12)

Martin: Setting some ground rules.

Things quickly went from trying to talk to just Tosser, to showing the entire pack what I meant by using a toilet. Then what I meant by daily bathing. Followed by squirting them down with dish soap and using the hose out back behind the store since I didn't want them up in the apartment. Even if the place was going to be left behind when I was eventually rescued

Bath time quickly turned into playtime between the suds and spraying them down with the hose, but I had dry clothes upstairs. They did seem very pleased to each gain an adjustable sized ball cap, which also helped me tell them apart.

At first, I began dubbing them after dwarves, Sleepy, Bashful, and Grumpy, but then I branched out a bit with Jermaine, Tito, Harpo, and Chico, and then the last one Otto. The name Otto wasn't from anything, he just looked like an Otto and even after trying to eat my mana stone it seemed a bit mean, even if accurate, to go with Dopey.

So the agreement that Tosser and his pack seemed to agree to, was, they got a place to live, things to drink, and food to eat. In return, they didn’t make messes, stayed out of my way, and kept themselves clean.

Really two out of three at any one time was more than I had expected.

Curiously enough, they all seemed to be able to sense when the changing lands were about to do their thing. All of their heads would turn in one direction and then they began dashing around to get behind cover, nearly in silence.

I had thought the changing lands changed all at once, but it seemed like something triggered the change from a seemingly random point of origin, then spread out from there. A fact which might be of interest to someone other than me, but I made a note of it on my phone and recorded them doing the creepy group head turn.

I also recorded a bit of the lands outside the front door each time. While I wasn't curious enough to go wandering around out there, I figured I might get a chance to look up some of the Umbral realms I was visiting for conversation later on.

It passed the time.

I had gotten shot around 11:20 the night before. Was woken up by a snack cake craving elf around 7:00 the next morning and it was now a little after 2:00. So it was now going on fourteen hours since I had gone widdershins from the real world.

Yes, I was using math as yet another way to pass the time and it gave me a bit of a break from telling the munchkins that “yes, you can open that bag." Then having to take the bag of mini marshmallows to toss out handfuls of them at a time down the aisles to stop yet another biting, scratching, rolling on the floor, fight over who got the bag.

I had given up on the no sugar thing, we were in a party store so sugar wasn’t hard to find and I could not keep an eye on them all the time. even if I wanted to.

The lands changed anywhere from a few minutes, the wood with the imps, to a few hours, an endless plain of tall grass, with what might have been brontosauruses in the distance. So there was no set pattern I could find in the time I had been there, and I hoped that if there was a pattern, I was not here long enough to notice it.

Of course, I got several shots and recordings of the Brontos with my phone. My inner seven old would never have forgiven me otherwise.

Then we came to a place of scattered shallow streams of water flowing through the dark gravel between hills and ridges of stone. Thick clumps of moss grew everywhere under a great orange sun, dim and cold as it loomed high above.

The Party-Mart now sat in the middle of all that with the addition of an entire army of tusked greenish skinned barbarians filling the stoney vale from one side to the other as they rose to their feet as if they had just been waiting for the changing lands to give them a patch of semi open ground to let them charge forward, weapons in the air, screaming at the top of their lungs.

Which they then proceeded to do.

Did I mention the part about the store sitting right in the middle of the place directly in their path?

Cassy: Following a lead

The Burroughs building had seen better days, once it had held medical offices, now the place stood half empty with most of the windows bricked up to save on the cost of replacing them whenever someone felt like throwing rocks around in this old, rundown neighborhood.

Kinkade popped out the passenger door as I pulled up to a stop, glaring around at the few people on the street. "Nice place to stay out of the sun."

"Yeah. Look, don't take this the wrong way, I know you're fully trained. I just want to confirm before we walk in there that you can create real sunlight.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, believed me, I know how to pull out sunlight, moonlight, and every other kind of light.” She shook her head. “Your grandma had you help harvest lavender oil, my Mawmaw used to throw demands at me to come up with spells on the fly and if I wasn't fast enough she would throw whatever was nearest to her at me. And she would aim for the head.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously, she's old school. Like eighteen hundred's old school."

The former office building currently had three listings beside the entrance. A tattered listing for a general contractor, a listing for a dental office with the new address they had moved to written over it, and a handwritten listing for Riggs Consulting on the third floor.

I looked up at the 70’s era security camera over the front door. “Somehow I suspect the elevator in this place isn’t going to be working, or if it is, I wouldn't trust it.”

Kinkade nodded. “Either it's really old or trapped. Either way, I vote for the stairs too.'

We headed inside the building. Dim lighting, with cracked and dirty tiles covering the floor. Cobwebs and dust. “Nice place.”

The Pact witch hissed in reply. "This isn’t right. It feels like there’s nothing alive in the whole building, no spiders, roaches, mice, nothing.”

“Would you be able to sense him if he’s here?”

She nodded. “Should. Vamps are still alive, kind of. All messed up inside and out, but they’re still living beings.”

The stair were no nicer than the lobby, but soon enough we were at the door listed at the front of the building. Before I could get the chance to look for magical alarms or anything of that nature, my temporary partner whispered “Door’s clear, no spells.”

I checked, but not for spells. The knob was locked. "Got any magic for a locked door?”

She shook her head. “Told Mawmaw I would just kick in the door, she laughed and let me off on that one.”

I took a knee and rolled out my set of lock picks.

Kinkade smirked "Really?"

“Spells leave a residue, I want to search the place without anyone knowing we were here.”

That's when the door opened from the inside.

Tarnell Riggs was taller than his nephew with a heavier build, a thin mustache, and a grin that made him seem like even more of a scumbag than the kid. He did dress better, with a slim tie over a button up shirt, and suspenders on his dress pants. Nice shoes too.

His creepy ass smile show off his sharp teeth, which were not so nice.

He locked eyes with me. "Hello ladies. Why don't you tell me what you all are doing here?"

I glared up at Kinkade. “I thought you said you would be able to detect him.”

She shrugged. "I said I should be able to. Guess I was wrong.”

Then I could feel a trace of something squirming at the edge of my thoughts, but, let's just say part of becoming an agent of the Bureau involved several painful hours of getting glyphs inscribed right onto our bones, one of which is a general protection against all sorts of mind tampering.

It wasn’t perfect but it did let us know when someone was trying something like the influence ability of a fairly new vampire.

“He's trying to put a compulsion on me, could you do something about that?"

Kinkade punched him into the room. Both his feet left the ground as she swung a full body punch to his face sending him flying back into his desk.

What can I say? It was a bit overkill, but it did work. The squirming sensation in my head stopped immediately.

The swamp witch was displeased. "Seriously? I standing right here and you try to vamp the tall blonde first. Trust me Cooyan, I'm the dangerous one here."

Well... Guess I'm stuck being the good cop again.

Donovan- Wondering what fresh hell is next

Roxzilla walked over to grab the largest sized cup and dithered in front of the Frozey machines unsure which flavor to get as if it was a major discussion. Either the red one or the blue one, it's not like he even had to pay.

Damia and Linda headed back upstairs, with Damia saying something about checking her social media now that she had internet access again.

Roxir, who had finally chosen blue, eyeballed the two of them heading out the back door and followed after them trying to look as casual as a seven foot tall red scaly guy could be.

Clarice just stood there the whole time staring at me with her arms crossed. Shit, guess it's time to pay for pocketing the screwdriver. No place to run, no place to hide and I'm guessing trying to fight her would just piss her off, what the hell, I crossed my arms as well and stared back at her.

She raised up an eyebrow at that. "Nice job with the shiv, but you were supposed to be getting drinks." she gestured at the half melted bottles filled with traces of ash on the floor.

Oh, well being a drink caddie sounded better than more stabby stabby so...

“But go grab your screwdriver before you get the drinks, maybe you'll be less of a little bitch if I let you be armed."

I gave her a glare that just made her grin, but I still went and got the thing. Whatever blood and eye juice had been on it was gone. I also grabbed one of those little plastic basket things by the door to fill with drinks.

Filled the thing up with random choices, with only a sniff of disguise coming from behind me. “What the hell, no beer?” and a demand for some Lake Mist apple juice.

“Big surprise, miss muscles is a juicer.”

Oh shit, I said that out loud.

For a second I was expecting a sudden sharp pain in the back, or across the neck, or… but surprisingly instead I got a single, sharp laugh.

“Good one. But this is all hard work and genetics. Daddy got kicked out of Jotunheim after trying to take over the clan from my grandfather. Then he ended up getting married to a human, and the orc blood bred true for me and my brother."

I turned to look at her “So you’re an orc? Like in the movies?"

She shrugged “We used to be called trolls, but there's like a dozen or so other races of giant kin that all get lumped together as trolls. Some magi gave my grandfather a box set of lord of the rings way back when and he decided we were orcs from then on.”

She looked off in thought "It worked out pretty well actually, trolls lurk under bridges and give goats a hard time. Orcs get jobs with dark lords so the clan got a lot more work after that. Branding matters."

I thought back a bit, "So your grandpa is a like a king or something, does that makes you a princess?"

She waved her hand in front of her. “No, no, no. That means something different in the realms. Besides, my dad lost any claim to any titles when grandpa kicked him out of Jotunheim.”

“So what is...”

"You know what, the drinks are getting warm. Get going up the stairs.'

Right, guess she forgot for a second that I'm just the group bitch.

Up the stairs. Then down the hall to see some painfully thin kid walking out into the room with the couch and the tv. Buttoning up a set of sky blue slacks about six inches too short for his legs.

Fish belly pale skin. A big mess of curly brown hair halfway down his back, and a set of yellow snake eyes surrounded by black glaring at me.

Roxir’s eyes.

Roxir in human form looked like a fourteen year old after a growth spurt.

No wonder he’s such a dick.