The group once-more reshuffled. No one here was going to fall for the full-on horror movie “let’s split up.” There was at least a buddy system, with the added rule of “no intern left unattended without at least two real workers.” So Sandra and Anna wandered off, hand in hand still, with with Gabe and Jeff following after. And I was stuck guiding our nutjob of a teamleader off to the clump of bushes with her wife and, apparently, familiar to see what the fuss is about.

  “Yup.” The familiar said, shining a fshlight into the bushes. “That’s a thin spot. Paper thin.”

  “Well, we expected this.”

  “We expected thin spots, sure, but this? This is the kind of thing you’d expect to hear people talking about in hushed tones in some pub in Irend a few centuries ago. It feels like a no-shit bastion of fae interference. Just look at the bushes!”

  “That’s more than a pocket full of hawthornes, that’s for sure.”

  “...I regret ever introducing you to Community. And why do you sometimes feel like you just give off Pierce Hawthorne vibes? I know that you aren’t like him as far as bi- Oh shit, I married a fucking boomer.” The dark-haired woman said, gring at enigmatic government spook.

  “But I hate boomers.”

  “You hate the government and feds too, yet here you are.”

  “But that’s Spies Like Us, not Community.” She seemed offended.

  “That’s one of the most boomer Chevy Chase movies you could have mentioned!”

  “It’s a cssic! And you enjoyed it too.”

  “And why do Dan Akroyd movies keep popping up during this case?”

  “Because… Well, honestly, with an ancient Sumerian demon, how could we not? We already have Gabe on his ‘Mission from God.’”

  “But with his height he’s more like the John Belushi of the pair.”

  “Which would make Jeff the Dan Akroyd?”

  “Jeff is too neurotypical to really be Dan Akroyd.”

  “Yeah, could you really see Jeff walking into a soul-food restaurant and asking for pin white-bread toast?”

  “Okay, now that’s racist!”

  “That’s homophobic.”

  “How eve- Stop with the Community references! We’re supposed to be working. You’re scaring the intern worse than the demon did!” At this point she had completely turned her back on the raised copse of bushes she had been examining, gring at our supposed boss for her unrelenting stream of pop-culture references, some of which were even from this millennium.

  “Sorry,” I finally had to speak up, ignoring an incomprehensible mumbled statement about regionals, “Why are we staring at a clump of bushes again?”

  “Because the ghost you spotted led us here.” Said the government agent.

  “Because it’s a damn portal to another dimension.” Said the other agent.

  “Full-on Goblin King tier shit.” Said the older of the two. “Minus David Bowie’s moose-knuckle.”

  “You know to be careful about that sort of talk. Especially so close to such an established...” She paused, looking towards the bushes. “This doesn’t outright change our approach, but we need to be more careful.”

  “Fair enough.” Mrs. Ev- Thorne gnced towards me. “If we’re going to expin further, we should do so where it’s safer, nearer to our modern tech.”

  “Okay…” I couldn’t think of any way to respond. The sheer level of-” I was interrupted by another low mutter.

  “This shitshow is dedicated to the brave mujaha-”

  “That’s Rambo, not Spies Like Us!”

  “If you want to talk about shitshows involving-”

  “We’re not going there!”

  Despite the warning about talking, their banter continued the whole walk back to the tent, with me stuck along at a third wheel. It wasn’t until we pulled back the fp on our initial command center that the mood began to return to a sembnce of professionalism. At least, it would have if we hadn’t interrupted Sandra and Anna talking quietly together, their startled, defensive gnces revealing their conversation was as unprofessional as the one I heard the walk back here. Unprofessional, but not in the same way as that of the two I just had to put up with.

  “Where are Gabe and Jeff?” Mrs. Thorn asked.

  “They’re watching the radios over at the- there.” Sandra replied.

  “Oh well, I’ll brief them on it ter. But you all should know the danger.” She said, grabbing another beer. She may, somehow, not be affected by alcohol, but all those carbs are gonna catch up to her.

  “I know the danger.”

  “Yes, we know damn well you do, but these two don’t. Actually, do you know the danger? Considering your past I highly doubt that.”

  “Considering the st time we went over there, I’d be safer there than with you.”

  “Not if they track down who blew up that mansion.”

  “That was you.”

  “You aided and abetted.”

  “At least if I escaped there I’d have someone to help me out.”

  “Didn’t she dump you?”

  “...not important…” Sandra mumbled.

  “All that aside, we shouldn’t make light of the danger.”

  “What danger.” Anna asked. “It was just a clump of bushes.”

  “The woods is full of clumps of bushes,” Sandra said. “But that ghost led us to a specific ‘clump’ for a reason. Mrs.-” She paused. “Daliah, why did you even take her st name, it makes things way too confusing.”

  “My mom was a deadbeat hippie who abandoned me, and my dad is technically part of the ‘severe danger’ we’re trying to warn these two about. I’m perfectly happy, enamored even, with my current family and wanted a clean break.”

  “Okay, so Mrs. Thorne né Goodfellow is our local subject matter expert.”

  “In what subject?” I asked, though in hindsight they’d been beating me over the head with it.

  “The f- Good Folk, and Faerie. Don’t want to call them by any other name considering how close we are to-” Her expnation stopped as she searched through her notebook for something.

  “So, you’re saying we need to worry about fucking Tinkerbell?”

  “I know that Peter Pan is a pretty recent piece of media retively speaking, but think about the whole implications of the whole thing, with kids being kidnapped. Then compare it with all the simir stories that you can find in every single culture on earth, going back thousands of years. Although it’s not just children who get kidnapped.” Mrs. Thorne, the team-leader one, not the cat one, said.

  “The modern storybooks sugarcoat things, but the Grimm brother’s didn’t hold back in recording them. While these entities have strict rules, it only takes one slip for you to get dragged off to another world to serve as a pet in one of their courts. Some fools even go willingly.” Dahlia sad, her mouth twisting in disgust. The other Mrs. Thorne took over for her.

  “People disappear all the time, as you two are well aware. There are generally two ways this happens. In some spots the world is just naturally thin. People, especially those who are overly detached from the world, can just lose their grip on reality and slip through the cracks. In some drastic cases whole groups or ships, airpnes, buses, and other things fall out of this world and into the ones that border ours. These are tragic, sure, but shit happens. And, in case you haven’t already picked up on the obvious, the two of you know damn well how this can happen.”

  She didn’t mean…

  “But that’s not what we’re facing here. Slipping out of reality is one thing, but it’s easily guarded against if you know the dangers. Something one of your friend’s didn’t at the time. We’re not here to warn you about that. Because there’s also the cases where there’s a bit more active interference from the other side. Creatures like that, they need a bastion to sally forth from to capture their prizes. They need a fort. And what we just found out there, is one of these forts. And you, Ms. Chanel, should know exactly why this is so dangerous.”

  “Don’t you dare make assumptions about me!” I shouted, fists clenched.

  “There’s no ‘assumptions.’ Let me give you a bit of advice. If you want to talk about your problems with a therapist, go see one in person where HIPAA will protect you. Don’t see one from a sketchy app you found from Youtuber’s shilling for money. Especially a sketchy app run by Israeli intelligence. That’s somehow worse than Raid: Shadow Legends.” Sandra felt the need to chime in on this.

  “Should you be revealing sources?”

  “How am I revealing anything? This is all stuff you can look up easily.”

  “Those are protected medical documents!” How dare she go through my confidential medical paperwork.

  “They would have been if you had actually seen a qualified professional. It’s not like we needed to sub poena them even, unlike what my bitch of a boss did when she hired me. Although we did have to do that for your juvenile records. So, if you can remember it, you know the- Wait, Liah, didn’t you say that we didn’t need to worry about… the Good Folk kidnapping people here?” She looked over at

  “I made a mistake, sorry. I’m not perfect.”

  “You’re more than perfect enough for me.” The reassuring pat on her wife’s shoulder just pissed me off more. Ft out admitting to a serious invasion of my privacy, and she interrupts it for some flirting? Digging into my deepest, worst-

  “You shouldn’t space out like that.” The bitch said, breaking me out of my reverie. “You know, I had a roommate in the Corps who would do that a lot. Actually, holy shit. How the hell did I not make that connection until now?” Sandra sighed.

  “How did you not? She came up during the discussion on hiring these two repeatedly. She was the actual instigating factor that led to me being hired! Did you somehow not make that connection at all until now?”

  “It was the military, we always used st names. How am I supposed to know who the hell ‘Rose’ was?” My blood chilled, but Sandra continued to argue.

  “Didn’t you bait her into taking this job by promising more information on that case?”

  “No, I was using the one from her childhood. I guess the Sumerian succubus made me forget about that. The ghost certainly didn’t help.” She actually wasn’t wrong. That early afternoon felt like it was a year and a half ago.

  “That doesn’t excuse digging through sealed records!” I finally responded.

  “Are we not going to touch on how weird it is that all of you seem to know the same random person?” Daliah asked.

  “Synchronicity is already well established, Liah, that’s not what we’re discussing here.”

  “I just don’t get why she’s so important.”

  “You can’t just say that in front of her friends and former stalker! Even if I agree. Our boss is also kind of pissed she wasn’t able to recruit her. Dunno why, from what I remember of her she seemed kind of absentminded. And with a lot of wasted potential for her looks. Plus a total closet case.” One of these descriptors finally made something click with Anna.

  “You don’t mean Rose Snyder.” Anna’s previous pet project, and my friend. “Is she- Don’t tell me she’s-”

  “Living the dream, and she didn’t even need to get run over by a semi-truck to obtain it.” Mrs. Thorne said dryly. “She’s probably best where’s she’s at, or else our boss would use the NFA and other tax-evasion charges she’s facing to force her into the position you two are currently interning for.”

  “So you’re saying she’s alive?” Anna was beside herself. I was shocked myself. After that day, and the resulting search, we had given up all hope. Even more than that, the abruptness of it all, it brought up memories of things I had though were long since buried. To think that she was alive all along.

  “Haven’t we gotten sidetracked from trying to brief you on the current danger?”

  “You can’t just tell us a friend we though was dead has been alive along and just move along from that!” Anna was furious, screaming at Mrs. Thorne.

  She took a seat, leaning back into it, and stared up at the canvas ceiling of the tent. When she replied, she spoke with a slow, measured tone.

  “Your friend is alive. And you are too, for now, but the amount of things that could kill you or worse here are piling up. If you want to go on about secrets and immorality you’re in the wrong pce. Those are our job.” She leaned forward, making eye contact.

  “On top of that, I’m being forced to state outright information that’s really best to say gently. I’ll be the first to admit that tact isn’t something I have in rge supply, but I don’t want this conversation just as much as you do. I’m a Libertarian at heart, and it pains me to have invaded your privacy, but you went through the same pain back then with no one believing you.” Bull-fucking shit.

  “At the best of times, people who touch with the supernatural are at risk of the supernatural touching back. The more you get involved with it, the more it gets involved with you. And when the supernatural does more than touch, and it turns into an encounter of the 3rd kind, well, it raises a few fgs in a few databases. And the agencies who run those databases have no sympathy for a young girl who went through hell and is missing her parents. Say what you want about our methods but we’re a close-knit family and far more empathetic than the bigger guys. So, Ms. Chanel at least, you should understand that when we warn you about the danger, that you know damn well we aren’t exaggerating, unless you choose to believe the ‘social workers’ who said your experience was all in your head.”

  “And you having me drag Anna along?”

  “Long story, but we need someone who can do wardrobe for us. She was the most recruitable subject-matter expert given the connection.” She shrugged. “Document retrieval is a weirdly tricky field. It’s not like we can just waltz into the main National Archive’s building and walk out with a magical document even if we do technically work for them. And other locations are even worse.”

  AnnouncementIn hindsight doing a full novel-length arc from a completely random perspective wasn't my brightest idea, but in my defense I did do a poll. The bigger issue is that the location in question is actually based on a friends house, and every time I add a new hazard to the characters here he finds something new and creepy IRL.

  The first one was finding a cave system underneath his property about 3 weeks after I posted about the cave system here, and he also recently discovered another graveyard full of ruined headstones. On top of that there's already common problems he has with ghosts and at least one demonic incident I'm aware of, as well as a mimic and a bigfoot sighting; it's probably not ethical for me to continue using his house as a setting.

  I'm still going to of course. I'm just waiting for him to actually find a rge copse of hawthorne bushes.

  Also, it's weirdly fun writing my MC becoming the very thing she hates, especially knowing how she's trying to justify it.