Twenty days eventually came and went. Over that time, Bath had many of his first “college experiences.” For instance, on one evening, Lisa decided to bring Bath to a frat party.

“Why does it smell like pot?” he yelled over the music.

Lisa gave him a look. “Bath, it’s a frat party; of course people are smoking pot.”

Bath scowled and said, “I thought people at frat parties just danced. Aren’t you supposed to not drink at frat parties?” Bath was fairly certain that, “don’t drink the punch” was rule number one of how to survive college. And yet, here was Lisa, a cup of sweet punch in hand.

“If you only have a few sips, it’s totally safe,” she assuaged. Bath sighed and rolled his eyes, not genuinely concerned. Lisa could take care of herself. If someone roofied her, which was the worst case scenario that he could think of, she had him as a backup.

“Why do people even come here?” he asked several minutes later, genuinely confused by the appeal of the party.

“Bath, you're so boring. You need to be drunk to have fun in a place like this,” Lisa murmured as she swayed to the beat of a pop hit. The place was so loud that Bath relied on lip-reading to understand what she was saying.

Suddenly, Lisa took him by surprise and fell into his chest, rubbing her hands against his back. Bath’s gaze turned sharp, though Lisa couldn’t see because she rested her chin on his shoulder.

“Hey, Lisa,” he hissed. “What—”

“Mmm,” Lisa sighed contentedly. Bath noted that Lisa had already finished the cup of mystery punch and was drunk. How drunk, he didn’t know, since he had never seen Lisa drunk before. They didn’t drink back home since they didn’t partake in the high school party scene. Even when alone, since Bath didn’t drink, Lisa never felt the need to. But now, at this party where everyone was at least a little tipsy, Lisa had finally let herself go a little.

So much for a couple sips.

Bath wasn’t sure how to address the situation. He had trusted Lisa to drink responsibly, and yet here she was, hanging onto his back and swaying with the music.

“It’s so unfair,” she murmured. “Your body is a fucking statue.” She pressed herself against his chest and hips. Bath’s face grew increasingly severe.

“Lisa, we should leave,” he stated, anger tingeing his voice. “You're intoxicated.”

She didn’t respond and continued to dance against his still body. Bath was extremely confused by how she could have fun ramming into him like a cat on a scratching post.

After a few seconds of deliberation, he peeled Lisa’s arms off his back and turned her forcefully around, so that her back was to his chest. Then, he secured her arms and led her out of the party. She resisted weakly, knowing even in her drunken state the futility of resisting his strength.

He sat her down on a bench outside and sighed.

“Lisa,” he began, “you need to sober up. I'm taking you back to your suite.” What the hell was in that frat’s punch that made Lisa so loopy? He’d thought the alcohol would take more time to get into her system.

Bath used a tendril of essence to gather a bit of the alcoholic punch from inside the party and brought it outside. He sniffed it, then licked the artificially bright-blue punch. He spat it out and glared.

“This isn’t just alcohol,” he realized, instantly infuriated. He looked down at Lisa. He didn’t know what the frat boys had put into the punch, but it wasn’t good. It wasn’t date-rape drug or anything seriously noxious, but it was enough to put her out of sorts.

He first walked Lisa back to her suite and stayed with her, watching TV in her suite. While he kept Lisa occupied, Bath decided to have a bit of fun while practicing long-range manipulation.

The floor of the frat house was sticky. This had been the first thing to annoy Bath upon entering, so he decided to exacerbate the problem by laying his essence across the floor and hooking onto people’s shoes as they danced. Soon, people were falling all over each other as they lost their balance.

In the confusion, he started to jab at the bodies of the frat boys, using needle-sharp bits of essence to poke through their shirts and pants. They started to jump and squeal at random. Soon, the entire frat house was filled with twitching, jumping guys who kept falling down as their shoes became stuck on the floor.

This minor assault took up very little of his attention and Lisa had no idea whatsoever that Bath was doing anything other than watching TV.

“Man, college guys are so rapey,” she sighed. “I can’t believe they spiked the punch with stuff that wasn’t alcohol.”

Bath snorted. “Lisa, you knew not to drink the punch. Are you honestly surprised?”

Lisa frowned. “I think disappointed is a better word. I didn’t think that the frat would actually do something so stereotypical.”

Bath’s face revealed no emotion; instead, he reflected his rising anger by elevating his jab frequency. Hearing Lisa speak increased his revulsion toward these insects who used their power to over-intoxicate girls for their own selfish motives.

Bath’s insistent jabbing and shoe-catching finally became too much for the frat to handle, forcing the party to end early. He wondered how the frat was rationalizing what had happened.

“Why are you smiling?” Lisa asked suspiciously. By now, she was fairly sober and aware of her surroundings.

“Hmm, me?”

She gave him an appraising look. “Bath...are you attacking the frat?”

Bath kept his face stony. “Why would you ask?”

Lisa suddenly burst out into a fit of cackling.

“You're the best,” she grinned, punching his shoulder lightly with her fist.

Bath waited until Lisa returned her gaze to the TV and smiled.

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

On the twentieth day, Bath and Lisa went together to search for Angelina. Over the past twenty days, Bath had continued to monitor the mind-manipulator, though he hadn’t been able to overhear anything useful. She had only made one phone call to Ritus the day that Bath and Lisa revealed themselves, and that had only been to say that the two of them would accompany her.

Meanwhile, Bath and Lisa had both spent a good deal of time trying to research Ritus, to no avail. There was simply nothing available about the organization online.

After the first week, they had both resigned themselves to figuring everything out when they actually got to Ritus’ headquarters. And while they were wary of heading there without any information, Bath felt confident in his ability to protect Lisa from physical harm and escape if necessary.

A week back, Lisa and Angelina had agreed to meet up at the local Starbucks at 3:00 pm before heading off to Ritus. Bath and Lisa arrived at 2:55, while Angelina panted into the Starbucks at 3:07.

“Sorry I'm late,” she huffed. “Are you both ready to go?”

“Yeah,” Lisa nodded. “Where are we going, exactly?”

“Come outside.” Angelina led the two of them to a car that had only just pulled up outside of the Starbucks. It was black, with tinted windows and a sturdy-looking exterior. A middle-aged, well-dressed man with a small mustache exited the driver’s seat and silently opened up the passenger side doors.

The three entered the car and sat down within the spacious interior. It was filled with two rows of seats facing one another, as though the car had been designed to facilitate meetings en route.

“Where are we going?” Lisa asked, repeating her original question. Angelina remained quiet, a small smirk tugging up at the corners of her mouth. Bath’s eyes narrowed slightly. He was using his essence to track the car’s movement, laying down a string of matter that scraped against the ground and left a pheromone trail. This was the only way he could devise on the spot to track the movements of the car over a long distance, as any essence from his Center would evaporate once it fell outside of his manipulation range.

Nobody spoke as the car drove on. Bath felt a twinge of annoyance as the car’s distance severed his control over the network of essence he had placed around Alens, but reminded himself that protecting Lisa’s safety was far more important than such a minor inconvenience.

Where is Ritus? Bath wondered to himself. The car was currently crossing a state line, supporting the theory that Ritus wasn’t a local organization, but a national-level one. How else could it have enough members? Mind manipulators were extremely rare.

Finally, the car slowed down and pulled into a side street somewhere in Virginia. It was around 6:00 by the time the car parked outside of an enormous, gilded mansion.

Bath noticed with a start that he recognized the mansion. He looked to Lisa, then looked back at the mansion. It...

“Lisa, it looks like a larger version of your family’s lake house,” Bath whispered. Lisa gulped. Bath noticed that Lisa’s eyes contained a newfound uncertainty. Bath, too, was fairly taken aback by the resemblance between the lake house and the mansion before them. On closer inspection, the houses weren’t identical...but the coincidence was too much for Bath to dismiss.

What was the likelihood that Lisa's family lake house looked just like the Ritus headquarters?

Bath began to listen for the movements of people within the mansion. He was too far out to hear anything definitive from outside the car, but as they approached the entrance, he picked up on the heartbeats of more than twenty people inside.

At the front door stood two armed guards in kevlar. They had weathered, deadly looks to them, though Bath didn’t see this as a reason to pay them any mind. As the three of them reached the door, the two guards soundlessly pulled back to permit them smooth entrance to the mansion.

“After you,” Angelina smiled.