Chapter Four

Violet was anxious.

Yet again, she found herself at the long table in the council room at the V.F.D. Headquarters, surrounded by concerned-looking volunteers. Every other time she had found herself in this situation, bad news had followed. Having heard from Klaus that there was information about her mother and Sunny, Violet feared the worst. Looking around the table there were far fewer volunteers than there had been a fortnight before, and Kit Snicket sat at the head of the tale in the place of Dewey, although she didn't seem to be organising a meeting herself. She was deep in conversation with her brother, who sat on her right, her brow furrowed in conversation, as though troubled by something. This did nothing to help Violet's nerves, and she was only partly calmed when Arlo gave her hand a reassuring squeeze under the table.

Finally, it seemed as though everyone important had arrived, and the meeting began. Thankfully, both Violet and Klaus (who were impatient to hear news of their lost family members) could see that Kit Snicket wasn't going to waste time with unimportant matters, and cut straight to the point when she stood up to speak.

"An agent of ours in the city has informed us that he has suspects Count Olaf to be behind various suspicious events in the area. Knowing him to have Beatrice and Sunny Baudelaire in his custody, we believe that the pair are likely to be hidden in a safe house somewhere in the city."

The city, Klaus thought. He had not been back to the city since the day that his family home had burned down. It had only been four months, but his happy, untroubled life in the city felt as though it was years ago. Around the table, the new information caused a mixed reaction, as though the volunteers were unsure what to do about the situation.

"We should prepare a mission to rescue them!" One young man exclaimed. "We should begin the search straightaway!"

"No," argued another, older volunteer. "We've already lost too many in trying to keep the Baudelaires safe. A more cautious approach must be used."

"Yes!" agreed another, and Violet felt her heart sinking. It seemed as though, after the events at Bladeridge Castle, the volunteers were too worried to do anything.

"We have to do something!" Violet burst out, angry at the negligence of the people who were supposed to be on her side. "We can't just leave them with him! Isn't there anything we can do?" she pleaded, causing Kit to raise her eyebrows, feeling shocked into action.

"Hmm," she said, as one often does when they try to stall for time, allowing themselves a moment to think. "I suppose we can keep Olaf under surveillance. If we have actual proof that he's in the city, of course. I should probably let our agents in the city know to keep up the search for him."

It wasn't much, but it was a step in the right direction. "Can't we take actual action?" Klaus asked impatiently.

"Not yet," Lemony replied frustratedly from the end of the table, speaking up for the first time in the meeting. "I know that you see the matter as important, and believe me when I say that all of us here are very concerned about Beatrice and Sunny's safety, but we cannot act without sound information," he explained, and many volunteers around the table nodded solemnly in agreement.

"In fact, there is a way of us taking action," Kit explained. "Albeit for a slightly different motive. I'm sure you all know that lately, our plight has been struggling. The Firestarters have been destroying our safe places, removing evidence of their crimes, even killing many of our most valuable agents. In our current state, V.F.D. will be lucky to survive the winter. We are spread too thin to survive the threat of the Firestarters. That is why I'm suggesting a new tactic - to gather up all important members of our organisation and keep them all safe and isolated here at the Headquarters, where they will be invulnerable to the Firestarters' attacks."

"Sounds like a decent plan," agreed Frank Denouement, Dewey's identical brother.

"Hear, hear," said a female voice that Violet couldn't place.

"I suppose we should take some action for once, then," Kit said, giving Violet an odd look that strangely calmed her. "Kornbluth, send out a Volunteer Factual Dispatch to all volunteers, advising them to return to the Mortmain Mountains for their own safety. We need all of our members to be aware of our schemes."

Mr. Kornbluth, Violet's inventing tutor and general technology expert, nodded in agreement with kit's orders, but raised a valid point. "What if some volunteers don't receive the Volunteer Factual Dispatch?" he asked.

"All of our trusted members regularly check for any telegrams from the Headquarters," Kit explained. "They will know. As for part-time members or former agents who won't receive the telegram, we can survive without most of them. However, there are a select few that we will still need to contact, and I propose that we should send out several teams to bring back those few crucial volunteers back to the V.F.D. Headquarters themselves." Kit paused for a moment, looking around the table at all the eager faces. "Dr. Montgomery," Kit said, pointing towards a middle-aged man best known for being a world-renowned herpetologist, which is a word to describe a man who studies snakes. "You need to travel east to Lake Lachrymose, to bring Josephine Anwhistle back to our cause." Montgomery merely nodded to show consent.

"Frank," Kit said, pointing once more at Dewey's twin brother. "Travel south to the Hotel Denouement," she ordered. "From there, you must contact Captain Widdershins, and tell him to bring the Queequeg north to safer waters immediately." Again, Frank merely nodded to show recognition of his task.

"And Lemony," Kit said, turning to her younger brother. "You need to travel south to the city with your apprentices, Arlo and Violet," she instructed.

"To search for mother and Sunny?" Violet asked hopefully.

Kit looked at her sternly and slightly confused before replying. "No," she said. "We need you to locate Peter Quagmire, a former associate of mine, and a close friend of my late brother Jacques. His research skills are needed for our cause. You must locate him and bring him back north to the Mortmain Mountains with you, before any misfortune befalls either him or his family."

It took a lot of explaining Lemony Snicket and Bertrand Baudelaire to get Klaus to accept that his fellow apprentices were going off on a mission without him. Even though the situation had already been explained to him before, he still sought further confirmation for everything. He had no idea how long Lemony, Violet and Arlo were leaving for, and after the events of the summer, he wanted to spend as much time with his sibling as possible. Despite knowing that Violet was in safe hands with Lemony and Arlo, it took a lot of convincing for him to realise that nothing would happen to Violet on this quick trip to the city.

Still, when the time came, Klaus found it hard to let his sister go, even though she promised a speedy return to the Headquarters as she clambered into the back of Lemony's small car with Arlo. His father and Dewey had been there with him to say the goodbyes, and for Bertrand the experience had been just as painful as it had been for his son as he watched the car disappear into the mountain valleys.

For Violet and Arlo in the back of Lemony's car, the mood was not so melancholy - where "melancholy" here means "sad" - but was more intense somehow, as both young volunteers had the feeling as though they had to get on with business. As though this mission really mattered, even though it may not have been quite as important as the failed rescue attempt of the previous month. Thinking about this, Violet began to wonder when the volunteers would next have a chance to rescue her family members. It seemed to her that the longer the volunteers left it before making new plans of action, the more time Count Olaf would have to keep them from the volunteers' grasp. It seemed to her that she was fighting yet another losing battle.

Eventually, as the small car passed out of the Mortmain Mountains that afternoon, Violet spoke up.

"Do you think we'll ever get mother and Sunny back?" she asked Lemony, perhaps slightly more bluntly than she had originally intended, to which her chaperone sighed.

"I don't know, Violet," he admitted. "I'd like to think so, and there is still a good chance that we will, but in all honesty, Olaf and his accomplices always seem to be one step ahead. And even if we do defeat Olaf and his henchmen, the battle is not over yet. There are all numbers of strong adversaries within the ranks of the Firestarters."

"Do you think, with us being in the city, that we might see something useful on this mission?" she asked Lemony.

"I don't know," he shrugged, which didn't help Violet's confidence much, either. "Possibly. I suppose there's a chance. But the city is a very large place, and all we have confirming Olaf's whereabouts are the suspicions of our fellow agents. So really, we have no confirmation of Olaf's hiding place. Merely suggestions. Don't get your hopes up, Violet. And don't deviate from the mission. We're here to bring Peter Quagmire back with us to the V.F.D. Headquarters, not to go searching for your family, no matter how much you or I might want to."

Violet, who had been somewhat disheartened by Lemony's lecture, had one last chance at drawing some optimism from her mentor. "Do you think Olaf will eventually reveal his location to us as he did last time?" she asked, but she could see almost instantly that Lemony was shaking his head.

"I really doubt it, Violet," he said sadly. "Last time, he only revealed his location so that he could bargain with us over the sugar bowl." This reminded Violet of the reason why Beatrice and Sunny were captives; so that Count Olaf could secure an elusive object called the sugar bowl for the Firestarters. Violet knew little of the object, as she had never seen it and elder volunteers would tell her little about it, but Lemony had told her that the contents of the sugar bowl would be able to sway the course of the schism dramatically, and that the sugar bowl must never fall into the hands of the Firestarters.

"After the way that we played him for a fool at Bladeridge Castle, I doubt he'll try and negotiate with us again," Lemony admitted glumly. "He'll probably just take what he's after by force, and do what he pleases with Beatrice and Sunny."

After that, Violet gave up on talking to Lemony, worried that he would strip her of whatever hope she had left. However, she knew that Lemony was still struggling somewhat to cope with the loss of his brother, and she had often seen him become pessimistic on long days as he was on that November afternoon travelling south. She knew that, in these moods, not to take him all too seriously, although she was fully aware that what Lemony had said, if somewhat exaggerated, was still the truth.

By the time that the three stopped that night in the southern Hinterlands to set up camp, Violet's mood had improved, thanks to Arlo's reassurance that with all the expertise of the volunteers, someone must knew how to get Beatrice and Sunny back. However, Violet still knew that whoever must know that answers had not yet cared to enlighten any of their fellow volunteers about whatever plan had sprung into their mind. As far as Violet was aware, she was completely in the dark as to the safety of her family members.

The following morning, the sky had clouded over and Violet saw rain for the first time in almost three weeks, having returned to the temperate latitudes south of the mountains. The second leg of the journey was far shorter than the first and, owing to the early start, the three volunteers found themselves in the suburbs of the city by mid-day.

For Violet, it was strange to return to the city, where everything looked permanent, untouched by the secret war that split a desperate organisation. To her, the city looked just as it did on the day of the fire that burned down her home, but despite what it looked like, it no longer felt like home to Violet. The city may have remained constant, but Violet had changed dramatically. Four months before she had never met either of her travelling companions, and would have been as clueless as any other person as to what V.F.D. stood for. But now she was in the thick of it, and as Lemony's car drove down streets that Violet knew, she realised just how much she had changed. She was still Violet Baudelaire, a passionate inventor, but she was no longer naïve, protected from the world and inexperienced in its ways. Now she was a volunteer; a young woman with a purpose, a goal, a destination. Maybe she had found herself in dire circumstances, but there was no doubting that she had been given a great opportunity during the summer. It had never felt like it until now, but maybe it could be a blessing in disguise. Maybe joining V.F.D. would prove to be the best decision of her life? Or maybe not. But only time would tell, and as Violet looked out of the window at parts of the city that she recognised - the finance district, the shopping district, the university district - she was reminded of her childhood in the city. So much had happened to her since the summer that she felt as though the memories belonged to another person; a different Violet Baudelaire. One way or anther, she began to realise deep down for the first time that there was no way back to the life that she once led, no matter how hard the volunteers and herself might try. The summer had changed her permanently. Somewhere along the way, Violet had stopped being a child and started being a young woman, independent and responsible for her own actions.

It was around lunchtime when their journey reached its end, when Lemony's car arrived in a neighbourhood not too far from where Violet had lived previously, where the houses were just as expensive as her parents' had been. Along quiet roads where the houses had large, lush gardens spread out before them, expensive cars parked on the drive. Rich, well-off families lived here; the upper-middle classes, just as Violet had once lived herself. She wondered for the first time what sort of person Peter Quagmire might be, and what he did to let him afford a life of relative luxury.

Eventually, Lemony pulled up his car at the side of the road by a large house that made Violet feel reminded of her old home. She thought that it was slightly smaller than the Baudelaire Mansion, but it had been built from the same red bricks - presumably at the same time - and had a similar architectural style. The lawns at the front of the house were well-kept, and there were two large cars parked on the drive. Even in the November rain, Violet couldn't deny that the house looked impressive.

Lemony turned off the engine of his car, slipped his coat on over his shoulders, swung open the door and stepped outside.

"The Quagmire Mansion," he announced grandly, and then set off down the drive towards the house.

(Serious) Author's Note: If you enjoyed this chapter, please review! Constructive criticism is welcomed :)

P.S. I'm sure you can all guess who's going to be making their first appearances in the series in the next chapter... ;)