I'd only had time to try tracking down a couple of the mugging victims before we were supposed to meet with Torchwick. It hadn't panned out. I'd picked two people from the list who had no next of kin to notify in order to keep things simple. The three of us had gone to the first home after Karrin checked in with Rawlins to make sure it would be clear to poke around. Officially, Rawlins couldn't sanction it, but he and Karrin went way back. As long as we left things the way we found them, nobody was likely to kick up a fuss.

Yang had said very little after leaving the castle, which didn't necessarily worry me. She'd just had an ugly surprise dropped in her lap. She offered to keep a lookout when we went into the first house, and Karrin stayed with her while I went in. Looking through the one-story didn't yield much. My first clue was the fact that there wasn't a threshold. The place looked too well-kept and personally decorated; there should have been one. Even with someone who'd recently died, there should have been at least a residual barrier – there wasn't one at all. That didn't bode well for the occupant, Lisa Mellis. She lived alone, had no pets.

I spent very little time inside, just long enough to find the bathroom. It held most of what you would expect of a twenty-seven year old single woman, including a hairbrush. I plucked a few hairs and proceeded with a tracking spell on the spot. Even if Lisa was dead, it should point me to her body. Only it didn't. The silver pendulum circled, but didn't give me a direction. Even that told me something. One of two things was possible: Either she was dead and the body had been completely destroyed, or she wasn't on this plane of existence anymore. I canceled the spell and left the house.

"Any luck?" Karrin asked. I could only shake my head.

"There's no threshold; she's probably dead." Karrin accepted it – we'd both seen enough cases like this to know how it could end up. Yang, on the other hand, had trouble with it.

"So do we just give up?" I put a hand on her shoulder.

"Of course we don't, Sparky, but there's only so much we can do here." I didn't like it either, but we only had time for one more. "Besides, this all started happening when your wannabe gangster showed up. If we don't find answers here, maybe we can pummel some out of him, eh?" Yang's eyes narrowed and a wicked grin spread across her face.

"Now you're talkin'." Karrin glanced at her watch and tapped it suggestively.

"We've only got a couple of hours left. For the record, I'll say it again; this so-called meeting has trap written all over it." What were the odds that it wasn't? Yeah, right, because my life is just so full of good luck. We all moved to the car.

"Of course it is. That's why we have backup." I'd called Toot back to scout along with some of his kernels. I was a little worried about sending him into a complete unknown, but I'd told him not to take any chances. He hadn't been able to find much about Remnant beyond what I'd already learned. Toot's wounded pride had vanished at the mere mention of pizza, though. Karrin had also insisted putting the Einherjar on standby, just in case. I hoped we wouldn't need them, but the aforementioned luck issues made that unlikely.

The next stop was at an apartment belonging to a man named Darius Gray. Getting in had proved a little harder than Lisa's house; the building was secured. I say only a little, because Yang decided it was time she proved useful. She had wanted us to wait out front while she went around to the back, but Karrin insisted on going with her. Probably to make sure she didn't break anything or just blow a hole in the back wall.

I waited a few minutes before Karrin came back, shaking her head in disbelief.

"So, what'd she do?" Karrin made a disgusted sound and rolled her eyes.

"She jumped up to the roof," she said, as if it was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever said. Not even close, by the way. I craned my neck and counted – seven floors – and let out a low whistle. Even with the Mantle, I wasn't even able to clear that. Don't give me that. Wouldn't you test your limits?

"What, you didn't want to join her?" Karrin snorted.

"Just because I have 'cool new superpowers' doesn't mean I should be using them in broad daylight." I guess she had a point. "Besides, I'm not so sure I could make that jump."

"Well, maybe not without more training. Speaking of, have you got a plan for that?" She gave me a level glance. Well, as level as you can get from a foot and a half down.

"Actually, yes, we do. Yang gave me some exercises to work on my focus. I'm doing one right now, in fact." I blinked. She didn't look all glowy. "You wanna see?" One glib nod later, she'd hefted me up in her arms (ack!) like I weighed less than a dictionary – one of those fancy expensive ones, mind you. Her eyes shone. "You just wait until we get some alone time. I told you that you might be the one screaming." Holy mother of stars and stones, I hadn't thought about that. We hadn't exactly explored much of that aspect of our relationship yet, what with her injuries and all. A sudden embarrassing thought occurred to me.

"Tell me she didn't." Karrin let out a dark chuckle.

"Oh that was one of the first things she mentioned. She was rather graphic." I felt heat creep up my neck and face go all flush. That was the exact moment that Yang reappeared, opening the door and leaning outside.

"Wow, Harry, I didn't think you could turn that shade of red. Do you two, uh, need a minute?" I wiggled out of Karrin's grasp, sputtering and waving my arms. No, no, no, I was not having this conversation with a teenage girl. "I can totally go back inside and come back in a minute," she taunted.

"No, that's q-quite unnecessary," I stammered and cleared my throat. Yang tilted her head and looked at me askew.

"That's not what I hear, Harry."

"Yang!" She laughed and pushed the door the rest of the way open. Karrin, at least, wasn't having fun at my expense. I ignored the wink she and Yang exchanged. "Come on, you two, let's go before someone wonders what we're all doing out here." I bypassed the elevator and went to the stairwell, while the two troublemakers fell in behind me. Thick as thieves, those two.

Darius' apartment was on the top floor, naturally. Counting apartment numbers as I went, I was dismayed to find a woman with a set of keys just locking up the apartment we wanted to get into. She was an older woman, dark hair shot with streaks of gray. She wore jeans and a black polo shirt, and had a worried look on her thin face. This could complicate things, but something told me that I could turn it to my advantage if I played it right. She turned to face us as I fished out one of my business cards.

"Oh, hello," she said. I held out the card, and she took it. She pulled out a pair of reading glasses and looked at it, "Mister Dresden… Wizard? Is that some kind of gimmick?"

"Hi, and sort of, Miss?" I replied, holding out my hand. She took it in a gentle grasp and shook it.

"Emily Rosen," she said. Yang gasped, but it was barely audible. "I'm the building superintendent. Are you here about Darius?"

"Yeah, do you know him?"

"He's one of my best tenants. Did somebody hire you to find him?" I shook my head and waved my arm back at Yang and Karrin.

"I've got a couple of ladies here looking to get into the business and no cases to work right now. CPD sometimes lets me do my own investigations pro-bono." She took them in with a quick look, pausing only briefly on Yang – if she found the girl's appearance unusual, she hid it well. "Do you mind if we go in and have a look around?" Emily's worried look returned.

"Do you think you can find him? He was such a good boy, even with his recent trouble." She pulled her keys back out and unlocked the door.

"I hope so. Do you mind answering some questions for Karrin, here?" I looked over at Karrin, who nodded.

"Sure, Mr. Dresden, anything I can do to help. You won't be taking anything from the apartment, will you?"

"That won't be necessary. Thanks." She opened the door and stayed behind with Karrin while Yang and I went inside. "Yang, have a look around, but try not to touch anything, okay?" She gave me a thumbs up. I handed her a rubber glove from the pair I pulled out of my duster pocket. "Use this if you absolutely have to." She took it and held it out for a second, then shrugged and nodded.

"You notice we didn't get all wonky like we did at Andi and Butters' place last night?" I had noticed; things weren't looking good for our mugging victims.

"Yeah, it's the same here as it was at Lisa's place. I get the feeling we'd find all the single missing peoples' homes just like these two if we had time." She bowed her head and moved to the hallway on the left. I took in the apartment; it was really nice. There was lots of open space, and apart from a pile of mail on a coffee table, the living room was neat and tidy.

I moved toward the back, passing an equally spotless kitchen. The master bedroom was a little more like I'd expect a bachelor's place. Clothes strewn about, sports gear leaned against walls, pictures jammed into the dresser mirror. Darius and friends or colleagues, I assumed. There seemed to be the same five or six people in most of them – at Wrigley Field, out on a boat, that sort of thing. The bathroom also looked more like what I would have expected, but no hairbrush or anything remotely usable for a tracking spell. I was about to go through dresser drawers when Yang called out.

"Harry, I think I found something you might want to look at!" She didn't sound excited, but there was an urgency to it. I abandoned the room and went to find her, which was at the end of the hallway. She stood in a doorway, her back to me. I made sure my footsteps were heavy enough for her to hear as I walked up behind her.

"What is it, Sparky?" She flinched, despite my noisy approach. She pointed at the open door without saying a word. I brushed past her and peered into the room, which was dimly lit by partially drawn curtains. I flipped on the light with the glove, and jerked back at what I saw. It was mostly – save for a table holding sketch books and painting supplies. The far wall had been painted with a mural straight out of a horror movie. The center piece was a giant snarling wolf-man with a red-lined bone mask, claws outstretched. The red eyes glowed, and bony spurs jutted out from the major joints. The background held dozens of smaller versions of the same monster, tearing at people and making a bloody mess of everything. The sky was an ugly red, and the ground was dotted with murky pools, out of which more monsters crawled. "Yuck. I guess we know what was on his mind." Yang hadn't moved.

"Those are Beowulves. Why would somebody from your world be painting them on his wall?" Good question.

"I wonder, how long after he got robbed did this start?" I didn't think we were going to find an answer and started to suggest we have a look at the sketchbooks when Karrin joined us. She stared at the mural for a minute, not saying anything.

"Is that one of the monsters you were telling me about, Yang?"

"Yeah. It's a good effort, but nothing beats seeing the real thing in person." Karrin pushed past us and moved to stand in front of it. The ceiling was ten feet up, and the Beowulf, even crouched as it was, reached nearly to the seam.

"Is this to scale?" I hadn't thought about that. I've seen bigger monsters – Elder Gruff came to mind with a shudder.

"I've seen bigger, but not by much. Most of the young ones tend to be a little bigger than Harry." Blessing, I guess? I really wasn't looking forward to a day-trip to Remnant. I gave myself a shake.

"Karrin, did you get anything useful from Miss Rosen?" She shrugged.

"Not much. Some noise complaints from the neighbors a couple of days before he went missing. That's when she found out about the mugging. He said he was having nightmares about it." She flicked her gaze up at the painting. "This is some real Shutter Island stuff, Harry. What about you, anything?"

"It's the same as the last place – no threshold. I couldn't find anything usable for a tracking spell, but I doubt it'd be any different from the last place." If they were all dead, I hoped it had been quick. I opened the top sketchbook and flipped through a few pages. The guy had real talent – which wasn't saying a lot from me: I did okay with stick figures. Yang and Murphy had both come to either side of me to look at the drawings. Some were pencil sketches, while others were full color illustrations. They were mostly of people, but once in a while armored knights and dragons would show up. There weren't any more clues though.

"Guys, we need to get going," Karrin murmured. She was right; this wasn't a complete bust, but it didn't help us much. Investigating anything is like that more often than not. I closed the book and we left the apartment in a subdued mood. The little black cloud seemed to follow us all the way to the industrial district; there wasn't much discussion.

The address we arrived at turned out to be an abandoned factory. We parked down the street from the four-story structure, which was nestled between similar buildings. There was a wide, tall sliding door that yawned into a partially lit production floor. I didn't see any Einherjar in evidence, but Karrin had assured me that they would be lying in wait, ready for action. I called out to Toot, who descended from the sky, barely making a sound.

"My Lord," he whispered with a quick salute, "the guard is in place and we have been watching. None have come or gone since we started."

"Excellent work, Major General," I saluted back. "What about the inside?"

"It's mostly one big room. There are boxes with different markings on them near the back." He drew the symbols in the air with his finger, which trailed a glowing outline. One was a wolf's head with three diagonal slashes behind it.

"White Fang," Yang growled. Murphy made a sound from the back of her throat. I hadn't heard the name yet.

"Who are they?" Yang started to answer, but Karrin stalled her to save time.

"They're terrorists from her world, responsible for attacking her school." Ah. Toot had drawn a second shape. This one was more like a box drawn in three dimensions. There were three lines coming off different corners, ending in small circles. Yang drew in a sharp breath upon seeing it.

"What is it, Sparky?" She pointed at it.

"That. That is the mark of Doctor Merlot." When the name got no reaction, she elaborated. "He's a crazy scientist who experiments on Grimm. He mutates them into bigger, nastier versions." Oh great. So we've got uber-monsters and now mutant monsters too? The Mantle urgently suggested that I just level the building then and there. The urge was so strong I had to close my eyes and take a couple of breaths.

"Is there anyone inside, Toot?" He shrugged.

"Not that we could see, my lord." Yeah, this totally wasn't a trap. I also had some land in the Everglades for sale. I checked over my gear, pulled out my blasting rod, and gripped my staff.

"Alright, let's do this."