A cup of coffee between Caroline and Thomas lasted longer than either of them thought. It started with both of them just asking each other about what they thought of the case, then the topic turned to their personal experience with training, specifically the difference between the training style of Jianmen and Josephine Wong, and the training specificities of fire Xuanli and the flow magic of “burn”. After some fun comparisons of their training experiences and sharing of slightly jabbing jokes and anecdotes about their mentor and master, both of them moved onto non-magic related topics, like childhood stories, family, daily hobbies, etc.

“How was your ‘talk’ with your family?” when they were on their way back to the SJPD precinct, Thomas asked Caroline with a smile.

“Yeah, it’s less of a ‘talk’, and more of a ‘trust me, prepare your guns, some bad guys are trying to kill us’ scenario.” Carolin shook her head: “Believe me, it’s not a talk you would want to have, while your crazy ex boyfriend led a cult with tattoos on his weak-ass chest tried to bust into your brother’s house and kill you and your nephew.”

“Yeesh, what happened?” Thomas frowned: “And what happened afterwards? Did you file a police report?”

“Yeah, it’s my first time actually killing someone. But you know, what can you do? Some fucking cultist nutjobs tried to kill me, my brother and my baby nephew. The next few days were kinda fuzzy for me, I think I did file a police report, but I must have left out a bunch of details.” Caroline scoffed and sighed: “You know, I don’t think anything came of it. What about you? I think your ‘talk’ would be kind of an awkward moment, huh?”

“That and times a hundred.” Thomas laughed out loud: “You know, it’s my second time telling my father, a no-nonsense cop with not much of a sense of childish wonder, that I am a magic user. The first time, he warned me that doing it will not attract girls like I expected and attract bullies, and he was quite right.”

Caroline covered her mouth while she giggled: “What about the second time?”

“The second time, because Aimee was there when I told him, and she told him the same thing. He had to take a long walk in the garden.” Thomas took a sip of his coffee: “And boy that walk was long. Only later did we find out that Mr. Yu had opened up the under layers of the garden to our families so that it would provide more context to the message and help them realize that it would be much safer for them to stay at the inn, and they ended up walking into your farm.”

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“Oh no, don’t tell me he went into the creek. The fish in there is kinda … creepy.”

“Yeah, from what I heard, he just got lost in the woods.” Thomas chuckled: “You’d be surprised how a bunch of trees that could grow chairs out of their roots and branches for people to sit in and lie on can convince civilians of the existence of magic.”

When they came back to the precinct, Detective Kuhn had just finished up his report and was on his way to the captain’s office.

“That’s fast, did Lee come back at all?” Thomas asked.

“No, this is just a simple report, with our findings and leads, and of course, some promises that we may or may not be able to keep.” Detective Kuhn sighed: “And no, they hadn’t come back yet. I’ll call them in a bit, but it looks like we may have to scout around that area by ourselves.”

“Not a problem.” Caroline nodded: “But we should find a way to get the bartender and the henchmen out first. And we can lock them up in our inn.”

“Yeah, sure.” Detective Kuhn only hesitated for around one or two seconds: “Just let me hand in the report, and we can release these suspects so that you can put these people somewhere safe.”

“Oh.” Caroline and Thomas exchanged looks, they did not expect that Detective Kuhn would agree to what they suggested this easily.

After the Detective Kuhn handed in the report, three of them went for two roundtrips between their precinct and Xianshi Inn, each time taking someone they just released from their holding and taking them to be contained in some underground room in Xianshi Inn. According to Rash, who seemed to have something on his mind and was extra careful and diligent behind the reception’s desk, Jason, Aimee and Detective Lee already came back earlier to lock some other people up. But they did not have the time to stay and ask about the details, as they needed to rush to that area which they located on the map earlier with the help of the lab techs.

The wind was chilly, the day was getting slightly late, but the sunlight piercing from the clouds above still shone upon the buildings of the alleged abandoned warehouse buildings and data centers. The exterior of the buildings was quite clean, as if they had regular maintenance and cleaning. There was a distinct flowery and grassy smell in the air, which seemed slightly unnatural to the place because there was not much vegetation in the area.

Even though this was an area filled with mainly warehouse and data center buildings, there were still some residential buildings nearby, which looked much more run down and under-maintained than the supposed abandoned buildings. If it weren’t for the cars and garbage bins outside of the residential buildings, Caroline would have thought that they were abandoned as well. There were also some dirty tents near the streets, some seemed occupied and some seemed full of trash and all kinds of garbage.

“This place doesn’t seem properly zoned.” Detective Kuhn said: “A mix of commercial and residential buildings like this?”

“That smell - does it seem weird to you?” Thomas sniffed a few times and asked Caroline.

“It’s strange - it’s like some kind of air freshener.” Caroline said: “Extra strong air freshener.”