As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about. When I woke up the next morning, there was no news report of the clock tower and half of shopping street burning to the ground. In other news, I finally had ended up going to Zach's house for that barbeque. It was nice, my parents spent most of the time in the backyard talking to other adults while Zach showed me his vast collection of paintings.

I now understood his father's pain. Even with the batch that he had placed in one of Uncle Nick's vaults, he still had way too many.

What I was saying was that I had left his house with a second painting. This time it was a landscape of a lone cabin next to a lake under a full moon. It was nice enough that my parents had decided to just put it right in the living room.

It fit in well with the Halloween decorations that slowly took over the house over the course of the next three weeks. I had plenty of time to help set up too. Mostly because I had gone three weeks without any notable incidents. No cannons attacking around the city, no strange rumors, nothing that would require Lamia at all.

Well, I had used her a few times to hang up some stuff that was too high to reach otherwise, but I was pretty sure that didn't count.

Still, I had felt a little uneasy. Just because things had stopped for now didn't mean that they would stop forever.

I wasn't sure when I had started doing it, but by the end of the third week I always made sure to have my goggles on me at all times.

I leaned back in my chair as I watched Zach paint. Normally I would take the opportunity that lunch provided to read, but I was between books at the moment. So instead here I was in the art room, passing time. It looked like he was making something with some darker colors. Fitting for Halloween.

"Did you hear that we apparently have a new student?" He asked as he put some more paint on the canvas.

"No, who?" I tilted my head to the side. We didn't get a lot of new students. Especially not this far into the fall.

"Some girl in our year. Share have a homeroom with her," He explained before narrowing his eyes at one particular part of the canvas. He put his finger over the spot before moving it over a bit to the right. A few seconds later he smiled and nodded his head. "Apparently she just moved into town,"

With that said, Zach went back to painting. We spent most of the rest of lunch in silence.

As Lunch ended and we got up to head back to class, a knock came from the door. Zach and I quickly glanced at each other before Zach shrugged his shoulders.

I pulled the door open as Robby burst into the art room.

"Rita, just who I needed to see. Your brain is full of dumb book nerd stuff right?" He blanked for a second before opening his mouth again.

"My brain is books yes," I told him before he could start trying to fix what he said. My best guess was that one of his boys had used the wording and he had accidentally used it due to being in a hurry.

"Okay good I need your help," He glanced over at Zach and flinched back like he had just noticed that he was here. "Oh, hey Zach, you working on a new painting?"

"Pretty much. You want it this time? I'm going for a creepy Halloween thing again,"

Heh, called it.

"Maybe later, let me ask my dad about it,"

Fun thing about my parents, they liked making friends out of their friends. Robby's parents had gotten the invite for the fall barbeque too and all three of them had ended up coming along.

Zach's dad made fast friends with Robby's parents from what I hear, and Robby's dad had spent a good while looking at the painting filled walls.

Honestly, a part of me wanted to tell Zach to just start selling his paintings. But that matter could wait for another day, for now I had another friend who needed me.

"So what do you need?"

"Okay so this is going to be a little complicated…" He glanced up at the clock on the wall. "One second thought, maybe it would be better to tell you after school,"

He quickly gave me some directions to visit after school and left for his next class. Zach and I followed after him and separated to our own classes.

When school ended, I didn't bother looking for Robby. With how animated he looked earlier, he had probably gone off by himself to whatever it was that caught his attention. Instead I just looked up the direction he gave me on his phone and followed them to an old train station.

The station was a bit out of the way, just a bit too far from the rest of the city to justify walking to it as part of a commute. Maybe that was why it was closed down. Trains still passed through it, but they never stopped. Instead they stopped at the shiny new station built last year in the heart of the city.

The station itself was pretty standard, a pair of platforms inside a building with an overhead walkway connecting the two. The paint was peeling off the walls and I spotted several bird nests in the roof overhead.

I found Robby pretty easily once I got onto the platform. He was standing next to his boys right outside a locked metal door built into the wall. All of them were leaning in close to the door looking at something. Whatever it was, they were giving it all of their attention.

Just… all of their attention. To the point that they probably wouldn't even notice someone walking up to them.

"So what did you need my nerd brain for?" I quickly asked as the group jumped.

"Don't do that!" Robby yelled as they crashed into the door. I smirked before looking at whatever it was that that had fascinated them.

It was a green metal door with something… were these words carved in? They were, someone had taken a knife and scratched words into the door.

Roode hthta enred nunot tubas iereh t.

…Was this what they had been expecting me to figure out? Just what kind of books did Robby think I read anyway?

I glanced over at Robby who leaned in close to me and the letters.

"Yeah I know it makes no sense," He admitted before saying the words that I was worried about. "I thought that you would be able to figure it out,"

"Why exactly?" I demanded as he handed me a folded piece of paper. I undid the folds and looked at a simple sentence that made everything make sense.

"I figured that the clue would make more sense to you than it did for us,"

Well he wasn't wrong, it hadn't even taken me a second to figure it out with this.

'Alice's second adventure will lead the way'.

"Do you have any idea what it means?" Robby asked as he leaned next to the door.

"More than an idea, I think I know what we have to do. The second Alice book is called 'Through the Looking-Glass',"

"What does that have to do with anything?" One of his boys interrupted before I gave him a glare.

"It means," I clicked my tongue at the interrupting party before continuing. "We have to use a looking glass, or as we modern people would call it, a mirror,"

"But the words don't looked flipped or anything," One of his other boys added.

"No but I bet that if we wrote them backward we'd get something," I explained as Kenny took out a pen and took the clue from me. He placed the clue on the door and started writing.

T herei sabut tonun derne athth edoor.

"There is a button underneath the door," I read aloud before glancing down. There indeed was a small opening between the door and the floor. "So which one of you guys is going to stick your hands down there and check to see if it's there?"

"I'll do it," one of his other boys declared as he knelt down and started feeling around for a button. Good thing he was doing it instead of me to be honest. I probably would have put my hand down there and started screaming about something grabbing it to freak everyone out…

Maybe thoughts like that were why I had so few friends? Well, maybe best not to think about that at the moment. Instead I turned to Robby to ask him a question.

"So how did you guys…"

"My hand!"

We all jumped back away from the screaming only for the boy in question to start laughing.

"Don't do that," Robby said as he punched him in the shoulder. The boy kept laughing anyway but went back to searching for the button.

"Jerk, I wanted to do that," I growled as I could feel the rest of the group looking at me. "So Robby, I was asking you how you ended up getting involved,"

"Oh, you see we found this old treasure map," He pulled out another piece of paper from his pocket. "First the map led us to the Alice hint, then to this old key," He reached into his pocket and took out an old iron key, big enough to need his entire hand to hold. "And then it led us to this door,"

"I think I found the button," The boy interrupted as we heard a clicking sound from the door and it slowly started to swing outwards.

We all glanced at each other for a second before Robby took the first step forward, grabbing the door and pulling it open all the way before stepping inside.

Beyond the door was a pretty big storage closet. At least, that was what I was pretty sure it was. Despite its title, it was almost empty. Bare tiles covered the floor while bare concrete painted the walls. There was a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

I flipped the switch by the door a few times, but it refused to turn on. "Looks like it's either going to be flashlights or the light outside,"

We all took out our phones and turned on the flashlights, sweeping the lights over the room.

It didn't take long for all the lights to converge on the one item in the room.

At the far end leaning on the wall was a locker with a huge lock on it. We all slowly approached it, all of us checking back to door just in case. Or maybe that was just me. Three adventures in and I wasn't going to take any more chances.

"Cross your fingers and keep the light on me," Robby told us as he got the key out. We all kept the light on the locker as he slowly pushed the key in.

I could hear him gulp as he slowly turned the key and something clicked inside the locker. It swung open and we were blinded by a flash of light.

"What is that?" I demanded as I summoned Lamia's card just in case. I was about to crush it to use her eyes when Robby's voice cut through our panic.

"Calm down, there was a mirror in the locker,"

We all did as he said as we lowered the brightness on our flashlight apps to reveal the now open locker. Just like Robby had said, the inside of the locker was a mirror that had bounced back all of our light at us.

At the very bottom of the locker was a chest.

Like… a chest chest. A treasure chest made from red wood like something that you would see out of a video game.

I knelt down next to Robby as he crouched down to look at it.

"So what kind of treasure is supposed to be in here anyway?"

"No idea, I figured that learning would be part of the fun," He admitted before undoing the latch and throwing the top open.

The inside was empty except for a single note.

Robby just starred at the bare bottom and made croaking noises as I reached in and took the note. I glanced up at the rest of his boys who were looking at me with expectant faces.

"Uhm…" Okay how to put this gently. Maybe I should just read the note aloud. "The contents of this chest have already been claimed by the great Zitili, urban explorer extraordinaire. To those who followed my trail and tail, I wish you my condolences. If it makes it any better you… oh my god she didn't,"

"Didn't so what?" Robby asked as he slowly got to his feet. I choked back my amazement at this person's audacity.

"If it makes it any better you can just say that the real treasure was the friends you made along the way," I finished as the rest of the room fell silent.

"Let's… let's all just go home for the day gang," Robby broke the silence as the rest of his boys gave murmurs of agreement.

I watched as one by one they all slowly shuffled out of the room, finally leaving me alone in the empty closet.

"This was not how I thought that day would go," I told myself as I went back to the chest and looked it. It was a pretty nice chest, maybe I could take it home with me? Put some of my stuff in it.

I had a little adventure, I got to use my vast knowledge of useless trivia for something, and I even got a cool treasure chest out of it. I would say that going on this little trip was worth it.

I glanced up in the mirror to smirk at myself when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. I glanced back at the far wall and then looked back at the mirror before letting out a frustrated sigh.

Without a word, I held my finger in front of the mirror before quickly swiping it across the surface.

It sunk in, because of course it did.

Because there in the reflection of the room there was a second door leading out that didn't exist in the real world, because of there was.

And it looked like my new name for the day was going to be Alice, because of course it was going to be.

"Hey Rita?" I glanced back at the door to see Robby standing at the entrance. I couldn't see his face in the shadows. "Are you okay? Why are you still in here?"

"Having a bit of trouble getting this chest out of here," I lied as I started tugging at the chest again.

I managed to pull it free of the locker when Robby came and up and started helping me pull.

I glanced back at the mirror one more time before we left. I was going to have to come back here later.