When she had first come through, even as stumbling and unique as her sojourn had been, her guide said there was a place Fables were congregating. A 'Fabletown.' It would be near where they came through into the Mundy, in a busy city called New York. Go there, ask for Cole. He was running things and would help her settle in. Squinting at a piece of aged parchment marked with charcoal, she memorized the name and unfamiliar form of the address.

This was a good idea. Better if she had taken the advice straightaway, rather than camping in the woods near the gate for two months, waiting to see if Kay came through—but that's what she had done. Lying awake in the darkness, repeating the address a hundred times to herself, she'd waited.

She finally gave up, went to New York, but never found Fabletown. It always seemed like fate that she couldn't find it—somehow, they knew she'd never saved Kay, that the fable wrapped around them was somehow wrong and they were the erring elements.

So it wasn't with much hope that she began seeking Fabletown again, feeling distinctly like Inigo Montoya, following the erratic movements of a magic sword. Four days in, she found herself circling the same shelled-out husk of a neighborhood like an albatross, though she didn't remember turning aside once. Was the place magically cloaked?

She stopped at this thought, people passing around her with their heads to their phones, lives in hand. There was nowhere in this city that wasn't crowded as a duck pond in spring. She was good-as-Mundy to them— how would Fables even see something odd to know to welcome her in? If it was cloaked, she was doomed.

Time for Google. A stop back at the apartment to fetch her laptop and she went to a coffeeshop. Sure enough, O.K. Cole's business address (the only one available) was based in that abandoned neighborhood. The only other connections were 'S. White' and 'Bigby Wolf,' neither of which had filled out their profiles. A quick check on Bigby revealed that he owned a ranch that refused all visitors on pain of 'being torn apart by vicious canines.' That, and an email address. She sent a carefully-worded email off to the man, closed the laptop and put her head down on the table.

The next morning, they sent the redhead and the pickup.

"You're late for an appointment," the woman said. Social pleasantries were apparently out of her scope: she didn't offer her name or ask for Gerda's.

"I didn't know I had one." Gerda began pulling together her purse, notes, pen.

"Bigby said you were asking questions. And you've never been to Fabletown?"

"That—that neighborhood? I thought I knew where it was…"

"Yeah, Mr. Dark did a number on the—leave that."

"What, the laptop?"

"Ours are fine, but we don't like people bringing them in."

"Sure, sure." She replaced it on the bed hurriedly. "Who am I meeting with?"

"Frau Totenkinder—no, Bellflower. That's what she goes by now." They tramped down the carpeted stairs, Gerda running her hand along the guardrail.

"And she's…?"

"Witchiest ally we've got. Retired now, and married, but I think she knew Kay, if that's your blind man, pretty well. She was very insistent on seeing you, once she got the email."

"Kay IS here then?" She almost lost her grip on the rail, walking faster. It had been such a long time that she tried to talk about Fable things; the conversation violated twelve of her personal rules. "And how does this Frau woman know? I emailed—"

"Frau gets information from everyone's email, one way or another."

"But she knows Kay?" The thought still sparked like a firework in her head, drawing her attention. "We left the Homelands separately, he wasn't blind when I know him. I didn't even know he was here! How did he escape the—Homelands? When?"

The redhead weighted her words carefully as they stepped out into the bright sunshine gleaming on the sidewalk. The pickup was conspicuously double-parked. "He lived in the Mundy, operated as a consulting Fable for people we didn't trust. That's all Bigby told me when I came to get you. They used to talk about security issues and testing new people. Nobody but Bigby, Frau, and maybe Beast knew him well."

'Lived.' 'Used to.' It didn't take a scientist to figure out the way the narrative had run.

"But he's not here anymore," Gerda said quietly. "Kay."

"No. He was missing when we evacuated Fabletown. On the bright side, you know, we never found a body. Step up."

Gerda obeyed, only glancing up momentarily as the rearview mirror and both side mirrors shattered. The woman blinked at them. Then at her.

"Sorry. Yes, that was me," Gerda said, with a little embarrassment.

"Evil Queen complex?" the redhead commented.

"Just unlucky."

"Only there are a lot of mirrors in the world." She started the car. "And breaking all of them's a little more unlucky than the Mundy community tolerates."

"Which is why I have to fix this soon. I want to be a Fable about as much as any Fable wants to be Mundy."

That said, Gerda turned her face to the window to watch where they were going, though she would probably never have to find this place again. It was better than thinking about Kay. 'Presumed dead'? Really? He was dead, and he had been friends with the best witch the Fables had on their side? Kay had never had the best luck with witches, but that was no excuse to let him die like that. She had to grit her teeth to keep from ripping into the admittedly-innocent red-haired woman.

Ask this Frau person. Hold your horses until then.