***Kenneth Peterson***

That could have gone worse, Ken thought, blinking burning tears out of his eyes as he drove. He could be dead right now, face bit off by a goddamn mountain lion.

On the flip side, it could have gone a lot better, too.

Obviously, the kid couldn’t have trained a mountain lion to dodge gunfire, carry bear spray and explode it on people between now and last Wednesday.

So, probably another demon.

On the plus side, he didn’t have to worry about killing some innocent scrub. If the kid was summoning actual demons, he was fair game in Ken’s eyes.

From what Ken knew about Tom Graves, the kid was a straight arrow until he dropped out his senior year to get a job. Lily was the mysterious wanderer without a past, and Carol the demon’s best friend. She was the primary evil witch suspect.

So when did baby-daddy get the ability to summon demons?

Lily must have left more behind than just the box in her car. More than the ring.

Ken tapped the steering wheel with his left index finger, his right hand stemming the flow of blood from his upper arm.

He gradually cried out the small amounts of incidental capsaicin as he made his way back to where he’d stashed his actual car. A few minutes later, Ken had switched cars, lighting his previous one on fire in the junkyard.

Hopefully that would take care of the DNA he’d bled all over the seat.

Ken used his first aid kit on his arm, bandaging up the puncture wounds before donning a long jacket to conceal them.

It hurt like a bitch, but it wasn’t like it was gonna go away if he whimpered about it. Ken had business to take care of.

Once he was cleaned up, he wadded the rest into a bag in the back of the car and started driving towards the station, aiming to pay a late-night visit to the evidence room.

When Ken pulled into the station, he avoided the security cameras by parking in the northwest corner, about fifty yards from the wall. It was a bit of a jog, but he was fairly sure he could sprint the superpower doodads that distance.

Ken pulled out the doodad and kissed it, enjoying the tingles before he put on his balaclava. It was the middle of the night, and only a handful of people would be at the station. He’d be in and out in seconds.

He’d visited the evidence room every day for a week, staring at the gold, memorizing its position relative to the hallway outside, relative to the northwest wall. He’d already mentally penned a straight line between him and his goal.

Ken hopped out of the car and headed towards the station’s wall at a loping, controlled run. He dove through the exterior wall, blinking as bricks and electrical wires phased through his head. A second later, he was standing in the outer hall outside the evidence room. One flimsy wall between him and his powers.

Ken moved a couple feet to the side, ensuring he would land directly in the evidence room, before he dove again. Ken emerged on the other side of the wall, and was assaulted by the smell of plastic bags and the acrid scent of drugs. The harsh fluorescent lights clicked on when the motion sensors detected him.

There was a kilo of cocaine on the shelf right next to his head from the bust the other day, wrapped securely in heavy plastic. Everybody knew it was cocaine, but they still had to send it in to the eggheads to test it.

Ken rolled his eyes and ignored it. The temptation was there, but he was the good guy, and good guys don’t steal cocaine, no matter how great it made parties. Good guys might occasionally buy it, though.

Besides, that’s not what I’m here for.

Stealing the coke would be like kicking the hornet’s nest. There would be an investigation, an inquiry, I.A. would crawl up everyone’s ass. Lots of I-words.

But the gold.

Well, that didn’t technically exist, did it? If they made the investigation into who stole it public, they would have to reveal that they’d held onto it rather than return it to the girl’s family.

People would ask questions.

So instead of making things public, the higher-ups would probably crucify Paul, then drop the matter.

Win-win.

Ken stooped to where the sweet superpowers were resting on the shelf in their wooden crate. He levered open the lid with a grunt, peered into the box and ran his fingers through the dozens of disk-shaped lumps of gold. Each and every single one of them was nearly identical to the one in his pocket, except for the strange symbols around their edges.

Implying they did different things.

“Nice,” Ken whispered, giving the box a perfunctory check for tracking devices before he picked the whole thing up and headed for the wall.

The doodad still had plenty of charge, and Ken swept through the wall with ease, even though he was lugging around roughly forty pounds of gold.

Ken took a moment in the hallway to check his doodad.

There was still a sizzle emanating from his doodad, but passing his whole body through three walls in short order had diminished its strength.

Alright, only one more wall to go, then we’re out, Ken thought, huffing a breath and hefting the gold. He turned cold and swept through the wall, emerging into the dark of the parking lot.

Ken sighted his car in the distance and took two steps toward it when something impacted against his side.

Raw pain assaulted Ken’s nerves as he toppled sideways, claws and fangs sinking into his skin through his hoodie as the wood box clattered to the ground.

He instinctively tucked his shoulder in front of his neck and was spared a bite to the ‘juggler’ as the fucking cougar savaged his shoulder with its two-inch fangs.

“Gah!”

Ken turned cold and rolled sideways, slipping out of the creature’s grasp using his powers.

He rolled to his feet and went for his gun, but the four-legged creature was much faster than him, already pouncing for him a second time, claws extended, mouth so wide the fangs nearly pointed at him.

“No, NO NO!” Ken shouted, stumbling backwards as he turned cold again.

Ken fell backwards through the wall of the police station, the magical doodad giving a final sputter before it ran out of juice, the sizzling sensation blinking off.

Ken slammed into the water fountain and collapsed down onto his ass, staring at the flier-covered cork board he’d just slipped through.

Joint BBQ with Fire Dept. August 5th, Be there!

Ken scrambled to his feet and pulled out his gun, rushing toward the wall, trying to slip through it.

He didn’t.

No. No! No no no no... Ken thought, his skin turning cold. He was in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time.

“What was that noise?”

Stan Smith, desk jockey and graveyard-shift bitch walked around the corner and spotted a faceless man in a balaclava with a gun in his hand.

The reaction couldn’t have been drilled into him any harder.

Stan went for his gun.

***DREAM***

BOOM BOOM BOOM!

Tom’s eyes snapped open as he revisited the day before the day before.

Oh, shit, that was a long day, Tom thought, protecting his face from breaking glass. He’d been awake for nearly thirty hours, running around town like crazy, mortgaging his soul, etc.

A moment later, Carol marched in, missing an eye, like before. She grabbed him by the ankle and started dragging him down toward the basement.

“It’s a dream!” Tom shouted at the top of his lungs. “Join me in the basement!”

“We’ll talk once I take care of these guys,” Carol said, preparing to throw him down the stairs.

“They killed you!” Tom shouted.

That got Carol to pause. “They banished me, you mean. I can’t die here.”

“Whatever! I saw your skeleton!”

“Hmm… Alright.” Carol dragged him downstairs by the ankle, allowing each and every step to slam into his ribs and head.

She released him beside the Outsider hotline spellwork, then leaned down and picked up Grampa’s gun.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, casually shoving the standing safe in front of the window.

“I have to ask you something!” Tom shouted over the sputtering gunfire.

“Just a minute.” She leapt back up the stairs, gun in hand.

What the hell? This is barely different than last time.

As Carol re-emerged, Tom heard the gunfire pick up again, a concussive hailstorm of bullets. It was terrifying, and horrible…

And it was lasting a really long time.

What the…

A couple minutes later, Carol walked back down the stairs. Her body was covered in wounds, but her grin was wide and feral as ever, like she’d just had the time of her life. A submachine gun dropped from her hand and clattered down the stairs onto the concrete floor as she clomped her way down to the basement.

“Now,” Carol said, squatting down beside him. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Was Lily human?” Tom blurted. He’d meant to tell her about the information she’d gleaned from the cop and ask her why it was so important, but the weirdness just kept piling up. Now, it was finally spilling out of him.

“Duh. You pumped a baby in her, cowboy. Woulda been tricky if she wasn’t.”

“I mean, was Lily from Earth?”

“I can’t talk about where Lily’s from.”

“The Ilspeth said I was the first contact from this planar address.”

“Cool.” Carol shrugged.

“There’s a goddamn book that mentions the long history of discrimination soulmongers have faced, and has a detailed recipe for how to contact Outsiders. There’s no way that book could have been created on Earth if the Outsiders have never heard of us.”

“Before you get your panties in a twist,” Carol said, shushing him. “I can’t talk about it. I’ve got a very specific, very binding set of instructions that prevent me from discussing this, and you’re not strong enough to deactivate them.”

“Yet,” Tom said.

“Yet. Go big, or go home, I suppose,” she said, standing. “Was there anything else you wanted to talk to me about? Is this some misguided attempt to soothe your fragile feelings? To give yourself some needed closure, as my untimely martyrdom has no doubt torn a hole in your heart?”

“Screw you. You’re an animated skeleton piloted by a Nim’tek. You’re totally fine. You’re probably watching reality TV right now in whatever dimension you call home.”

Carol chuckled. “That’s fair. Sooo?”

Tom moved on to the real issue. “In a dream I had last night, you sounded like you thought someone from Lily’s home might be here. There was a passenger in her car, the night she died, and there was a box of something you called ‘crypts’. What are those and why are they a problem?”

“What!?” Carol drew him to his feet, pressing her nose against his as she bared her teeth at him. “Who was it?”

“We couldn’t get that out of him, but apparently they went through the front window and walked away without a drop of blood.”

“Sh’Negashbaheir!” Carol growled, dropping him and punching the wall.

“Is that a problem?” Tom asked.

“I can’t…talk about it,” Carol hissed.

Her eyes flickered over to him. “Alright Tom, here’s the plan. You’re going to resummon me, and I’ll charge you a pittance. Then when you’re Inured enough to command me, you’ll order me to divulge the things Lily instructed to remain secret.”

“Oooh, bit of a problem with that,” Tom said, holding up his finger. “The cop kinda sorta…has your ring.”

“Well, get it back!”

SLAM!

***AWAKE***

“I’m working on it!” Tom said with a snort as the binder slammed down in front of him on the sturdy steel table.

Tom blinked the sand out of his eyes and realized he was back in the interrogation room. Cops had tracked him down right after the second shootout in three days occurred at his house, bringing him in with a very firm ‘please’.

A somewhat overweight, somewhat balding detective loomed over him for a moment before sitting down across from him.

Some of his grampa’s advice surfaced in his mind.

Whatever you do, don’t tell the cops anything. Just ask for your lawyer like a goddamn broken record.

Why?

Because they will do absolutely anything they can to nail your ass, and that includes using the truth to hang you. If you get one detail wrong, they can ‘prove’ you’re lying. If you tell them everything perfectly accurate, they can cherry-pick a witness who remembers it wrong, to ‘prove’ you’re lying. It’s not ‘anything you say can be used against you’, it’s anything you say ‘will’ be used against you. Remember that.

“What do you know about gold?” the detective asked, pulling out a photo of his soul engine.

“I know I want a lawyer,” Tom said with a shrug.