That's right, just THREE DAYS LEFT to get a FORGE PLUSH! I can't stress enough how important it is to me that we clear 400... it's the last threshold to improve the percentage of the sales I get from the campaign, so it means a HUGE jump in what the plush's success means for me! Please consider grabbing one and helping to spread the word! You can find it HERE!

~

[Transcript]

        Boss Leader crossed her legs, floating up to lounge on empty air.

        “Agent Day was telling us about your little lunch date—”

        “Is that what it was?” scoffed Mina, pushing up her haunted glasses. “It felt much more like another of your irksome interrogations.”

        “Why can’t it have been both?” hummed Agent Day. “Sometimes it’s fun to be debriefed.”

        Mina’s finger slipped on the bridge of her spectacles like a track-and-field star tripping on a hurdle.

        “...You’ll find that she found nothing out of lockstep with your footloose marching orders, Boss,” Zarei grumbled, ignoring Agent Day when she leaned into her peripheral awareness with a smile. “Only you could take what little independence I assert as an affront to your authority. Have you ever once considered that my reticence to spend time in your company is simply the result of your unpleasant personality?”

        “A deeply flawed hypothesis, Doctor. I’m a darling little princess,” said Boss Leader. “See, this is why I worry about you! Even paranormal scientists need some scientific method to their madness. Especially when that madness is them getting mad at me.”

        “...Now hang on, y’all,” came Agent Walker’s interjection. He held his vast orangutan palms up to gesture that he meant to keep the peace. “Let’s not let the rattlin’ lead to venom we can’t take back without suckin’ somethin’ fierce. Whatever stickin’ points we got between us, no one’s gotta get pricked if we pet the cactus careful-like. Remember: we’re all on the same side of the cattle pen. No point lockin’ horns when all our beef’s gonna get squashed by the butcher either way.”

        “There is no world, pocket dimension, or parallel universe where any of those phrases are an actual expression you expect me to accept as human speech,” growled an exasperated Zarei.

        “I say all of those things all the time,” said Agent Day. “You can get mad at me, too, if you want!~<3”

        Again Zarei ignored her teasing, though the effort stole her focus. The Boss had found a frustrating agent in Valerie. She was relentless, small and cutesy but assertive—Mina never had been skilled at fielding undisguised regard from other women. It was obvious that the Boss was playing matchmaker to throw her off her game, and she was far too smart to lose to such a tactic... but how could she fail to react, biologically speaking, when Agent Day was flirting with her constantly? Avoiding eye contact was hardly any help; Day could study her incessantly without it, and Mina could still smell her rose perfume five feet away...

        “If this is all about YOUR flawed hypothesis, Boss Leader,” Mina soldiered on, “that there are monsters hiding somewhere in the black box YOU created around Bayview—”

        “Oh, we can dispense with that pretense, Doctor. Of course there are monsters in Bayview.” The flatness of Boss Leader’s tone took everyone but Walker by surprise. “Whatever bone we might have dug up to throw at the Cousinhood will hardly tempt them now. They’ve caught the scent of red meat, and, despite my protestations, have already dispatched one of their best to Bayview’s shores.”

        “W-what?” Zarei stammered. “What red meat?”

        “Not the friend you’ve been protecting,” said Boss Leader, causing Mina’s blood to run ice-cold. “Though if they do manage to breach the barrier, and if he, too, is marked as prey, I hope you will extend the trust I clearly haven’t earned from you thus far... and seek my help in sparing him their silver.”

        “Boss—” protested Agent Day. This wasn’t what she’d promised. She’d only just arrived! She was meant to have more time...!

        “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” snarled Zarei, defiant. What was going on? Was Jean in danger? What had changed? The Boss, the Cousinhood... they’d never been this brazen! “What is your singular, delusional obsession with my home, my work—the past you have no part in?!”

        Boss Leader stroked her bandaged chin.

        “Until this morning? My suspicion that Richard Spender is harboring a wight... and that you, Mina, are attempting to create one.”

        Doctor Zarei went pale. The existence of wights had always been a secret dearly kept by the Consortium’s highest echelons. As a teenager, she’d wrestled the word from a forgotten dream with every scrap of willpower she’d had... but now that precious knowledge was the least of what Boss Leader had just flaunted. Even Walker did a double-take, then wrestled down an outburst that he knew would be no help. Mina frantically surveyed the man’s reaction. Impossible. He and Agent Day were acting like they’d known what wights were all along! They hadn’t even been startled by Boss Leader’s accusation—it was only its disclosure that had shocked them!

        “...What in the heck is a wight?” asked Agent Griggs, leaning over to his partner.

        “Not a clue,” lied Agent Savage. Through bored eyes, she watched the whole room like a hawk, absorbing every single word she heard.

        “Of course, as you’ve asserted in the past, I have no proof. Only my own paranoia, which I hope you’ll understand is born from the best of intentions.” Boss Leader stared at Mina from on high. There was something altogether inhuman in her blank face, Mina noted with a shiver, as the Boss looked down at her with weary, strangely envious concern. “I’ve always wanted what’s best for the people I admire and protect. To keep you safe, I’ve tried a heavy hand, a gentle touch, and simply watching from a distance. Power like mine will always breed contempt, however, no matter how benign it wishes it could be. That’s what I have come to learn. Accepting that, I must do what is right and what I can before it’s too late, even if it means that I win nothing but resentment for myself.”

        “Boss...” Agent Day murmured, her hands clasped tight together. Those couldn’t be her true feelings. Why was the Boss so certain she deserved her allies’ scorn? Why did she seem so lonely when she shared her dream, in every sense, with hundreds of loyal supporters? Val, at least, considered her a friend...

        “Heavy is the head that wears the crown? What contemptible self-pity,” Mina scowled.

        “That depends on the crown. Darling little princesses wear cute little tiaras,” Boss Leader answered, posing as if taking a school photo. “Don’t fret, though, Mina. I haven’t decided how and if I’ll have to save you and dear Dicky Spender from yourselves. Today my heavy hand falls on another, which is the reason that I threw this poolside shindig on short notice.”

        Boss Leader clapped her palms together, then unfurled a wanted poster from the empty air between them. The sallow visage scrawled upon it smugly smirked above the words “DEAD OR ALIVE?”. Agent Walker, sadly, was too steeped in steely silence to appreciate the bounty’s western flair.

        “The monster I am after in Bayview is a man named Davy Jones. I’d long believed him dead, and I was right to: he’s a vampire, among the last the Cousinhood has suffered to survive.”

        Zarei’s eyes narrowed. Davy’s face and name were plastered nearly everywhere in Bayview. That crusty car salesman cartel boss was a creature of the night? That couldn’t be. He would have been discovered YEARS ago—

        “He is also a former agent of the Paranatural Activity Consortium... and a villain I will need your help to lay to rest for good.”