The Commissioner's funeral was held in secret, with family members and close friends attending only. Robert learned about it from the media, like anyone else, a day later. Made sense why Marcus just passed them the list yesterday and disappeared for the rest of the day again: he went to the funeral.

Robert didn't tell anyone, not even Jenna, but he felt relieved about how it went down. He was anxious about the funeral: it wasn't a secret that he never agreed with the old man's ways and decisions, not to mention he was the son of the man who was the loudest protester back in the day when they proposed the idea of a non-human police commissioner. With all that he still felt like he wanted to be there for his friend, but apparently Marcus didn't need him.

Things between them were a little tense since the night of the Tate Modern. Even if Marcus was the one who decided to spare The Priest's life, and not because Robert asked for it but the sake of Rose, his friend still seemed to be mad at him. They didn't see each other a lot in the last ten days, with Marcus being away, transporting The Priest in half of the time, but Robert still thought that Marcus avoided him on purpose. The funeral was just one thing, but even this morning, when they formed the teams to go through the surprisingly long list of potential host-bodies, Marcus made sure that he didn't have to spend the day with Robert.

'He is grieving,' pointed out Jenna, when Robert told her about his suspicion. 'He is entitled to be mad. In fact, anger is one of the phases, you know. Give him time.'

'I do understand that and I feel for him, truly,' Robert sighed. 'But I haven't done anything wrong.'

'Without starting that conversation again,' nodded Jenna, talking slowly and carefully, 'even if you haven't, it doesn't matter. Feelings and logic aren't exactly known for working together.'

'Look at you,' grinned Robert. 'A mere month ago you had troubles saying the word "feeling" and now you are giving advice, and not even bad ones. Pretty impressive.'

'Look at you, just a month ago you were a condescending jerk, and now, you still are,' answered Jenna with a sweet smile.

'Fair enough. Sorry.'

'Tell me why we are here again?' looked Jenna out of the windshield.

Robert's car parked in front of a school building. Kids, teenagers, more precisely, walked and ran by in uniforms, every one of them louder than a jet-engine, trying to over-cry their friends. It was lunch break and most of them charged the Sainsbury's supermarket nearby to get something to eat.

'To see a Thomas Jones, 17 years old. Last year they had a serious accident in the Alps on a school-getaway. Their bus, full of two class worth of kids slid on the road and went straight into a chasm. Thomas made sure that they landed safely 50 metres below, once again, around sixty kids and the three teachers in a bus. Up until then, his teachers had pinned him as an average student, talented in math but below the bar when it came to magic.'

They had talked over the plan one more time and decided that instead of Ayana's demons they will visit the people on the list personally at first, then they will see who was trying to disappear and have the demons follow them. Tailing a few people was easier than searching the entire city without being noticed.

'So he saved a bunch of lives and the MAGE put him onto their "potentially dangerous" list? Charming,' noted Jenna.

'I believe the tone is on "potentially" in this case,' pointed out Robert.

'Still. But he is a boy, right? Do you think the Goddess would occupy a male body then would continue to go to school?'

'Not at all,' shook his head Robert. 'But we have to check it out anyway. Nobody on the list showed any unusual behaviour, so better safe than sorry, I suppose. Besides, we only know that she was born a woman; maybe she wanted to be a man all along, and this is the perfect opportunity.'

'On Trafalgar Square, she picked a woman,' said Jenna.

'Right, but she didn't really have time to be picky back there,' shrugged Robert. 'Let's just get over with it, you will sense her magic anyway, we don't even have to talk long.'

Jenna sighed and got out of the car. They bothered strangers since the day before, and most of them weren't keen to talk to them. Thomas Jones might have been on the list because of something innocent, but the other participants were on it for good reasons. Reasons they didn't want to talk about, especially not with people sent by the MAGE. They were cursed at twice yesterday, and Robert saw no reason to believe today would go any differently.

Yet, there was something odd with Jenna's mood. She loved a good fight or an interesting investigation, but today she seemed like she had enough of everything. Even Robert.

So the man got out of the car too, caught up with her and grabbed her arm gently. They had agreed on full honesty on day one, after all.

'Hey… Is everything okay? You are kind of short-tempered today.'

'I'm always short-tempered,' she shrugged. She did not pull her arm away and Robert noted that as a good sign.

'Exactly. You can see how bad the situation is if I actually mention it.'

Jenna sighed.

'I… I didn't sleep well,' she said. There was something in her voice Robert didn't like.

'You mean, bad dreams or ancient crazy lady broke into your mind while you were sleeping sort of dreams?' he asked, narrowing his eyebrows.

They stepped out of the way of a group of teenagers that didn't seem to care about them enough to slow down and avoid a clash. Jenna sighed again.

'I don't know,' she said. 'It's hard to tell. I was dreaming about a woman, she lived in a hut of some kind, she looked like a leader and then they killed her… I don't know,' she repeated. 'I thought maybe she kinda… left the connection open, by accident, after she tried to convince me to kill The Priest. Maybe I saw her memories…? Is this possible?'

'Well, I scored a hottie like you, I'd say anything is possible,' said Robert with a serious face.

Jenna laughed weakly.

'You did that, true,' she nodded, still smiling. 'But seriously, what do you think?'

'Your hypothesis makes sense,' Robert said. 'After we are done with the three people on our list, I will go to the University’s private library and see what I can find out about dreamwalking.'

'We are gonna go to the library,' corrected him Jenna. 'Just because I am having a bad day, it doesn't mean I don't wanna be with you.'

Robert smiled and fought off the urge to kiss her. There were way too many kids, smartphones and CCTV cameras around for things like that.

Thomas Jones turned out to be a perfectly normal, smart and a little awkward 17 years old boy. Tall, blond and with an otherwise handsome face full of pimples. He was bad at magic because he never cared for it, but he was potentially nearly as strong as Jenna. Only he didn't know how to use that strength at all.

‘I mean, I’m kinda good at football, too,’ he told them with a lot of shrugs. ‘Don’t wanna do that for a living, either.’

Robert gave him his calling card and told him if he would ever change his mind and decided to learn about magic on a college level, give him a call.

'He is clear,' said Jenna after Thomas left them for history class. 'No ancient bitch lurking inside, as far as I can tell. But man, he was like a power plant. Such a shame he won't use it for something.'

'It is,' Robert agreed. 'The weird thing is, his parents or any of his grandparents cannot do magic at all. MAGE checked them out last year.'

'I mean, my father isn't that big of a sorcerer and Mom wasn't that strong either,' shrugged Jenna. 'These things happen. My Nonna, on the other hand… She was a beast. Mom told me that she mushed together my grandfather's car once, into a little ball, because she was angry at him. Say, if I was to ball up your car, would you finally buy one that has a working heating system in it?'

Heating with magic was like fighting with windmills because every spell's main power-source was always the thermal energy in the air around or the sorcerer's own energy, which wasn't a development on the long run.

'Told you, make a small fire,' spread his arms Robert.

'Told you, bite me,' answered Jenna.

'I'm planning on it, don't worry, later on this evening.'

'That's not what I… Well, actually never mind. Good plan,' nodded Jenna with a faraway look.

Robert rolled his eyes on her, grinning.

The third name on their list proved to be a dead-end as well. Saanvi Bhatt was an old, small lady who lived alone in a tiny apartment, used a cane to walk and was almost entirely deaf. When Robert asked her about magic she looked surprised, then her face lit up as if she just remembered that she was a sorceress.

'Yes, yes, I used to do that…' she shouted. 'I remember those fiery things always came to help me with the groceries. Haven't seen my wand in years, I wonder what came to it…'

The "fiery things" were elementals. According to the MAGE's records, cute old Saanvi Bhatt once was able to conjure and control dozens of them at the same time. She was an unlikely but brutal mob-boss back in India, then she fled to the United Kingdom when her enemies started to join forces against her.

'Well, she was lying like a rug,' noted Jenna once they were out of the door. 'She is very much active, she had at least two elementals and a demon in there. But she was herself, no Goddess.'

Jenna's phone chimed and she took it out.

'It's Marcus… They've got nothing. He says their last one was a little suspicious and he wants us to check her out, too. But probably a false alarm.'

'Who is she?' asked Robert, pulling out his phone to check the full list. He didn't have any messages from Marcus.

'Edyta Wisi… Wiseni… Wis-ni-ew-ski. Huh. I think she might be Polish.'

'What tipped you off?' asked Robert. 'So Ms Wisniewski…'

'Show off…' murmured Jenna.

'...is on the list because… Now, that is interesting. She claims to be a shaman. She says she is also a shapeshifter who can turn into the form of her own spirit animal, a raven.'

'So she is a lunatic,' shrugged Jenna. 'Why is she even on the list?'

'Because she worked for the MAGE for years as a spy. She sneaked into other people's dreams and extracted information. Of course, makes sense,' he said. 'Shamans were the original dreamwalkers back in the day, long before the Runes. Maybe the only kind of magic invented by humans. I thought their knowledge was gone, that's what anthropologists think, too, but this woman was in front of our nose all along.'

'Why wasn't she on the top of the list if she is a dreamwalker?' asked Jenna.

'Because the only people knew that the Goddess can do that are you and me and we apparently forgot to mention it to the MAGE,' shook his head Robert in disbelief. 'Sometimes I can be such a bloody idiot,' he was already dialing. 'Marcus? Where are you? Okay, good. We are going to check out Wisniewski right now and we might need backup,' pause. 'Half an hour, forty-five minutes, tops. See you there.'

'So it's her, right?' asked Jenna when Robert put the phone away.

'Not necessarily. In fact, I am almost certain that it's not her,' they were going down the stairs now. 'Just think about it: The Goddess came from an age when dreamwalking was common. She doesn't need to learn it. What she might need is whatever potion or charm or anything that shamans used for dreamwalking.'

'So you think that Wisniki… Merda. Edyta met her?'

'It's a long shot,' said Robert opening the front door and letting out Jenna on the street. 'But our best lead so far.'

They got in the car and the doors weren't even properly closed when the engine coughed itself to life and Robert shot out of the parking lot with a speed his old little car wasn't made for.