the man.

The man—Vic, or whatever his name was, Malone—smiled and said, "You know, we don't get a lot of players around here these days. Wonder why that might be."

Antoine kind of dismissed his playful greeting and said, "I just want to know if we should be here. Aren't Paragons supposed to help the players?"

"Well, hang on there. There's a way of going about things. Don't just ask me if you're in danger. Endear yourself to me so that I'm inclined to help you," Malone said, smiling. His eyes were searching and revealed something his smiling face hid well, a slyness, a cleverness.

He wore his sleeves pushed up, and his thin, nimble fingers could fit all the way to the bottom of the glasses he was polishing.

He was one of those guys whose smile could transform his face from fierce and unwelcoming to charismatic and, frankly, warm.

I welcomed that in a place like this.

"Take a beer for each of us," Antoine said.

"That'll be a 50-cent piece apiece," Malone said. "Would you like to start a tab?"

Fifty cents seemed like really cheap brews, and even though none of us actually wanted to drink at that moment, we were happy because we were still counting on the whole if you pay for something, you're safe logic, which was only 85% true at best in practice because plenty of restaurants and stores had dangerous things in them.

As he poured our drinks, he said, "And relax. These characters don't mean you any harm, and they couldn't if they wanted to. Not here. But I suggest you don't be too friendly with any of them because while you learn about them, they’re learning about you."

I looked over the cast of characters who were having a good time in the Speakeasy that night. How many black widows, serial killers, and psychopaths were there with us? I had no idea.

The crybaby didn't cry, and I never saw an omen. We found ourselves a booth, squeezed in, and listened to jazz.

Eventually, we got Malone, the bartender, to come talk to us. He wouldn’t talk to us at the bar.

He scooted into the booth with us and asked, "So, what brings you to this neck of the woods? People like you don't show up at a place like this unless they have a real good reason."

Andrew was the first to talk.

"We're on a mission," he said. "We're looking for a storyline that involves werewolves and takes place on the mountain near the Powerworks Pavilion. Do you have any information on the location of an omen for a storyline like that or anything that could help us?"

"I see," Malone said. "See, I cater toward the human type of killer.” Then quieter, he commented to himself, “Fella comes in here asking about werewolves…” like he was making fun. “What I suggest is that you drink, and you think on it, and just take it all in. You never know what you might find here."

He smiled, got up from the booth, and walked back to the bar.

"This is useless," Michael said. "I don't like going on wild goose chases, and I don't like being toyed with by those…whatever you call them. Pelicans, politicians, paramours..."

"Paragons," Andrew said. "They're called Paragons. The older version of the Atlas that we have now talks about them."

"Doesn't matter," Michael said, and then he was the first of us to take his beer and take a swig, and because he didn't fall over, the rest of us followed, even though no one really drank much.

"Maybe we should take off all our tropes," Kimberly said, "just to make sure that if there's danger here, none of us are unknowingly detecting it and stopping the baby from working."

That was actually a smart idea. We were pretty emotional and tense, so if one of our tropes was detecting danger or magic or anything, we possibly would not know it, but our ability to detect it might stop the baby from crying.

So we all took off all our tropes, and when the baby didn’t cry, we put them right back on. How silly we felt after.

“It was a good idea,” I said. “Maybe we actually are safe here.”

It still didn’t feel like it, and frankly, I was growing really frustrated not knowing why we were there in the first place.

I let my eyes wander.

There was a man drinking alone in the corner.

He looked like a regular guy, probably good with the ladies if I could guess, but he spent all his attention staring at a woman and a man across the room, and occasionally the woman would look back at him like they shared a secret.

I pieced together that they were working together to fleece the third man that the woman was talking to. Yep, from the looks of it, that fellow talking to the woman was going to have a rough night. Maybe I was just imagining it.

Which is to say, I was having trouble focusing on why we were actually there.

My eyes carried further around the room as I watched other narratives play out—a couple of con men trying to sell a coin to a dupe, a woman sneaking something into the drink of a jazz pianist, and so on.

And the man over there in the corner just waiting to paint someone’s caricature.

Strange fellow.

He didn’t seem to be interacting with anyone; his eyes were yellow where the white should be and black everywhere else—not in a supernatural way, but more in a drinking-himself-to-death sort of way. He had a funny shape to him, too, kind of like a bowling pin with noodle arms. His shape was so distinctive that I recognized him from the picture he had of all those clowns, even without his makeup.

“Does somebody want to go with me? I want to go talk to this guy over here,” I said. It wasn’t as if I thought he was part of our reason for being there, but I still wanted to know what his deal was and why a Speakeasy filled with criminals needed a caricature artist.

Antoine volunteered to go with me.

As we approached, the man started to smile—a big toothy smile with yellow teeth that matched his yellow eyes. When he spoke, I could almost hear every cigarette he had ever smoked in his voice.

“Can I interest you two gents in a portrait?” he said, coughing. “I’ll give you one hell of a price, just 10 dollars.”

That was worth twenty beers in this economy.

“Would you like to see some of my other portraits?” he asked, flipping open a book filled with Polaroid pictures of drawings he had done. They were mostly of families with children, as well as a few romantic ones with couples, and of course, a few friend groups who decided to get their picture drawn together.

“What’s with the clowns?” Antoine asked, staring at the sign and the picture on it.

“You like that?” the man said—not asking, but declaring. “Yeah, I work at the Low Top Circus. It’s coming back to town next month; it’ll be a thrill. This one’s me,” he said, pointing to the one that was obviously him because of his funny shape and yellow eyes.

“You like being a clown?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, but if I’m being honest, I mostly do it for the children,” he said, then looked at me blankly.

I looked through the picture at all the clearly murderous clowns. In movies, clowns usually come in at least two different versions of themselves—the perfectly ordinary one that you would expect to see at a real-life circus and the scary one that you would only see when you were about to be killed. The picture had the non-scary versions, and yet they were obviously still murderous, but not in a way that would hold up in court.

I couldn’t stare at the picture too long because the one clown with the face drawn above his face was starting to freak me out.

I didn’t know what I was hoping to see, but I thought that maybe because he wasn’t going through his own little narrative like all of the other characters in the Speakeasy, he had something to do with us.

I looked at Antoine and shrugged my shoulders.

He shrugged his shoulders back, and we went back to our booth, where everyone was on their second round, even if they didn’t finish their first.

“Well, maybe we were supposed to go to the mall,” Isaac said. “Do you remember all those people talking about going to the real mall when we were at the outlet mall? It’s malls all the way down. Think about it—there’s a costume shop at the mall, remember? Maybe there’s a werewolf costume, and we’re supposed to buy it, and that’s the omen. Wouldn’t it make sense for a werewolf movie to have a werewolf costume as an omen—literally turning into a werewolf?” He kept tapping his temple as if he was showing you exactly how clever he was.

And yet, when he said that, all I could think was, What exactly would a werewolf costume look like in Carousel? Because there were so many different types of werewolves. Would it be a big fur suit, or would it be some sort of mask, or maybe some of that facial putty that you’re supposed to glue onto your face to add a snout or something?

As I started thinking about it, something occurred to me, and I really just couldn’t stop thinking about it. Instead of taking my place back in the booth, I went back to the bar and took a seat there, and finally, the pieces started to click into place.

Werewolves from different franchises didn’t look alike at all, did they?

Somehow, that thought brought me back to the fortune Madam Celia had given us:

> "Your friends have all fallen, some here, some there;

> 'Til they have risen, you've no friends to spare.

I had two pretty strong ideas, but how did they fit together?