Governor Street wasn't a common street name in London, and a quick Google search revealed that none of them had any kind of church. There was, however, a church-like building on one of them, made out of used corrugated iron sheets, according to Ayana, who had her demons fly the city and take a look. As it turned out, the building had been used for a year or so back in around 2005 as a church, when the old Catholic church of the neighbourhood had a minor fire and had to be closed for renovation. After it was done, the building became a warehouse of a local greengrocer, but he moved a few years later and the ex-church became unused.

'All right people, so just we are clear, we are not going there to fight,' said Robert.

All members of their little group were sitting in Benjamin's loft, drinking coffee and looking ready. Robert and Jenna agreed that it wouldn't be smart to hold the meeting at the Broken Shield, given that they weren't exactly doing what Luther was expecting from them. Robert was standing in front of them, despite his words, dressed for a fight: an old pair of jeans and a black jumper, comfortable clothes letting him move easily, plus his dark grey trench coat, full of defending spells and enchantments.

'But we do have the statue ready, right?' asked Rose. 'Just in case.'

Ayana stood up from beside Teodore, stepped next to Robert and held up a black cube. It was bigger, maybe five centimetres by five centimetres and the surface was completely carved full with Runes.

'The statue was damaged beyond repair,' she said. 'But I managed to build something similar. It is very easy to use, you can open or close it with the Rune of Door. The tricky part, however, is the timing.'

She made the Rune of Door lit up, and one of the sides of the cube opened up. She pressed it to Robert's arm, who stepped back and looked at her confused.

'As you can see,' continued Ayana, as if she didn't try to condemn Robert to eternal damnation, 'it does not work against human beings with a living body. Which means, if things would go south, we are going to need to kill the Goddess' body first. I presume she won't be a big fan of this plan, so it might be an inconvenience.'

'You gotta love how she makes things like "y'all gonna die" sounds like a boring chore,' murmured Martin, and Remy nodded. Ayana looked at them until they couldn't bear it anymore and looked away, then she sat back down.

'Nobody is going to die,' said Robert, rubbing his arm where the cube touched it. 'We only asked you all here for the worst possible scenario, but we have no reason to believe that is going to happen.'

'Didn't she teach a murderer how to murder better, though?' asked Claire. 'Sorry, Robert, but that does sound a little alarming.'

'Until the opposite gets proven, we have to believe that it was an honest mistake,' answered Robert calmly.

'Yeah, it might have been,' said Remy. 'But people wanted to get rid of her in the first place, right? There must have been a reason for that…'

'I don't know, dude, you are a black immigrant and I am brown and bisexual, I think we know better than anyone in this room that people don't need a reason to hate,' said Marcus in an uncharacteristically serious voice.

Remy looked at him for a moment then nodded.

'Point taken,' he said.

'After this devastating comment on our broken society, does anyone have any more questions?' asked Jenna.

'Yeah, what're our arrangements? Who is gonna go in?' wanted to know Benjamin.

Jenna and Robert shared a look. They had quite a disagreement about that: Jenna didn't want Robert in there because he already tried to kill the Goddess which wasn't a good conversation starter, while he wasn't going to let Jenna go alone.

'Marcus will be there, as the agent of the MAGE, in the name of the law,' said Robert. 'Jenna is the strongest sorcerer we have, and she can understand the Goddess better than anyone, so she has to be there, too,' he sighed and stopped for a moment before he continued. 'We think more than three people going in might be threatening which we want to avoid. I think the third one should be Teodore.'

Remy whispered something.

'Nah, he did say Teodore,' shook his head Martin.

The Italian looked at Robert for a long moment with his unreadable face, then nodded ever so slightly. There was still a kind of tension between them, but everyone knew why Robert wanted him in there instead of himself: if things would go spear-shaped, nobody would try to get Jenna out of there harder than Teodore.

'On arrival I'd like you, Rose, to look around and check for any traps or such,' said Robert. 'Discreetly. Remy will help you, he's got the eye of a demon hunter, he will see if something's off. The rest of us will stay in the cars, in front of and behind the church, ready for extraction if needed. We will stay in touch, everyone has an earpiece, right? Good. If you hear an alarm siren, that means Marcus pushed the panic button. In that case, some of you will rush the church and help them get out, some of you will drive the cars into the best escaping positions, we will decide who whilst on the road. If there will be a fight, do not engage the Goddess, Jenna will decide if she wants to try to defeat her or not. If you see her fight, you fight, if you see her run, you run. We have a lot of weapons there,' he waved towards a table full of wands, batons, instant spells, even guns, 'Thanks to the MAGE. Take what you are comfortable with. Hopefully we are not going to need them, but better to be safe than sorry. And while we are waiting I need you to take a picture of everyone who enters or exits the church, so we will know some of the followers. Erm… I think that was all.'

'What, no pep talk?' asked Marcus.

'Right. Erm… We have got this, guys, and… Erm… Don't die,' said Robert.

'So inspiring,' shook her head Jenna. 'All right, get your lazy asses up, today we are finally one step closer to end this whole clusterfuck. I don't know about you guys, but even though it kinda made us all friends which is weird but cool, I, for one, am so tired of this shit. It had been a pain in the ass, and not the fun kind...' Robert cleared his throat. 'So yeah, let's go and see what happens.'

So they did. The area where Governor Street took place was as generic as it gets. Governor Street itself was a side street led to the local High Street. There were small, dark shops around, most of them looked out-of-business or at least struggling. The neighbourhood was occupied mostly by Polish immigrants; those who came from the same nation always tried to live with their own people. Even the shop fronts had signs written in Polish.

The church stood alone, surrounded by a neglected court. It did resemble a real church, but it was much smaller. It even had a big clock above the entrance, although it didn't work.

'Okay guys,' said Rose in their earpieces, 'I think we are clear. You can go.'

Robert lifted his hand, touched the earpiece and thanked Rose.

'Ready?' he asked then from Jenna.

'Yeah, it's gonna be fun,' she nodded with a weak smile. Robert kissed her and she hoped very hard that it won't be their last kiss ever. 'Let's go, boys.'

The three of them, Jenna, Marcus and Teodore, got out of the car. They walked across the road, then stopped at the door. Jenna felt Robert's gaze on her.

'She is here,' said Jenna. 'I can sense her. Erm... Shall we?' asked Jenna. Teodore fixed his black tie, then knocked. They waited. When he raised his hand to knock again, a lock clicked and the door opened. A young Indian man stood on the threshold.

'Can I help you?' he asked politely.

'We are here to see the Goddess,' said Jenna.

'Who?' the man asked.

'The unbelievably powerful sorceress from the dawn of times,' said Marcus. 'Don't tell me we have got the wrong address…'

The man nodded and stepped aside.

Inside the place wasn't like a church at all. It was well lit by two dozen naked light bulbs, it had a concrete floor and a few chairs, put in a semicircle. A few of them were occupied. A bigger, almost throne-like wooden chair opposed them, now empty. Where the altar should have been, there was a drywall which didn't reach for the ceiling, probably to give some privacy to the Goddess. There were no artworks on the walls, religious or otherwise.

'Erm… Hello,' said Jenna, waving to the few people sitting in front of the big chair. 'Sorry to disturb… Whatever is this,' she was a little light-headed now: the Goddess was here, probably behind the drywall, and her power, this raw, silent thunder of an unused potential swept all over Jenna. It was kinda like when they visited Kovach's house, only not that overwhelming.

In the doorway between the big, empty space and the smaller one, a young woman appeared. She was short and just the right amount of curvy, with a beautiful, round face, a big mess of curly black afro and skin darker than even Luther's. She wore a faded pair of skinny jeans, a simple white T-shirt and a long, orange, knitted cardigan. She had square glasses.

'Are you here to learn about the One True Light?' she asked with a stentorian voice.

Jenna and Marcus shared a look. The girl checked where the followers exactly were, while Teodore unbuttoned his black suit-jacket for easier movements. Then the Goddess burst out laughing.

'Man, you should have seen your faces,' she giggled. 'Relax, I know who you are. I'm just messing with ya. Sit down, let's talk,' surprisingly, she was talking with a Londoner accent.

She settled in her big chair, while Jenna and the others picked three others together. The followers or students or whatever they were, looked bored: some of them were on their phones, some were talking. Nobody paid attention to them.

'So there is no One True Light?' asked Jenna.

The Goddess shook her pretty head.

'Nah, I don't do cults. I'm just teaching people. I hear you had a problem with one of my students… I had my doubts teaching him, and looks like I should have listened to them.'

'Yeah, kinda…' nodded Jenna. 'Listen, erm… I'm sorry, what's your name?'

The Goddess' face became sad all of a sudden, but only for a moment, then she was smiling again.

'I don't remember,' she said. 'But I like the name Yolanda. I know, it's silly… You can call me Yola, though. I know that you are Jenna,' she nodded towards her. 'And your brother is Teo, right? I have seen him in your dreams. And you are...' she looked at Marcus. 'You are hella fine, by the way. But I don't know your name.'

He grinned then cleared his throat.

'It's Marcus. Listen, Yola, do you know what the MAGE is? The organisation?' he asked.

'Yes, I heard about them,’ nodded Yolanda. ‘My friends warned me that they will want to find me. Are you with them?'

'Yes,' answered Marcus slowly. 'My bosses, amongst other people, want to know whether you are dangerous or not.'

Yolanda pushed her glasses up on her nose.

'I think I must be,' she said then. 'I am very strong, and the sorcerers in this new world are very weak. That's usually enough for people to hate and be scared of someone, right?'

'Yeah, but that wasn't the question,' said Jenna. Yolanda looked into her eyes.

'If you ask me if I want to hurt people, my answer is no,' she said.

'Yet, you did, when The Priest let you out of the statue,' said Teodore quietly.

Yolanda squirmed in her seat.

'It was… You can't imagine, and be happy you can't. I was very scared, okay? And confused. You guys came and attacked me. I had no idea where I was or what was going on... I'm sorry. I only knew that I was finally out and I was sure as hell that I'm not gonna go back. I hope I didn't hurt anyone.'

Jenna thought about Robert, laying under the thin sheet on the hospital bed with tubes in his throat. She could actually hear the beeps of the EKG machine.

'We will live,' Jenna said. 'Tell us about what you are doing here.'

Yolanda looked around the ex-church.

'After I escaped from the man you call The Priest, I was alone. I learned so much from the body he brought me: the language, some history, how things worked… Everything she knew, I know now. She and I… What do you call it? We are living together. I had the knowledge to fix her, because she was dying, and she had the power I needed. This body was almost as strong as mine, before… Before. Only she never used magic: her mother said it's wrong, it's from the… Devil? She remembers a red man with horns, but I never saw anything like that.'

'What knowledge was that?' asked Teodore. 'What kind of knowledge do you have that modern doctors don't?'

Yolanda smiled at him.

'I know you are a healer. I never was. But I do know the Name of the Soul in the Old Talk… And her soul was ill. I think you call it depression. She wanted to die,' Yolanda rolled up the sleeves of her cardigan and showed them three long scars on her forearm. 'She is happy now. We are… We are one.'

'So you came here, to… What?' asked Jenna. 'Having followers?'

'They are not followers,' shook her head Yolanda. 'They are students. Friends. I teach them real magic, and they help me… You see, I do not have money. I'm not even sure I understand how it works, it's sometimes a piece of weird paper, sometimes just a thought going from one make-believe place to another… I know what it is because she knows, I'm just having a hard time understanding it. Especially the part with how to get it… Looks like for me people are doing things they don't like to do in places they don't like to go so they can have money that they can use not to die, but they don't have enough money somehow and they are not happy… Pretty weird, if you ask me. Anyway, my friends have money, and they are bringing me food and clothes and books… I love books! We didn't have them back there, we didn't even have a word for reading… And now there is a new story in any one of them.'

Jenna nodded. She wasn't a big fan of books until they got together with Robert, but she had read more books in the last few weeks than the last ten years before. Not like they didn't have enough things to talk about, but it was kind of like a shared hobby and it felt good.

'It's all really nice, but that is one of the reasons we needed to talk to you,' said Jenna. 'You cannot teach magic to people.'

'I understand your concern, but Mario was only one person, I…'

'It's not about him,' cut in Marcus, and Jenna saw Yolanda's eyelids narrowing with annoyance for a moment. 'As you probably noticed, the fae is gone. They took away the Old Talk and left for… Well, nobody knows where, probably to another world. But if they see that people are talking the Old Talk again, they will come back and they will kill everyone, all of your friends, everybody in the city, or maybe even more. So we have to ask you to stop.'

Yolanda gave that some thought.

'The fae, you say? They didn't come from another world, you know, and I don't think they went to one. They were just very, very old, ancient already when I was born. And they were dying even when I was still alive, because of this… What's the word? The planet was changing. Humans had their own magic all of the sudden. It wasn't as powerful as theirs, with all the animal spirits and rain-calling, but it was still magic. And every drop of magic they used pushed the fae closer to… Extinction? They were pure magic back in the day. They were the magic itself. Then they made those bodies, well, what left of them did, they became elves, dwarfs, kobolds, giants... But it wasn't good enough, and they were still all dying, only slower. I understand that was a long, long time ago, so I imagine by now they must be all dead. And even if they are not, if they found a way to leave this plane, they cannot come back here. There are more sorcerers than ever before. The fae's magic, their essence would run out, would get used up by humans in a day. No, if they are alive, they won't come back, they cannot. Whoever told you otherwise, was a fool or lying. Hey, do you want some tea?'