"Doring."

Gary's confused for a second; then the lightnining hits his brain, and his eyebrows roll up to his hairline.

"Anna?" He shakes his head, but it's half-hearted.

"If you want to call her that." I cross my arms, more hugging myself than looking cool. "She was the one the officer talked to"—I throw my defenses up; leave the poor fucker out of this—"and she and Milk had contact with Foreman."

"Who I'm guessing—"

"Told Sunflower we plain needed killin'."

Gary looks to the side, still testing out the thought process. "Milk wouldn't betray me—"

"Milk's a demon, Gary. All he is, is his own desires. That and maybe some strings getting tugged from on high." I flick toward the ceiling. "If he thought helping Doring would further whatever the fuck it is he wants..."

Gary's attention slides over to the kids, and for a few seconds he's doubting his decisions. Then he looks back up at me, and it's with slitted eyes and no small amount of suspicion.

"My argument is iron-clad," he insists with the force of delusion. "You know I'm not—you know how good this could be—"

"Your planet must be comfy. And to the subtext, I say: No, I'm not bullshitting. All of it happened, all of it's real, all of it is both nicely illegal and a serious violation of the agreement." And there's my ration of bluster for this exchange.

Gary sits back, but I wouldn't call it relaxing. "It'd be real useful if that were true."

"Your tit would be in a diesel-powered wringer."

"And I'd be disinclined to, say, tell anybody what I was doing." His voice has all the charm of a cheesegrater. "To share the secret of my success, since my success, you could argue, could have been predicated on a certain amount of violence."

"Moderate elements would never agree. No political clout in stirring up an Inquisition. You know"—I scratch my nose—"because turning farmhouses into occult orphanages, totally not going to attract any attention. I totally need violence to make my point."

"No, just to point the finger." He sneers a little. "Point it at me." He thumps on his chest. "You have it out for me, Chatham, and you have it out for me because you don't like the possibility shit might make you uncomfortable. You want magic to be that Harry Potter-Twilight crap, well pal, real magic? That shit takes wandering in the desert for forty days. That shit takes blood, and sacrifices, and that is what I am teaching these kids."

"Things that will traumatize them and might qualify as child abuse?" I don't need inflection to make my point.

Gary's skin turns the color of a beet; he's hit the bottom of the deep end and started digging. "I am teaching these children things that"

"Throw away the cue cards." I almost spit at him. "I'm not here to sign up for the First Church of Basement-Dwelling Douchebag. Maybe you didn't commit the crime, but I'm not sure the people who almost got burnt at the stake ten years ago will see it that way."

He settles back again, thin-mouthed and thin-eyed. "I still don't buy it." He wheels a tiny bit closer, and I see his next few moves open up in front of me. "I'm going to need a little more assurance than that."

Fortune favors the bold. "Fine." I look at the kids; they're all moving on towards terrified. This may not help. "Fine." My lip's quivering. "You want insurance?" I roll up my sleeve, stick my arm out toward him. "Here. Everything you could possibly need."

I let out a deep breath as I drop every defense I have. The room hits me with a wave of blackness and taut muscles; for a second all I want to do is flee.

Gary stares me in the face as he rolls closer, head cocked to the side as he dares me to move away. He looks at my arm like he's trying to memorize the pattern of my veins.

And with a sharp move and a jolt of cold flesh, I'm standing in a gallery of old memories while an cult leader burrows through my head.

It's cold when we come out of the cellar, and my soul feels like the business end of an oil filter. Gary looks shaken up, but that has to be for my benefit. It doesn't stop my nervous system from trying to wear itself out early.

The mood's electric gray inside the house, tension floating free without us even looking for it. Everyone's more or less where we left them, with the exception of the unoccupied chairs standing in the middle of the room; guess there was some refused courtesy while we were gone. Milk barely glances at me; Doring's preoccupied, her aura like a petri dish full of rabies.

"Welcome back," says Paul, blithe as ever.

Arabella's eyes ask the question; I respond with a kicked-dog expression and an inability to look at her face. Her thoughts collapse into disappointment.

"Everyone alright?" Gary asks.

"Fantastic," Doring purrs, still sighting down the barrel of her shotgun.

Gary gives her a black look. "Excellent."

He wheels in between her and Milk; I can't see his face, but I can tell just looking at his shoulders he's playing satisfied. He looks at Anna Doring, and holds out his hand.

"The gun, please."

Doring double-takes, but she barely glances at that big friendly face before her shoulders droop. She hands the shotgun over with quivering hands; Gary grabs the trigger as soon as her finger's off it, keeping the weapon aimed roughly at Paul.

"Thank you, Anna." He checks the pump on the shotgun, leaves the barrel pointed right at my friend. "Mr. Chatham and I have had a bit of a chat"—all eyes swing toward me on that one—"and we have come to an agreement."

"Agreement?" Arabella makes it sound like "atrocity".

"A very simple agreement," Gary responds. "Regarding our time together here." He hefts the shotgun a little. "Nothing happened."

Arthur's the first one to look like he's been slapped. He goes tensed-knuckle white as he divides the betrayed stare between Gary and myself.

"I was trapped here for a five days. You made me lie to those children."

"You assisted me"—Gary's voice shakes, just for a second—"in dealing with the aftermath of a dangerous and ultimately failed experiment." He gets a faraway vibe to him, his words coming from somewhere much nicer than the world he's currently inhabiting. "One involving kidnapping, and multiple violations of the agreement."

Arthur's whole face drops. "Taking care—"

"Give him a minute, Arthur." No-one likes that I'm the one who says that, but I'm too busy watching Gary's movements to hate myself.

"Yes," Gary says. "Taking care. Taking care of a kidnapper. A conspirator."

The demons get it, but only Milk and Kelly move in concert with Gary; Paul manages to keep himself still as the old man levels the shotgun at Anna Doring.

"A murderer."

Doring swivels in shock, recoils as she realizes what's pointed at her.

"What are you—" I have officially heard the sound of betrayal.

"You gave the order to kill Walt." Gary says it like he's explaining English grammar. "You sent Sunflower on a hit against a group of peacekeepers. And you told a police officer about us."

"Necessary measures." Gun to her head and she's still the sneering assistant. "They were too close to finding out what you were doing...Master, you were so busy, I didn't want to—"

"I was so busy?" Gary's grin makes me sick to my stomach. "Don't you mean you were so busy?"

Doring starts to react, scrunches up at the deviation from script.

"Again," Gary's almost laughing this time, "it seems I have to explain to you how things happened. You"—he gestures with the gun, which is a nice hammer to the adrenal gland—"execute my day to day affairs. You, for whatever reason you might choose to imagine, decided that my resources would be perfect for your plan—"

Anna Doring's world is breaking down into individual pixels; her mouth keeps flapping as she tries to do something besides sink to the floor. Gary keeps on talking, either oblivious or uncaring.

"Your plan to kidnap psychics at the moment of emergence, fill their heads full of stories of how it used to be, and stash them in a room together in the hopes of shifting the belief paradigm." His lip quirks; his eyes are snakes' rattles. "Good thing you explained it to me thinking I'd buy in, or the powers that be might never have known."

"Master—"

"Don't call me that!" His bark somehow makes the silence more pervasive. When he grins it looks like he might bite her. "Don't call me that after what you did."

Paul shakes his head, two pupils floating in each eye. "Well thanks, Master Gary," he says, all the forced enthusiasm of a kid playing with Barney, "I'm sure glad you were here to tell us the truth. Now, you mind telling us what the deal Randall made for us might be?" I don't think that sting was unintentional.

Gary leans his head back, flares his nostrils. The shotgun twitches for just a second, and then he thinks better of it.

"Cover her, Milk."

The demon keeps looking at his fellows on the other side, hesitant to move the gun.

"Milk."

Milk complies with a scowl.

"Thank you." Gary rolls back without looking at the broken blonde next to him, and turns himself to face Paul. "The deal is very simple."

"So simple you don't need to make a speech to explain it?"

Gary ignores that. "I'll surrender Miss Doring to Arthur and Kelly, to be debriefed by whomever the powers that be deem fit. In exchange, we stick to the events as they really happened."

"You mean as they really were just explained to us," Arabella chimes in.

"Feisty." Gary scoffs. "Yes. That version. And in exchange—"

"Master—" Doring stumbles forward.

"Milk, shoot her if she does that again. In exchange, I will release all the emergent psychics—"

"The children," I say.

"Will you people stop it?" Gary snaps.

"Respect isn't running high," Arthur says, arms crossed.

Gary grits his teeth. "I give you the kids. The experiment is over. The culprit is in jail or equivalent. We all move on with our lives." He glances across all our faces. "That's the deal." His fingers glide along the edge of the shotgun. "Now are you gonna take it?"

I look at the rest of the team, Arabella defiant, Arthur broken, two demons too busy thinking to have expressions. I feel steel and fire in them, and a certain amount of swearing; I catch snippets of the things my two associates wish they could do. But no-one moves or says anything; and while Arthur watches Gary, everyone else is either looking nowhere, or at me. My voice comes from somewhere beneath the mother of all dumpsters, vile and disgusted:

"We're gonna take it."

It's not profound. It's not even witty. But it's the best thing that can be said.

Gary looks at me sidelong, most of his attention on Anna Doring. "Then we're done here. Deal is made." The fire's in his eyes again. "And I do know where you live."

"Yeah," I say. "Okay."

Doring starts forward. "Master—"

"Shut up," Gary snaps. He looks back at me, and all but growls. "Go. Now. Right fucking now."

Arabella wants to object, but I'm already marching down the hall, smartass comments dying on my lips. There's movement back in the kitchen, questions and swearing; but none of it is aimed at us. We're already out of this story. I keep my hand pressed to my breast pocket, focus on the Tarot card shifting against my chest, and try to pretend this was all more bad-ass than it was while Arabella thinks daggers at me from behind.

Across the porch; onto the grass; a jingle as Kelly pulls out her keys. The argument inside peaks to shouting, most of it coming from Doring. I give Arthur the front seat, the better to sit near Kelly; it's tight quarters and fumbling as the rest of us try to cram into the back.

From up on the hill comes a single yell, and the bassy, unfortunate sound of a gunshot. We all look up; we all look at each other; but nobody wants to speak. Both I and Arabella want to cry.

Kelly gets the Impala started over the sound of clicking seatbelts, and drives down the little country road as fast as she can safely go. The inside of the car feels like a funeral.

"Sounds like Gary's a hero," Paul says to no-one. "Sounds like he did a good thing, taking out the evil Anna Doring."

"What the hell is your problem?" asks Arthur, genuinely shocked.

"It's how he feeds," Arabella deadpans, uninterested in his response.

Arthur glares at her instead. "Well it's a fuck of a time to do it!"

"You are upset," Kelly says, and reaches her hand across to him in the closest thing she has to friendship. "You should—"

"Damn right I'm upset!" His cheeks flutter with an oncoming cry. "Damn right! Damn it, do you know what he had me do up here? Do you...he made me lie to those kids, made me tell them... tell them all the things they should believe in..."

"Tell them to believe in magic," I croak.

Arthur stops, white-faced; slumps back around out of view. "Yes..."

The car goes a notch quieter, Kelly just driving, Arabella just glaring, Paul a living smirk off to my left. I look out the window and try to enjoy the night air.

"Why was he lying to them?" Arabella asks.

I close my eyes. Moving my tongue is very, very difficult. "You're going to wish I'd made this up."

Her response is an ice cube to the neck. "Try me."

A big, pent-up sigh. My collar's suddenly tight. "Gary thought, if he gathered enough kids—maybe people, I don't know—and made them really, truly believe in magic, the way things were before the Inquisition...that he could actually turn back time. Make magic work again, if only in a small area."

"Like a clean room for sorcerers," Paul says.

This is still the conversation I didn't want to have. I swallow yet another lump in my throat. "Yep. And...from what I can tell, he might not have been wrong."

"Theory's sound," Paul muses.

"McCartney."

"I'm serious," he counters, glaring at the driver. "Shit, I'll be glad to have you off my nuts when I get back home."

"That's Paul for 'I'll miss you'," I reply.

Up in the front, Arthur's still quiet.

"Great," Arabella breathes, aura made of purple razors. "Great." She sniffs, breathes louder than needed, thoughts spiraling out into chaos. "So what? He might have been right, so we let everything he did—"

"Doring did some of it on her own."

"Oh bullshit." Her face lights up wrathful next to me. "We let it all stand now, because 'he might have been right'?"

"I made a deal with him because he had guns pointed at your heads. Because he controlled six confused kids who just wanted to believe in a magical unicorn kingdom. I had nine lives on the line, and—"

"And you got to be in control again," Arabella snarls. "And you got to be the big decision-maker. You got to save the fucking day and do it the god-damn hard way."

This is what I get for our safe exit. I might deserve it. I breathe as deep as the urge to punch will let me, and shiver out a "Yes."

"Well," Arabella sniffs. "Well. We made a deal with the devil, on your word. So what now?" She nearly hits me with her gesticulating. "What do we do next?"

I keep on looking out the window. "Now we tell the powers that be that our good friend Gary violated the agreement, and make an anonymous call about all those missing children."

The entire car seems to exhale. I want to dramatically turn at look at Ara; I don't.

"It'll be a circus," she says, with a dash of awe. "Even if people in charge think the idea has merit—"

I nod. "Kidnapping spate like that'll put the whole damn country on alert. Especially since some of the kids were white," I mutter.

Arabella turns full on toward me, and reaches out to ruffle my hair.

"You know, Randy?" I can barely see her face, but I think I'm getting a sexy little smile. "A girl could learn a thing or two from you."

I look back at her, and smile, and think nothing but roses and trumpets until she's pulled away, my whole brain sealed up tight against her. Then I look back at the window and think: God, I hope not.