Roy, for his part, was pacing the length of Felicity's computer workstation, impatient to get going and wondering why everyone else around him seemed to be treating Maggie's introduction to Officer Lance as some sort of 'sacred' event. "This is ridiculous," he grumbled. "Why the hell are we giving them so long for a simple introduction..."

Felicity shushed Roy, annoyed that the street kid seemed so intent on ruining such a unique and special moment. "Harry is Maggie's *father*," she whispered harshly, "she hasn't seen him since she was eight years old..."

Roy's annoyance vanished when he understood the circumstances surrounding the reunion. A minor question, though, continued to stick out and bother him. "I thought his first name was Quentin," Roy commented, confused.

"Shhhhh!" Felicity exclaimed, fed up with Roy's pestering.

When father and daughter came back to the main meeting area, it was clear that both of them had been crying. Harry decided to take the lead. "Guys," he announced to the group, squeezing Maggie's hand for support, "I'd like to introduce you to my daughter, Maggie Carpenter."

"Maggie Dresden-Carpenter," Maggie corrected.

"Really?" asked Harry, clearly surprised.

Maggie squeezed her father's hand in repsonse. "Told you I never forgot you." Harry opened his mouth to speak...then closed it when he realized that no words were going to come out. So Maggie decided to bring the group's focus back to what they had come there to do. "So," she began, squeezing her father's hand again, "you clearly have an expert on the Red Court working with you. What do you know about Beso Rojo so far?"

"We know it's a nightclub," Felicity began, opening a file of papers and reading from the top sheet. "Opened by a shell management company shortly after the quake..."

Roy looked at the roomful of premium computers, then back at Felicity's paper file, intensely confused by the disconnect between them. "Wait, why is she reading from paper? A computer setup like this could probably get us any information we could ever want..."

Maggie turned her attention to Roy. Her expression showed deep sympathy for the plight of her friend...and his frustration at being out of the loop. "I guess you don't know about my dad, huh?" she asked him. Roy's brow furrowed as he shook his head. "My dad's a wizard, Roy. If we turn on those computers with him around they'll fry."

Roy's eyes went wide for the briefest of moments before he remembered exactly who he was talking to...and what they were there to do. Once the concept settled in Roy's mind, though, it sparked an idea. "You're a wizard?" he asked, turning to Harry. When Harry nodded, Roy tried to present his idea. "Can you...do you have any way to tell us if Thea's still alive?"

Harry caught on to Roy's line of thinking right away. "I do," he told the group, inspired and energized by the presence of his long-lost daughter at his side. "Do you have anything really personal of Thea's? A necklace, a watch, anything she kept on her all the time?"

Oliver spoke up. "I think her purse is still in her office," he suggested. "I'll go get it."

He headed toward the staircase...until Diggle stopped him. "You're not exactly dressed to be seen in the club, Oliver, and it's getting close to open. I'll go."

When Oliver looked down and realized that he was still dressed as the Arrow, he immediately recognized that his friend was right. "Thanks, Dig," he agreed.

"How would you know where Thea's purse is?" Maggie asked Oliver as Diggle climbed the stairs.

"She's my sister," Oliver replied.

Maggie raised a curious eyebrows in Roy's direction. "*He's* Thea's brother?"
Roy nodded and winced, fully understanding where Maggie was headed. "Yep."
"And he's this Arrow figure you've been working with?" Roy nodded again.
"And you've had no idea this whole time?"

Roy turned to Maggie, clearly annoyed at the way she was pushing at his shortcomings. "Yeah, what about it?"

Maggie was unintimidated, and it showed in her teasing smirk. "Just...interesting, is all..." Roy was stopped from any attempt at coming up with a counter-argument when Diggle came back downstairs carrying a small woman's purse.

Harry scanned the contents of the purse as Diggle spilled them out onto the table. "No necklace, no charm bracelet, no watch. God, not even a tube of lipstick! I thought no self-respecting woman left the house without at least a tube of lipstick..."

Oliver cut Harry off when he saw what *was* in Thea's purse. "There! I gave her that stone when I got back from the island. It's a symbol of our relationship."

Harry picked up the smooth stone etched with chinese symbols. "So this rock is important to her?"

Roy and Oliver both nodded. "One time when we broke up she gave that rock to me," said Roy. "She said if I wanted to get back together with her I should give that back to her."

"So the fact that she has it means you gave it back to her," Harry mused, "which means you're still together..." Roy and Oliver suddenly averted their gaze from Harry, which he noticed immediately. "You two broke up?" Roy nodded, which Harry took into account as he studied the stone. "This stone represents Thea's relationships to the people she loves. When she didn't want to think about those relationships, she deliberately left this rock back at the office."

"Dad, how can you know that it was deliberate?" asked Sara.

Maggie gasped at the first word of Sara's question, but Harry answered the question before she could bring up the issue. "I don't know any woman who would go anywhere without her purse, do you?"

"So what does that mean?" asked Roy.

"It means," Harry replied, clearing away space on the cluttered table, "that this is the perfect focus for my tracking spell." He pulled a couple of hairs from the hairbrush he found on the table and focused his energy on the sweet young woman in his memories and the dangerous situation she now found herself in. Harry then wrapped the hairs around the rock as he whispered his incantation: "Ubriacha, ubrius, ubrium..."

The stone started to glow with a gentle green light. Roy stared at the stone, stunned into silence by the simple display of Harry's power. Oliver, though, was far more curious than surprised. "What does that mean?"

"It means," Harry explained with a growing sense of relief and self-satisfaction, "that as far as I have any power to tell, as long as this stone keeps glowing green they're keeping Thea alive."

"They?" asked Maggie. "You've tied your tracking spell to the Court?"

"Kind of," Harry replied. "You're familiar with the fact that the club is pushing a street drug called the Kiss?" Maggie nodded, so Harry continued, "I think they've found a way to up the concentration so they can keep their potential food docile for longer periods of time. This stone isn't tracking Thea per se, since we already know where she is. It's tracking the amount of the drug in her system."

Maggie was impressed by the logic that her father had put into the spell. "So if the stone starts to increase its brightness we'll know we don't have much time. Good thinking, dad..." When the group looked to her for an explanation, Maggie gave them one. "When a Red Court vampire is about to feed, their saliva works as a mood enhancer and anesthetic."

"Sure," Felicity commented, "because they want to keep their food happy and pain-free before they kill it."

"In a case like this, it's more like they want to make sure their victim doesn't scream and alert neighboring residents of their impending death," Maggie countered, continuing her explanation. "Anyway, I've believed all along that this 'Kiss' is based on some derivative of their saliva. I take it you got that idea as well?" Harry nodded. "So that's why the spell is so ingenious. Thea's clearly got a high concentration of the drug in her system already. That just means they're keeping her docile somewhere, probably with a bunch of others the vamps want to feed on at some point. If this stone starts glowing a brighter green, we'll know that more of the drug is getting pumped in her system."

"Prepping her to be...eaten," Roy concluded with a nervous swallow. Maggie nodded. "When that warning kicks in, how much time will we have?"

Harry's expression turned grim as he passed the stone to Oliver. "If this glows bright enough we might only have a few minutes."

Satisfied that his sister was safe for the moment, Oliver turned to Maggie. "When we first met you were pretty adamant about the dangers of walking into Beso Rojo without knowing how to handle a vampire. So what do we need to know?"

"Red Court vampires are similar to the stereotypical vampires you see in the movies," Maggie explained. "They've got supernatural speed, strength and senses. There's no ambushing a vampire. They *will* know you're coming. And," glancing over at Diggle and his holstered sidearm, "they're impervious to bullets and arrows. Anything that you can throw at them from a distance will do nothing to them. They'll just feed, heal, get angrier, and come at you twice as hard."

"So how do you kill them?" asked Roy. "Wooden stakes through the heart?"

Maggie shook her head. "Decapitation and sunlight are the only things that are guaranteed to work. Other than that...not much. If you can slice open their abdomens they'll spill out any blood in their stomachs, which weakens them substantially, but that's only temporary."

"We'll need swords, then?" asked Oliver.

Harry nodded. "I've been working under the assumption that you two know your way around them. Am I correct?"

Sara and Oliver nodded, but it didn't seem to easy Harry's level of worry. "What is it, dad?" asked Sara.

Harry turned to Maggie. "How many vampires are in this nest? Rough estimate?"

"At least thirty," Maggie replied.

"Yeah, that's what I was afraid of," Harry muttered. "Given our current circumstances, I don't think four of us can handle that many vampires on our own."

"Current Circumstances?" asked Maggie, clearly confused by the qualifier.

Sara took over bringing Maggie up to speed. "We believe that Beso Rojo may be funded by a human organization called the League of Assassins. I saw their leader when we were at the club the other night."

"I've heard of this League," said Maggie. "Not a nice bunch. Where did you see him?"

"On the second floor catwalk," Sara replied. "His name is R'as Al-Ghoul. His goal is to eliminate the human race because he thinks that will restore 'balance' to the earth. And he has a particular fondness for biologics as his weapon of choice."

"Sounds a lot like the Red Court," Harry mused.

On that point, Sara and Maggie seemed to be in full agreement. "I think R'as Al-Ghoul is funding this nest in the hopes that the Red Court will do his dirty work for him," said Sara.

Maggie agreed, "a group of Red Court vampires trained in the highest level human fighting techniques would definitely be a force to be reckoned with." A lightbulb appeared to go off over Maggie's mind as she considered everything she knew about Sara. "That's why you said you had your own reasons for going after Beso Rojo, isn't it? This R'as Al-Ghoul?"

Sara nodded. "I was a member of the League. When I left, their code stated that I was condemned to die. In order to draw me out to kill me, R'as Al-Ghoul has been targeting my family. That's why I want to take out Beso Rojo. Either he has to die, or I will." She crossed the space to grab Maggie's hands and look her in the eye. "Until R'as Al-Ghoul is dead, my family will always be in danger. *Every* member of my family."

The impact of Sara's words wasn't lost on Maggie. Still, Maggie choked up from the from the sincerity that she heard backing up those words. "Thank you," she told Sara. "When I was eight, I was the one in danger. The Red Court used me to go after dad. He got together an army to fight them and he and I are still here. We'll get this guy, Sara. *No one* goes after our family and gets away with it."

Sara smiled, feeling a spark of hope light up in her heart for the first time in years. "You didn't happen to bring an army with you, did you?" she joked.

"No, I didn't bring one with me," Maggie replied, matching her sister's smile. "But their flight touches down in an hour."