"I suspected right away that he was not born or raised in America," I continued. "He had a slight accent, German, I thought, and when he ate with a knife and fork, he wasn't always swapping them back and forth, as Americans do. Yet I never imagined—when one thinks of illegal immigrants hiding under false names, usually it's of someone Hispanic from Mexico and parts south of there. Not kindly grandfathers who speak perfect English and play killer chess. He was very gentlemanly. Flirtatious in a gallant way, like it was a reflex and not an expression of real interest—he was well over eighty and nearly ninety. Our relationship was platonic."

Again, I wet my lips with the drink. It smelled like licorice, and I have never really liked licorice. Across from me, Shaw shifted impatiently. I went on. "At the beginning, all we did was play chess. He beat me every time, and I'm a pretty good player. Then we started going out for coffee or tea after the match, and we'd talk. He was educated. Cultured. He knew about art and literature, about social issues. We didn't have much in common where music was concerned, so we never really got into that, not after a nasty argument over Madame Butterfly. But while he encouraged me to talk about myself, he never shared much about his own life."

Thinking about him started getting me worked up again. I let it. There is nothing like getting weepy and falling apart (in moderation) for being convincing. "For over a year, we played a game of chess almost every week. I—I never had a grandfather, you see, so I suppose he filled a void. Over a year—and then the holidays came around again. When we exchanged gifts—I gave him a hat and a scarf, he gave me a tin of fancy tea—I saw he wasn't looking well. He said he thought he was coming down with a cold. I missed a couple of games, thanks to all the family stuff I had going on, and then he missed a couple—he said his cold was planning to spend the winter—so it was early February before I saw him again. Then I knew he was very sick. But he said he was just getting over his cold, and I—chose to believe him. Not believing him would have stepped over a line, you see. He was entitled to his privacy and his dignity.

"The next time I called him, he didn't answer his phone. Not the first time, or the third, or the sixth. So I went over to his apartment—I brought him chicken soup and groceries, on occasion—and when I knocked, he didn't answer the door. By then I knew, even though I wasn't admitting it to myself. I called Emergency, and they sent over an ambulance. He was lying on the floor in his kitchen, and he'd been dead for a while. They took the body away to the morgue, and I was left to sort through his things –he wasn't well-to-do, so they just let me look around to see if I could find an address book or something to contact his next-of-kin.

"Many old people let things pile up, and he was one of them. While I searched, I thought about what he had told me of his life, his family. He'd said he was a widower, that he and his children and grandchildren weren't on speaking terms, and his oldest friend was dead. I was the only person who missed him enough to do anything before the body started to smell. What was the likelihood that even if I found contact information, that the person would care?" My audience was starting to get restless in general. Time to amp it up.

"Then—I guess you're familiar with Kafka's The Trial, where the protagonist gets arrested and prosecuted yet never finds out why or by whom or for what? The trial is meaningless nonsense, and he leads this life of increasing paranoia until he turns thirty and they kill him? It was like that. There were police downstairs, and they asked me to come down and make a statement. I went, like the good little citizen I was, only when I got down there, someone gave me a knock-out injection. They weren't police. They were federal agents.

"It turns out my friend Mr. Magnussen was a criminal, someone wanted so badly and for something so horrible that just for being close to him, I had to be made to vanish away. While I was unconscious, they evacuated and condemned the building on the grounds there had been a toxic chemical leak. Mr. Magnussen really had been experimenting with some dangerous substances, it seems, but they used that as an excuse to stage a scene in the morgue to convince my family I had died on the scene. They couldn't get close enough to tell I was only drugged because they were told the chemicals were too hazardous.

"When I woke up, I was in that institution I told you about. I wasn't mistreated while I was there. I was never raped or tortured or starved. Yet it didn't feel like they were being merciful or humane, it felt as though… all the bad things could start at any moment. Why shouldn't they? No one knew where I was. It was an intolerable misery. So… I waited, and eventually I found a way to escape that would leave them thinking I was dead." I do know how to tell a story. They were utterly silent.

When Frostbite rustled her dress, I continued. "Mr. Magnussen once mentioned Sebastian Shaw, who owned the Hellfire Club in Las Vegas. It came up in the context of a discussion of the mutant question. It was only a casual reference, made in passing, but I remembered. He said you were the first man when it came to mutant issues, something to that effect, because you were a mutant yourself. I remembered, and when I found myself free, but alone and friendless, it was here that I came, to turn to you. When I found out you weren't here—well, I was rather upset. Desperate, in fact, and so I made up a lie to get a job, so I could stay and wait for you. Also, I needed the work, I needed money. And so I worked, and waited. Today you came."

The eyes I turned to him were shiny with tears. "I can't go home, or even contact my family to let them know I'm alive. I have no other resources, no one in the world."

He pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to me. "There, now. It's all right. You're among your own kind. Wipe your face and finish your drink. Emma?"

"Everything she said is the truth, but there's something smoky about all of it. She's holding out."

I sobbed once into the white cotton. "O—of course I haven't told you everything! That would take all night and anyhow I've only just met you! W—would you tell strangers everything?"

"It's all right," Shaw said soothingly. "Can you answer a few questions for me?"

"I—I think so."

"This Magnussen—did you ever get his real name?"

"Not from him, and like I said, this was a lot like The Trial. There was a lot the Feds didn't tell me." There—a decent bit of misdirection. I never said I didn't know his real name.

"But he was an old man, you said. What did he look like?" Shaw asked.

"Old. Wrinkled, liver-spotted. He had silver hair and blue eyes. Just…ordinary."

"Just an ordinary old man. Magnussen. Magnus…" He mused aloud. "Jenny—what does the name 'Erik' mean to you?"

"The Phantom of The Opera," I said automatically, because it was perfectly true. "That was the phantom's name. 'Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be "some one," like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius…when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind!' I was in love with him all through high school. I carried that book around with me for months."

Shaw laughed, of course. He was a great one for laughing. "Now there's a mutant for you. 'Poor, unhappy Erik!' Hmm…Did Magnussen ever mention a Doctor Klaus Schmidt?"

"No. Never."

"Hmm. You're posing me quite a thorny problem. The thing is, I know of several people who could have been your Magnussen, but either they're the wrong age or they have the wrong color eyes or I know where they are and it's not dead or in America. Well, I have certain sources of information I can call on, and maybe they can shed some light on this. Now I want some dinner. Riptide, call down to the kitchen and tell them I'll have the prime rib with truffle sauce. What does everybody else want?"

Evidently possession of a PhD bumps me up above Riptide in Shaw's estimation.

I watched a few episodes of the show Mad Men, to see what it was about, and although I never really got into it, I did come away with certain impressions about the early 60s. Everybody smoked, everybody drank, everybody screwed around, and they did a lot of all three. At least the drinking part seemed to be true. The wine flowed freely at dinner that evening (I stuck to ginger ale. Why is there no sophisticated adult alternative to alcohol?) and then there were after-dinner drinks. Neither Riptide nor Azazel said a whole lot, and most of the conversation doesn't demand to be immortalized in this journal.

However, I may have made a huge error. I admit a lot of my self-esteem is bound up in how intelligent I am, and perhaps it borders on excess and topples over into pride. I was doing pretty well for myself in the conversation, and in response to something I said, Shaw asked "Have you ever taken an IQ test, Jenny?"

"Yes, I have. Several times."

"And the results?" he asked.

"IQ alone isn't a measure of how successful a person will be. I've known people who tested in the genius range in grade school who nearly twenty years later were still living in their parents' basement, working part time in retail and playing—board games all the rest of the time." I nearly said video games, which would not do at all.

"How high did you score?" he persisted.

I don't think I should have given the answer I did. "Twice my bust measurement in centimeters minus my shoe size."

He frowned. "Stand up and walk over here for a moment. Turn around."

Although he hadn't said 'please', I did it anyway. Looking me up and down, he said. "One hundred and sixty-five. Very impressive."

"Unlike her bust measurement itself," Frosty the Snowgirl sniped.

"Meeeow!" I replied. Her remark deserved no more dignified a response. "No, it's more like a hundred and sixty-two. This bra exaggerates things. I'm impressed—the metric stumps almost everybody." Again, I had the sense he wasn't pleased, and I don't think it's because I'm smarter than he is. I have the sense we're about in the same weight class, so to speak.

But the part which really set me on edge came later, at about two in the morning. At that point, I was the only stone cold sober person in the room, with Frostbite about halfway between the state of sober and drunk. There's something humiliating about being the only non-drinker at the party, and I was smarting like a case of heartburn. I don't know why, I should be used to it by now.

Shaw tossed back a brandy, focused his eyes on me, and said "Since your mutation compensates for your missing hants" a German accent had slipped into his voice "—would it not be interestink to see if it were to compensate for other parts ov your anatomy as they are lost?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, suddenly very glad to be sober.

"Your eyes, for instance. What might you see wizout flesh-und-blood eyes? Or your earz, or your tongue, perhapz. What perzeptions lie in your powers of which you are unaware? Do you not wish to know?"

"Sebastian, darling, you've had a bit too much," Permafrost chided him.

"Only az a matter of zcientific curiosity," he protested.

"No," I said, very quietly, because I was slightly queasy. He couldn't mean—could he? Yes. He could. He did. "That's not something I want to know. What I do want to know is, what happens now that I've joined you?"

"What happens now?" he asked, sitting up straighter. The accent faded as he pulled himself together. "Ah. Yes. For now, you need practice. Practice and develop your powers until you reach your absolute limit. I also want you to keep on doing what you're doing now, only I'll want you to pay special attention to certain guests and members. Once I'm satisfied that you've cultivated your powers to the utmost, then we'll see. I also want you to keep up in what's going on in the field of medicine and pharmaceuticals. How does a thousand dollars a month to cover your expanded responsibilities sound?"

"It sounds fine. Would that be before or after taxes?" I asked, glad to get the conversation back to something more mundane.

"Oh, Uncle Sam's not going to get wind of this. It's off the books."

"Very well. Then since I work tomorrow, I will thank you for extending the protection of your organization to me, and for a lovely evening. Good night."

And so I left and came home.

Upon reading over what I've written and considering it with care, I've come to three conclusions.

Conclusion the First: Shaw and Schmidt are almost certainly one and the same. Support for this?

Shaw slips into German when in his cups; Klaus Schmidt is a German name.

Conclusion the Second: Shaw/Schmidt knows who Erik/Magneto/Magnussen is, and he knows him personally. Support for this?

Shaw asked me about 'Erik'. (How on earth did a German-born Jew wind up with such a Scandinavian spelling, anyhow? Shouldn't he be 'Erich' instead?)

Conclusion the Third: I need to be damned careful, because Shaw might decide to do some exploratory surgery on me. Unsupported. Gut feeling, that's all.

Speculation: Shaw should by all rights have been at the Nuremberg Trials along with the other major Nazi war criminals. Why? Put a certain sort of unethical scientific curiosity together with a German accent, add his acquaintance with a Holocaust Survivor, and 'What did you do during the War, Daddy?'

But that is enough for one night. Time to get some sleep.

Back at the Hellfire Club:

"What did you think of her, my sweet Emma?" Shaw asked as his companion slipped the band from her hair in preparation for bed, if not for sleep.

"She could almost be a Negro, with that flat nose and those thick lips. I'm sure I've seen Negros with skin as light as hers."

"She is not a Negro, and you're clinging to the mores of an outmoded societal standard. We are above that now. All that matters are her genes and her powers. Besides, she has a very well-shaped mouth. Leaving your irrational jealousy aside, what was your assessment of her?"

"She's not like your other recruits. She's not angry enough at the world or at humans. That might just be her temperament—her mind rules over her emotions. Probably always has and always will—."

"Could she be a plant, a double agent?" he asked.

Emma paused while reaching for the zipper at the back of her neck. "Whose?"

"China. North Korea."

"You should have asked me before. Help me with this?" She nodded him over.

"With the greatest pleasure." The zipper purred down in his hand. "She told no actual lies, did she?"

"No. But I wouldn't trust her. Not yet. Her story has as many holes as a pair of fishnet stockings. You slipped up, though. Darling…" He kissed the back of her neck.

"How did I do that?" He nibbled further.

"Dr. Schmidt was showing. And she noticed. Mmmmm." Emma moaned.

"Ah, she may have noticed, but she won't understand…" After that, they were a little too busy for conversation.