Wallet? Check. Pistol? Check. Badge? Check. Overpriced life insurance policy from that Prudential shack on Sunset Boulevard that doubled as a safe haven for traffickers of all shapes and trades? Check. Bulletproof vest? Check. Kiss Sasha goodbye…

Heather scampered down the door, absentmindedly ran a comb through her hair only to remember that she had buzzed it a week earlier, and plopped a big, sloppy wet one on an unexpecting Sasha's cheek. (Of course, she barely moved an inch, given that some random Klingon villain-monologuing on Star Trek Apostle was, of course, far more important than bidding farewell to her beloved wife.) Regardless, check.

She stepped out onto the curb, the wind battering her face as she hastily unfastened the black-leather harness she had completely forgot she was wearing from around her shoulders and slipped into the backseat of a waiting police car, rubbing a decade's worth of sidewalk dirt and grime off her combat boots and turning to face with whom she now shared a vehicle."

"Officer Waybright," growled the man on the left. His long, center-parted back hair was slicked back with an inhuman amount of hair gel, only drawing more attention to his slender, almost snout-like nose and the gaping scar that was etched from eye to eye. "Late again, I see. Whatever you're doing with that woman in there, you better speed it up next time."

'Sergeant Cain," laughed Heather Waybright, "me and 'Sash were just binging Netflix. Netflix, babe. That and nothing more."

"That's what you said last time," Cain growled. "But Asimo here STILL insists he heard quite the sound from upstairs!"

"FOR THE RECORD," cried the other man, his voice a squeaky shrill that sounded rather unfitting of his broad, muscular physique, "I said nothing of the sort. I said I heard something upstairs- it was probably just Grime, or one of your other dozen cats… I would never imply…"

"Quiet, Asimo," spat Cain. "Whatever Waybright and her wife are doing behind closed doors is none of our business. I've just got a high-profile murder shoved into our outstretched hands and we're waisting valuable time."

"Ooh, a MURDER case?" squeaked Heather. "Fun! I've never had a murder case before!"

"There's a reason for that," muttered Asimo under his breath. Sure, his cobalt-blue eyes, and the way the light gently danced in their depths and glanced off his sepia skin was kinda cute if you looked really closely- but Heather still had no idea what Sasha had seen in him all those years ago. Then again, if Sasha had never dated him, Heather might have never met her wife. And Sasha, back then, in those early days… might have been the only thing that was able to save her.

Whatever Cain's skills were at ensuring others follow the law, he most certainly did not apply the same rules to himself. As their car (a refurbished 2024 Toyota, in dire need of replacement) careened though stoplight after stoplight, Heather withdrew from her flannel pocket a tiny forensics notepad and, having done her hours as a meter maid in the LAPD Training Program, began tallying her superior's traffic violations. By the time they had flown halfway across town, she had counted no fewer than 56.

Cain rounded another sharp corner, sending the lid of Heather's iced Masala chai flying off as Asimo continued, unfazed, to flip through the police reports on his smartphone. "The Reddicks' house,'' read Asimo, as if perusing a comic. "221 Cedar Street. Two adults and a kid."

"Any notes on their occupations?" asked Heather. "If we could determine the motivation, we could get a better grip on the suspects…"

"The father, David, was a barista. Real hipster, if you asked me. Relocated to LA from Portland after the stress broke out in open warfare alone with his wife, a private investigator from Ashland named Pacifica." Asimo coughed. "Not much on her work. Never really had any high-profile cases, mostly low-level, taxes and stuff." He raised an eyebrow. "Apparently her father was committed to a mental institution just last year for his extreme devotion to conspiracy theories."

"Conspiracy?" There was a disturbing level of excitement in Heather's tone. "Like the Illuminati? QAnon?"

"Nah," laughed Asimo. "Something about a demonic triangle triggering Armageddon in some random, tiny Oregon town. Huh. And I thought the Flat Earthers were crazy."

"So nothing." Heather groaned. "Dammit. I was really hoping I'd get an ACTUALLY dangerous case for once."

"Well, buckle up ladies," interrupted Cain (to Asimo's pathetic groans), "'cause we're here."

By the time Cain's car pulled into the driveway of 221 Cedar Street, the investigation was already deep underway.

A border of neon-yellow caution tape had been erected all around the perimeter. Armed officers weaved in and out of the barricades, carrying with them piles of debris that were to be taken back to the station and examined as evidence as soon as time allowed. They seemed to be in some sort of abject hurry unbefitting of an obscure middle-class murder- Heather hadn't seen LAPD officers act anything like this since… since…

"WHAT'S ALL THIS FUSS ABOUT?" barked Sergeant Cain. "I was told I'd get to work alone on this case for once, but now I get here and find myself surrounded by a big, heapin' mountain of effin' sissies! SISSIES!"

"I'm sorry, sir," moaned a weedy, auburn-heard twink with a thick Bostonian accent, "but there's been some, er… developments."

"Developments?" Cain's voice dropped. "What sort of developments?"

What followed was a series of great, thundering footsteps, as the crowd around Cain parted like the Red Sea. Seconds later, a man stepped forward, stroking his goatee aas his ran his finger gingerly along the fading lines of his Elvish tattoos. "When I ordered you and your team here, Sergeant Cain," choked the man brutally, "we thought there were only two bodies. But, you see, we did a little digging… and it just so happens that we've managed to find seven."

"Chief Gustafson!" chirped Cain pathetically. "You- you-"

"If you don't mind me askin', sir," piped in Asimo from behind them, "did you not just say there were seven bodies that your team found on the scene?."

"Sergeant Cain should have taught you better than to speak out of turn to your commander, Officer," growled Chief Gustafson. "But yes. Yes, I did."

"How is that possible, uh, sir?" replied Asimo incredulously. "I read your file, and only three people were living in the house at the time of the murder!"

"That is correct," replied Gustafson, "although, in all fairness, up to this point we have only been able to locate the bodies of both the adults."

"Sir, if I must ask," interjected Heather (much to Gustafson's displeasure), "but have you managed to gather any information on the suspect or suspects-"

"You see, Officer Waybright," the Chief snarled, "that is our problem. It appears- well, it appears as if someone else has already dealt with the culprits for us. Yyric?"

Gustafson motioned as his auburn-haired assistant dragged forward a pair of bodies. They were enshrouded in charred, draping black cloaks dotted with bloodstains- at the center of which appeared to be a gaping hole of ash and cinders that still continued to sinew, red-hot, at their very tips.

"The Reddicks were killed by bullets to an artery, nothing outside of standard," coughed the chief. "But this- this- suffice to say we've never seen anything like it before."

Asimo stepped forward and pulled a thin pair of silvery wire spectacles over his eyes, glancing at the pair of bodies. "The markings are consistent with standard burn damage, explosion damage. It's as if somebody shot a concentrated jet of fire directly at his chest. Or impaled him with, like, an honest-to-goodness Star Wars lightsaber. Except I've never heard of a lightsaber that can impale five people at once." At Cain's bewildered expression, he added, "What? I spent three years in medical school before dropping out to pursue other career options. Office jobs just exacerbated my FOMO."

"Any idea who they were?"

"We've yet to find a DNA match yet," growled Gustafson, "but we've managed to discern that the samples match those taken at the scene of the Reddicks' initial murders, confirming them as their assailants. But all we've been able to uncover were the pendant necklaces we extracted from their clothing," he said, as Yyric placing an identical necklace in both Cain and Heather's hands, with what was once bronze now coated by blood-red and their steel red-hot- "but their appearance would suggest an association with some sort of Illumin-"

"-ILLUMINATI!" Heather practically squealed in excitement. "YES! YES!"

"I hate to say it," stuttered Asimo, "but Heather's right. That's the Eye of Providence, for sure for sure, and unless these culprits double as experts in creating fake cash-"

"Nonsense," growled Cain. "The Illuminati are just some wack conspiracy theory, everybody knows that. What's more likely is that they were some sort of occult worshippers, pagans, Satanists maybe- and that triangle was some sort of symbol they thought they could use to summon a demon through sacrificing the Reddicks and-"

As Cain mystified the Chief through yet another iteration of his inane rant blaming yet another strange happening on (really, what else?) alleged Satan worshippers, Heather seized her moment to take an Irish goodbye, masking her footsteps so they faded into the subtle hum of the night, slipped away from the scrum, ducked under the barricades as tiny drops of raw sewage dribbble upon her scalp from the gutters above, and slipped through the Cedar House's door without so much as a whisper.

The inside of the Reddicks' house was not what one would exactly cally "welcoming", even if they were to disregard the charred bits of human flesh scattered along the floor and the gaping bloodstains split down the plaster-peeling white walls. David and Pacifica, evidently, were not keen on interior design- the chairs shrieked and squealed for lubricant as Heather strode past the carpet upon which they sat, and the coffee table was littered with fly carcasses and stacked with so many antique novels that the feeble wood practically bended under its own weight- though what appeared to be a unicorn head mounted to a wooden baseplate upon the wall was an inspired touch for anyone who carried themselves with all the camp of a Northwesterner. Heather drew her breath as a sickening whiff of burning phosphorus wafted through her nose before following its scent through the kitchen, hissing pots boiling over and spewing onto the freshly laminated wooden floors, and down a narrow, creaky flight of stairs into the basement.

The minute Heather Waybright nearly tripped as her foot lurched off the final trembling, uneasy step and onto the waterlogged concrete, there were three things she noticed. First and foremost was the really-quite-impressive billiards table that sat in the very center of the Reddick basement, balls scattered across the table as if interrupted in the very middle of the game. Second were the massive tapestries hung along the wall- considering the rather lacking attention to aesthetic detail in the foyer, the quality of the art they hung out of sight was really quite impressive- a series of truly impressive tapestries lined in wheels, ciphers and codes- David must have been an avid Dungeons and Dragons player. And the third thing…

The glow had blinded her the minute she managed to catch her footing, but as her eyes slowly but surely adjusted to the oppressive light, she managed to discern the source of these cascading beams of scarlet. The southern wall of the basement seemed to have burst into flames- engulfing every last panel in a foot-thick curtain of cinders that, for whatever reason, had not spread to a single other inch of the floor plan. Scattered around the blast-center were three more cloaked bodies, their faces ravaged, engulfed in their cloaks as identical Illuminati necklaces sparkled around their throats. And at the very heart of the blaze was a symbol, a stagnant mosaic of ashes the fire could not touch, etched in what appeared to be some sort of circular rune. Withdrawing her notepad and ripping off the set of pages she had moments ago ruined recording the many vices of Sergeant Cain's driving, she managed a haphazard sketch of the symbol before stepping forward, her back prostrate against a rusted old wrought-iron chair, to take a closer look. The smoke battered her face, sealing her nostrils as she held her breath and reached out, the heat battering her eyes and ashes coating her face. From the Illuminati body she withdrew a long, slender flier, inscribed with the message WHERE WE GO ONE, WE GO ALL. her hand then floated up and started fingering the Eye of Providence necklace chained around the corpses throat- she had just manage to unearth its string and gain a firm grip when-

With a deafening shriek, Heather was catapulted back against the billiards table as the chain of the necklace delivered a scalding, terrible burst of heat to the officer's hand. As the wrought-iron chair erupted in an expanding mushroom-cloud of dust above her, she managed to pull herself to consciousness, her heart pounding through the hand the sheer force of the burns had practically cleaved open, coming bare inches of skin from severing the burn in two. She snuck a single pained glance over at her mangled hand only to recoil back, unable to see it without fainting.

All of a sudden, the sheer fallout of what had just happened seemed to hit her- and it did hard. She screamed and stumbled backward, tears pouring from her eyes like faucets, as she curled into a fetal position and cried for help-

-only to collapse directly into something else. Somebody else. A human. Heather Waybright wasn't alone.

But in the instant it took her to whip her head around to face that with which she had collided- whoever it was seemed to have scampered away. There was not a shape, not a human shape, anywhere in sight.

Yet Heather reached out her arm, and it collided with something- something that collided to the floor as her hand slammed directly into its cheek, coughing feebly as it gradually faded, most peculiarly, into visibility. It was a girl, no older than fourteen or fifteen. She was dressed in a T-shirt from some fishing town in coastal Connecticut, and a cardigan sweater so poorly fitting that the strings pouring off its hem licked the tips of her toes. Even curled up, her raven-black hair, cut bluntly around her chin, fell in waves around her eyes. But this could not obscure her ears. Her pointed ears.

Too overwhelmed with pain to even bother to care about this girl's ears, Officer Waybright's mind hurriedly redirected itself to the task at hand. "Are you the Reddicks' girl?", all the while desperately trying to stifle the pain that practically immobilized her nerves. "Are you Zima? Zima Reddick?"

She did not answer, nor offer any indication as to the outcome. All she could do was shiver in her place and mutter, feebly and without much in the way of intention, "He- he come…"

"Can you talk?" asked Heather, running her hands along the tips of the poor girl's ears. "Can you tell me your name?"

But this girl, whoever she was, only seemed capable of saying one thing.

"He's coming," gasped the girl feebly. "He's coming…"