Hi, all! Annabelle Hawthorne here with yet another installment of "my main story has a side trilogy because I can't stop writing about lesbians."

I work hard enough, but I'm just one person. Having a clone would be nice, cause then I'd be

An Army of Two

Ingrid rubbed at her temples in an attempt to assuage yet another massive headache blooming right behind her left eye. She was fairly certain it wasn't a massive stroke waiting to occur, but there was always the possibility that fate had decided to cut her string early.

Dibs on your body, Jenny whispered in her mind.

"Only after I shit my pants," Ingrid snapped.

The awkward moment of silence that followed was further compounded by Aurora slowly spinning in her chair like a geriatric Bond villain, a look of concern on her face.

"What was that about shitting your pants?" she asked. "Is your stomach okay?"

"I'm suffering from IBS is all," Ingrid replied, jerking her thumb at Jenny. The doll was seated in a fucking high chair of all things. "An Irritating Bitchy Spirit."

"You two need to play nice." Aurora frowned and pointed at the monitors. Surveillance footage from around the Kensington estate revealed an increased presence of what appeared to be hired mercenaries, which were one of Jenny's favorites. "The others need you."

"Can we really not get one of the Radleys here?" Ingrid stared at the screen. There were easily twenty men and a few women patrolling the grounds with automatic weapons that hadn't been there a day before. It was clearly a response to Dana and Tasia's break-in, or perhaps even the dead goblin Ingrid left in the Caymans. "What about the fox? Yuki can ice the whole place down."

"Their home is crawling with Fae." Ingrid clicked a button to reveal satellite footage. Where the Radley house should be was a weird dead patch, as if the satellite had malfunctioned. "Dozens of them, all over the house. If this was happening literally anywhere else, the Order would have at least approached the Fae and asked what grievance was committed so that they could mitigate it."

Ingrid scowled. "That fucking figures."

"Why are you being so down on yourself?" Aurora leaned forward in her chair and patted Ingrid on the knee. "You've never balked at a little breaking and entering before."

"Somebody in there took out a werewolf and a...whatever Dana is." Zombie really wasn't the best word for it. "And if they took Lily, too, I feel like I'm jumping into the lion's den with little more than a sharp stick and delusions of grandeur."

I'm the delusion, Jenny whispered, then let out a laugh that sent a wave of static across the monitors, which shouldn't even be possible on LED monitors.

"Ah. I see the problem." Aurora leaned back in her seat. "Feelings of inadequacy. Imposter syndrome."

"It's not a syndrome if you really are faking it." Ingrid groaned and rubbed her temples harder. "Maybe if we had more intel, I'd feel better, but--"

There was a loud thud from above. The two of them looked up to see Eulalie squeezing through a small hole in the ceiling. It was rather remarkable just how small her body could contract when she wanted it to. The Arachne dropped the remaining thirty or so feet and landed in a light crouch.

"I've got valuable intel," she declared. Aurora leaned sideways in her seat to smirk at Ingrid. "Check this out."

Eulalie dropped some charts in front of Ingrid, but misjudged the distance. Instead of landing in a neat stack, they fluttered everywhere on the way to the floor.

"Oops," she muttered. Ingrid noticed that two of Eulalie's legs were tapping anxiously at the floor as the Arachne bent down and scooped up her mess.

"Give me the CliffsNotes version," said Ingrid.

"Right. Satellite telemetry recorded an anomaly out in the Atlantic Ocean on three separate occasions within the last week. The earliest was roughly the same time you were at the oil rig. It was actually spotted leaving from London, then headed to the rig and back. We saw it again right after Lily went radio silent on us, and tracking seems to indicate that it went straight to Lily's last known location, then went back to Kensington."

"Is it a private plane?" Ingrid asked.

Eulalie shook her head. "Far too small. Bigger than a drone, smaller than a plane. But I spotted it again right after you returned from the islands and it's headed to where you were. Based on its current speed and heading, we actually have a narrow window of opportunity. Whatever it is, it's left its base of operations, which is roughly when the guards showed up."

Ingrid frowned and tapped her fingers on the armchair. "You think it's our target? The witch?"

"Whoever it is needed to hire a small army for when they were gone," Eulalie said. "Object isn't much bigger than a single person. My guess? It's someone riding a broomstick."

Ingrid nodded. That tracked with her experience on the oil platform. "I guess that means I'm going in," she said and stood.

"Well, hold on." Aurora snagged Ingrid's hand. "We need to get you properly outfitted first. The away team put together a kit that should help you get in."

"Getting into Kensington isn't the hard part," Ingrid replied. "Apparently leaving is the primary issue. What does the team even have for me?"

"Well...not much," Aurora admitted. "We lost some good supplies in the fire, and what we have left is mostly preventative, demon stuff and the like. Once you leave, that demon will come after you again."

"Goody for me," Ingrid muttered.

"Are you...scared?" The way Eulalie asked the question wasn't accusatory. Rather, she sounded a little stunned at even the thought.

"Of course I'm scared," Ingrid replied. "This fucking sucks. I don't think I can do it."

"But...you're a mage of the Order." Eulalie stared at Ingrid with unblinking eyes. "You guys are terrifying."

"Terrifying?" Ingrid barked a laugh. "Hardly."

"My mother used to have nightmares about the Order." Eulalie frowned down at her hands. "My father taught us early about what he remembered. The knight that hunted them, along with...Master Cyrus." The Arachne smiled weakly. "He was kind of like the boogeyman for my sister and me when we were little. I got in trouble one time for picking up a stick and casting fake fireballs at Velvet when she was still really little."

"Why did your parents teach you about something so scary while you were so young?" Ingrid asked.

"When I was five, I ran into a grizzly bear," Eulalie said. "I accidentally broke its neck while playing with it. My parents needed us to know that there were things in the world that could hurt us, that we weren't invincible. Just...different."

"Well, that was the old Order." Ingrid sighed. "They knew better tricks."

"They were also complete assholes," Eulalie replied. "Look at you, though. Willing to work with others. You're part of the team, the only one who can use magic, even! That's pure DPS!"

"DPS?" Ingrid asked.

"Damage per second," Aurora answered. "Gamer lingo."

Eulalie nodded. "Maybe the Order is different now, but you're a bona fide badass. Do you know what you can do that the others can't? You can cast magic."

Ingrid chuckled. "Only through artifacts and shit I don't have. My options are pretty poor right now."

"But it doesn't have to be magic." Eulalie pointed at the screens. "Those guys are just humans. What are they going to do, shoot at a fireball?"

"That's exactly what they'll do. I would far rather be casting spells from behind Tasia than by myself. She can take a bullet. I cannot." Ingrid shook her head. "I'm literally the one person on the team who can't take a bullet. Hell, if I break a bone, I'm in a cast for weeks. I'm fragile." She looked at Eulalie. "That doesn't mean I'm not going. But it does mean I'm fucking scared."

Eulalie moved slowly and deliberately, as if to not startle Ingrid. The Arachne took Ingrid's hands in her own and met her gaze.

"You can't take a bullet," she said. "Your body doesn't heal. You aren't a demon, or a zombie, or even a werewolf. But you are brave. And once we get you outside of your own head, you'll remember just how brilliant and cunning you are."

Ingrid rolled her eyes. "You can't butter me up. I'm not a piece of bread."

"You escaped a demon. Twice." Eulalie squeezed Ingrid's fingers. "I saw the video footage from Maui. I've seen how you've faced insurmountable odds. You think that you're weaker than the others, but it's simply not true. They have things that they are good at, yes. But you're the one who has always had to think outside the box." The Arachne let go of Ingrid's hands. "When I was a little girl, my father taught me how to hunt with this old rifle of his. It was a Remington. Beautiful gun, he got it from an estate sale."

"Why did you need a gun?" Ingrid asked.

"It wasn't about the gun. See, my sister and I were born killers. It's in our blood. We could have fended for ourselves from an early age. But the reason he taught us how to hunt was two-fold. First, guns could still hurt us. He didn't want us playing with them and thinking we were invincible. Second?" Eulalie smiled, her eyes on a distant memory. "It was so that he could bond with us. He was the only human in a family of Arachne. In a lot of ways, he was like you. The weakest among us."

"I can see that." Ingrid's original response had been far snarkier, but she could see the fondness in Eulalie's eyes. The Arachne was trying to make a point. "So he taught you to shoot."

"My father was a lot of things to me. But mostly, he was the heart of our family." Eulalie smiled. "My mother was cold. Not in a bad way, really. There was this odd...divide sometimes. Like she didn't quite fit in. I'm way more like her in that regard. But it was my father who helped me be more than just that. He couldn't outrun a deer, climb anything, or make webs. But he was so good at being the things we didn't know how to be."

The Arachne's eyes shimmered as her gaze met Ingrid's. "Do you know what goes through a bear's mind when you shoot it with a rifle?"

"Rage? Anger?" Ingrid snorted. "I can only assume nothing good."

"My father had a different answer. He liked to say 'a.22 caliber round if you're a good enough shot.'" The Arachne smiled. "He couldn't snap a bear's neck by accident. But he could aim and wait until it was close enough that he could put a bullet right between its eyes. The Order was the boogeyman, but my father? He was my hero. That's how I see humans, Ingrid. Full of bravery and potential, and capable of doing great things. That's how I see you."

Ingrid stared at the Arachne for several long seconds, her self-loathing officially cut off at the source. Eulalie wasn't just blowing smoke up her ass, the woman was speaking from the heart. For a brief moment, her mind tried to reconcile it as pity, to bring that rancid anger back and bathe in it.

"What I need..." Ingrid closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to hold onto this feeling she suddenly had. This sensation was a freshly lit candle, and she didn't want it to get blown out too quickly.

"Anything we can get you," Eulalie said. "We've got a magical Library and portals everywhere. If you can think of it, we can try to find it."

For the first time in several days, Ingrid firmly stepped back from her personal feelings, from the events that had occurred, and even from her own self-doubts. The visualization was intense enough that she actually found herself standing in a dark room, looking at monitors similar to the ones Eulalie had put up. The Kensington estate was there, the images frozen and overlaid with bursts of static.

Crouched beneath the monitor was Jenny. The spirit's arms were just a little too long for her body as she idly poked at the ground with what could have been a bone.

"Are you doing this?" Ingrid asked.

The spirit shrugged. "It's always like this for me," she said, then stood from her crouch. Her hair shifted just enough that Ingrid could see one wild-eye between them. "I'm not stuck in here with you--"

"You're stuck in here with me," Ingrid finished. "You're no good against demons--"

The spirit blurred and teleported right in front of Ingrid, that wide eye now cracked with veins. The bone was sharpened, and pressed against the base of Ingrid's throat.

"But I am," Ingrid finished, ignoring the spirit and studying the monitors. "I got stuck thinking about the things I couldn't do, along with the things you couldn't do. That's a fool's game. But if I start thinking about the things I'm capable of, the things I was trained for..."

Jenny pressed the sharp end of the bone into Ingrid's neck. The mage simply pulled it back out. This place was little more than a hallucination, after all. Ingrid couldn't be hurt here.

"I don't have a plan yet, but I know somebody who can help." Ingrid patted Jenny on the head. "Want to go make a mess with me?"

Jenny opened her head like a demonic Pac-Man and cackled. The vision popped and she was back in the real world, Aurora and Eulalie watching her with bated breath.

"I need to speak with Tinker Radley."

Tasia opened her eyes and stared at the roof of the barn for almost an hour. She sat up and picked the straw from her hair and sniffed the air with hesitation. Blanching, she stuck out her tongue in response to the flavor of this place.

The air tasted like paint. Once upon a time, this world had been nothing more than brushstrokes on a canvas, some artist's idyllic dream of a small farm on the edge of the woods. Through magic, a small pocket world had been formed, the painted trees and grass imbued with a false life.

The sun never set in this place. As such, it was hard to tell how long she had been stuck here. Whatever magic created the illusion of a real world also provided the minimal sustenance required to stay alive. Tasia's stomach growled, and she rubbed at her belly with a frown.

Upon arriving at Kensington, there had been an ambush--that much she remembered. Then she had awaken here, sick to her stomach and her entire body hurting.

It hadn't taken long to figure out what had happened. This place had odd boundaries, where it looked like the world continued, but it was little more than a painted surface. Her world was an oblong box, less than sixty feet wide, yet a quarter mile deep. It had taken her a minute to recognize the place, which she had last seen inside of a painting in the auction house.

Any doubts that she had been trapped inside this place had been immediately dispelled by the man she called Gunther.

The man was old, perhaps in his nineties. He had been frightened upon seeing her, and had hidden himself away almost immediately. Other than a few, scratchy words of German, he had said little else to her. She had tried to introduce herself, or to communicate in any way, but the guy refused to say another word.

Then the bastard tried to murder her.

Tasia had gone inside the sparsely decorated home and tried to sleep off her headache. She had awoken to see Gunther coming at her with a knife. The man was surprisingly strong, and Tasia had shifted into werewolf form to disarm him. Properly terrified, Gunther now gave her a wide berth, occasionally making the sign of the cross if they ran into each other.

Now Tasia got to sleep in a barn and try to figure out how she could escape from the painting. If the auctioneer was correct and Gunther had been trapped here for decades, there was a very real chance that her fate might be similar.

Or maybe turning into a werewolf would make her strong enough to simply dig her way out. The ground was surprisingly hard, but maybe it wouldn't hold up against her claws.

If Gunther tried to stab her again, she would definitely have the perfect use for a hole. She felt bad for the poor bastard, but that didn't give him a free pass to be so stabby.

Tasia stood up and paced the barn for a little bit, then stretched her arms and legs. She had spent the better part of yesterday trying to damage the boundaries of this painted world without any success while Gunther watched in horror. Maybe the man didn't even want to escape anymore.

If he did, could he even handle it? She couldn't contemplate just how much the world had changed since his capture. In all truth, Gunther had likely gone mad many years ago. She honestly wondered why the man hadn't killed himself yet.

Maybe he couldn't. Now that was a sinister thought that made Tasia shiver. If she got stuck here for decades, she didn't know if she could handle the same level of loneliness. Being a werewolf meant it would be very hard to take her own life.

"Fuck," she muttered to herself before walking outside. Gunther saw her and immediately went back inside his cottage.

Growling, Tasia started patrolling the perimeter again, hoping to find a seam in whatever magic kept her here.

Ingrid took the lift down to the front lobby where Tink had set out a table. Rats were scurrying about on her orders, bringing her a combination of tools and food. The goblin looked up at Ingrid through her magical goggles and waved.

"Pretty mage right on time," she declared, then grabbed a small sandwich and shoved it in her mouth so hard that all the mayonnaise, mustard, and cheese squirted free. The goblin scowled at the food that had escaped her mouth as if expecting it to jump right back into her ravenous maw. Ingrid noticed that some of the mess had gotten on Tink's project.

"Okay, what do you have for me?" Ingrid asked.

Tink cackled and picked up a piece of meat from the table to reveal Ingrid's wand, which had been strapped to the side of a pistol. When held by the grip, Ingrid's hand was in contact with pistol and wand alike, allowing her to casually swap between bullets or magic.

"Need test this," she declared, pausing to lick some mayonnaise off the side. Kisa, who was apparently sitting nearby, snatched the weapon away.

"You don't even have the safety on," she grumbled.

"No bullets," Tink replied, picking up a shotgun and opening it to reveal that it was empty. "Tink no stupid. Smartest wife. Best wife!"

"It'll work?" Ingrid asked, taking the pistol in her hand. She could feel the magic of the wand tingling in her palm.

"Pretty mage test, this one shield wand." Tink made a pistol with her hand and fired an imaginary bullet, which caused her to spit part of her sandwich out.

"I am so sorry," Kisa muttered. "Your little project has made her hyper-active."

"Pretty mage appreciate Tink," the goblin declared, then picked up the cheese that had escaped and shoved it in her mouth.

Ingrid studied the gun, impressed that Tink had carved a light groove in the slide to account for the wand. An unholy amalgamation of duct tape and hose clamps held the contraption together. When she channeled magic through the wand, a barrier formed. While she wouldn't be able to fire the weapon through the barrier, it would allow her to use it like a riot shield.

The shotgun had been altered to accommodate a lightning rod under the barrel. The rod was almost completely hidden, so that would be a nasty surprise for someone who thought she was out of rounds.

"Where's the other pistol?" Ingrid asked.

The goblin made a face and pointed to a melted lump on the floor nearby. "Tink mess up," she admitted.

"And almost took her own face off," Kisa added.

"How did you melt the whole thing?" she asked in horror. "And what about the force wand?"

"It's not technically melted," Kisa replied. "The thing imploded on itself when somebody dropped it to eat a grape."

"Tink sorry." The goblin pouted, her tail flicking behind her. "But Tink do good on other weapons!" She proudly held up a submachine gun that was welded to a fire rod. This would belch out fire and bullets for maximum destruction. A carbine with a strap had been stripped down and rebuilt to incorporate an ice wand.

"This one is kind of cool, no pun intended." Kisa picked up the carbine and held it sideways to point near the trigger. "If you leave the safety on and use the wand, it should create a small shield made of ice on both sides of you."

"But you're not sure?" Ingrid took the carbine from Kisa.

Tink shrugged. "Mage find out, no can test. Goggle say okay." She tapped her headgear.

Frowning, Ingrid channeled magic through the carbine with the safety on. There was a loud hiss as magic enveloped her, then fired massive spikes into the ground around her creating a protective barrier.

"Holy shit," she said, nearly dropping the gun. She studied it for a moment. "What does it do when you actually fire it?"

"With magic? Big big bullet." Tink pantomimed something exploding between her hands. "Maybe big mess, don't know."

"As long as I'm not the big mess." Ingrid set the carbine down. "These are all amazing, thank you."

The goblin beamed.

"However, I don't really have room to carry all of this." She studied the guns for a moment. If she strapped the carbine to her back, she could maybe holster the pistol and carry the SMG and the shotgun. "Call me crazy, but this almost feels like a potential loadout from a videogame."

Tink nodded. "Spider booty help Tink make choice."

"Yeah, well, spider booty doesn't have to carry all of this and Jenny."

"About that." Eulalie's voice came from above. Ingrid looked up and tried not to shudder at the sight of the Arachne dangling down a thread of silk. Once Eulalie was on the ground, she handed something over to Ingrid. "I think I have something that might help."

"What is it?" Ingrid took the object from Eulalie and gasped once she realized she was holding a trenchcoat.

"I found it in Cyrus' house after his death," Eulalie said. "I didn't know what to do with it and thought it might be something you could use."

"Eulalie." Ingrid didn't know what else to say. She ran a hand along the fabric and then tried it on. The trenchcoat was loose on her, easily two sizes too large. Ingrid stuck her hands in the pockets and searched the coat. The only thing she turned up was a receipt for a breakfast place in town. Apparently Cyrus was a member of the VIP club, whatever that meant. His meal of choice had been coffee and pancakes.

"Well?" Eulalie asked. "How does it feel?"

Ingrid tried to keep the disappointment from her voice. "Too heavy," she admitted. "Symbolically, anyway. Also...it's not magical. It's just an ordinary trenchcoat. The pockets won't let me carry everything."

"Oh." Eulalie deflated. "I...didn't even think to check. I just assumed."

"Yeah, the Order wasn't in the habit of handing out spares." Ingrid sighed and took the coat off to study it. "But it does look exactly like what he wore, doesn't it? I don't blame you for thinking it was magical."

"Right." Eulalie put out her hands and took the coat back. "Shit. Let me see if I can weave you something. We can't have you looking armed to the teeth on your way into Kensington."

Ingrid nodded. "That would be good. Our support team wasn't able to put together much for a one-woman assault. We're sort of limited by the stuff we already have." She reached over and ran a hand along Cyrus' nonmagical coat. "It's a shame there's not an auction going on now, maybe they'd have something that we could...could..." The answer was so simple that she was almost mad at herself for not thinking of it already.

"Buy?" Eulalie asked.

"I need a portal," she said. "To Texas."

"Back to the hotel?"

Ingrid shook her head and grinned. "Somewhere much better."

The sun was only an hour from rising over Kensington Palace Gardens, the street lit by Victorian lamps. Ingrid's footsteps were silent against the pavement as she approached the armed checkpoint at the end of the road.

Dana and Tasia had apparently just vaulted the protective walls after their arrival, but Ingrid was going to need a different approach. She hugged herself tight as if cold, but the magical trenchcoat she had stolen from Anthony was more than comfortable enough. By the time she had made it to the checkpoint, the police on guard there were watching her warily.

"Good morning," she said as she held over her falsified credentials. Kensington Palace Gardens wasn't just a neighborhood for very wealthy people, but also hosted a couple of embassies along with the residences of various ambassadors. Not long ago, it had been closed to foot traffic.

The armed guards checked their database, then handed back her ID and waved her through. Ingrid had no idea what her cover story even was, but suspected these people knew better than to question the business of billionaires. Perhaps she was an embassy liaison, or maybe some rich guy's accountant. For all she knew, her current identity was a high-end escort. It ultimately didn't matter.

The homes along Kensington Palace Gardens were old, with many having been updated over the centuries. The embassies had their own armed guards, and various security forces lingered on other properties. By the time she made it to her destination, it was clear that something was different about this estate. For starters, it was actually much larger than any of the others. Ingrid casually walked across the entrance and counted her steps, immediately noticing that she would sometimes forget the number immediately.

The other issue was that the home was unnumbered. If her math was correct, the address should have been 13 Kensington Palace Gardens, but that official honor belonged to Harrington House, which currently housed the Russian Ambassador.

The magic here was similar to the Caymans. It was extremely difficult for her to concentrate on the property as her mind slipped over it. The grounds were far vaster than they had any business being, and the parallels drawn in her mind immediately reminded her of someplace else.

The manor was massive, with a large garden out front with numerous terraces. If somebody had told her that this was what the Radley house could grow up to look like, she would have believed them.

Ingrid touched the earbud in her ear. "I'm there," she said.

"I can see you on the map," Aurora replied. "You keep jumping around a bit."

"Lots of magic here," Ingrid replied. Had Tasia even noticed? Would Dana have? Or had the two of them been far too busy with each other?

It occurred to Ingrid that Tasia usually relied on her partner for such things. It was very likely that her reliance had made her sloppy.

Guns, guns, and more guns, Jenny whispered in the back of Ingrid's mind.

"Are you actually counting them or stating the obvious?" Ingrid whispered back.

The doll giggled and started a creep rendition of Singing in the Rain.

"Okay, creep factor is at maximum. So Jenny is ready." Ingrid paused, pulled out her phone and pretended to be on a phone call to properly survey the area. From where she stood, she was able to identify at least three magical traps on the path they had planned together in the Library.

"I'm looking through embassy cams right now," said Eulalie. "By my count, we have nearly thirty armed guards."

"And they weren't there before?" Ingrid asked.

"Nope," Eulalie replied. "In a place like this, no security at all is outside the norm. My assumption was that this was just some rich person's residence."

Sloppy, Ingrid thought again. "Do we know anything about the current guards?"

"I've had a couple of pings. Basic mercenary types. A few have criminal records in places they can't be extradited to, more than a few soldiers of fortune, but all are professionals." Eulalie cleared her throat. "It would seem this was a last second hiring spree."

"And our target?" Ingrid asked, referring to the witch.

"Last spotted landing in the Cayman Islands," Aurora replied. "No atmospheric disturbances noted. She is at least six hours out, unless she's already on her way back. In which case, four hours."

"You said witch case," Eulalie whispered.

"That's...not even remotely funny," Aurora said.

"Focus." Ingrid adjusted her coat and studied the estate. "If I follow the road up and bypass the fountain, I can go up the stairs on the right. Any luck with the drones?"

"Nope." Eulalie sighed. "Sent one in earlier, but someone jammed the signal and it crashed."

"No eyes on the sky then. Guess it's just me and the doll." Ingrid took a deep breath and let it out. "Think you can keep me from getting killed?"

Jenny giggled. Nope.

Ingrid moved toward the entrance to the estate. "Well if I die, I'm gonna haunt you."

It'll be an eternal tea party, Jenny whispered.

"I'll make sure Grace likes me more."

Fuck you. Ingrid felt the temperature drop as the air filled with a heavy presence. And the horse you rode in on!

"A horse would be far more dramatic." Ingrid stepped through an unseen barrier and felt her skin tingle. There was a faint blip inside her chest, almost like an electrical shock. She flinched and bit her tongue as a spell tried to disrupt her heart and cause her to faint.

You're welcome, Jenny whispered.

"If our friend could do something like that, why not keep it up all the time?" Ingrid wondered aloud.

Too much effort.

"I guess." Ingrid tried to keep to the shadows, aware that they would soon fade with the morning light. The world outside the barrier was ominously quiet, and she wondered if the people here in Kensington would even hear the mess she was about to cause. She reached into one of the deep dimensional pockets of her stolen coat and pulled out the pistol.

The good news was she only had to get in and survive long enough to find the others. They could do the heavy lifting from there. The bad news was pretty much everything else about the situation.

Taking a calming breath, Ingrid moved forward with purpose, her eyes darting to the perimeter guard. She thought she had found a gap in their patrol and was about to slide through it when icy tendrils grabbed her legs and froze her in place.

Not through here, Jenny whispered. A little birdy will see you through his scope and turn you into a mess of feathers.

Ingrid turned to the left and got on her hands and knees to crawl beneath a pair of bushes. The branches slid away from her enchanted coat, but still managed to yank a few strands of hair free from her ponytail. She timed her movements with the wind, then got stuck halfway through once the wind died down.

Whether the weather be fine, or whether the weather be not, whether the weather be cold, or whether the weather be hot. Jenny giggled and a gust of wind rustled the nearby foliage, allowing Ingrid to pop out the other side to see that she was standing in a small clearing that led to a side door.

Between her and the door was a surprised mercenary who was in the middle of lighting a cigarette.

Jenny! Ingrid thought as she raised her gun.

It's more fun this way, the doll declared as the mercenary raised his own weapon and fired a quick burst just as Ingrid summoned a shield around herself.

Magical shields were only partially effective against bullets. A direct strike from a high enough caliber would tunnel straight through, but the man's aim was jerked off course by what was most likely a telekinetic shove from the doll. Ingrid dropped the shield and fired three times, dropping the mercenary where he stood.

"Damn it, Jenny! Shotgun!"

A side pocket opened, allowing the shotgun to slide out and into Ingrid's outstretched hand. She pumped a round into the door latch and gave it a kick. When it slammed open, she turned around.

"Machinegun!" The SMG slid into her palm as the shotgun was retracted. She aimed at the trees and bushes she had just come through.

Sending magic spiraling through the rod, a jet of flame ignited the nearby foliage. Up above, men shouted in alarm as Ingrid made her entrance into what looked to be a utility area. There was a panel labeled Security, which she pulled the main shut off for, then blasted it with the lightning for good measure.

Yes, yes! Janey shouted. Let them fear your wrath!

"This isn't wrath. It's just basic breaking and entering." She looked over her shoulder at the man she had killed. "And maybe a little light murder."

You should set the building on fire, Jenny added. The others will survive it.

"I don't know that Dana would," Ingrid replied. She wasn't entirely certain what the limits of her regeneration were, but fire seemed like a very bad idea.

Best two out of three?

"I'll tell her you said that."

Jenny laughed again as Ingrid ran toward a nearby door and opened it. She was in some kind of servant's hallway, lacking in decoration with a thin runner on the floor. Moving quietly, she heard shouting from outside, along with movement up above.

With no map of the place, she had to guess where to go next. During the brief debate, she heard the rattling of a door in the hallway behind her. She stuck a hand in one pocket and pulled out a grenade. Yanking the pin, she casually tossed it over her shoulder and moved forward and around the nearest corner before it could blow.

"We go up," she said. Clutching the pistol in one hand and the SMG in the other, she made a run for it.

Real life break-ins weren't like action movies. The bad guys rarely all came rushing at you all at once. Instead, they were shouting instructions at each other and trying to establish checkpoints within the estate. What this meant was a lot of slow wandering as each group tried to figure where the bullets were coming from.

This was exactly why Ingrid had Jenny blow a massive hole through the first big wall she came across. The doll was able to shatter the lath and plaster inside of it, which not only allowed Ingrid to make her own door, but scare the absolute shit out of the three guards on the other side who were hiding in the room.

The gunfight was almost dismissive. Ingrid blasted one of the men with lightning before raising her barrier and stepping through the gap. She tossed the shotgun to the side where Jenny snagged it in midair and opened fire on the mercenaries from outside the bubble.

Two rooms and a hallway later, she found herself in an entrance hall. A small double staircase descended into what would have been the main entry if she had come in that way. The home itself was decorated with beautiful antiques, but what Ingrid noticed almost right away was the blank spot on the wall between the double staircase. While no interior decorator herself, the lone hook in the middle of a patch of red plaster framed by curtains made her immediately think of a museum painting.

Down below, the front door had opened and a group of guards opened fire. Ingrid was forced to move back into the previous room and duck down as a hail of bullets punched holes in the wood and plaster around her. Bits of white wall fluff rained down around her, making her think of snow.

The gunsmoke was so intense that it filled her mouth with an acrid taste. Sniffling, she held her pistol tight in both hands to channel far more magic than usual, then sprinted across the opening.

Her ears rang with the ensuing cacophony of bullets. The shield shimmered as it took multiple impacts, then failed. At least two smaller caliber rounds shattered against her magical coat, but a third that was much larger smashed into her shoulder, causing her to spin and fall on the stairs. Grunting, Ingrid yanked free the carbine and fired it straight in the air.

A wall of ice appeared around her, and the gunfire ceased.

"What the fuck is that?" somebody asked.

"Ice?" Somebody put a couple of rounds into the ice wall, which held. "This job is fucking weird, man."

Ingrid hissed in pain as she lifted her arm and flexed, hoping her shoulder was okay, that her arm wasn't broken. It was going to hurt real bad tomorrow, that was for sure. Wincing, she reached for her shotgun as footsteps came up the stairs and sent a blast of lightning at a big guy wearing a face mask and holding an AK-47. The bolt of electricity went straight through the man's body armor and sent him flying back down the stairs.

"Shit, that hurts." Grunting, she rolled over and crawled up the stairs as more gunfire chipped at the ice. Concentrating on her pistol, she summoned the shield and made it up the stairs, making sure to keep low as she was fired at from below.

If you don't want your body anymore, I'll take it. Jenny giggled ominously. I'm always in the market for something used, though the model you've got is older and slower than what I'm holding out for.

"If I ever give you my body, I'm gonna make sure I have a massive hemorrhoid first. Then it'll be my turn to be a pain in the ass for you."

Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words--DUCK!

Ingrid hit the floor as gunfire erupted through the wall closest to her, tearing up the space where she had been standing. Whoever was shooting had no actual idea where she was, and Ingrid was able to get up as the bullets swept back in the direction she had been. Behind her on the steps, a man crested the rise and aimed a gun at her only to catch some strays through the wall.

Jenny giggled. Loser!

Ingrid opened up the next door to find a bathroom. Leaving the door open behind her, she jogged down the hall and turned the corner to see a man leaning against a distant doorframe. He spun and took aim, but his rifle lifted up to bash him in the face. Ingrid shot him and moved in his direction.

"Are we even going deeper into this house?" she asked. When she got to the man she had just shot, she put a second bullet in him to make sure he was dead, then picked up his rifle. Thinking he may have been guarding a special room, she was disappointed to see that it was another bathroom.

"This fucking sucks," she muttered. "Do you know why rich people have so many bathrooms?"

'Cause they're so full of shit, Jenny replied.

Ingrid had no response for that.

"Next guy we run across, let's disarm the fucker and see where we should be going," she said.

Eulalie stared at the bank of security monitors with one eye while several of her others watched a steady stream of data on another set of screens. She was busy playing Cat's Cradle with a piece of web between her fingers, idly spinning shapes that would put the world's best seamstresses to shame.

"Any sign of activity?" she asked.

"None," Aurora replied. Her job was to watch the monitors around the embassies and see if the ruckus Ingrid was likely causing pulled in more security. "The place is clearly warded, which is...well, I don't know if that's good or bad. We can't see in there, but neither can anyone else."

Eulalie frowned. "I hate this," she said. If there wasn't an extremely good chance of the Fae Court trying to abduct her to get at Mike, she absolutely would have considered it. Honestly, she had no idea what had their tits in such a twist.

"Me, too," Aurora admitted. "But at least Jenny is in there, too."

The Arachne made a face. "While Jenny possesses a certain single-mindedness in some matters, she has been known to go off script."

"Do you think she'll abandon Ingrid?"

Eulalie shrugged. "I think it means she's a wild card. Could be a huge help, or even the oppos--what the fuck is that?" Her head swiveled to focus on a pair of screens with data streams. She had bookmarked the Collector's accounts that she was aware of and money was being shifted to numerous entities from some of those accounts.

"Is everything okay?"

"Somebody is spending a shit ton of money all of the sudden." Eulalie swung toward the nearest keyboard and started typing. "Which makes me wonder if she's buying something else or...shit."

"Shit?" Aurora looked away from her screens.

"These destination accounts, some of them belong to local military groups." Scowling, Eulalie watched the flow of money. In moments, almost ten million dollars was spent. She moved to a different monitor and started pulling up a couple of dark web sites that were used to hire mercenaries. A quick read confirmed her suspicions. "Our witch is buying a small army."

"For what?" Aurora asked.

"Kensington." Eulalie narrowed her eyes. "Looks like she caught wind of what's going down. She's offering cash up front and a bounty to anyone who kills the intruder."

"That's gotta be a logistical nightmare. How is she supposed to know who is supposed to be there?"

"I'm willing to bet some witch nonsense." Eulalie stared at the flow of cash. If she hired a small army of her own, could they even get into the mansion without being shot?

No, that wouldn't work. Mercenaries had no qualms about fighting each other, but trying to hire an opposing force would just blacklist people. If she was lucky, maybe she'd get ten people worth their salt. She needed to find a way to leverage this influx of people into something useful, something that would drastically tip the scales.

"I need you in Kensington," she said.

"What?" Aurora swiveled in her chair. "I'm not trained for this."

"No. But you are trained in hospitality." Eulalie picked up a piece of paper and started scribbling on it. "If you run to Ingrid's portal, you can be there in twenty. I'll have your credentials ready for the gate guards."

"And then what?"

"I'll text you the details on the way." The Arachne was doing some rough math on the paper. "Dress professionally, but wear good shoes. I'm gonna send you some QR codes, you'll need them."

"For what?" Aurora called as she jogged out of the room to the nearest platform.

"I'LL TEXT YOU!" Eulalie shouted, then paused and looked at a monitor across the room. There was an atmospheric disturbance in the Atlantic Ocean, barely a blip. The Arachne moved to a different monitor bank and logged into a pair of government satellites.

"Fuck," she muttered. Something small was pulling Mach 2 over the ocean. Either the Cayman Islands were testing a random missile, or a very angry witch was already on her way home.

Biting her lip so hard that she bled, Eulalie moved toward the nearest computer and started programming an automation sequence. In five minutes, she got a text from Aurora that she was in London. At the twelve-minute mark, Eulalie got false credentials put onto the list at Billionaire's row. With a single minute to spare, she sent the text with the plan to Aurora's phone.

Letting out a gasp, the Arachne leaned back in her web and let out a heavy breath. Her phone dinged a few moments later and she saw that Aurora had responded.

That's super fucked up was followed by a laughing emoji.

The Arachne grinned and leaned forward, steepling her fingers as she stared at a data stream from her satellites.

"Game on, witch."

In the halls of Kensington, Ingrid let go of a man slumped against the wall. His nose was broken with blood gushing down his lips. Her knuckles were also bloodied as well, but she had no way of knowing how much was hers and how much was his.

"That asshole has a hard head," she muttered.

Now he's got a soft spot, Jenny added.

"Yeah, only after I beat the shit out of him." Wincing, Ingrid drew her pistol. "I wish you had just scared the information out of him when we first got here instead of making me punch him in the face like an idiot."

But you were doing so well! The sound of children clapping filled the room. It was clearly some sort of wine storage, only there were no bottles of wine anywhere.

"I think my pinky got dislocat--OW!" Ingrid felt psychic fingers grab her busted digit and yank it back into place.

Would you like a sucker for being such a good patient?

"Fuck you." Ingrid looked back toward the door. She had bought herself some extra discovery time with a pair of grenades and a timed explosive on the other side of the house. The amount of property damage alone was staggering, but since most of the mercenaries were outside the home when she snuck in, they were just as lost as she was.

This guy, however, was apparently a regular. Sure, Jenny had to infiltrate his mind and torment him with a psychic scorpion bath, but now she had a direction to move in, and it was down, somehow.

Service stairs took her down toward the basement. She paused for a minute to listen to a group of men run down an adjacent hallway while Jenny cackled at them from the shadows. The mage used the moment to catch her breath, then took a drink of water from a canteen in one of her pockets.

"Almost there," she muttered to herself, then capped the canteen and finished her descent. The man's directions would have sounded like the ramblings of a mad man, but not only did Jenny vouch for his honesty, but the answer sounded appropriate somehow.

A few minutes later, she was down in the basement. Instead of concrete and dirt, it was opulently decorated with fancy rugs and a massive door in the back of the room. Between her and the door was a group of ten mercenaries, all of them armed with weapons pointed in her direction.

Ingrid barely ducked out of the way. If not for the thick stone foundation, she would have been reduced to meat paste.

"Looks like we're at the path of most resistance," she muttered. "Think you've got one good push in you?"

Jenny cackled and the temperature dropped. They will know fear.

Ingrid pulled all four of her guns out and set them on the floor. Up above, she could hear footsteps headed her direction. Snatching up the pistol, she undid the belt of her coat and yanked it open.

Strapped to her chest in a baby carrier made of silk webbing was Jenny. The doll let out a cackle of delight now that she was out in the open.

Say the thing! She demanded. Say it say it say it say it.

"Say hello to my little friend!" Ingrid stepped around the corner as the other three guns levitated off the ground behind her. Using the pistol exclusively as a shield, she sprinted toward the men guarding the door as Jenny opened fire on them from outside the magical barrier.

The man closest to them raised a rifle to take aim, but his head snapped rapidly backward so that he was looking at the people behind them. One of those guys dropped his own gun in surprise, then tried to run but was dragged toward Ingrid and lifted in the air to become a meat shield. He jerked in the air as bullets tore him apart.

Play with me! Jenny growled. PLAY WITH ME!

Dust drifted down from the plaster ceiling as Ingrid moved the remaining distance, pausing every few moments to lower her barrier and take aim. Dropped weaponry was added to Jenny's arsenal, and the spirit fired relentlessly, creating a storm of bullets.

Sadly, Jenny's aim was shit. Most of the weapons ran out of ammo quickly, then were hurled with far greater accuracy. The group of ten was soon reduced to zero as Ingrid moved toward the door at the end of the room and tried to push it open.

"Damn, it's locked." Scowling, Ingrid put her hand out. "Carbine." The rifle was slapped into her hand as she took several steps back and took aim at the lock. Behind her, people were shouting in the stairwell as she pulled the trigger.

The carbine exploded. Ingrid was launched backwards as a twelve-foot-long icicle the size of a car erupted from the barrel, blowing the door off its hinges.

"Ow!" Ingrid moaned and rolled to her feet, then crouch-ran toward the open door. Somebody in the stairwell opened fire, and she ended up being pushed through the doorway by bullets ricocheting off her coat. Rolling out of the way, she stuck her hand.

"Shotgun!"

You landed on my face.

"Shotgun!" Ingrid looked around for where Jenny may have dropped the weapon. Out in the previous room, she heard boots on the floor as her pursuers grew close.

MY! FACE! The house shook.

"Damn it, Jenny!" Ingrid reached into her pockets and pulled out a pair of grenades. She threw both of them into the last room and heard cries of panic. After they detonated, she heard a secondary explosion and the house shook as the ceiling collapsed and dumped debris into the room she had just left.

"Where is my shotgun, Jenny?" Ingrid coughed heavily and wondered what year asbestos was used to build houses. She managed to find her pistol nearby, but that was the one weapon she had been clutching.

The ghost was silent. Ingrid looked down and tapped the doll on its forehead. The head jerked around a hundred and eighty degrees to look at her, the fixed facial expression somehow accusatory.

"Okay, fine, I'm sorry." Ingrid narrowed her eyes. "I didn't mean to fall on you after getting shot in the fucking back."

Was that so hard? The rubble behind Ingrid shifted. She turned around and watched as a wooden beam shifted and the shotgun came through.

"And the SMG?"

The rubble shifted again, but nothing happened. The temperature dropped hard enough that Ingrid could see her own breath, but the third weapon didn't appear.

Be grateful for what you have, Jenny muttered.

"Can't get it up?" Ingrid smirked. "That's what happens when... when..."

Finally getting a good look at the room she was in, her eyes were immediately caught by the opposite wall. A curtain hung over what was clearly the frame of a large painting, but it made Ingrid feel sick just looking at the fabric. The fabric had shifted just a bit to reveal a tiny sliver of black along the edges that whispered to her.

She took a tentative step toward the painting, but paused when her hair was yanked backward suddenly.

I wouldn't do that, Jenny cautioned. Not without the others.

"Is that...the outsider?" Ingrid frowned.

Maybe. It feels wrong.

Ingrid shivered. Coming from Jenny, that was actually a very powerful statement. Looking around, she saw a pair of doors. Behind her, rubble was being shifted, but she doubted anyone was coming through there anytime soon. The rest of the room looked like an entryway, giving her the strange impression that she had entered another house entirely. Taking a moment to examine what was left of the front doorway, she was able to discover just the hint of dimensional magic along its seams.

"Are we sure this isn't the Radley house?" she wondered aloud.

You should keep the dumb thoughts to yourself.

"But you can read my mind."

So don't think them at all, dummy.

Ignoring the doll, Ingrid moved to the nearest door. "I hate this," she said. "As best as I can tell, we just fought our way through a mansion just to get inside of a magical home that's actually somewhere else. This feels like a nesting doll of bullshit."

The mage had her hand on the doorknob when the door was violently shoved open. She tucked into a roll and did a backspring onto her feet, bruising her chin on the top of Jenny's head. Raising her gun, she opened fire on a dark figure wrapped in black cloth.

The humanoid moved toward her, the bullets doing nothing. Ingrid raised her shotgun and fired it in the figure's face, disintegrating the black mask over its head to reveal what was left of a skull beneath. The figure cocked its head to one side, allowing its jaw to fall off completely, then wrapped its hands around her neck.

A powerful wave of psychokinetic energy tossed the thing backward where it crumpled against the wall. Ingrid rubbed at her neck and approached it.

"What the fuck is..." Her voice trailed off as the thing looked up at her, the bones cracking as it tried to stand up. Through the doorway it had just come, a similar humanoid could be seen approaching.

Not a single thought in its head, Jenny whispered. Can't kill what's already dead!

"What are you trying to say?"

I would run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm--

Mercilessly, the doll went silent as Ingrid slapped a hand over her mouth and ran through the other door.

Dana kept her eyes closed, trying her best to feel something beyond the phantom tendons that allowed her to flex the muscles in her hand. Every now and then, she could feel the cold, metallic touch of the pin holding her hand in place.

If she had been alive, the mental exertion alone would have had her panting and sweating, of that she was sure. Even now, there was a cold sort of weight that had settled in the base of her mind. She did her best to focus on that rather than the magical rationale for why she was even able to do this in the first place.

Honestly, if the Collector hadn't jammed all that jerky into her stomach, she would already be a raving mess. Dana drooled openly as her body struggled to process the meat in her stomach while she existed in a fixed state of dying. Blood would form and then pump out of her, creating quite the mess on the floor.

"C'mon, c'mon," she whispered, feeling that metallic edge slip between her fingertips again. It reminded her very much of the effort required to reach the bolts on the bell housing of a Chevy S-10.

"Almost there, Sparks." Her dad smiled at her as she stuck out her tongue in concentration.

"I hate that I can't see it," she complained in another attempt to slot the ratchet over the bolt with her body stretched over the open engine. Her shirt had ridden up long ago, allowing her stomach to get coated in dirt. The little girl had on a baseball hat with an LED light clipped to the brim, but had long ago spun it around backward, neglecting to turn the light off.

"Sometimes you gotta do these things by touch," he said, placing his hand on her forearm and squeezing gently.

"How do I know when to turn it?" she asked.

"Sometimes, you guess. Otherwise? You just know."

"Why can't you do it?" she asked.

"Oh, I already know how to do it." Her father chuckled and rubbed her back. "I could have it done in just a few minutes."

Dana said a word under her breath that would get her grounded.

"Don't let your mother hear that," he said, giving her butt a playful swat with his grease rag. Dana turned her head to glare at him.

"You're distracting me."

"Or maybe you're thinking about it too hard." His face got serious as he shifted position, allowing him to put both of his hands by her wrist. "You need to think of the ratchet as an extension of your hand. When you close your eyes, can you sense where your fingers are?"

"Uh huh," she muttered, then slipped. "Ah, shit."

"Hey, language." Her father lowered her voice. "If your mother had ever done one of these, she'd understand. But she hasn't."

"And she won't," Dana grumbled.

"It doesn't interest her, Sparks. And that's totally fine. Baking doesn't interest you and she doesn't give you grief over it."

Dana paused what she was doing to stare at her dad. "Do you really believe that?"

Her dad sighed. "Okay, fair. She spent a lot of years thinking her little girl would bake cookies with her and have tea parties. It was a bit of a shock when you wanted that toy engine set for your fifth birthday. She thought it was a phase, but you were out in the garage helping me change spark plugs just six months later."

"Yeah I was." Dana stared at her father, studying the lines of his face. Her current memory of what he looked like had melded with how she pictured him from her childhood. That streak of gray by his temples certainly wasn't there now. "That's why you called me Sparky, right?"

Her dad shrugged. "There's lots of good reasons, actually. We couldn't get you to stop licking 9-volt batteries for starters."

"I like how it tingles." With her attention focused on her father, it was far easier to pretend that the ratchet in her hand was some unholy amalgamation of flesh and metal, stretched far into the bowels of some metallic beast. With her face so close to the engine, she thought it was strange that it stank of blood and smoke. Dana wondered if she had cut herself.

Her dad laughed. "Anyway, if you ever try to make a baked Alaska with your mom, she could teach you some bad words of her own."

"Why on earth would somebody make one of those for fun?" Dana asked. A Baked Alaska was a cake with ice cream inside of it.

"Sometimes it's the challenge of--freeze." Her father clamped his hands down on her wrist. "Right there, do you feel it?"

Dana nodded. She had gotten the socket over the nut.

"Go slow, but firm," he said. "You're not in a rush. Once you can't move any further, twist that ratchet back, feel the clicks inside of it."

Dana nodded, doing her best to maintain her grip on the ratchet. If she let go, it would pop off the nut. For whatever reason, the tool was wet in her hand.

Her father was inexplicably silent as she twisted her hand, feeling the clicking of the ratchet as if it were the bones in her finger instead. She had to regain her grip numerous times as she slowly eased the bolt out.

"I hate this," she moaned. "Why did they design it this way?"

"Who knows, Sparks. But you're doing great." Her dad paused. "What changed between us?"

"Huh?" Dana nearly dropped the ratchet. That nickname was something only Alex had called her. This wasn't a memory, but something else. "What do you mean?"

"We used to be close. And then you went off to college and, well..."

"My girlfriend died."

He nodded. "I get that. You stopped calling, stopped coming around. Whenever we tried to spend time with you, you were sullen. Sadness does that sometimes, you know? It takes a great, big bite out of your soul and others are forced to wait until you grow back enough to shine again."

"I..." Dana was absolutely certain this conversation had never happened, but didn't dare let her concentration on the ratchet slip. "It's not about you," she finally said.

"I know that it's not about me. Your mom and I did nothing wrong. You wanted space, so we gave it to you." The man stepped around the dinner table which now sat where the tool bench had been. Her mother was sitting there, her meal untouched as she studied Dana with bleary eyes. "But then you started comin' round with that teacher of yours."

"Quetzalli. Oh. Right." Dana scowled. This was a really inconvenient time for a hallucination involving character growth. "Yeah, that was a farce."

"Why?"

"'Cause I died." The ratchet spun easier now, the bolt slipping closer and closer to freedom. "Got murdered by a necromancer and fell in love with a werewolf."

"That sounds like the kind of books your mom enjoys." Her father withered under a glare from her mom. "What? It does!"

"Did you think we wouldn't understand?" asked her mom.

"I figured you wouldn't believe me." Dana grunted, suddenly aware of the dirt all over her stomach. It felt like it was sanding off her flesh as she squirmed. "Parental love is a special thing, but there is a pretty stark contrast between the world you live in and the one I do."

"Shouldn't that be our choice?" he asked.

Dana sighed again. "Look, originally I figured I would get better and let it go. But I came to realize that the Dana you knew died. I'm...somebody different?"

"Are you, though?" Her father smiled sadly. "Just because who you are changed doesn't mean we don't still love you."

"Dana died, Dad. I'm just wearing her body."

"I carried that body inside of me for nine months," her mother said. "If my child died, shouldn't I have the right to mourn her?"

"Why the fuck is this conversation even--" Dana almost lost her grip on the ratchet. "Damn it."

"Language," her mother cautioned.

"This existential guilt trip is beneath me," Dana muttered. Her stomach felt hot, and she briefly wondered if the engine had still been hot. Her nerve endings were firing on all cylinders now, as if uncertain which sensation she needed to be feeling.

Her mother and father watched her quietly, then turned to face a dark specter who had joined them at the table. Death looked up from his cup of tea, then took a sip.

"Don't look at me. I can't even see her," he said just as the nut popped free. The tang of metal against marble had Dana opening her eyes to watch her hand slump forward, the large pin holding it in place now on the floor.

"Finally," she muttered, concentrating now on the tiny pins that had been holding the flaps of her skin open to reveal the muscle structure beneath. She got half the pins out before her hand swung free, her skin tearing. Her hand landed with a splat on the floor.

Satisfied, she flexed her fingers to make her hand stand up like Thing from the Addams family. It took a few minutes to establish a walking rhythm, her hand looking very much like a drunk facehugger as it stumbled around.

Okay, now that her hand was free, what was the play? The hand and wrist terminated right before her elbow, so she could try and reattach it, but then what? Maybe free herself?

Or was the play to try and knock over the painting with Tasia trapped inside. Dana scrunched up her forehead in concentration, wondering how to save Tasia.

This forced her to confront a rather ugly truth. The only thing she could do was damage the canvas. Without understanding how the magic worked, doing so could kill Tasia. Then again, the werewolf was either doomed to an eternity in the painting or being dissected as Dana was.

Maybe she should chance it. If she could knock the painting on the ground, she could stab it with the metal spike and destroy it.

Taking a deep breath, Dana briefly contemplated if this was the right course of action. Logically, it made sense, but her emotions were compromised. She had trouble feeling beyond the discomfort of her position, and only vaguely knew that Tasia's death would eventually devastate her.

The second option was to try and reattach her hand to her arm, but she had no way of knowing just how strapped down she was. And once her hand was reattached, the only option for removing it once more would be to chew it off.

What to do, what to do? Her mind whirled with possibilities until a third presented itself.

Up the spiral staircase and trapped inside of a snowglobe was Lily.

Dana flexed her hand and had it walk out of sight. She closed her eyes and tried to picture the path she had been brought along, her photographic memory allowing her to reconstruct the journey. Cautiously, she moved her hand until it bumped into the bottom step of the spiral staircase, then painstakingly climbed it.

The zombie kept count in her head, making sure to double verify everything. If her hand got lost, there was no telling how long it would take her to find her way back to the lab again.

Dana felt soft, plush carpet beneath her fingertips and smirked. She had made it back to the office where she had woken up. Taking a long moment to picture the room again, she was able to visualize the table where Lily's snowglobe had been set down. As long as nothing about the room had changed, she would be able to find it.

The leg of the table had a bulbous foot, and Dana held the wood tight with her fingers as her thumb pushed the hand up. After slipping off twice, she was able to clutch the rim of the table and pull her hand up and over the side. Moving carefully, she felt at the random objects. She bumped into a lamp first, and then a discarded mug. By the time she made it to the snowglobe, she made a mental note of how many seconds it had been since she started.

If her math was correct, it had taken her hours to free her hand and find Lily's snowglobe. Grinning with satisfaction, she flexed all the tendons in her hand until the glass shattered.

Only three chapters left in this book! I hope you had fun, cause I certainly did (please don't show this chapter to my therapist).

~Annabelle Hawthorne