For a bit of background; anyone who’s done research into alchemy or the occult has probably come across the Comte de Saint Germain. He was a real person, as hard as that can be to believe. He first popped up in the early days of the 18th century, and his charisma immediately led to his inclusion in all of Europe’s highest circles.

And I mean highest. Forgive me for the crass comparison, but it’s sort of like how the Kardashians wormed their way into celebrity fame, if you replace celebrity with “nobles and political elites.” And also unlike the Kardashians, he was talented. Immensely talented. Within a year of his first appearance in the “official” historical record he was composing operas and concertos as a hobby. His violin and singing was said to be “heavenly” and all of the top nobles in Europe were in awe at his skill.

He also was charismatic. And I don’t mean “people liked him.” He wormed his way into every major royals good graces, from England to Russia. People admired him, idolized him. Casanova, that Casanova, seethed in jealousy at how women would hang off this mysterious guy’s every word. Imagine having the guy who’s name is synonymous with womanizing look at someone and say “wow, my one wish in life is to be as good at talking with women as this guy.

Not that the Comte de Saint Germain was ever seen doing anything more than talking with women. He was reportedly celibate, both in the official historic record and certain other reports. That was one oddity among many, so most people viewed it as just a drop in the bucket. And this is a bucket overflowing with weirdness. I’ve read some pretty weird stuff that got consigned to the secret archive I’m currently stuck working at, so seeing someone who’s peculiarities are just so flagrantly out in the open rings major alarm bells.

For one thing, he didn’t just abstain from sex. He abstained from food as well. No one had ever seen him eat. He’d host dinner parties, was a major hit on the social circuit, and all he’d do is talk about whatever subject caught his fancy, and talk at the level of an expert in the field. He wouldn’t touch a bit of food. The most he’d do is take small swigs of a mysterious liquid from a mysterious vial.

Did I mention he was renowned for his knowledge of alchemy as well? It probably isn’t too difficult to make assumptions, even if most people would give a more “logical” explanation. As someone who’s already gone way past what the average, science-believing person would view as logical however, I just went out on a limb and assumed “created the philosopher's stone” when I first was researching this enigmatic count.

Unbelievably skilled in multiple fields, immensely wealthy, never ages...Oh did I mention that part?… sips a mysterious elixir rather than eating… If it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, and makes annoying quacking noises like a duck, it’s probably a duck, or in this case someone who’s achieved the magnum opus of alchemy.

After his official death there have been numerous reported sightings, and several occult and otherwise esoteric movements have lauded him as being everything from a member of their order to a deity. Helena Blavatsky claimed to have met him, and the infamous Crowley mentioned him in his writings. And the Freemasons really don't like to be reminded of how he was listed as an attendee at one of their major international meetings a few decades after the Comte’s death, as they’ve been trying to get away from the spoopy conspiracy-bait reputation they’ve acquired in recent years partially thanks to Nic Cage.

Yes, this is a lot of information and yes, you probably could get all this information from the guy on the street corner wearing a tinfoil hat even more easily than from me, if a bit less coherently worded. But the baseline of information, what’s open source, is hardly even a fraction of what was contained in the dossier handed to us by my boss.

“Well, damn.” I finally spoke, my tiredness completely blown away by the file full of the kind of info that’d have the very best of short-wave radio talk-show hosts salivating. Liah’s eyes were glazed over and the new recruit, Sandra, looked as though she were about to have a heart-attack from all the stress.

I thought I had been at least slightly insulated from all the deep-state tomfoolery you hear about in other agencies. To be completely fair I still thought the idea of a deep-state kind of thing was mostly just bureaucratic inertia anyways outside of a few bad actors. Also, I was rather surprised to actually see the words “Illuminati” show up in a government document like this, although that part of the report was actually rather mundane and conforming with openly available historic records.

“Now, normally we wouldn’t even try to do anything against him. He normally kept to himself anyways. But we have reason to believe the recent disruption with reality might lead to him acting on the world in something closer to the capacity he used to, with manipulating governments. And as someone who made off with most of a large library of occult and otherwise unsafe documents, this would primarily fall under our jurisdiction.” My boss elaborated, having noticed we had all finished reading the report.

“So… what are we even doing?” I asked. It only makes sense to be sure of what our job is.

“Retrieving some grimoires, of course. He has a lot of them, but I have a list of the few that would be best to retrieve before he does anything too meddlesome. Plus he’s probably going to use one of the ones he stole off the defunct Bavarian Illuminati way back in the day for a ritual that would be pretty bad for the world as a whole and the US in particular. So officially we’re sending you to retrieve some grimoires and stop that ritual. We probably can’t do more than that, but if he gets too beat up during your retrieval of the documents, no one will really cry about it, if you catch my drift.” She winked.

“Uhhh, aren’t I supposed to be sworn law enforcement?” I know people say a lot of bad things about cops, but this is sounding more like a mob hit than a by-the-books police raid. Not that I’ve ever done a by-the-books police raid. I like to think I have some respect for the 4th amendment.

“A bit apprehensive? Don’t worry, if you somehow actually managed to succeed it’d have to be hushed up anyways. You’re not going to face any legal trouble killing someone who on-paper died in the 18th century, even if he was involved in founding our country. Besides, after that one job you really don’t have any room to talk, Mrs. Cage.” Always bringing that up.

“Still, this seems a bit excessive.”

“Well, normally one of the bigger agencies would handle something like this, but they’re too caught up in more mundane coups to really deal with this one. And they’ve shied away from sketchier jobs ever since that episode of X-Files was too on-the nose with the Smoking Man in Dallas. It was a lucky guess, but it still spooked them somewhat. Don’t get me wrong, they still do them, but they’re not going to waste valuable assets on a few spell books regardless of how dangerous they are. If anything, they’d let him do his ritual and take advantage of the chaos. Do you want that, Mrs. Thorne?” She looked at me intently, as if questioning my sense of morality.

There was a lot to unpack in what she just said, but you know what, I feel I’m better off not knowing. It’s already bad enough as it is, maybe I can just do this job and feel content with the fact that I wouldn’t be doing anything too morally reprehensible. Immortal alchemist and occultist probably doing some sketchy ritual. That’s the kind of thing heroes fight, I think? It almost feels like when I kick down the door I’ll have to fight off loads of mutated fish people, or cultists. This is fine, right?

The reassuring hand Liah placed on my shoulder is oddly making it harder to accept this job. Not that I really had a choice. It’s like how many of this sketchier things are supposed to work, on a web of blackmail and deceit. Or so I had heard, I really only ever worked here or in the Corps, which honestly the later was more of just a general environment of trying to skate out of work long enough to get discharged and get a real-person job where they treat you like a normal adult.

But, there was one other major issue.

“Do you really expect me to pull this off sleep-deprived and with some rando tagging along I just met?” I feel pretty justified in being a bit pissy.

“No Mrs. Thorne, I expect you to...” Oh hell no…. “…spend the next several weeks planning and bringing Ms. Dee here up to speed on her new job here. We believe the ritual wont take place until the Solstice anyways. How convenient, I think all of you have a few weeks of winter break then too. Perfect. Plenty of time to actually pull this off. That’s like what, a month and a half of planning and a two week window.”

“...”

“Well, you have a lot of work to do. I recommend taking advantage of this time to get to know your new coworker here. You know what, you can even use your travel card to take her to lunch, though with how you smell I’d recommend you use the showers here first. We wouldn’t want someone calling the cops on you after all. You smell like you just left a war zone.” And with that my boss left the room, leaving us alone, in shock, and unsure how to proceed.