Friday. 8:02 PM

Ben beat me to the diner. He was a sight for sore eyes, and not just because he had a cup of coffee waiting for me when I arrived.

“You’re a freakin’ angel,” I commented, draining most of the cup and setting it down. My fingers were buzzing, shaking with the exhaustion I was staving off, and probably more than a little residual panic adrenaline.

The guy behind the counter stepped up to refill my coffee, wearing a greasy apron. “Can I get you anythin’?”

I glanced at the menu. “Eh… three orders of tater tots.”

He apparently wrote that down and passed it down the line, while I turned to Ben.

“Sorry.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Sorry? You didn’t do anything.”

“I assumed you’d abandoned me,” I pointed out. “And I didn’t think to tell you I’d taken the card out of my phone.”

“That’s fine,” he shrugged. “I didn’t show up, and you didn’t have any way of contacting me. I’d probably have assumed the same.”

I nodded. That made sense. My fingers were drumming my head, and I took another swig of coffee. “Lot of stuff. Still putting together some of the information. Good news is, we don’t have to worry about the v-thing for a while.”

He tilted his head, confused. “The what?”

“The thing I was worried about. You know. After sunset.” I glanced at the line cook, who was only a couple feet away and could clearly hear everything we were saying.

Ben rolled his eyes. “We’re in a 24-hour diner after dark. I don’t think anyone cares.”

“Okay, fine. We don’t have to worry about the vampire.”

Looking around surreptitiously, I expected someone nearby to react. Nobody did. Ben, apparently, was right.

I filled him in, emptying another cup of coffee over the course of the retelling. My tots arrived, and I munched on them, feeling my body respond to having real calories to burn. Had I really not eaten anything since lunch?

“... so, I smashed the crystal and ran for it,” I explained. “I guess the vampire will figure out the trick and track down my scent eventually, but we’ve got time now.”

“You had a chance to get out of all this,” Ben said, staring at me with an expression I couldn’t read, “And you didn’t go for it.”

I shrugged, nodding thankfully at the server as he refilled my coffee. “I have to know what happened.”

The way Ben looked at me, I expected an argument, for him to tell me I was being ridiculous, something.

He sidestepped the issue completely. “So we’re back at square one? I mean, we know the council’s knee deep in it for sure on this one, but that doesn’t give us any leads.”

“Not quite.” I flashed my teeth in a broad grin. “Do you know the wifi password?”

“It’s on the wall.” He pointed to a sign with the login information, and I took out my phone.

Connecting to the diner’s wifi, I checked my email, munching on tater tots while they loaded.

Just like I’d been promised, there was login info and a link to the phone recovery website. I entered my name, the temporary password I’d been assigned, and waited. A second later, a GPS map of Kansas City popped up, showing a little red dot flashing on the map.

I turned it around, showing it off to Ben. “That’s our clue.”

He peered at the screen, head tilted, then glanced up at me. “What am I looking at, exactly?”

“That’s the location of Andrea’s phone. I got it fixed, like I said, and the repair center added a tracking app.”

“So…” he looked back down at the screen, hesitating. “That’s not the diner.”

“No, it isn’t. Unless Agnita found it already, the phone is still tucked inside her bag.”

…

Saturday. 2:16 PM

Davis blinked at me. “Huh?”

“Oh, didn’t I mention?” I asked, innocently. “Sorry, I should explain.”

…

Friday. 7:43 PM

Agnita paused, frowned, and reached for her pocket. “Hello? Yes, I can hold, but it’s—okay.”

While she waited, I peeked into her satchel, looking around for anything else that would be useful. The water balloons were depleted, and the other holy icons weren’t anything that would be helpful to me.

Just because there wasn’t anything helpful to take out, though, doesn’t mean I couldn’t do anything beneficial. Eyeing Agnita, I slipped Andrea’s phone out of my pocket, put it in a side pouch in the bag, and zipped the pouch shut.

Someone came on the line, their voice tinny and distant, and Agnita let out a short breath. “Okay, yes. Greg? I need to be authorized for OT, immediately.”

…

Friday. 8:14 PM

Ben blinked as I explained to him what I’d done. “You’re going to follow her?”

“Follow my logic,” I said, tossing another tot into my mouth. “The council is doing way too much work in the city to be doing it remotely. Something big has to be going on, and they wouldn’t just open portals for anyone who needs to travel here. I’m not even sure if that’s something they can do, even with their resources. They’ve got to have a local base, somewhere, and that base has to have clues floating around.”

“Did you get a chance to see if there was any useful information on the phone before you stashed it?”

“It’s a calculated gamble. If we can track her down, I can get the phone back anyways, and then we get double the information.” I shrugged. “‘Go big or go home’, I guess.”

He chewed on that. “Alright, that makes sense. So what’s she doing inside Union Station?”

I turned the phone to look at the screen. Sure enough, the tracking signal was coming from somewhere inside Union Station. “That’s where the streetcar ends,” I pointed out. “Maybe she stuck around to deal with the fallout.”

“Say,” Ben said, chewing on a fry. “If you were going to put a portal in Kansas City, to get people in and out fast, would it matter where you put it?”

That was… a good point. “I’m not sure, but… Huh.”

“What?”

“I have a book on this.” Turning to access my backpack, I reached in, taking out the book on leylines I’d picked up that morning.

Ben leaned in, peering down at the table of contents as I thumbed through it, looking for relevant information. My lips moved as I read, mumbling out the words. “Leyline basics… lifelines… astrological lines… wells… “

“Wells?” Ben asked.

“Sources of power,” I said, drawing from my fairly basic memory. “Leylines, lifelines, they all carry energy. Wells provide that energy. Nearly all magic comes from a well, it just depends how far the power gets carried first.”

“Like generators,” Ben said, following along. “And leylines are like high voltage wire, and your lifeline is a personal extension cord.”

“Sort of, yeah.” I kept skimming the contents, until I found the right chapter. “Leylines and travel.”

Flipping to the page, I speed-read the first couple pages, gleaning the general sense mostly from diagrams and pictures. “It looks like… yes. If you want to be efficient or just don’t have a lot of power, and we don’t have a lot of power in KC, you need to place a portal at a location with a high amount of real-world transit. I guess the act of travelling a certain path repeatedly creates a sort of man-made leyline for power to travel down.”

“So, if you did need a place to come into the city,” Ben finished, “You’d want to put it in something like an airport or a train station.”

I checked the map again. The pin hadn’t moved. I shrugged. “Union Station is within walking distance, and they’re open to the public till eleven.”

“Go there once we’re done?” he asked. “If you still want my help, that is.”

I picked up my coffee cup, gulped it down, and beamed. “It’s a date.”

…

Friday. 8:48 PM

It took my last twenty dollars to cover the check at the diner, plus a little fishing in my pockets for change so that the tip wouldn’t be pathetically small.

In the interest of stealth, Ben and I stopped to get a disguise from an artist on the corner, selling prints of their work on hats, shirts, and other memorabilia. Ben got a T-shirt of a dinosaur, while I got a knight with a cool sword, we both got matching caps. He paid, and I promised to pay him back once I had some more cash on hand.

We weren’t exactly inconspicuous, but at least I looked different from my previous getup. I’d have to find the money to pay him back somehow, but that was worth it.

Union Station was a gorgeous building. They’d restored a lot of the original masonry around the turn of the millennium, and the whole place was done with marble and stone, the sort of architectural wonder that didn’t get built anymore.

It was also, for our purposes, a dead end. The GPS was beeping around the middle of the grand hall, but there was nothing worth seeing except the monumental design of the building itself.

“Illusion?” Ben suggested, spinning around.

I glanced at the security guard who was watching us, politely and from a distance. “More likely, not on this floor,” I said. “I have a command to make the phone ring, but… that seems like a bad idea if it’s not nearby.”

“So we look downstairs,” Ben said, shrugging. “You ever do ‘urban exploring’?”

Hesitating, I stole another look at the security guard, speaking in a low voice. “I’m pretty sure we’d get stopped if we tried that.”

“Yeah, if you keep looking back at that guard and acting suspicious.” Ben spoke without even looking at the man. “Just act like you belong here. Come on, he’s already watching us, but we can go around to the east side where he can’t see.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.”

He strode away, confident, like he owned the place. I wasn’t sure in what circumstance the owner of Union Station would be wearing a bright dinosaur T-shirt, but if such a situation was possible, Ben convinced me it was happening.

We turned the corner, and he walked right for a side door. I fought the urge to look around, to check for security guards who might be descending on our position.

In the past couple hours, I’d fought a vampire, and I’d trespassed on public property. Between those two things, the trespassing made me the most anxious. Mentally, I had no reason to be half so afraid, but the knowledge that we were breaking the rules still niggled at the back of my thoughts. This is wrong. We shouldn’t be doing this.

As we walked into an employees-only area, nobody stopped us, but I was acutely aware that we were in a space that we were not meant to be.

“Stairs down are probably this way,” Ben said, waving me forward. “Look, even if we get caught, we’ll just say we got lost looking for a bathroom.”

I doubted that story would work once we were poking around the basement, but I nodded anyways as we reached a stairwell. The door pushed open with a click, and without looking back we started down towards the lower levels.

In stark contrast to the beautiful marble of the public areas, the back stairs were utilitarian, cement and metal railings, like the back stairs of office buildings across the world. The lights all worked, and it was kept clean, but I still got the vibe that it wasn’t well trafficked. Linoleum tiles were arranged in a checkerboard pattern, weathered by time. The stairs had an emptiness to them, a quiet stillness that told me it rarely saw people come through.

The basement door wasn’t locked either, and with a simple push of the bar, we were on the lower floor.

The lights were out, so we both produced our phones and turned on the flashlights, advancing into the dark hallways.

“Are you getting a wifi signal down here?” he asked, in a low tone.

I checked. I’d autoconnected to the station’s wifi. “Yeah, but the GPS signal isn’t too precise. I think it can get us within fifty feet or so.”

He paused, lips moving as he considered the different turns we’d taken. “The basement beneath the main hall is… left, then a right, then… uh… this way.”

“Are you sure?”

“If I’m wrong, we’ll try a different direction. We should keep quiet, in case Agnita is still down here.”

I paused. “I haven’t thought about what we’ll do if we actually run into a counsellor down here.”

Ben frowned as he thought about it. “Run?”

I shrugged, and we continued forward. “Keep your voice down. If she’s down here…” I didn’t need to finish that thought. We had to be the ones to find her, not the other way around.

Following the directions towards the right part of the basement, I watched my phone as we got closer and closer, until the dots were close enough to be overlapping. I held up my hand, pointed at the phone, and whispered, “It’s got to be here.”

A long stretch of hallway was ahead of us. It had to be somewhere along that corridor, in one of the side rooms we could see.

Ben took my hand, holding it in his, and turned out his light. I pressed my light against my body, smothering it so we wouldn’t give ourselves away.

We crept forward together, moving slowly, keeping our footfalls soft and silent. Coming up to the first door, he turned the handle, opening it slowly.

The hinges didn’t creak. Poking my head in, I looked around, shining my light inside.

Storage. Bits of old exhibits, mostly, that were in good condition but didn’t serve much purpose. Replica Egyptian furniture, old model train sets half-assembled in boxes. I looked inside, but there wasn’t anything to see.

Closing the door, we stuck together as we moved forward, repeating the process in the next room. More storage. Filing cabinets, mostly, stacked in rows.

As we moved down the hall, Ben stopped, looking down at my feet. I stopped, glancing back at him.

Speaking in a barely audible whisper, I asked, “What?”

He responded in kind. “Why are you walking funny?”

I looked down. I hadn’t even been thinking about it, but I’d been stepping around to only plant my feet on the black tiles, and not the white ones. I couldn’t think of a way to explain this that wouldn’t take a lot of time and noise, so I just shook my head.

He shrugged, and we kept looking.

Tables and chairs stacked on rolling carts blocked access to the freight elevator doors. I peered past, through the little window slot on the front of the heavy metal doors, but it wasn’t on our level.

Creeping to the end of the hallway, I got to a door that led out towards the train tracks. I checked the map, confirmed that the phone couldn’t be in that direction, closed the door, and returned to the rest of the basement.

No signs of corrupt wizards, or even Andrea’s phone.

We passed by an old meeting room on the walk back, and Ben paused, pointing to the bathrooms. Those, and a broom closet, were the only spots we hadn’t yet checked.

To get it out of the way, I opened the closet door first, but it contained nothing except janitorial supplies. I shut it, and we crept into the men’s room.

Nothing leapt out at us, but that wasn’t a reason to relax. Inching forward, I opened the stall doors, one at a time. All empty.

We checked the women’s room. Same thing.

I stepped back into the hallway and let go of his hand, shining my light up and down the corridor.

Nothing. Nothing at all. I no longer felt the need for quiet. “Maybe it’s on a different floor?”

“There’s that science museum, I guess?” he mused, raising an eyebrow. “Peculiar place for a counsellor to hide out, though.”

“Well, there’s nothing down here,” I said. “Unless there’s an illusion we can’t see through.”

“I guess… walk it again, and we’ll check all the rooms more thoroughly. See if we can’t find a flaw with their illusions.”

It was the best thing I could think of. Flashlights waving, we returned to the search.

We checked everything twice over. I pushed open every door in both bathrooms, checking to make sure there were no secret passages behind the urinals. I turned on the sinks, let the water run, and shut them off.

Ben and I worked together to roll the carts of chairs and tables aside, and even stepped into the freight elevator to look for a way to get to a secret floor. Either it was hidden beyond our ability to find it, or it didn’t exist.

We took turns walking the hallway and checking the storage rooms, looking at every half-assembled display and moving around the boxes of model train parts. I even checked the broom closet next to the meeting room, feeling the back wall for secret panels. Nothing.

Rendezvousing back by the stairs, I said, “There’s nothing down here. We have to check somewhere else.”

“Maybe the tracks? We didn’t look at them too thoroughly,” Ben suggested.

“Can’t be there. Maybe Agnita is, but the phone isn’t. It’s somewhere beneath the main hall, within a hundred feet of the stairs and we’ve checked everywhere it could be in that radius.” I raised my fingers, counting off. “Eight storage rooms, we checked them all. Two bathrooms. A supply closet. The freight elevator. We know it’s not by the rails.”

Ben hesitated. “I feel like we’re missing something.”

“We’re not missing anything.” I shook my head. “Look, let’s walk it one more time and I’ll show you.”

We walked it again. At every door, I counted off on my hand. “Storage room… storage room… bathroom… storage room…” Stepping past the meeting room, I pointed to the next door. “And a second supply closet.”

“Right.” He nodded again, but he looked puzzled. “What about the meeting room?”

“It’s not in there,” I said, automatically.

“Okay. How do we know?”

“Because…” I started. “Wait, why are you asking?”

“When we were at Garret’s. There was magic messing with our heads, and we didn’t even think about it. We just assumed something was true, and then it wasn’t.” He pointed at the door. “Did we look behind that door?”

I stared, between him and the door. “Oh. Oh. How’d you catch that?”

“I was looking for it.” He shrugged, but even in the darkness I caught his smile before he turned. “Now, shh.”

Stepping forward, he pushed open the door.