After a harrowing series of events that had culminated in the total destruction of the Business Center by midnight (though no bell was struck in the clocks of the Saturn, there was still some faerietale essence in the timing), Sao wished he could have claimed he found it hard to sleep. But he did not.

He was submerged in a dream which found him lying on his side in a field of ruffled plum flowers, blanketed with low hanging clouds. Above, a sky scattered with blue stars, a trail, like thrown sequins. He was reaching to pluck one down when Rai woke him up by hissing from across the room. At first, he wasn’t sure if Rai had intended to actually wake him, or was speaking to someone else in hushed tones so as not to wake him.

“Sao. We’re going for a drive.”

Well, there was his name. Sao nudged the covers loose and sat up, blinking stardust.

A sail of turquoise sunlight was filtering in through the window. And fingers of burning blue were lighting up a corner, coiled around a cup of coffee. Rai was enjoying the view, looking fairly serene, considering all that had happened.

He obviously hadn’t slept. How did he manage? Without the computer, he wouldn’t have had much to take his mind off the disaster with Cherry. When they’d left the lobby, Guy had been clutching his hip and Marinell was whimpering with each step as he swept up the remains of the Business Center. At least Rai had the Saturn Hotel Library. A bookshelf of family magazines and tattered novels had gathered on the windowsill.

On the desk was a tray with a cup and teapot, steam rising from the spout. Beside it, a small plate covered in a metal dome, embossed with swirling ferns.

“Room service,” Rai said, masticating some toast.

Sao tried not to look too pleased. “Thanks.” He slid off the bed. “You were talking about going for a drive?”

“Yeah. Whenever you’re ready.”

Tea in hand, Sao drew the curtain back, sipped. The sky was a brilliant blue, not the blue of a common sunny day, but an oceanic teal, fading into golden white where the sky slipped behind the mountains. He had woken up too late the previous day to see this - sunrise.

“It’s six thirty,” Rai said. “Guy’s the one to really thank for the breakfast.” Then, quieter, “We’re not checking out yet. Just taking a day trip.”

“I see. Where are we going?”

“As far as we need to. To make or take some calls. You can sleep in the car if you want.”

He was trying to sound casual, which wasn’t his forte.

Sao wasn't too taken with the prospect of changing back into his garish sweater and grimy coat to brave the cold. And hearing Rai take calls - if there had been one benefit to the trip, the disconnect from society, it was that he hadn’t had many of those. Rai hated phone calls.

“I see. I don’t have any urgent business, though. You didn’t have to wait for me to wake up, if you needed to...” This seemed to be taken the wrong way. “Don’t let me hold you back. It can’t have been fun, sitting here all night.”

Rai slammed his cup down beside the makeshift bookshelf and stood. A magazine slid off and narrowly missed his foot. The calm was gone, but it wasn’t anger on his face. His expression was empty - spent, pitted out. The eyebags didn’t help.

“You don’t…” Rai’s face fell, then hardened. “I think you should probably be there to hear if there’s any reply to our request.”

“I’ll join you, of course. I’m awake now.” Sao set his tea down, pulled the curtains back fully. The sweep of lucent dawn reminded him of Thomi’s hair. “Beautiful morning.”

Rai was glaring at him. An old fashioned bludgeoning glare, red rimmed, brows so low they might fall right off his face. Sao hadn’t taken the brunt of one of those in a while. It was almost nostalgic - Rai used to glare at him all the time, when Sao first joined the office.

In those early months, Rai also had no problem ditching Sao in the office for hours - even a full day - to go off on his own little expeditions. It wasn’t a problem. Sao always had his work, and failing that, his naps, to occupy him. The leniency was welcome. Rai woke him up when there was a need to, and knew he could even call on Sao at his home, if matters were urgent. Or if he just needed a willing ear; Sao’s job was to assist after all. Not unlike now. But no, something was different now.

The distance had closed and Sao wasn’t sure he liked it.

Luckily, it was temporary. When they were back in their own separate homes, with working phones, the regression would be reversed. If regression was the word for what was occurring.

He checked the covered plate and found some thick toast and a pat of butter in foil. He tried to ignore Rai’s silence. The reflection in the silver dome showed a patchwork, wild-haired ogre. He didn’t have much concealer left to patch up his whole face and arms. Thankfully, his unicorn sweater had very long sleeves.

“I’ll get ready now,” he told Rai. “Five minutes.”

In two, he remembered Rai’s taut but oddly heartfelt speech the previous morning. About staying close.

—

In the lobby, Guy was sweeping the floor and Marinell was tending to the fireplace. There was a plump woman bringing new pillowcases into the lounge; a part-time cleaner, perhaps. All signs of the fallen computer were gone, and there was a yellow plastic caution sign set up in front of the closet.

Guy, Marinell, and for inexplicably even the cleaner were all sporting eyebags that competed vehemently with Rai’s.

Sao thanked them for the breakfast and handed Marinell his sleeping clothes back. The way the man held the bag was not unlike how Cherry clutched her book.

“You’re leaving so early.” It was hard to tell if Guy was happy for the possibility or not.

“Just gonna drive around and try to get a phone signal.” The brass keys were hanging from Rai’s hand. “We’re coming back later.” He jabbed a thumb at Sao. “His shirt’s still in the shower.”

The nervous look lingered.

“Um. But I can pay the bill and leave the keys now, if you want.”

Now this Guy saw as a threat. “No, no. Guests hold onto their keys and don’t pay until the end. Otherwise it’s bad service, and it tricks me into feeling like you’re really leaving and I’ll say something silly, when I should really just say: see you later!”

—

With the roads clear, Rai was free to go as fast as he liked. He still did not go as fast as he normally would. He couldn’t. The oversized tyres pushed back on him like unruly beasts of burden.

The blue of the sky evened out, boldened, and darkened. A thick cover of clouds cloaked the sun that had once been shining so pleasantly over Temperance.

In forty-five minutes, Sao recognized the stretch that would take them to the I77 Mall, and both of their phones began pinging like slot machines.

The muffled melody of the carousel began wafting through the windows as Rai pulled into the parking lot. Sao saw the surrounding leaf piles had been cleared. Or perhaps they had been knocked over and spread out again, because the ground was still covered in tawny leaves.

Tugging a thumb free from a glove, Rai began hammering at his phone. There was a realism to his silhouette, to the whole situation, that hadn’t existed, hadn’t even occurred to Sao, when they were in Temperance. Even the sky in all its stygian gloom looked more tangible.

Rai told him that Guy had described Temperance as old faerie land. Magic, even fading, abandoned magic, was no laughing matter.

Rai went about his business as if he was eager to return as soon as possible. Sao could hardly muster the energy to look at his phone, so he sat and thought. Aura helped Rai go without sleep, a sort of constant slow recovery. Sleeping pills had no effect, he’d said. Aura made him resistant to medication and alcohol (he’d known some who would consider the two the same). Rai had implied his Life Fountain aura, dilute as it was, helped him resist hypnosis too. Was the enchantment on the land a form of hypnosis?

Sao tried not to be envious. If he faltered, he at least had someone watching out for him.

“Charm’s on,” Rai said. “I’ll put you on speaker.”

Charmion was the Core-Mainline Chief Commander’s sprightly assistant. A pierced and tattooed woman of undefined age, she was also a trusted investigator, trained in magic, who wielded a magic wand in the form of an axe. A bouncing ball of contradiction and eccentricity - it was hard not to smile thinking of her.

“Good morning, Rai,” chirped the phone. “I’d say it took you long enough, but frankly, you shouldn’t be taking work calls at all. How’s the vacation?”

“You said that you looked up that kid Rose for us,” Rai said. “We’ve picked up some extra info that might help–”

“We? On, you took Sao with you? That’s cute. Sao, did you know that this guy hasn’t taken a vacation more than a day long in three years? Not counting the occasional suspension–”

“Her full name,” Rai said. “Roselyn G____. I have a couple of pictures now too. I’m sending them over.”

“Thank you, Rai. I looked for all the Roses, Rosies, Rosemaries,Roselyns… you can tell from that list that I had to dig. Just a couple of sixty-plus-year olds in Garland. No kids - birth record or otherwise, in what we could access.” The sound of paper flipping. “It’s not uncommon for records to just be handwritten and kept in boxes, in the really rural parts of Interstate.”

“We heard Rose and her family were pretty well off, and they weren’t from Temperance. Maybe had some business in Central. Parents’ names are A_____ and M___.” Rai spelled them out.

“I’ll do a search. Central records should come through a little smoother.” A pause, some tapping. A keyboard. The wrecking of the computer the previous night seemed like a faraway dream. “So, are you two planning to see anywhere else before heading back?”

Rai was suddenly tense. “I’ll be back Wednesday.”

“Take a few more days off, if you need it. You have a quota. And it sounds like you’ve just been working the whole time.” When Rai didn’t reply, Charmion started humming. “Nothing’s coming up so far.”

“Was there any sort of record of a child being checked into the hospital in Garland, two weeks ago, give or take?” Sao asked.

“None on that count either. But doctor-patient confidentiality could be blocking that, or just some admin unhappy Mainliners are nosing around their turf.”

“Or the parents.” Sao recalled how Muka had admonished himself. “They couldn’t be happy about what happened to her. And we’ve heard they’re rather difficult to get in contact with. Neither parent ever came to the school in person, Rose was sent to and from on her own.”

Rai frowned. “Parents getting pissed might stop them from calling the school, but the hospital would need to have them on record. I was wondering if Rose was a fake name, if the whole family faked names, but if no kid turned up at the hospital at all...”

Charmion stopped to greet some of her office mates before returning. “Like I said, unreliable reports could be in play. But hang on - parents sent their daughter all the way out to some isolated castle-thing in Interstate without ever checking the place out themselves? That’s freaky. How do people learn about that place? The website wasn’t too helpful.”

“That’s a question we can throw at the principal,” Rai said. “We’ll have a talk with him later.”

“He’s a faerie, you said. What sector?”

“Feldspar.”

“What kinda magic does he do?”

“What?” Rai glanced at Sao, a student caught not having studied for the test.

“He came from the Citadel, right? Pensioned? That means he did some kind of job there, and all fae jobs involve a magic specialization. Like, the cosmetics folks are almost always alchemy pros. For government jobs, logistics and surveillance. And prison guards almost always specialize in barrier creation or magic neutralization or…”

“He didn’t talk about it. He was actually pretty cold toward Citadel life in general,” Rai said.

“See if he’s willing to talk about it next time.” Charmion paused. “The kids are important to him, right? And he’s anti-establishment of his own people? He might have enemies who’d go after his students. If something nasty did happen to Rose, that’s a place to start looking.”

A chill crawled up Sao’s spine. “If something happened to an ambulance, that would be in the hospital reports, wouldn’t it? Rose was taken in an ambulance...”

“Mm. Ambulances go between districts all the time, so I could look it up by driver, time, plate number. But from what I see, no Roses transported in the time you mentioned.” Another pause. “Are they sure it was an ambulance and not a van to a local clinic, something of that nature?”

Sao squeezed his eyes shut, trying to sift up what he’d heard, form a picture of it. “Muka and the assistant teacher, Thomi, saw it come. And one of the kids who was up that night, Lumi. He described seeing Rose, on a stretcher, carried into the back of an ambulance with flashing lights. It shook him up badly.”

“A kid saw it?”

“One saw her being taken, that was Lumi. And one saw Rose fall, that being Cherry.”

“Your little vandal.”

“Charm,” Rai said, “can you also run a search for someone called Lamort?”

“What kind?”

“Uh… missing person.”

A groan. “Like we don’t get enough of those. Any details, full name, age or…?”

“Try family court cases, perhaps restraining orders,” Sao said. “This man supposedly lived in the city, but came to Temperance with his child, to escape his wife. An anonymous letter pertaining to her scared him into leaving - without his child. This is according to Muka, a friend of his, and the town delivery boy, who seemed to be the first to notice his disappearance.”

“Anonymous letter? This the blackmail stuff you were talking about, Rai?”

“Yeah. Though most of the recipients we’ve talked to see it as a prank rather than blackmail.” Rai shot a glance at Sao, mouthed Marinell? Sao shook his head. Marinell’s and his poor financial choices could wait.

“I don’t see anything on a Lamort, or Roselyn’s parent’s. I’ll run some name variations later. Oh, but for missing persons in the I77 area…”

A bus to Central, jammed up at the mall’s exit, blasted its horn. Rai and Sao both jolted. Rai’s hair was left standing on end.

“Well! There’s shockingly little,” Charmion said. “Either there’s not a lot going on in general, or things just don’t get reported. Just one murder in the last twenty years on the I76. Well, he started off missing, but his body was found. Wallet emptied, stabbed on the side of the road by his car - probably stopped to help someone and got mugged. Sad, but clear-cut enough to the Interstate cops. This was five years ago. Your Lamort, was he in cosmetic sales?”

“I’m not sure, but…” Sao frowned. “Lamort only left about a year ago, from what I was told.”

“I76 is actually pretty far off,” Rai added. “About an hour from Temperance. That’s the long road we took to Birdsing.”

Home of the ‘haunted’ tunnel. Sao smiled.

Charmion clicked her tongue on the other end of the line. “Ah well. I guess it was just one coincidence that made me jump to connect them. This guy, a Mr. Triamond C____, also left behind a kid. A son, seven years old at the time. Really sad.”

There was a moment of silence for their fallen fellow traveller. In solidarity, the leaden clouds began to pour. The view out the windows became a smear, a world through tears.

“And for total crimes in the area, there’s just one more. This…” Charmion’s voice cut. Rai picked up the phone, checking the signal. Charmion faded back in. “This one’s recent. Really recent. When did you say Rose went off in the ambulance?”

Sao didn’t realize he had been holding his breath. “Three weeks now.”

“Well there’s something here from fifteen days ago. A missing woman, still missing, name is Britania S______. A writer and freelance reporter. She was last seen on the I78 - so a little closer to Core-side - she and her boyfriend were on a road trip, headed for the mountains. They stopped at a motel, turned in for the night, but the next day, she and their rented van were gone. Her boyfriend didn’t report it until he got back to the city, so it wound up in our system instead of Interstate.”

“Well, that’s unsettling,” Sao muttered.

Rai folded his hands over the steering wheel, the furrow in his brow deepening. Stormy as the skies. “No doubt he was the main suspect. Just another coincidence for us. It’s recent, but the timing’s almost a week after Rose’s was taken away.”

“Ah, but listen: that’s the reported date. Apparently the disappearance itself was five days earlier.”

“Then that puts it a day before Rose’s fall,” Sao said.

“The boyfriend dragged his feet on reporting her missing.” Charmion clucked disapprovingly. “Out of embarrassment, I think. He was cleared of any wrongdoing, but he lives with his parents and didn’t want them to know who he was dating. Why? He was 17 years old, and she was 51. The trip was to celebrate his 18th birthday.”

That left them speechless. The white noise from the rain drowned out the carousel’s jingle - Sao found himself grateful for that.

“Needless to say, if she does turn up, there will be some further questions.” Her work was done, Charmion began closing up shop. “I’ll send you the Triamond and Britania reports. They’re pretty light on details, but maybe you’ll get something out of them, find something to help their cases. I’ll get some of the archivists to do a couple more searches on Lamort, the G_____ family too. Oh, and Rai, about the stuff from Birdsong…”

“Birdsing,” Rai said, pronouncing the zing as the one Birdsing local had instructed them.

“Someone’s interested. Or was, eleven months ago when the inventory was first filed. There was an internal request for viewing. But the request got buried.”

Speechless again. Finally Rai mustered up an answer, slightly strangled, “The inventory was never public, so it had to be a cop, right? And if a cop needed this grimy little toybox, they could have come out and got it themselves. This stuff was just sitting in the Birdsing station for a year.”

“I don’t think it was that urgent. They did resubmit the same request twice, but didn’t follow up and didn’t want to leave a name before the items were available. Maybe someone curious, or from the area. Maybe it was a PI.”

“What could possibly be in or around a 30-person town like Birdsing that would interest a PI?”

Again, Sao didn’t mention Rai’s ghost (or rather, ghostless) tunnel. Or Rose. Or Lamort and Marinell and the letters. He was quickly wishing there wasn’t quite so much of interest going on.

Charmion’s voice took on a matronly tone. Sao could feel the starchy texture, enhanced by the crackling of the rain on the roof. “I don’t know, because Level 3 clearance has the right to privacy when it comes to their investigations. I only know they were Level 3 because they needed to provide that much ID to have access. So it was an Investigator, like you.”

—-

Rai got three coffees from the stand by the carousel - two for himself and one for Sao. “The cashier convinced me to try the gingerbread latte,” Rai said. “But I’m having second thoughts. If you can take the smell, we can trade - not that it’s bad, just a little bready for me – like I should be chewing it –”

He was in good spirits. Sao didn’t think that Charmion’s update had revealed anything that would be particularly comforting to Cherry and the others at the school, but Rai seemed satisfied enough to ramble about their paper-sleeve coffee, and suggest sitting down in the mall’s Food Hall to wait out the rain. The Food Hall was a narrow passage lined with tables which had space for about six shops and a cotton candy stand. All were currently closed, giving Sao the impression that they weren’t supposed to be sitting here. But nobody stopped them.

They traded coffees and Rai comfortably finished one of his in less than five minutes. One hand on the cup, the other tapping away at his phone. Perhaps it was the security he needed; the phone reception, the fact that he’d been able to get the update at all. Rai had always lived in the city, had an internet connection since he was in primary school. He expected people to be up-to-date and to pick up his calls so it must have been killing him to be unable to fulfill his own standards.

“Maybe we can drop by Garland and check out the hospital. Guy said it’s something like an hour and half both ways. I’ll gas up at the station nearby and we should make it back in time for dinner, here or at the hotel–” Rai’s loose demeanor went out for a moment. “And I gotta remember to make another call later.”

“Work?”

“No. I just gotta… cancel an appointment.”

“Why not handle that now?”

“Because I might end up making it back home in time, if we decide to leave by tonight.” Rai shook his head. “I’ll get to it later. I want to at least check in at the school again and ask Muka a couple of things.” He nudged his phone away so he could pour some sugar into his second coffee.

Perhaps the only legitimate reason, in Rai’s eyes, to disconnect himself. Sao smiled.

Rai glanced at him and felt the need to counter. “Even though everything we’ve learned really makes things look worse for Rose. No info regarding hospital, ambulance, family. I tried looking her up on social media; zilch. The firewall at Myrmilion’s pretty egregious, but you’d think there would be something from before that.”

“Well, she was just a fifth grader.”

“That only makes an online presence even more likely. Peer pressure is a bitch.”

“Ah, fair.” Sao wondered at that. “You really do understand these children better than I do. Cherry last night, and Florien the night before - I was impressed.”

“They aren’t that complicated. Kids from here in particular - they’re like mini versions of you.” Rai visibly bit his cheek and hunched low, suddenly very interested in his phone. “Well, not really. Did I ever tell you about Cherry’s online stories?”

“You mentioned it before I nodded off last night. So she snuck out to use the hotel computer since she wouldn’t be able to visit her story website from the school…”

“An example of a kid going out of their way to get online.”

“A characteristic that reminds you of me?” Sao gave Rai the most saccharine smile he could muster.

“Not Cherry. Lumi and Florien are more like you. I mean – forget it, okay?” Rai tapped furiously at the screen. “Look at how far she went. Sneaking out of school on a cold night, to a place where she’d obviously get kicked out if she was found. And somehow, she got her hands on a camera. Did you see one in her room?”

“I don’t think so.” Sao recalled the room being remarkably clean, not like a typical child’s room at all, least of all what he’d expect to belong to one like Cherry. But then, as said, he really didn’t understand these children well. “You’re right, though - she had that photo of Rose.”

“And there’s more.” Rai turned his phone around and panned slowly down the page. “This is Storycentral, the site where he she put up her revamped faerietales. A few of them came with visuals.” At the bottom of the story was a photograph of Cal and Tal, taken from a distance, with scribbled swords in their hands and large pixelated globules over their heads, gray and pointed. Helmets, perhaps.

“And check out this one.”

The Frog Prince had a photo of Lumi - this one obviously taken with the subject’s knowledge, if not his approval. His furious face and most of his perfectly parted hair had been colored over with acid green strokes.

Sao found himself rather relieved that his stiff, unsmiling tutors had rendered social media nonexistent in his school days. “She certainly has a unique sense of humor. Muka didn’t want the children’s images publicized, though - think we should…?” Looking at Lumi’s lime colored pout, he felt ridiculous suggesting anything.

“Maybe, if it comes up when we drop by.” Rai took another swig of coffee. “Did anyone ever say when the Temperance police station shut down? Hode might have still been a cop when the Triamond guy was murdered.”

“I didn’t get to speak to Mr. Hode at all.”

“Neither did I. Fast with his hands, but…” Rai glanced at the end of the hallway, where one of the mall’s four exits lay. “I should see if the gas station has any tyres that aren’t intended for eighteen-wheelers.”

“What would we be hoping to get out of Hode? Do you think the Triamond murder is related to what happened to Rose?” Sao brought up the reports sent by Charmion on his phone. From the provided photo, Sao gathered that Triamond had been a handsome man, and a fan of personal grooming. His skin gleamed, his eyebrows were plucked (or tattooed, Sao remembered hearing about that) and his fair hair fell in gelled licks. “What a coincidence - he was a marketing lead for the mainland branch of Langgan.”

“Muka’s favorite fae soap company.” Rai didn’t seem too interested in this fact.

“Langgan has a distribution and research complex on I79. He was due to be transferred there the year that he died. His wife said the reason he was out was to visit the new office and search for houses in the area. The family was supposed to relocate…” His chest tightened. “I hope they’re doing alright now.”

“Official verdict: mugged and killed in the countryside. But no culprit was arrested.” Rai brushed right past that - for the better, Sao thought. “I’ll look into the woman next.”

The missing Britania may have preferred men inappropriately young, but Sao didn’t enjoy the thought of any woman lost in the labyrinthine woods of Interstate.

As Rai tapped and scrolled, Sao decided to re-acquaint himself with the box from Birdsong, which had been sitting between them in a third chair. The request (repeated, no less) by an unnamed Investigator for its contents did not line up with current impressions. The impression, of course, had been formulated by Rai, who deemed what was in the box so worthless that a thief would not have bothered.

Rai cleared his throat. “Alright, looks like this Britania was a semi-famous writer. Mostly young adult, slice of life dramas. Her special interest was ‘greater representation for variants in written works’. Griffin and satyr main characters, stuff like that. No Life Fountains mentioned…” Rai snorted. “Recently made forays into nonfiction with long-form articles and one book - Biography of a Faerie Girl. That’s the title. It’s a hit with the teens.”

“Such as the boyfriend?”

“He’s not in that demographic. Faerie Girl was, er, a girl-marketed title.”

Sao supposed he could appreciate Rai’s attempted diplomacy. “Her report’s got a lot on her publication history.”

“Charm covered just about everything in the report. I’m doing some extra digging. Mm… lady only has business socials. Fifty-year old writer, that tracks.”

Sao had no idea if it did. He pulled a teddy bear out of the box for inspection. With eyes sewn too far apart, it looked oddly perplexed. Sao imagined he didn’t look much better himself.

“Well, this is interesting. She was one of the judges for a short story contest on Storycentral. This was a while ago. Wait a minute - fifteen thousand dollar prize?” Rai reread the number, pushing his nose closer to his phone. “Really? Her personal pick is some sludge about a poor orphan dating a faerie king. The Citadel never even had kings. Well, I shouldn’t knock it before I read it…”

Intense silence. The case had pivoted into an investigation of what writing deserved - or did not deserve - fifteen grand.

Sao knew that Rai could spend hours upon hours devouring reports from the archives. That was exactly what Rai spent much of his literally sleepless nights doing. Again, he wondered how torturous the stay in Temperance must have been for Rai, to leave him deprived enough to dive so readily into the world of amateur YA romance. The only fiction he’d known Rai to care for were horror films, the gorier the better.

Back to the box, then. Out came a stuffed cow with black patches and floppy horns. This one also reminded Sao of himself somewhat. Embroidered on the side in red was the harmless little aphorism Friends Forever. He wondered if it referred to the bear. How long had they been stuck together in the stacks of some dusty lost-and-found?

Involuntarily, his mind traveled back again to the afternoon where Rai was saying things like we have to look out for each other. Stick together. And all that.

All that. Sao put the stuffed toys back and burrowed past a warped plastic doll, an empty flask, a jersey that smelled of ancient sweat. An empty wallet - he put that back quickly; it reminded him of the deceased Triamond.

The rain drummed against the tin dome that covered the carousel mall. Rai was fully absorbed in his stories.

Sao spent a few minutes trying to solve one of the metal wire puzzles. Two steel rings shaved slightly so there was a small gap in each. Sao gathered that the intention was to separate them. He couldn’t do it. He put it back in its bag, and pulled free the folder of old notices. Under the folder was a bag containing a pink acrylic tile. Rai had gotten into an argument with the station administrator over it being labeled a ‘hard drive’.

Holding it up to the buzzing fluorescents overhead, he noted there were some filaments inside the translucent plastic. Perhaps it was a fancy sort of USB. Sao pulled it out of the bag, tugged at opposite ends of the block in one direction, then another. No dice. He inspected it again in the dim light of the Food Hall and decided the filaments were just as likely to be scratches and cracks in an old paperweight.

What a pretty color it was, though. Not Temperance-inferno pink, but a soft jeweled color, like smooth cut tourmaline. Despite the cracks, and likely years spent in a crumpled plastic bag, it was polished enough for him to make out a rosy reflection, with an iridescent sheen flashing through at certain angles.

He set it on top of the bag so he could look at it, and opened the folder. A few financial documents belonging to the station - Rai was better with numbers, but even Sao could immediately tell that columns of negatives were not a good sign. Some letters, inter-departmental requests from when the station was more substantial. A notice about a condemned building.

The stack of papers was bulked up substantially by including multiple photocopies of the same items. There was a pile of missing persons posters (none of Triamond; Sao hoped that meant the rest who did make it to print were found alive and well) and three Be-on-lookout - which, from their captions, Sao took as a polite way of saying they were Wanted for crimes. Only two of them had captions describing offenses - two serious looking young men, one believed to be a thief, the other a neighborhood vandal. The third was for an older woman with glasses and smooth hair and an ironic smile that showed her large straight teeth. This one simply warned, do not approach. Please call…

Rai’s finger came down on the page before Sao could turn it. “Hold on. That’s her. Britania, the missing woman.”

“What?” Sao pulled his hand from the page as if he had been burned.

Rai also jerked back at the same time. “Uh, sorry.”

Sao shook his head. It had been a long time since Rai had come close to a touch-phobia violation, but it hadn’t been the case this time. It was what he’d said. They both pulled back in, slowly, to look at the printed woman. Rai opened the photograph from the police record, magnified it on his phone. The same woman, with nearly the same expression.

“This isn’t a missing person's poster,” Sao said. “I doubt Birdsing’s been keeping their notice board up to date as of two weeks ago - it must be from earlier.”

Rai tugged one copy of the poster aside and began scanning through the remaining papers, ten times quicker than Sao had been doing. The faces flew by, and were suddenly gone. Another, then another. The inspection slowed once some non-copied pages began flickering by, and Rai singled out a letter from the pile. “... though it may prove unneeded, your consideration will bring great peace of mind for my friend. Enclosed is an amount that should cover printing and labor costs. We thank you for your understanding. AMM. Telephone and fax number in the letterhead. This was sent six years ago.”

“MM. Muka Myrmilion?” Sao accepted the letter, read it over. “Sounds enough like him. Peace of mind for my friend… a friend who wanted police to be on lookout for a woman. Could that friend be Lamort?”

“That points to Britania being the wife Lamort was so afraid of.” Rai crossed his arms, frowning. “Afraid of enough to have Muka blast out warnings to nearby police stations so they’d be on lookout. Though, you’d think that would attract attention instead of helping him lay low.”

Sao thought of the castle, the flat fields all around. The perfect surveillance point, or the perfect place to find oneself trapped. “Fear can make people go to extremes.”

“And then the threatening letter came true. Although we don’t know if the letter-writer had anything to do with it, his wife did somehow track him down.”

“Not exactly. According to her young boyfriend, Britania came to Interstate just a few weeks ago. Lamort’s already been gone for a year. But the child he left behind…” Sao pressed a hand to his head. The latest loop of the carousel’s jingle was bringing with it the beginnings of a nasty headache. “We’ve got a lot of assumptions going. Britania might have been wanted for other reasons. AMM might not be Muka...”

“There can’t be a lot of guys with those initials, though. Not a lot of people, in this area, in general.” Rai held up the folder and shook it, reverently. “The Lamort case just got a lot more interesting, for sure. That settles it. We’ve gotta talk to Muka. Find out if Britania is the woman Lamort was running away from, and more about his kid’s situation.”

“I do wonder why Lamort was so afraid.”

Rai slapped the folder down with what seemed like a disproportionately loud crack. The steel legged table shuddered with aftershocks. One of Rai’s least pleasant habits, though it was more prevalent in an office setting. “If she was bad enough, maybe someone struck first. If Lamort’s really gone, it could be a friend of his… the guy who we’re going to talk to anyway.” He began jamming everything back in the box.

Sao took the moment of relative peace to finish off his coffee. “Perhaps we should request another day’s leave. That will give us time to go to Garland too.”

“Huh?”

“With HQ. We still don’t know what happened to Rose.”

“Right.” Rai pushed down the bag of metal puzzles and reached for the glossy pink ‘hard drive’. “We should do that. Cherry won’t be happy that another case has superseded hers. Maybe we can get permission to take her to Garland, if Rose crops up there…”

“Maybe. If we’re staying another night, do you need to call and cancel your appointment, then?”

“What appointment?”

Before Sao could remind Rai of what he himself had been so worked up over, Rai’s phone began to ring. It was Guy on the other end, and Sao could hear his howls even without Rai turning on the speakerphone.

“Oh good! Oh god! Thank you for being there, thank you for picking up! Sir! You need to come back right now! To the school! There’s - we - someone - please! Something’s happened at the school!”