The Agency

"Well, Py," she said, sitting down on the brand new, plastic-covered mattress with a loud crinkle, "Here we are."

The cat gave her a withering look and set to performing his feline yoga, a Butt Salutation, while he licked his back leg and pointedly ignored her. He had in fact been angry at her since the night before, when armed FBI agents had stormed their apartment, then she'd disappeared while someone called SA-14 had stuffed Py into a carrier and brought him here...wherever here was.

She'd been told by the friendly armed guard who'd escorted her here that the Shadow Agency's campus was west of Loop 1, back behind Camp Mabry. It was in fact disguised as part of the University of Texas research complex, and looked to all outward eyes like a big brick campus building, three stories and carefully-manicured grounds, one of dozens like it around Austin, totally innocuous and unremarkable. Most of the employees and Agents of the SA lived aboveground, where she was. The majority of the nonhumans and a few others lived underground.

The main command center and most of the classified operations were below the surface, too, branching off something just called "The Floor." The diagram she'd been given depicted the Floor like the middle of a spider web, with training rooms and archives and living quarters branching off of it in all directions.

Sara hadn't seen any of that yet. Her tour below was scheduled for Monday, her first day on the job. Today she was free to walk around the upper levels and familiarize herself with the layout. At her orientation on Monday morning she would receive her security pass for the Floor.

She'd spent a restless night in an empty, windowless room on the most uncomfortable excuse for a bed she'd ever dealt with, worrying about her belongings, fending off nightmares about guns and shouting men. She'd lain awake remembering the two creatures who had interrogated her, and that was no more comforting than her dreams.

Vampires. Elves. Not only were they real, they were now her coworkers.

What in hell was I thinking?

She'd spent an hour filling out the application forms, been shown to a temporary room, and given assurances that her possessions would be transferred to her new quarters by morning. The Elf--SA-5, whom the vampire had called Rowan at some point, she remembered--had been very sweet in promising to see to her cat's welfare personally. He had slipped her application into her file without even looking over it, smiled at her, and turned her over to the guards before vanishing down the same corridor that SA-7, the vampire, had taken earlier.

And now, here she was, in her new home.

"Here we are," she said again, as if to force herself to believe any of this was real. "Hi, my name is Sara Larson, and I work for the Shadow Agency, a top secret branch of the FBI that investigates the occult. Yes, I'm insane, why do you ask?"

She stared around her, trying to make sense of her surroundings without dwelling too much on the fact that her life had suddenly become a prolonged X-Files episode. Her entire apartment had been packed up in a few hours into stacks of cardboard boxes that now surrounded her; each was labeled CLASSIFIED in huge black letters, but underneath was a smaller sticker that indicated which room the items had come from. Thank goodness she'd only been in Austin for a month, and had fled Houston with only what she could fit in her rented Corolla.

She wouldn't need any cookware or anything like that; there was a cafeteria that saw to the varied needs of the diverse staff, and it was open all night and all day, presumably to feed those who were nocturnal...she found herself wondering if the vampire got his blood there. Did he have to stand in line with a tray? Drink it with a straw? And what did Elves eat, anyway? Morning dew and acorns?

And what else worked here besides humans? Werewolves? Elementals? The Wizard of Oz?

Her brain was spinning again. Too much, this was too much. She had to focus on something, something mundane and small, or she was going to blow a gasket.

Sara forced herself to stand up and open one of the boxes. She could unpack. That was good and normal.

Her new quarters were a small suite of rooms that seemed situated in the corner of the building. She had a small bedroom, a sitting room off that, a walk-in closet, and her own bathroom. Nothing luxurious, but bigger than she'd expected, and probably better built than her apartment had been. The walls were a standard beige, the floor hard wood and bare. There was no decoration. The furniture was plain and utilitarian, with a bed and desk and bookshelf, overhead lights. There was a small sofa and TV stand in the sitting room, and a mini fridge/microwave combo.

She'd moved to Austin with nothing, so she had nothing here, furniture-wise; she wondered if they'd let her have more shelves. She had a lot of books, a TV, a reasonable collection of DVDs, and a set of speakers to connect to her iPod. That was really about it.

One of the bookshelves was about the right height for an altar. She should set that up first; maybe having incense burning, assuming that wasn't against regulations, would make her feel less panicky.

She walked past the desk to try moving the shelf, and noticed a folder there with the SA seal on it. "Welcome to the Shadow Agency Living Quarters," it proclaimed in sober silver lettering, as if she'd booked a room at the Hyatt and would find the room service menu and concierge phone extension inside.

The folder contained lists of rules about what she could and couldn't do to her new home. Painting was allowed, but only using an approved zero-VOC organic paint that could be requisitioned through Housekeeping. Incense, she saw, was permitted "within tolerance of nearby residents." Candles were not to be left unattended. Trash pickup, laundry pickup...it was like a cross between a dorm and a hotel.

Also in the folder was a requisition form for additional furniture, a more detailed map of the surface level building, a phone extension list, a guide to getting on the Agency network...which was pretty useless to her at the moment, as she had no computer. Her faithful Mac laptop had finally died the week before she'd moved here to Austin, and until she got a job she'd had no hope of replacing it. Temp work had been a last resort when her usual interviewing skills had failed her.

It occurred to her to wonder, for the first time, if Blue Moon had had something to do with her streak of ill luck. They'd threatened her, lied to her, tried to frame her for murder. What was a little hex between exes?

The magma of rage rose in the back of her throat, and she dug her fingernails into the paper she was holding until it started to wrinkle. Blue Moon--the people she'd pledged to support and defend. Her covenmates. They were supposed to do the same for her. She'd stood in Circle with them, called upon the old gods, celebrated the eight holidays of the Pagan year...danced...chanted, called up power the mainstream believed a fantasy...and they had betrayed her, broken her trust under their collective heel. They had killed.

"I'm going to stop you," she murmured, feeling dizzy with anger. "I'm going to stop you." She looked down at the Agency seal. "We're going to stop you."

Sara took a deep breath, grounding herself, and turned back to the pile of boxes. "Okay. Altar. One step at a time, girl."

As she stripped the packing tape from the first box, she heard a knock at the door.

"Come in," she called, a bit uneasy as to what might cross the threshold.

To her relief, the head that poked in was perfectly ordinary--a messy-haired young man in a dark blue lab coat, wearing a clip-on badge with his picture.

"You must be the new girl," he said with a cheerful grin. "I'm Frog."

She stared at him. "Frog? So, are you, like, an amphibian of some kind?"

His grin grew wider. "Nope. 100% regular human being. I'm your next door neighbor. I work in Research and Development."

"So why do they call you Frog?"

He shrugged. He was kind of cute, in a geeky way, with his horn-rimmed glasses and slightly crooked nose. He reminded her of every guy she'd dated in high school, and, lucky for him, he looked nothing like a frog. "I keep frogs," he explained. "I have three Poison Darts and a Peruvian Laughing frog."

"Oh. Well, I'm Sara. Larson." She gestured at the now-retreating grey rear end of her cat. "That's Pywacket."

"What?"

She smiled. "Pywacket. He's named after the cat in Bell, Book, and Candle--you know, that old movie with Kim Novak, about the witches?"

Frog shrugged. "Never heard of it. Cool name, though."

"Thanks."

"So, what did they recruit you for? I heard there was an opening in Admin."

"Yeah, something about filing and dispatch?"

Frog nodded. "Awesome. I've been here for five years--I started there too. They always throw people into Admin and then move them wherever."

That was interesting. It hadn't occurred to her that this might be an entry level position. "Like where?"

"Well there's R&D, where I'm at--we take the weird weapons and stuff that we confiscate and figure out what they do and if they're useful, or we send them to the Vaults to be permanently stored. We research the history of a lot of organizations and suspects, too. There's also the Floor, where you run logistics for the field Agents."

"Logistics, as in..."

"Maps, satellite recon, computer stuff, dispatching Agents to emergency situations. Sometimes the FBI or another agency calls for our help when they find something they can't handle. Then there's the field itself, but unless you're psychic they won't even train you for that."

"Wait, so all of the Agents are psychic?"

"Yep. Have to be. The communication system is part tech, part telepathy. Wait till you see the system, it's amazing--but you have to be at least level 3 telepathic to use the Ears."

Sara sat down on the couch, inviting Frog to follow suit, her mind awhirl with questions. "So anybody they hire that's psychic, they've probably got a plan for, right? I mean, you wouldn't need a telepath to file and type."

"Right, right. I'm a total dud, thank God, just a computer geek." He chuckled affably, and she decided she liked him. "Otherwise I might have to do something dangerous."

"So what do you do, exactly? Or can I ask that yet?"

"Technically no, I guess you shouldn't until you have your clearance, but..." He shrugged. "I don't think anybody will care, I mean, SA-5 vouched for you and that's all the clearance I think you need."

"Do you know him? The Elf guy?"

Another grin, and a nod. "Yep. We work together a lot--that's my current project. We're developing a prototype for a psychic inhibitor. Agent 5 is the most powerful psychic in the Texas branch, but he can't shield very well, so he has to stay here on base. Big crowds of unshielded people screw him up pretty badly. The inhibitor would stabilize his shielding, and amplify it, so he could go into the field to crime scenes and on-site investigation."

"I don't get it," Sara said. "If he's so powerful, why can't he shield?" She hadn't noticed it last night, but then, she had her own psychic barriers; it was part of the fundamental training for Witches to learn how to keep their own emotions and thoughts separate from other people's, so that they could better take responsibility for their own actions. Mucking about with magic made you sensitive to other people's energy, so it was essential to have good boundaries.

Frog's smile faded, and he shook his head. "I don't really know. It has something to do with what happened to him before he came here. All I know is he was in the infirmary in isolation for a month before he could even carry on a conversation. He doesn't interact a lot with the staff except the SA's and a few of the techs, like me." His cheer returned as he added, "Probably in another month we'll be ready to run initial testing on the inhibitor, though. Totally unprecedented technology, a hybrid of human and Elven."

"You must be pretty damn smart if they gave you a job like that."

"Genius level," Frog said proudly. "I built my first computer when I was six. I used to code for Apple before the Agency recruited me. What about you?"

"Oh, um...well, I went to Rice for about a semester, but it didn't take. Mostly I've done admin type stuff."

"Oh." Frog looked like he was confused but trying not to be rude, and she could see the question on his face--why had the Agency hired her if she really was just a secretary?

She was rather interested in the answer to that, herself. Obviously it had to do with her gifts, and possibly with her religion, but she highly doubted it had to do with her ability to alphabetize and type 85 words per minute.

Instead of asking about her obvious deficiencies, however, Frog went with, "So...is it true that you got interrogated by SA-7?"

"Yeah, why?"

He gave her a conspiratorial smile. "Did he scare the crap out of you like he does me?"

"Oh, hell yes. Even before I figured out he wasn't human. The guns alone would have done it. Have you ever met him?"

"Kind of. He doesn't really speak to those of us on the lower end of the ladder--actually he doesn't really speak to anybody except his sister, SA-5, and Ness."

"Who--he's got a sister? A real sister?"

"Her name's Beck, she's SA-8. They're twins."

"Twin vampires."

"She's way cooler, but still pretty scary. She plays bass in a vampire band called Fang Porn. You'll know her when you see her. They look a lot alike except she smiles and he doesn't. But they're the toughest Agents in the place. Ness is the Agency Director, Vanessa MacMillan. She's a human--I think you'll probably meet her on Monday at your orientation."

Frog glanced at his watch, then yelped. "Damn, I've gotta go--I have to run down to the lab and check on some calculations I had going that are due to finish up any minute." He stood and headed for the door, adding, "But if you need anything, I'm the door on your left, #138. And don't worry--you'll do great."

She shut the door behind him, trying to organize all the information he'd just dumped on her, and went back to her boxes with a sigh. Every new thing she learned about this place made it that much weirder.

She had a feeling it was only going to get worse from here.

*****

"Right this way," Steve said, not bothering to look back and see if she was keeping up. Sara had fairly long legs, but she had to practically run behind the lanky Executive Administrative Assistant, otherwise she'd end up lost in the maze of subsurface corridors for the third time that morning.

After two hours of paperwork, left mostly to herself in a room that bore no small resemblance to the room she'd been interrogated in, Steve had come to fetch her for her pro forma interview with Vanessa MacMillan, the Big Boss of Everything. MacMillan, whom everyone but Steve called Ness, had an underground office adjacent to the Floor.

Sara figured that Steve would point out at least a few of the important details of the subsurface layout, but he didn't seem all that inclined to speak to her; he was obviously much too important to bother with an entry-level Admin.

She pursed her lips in irritation as she followed him. He was a regular old human, and she could tell he was no more psychic than Frog was, so it wasn't like he was out risking his life for truth and justice or anything like that. He was a secretary, probably with the same level of education as Sara. She hoped the boss wasn't as stuck up; she hoped double that her voice wasn't as nasal as Steve's. The boy sounded like he had chronic sinus congestion and someone clamping his balls.

Finally, the long hallway from the elevators opened out into a huge expanse of open space, and Sara nearly froze stock still to take it all in.

The Floor was half the size of a football field, easily, and though there were no windows there was a whole wall of digital displays: a huge map of Texas with all sorts of colored lights indicating…well, she had no idea; a screen that looked like an arrivals board at the airport, which she assumed kept track of the Agents; and several other things she had no idea how to interpret.

There were two rows of cubicles, each with a very strange-looking computer system; about half of the seats were filled with people wearing headsets that were lit up the same blue as the communication devices she'd seen on SA-7. She couldn't even describe what was weird about the computers. The way they were constructed looked…almost organic. She saw that the people in the seats were clicking away at various screens of data--maps, lists, even websites--and speaking in low voices, presumably to whatever Agent was on the other end of the line.

Other people bustled to and fro, delivering files and seeing to the needs of the dispatchers. The back half of the room was taken up by office equipment and a sitting area that looked like it had been well-loved. The Floor was mostly round, except for the flat front wall, and all around Sara doors led away from it. A few were open, revealing conference rooms, offices, and more hallways than she could even count. She thanked the Goddess silently when she saw that all the doors were clearly labeled.

She followed Steve across the floor and to the left. No one else seemed to take any notice of her, perhaps because now she looked pretty much like they did. There wasn't exactly a uniform for the Admins, but they all wore basic black, blue, or grey, along with the standard ID badge. She was glad she'd picked a simple black suit with a white dress shirt for her first day--a bit less casual than most everyone she'd seen on the Floor, more casual than Steve's rather pretentious suit and tie, and perfectly average. From what she'd seen the R&D guys had lab coats and the Agents wore black fatigues into the field.

She had also noticed that the Agents didn't have badges, at least not that they wore; they probably had those pocket folding ones like the FBI. She'd have to ask Frog about that later--they were supposed to meet for dinner in the cafeteria after he got done with whatever it was he was doing with neural-response encoding and other impenetrable technobabble like that.

"In here, please, Ms. Larson," she heard Steve say ahead of her, and walked through the door he'd indicated, into the office suite of the Director. The first room was probably Steve's office. There was an obsessively neat desk and the usual files and shelves an Executive Assistant would have.

He stopped at the desk and hit a button on the phone. "Director MacMillan, Sara Larson is here."

A smooth voice, deep for a woman's, replied, "Send her in, Steve."

Vanessa MacMillan wasn't a vampire, but Sara wouldn't have wanted to meet her in a dark alley. She was tall, muscular, and had a calm authoritative air that would be the envy of any politician. She had absolutely gorgeous chocolate brown skin, wore a pin-striped black suit that had to have been custom-fit, and wore her hair back in a utilitarian yet classy up-do. Her wide, generous mouth looked accustomed to hearty laughter, yet she surveyed Sara gravely, her hands folded, perfectly manicured nails in a shade of deep plum tapping lightly together.

"Have a seat, please, Sara," she said. She looked and sounded an awful lot like Angela Bassett, but crossbred with the Terminator.

"I'm Vanessa MacMillan, Director of Operations here at the Texas branch. SA-5 has told me a lot about you."

Sara shook her hand and saw that her file was laying on the Director's desk. "All good, I hope."

"Aside from your…unsavory prior associations, yes, it was all good."

Sara felt herself flushing. "Yes, about that. If I'm some sort of suspect…"

"Then we wouldn't have hired you," MacMillan said firmly. "As it is, I expect your full cooperation in the ongoing investigation into your former covenmates."

"Absolutely," Sara said, trying to put all the force of her conviction into that one word. "They murdered people, and they betrayed me. Anything you need me for, I'm there."

The Director looked her over again, as if considering what all Sara might be needed for, then asked, "Have you been briefed on the details of your position?"

"No. To be honest nobody's really answered my questions except the guy living next door to me."

"Ah, yes. Frog." A hint of a smile touched her lips, making her seem far more human. "Well, what we need you for right off the bat is general administrative work, but once you've passed your probationary period we'll have a lot more for you to do. You'll start out under the office manager's training and supervision. Her name is Dru Carter." She paged through Sara's file, then added, "We also want to get you into specialized training with SA-5, to hone your psychic abilities. That will start after your first month."

"Can I ask a question?"

"Yes?"

"Frog mentioned that Admins don't need psychic talent, so you guys must have something else in mind for me here. Was he right?"

MacMillan gave her another long look, and simply said, "Yes, he was. At the moment the position we have in mind for you is above your security clearance, so I'm afraid I can't discuss it with you until after your probationary period. Of course, you'll have full disclosure and time to consider the position when you're ready, and if you choose not to accept it you can remain part of the Administrative staff." She smiled, and Sara felt a heady sense of approval and relief--she got the feeling that those smiles were rare. "I think, however, that you'll find the opportunity irresistible."

The tall woman stood and offered her hand again; Sara, surprised that the interview was apparently done with, followed suit.

"Welcome to the Shadow Agency," MacMillan said, and there was actual warmth in her voice. She hit the intercom button and summoned Steve. "Steve will take you to the file room where you'll start work, and then Dru will show you around and answer any further questions you might have."

Questions? Good…that should only take the next seven years or so. Sara shook her head as she fell into step behind Steve's thoroughbred gait.

*****

"Dru will be along in about fifteen minutes," Steve informed her as he dropped her off, sounding relieved not to have to baby sit her. "While you're waiting, how about you take these--" he pointed toward a foot-high stack of black file folders on the table-- "and put them in case number order, then put them in the To Be Filed drawer. That way you'll get a little taste of the filing system."

"Okay," she said, but he was already out the door before she even finished the second syllable.

She looked around the Current Case File room, and was disappointed to note that it was exactly the same as every other file room she'd ever worked in, especially at a government office. Rows of metal file cabinets, all locked, all labeled in sequential order; a long table with bins for sorting; a computer whose screen saver was the SA seal bobbing around on a black background. There was a separate cabinet labeled "Personnel" that she tried to open, but of course it was locked, as were all the cabinets except for "To Be Filed."

Everything here was black, blue, and silver, she'd noticed. The techs wore blue lab coats, the office supplies were all black, signage was black with silver lettering. Even her badge, complete with an awful picture of her taken before she'd had her first cup of coffee, was done in those colors. She was listed as an "Admin Tech I," with security clearance A. If the clearance levels covered the whole alphabet, she had her work cut out for her.

She picked up the first folder in the stack and opened it, partly to get a sense of how things were organized and partly to see more of what she was getting into, here. Easy enough on the first: each case file had a unique identification number that incorporated the date it was opened, so they would all be stored chronologically. The cabinet drawers started with the current month and went back six months; everything earlier must have its own archive.

The file was very similar to the one she'd seen for herself and the other for her ex-coven. There were printouts of reports from the Agents who'd worked on the case and official case disposition forms stamped CLOSED; in the back of the folder was a slot holding a small strip of metal with a USB connector on it. A thumb drive, she realized. All the folders had them.

Curious, she stuck the first one into the port on the computer and jiggled the mouse; it prompted her for her ID. She saw that the monitor had a scanner-looking thing attached to it, and held her badge up to it, barcode first.

The computer beeped and the screen changed, flashing a warning; she didn't have sufficient security privileges to access those files. Damn. Not very trusting, these secret agents.

Behind the warning window, though, she saw what was on the drive that she couldn't get to: photographs, video, and other media pertaining to the case. She'd bet that if anyone had been interrogated for the case, a video of it was on that drive, which would mean there was a video of her own interrogation in her file. She pulled the drive out of the port and slid it back into its place in the folder, then turned her attention to the paper copies.

The case she was looking at was a simple one, looked like, involving the sale of something called Ravloch's Shewstone to a minor in Round Rock. Apparently there were statutes governing what sort of magical objects could be sold to whom.

Where exactly were all these laws written, anyway?

She wondered if her former high priest, who ran an occult store in Houston, had been familiar with the laws governing his market. She would bet her first week's pay that he had been aware, but hadn't expected anyone to try and enforce it. How had he gotten his hands on that Reaping Sphere? Surely there was a law about not selling magic murder rocks?

A tip from an informant somewhere in North Austin had led the SA to believe that this Shewstone, which was apparently a Type 7 Artifact and therefore dangerous, had been sold to a high schooler named Terry Winthrop. The Agent's case notes were there, typed up dutifully, but she could sense that the Agent involved had been a little irritated about the whole thing, especially when he discovered the Shewstone was a forgery and the kid had bought it to impress his girlfriend.

"Suspect is about as psychic as a box of dryer lint," she read, and her burst of surprised laughter rang off the metal cabinets. "Poss. Level 1 Empathy. Artifact confiscated, disc. as resin with gilt paint. R&D authentication unnecessary. Seller of Artifact fined $10,000 for violation of Paranormal Artifact Trafficking Statute 1477.0 Section B. Buyer given warning and released, no charges filed."

At the bottom of the printout was a short form filled out by the Agent: name, rank, ID number, dates, et cetera. Her eyebrows shot up as she saw who it was: Jason Adams, Shadow Agent 7.

God, no wonder he'd been pissed, if they'd sent someone as important as him out to investigate a tenth-grader with a fake rock.

A quick look through a few of the other files showed they were all very similar. There were a lot of false alarms. Only a couple more files bore SA-7's signature. As she paged through them she could sense faint wisps of residual energy coming off a few, revealing the emotions attached to the case. Most of them, being routine, held a sense of "here we go again."

The last, however, was so soaked in emotion that she could barely hold it in her hands. Anger, hot and dark, was burned into every line of the Agent's notes, and the signature had been made in almost a scrawl of rage. Almost shaking, Sara took a deep breath and lay the folder down, forcing herself to ground and center, an old Witch's exercise as basic as shielding that helped her regain her calm and focus. It was just an echo, she told herself sternly. Whatever had happened, had been before she even came here--the file was dated February 8, and she hadn't even arrived in Austin until the first of April.

The case was a ritual murder investigation in a suburb of Dallas. A seven-year-old girl had been skinned alive, her heart cut out, as part of a ceremony to summon some kind of demon.

Sara's vision swam. Things like this really happened? There were people who would...how could there be anyone warped enough to skin a little girl?

She read the file cover to cover, her heart pounding. Not only was it real, it had worked. The demon had been lured out of its dimension, a place designated simply "MAGOS-9," by the promise of flesh; in return for doing the human's bidding, it was given the girl's heart. The demon was noncorporeal, and required a child's skin to wear to keep it manifested on Earth.

Some sort of energy detection system the SA had in place had raised an alarm, and Agents were dispatched to deal with the situation before the demon could get loose. The team included a ceremonialist of some kind who banished the demon back to its world, and the Agents destroyed the ritual circle; during the raid the man who had called the demon, an investment banker by day, was shot in the head.

All of the SAs in attendance reported the same thing: the suspect was shot attempting to escape. Sara, however, could feel the truth radiating from the paper in front of her. The senior Agent had been so disgusted and angry that he had walked up to the man and shot him to keep from tearing him limb from limb with his bare hands.

She was thankful that the crime scene photos and video were all on the thumb drive where she didn't have to look at them. She couldn't imagine being the one to catalog all of that, much less have to face the man who had done it. It made sense, now, why Frog was grateful he wasn't psychic, if that was what being an Agent meant.

To her surprise, the SA who had held the gun was Jason Adams. She wouldn't have expected someone who wasn't even human to get so upset over a child's death that he was willing to shoot someone in cold blood--but then, depending on how vampirism really worked, he might have been human once. Hell, he might have a daughter of his own out there somewhere. He had a sister, after all, and she hadn't thought that was possible. Who knew, in this place?

"Demons," she muttered, closing the file. "Demons and vampires and Elves…oh fuck."

Putting the folders in numerical order took all of two minutes, which was fortunate, because the second she finished straightening up the stack, the door opened.

"Hi there," said the woman who walked in. "You must be Sara."

Sara blinked. "Hi."

"Dru Carter. I'm the Office Manager."

Sara found herself shaking hands with the shortest adult woman she'd ever seen--Dru might have been five feet if she stood tiptoe. That wasn't the interesting thing, though.

Dru was blue.

Literally.

Head to foot, her skin was a smooth and shiny robin's egg blue, with a smattering of darker blue freckles over her nose and neck. She had dark blue dreadlocks that were held back from her face with a silver clip. Her facial features suggested African American, and her eyes were a burnished silver color. To further spin Sara's logical mind off kilter, Dru wore perfectly normal office clothes, heels, and jewelry.

"I can tell you're new here," Dru laughed. "You're trying not to stare. It's all right, I'm used to it."

They shook hands; Dru had a firm grip and a friendly, infectious smile. "If you don't mind my asking…"

"What the hell am I?" Another laugh. "I don't mind at all. I'm a Naiad."

"A river nymph, like from Greek mythology? God, is all of that stuff real?"

"In a way. My people are mostly gone now; the SA rescued my mother from an accident, and after I was born I lived here on base--next to the pool."

"There's a pool?"

"Yeah, in the courtyard across from the labyrinth. I'd prefer a river, really, but it's the best they could do with the existing building. I go to the lake every chance I get."

"So you don't live in the water."

"No, that's part of the myth. There are creatures who do, like mermaids, but they don't associate with humans, and besides, having them work here would be kind of messy. I can breathe underwater or on land."

Dru should have been the one named after an amphibian, then…did she have gills under her suit jacket? Sara decided not to ask. "Wow. I thought I'd seen everything already after I met SA-5."

Dru had a wonderful laugh--it did, indeed, sound liquid. "Oh, Rowan's plenty strange. Wait until you see him in the Winter."

She decided not to pursue that one just yet. "So, um…you're in charge of the whole Admin team?"

"That's me. There are six other Admins besides you, and everyone reports to me. We're going to start you out on filing for probably the first month, then Ness wants you to train with Rowan so you can do dispatch out on the Floor. As I understand it you're way above the telepathy level they need, but there are a few skills you'll need to develop to use the system."

Finally a glimpse of the SA's plan for her! "So that's why they hired me?"

Dru's smile turned mischievous. "For now. At any rate, today I'd like to show you around the sub-levels, introduce you to everyone, and get you started in here on current cases. I'm assuming while you put those guys in order you poked through a few of them?"

Sara bit her lip. "Um…"

"Everyone does, their first day. Don't worry about it--you've got clearance for case files, just not Personnel files. Nobody can get into those but me and Ness without submitting a request form."

Dru beckoned for her to follow, and they headed back into the hallway. "Now, the basic layout of the place is pretty simple," she began, as Sara fell in stride beside her--one advantage to Dru's height was that it was much easier to keep up with her than with Steve. "You've seen where Ness's office is located. Several of the senior Agents have their own offices off the Floor, too. Now, over here, this hallway leads to the Agents' locker room, and also to the combat training arena…"

*****

Filing for a secret government organization, it turned out, was pretty much like filing for anyone.

It took her all of one full morning to learn her new job, which was a bit disturbing seeing that she was going to have to do it every day for a month at least. She was quite willing to do whatever they wanted her to do, but if she were perfectly honest she would have to say that by the end of the first week she was bored out of her mind.

She could have been working for the IRS for all the excitement she had. Every morning she got up, showered, dressed, and went to the cafeteria for breakfast; she was allotted three meals per day for free, but could go back for snacks at her own expense. She could also keep anything she liked in her little fridge, so when Frog stopped by again she could offer him a beer. The cafeteria served an astonishing variety of food, and it even had a coffee bar, which was usually her first stop of the morning.

After breakfast she took the elevator down to the Floor, then crossed the room to Current Files, where she spent the day alphabetizing, organizing, and storing.

She was, as it turned out, too efficient for the government; by the first Thursday Dru had already started giving her more tasks. She was granted access to the main files and to the computer, and learned how the case files were assembled, so she could take the piles of haphazard notes the Agents threw together and turn them into an official record of the case. She printed labels on the special label machine attached to the computer, which was fun in a very geeky way.

She could also get into the media files on the thumb drives now; her security clearance had already been upped to B so that she could pull files off the server and copy them to the thumb drives.

That first week she hardly saw anyone; she had learned all the Admins' names, but they were so busy nobody had time for anything but a "Good morning" and a "Have a good night." She saw Dru every day, and that was good; she already liked the Naiad immensely. Beyond that, though, Sara's interactions were with the files, and occasionally with Frog for coffee or dinner in the cafeteria.

Frog, bless him, didn't seem to mind that she peppered him with questions about the Agency, many of which he couldn't answer.

Sara started to have dreams about black file folders chasing her naked across the Floor. At that point, she asked Dru if there was anything else she could help with.

Dru was amused. "I knew you were going to make short work of this department. How about you help me do some copying? It's not that interesting but it'll occupy your for an hour or two."

The copy machine, a massive beast that did everything but wash cars, was out on the Floor, so Sara jumped at the chance to see something besides the antiseptic white walls of Current Files. Dru handed her a pile of interoffice mail envelopes and instructed her to copy the contents of some, scan others, and give them all back when she was done.

Glad to have something new to do, even something as banal as copying, Sara all but bounced out of the file room.

When she arrived at the corner where the copier stood, someone was already using it, and again, Sara found herself staring.

It was another small woman, probably five-five, but ivory skinned instead of blue. She had a mop of jet black hair streaked through with vibrant red, the same color as her lipstick. The woman wore black fatigues, the standard dress of SAs, but over it was a black patent coat, matching the shiny steel-toed boots that laced up to her knees. Her eyebrow and nose were both pierced.

She looked up at Sara's approach. "Do you know how to use this piece of shit?"

"Um…" Sara stammered, taking in the woman's face--a carbon copy of another she'd seen, but a little smaller and more feminine. "What are you trying to do?"

"I was thinking of photocopying my ass. Or this." She held up her document, a binder clip full of field notes. "I want it front and back."

"Oh, easy. Look…" Sara moved closer, feeling a twinge of atavistic fear; her instincts knew exactly what she was standing next to, even if she wasn't ready to say it aloud. She tapped the copier's screen, bringing up the menu that she needed, and within seconds the woman's paperwork was zipping through the document feeder, copies spitting onto the tray.

"Cool." The woman looked her up and down, blatantly examining her. "You're the new girl, right? Did you make the coffee this morning? It tasted like bong water."

"There's coffee down here?"

A tip of her head to the right. "Third hallway left of Ness's office. Staff lounge. They have donuts."

"Oh, do you…eat…donuts?"

The woman had a loud, bell-like laugh, one that sounded like she used it a lot. There was a Puckish glint in her eye. "No. Solid food makes me vomit. It's all liquid for us, all the time, and thank god that includes vodka or I'd have staked myself a long time ago."

She reminded Sara strongly of the watercolor "bad faeries" by Amy Brown--sort of punk, sort of wicked, and far younger than she really was. The contrast between her and her twin was nothing short of amazing.

"So you're Beck, right?"

"The one and only. How'd you guess?"

"Well, you look a lot like your brother. Sort of."

Beck snorted softly. "Two different eggs, two different planets. You met him?"

"Yeah. He interrogated me. And shot me with a tranquilizer dart."

"Rock on." Beck picked up her document and leafed through it, checking it over; then, she muttered, "Speak of the devil."

Behind Beck, on the far side of the Floor, SA-7 emerged from the hall that led to the Agents' locker room. He looked like he'd just had a shower, as his dark hair was damp and a bit tousled. His coat was slung over his arm and instead of regulation black he was actually wearing a pair of jeans and a plain white t-shirt that allowed a much better view of both his muscles and a tattoo, a black dragon with the Moon in its claws, covering his left bicep.

Sara had never seen anything so sexy in her entire life.

Unfortunately she had a bad track record with attractive men, so by the time he reached the copier area, she had completely lost her hold on the English language and just gawked like a teenage groupie.

He strode up to Beck and handed her something--a small brown paper bag. Beck looked in it and rolled her eyes.

"You are such an idiot," she told her brother.

"And you're going to be late," he replied. Sara started to wonder if his facial expression ever changed, but right then a smile passed briefly over his lips, and he added, "As usual."

Beck saluted him. "Sir, yes sir. Coding on for my patrol shift right away, sir."

"Fuck off, little girl. Have you seen Smurfette around anywhere?"

Beck shrugged, pointed at Sara. "Ask her."

Jason finally seemed to acknowledge Sara's presence; his eyes fixed on her at first as they might a particularly troublesome bug, but then she saw recognition. "The Witch."

Sara realized how stupid she must look staring at him; whether his attitude was due to arrogance or something less obnoxious, she had every bit as much right to be here as he did. Plus, she'd had a glimpse that there was more to him than disdain, reading over his case files. There was wry humor in them, but also, more subtly, real compassion. She knew he cared about his job and the people the SA protected.

Still, he didn't have to act like a dick.

"The jackass vampire with the big gun," she responded evenly.

He stared at her for a second, seeming almost astonished, then gave her a dazzling smile. "Sara Larson. Do you know where I might find Dru?"

"Jason Adams. Last I saw she was heading for her office. Does she know you call her Smurfette?"

"Of course," he said. "I've been calling her that since before you hit puberty." He looked her up and down as Beck had, and Sara knew she was blushing but stood her ground under his scrutiny. She wasn't sure what he was evaluating her for, but apparently he found it, because he said, "So Rowan isn't as crazy as I thought he was."

"That remains to be seen," Beck told him, smacking him lightly on the arm with the paper bag.

Jason gave her a look that Sara couldn't begin to interpret, then said curtly to Sara, "Welcome aboard. Office 303, next door to the coffee."

He turned and headed for Dru's office, and Sara tried not to be obvious in checking out his ass as he walked, but failed pretty spectacularly.

Beck shook her head. "Honey, don't waste your time. You're not his type."

"Oh, I didn't--I mean, I wouldn't--"

"Sure you wouldn't. You and every other woman here, right? Trust me, there's no way in hell, unless there's more going on under there than I think there is." She gestured at Sara's midsection.

"What, he doesn't date humans?"

Beck wrinkled her nose, which was adorable, in a strange and faintly creepy way. "It's less the humanity and more the vagina that's the problem."

Sara looked over to where Jason had disappeared, mouth working soundlessly in shock for a moment. "You're kidding."

The vampire grinned broadly. "Nope. Oldest bitchy queen in Austin. You can tell him I said so. Anyway, nice to meet you and all that, and thanks for the help. See you around."

"Yeah, you too. Thanks for keeping me from making an ass of myself."

"Much fun as that would have been to watch, I figure, you're new here, you deserve a break. Good luck."

With that, Beck walked--actually strutted was a better word--the way her brother had come from earlier, tossing the stack of papers she'd just made into a bin by the door where a bunch of similar documents were waiting, Sara assumed, to be turned into case files.

She went back to her own copying, trying to decide how she felt. It was a combination of disappointment and relief, she decided, but really, it wasn't as if she'd had a shot with SA-7 anyway. She knew the sort of women that guys like him usually went for…when they went for women, anyway. He was probably great in bed but crap at relationships, not interested in anything deeper. Intuitively…

Well, that was odd. Now that she thought about it, she hadn't really sensed anything from him at all. Aside from the impressions she'd gotten from his case files, he was a blank slate to her. That meant he must have the best damn shields in Texas. Her empathy wasn't very well trained and didn't work nearly as effectively as her psychometry, but she usually got at least a vague idea of someone's character right off the bat. Jason could have been anyone, or no one. It couldn't be a vampire thing--Beck hadn't been nearly so closed off. He was either a really private person, or he had something to hide.

It was almost certainly the latter.

Sara found herself curious, as she returned to her administrative exile, how difficult it would be to break into the Personnel files.

*****

Nearly a month into the job Sara was positively dying for some adventure, but when it found her, she really wished it hadn't.

At the end of the day when the Agents had finished stopping bad guys and confiscating dangerous magical objects, someone had to deal with the paperwork. For every TV show about FBI agents and crime scene investigators there was a fleet of underappreciated, underpaid staffers making copies, brewing coffee, and putting things in alphabetical order.

"Just call me Ianto," she muttered irritably as she dumped a wet coffee filter full of grounds, the fourth she'd made that day, into the trash. "At least he gets laid."

The staff lounge had become one of her favorite places. There, working her way through one of half a dozen cups of coffee for the day, she could watch the Agents come and go and overhear their conversations. Most of them were consummate professionals; they responded to her conversational overtures cordially enough but then went back about their business. The Admins, of course, were a lot more personable, as were most of the guys from R&D.

Still, like every other office she'd ever worked in, it was like pulling teeth to get anyone to make a fresh pot of coffee after they'd drained the last one, so she more or less took over. At least Beck had no complaints about her brewing skills.

Sara reminded herself for the hundredth time that morning that the government always did things at a snail's pace, and that if they'd promised her something besides Admin, she'd get it eventually. It was a matter of yet more paperwork, and protocols, and probationary periods.

She knew that outside the base very exciting things were always happening, but it was a testament to how smoothly Ness and Dru ran things that on the Floor the atmosphere was almost always calm and orderly. Even in the midst of a massive raid on some sort of otherwordly arms dealer, on a night when two Agents were badly injured and half the dealer's henchmen were killed, the people at the system consoles never raised their voices or ran around yelling "Get the Pentagon on the phone!" or "We're not losing anyone on my watch!"

She sighed. Science fiction was turning out to be too much like real life.

At least she was getting somewhere in accessing the Personnel files. The cabinet itself was a no-go; it required either Ness or Dru's badge to unlock. Luckily, the redundancy of government paperwork meant that the hard copies that Sara dealt with were actually the secondary versions of the files. The electronic versions on the main server were what most of the staff used on a day-to-day basis. In fact, the electronic Personnel files were more up-to-date, as the hard copies were only updated twice a year during performance reviews. Getting into that part of the server was just a matter of figuring out either Ness or Dru's password.

Every time she went into Dru's office, Sara paid careful attention to the personal effects she saw laying around, in the hopes that something would jump out at her. Most people used names of children, pets, and spouses as passwords; Sara's password was Pywacket's name backwards. Dru didn't have any pets, and her only family had been her mother Atrella, who had worked for the SA when Dru was a child. Sara tried a dozen permutations of the name but got nothing.

The fact that all her snooping could get her fired, or worse, didn't bother her as much as it should have. She was just bored enough that it seemed worth the risk.

Sara plopped into one of the staff lounge chairs to wait for the new pot of coffee. The lounge was comfortable, even welcoming, considering it was five stories underground; it was a place to decompress, have a snack, and socialize a little. There were in fact several areas like it both below ground and on the surface level, and when hanging out in her quarters got too claustrophobic she made her way there with a book and got to know her fellow travelers in this bizarre new world called the Shadow Agency.

Just about everyone hit the off-Floor lounge at least a few times a week, for the food and beverages if nothing else. There was a fridge stocked with every form of carbonated drink imaginable, and Food Service brought down all sorts of between-meal goodness to keep the staff going on long shifts. Agents, she noticed, mostly came for the coffee.

She'd seen the twins a few times, and if her own caffeine habit was serious, theirs was insane. Beck had an enormous travel mug that she filled before her shift and again afterward, and often dropped several venti-sized Starbucks cups into the recycling bin whenever she blew through between cases. She was currently on patrol, which Sara had figured out meant that she basically walked a beat around the city's most troublesome areas, monitoring known offenders and possible situations, checking up on informants, and complaining a lot into her Ear about how dull it all was.

Sara snorted. If she thought that was dull she should try filing.

Every Agent took a month on patrol every six months, even Jason, who was important enough to have his own office. He went through about a full pot of coffee every evening just by himself. As the senior SA he was a sort of team manager, coordinating who went on patrol when and who was assigned to what case. He usually spent the first three or four hours of each night in his office, then went out into the field.

And every night, without fail, he brought Beck a brown paper bag of…something. Sara hadn't worked up the nerve to ask what it was yet. Drugs, maybe? Somehow she couldn't quite see them being so obvious about it.

Sara looked up at the clock: four-thirty. She'd be off at seven. Shifts here were flexible, mostly in deference to the nocturnal folk. As far as Sara was concerned the world had no business being awake at eight in the morning, so she'd applied for a ten-to-seven. When she went on dispatch she'd probably have to switch, since she had to match up with the shifts of the field Agents, but at least for now, nobody really gave a damn what hours the file clerk kept.

Maybe she could get Frog to go to a movie or something this weekend; they hung out a couple of times a week, and he was pretty frazzled these days and could probably use the break. Or there was always--

She sat up straighter. What…

Something was wrong.

She could feel it, rolling through the base like a slow-building tsunami, starting from--

Suddenly the room shuddered, and alarms began to blare all around her. The lights dimmed momentarily, flickered, then powered back up, but the alarms continued, deafening.

A voice boomed out over loudspeakers she had never noticed were there.

"WILL ALL SA PERSONNEL PLEASE EVACUATE THE SUBSURFACE AREAS. WILL ALL SA PERSONNEL PLEASE EVACUATE THE SUBSURFACE AREAS."

Sara leaped out of her chair and bolted for the door, where she was nearly knocked over by a herd of other employees making for the stairs. She stepped into the group and tried to stay in the flow so she wouldn't get shoved, her heart pounding, her eyes scanning the Floor for smoke or some sign of what was going on.

Aside from the fact that everyone was leaving, everything looked normal. The Ear system had been put into standby mode, and she caught sight of Dru ushering people out of the room, her face grave and pale. All the while, the alarms kept sounding, and the loudspeakers repeated their command once more before changing the message:

"SA-7, REPORT TO R&D LAB #4. SA-7, REPORT…"

Lab #4? That was where Frog was working.

Oh shit, oh shit…Sara's guts twisted with the knowledge that something had gone very, very wrong, and that her friend was in trouble.

She ducked out of the mass of evacuees and made for the spot where Dru was standing. She had to know what had happened before she could stand to run away.

Before she could reach the Naiad, however, someone grabbed her roughly by the arm and hauled her sideways.

She started to protest, but when she saw who had her, the words froze on her lips.

"There's a situation," SA-7 said shortly. "You're coming with me."

*****

The R&D department was made up of several large labs, each one with its own security codes and systems. All sorts of things could happen when the techs started screwing around with magical objects, so each lab had fail-safes designed to lock the room down and protect the rest of the building from whatever disaster might befall it. The walls could withstand explosions that would take down a skyscraper.

Sara stared at the scene before her, unable to comprehend it, barely able to breathe. She thought she'd been scared when the FBI had broken down her door; that was nothing compared to the rock hard ball of dread sitting in her stomach now.

The lab walls were some form of glass, so she could see into all of them from the main door. Everything seemed perfectly fine: a centrifuge was whirring, computers were calculating, there were various bits of technology and a few strange stones and amulets at some of the stations. The only anomalies were the lack of lab-coated techs going about their research, and the presence of half the building's security staff, Ness, and emergency personnel hovering around.

Lab #4 was a haze of smoke and debris. Sparks flashed from a loose cable of some kind. Sara couldn't really see in, but there was a dark shape moving around inside, the sight of which made the knot of dread in her gut increase in size by a factor of ten.

Jason led her over to the lab door, where Ness and the head of the emergency team were supervising as the workers tried to get the door unlocked.

"I want the smoke vented out of there right now," Ness ordered, her voice loud and not one to be disobeyed. "Where the fuck is Dr. Wu? I want to know who was in there and what they were working on."

The head of R&D, an Asian woman who always seemed one step away from a nervous breakdown, appeared at Ness's elbow. "Here," she said breathlessly. "I've got the roster. Lab #4 had two projects going--the Arcadian Opal and the psychic inhibitor."

Next to her, Sara felt Jason's entire body go rigid. "Was SA-5 in there when the explosion occurred?" He demanded, his shadow falling over Dr. Wu and cowing her almost into a fetal position. The vampire took her by the shoulders, and there was almost a tremor in his voice. "Who was in there?"

Wu was shaking all over, both at the situation and the barely-contained anger in Jason's voice, but managed to nod her head. "Rowan and Frog were both in there. So were Dr. Samuel and his assistant."

"SA-7, stand down," Ness snapped. "If you can't control yourself we can call in Beck to do this."

He blinked, seeming to realize how he was acting, and let go of Wu's shoulders, calm settling back over him like a cloak. "I'm sorry, Dr. Wu. Ness, what do you need us for?"

Ness looked over at Sara. "Now's your chance to do something interesting," she said.

"What--what happened?" Sara stammered.

"We're not sure. That's part of why we need you. Chase, how's that door coming?"

The man she was speaking to looked up from the equipment he was working with. "Coming, ma'am. We can blow it any time, we're just waiting for the internal scan results so we don't end up venting toxic gas outside."

"Right. Patel, what have you got for me?"

A woman in emergency uniform held up a palm-sized device. "Atmosphere is stable, the ventilators and filters should be able to handle the smoke. We're okay to vent."

"Do it. What else?"

Patel motioned at Chase, who flipped some switches. Sara heard a massive roaring from somewhere up above, and the smoke that filled the lab began to suck out through the vents in the ceiling.

"We've got four life signs. Two human, one Elven, one…other."

"Shit," Ness said. "I was afraid of that."

She turned back to Jason and Sara. "All right, you two. Here's what we need. SA-7, when we get the door open, you go in. Are you armed?"

Jason gave her a grim smile. "Aren't I always?"

"For once I'm not going to lecture you about guns in the base. You go in and incapacitate whatever's in there. Make sure the room is secure and there aren't any more explosions imminent. Once you're sure it's clear we'll send in the EMTs."

"What about me?" Sara asked.

"This is where it gets tricky," Ness said. "We know that Samuels was working with something called an Arcadian Opal. Legend says it's cursed, that anyone who wears it will die a horrible death. Samuels figured out that it's not a curse, it's a holding cell."

"So whatever's in the lab came out of the opal?"

Ness nodded, pleased that she was catching on quickly. "Problem is that we don't know what kind of creature it is, and I'm not sending anyone in there until we do. You're listed as a contact clairvoyant, aka a psychometrist, meaning you can read things by touch, right? As I understand it you have a knack with buildings."

Sara was starting to see, and not liking it one bit. "I don't know," she said doubtfully. "I've never really developed it to where I could use it on command. It's kind of a passive gift."

"Well now's the time to activate it. See what you can get."

Sara looked from Ness to Jason, who was very clearly trying not to show his impatience. "Just let me go in and kill it," he said.

"We don't even know if you can," Ness replied sternly. "And it's possible it's stronger than you--you're not invincible, Jason. Even a vampire might not be able to kill it."

"I bet bullets can," he said, reaching back and pulling a pistol from somewhere. "We don't have time to wait for her, Ness. They could be dying in there."

Sara ignored him and walked over to the wall of the lab, breathing as slowly as she could, trying to get past the chaos and the fear and the noise. She reached out and put her hands against the wall, closing her eyes, saying a silent prayer to the gods that this would work, not just because of her job, but because of Frog, and Rowan. She tried to think of them, and of the other two she'd never met, and block out everything that was going on behind her.

"All right," she whispered. "Talk to me."

Her whole life, houses had spoken to her. Inanimate objects contained energy just like living things did, but theirs was residual; every person who touched something left some of themselves behind. Personal things like jewelry and clothes were full of energy, but the best she had found were places. Buildings soaked up the lives of whoever lived in them, and the land beneath had a long memory that murmured in the back of her mind, the spirits of the Earth telling stories around the campfire of time.

There were ways to clean out that energy so that a place was new and receptive again, but only Witches and other spiritual practitioners seemed interested in that, probably because the average person never realized how much of an influence one's home had on one's own life. She could tell walking into a house who had died there, who had argued there, what kind of people it had sheltered. It was harder with other kinds of buildings, but still there were echoes, ghosts that weren't ghosts. In a place like this, where people were always in motion, she had to really stretch to hear anything.

Come on…talk to me…

Sara extended her senses out through her hands, through the wall of the lab, and into the still-smoky air beyond, reaching, reaching…

Her head began to pound. She wasn't prepared for anything this hard, and she'd never had to force it before. It had been years since she'd actively worked with the gift; like she'd told Ness, it generally worked by itself, telling her things she usually ended up wishing she didn't know. Like empathy, feeling what other people were feeling, it seemed invasive, both to her and the place she was reading.

Not strong enough…come on, Sara…they're counting on you…

It wasn't working. She could sense the room, and that there were living things inside, but she couldn't figure out how to sharpen the images. It was all a blur. She didn't have the training for something like this. Gods, why had she ignored it for so long? If she'd had the balls to face it, and learn to use it--

[Sara.]

The light, gentle voice flowed into her mind, and she nearly jolted out of her trance, but a hand of energy reached in and held her steady.

[Easy, child. You have all the skill you need; just let it work.]

The energy was soft, fluid. The contact was more intimate than any she'd ever had telepathically. There was pain beneath it…so many years of pain…but woven in among its power was love, a love so deep and elemental that it made her body ache. She felt the "hand" carefully steering her perception just a tiny bit, guiding her, showing her how to adjust the dial of her mind's eye. Suddenly the blurry images jumped out, crystal clear, and she gasped.

"I see it!" she said, and both heard and sensed the others coming over to her.

"Are they hurt?" she heard Jason ask.

Sara extended her energy a little more, sweeping it around the room, and said, "Samuels has a broken leg and ribs, Frog is unconscious but he'll be okay--he got thrown into the wall. The other boy…the assistant…he's dead. Rowan is…"

[Rowan is pinned under a table and covered in sulfur,] came the voice again, this time flavored with a remarkably calm laugh, and she smiled as she realized who it was. [He would really appreciate it if someone came and dealt with this Loshnar so he can take a shower.]

"Rowan says it's a Loshnar," Sara told them. "Does that mean anything to you?"

Ness nodded. "It means this won't be as hard as I thought. SA-7, you have a green light."

Jason smiled dangerously and cocked his gun. "Fuck yeah, I do."

He disappeared, and seconds later Sara heard the sound of glass shattering--whatever they'd done to get the door open, it sounded like it would have to be replaced.

She kept her senses inside the room, watching, as Jason slipped in, making no sound as he moved around the demolished lab. She cast about for the Loshnar, and found it, a dark pool of seething energy in the corner. It felt…scaly, and clawed, but not huge--probably a little bigger than a turkey. If she had to describe it to a stranger she'd say it was some sort of dinosaur.

A dinosaur with poison dripping from its teeth.

Sara clamped down on her fear and stayed in the room, ascertaining pretty quickly that Samuels' assistant had taken the brunt of the blast, and was little more than a charred heap of flesh on the floor of the lab. He'd been doing…something stupid, she could tell, to the Opal, and it had basically gone into self-destruct mode, also tripping whatever mechanism freed the Loshnar, presumably so it would take out whoever was foolish enough to try and dismantle the Opal.

The Opal was pretty much dismantled at this point. Bits of it had flown all over the room, glowing stone shrapnel burying itself in the walls, equipment, and people.

There was movement as the Loshnar sensed a new presence in the room, and it gathered its limbs underneath it, waiting to spring--

A single shot, and the creature shrieked and fell forward, slimy green blood oozing from a hole in its head.

Sara heard Jason over the intercom. "Lab secure."

EMTs began pouring into the room, and Sara, faint with relief, withdrew her senses back into her body. Her head ached fit to split, and the palms of her hands felt like they'd been burned; she was so dizzy that the minute she blinked her eyes and settled back into herself, she sagged backwards, legs giving out.

[Easy there,] Rowan said into her mind, and her headache began to fade. [Sorry I can't do more, but I'm about to pass out myself.]

"That's…okay…" Sara managed as she tumbled.

Someone caught her and lowered her gingerly to the ground. She looked up at the Director of Operations.

"Good work," Ness told her as the room started to fade. "See me on Monday morning."

*****

She woke in the infirmary, another place she'd never been, to find a large Hispanic woman in a white coat standing by her bed with a clipboard.

"Good afternoon," she said, her voice accented and musical. "I'm Dr. Nava. Can you tell me your name?"

"Sara Larson."

"Do you remember what happened to you?"

"Yes…" It was a bit foggy, but not too hard to grasp. "There was an explosion in R&D, and I passed out."

Dr. Nava chuckled. "That's the short version, all right. The official report is that you suffered psychic overload and a mild case of neural shock brought on by overextending your abilities to a hazardous degree. I've already read Ness the riot act about it. If our only other contact clairvoyant hadn't died two weeks ago I would be a lot angrier at her for allowing you to do something so stupid."

"Wait--Frog, is Frog okay? And what about Rowan? And Dr. Samuels?"

"They're all doing just fine. We lost Barnes, Samuels' assistant, but the others escaped with minor wounds. Frog actually came out of it with hardly a scratch. He's always been lucky like that. Rowan had a few scrapes and a piece of the Opal lodged in his arm, but he's fine. Samuels broke several bones."

"Thank Goddess," Sara murmured. "Am I okay? Do I need to stay here?"

"No, you're welcome to leave if you feel able. You're off duty until Tuesday. I expect you to rest."

"Got it," Sara said. The doctor smiled and watched her get up, making sure she didn't topple over again. Satisfied, she nodded and shooed Sara out of the infirmary.

Sara made her way from the infirmary, which was aboveground, to her quarters, where she took a scaldingly hot shower and put on faded old jeans and a t-shirt. When she emerged from the steamy bathroom, Pywacket was sitting on the bed, giving her The Look.

"We're in for it now, Py-baby," she said tiredly, pausing to scratch him between the ears. "I just opened one serious can of worms."

She knew she should sleep, but there was still too much adrenaline and too many thoughts running through her to let her rest. Instead, she got her journal and pen, put on a pair of slipper socks, and headed for the staff lounge closest to her.

It was a sunny, cheerful room during the day, but she was a little thrown to find it was night, and the shutters were closed. She must have been out for a whole day. Still, the lamplight was soothing and there were cookies and hot tea, and she administered both before looking around for an empty couch.

It took her a moment to see the slender figure reclining in the corner.

"Sara," the Elf said with a smile. "Shouldn't you be in bed?"

She smiled back. "Shouldn't you?" She went over and settled in the chair opposite him, and noticed that his arm was bandaged. "Are you okay?"

"Don't worry. I'll be fine."

He was wearing some sort of long robe the color of an eggplant, and his feet were bare. She stared at him for a minute before realizing that something was different about him from when they'd met in the interrogation room. What was it?

"Would you like some?" he asked, lifting what he had in his hands--a carton of fresh strawberries.

Sara reached out and took a few. They were fantastic, perfectly ripe and juicy, and she said as much to Rowan, who nodded.

"Beck's patrol route goes by the Whole Foods on 6th," he explained. "She always brings me something local in season. We can get most anything through Food Service, but it's mostly conventionally grown or at least shipped in." Wistfulness touched his face as he said, "I can taste the life in these. It's like being home again. At any rate, Beck said I should smile more, so she started bringing me fruit almost every night. Sometimes it's an orange, sometimes a pear, and in the Autumn she goes through every variety of apple she can find me."

Sara was a bit distracted, staring at the plain brown paper bag lying empty on the table beside him; she looked from it to the strawberries, and couldn't help but smile to herself. "Yeah, that's really sweet of her…she must like you a lot, to go through all that trouble. So…where is home, for you?"

"Gone," he answered. "The place I was born no longer exists."

"I'm sorry," she said. She thought about what Frog had said about him, and asked, "Did the explosion destroy that thing you and Frog were working on?"

He shook his head, and that's when she figured it out--his hair color had changed. The blue was gone, and it was almost all green and brown now, with grey entwined. From Spring fields to an early Summer forest, she realized. His eyes, too, had darkened in color to the green of oak leaves.

"You see it now," he said with a smile of approval. "It usually takes people a while to notice."

"So what do you look like in Winter?" she wanted to know.

"You'll see in Winter. But to answer your question, no, the inhibitor was safe. We had just finished wrapping up our work and had put it into the vault for the night."

"Do things like this--stuff blowing up and people dying--happen a lot?"

"Not here, no," Rowan said, biting into another strawberry. She couldn't help it; she remembered the way his energy had felt moving through her, and how sensual it had been, and that sensuality was matched by the way he ate, savoring every bite, every drop of juice. She would have expected an Elf to be a lot more ethereal. Way too much Tolkien, she decided, mentally editing her list of books to read.

"Most of the hazardous action goes on out in the field. I've been here about twelve years, and this is only the second accident I've seen in R&D. The first was, well, a lot less serious. Some kind of incident with a toaster, minor burns and the like. Life inside the base is very secure. Barnes was being stupid and trying to open the Artifact without fully understanding its mechanisms--he was young and impatient, and wanted to see what was inside. Humans often do. You're endlessly curious, always seeking more knowledge. It is one of your greatest strengths and often your downfall."

Sara listened to him speak, watched his mouth move, and the thought kept intruding: He's not human. He's immortal. And he's absolutely beautiful…I've got to stop crushing out on everyone here with a penis, for gods' sake!

"How old are you, really?" she asked. "If you don't mind saying."

Another soft, sad smile. "By human reckoning, I am 420 years old, give or take."

"And how old do your people get?"

He shrugged. "As old as they get until someone murders them. We don't die, Sara. We age one year for every fifty. But we can be killed, and we are. There are precious few of us left, anywhere."

"Do others work for the SA?"

"A few. I'm the only one at the Texas branch. Our talents are in high demand, so we're stretched thin."

"Must be lonely," she observed, taking another offered strawberry.

"I suppose. I'm…used to being alone, though, so…"

He stared down into the berries for a while, seeming in another world entirely, and she looked back over at the paper bag before asking, "You wouldn't happen to be gay, would you?"

Rowan's expression was a very cute combination of bewildered and amused, but he didn't comment on how rude, or unexpected, the question was. "All Elves are bisexual, in theory. I personally am celibate."

"Celibate? Why on earth would you do that?"

He smiled, and she realized she was being both inappropriate and nosy--something about him, though, invited that sort of honesty, as if she could tell him pretty much anything and he would accept it, and her, without question. Still, they barely knew each other and he outranked her by a galaxy's worth of years and experience…and power, she remembered, nearly shuddering at the thought of his energy again. God, with energy like that what in hell was he celibate for?

Or maybe that was why, if that's how he affected people.

"It's a long story," he finally replied, then changed the subject. "So, Ness is going to have you train with me starting next week."

"I kind of figured."

"Is that all right with you?"

Sara laughed. "If you had any idea how boring it is in the file room, you wouldn't even ask."

A grin. "Very well, then. We'll start on Wednesday, most likely, with a series of assessments so I can see where you are in terms of power and skill. I have a pretty good idea already but we have to go through the official protocol. From there we'll work on your receptive and projective abilities."

"Okay. Sounds great."

He reached over and stuffed the empty berry carton back into the paper bag, then picked up his mug of still-steaming tea and sipped it, saying, "Why don't you tell me a little more about your gifts?"

Sara echoed his motion with her tea, taking a bite from her cookie as well. "Are you sure you want to talk about it now? You probably need rest--or at least you have something more important to do than listen to me talk."

"At this precise moment in time, Sara Larson, nothing is more important to me."

She felt herself blush. "Thanks. You know…you're not what I would have expected from an Elf."

"That's funny," he replied, giving her a knowing smile that, damn it, made her toes curl. "You are exactly what I would expect from a Witch."

"You mean chubby and sarcastic?"

Rowan laughed. "No, I mean strong, and passionate, and willing to risk everything for what matters most to her." His green eyes grew serious, meeting hers with calm authority. "You're going to be a phenomenal Agent, Sara. It will take time, but I promise you, one day you'll intimidate the hell out of the new Admins just by walking in the room."

Her mouth dropped open at his words--the full import of what was happening to her had not yet really hit her, until now. She started to stutter out some sort of reply, but had no idea what to say.

The Elf was still smiling. "Don't worry. You'll have plenty of time to get used to the idea. For now, let's start simple. Tell me when you first realized you had psychic abilities. Whatever you remember, the more detail the better."

Sara nodded, heart doing flip-flops in her chest, her fingers digging into the arms of the chair. Terrified or not, there was a sense of rightness to being here, to this moment, that she couldn't deny. The Goddess had Her mysterious ways, after all…and Sara, it seemed, had also stumbled upon Her quirky sense of humor.

And so, making a conscious choice and acceptance of all the possibilities stretching out in front of her, she took a deep breath, and began.