"You need more money for what?"

"Hotel rooms," Azara explained, then chose her next word carefully. "Food."

As if the word had summoned her, Clara appeared behind her. "Room service and chocolate. It's a part of my contract."

Alastair rubbed his forehead in exasperation, his features shrunk down on the small television monitor. Harvey had been reduced to a few fluffy white pixels. "Angus. I'm doing the best I can for you. But now you're asking me to accommodate a lady who's more sketchy than the raccoon that keeps going through my trash. No offense, miss."

Clara blew some stray hairs out of her face, only for them to resettle equally chaotic. "None taken. I like raccoons."

"And further," Alastair turned to Angus again, "your safety is important to me. I'm already not happy about the fact that you nearly got yourself blown up inside that tower. If this gets any more dangerous, I'm booking you a ticket straight back to Ireland."

"We will stay safe," Angus assured. She felt the way he answered. It sent a a quiver through her bones. A small wave of wrongness that made her pulse slow. It all passed within a heartbeat, but she knew what that feeling meant. A lie.

Angus didn't mean to lie. It was more of a promise he wasn't sure he could keep. There was no guarantee they would stay safe. Not that they were going to tell Mr. Alby that.

She could feel Angus thinking along the same lines. Hesitation to give a promise he might break. She didn't hear people's thoughts as words or exact sentences. She heard them as waves of emotion, and from there it was a matter of deduction and separating through the jungle of feelings that people usually experienced at the same time. When Alastair had been reluctant to help them earlier, she had known that behind his businessman's mask he had been afraid. The way that fear grew when he looked at the little green dragon, swamping over his more reasonable emotions, told her that he had been afraid for Angus.

It was harder to read a person over a television screen, but still she tried, so that she could best navigate the argument. A bloom reluctance merged with the want to help told her that Alastair was close to budging.

"I will help you. But I want constant updates on your whereabouts, and Lawrence with you at all times. Where is the old chap, anyway?"

"On the surface," Isis answered. "We left him in a hotel room when going to the tower."

Alastair sighed, and pulled out his laptop, a blurry box of black pixels. "So where am I getting you tickets to?"

They all turned to Clara.

She bit her lip. "America."

Alastair raised his gray brows. "America?"

Clara only nodded. "America."

"America?" Frida peeped.

"America," Clara confirmed.

Angus's eyes went wide. "AMER-"

"Oh it's just over the pond," Azara snapped. "We'll survive."

Frida looked down at her talons. "It's just... So far away..."

"After all we have done, are we backing out now? I don't think so." Azara turned to look at Clara. 

"Exactly where in America is it?"

Clara frowned. "That I don't know."

Angus looked like he wanted to melt into a muddle. "But America is HUGE! Like, millions of sheep pastures big! How are we supposed to find the lab if we don't have any idea where it is?"

"Well we're no closer to finding it if we're in the wrong country," Isis pointed out. "Let's get to 

America, and we can figure out where it is from there. I mean, there's only fifty states to check, right?"

The former agent twirled a stray piece of hair. "But sixty-two locations. There's sixty-two labs scattered across the US."

Frida looked like she wanted to bury herself in the darkest hole she could find. "Sixty-two? There's that many?"

"What's the closest?" Alastair questioned.

Clara thought for a moment. "New York."

Alastair sighed. "Very well. I will get your tickets. Is New York is a good place to start?"

Clara nodded. "Yes. A good hub for the rest of the country but close enough to our European operations. It would make sense if they set up there."

Mr. Alby chewed on his lip. "Then New York it is. But I have one condition."

Azara raised a brow. "Yes?"

"I'm putting a time limit on your trip. With Angus gone, business here is slowing down. I want his talons back on Irish soil within thirty days."

Angus's wings drooped. "But what if it takes longer than that to find Will?"

"Then I'm afraid my aid will come to a stop."

Azara rested a talon over Angus's to assure him, but she looked up at Alastair on the monitor. "Then we will find him within thirty days. Thank you, Mr. Alby."

Alastair nodded. "Best of luck. I'll let you know the details of your tickets." With that, after a goodbye baa from Harvey, the monitor turned black.

Azara took a breath, then turned to the team. "Alright, what's next?"

Clara tucked a rogue piece of hair behind her ear. "Now it's time to find my toys."

~~~~~

Toys. What exactly Clara meant by toys, they did not know. The woman had provided them with little more description than you'll know they're mine when you see them. And yes, you'll be able to lift them. Maybe. Yes.

On top of that incredibly unhelpful description, Clara had also failed to provide any real idea of where these toys might be found. They were confiscated after I retired. A couple I managed to sneak away with me or hide in secure locations, but most of those I've already had to dismantle for my current operation. I'm going to need more of them.

Which left them exploring the hallways, turning over rubble as they went. "They clearly left this place in a hurry," Azara muttered, rolling over an abandoned flask.

"They sure did," Angus agreed, poking his head out of a sack, a jam smeared on his forehead.

Frida furrowed her brows. "What exactly...?"

Angus wiped the jam off his forehead and stuck it in his mouth. "Jam tarts. Lots of jam tarts."

"Any chance that's what Clara would consider a toy?" Isis chimed in.

Angus tapped a talon to his chin, resulting in a blob of jam formulating a sticky beard. "Knowing 

Clara, her definition of toy probably falls more in line with shiny, deadly, and psychotic."

"This whole place gives me those vibes," Frida murmured darkly.

Silence fell over them. Azara could feel the somber waves emanating from them. They all felt the same way.

"Maybe we'd have better luck searching in one of the rooms?" Angus offered softly, slipping from the sack, jam clinging to his scales.

Isis nodded. "That's a good idea. Anything of importance probably wouldn't have been left out in the halls."

Angus twitched an ear. "Well, I'd say jam tarts are pretty important, but that's just me."

Azara offered him a smile and snuck a lick of sweet raspberry from Angus's wing. "There's a lot of rooms. We'd make the most of our time if we divide and conquer."

Frida hugged her wings to her side. "Is... Is separating really a good idea?" Isis swished her tail in thought. "It would be best to be efficient. Will is waiting for us every moment we delay. But we shouldn't wander these rooms alone. Let's travel in pairs. Safer that way."

Nods traveled around the group. Azara gestured towards the closest door. "Angus and I will take this one. Plan to meet back here within an hour?"

Isis nodded. "Within an hour." With that, she and Frida leapt into the air and glided down the hall towards another door.

A phantom draft brushed past her scales, and she shivered. Something about the place made her stomach cold. Hollow. She hadn't been there to witness all of the lab's horrors, but standing in that abandoned hall, she could imagine it. The black-suited agents darting back and forth, ferrying trapped dragons in cages and sacks. Helpless.

And she had wanted to abandon them. Before Angus had convinced her otherwise.

A wingtip brushed hers. She turned to see Angus's warm golden eyes. "Don't feel bad. We helped end this, remember?"

She offered him a smile. "I didn't know you were also a telempath?"

Angus chuckled. "It doesn't take a telempath to read a face."

"Is it that obvious? I really need to work on my acting skills." Azara twisted her expression into her interpretation of a certain agent they knew. "Now you'll never be able to tell what I'm thinking."

The green dragon burst out laughing. "I think you still have some work to do. That face looks like Mr. S just fell in a heap of sheep dung."

She exploded with laughter, and Angus joined her. The laughter lifted some of the weight from her stomach. She felt lighter— until she remembered why they were here.

Azara set her jaw. "We should keep looking."

Angus nodded, and they started for the door. Conveniently, it was jammed open with a piece of metal, just large enough for them to squeeze through.

"Ah, where's Frida and her knack for finding light switches when you need her," Angus muttered. She couldn't see him in the dark, but judging from the sound and distance of his voice, he was skimming the walls looking for the switch.

Perhaps it was the dark. The swirling, unnatural night. But something about the room unsettled her. It twisted her stomach into a knot and her heartbeat speed. Despite this, she tentatively stepped into the dark. The dark curled around her, beckoning her in.

Come, come...

Help us...

Waves of fear greeted her. She wasn't afraid— the shadows were.

Run...

She halted.

RUN!

She turned, scrambling backwards. She needed out— she needed to get out—

The room filled with light. The darkness vanished.

Angus drifted down towards her. "Found it! Oi, who puts a light switch behind a cabinet?" He cocked his head, watching her. "Hey, you alright? You look like you've seen a ghost," he chuckled.

She blinked and twitched an ear. There was no mistaking it. She had definitely heard those voices. Felt them. "No," she whispered. "But I heard some."

His brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

She shook her head. "Something terrible happened in this room. Something so terrible that the memory of their fear still clings to the walls. To the shadows."

Angus tucked his tail tightly around him. "What do you mean? All I see in here are... I'm not really sure what this stuff is. Vials. Strange fluids. Microscopes. Lots and lots of cabinets and big metal boxes. But what do you mean by heard some? How do you hear ghosts?"

"I don't know... It's never happened to me before. But— in my family, my mother was the telepath and my father the empath. My mother's mother used to ramble on about graveyards— said they were too noisy. We all thought she had lost it in the head but..." She took a deep breath. "I just don't know."

"Well I must say, if you can listen to ghosts, that's pretty awesome."

She grinned, then a thought struck her. "Wait, vials? Strange fluids? Microscopes?" She looked around, confirming the sight even as she asked.

"Yes, why?"

"I know where we are."

"Where?"

The knot in her belly turned cold. "We're in what this place is named after," she said. "We're in the lab."

The place was clearly in disrepair, victim of a hurried evacuation. She spread her wings and ventured up to the lab table. Indeed, little remained. Yet there was still enough to have a sense of what had happened there. Empty cages littered the table, as did scalpels and other horrific tools with precise blades.

The sound of clinking glass made her turn. Angus was reaching his arm into one of the overturned vials, where a few drops of bright red fluid still resided. "Angus, what are you doing?" she called to him.

He dipped his talon in the liquid, and proceeded to stick it on his tongue.

"ANGUS!" She lunged towards him—

But he had vanished.

"Hey, look, I'm invisible now! Awesome!"

She dragged her talons down the side of her face. "Angus! What were you thinking!"

The place where he last stood rippled, the only indication of his presence. "It smelled like strawberries. Nothing overly evil smells like strawberries. Except maybe medicine. But that stuff is usually good for you."

"Angus, if I could see you, I would slap you." She sighed, and started over towards the vials and the microscope next to it, talons clicking. Her eyes caught on what was left beneath the microscope.

Scales. Dragon scales. Gray with decay, but scales nonetheless. "Oh no... These poor dragons..." she murmured. As she approached it, she realized it wasn't entirely gray— patches of it rippled like Angus. "They derived this... From dragon magic. From a dragon with invisibility."

"How do you know?" The sound of his talons on the metal table was the only indication that he had come up beside her. "Blazing sheep— those are dragon scales— those came from a live dragon—"

He retched. His scales shifted back to green, the color of his body reappearing as if he had just stepped out of a dense fog.

"This could have been us," he said, voice just above a whisper. "Picked apart, lab rats, dissected—"

Azara cut him off with a gentle wing tap to his shoulder. "I know."

For she understood the pain, the disgust, the horror that radiated from him. And she had no other words to explain that she felt it too. "Let's keep looking," she murmured after a moment.

Metal clanged as she turned over a canister. Not quite a canister, she realized. A gas tank. One of many. Several more stood propped against the wall. She scanned them for any sort of label to indicate their contents, but found none. Loose papers, abandoned in a hurry, scanners the ground near the wall. She moved to investigate—

"Hey Azara, I think I found Clara's toys."

Azara eyed the papers, then turned back to Angus. They likely weren't important anyway. Angus sat next to a small briefcase at the far end of the lab table, popped open to reveal an assortment of shiny gadgets laid out on black velvet. Most were spherical, a small button topping them, with nothing but a glowing ring of color around each button to tell them apart.

"Yes, I'd say this is them," Azara muttered. "But now how to get them back to Clara?" She glanced back at the door. The gap was smaller than the briefcase to be sure.

Angus chewed on his lip. "One at a time?"

Azara sighed. "One at a time."

She picked up one of the orbs, careful to avoid the button, and took to the air. Despite there being no immediate danger, she couldn't help but feel relieved as she slipped out of the laboratory and back into the corridor.

Azara didn't believe in ghosts before. But she was absolutely certain that they existed in that room. And she wanted no more than to heed their warning.

To run from the lab.

Yet they couldn't— not until they found William. 

~~~~~

So... The journey is talking us to America! What do you think about that? And what about Azara's mysterious new power? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments, and please remember to vote if you enjoyed!