After the explosions, and Staccato's unmasking, the evening had gone very south, very fast. Nobody had understood what had happened, and the Pollos had had all the time to disappear from the walkways. River had, in a very chivalrous way, helped a pale and suddenly incredibly sick Banshee out from the room, passing through the flood of running people with all of his might. He has deposited her out of the theatre and then, with a look that was half apologetic half disappointed had excused himself, turned into a crow, and flown away in the night.

Banshee didn't want to wait for the others. She remembered walking into an alley, half-blinded by confusion, and then she was right in her living room.

She felt a sense of suffocation at the bottom of her throat, and her stomach spinning and turning with the utmost violence. She hurriedly crawled out of the dress that was downright killing her, and back into her tank top and comfortable house shorts.

When Garaham appeared in the center of the room, she had already emptied a whiskey bottle, and her stomach in the meantime, at least two times, in the paper bin beside the couch where she was lying.

«Woman! Whatever possessed you for not answering your phone? We've been looking for you everywhere!» Garaham snarled, snatching the bottle from her fingers. She could barely protest, her head still spinning.

«I had to lie down.»

«From what I have the disgrace to be able to see, you had to gulp down! Look at this bottle. You're shameful!» he put it away, in the proper glass bin. «You came home just to get drunk? Don't you all, usually, ruin your livers together then patch them up with magic like girls in a slumber party?»

«That was Brunswick.» Banshee said. «Surgeon Egon Brunswick. The best heart surgeon in Boston. And, incidentally, the man who saved me hide, ten years ago.»

«Chinese food incoming!» Chico and Vopros entered, and a cloud of fry food smell followed them like hunting follows its prey. They had four bags from a good Chinese restaurant downtown, and big ones, at that. «Sorry we're late, we thought you were hambrientos like us! I could eat an elephant!»

Banshee started to rise up, trying to make up her mind about the food. Some part of her was famished, some just wanted to throw up again.

Garaham was still looking at her with the widest eyes.

«What? Did we interrupt something?» Chico laughed. Then he saw them exchanging a gaze. He panicked. «Ay de mi, we did?»

«No, no. Banshee was just telling me about it... you know, Staccato.» Garaham said, his composure rapidly regained.

«Uh right! That was... man! Who could imagine? At this point, I was really convinced he was Jägermann! What a shock!» Chico went on, without stopping to think, starting to put the food on the table, while Vopros took on his shoulders to put the alcohol.

«Little doctor was always with Grasshopper. Seems we have just made little error.» Vopros pointed out, putting down the glasses.

«Who could imagine the other one was a mage as well? Grasshopper does find himself surrounded by them.» Chico nodded. «Banshee, why are you so white? And why the living room smells like your room on a Saturday morning?»

«I thought you'd go out on Saturdays, like all the young people in town.» Garaham looked at her from up-down. She snorted, and fetched a chair, sitting down at the table.

«I have mass on Sundays if I got at church with a hangover Father Browning bites me head off.» she grumbled.

«Oh, right. You miss all the high Cs.» Garaham said, absent-mindedly. She turned towards him, an eyebrow raised.

«What?»

«What?» he replied, blankly.

«Jefe! Sit down and eat before it goes cold!» Chico called, pouring some water in a very clean glass and putting it in front of the man, who was still standing in front of the chair. Garaham didn't seem to understand.

«Isn't this your dinner?»

«It's ours.» Chico gleamed. «What if it wasn't Jägermann? We unmasked the bastard in front of the whole Order. And he won't be showing his face around us for some time now.»

«We're not even close to pinning the werepeople's attacks to Staccato, neither are we in understanding what could he want from the Hildegarda.» Garaham pointed out, his hand stopping on the chair's back.

«But we won. And you celebrate your victories, as small as they are.» Banshee chimed in, picking up a package filled with a strangely messed-up rice. «Plus, if he's not Jägermann, sooner or later, the Order will find out he was behind the attacks. You should have more faith in your brother.»

Garaham glared at her, but just for instinct. Ultimately, he looked at the food. He hadn't had Chinese food since he was in College. He could have sworn he had completely forgotten the taste of mu-shu pork.

The food was good and warm. As was the air around the table. They had pulled off something incredible, in its small importance in the history of the world.

«So, tell us, Chief. Did it hurt?» Banshee asked, seeing Garaham take a second helping of shrimps.

«What?»

«When you extracted the stick from yer ass.» she snickered, ready for a solid whipping, but ultimately now, too relieved and happy to avoid the temptation.

Garaham laughed.

Everyone stared at him.

They all laughed.

It was turning into a wonderful evening.

Until Vopros sniffed something.

«Hey, it wasn't me!» Chico raised his hands. «Ay de mi, did something die in the air vents? And decomposed in a blast?» he then asked, as everyone brought their hands to their noses, trying to fight off the terrible stench that was surrounding them.

It was indescribable with words, everyone started coughing.

The surface of the table started to be pinpointed with little black dots. So small, in the beginning, they looked like fleas. Then, they started to grow, and roll on the surface like black and horribly smelly quicksilver drops. But this time they knew what was going to happen. Vopros put a hand inside his jacket, Banshee darted in her room and extracted a rifle and a gun, tossing the rifle towards Garaham, and Chico caught his meat cleaver.

In a matter of seconds, the drops had formed a pool of oozy, stinky black liquid. That same pool rapidly burst up in a pillar of fluid and formed the well-recognizable figure of Staccato.

There was something darker about him, even simply in his aggressive stance, with his arms along his sides and his fists clenched, his legs slightly apart and one a bit further than the other, his head lightly bent forth, as if he was challenging everyone in the room to do something. A deadly violet aura surrounded him.

«Finally! I had to wait until the useless failure of a summoner wanna-be and the old dynamite dinosaur were back with their disgusting parody of food!» he hissed. There was rage in his voice, even if he was trying to keep it under control. They could easily see it even in the trembling of his fists. «I'm here to put an end to you and to your meddling!» Staccato's voice was coarse and dry, he was so angry he wasn't even disguising it as he had always done.

«Hey! Ye started it! Can't we call it even and go each other their fucking way?» Banshee offered, taking the safety off her gun. Staccato turned slightly his hooded head towards her, with just the smallest movement, and it still made her skip a breath.

«Even? I always knew you were an ignorant peasant, but that's too much, even for you. To think that an "even" can exist with all that you've done to me! With all that you've been putting at risk with your oblivious, obtuse interfering in things so much out of your league!» his voice rose up, in volume and even in tone, croaking slightly as his anger mounted to the point of no return. He put a hand on the golden treble clef around his neck and tore it away, snapping the chord. He rose it over his head with a dramatic gesture. «But it ends here! You are nothing! Nothing in front of me, nothing in front of the pure power of death!»

Banshee and Garaham let go of some silenced shots. The bullets stopped mid-air and fell down like candies. Under the hood, Staccato painted a manic smile on his thin lips. The treble clef shone, once, of a creepy violet light, of the same shade of Staccato's aura.

The four felt a paralyzing power emanating from the little object.

Something terrifying crawling inside their bones and melting every hope, crushing every optimism. They felt a pang in the pit of their stomachs: desperation, hopelessness, emptiness. It was so strong that they all felt nailed to the ground, deprived of any energy, broken by the weight of anguish and sorrow.

Staccato brought the treble clef in front of him, pointed it right towards them, and muttered some words.

The treble clef flashed with its violet light.