Phil didn’t love the idea of my mother hanging out with him and Candy, especially since the two of them were clearly growing close, but he conceded that having a frigging angel for protection until this all blew over would be a logical move.

“I hope she does not interfere in my bonding with your friend,” he said while walking me to the door. “I am becoming quite fond of Candace.”

“You dog,” I replied with a smile.

“I am very clearly not a dog. You would call me an alien, but that is not fair either, as my race is called—”

“It’s just an expression,” I said. “Just remember, Candy lied to me. She is a liar.”

“I have taken that into consideration. Don’t worry about that.”

I placed my hand on his shoulder. “I will always worry about you. That’s what friends do. They worry and look out for each other.” I pulled my hand away. “Now, did you find out where they took Benny’s body?”

Phil nodded. “They have moved it to their central medical examiner’s office. They are very concerned with figuring out what happened to him.”

“You would have thought they already knew what happened with how they are after me.”

Phil shrugged. “I think that was more of a show of strength. A mob can’t allow their boss to be killed without decisive action. It would undermine their credibility.”

“If only we didn’t all have to swing our dicks around all the time, maybe this would be a better world.”

“Neither of us have penises in the traditional sense, Ollie. I think I understand your point, though. If we were more able to act with restraint and without blowing up at each other immediately, perhaps cooler heads would prevail. A better but less likely world, given the nature of humanity.”

I sighed. “Guess we have to live with the hand we’re dealt, huh?”

“Precisely.”

I said my goodbyes and portaled to the medical examiner’s office. I pulled the wand out of my long trench coat. “Trawsnewid.” With a tap from my wand, the trench coat transformed into the same white lab coats worn around the offices inside. Someone was leaving the office, and I ran up the stairs to grab the door before it latched behind her.

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Inside, a security guard tapped their key card on the edge of the door. A green light popped up to grant her access to the back of the facility. I pulled a magazine from the rack in the front of the office and sat down as if I was waiting for an appointment. When the door opened again, an old man came out, palming his key card into his pocket. I stood up and “accidentally” bumped into him, swiping the key card out of his outside pocket as I did.

“Trawsnewid.” I tapped the key card and the face changed to mine, as did the information on the card. I tapped the key card against the door and entered without issue. Inside the door, a woman stood behind a pane of glass.

“Excuse me,” I said. The woman looked up from her book. “I was just assigned to the Ratinger Drug shooting. Any idea where I should go?”

She rolled her eyes. “Man, they are bringing everyone onto that case. I don’t blame them. It is strange. Who guns down fifty rats and three people, right?”

“Definitely weird,” I replied. “But that’s why they brought me in. Weird is my middle name.”

“Weird.” She gave me directions and returned to her book. I continued down the hallway until I reached the room that held the bodies. Inside were four long metal gurneys. On two were the troglodytes, except nobody knew them as that, obviously. Our disguises—the good ones, at least—worked even in death. On a third gurney was the poor pharmacist who didn’t deserve to die, even if she was a catty wench.

In the center of the room was a fourth gurney with the bodies of dozens of little rats on them. They were all the same, brown with red eyes, riddled with bullets. It was a massacre. I looked through each little rat body, searching for a clue, and before I walked from one side of the gurney to the other, I found one. There were almost exactly fifty rats—forty-nine, to be exact, and one foot. There was at least one rat missing. I needed to find it.

The door opened, and two men with lab coats entered. They didn’t look like the others I saw milling around. These two were built more like federal agents than scientists. They were wearing shoulder-strapped guns, and their jaws were stiff and square.

“What are you doing in here?” one of them asked. His coat said Dr. Ullman, while the other’s said Dr. Overton.

Dr. Overton went for his gun immediately. Definitely not a scientist move. I held up my hands. “Easy, easy. Look, it’s a weird case, and I couldn’t help but take a look. I mean, who guns down fifty rats, right?”

“Let me see your card.” Dr. Overton demanded.

I held my card out to him. He flicked the sides of it and then tapped the top. When he looked at me, he looked even less polite than before, which I didn’t think was possible. “This card has been magically altered. Who are you really?”

“How did you know that—” But I didn’t want to stay and find out. I tossed a tray of tools into the air toward Dr. Overton as I spun and roundhouse kicked Dr. Ullman in the chest. I grabbed the severed rat leg and stuffed it in my pocket. Before the two men could regain their footing, I pushed open the door and ran out into the hallway.

“Trawsnewid.” I tapped my forehead, and my body turned into a dark-skinned woman with long, straight black hair. My lab coat returned to my trench coat form, and I took off to conceal myself in the darkness.

Who were those people? They weren’t monsters, that was for sure. I would have been able to tell their true form if they were, which meant at least two humans, government agents probably, knew about magic. I did not like that idea at all.