Serenity knelt next to the wall where the package with the partial artifact once was. There was a smear of magical residue on the wall. It was a purple so deep that it was almost black, and it tasted like … curiosity?

How can curiosity have a flavor?

Serenity built the spellform and keyed it to the residue on the wall. For a moment, he thought about doing a map-based divination, like the one he’d done for the ley lines, but he shook his head. However unusual this residue was - and it did look strange - he didn’t have the mana pool, even when full, to do more than about a mile radius. That sounded large, and in a smaller city it would probably have been fine, but here? That didn’t even get him out of Brooklyn - in any direction.

Who was to say that the item was still close, anyway? Serenity couldn’t count on it. Even in a ley line, he wouldn’t be able to just spam the divination, and outside at his current recharge rate, he’d only be able to cast about twice a day. No, the much, much lower drain of a simple trace spell was the way to go.

Serenity tied off the ends of the spellform. That way, it wouldn’t lose the reference he was tracing against; it would require a little attention and a trickle of mana to maintain the spell, but he was used to that.

As he finished, he noticed a hand sitting on his back. Rissa’s; he’d have noticed anyone else coming into the room. He moved a wing back towards her and she stroked it.

It was the little things that made him feel like he was home, and this was one of them. Everything was different, but somehow it also wasn’t, and Rissa was here for him the way he was here for her.

Serenity took a moment after he’d finished the spell placeholder to hold Rissa before they headed downstairs.

“Lancaster? I wasn’t expecting you here.” Rissa stopped as she entered the kitchen, but Serenity continued forward and pulled out a chair from the small table across from Lancaster. After a moment, Rissa took the seat next to him.

Lancaster was sitting at the table alone. He’d been reading something on his phone when they came down the hall, but put it away at Rissa’s words. “And I wasn’t expecting the reason you called me to be a robbery you didn’t report otherwise.” He seemed tired, but he smiled. “It’s not dinner, but this is the only time I had, with the Hegemon Worm situation.”

“What’s going on with that?” Rissa spoke before Serenity could.

“Some good news and some bad. That reporter, Made - she still hasn’t woken up, and they haven’t figured out where she was infected. What we do know is that one of the cameramen she worked with seems to have them, and her boyfriend’s vanished. They show up really clearly on an MRI, but that’s not a fast test to run, so now they’re trying to ship in as many as they can; they’re talking about a portable hospital used for disasters, but I’m not sure where that’ll be coming from. My piece is trying to find the boyfriend.” Lancaster leaned back in his chair. “On top of dealing with all the crap that people are doing with their new Paths, of course.”

Serenity nodded. “Have they tried wasp venom yet?”

Lancaster tilted his head a little. “Not that I’m aware of. For … oh! You think it was the wasp and not the damage that made the worms …” Lancaster seemed to go a bit green as he avoided describing the scene.

“It’s something to try. If it poisons them, then maybe it’ll be worthwhile. It’d be better if they can find an alternative that doesn’t also hurt the human, but wasp stings aren’t usually fatal, even if you’re allergic, as long as you get to medical support fast enough.” Serenity suspected that if it did work, a lot of people were going to find out if they were allergic or not very soon. If it didn’t work, well - they’d be able to test that on the poor cameraman.

“I’ll ask. If it does work, though, I don’t know where we’ll get the venom. I don’t think there are that many places that farm wasps.” Lancaster pulled out his phone and started tapping a note into it.

Serenity shrugged; it really wasn’t that hard. “You have the Giant Wasp Dungeon. Send some teams in and have them try to harvest the wasps’ venom. You won’t get much that way - monster parts don’t stick around well without an appropriate Path - but do that a few times and the dungeon will start adding them as drops. Dungeons learn, and I bet that one would be happy to have another possible valued drop.”

Both Rissa and Lancaster stared at Serenity.

“How do you know this shit.” Lancaster shook his head. “The more weird stuff you tell me, the less it sounds like you had a dream, and the more it sounds like my nightmare was real. Still, good idea, and one I bet we’ll try if the venom works on that guy. I don’t suppose you also know how to trace the boyfriend?”

Rissa smothered a laugh and Serenity couldn’t suppress his own smile. “Funny you should ask that. We’re about to see if we can trace one of the stolen artifacts. If that works, maybe we can try.”

Lancaster smiled and shook his head. “Didn’t expect you to say yes, but it seemed worth asking. Tell me about the robbery?”

Serenity heard Rissa take a deep breath to start talking and went to touch her to ask her to wait, but he’d barely moved when she settled back in her chair, silent.

He knew she’d just heard his wordless request. Was that her telepathy - or empathy, whichever, or was it the link between them? He hadn’t closed it, after all, even though they were no longer sharing senses.

For that matter, why was he so sure she’d been about to speak? It was a good guess, but he was absolutely certain.

It was a mystery he didn’t really want to explore, so he focused on Lancaster instead. It occurred to him that Lancaster was one of the people caught in the spell with Rissa and Raz; if completing it with them restored some of Serenity’s mana and essence regeneration, maybe he should try with Lancaster as well?

“Before we do that, can I try something? I want to see if that spell from the dungeon is still hanging around you, incomplete. It was for Rissa.” Serenity waited for Lancaster’s response.

Lancaster shrugged. “Sure, why not? I haven’t noticed anything weird yet other than that line on my Status. What do I need to do?”

“Shake my hand?” Serenity reached out, took Lancaster’s hand, and initiated a link. He could feel that the link was there, but nothing happened. “Looks like it’s gone. Just as well.” The only person left to check was Russ. Serenity really wanted the rest of his regeneration back, but he also wanted to be sure he hadn’t hurt any of his friends. “Please tell me if something does happen? I’ll try to fix it if I can.”

Lancaster shrugged. “This whole thing is weird. I’ll worry about it if something actually happens. So, the burglary?”

Serenity nodded and tried to remember what he wanted to ask. He’d stopped Rissa for a reason. “Can you tell me why you were partnered with Raymond? I haven’t forgotten that he shot me.” Serenity didn’t hold that against Lancaster, but he also remembered that Raymond had shot him after claiming that Serenity was “ruining a good man’s name” or something like that. Serenity didn’t remember the exact words he’d used, but it was like he’d thought Macho was the victim.

“Hah. You would ask that.” Lancaster pushed back against the back of the kitchen chair, lifting it onto only its back legs. “My job, really. You’ve probably noticed that the head of UERT isn’t exactly a normal next step from my supposed last position.”

Serenity wasn’t sure what UERT was, but he could feel Rissa’s agreement and it didn’t seem worth asking Lancaster when he was in a talkative mood, so he nodded silently.

Rissa seemed to feel his confusion and leaned over to whisper in his ear, "UERT's the Unusual Events Response Team, a NYPD task force set up to handle stuff people who've been through the Tutorials do and dungeons and stuff like that. They're pretty famous right now."

“That’s - well, I wasn’t what I seemed. NYPD is a large organization, with some black spots in our history. Part of the problem is that any large organization with the sort of power we have - real or perceived - will have people who take advantage of it, but part of it is also that for a long time it was ignored or not actively pursued.” Lancaster paused, waiting for their feedback.

Everyone knew about the troubled past of the NYPD. Serenity - no, Thomas - had never had trouble with them, but he was a white male. Serenity suspected that if he’d become what he was now with a little less fame, he might have been in for a very different reaction than what he was getting, and the thought concerned him.

Threatening a dragon wasn’t likely to end well, and if it was a police officer doing the threatening, there was a good chance it wouldn’t end well for either of them. Not because any individual was likely to be able to hurt him seriously but because it could damage what he was trying to do. It could discredit him, and possibly damage his friends and family and his effort to save his world.

All over some discrimination by the wrong person. Serenity growled a little at the thought, then tried to refocus back on what Lancaster was saying.

Lancaster hadn’t continued. He watched Serenity openly. “Yeah, I’m told it was pretty bad at one point. I wasn’t here for that; I was hired a bit later. The thing is, even then - people tell me it was better, quite a bit better, but it wasn’t where it needed to be. Where it should be. More than that, though, we had a problem with people who, ah,” Lancaster coughed for effect, “did their job in the most beneficial way for their pockets. The thing is, that’s hard to catch. We did the best we could, but first you have to know where to look.”

“So a few years back, we added another strategy; we’d provide temporary partners when a normal partner is sick or on vacation or,” Lancaster stopped and shrugged, “whatever. It’s amazing how much you can see with only a week or two in a precinct, when people don’t know you’re someone to be wary of. We’re always the junior there, even when we aren’t really.”

Lancaster smiled. “I was a temporary partner for Raymond. I don’t think I’d have caught anything at all if the Tutorial hadn’t happened; Raymond was professional and seemed competent until you ticked him off. As it is, I’m just as happy that he disappeared for unknown reasons in the Tutorial, probably lost in a dungeon. Whatever happened, it’s out of my jurisdiction.”

Serenity hadn’t thought about that. Lancaster very well knew what happened to Raymond; he was dead, with Serenity’s knife in his eye as he went down after attacking Serenity and Echo with others.

On the other hand, it happened in the Tutorial, which definitely was outside Lancaster’s jurisdiction - and there certainly wasn’t a body. If anyone did decide to go after Serenity, they’d need to do it on the testimony of the people there. Lancaster was telling him indirectly that that wasn’t going to happen.

Serenity nodded as the deductions flashed through his mind. “So, what do you know about Macho?”

“The burglar got what Macho was after then?” Lancaster grinned as he leaned forward and the two front legs of the kitchen chair slammed back to the ground. “Not as much as I’d like. I’ve asked around; he has a warrant out both for the attempted armed assault and for escaping custody. From what I can tell, he’s a dead end - a cutout, really, who arranges specifically not to know anything in case a job goes wrong. I haven’t been able to find anything out about someone hunting artifacts.”

Serenity sighed. “That’s about what I figured. I expect he’ll turn up again; people like him usually do.”

“So what was stolen? I won’t put a report in; it’s clear you don’t want me to, so it wouldn’t do any good.” Lancaster lost his smile and looked serious as he pulled out a notepad.

Rissa waved her hand at him. “Put that away, it won’t do you any good. As far as I can tell, whoever it was stole all of the magical stuff I’d collected and nothing else. Most of it’s worth less than $100 to anyone who doesn’t know what it is, and what little’s worth more than that - well, it’s only because it’s antique and has provenance. Provenance I’m trying to break; no one needs this stuff, it’s just hard to safely dispose of it.”

Serenity wasn’t sure he agreed, but without knowing what it was that she was collecting it was hard to be sure.

“So you’re-” Lancaster’s words cut off as his phone rang. He tapped his bluetooth earpiece and answered the phone.

Serenity could only hear bits of the other side of the conversation from the earpiece. “-Rocket. It’s probably magic but … lots of smoke … seventh…”

When Lancaster hung up, he shook his head at the other two. “Never thought I’d see the day when we started doing dispatch by phone instead of radio, but that’s UERT for now. I have to run, see you two when I can. Maybe I’ll even get to join you for dinner one of these days!”