Josie fumed silently. She took a moment to take a deep breath. She exhaled her fury,

  letting the anger drop to acceptable levels.

  “Do we wait, or do we go ahead with our plans?,” asked Elaine. She seemed calm

  enough. She definitely was the steadier of the two of them.

  “We go ahead,” said Josie. “We can’t do anything without proper housing, and I don’t

  think Jane has the room for more people to be laid out at her mansion. We have to

  secure the buildings and try to set up a staff until everyone is better.”

  “How do we get started?,” asked Elaine. “I have already talked to Jane. She said the

  Exchange is doing a deed search for the original building we want to use.”

  “All right,” said Josie. She saw the makings of a plan in her mind. “We can’t do

  anything until Jack and Mister Warner get the Enterprise back. So let’s talk to Jane,

  and then we’ll swing by and talk to Guin, or Linus. If either one of them found the

  owner of the second building, we’ll talk to them next.”

  “Laura has a good command of her flight power,” said Elaine. “She’ll be able to get

  everyone to the guild hall without us.”

  “If we can hire adventurers to supplement our manpower needs, that will take some

  of the load off of us,” said Josie. “We need caregivers for everyone too.”

  “Some adventurers have some battlefield experience,” said Elaine. “We should talk

  to some of the temples. Maybe they can lend us some of their clerics to nurse our

  victims.”

  “Good idea,” said Josie. “Do you know anyone here?”

  “Not here,” said Elaine. “I left the sisterhood a long time ago.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?,” asked Josie.

  “Not now,” said Elaine. “Maybe some time when we aren’t chasing our youngest and

  her dragon across the world.”

  “That is a sentence I never thought I would hear ever,” said Josie.

  “So let us go about our day,” said Elaine. “I doubt that Guin will be at the Coin this

  early in the morning. Do you know where he lives?”

  “I can find out,” said Josie. “So we hit him first, swing by Jane’s, try to find the

  owner of the second building, and then have lunch, and check in with Jack and Mister

  Warner. Then we go by the Hall and see if Sally could get us some bodies to help

  move our patients.”

  “I think that is a good plan,” said Elaine. “We will also need to be ready to help Jack

  if he needs it wherever he winds up.”

  They looked at the model. Elaine almost put her finger on the black and red dot that

  was Jack soaring through the air.

  “All right,” said Josie. She nodded. Jack should be able to handle his sister and a

  couple of tagalongs. She asked for the Enterprise and their lost sheep. Various dots

  put them close to each other.

  “All right,” said Josie. “Let me put up one more spell in case I have to go out there.

  Then we can go out in the city.”

  “All right,” said Elaine. “What do you plan to do?”

  “I figured out how to do long range teleportation,” said Josie. “Matter of fact, I can

  do that inside the city to help us get around faster.”

  “All right,” said Elaine. “I need my notebook and coin pouch. I will be ready to go.”

  “Go ahead and get them,” said Josie. “I will send out the bird to keep an eye on

  things, and then I’ll send out another to take us over to Master Guin’s place.”

  “Don’t go without me,” said Elaine. “I don’t want to be waiting at home when I can

  be doing something.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Josie. “You’re going to have to sort things out with the city, and

  anyone else who wants a piece of the action while Jack and I run around and fix

  things.”

  Elaine nodded and headed downstairs.

  Josie turned her attention to the model. She should have went and stuck Jack with all

  of this infrastructure crap. She could have already been there. She wondered what he

  was using. He was flying fast across the continent.

  She turned into Zatanna and sent out the bird she wanted to use to get to the

  Enterprise. It was a safe harbor, and she was the first officer. That should be enough

  to give her back command of the ship.

  And then two people were going to be grounded for a while after this all shook out.

  She sent another bird to Guin. Once she tripped it, it would set her and Elaine down

  on the street outside where he was. Then she could just ask to speak with him and

  then go about the rest of her day.

  If they knew who owned the second building, she could make them an offer they

  couldn’t refuse.

  She let the persona go and headed downstairs. She wanted to do one last check on the

  rest of the girls. Then she could really get started.

  Anybody getting in her way today was getting a fistful of knuckles.

  She spotted the pile of bound paper on the dining room table. She read the top of it

  and almost smiled. Mister Warner had come through with his case work. She hoped

  it was interesting reading.

  “I’m ready,” said Elaine. She shrugged into a jacket over her normal dark green dress

  and boots.

  “Girls?,” said Josie. She looked around for her sisters.

  “We’re ready,” said Beatrice from the living room. “We still have an hour before we

  have to take off.”

  “Elaine and I are heading out,” said Josie. “If Matilda, Aviras, and June get back

  before we do, tell them they are all grounded. No books, ice cream, or roadwork.”

  “Understood,” said Beatrice.

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Josie took Elaine’s hand and activated the first bird. They popped out of the dining

  room, and popped back in down the street from where a walled mansion stood in the

  middle of its grounds.

  “That was a lot smoother than the other means that you have carried me,” said Elaine.

  Josie switched back to let her watch recharge as they walked up to the gate. She

  didn’t know if it was smoother than her usual teleportation, but it had longer range

  since she could send a bird anywhere and it would wait until she needed to use it.

  “If I get a call from the Enterprise,” said Josie. “I will be able to transition out there

  as soon as the bird is on station. Then we’ll see if June and her coaches were on the

  right track.”

  “We might need to remodel the buildings into something we can use,” said Elaine.

  “The one definitely,” said Josie. “It was just an open space filled with cages.”

  They paused at the gate leading up Guin’s house. Two toughs on guard regarded

  them. No solicitation was the rule.

  “Is Guin or Linus in?,” asked Josie. She wondered how fast she needed to be to reach

  through the gate and pull the first sentry’s face into the bars.

  She thought she could do it depending on how much adrenaline she dumped into her

  system in preparation to fight.

  “Who should I say is asking for them?,” asked the sentry. She frowned at his

  expression. It said he was going to say no unless she was on a short list of visitors.

  “This is Elaine Numera,” said Josie. She gestured at the taller woman. “I’m Josie

  Fox.”

  “Jack’s friend?,” said the sentry. He looked at his partner. The thousand thoughts

  running through his head clearly said don’t get killed in a horrible way.

  “We just wanted to check in with them about a building we are hoping to buy,” said

  Josie. “We’re not here to hurt anybody.”

  “That’s what we have Jack for,” said Elaine.

  Josie glanced at her. She had said that so deadpan she could have been Spock. She

  shrugged and turned her attention back to the gate.

  “I will go up and see if Linus will come down and talk to you,” said the sentry. The

  decision meant he was leaving his partner in the clutches of the meanest witch in the

  city. He was okay with that. He hurried off.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know who we could hire for some manual labor?,” asked

  Josie. “We might have to move some bodies around.”

  “Not off hand,” said the other sentry. His expression said he hoped she wasn’t

  planning on moving his dead body around.

  Linus came out of the mansion before Josie could ask more questions. He had a

  napkin tucked into his collar. Evidently they had caught him at breakfast.

  “Where’s the loon?,” he asked in his grumbling voice.

  “Jack’s sister applied to the Society, and he went out of town to make sure she wasn’t

  blowing things up,” said Josie. She smiled at the eyeroll that engendered. “I know.

  You will have two loons to deal with in the future if she passes. I can hook you up.

  June loves big guys.”

  “I think I will avoid that trap,” said Linus. “Cutton says you came by about the

  building you wanted.”

  “We’re on the way to talk to Jane and check on the women we already dropped in her

  lap, and then we were going to go by the bank and help with that if we could,” said

  Josie. “If we get the first building ready, we’ll move those people out of the House

  and get them settled there. I think I can move them all myself, but we are going to

  need people to watch out for them while they are recovering, if they recover.”

  “There are always people we can hire,” said Linus. “Most of them will be thieves

  looking things over.”

  “See if you can get a bunch of alchemists and any doctors and nurses together,” said

  Josie. “We’ll have to hire them to help Jane out. She is going to have oversee the

  charity and the hospitals at the same time. That’s going to be a lot of work for her.”

  “All right,” said Linus. “I know some people I can put on the ground for you. How

  serious is this?”

  “We have a lot of people in cold storage,” said Josie. “We have a lot of people I

  already dumped on Jane. Once they start recovering, we can send them home if they

  have a home to go home to after all this. The Montrose doesn’t seem to care why they

  take anybody as long as they get paid. I’m going to talk to Eric and see if I can be

  more active.”

  “Jack killed a lot of them in the city at the old Duke’s place,” said Linus. “Anyone left

  is going to be at bottom of the chain.”

  “They probably don’t know we hit two of the depots,” said Josie. “On one hand,

  better communications would allow them to counter what we do better. The way it

  is now, the organization might notice a chunk is missing when they aren’t getting

  money from Hawk Ridge anymore which gives me more time to do what I want to

  do.”

  “Master Guin has been able to negotiate a takeover of some of the territories around

  ours,” said Linus. “Some of the bosses were in the syndicate like Corle and got caught

  up in the whirlwind.”

  “All right,” said Josie. “As long as you guys are doing good, we’re doing good. If you

  want a woman who can carry you around in her bare hands, I will intro you to June.

  She might need a big guy to take her around and show her things.”

  “I would rather not,” said Linus. “A visit from Jack is bad enough without letting his

  relatives marry into my family.”

  “I didn’t say anything about marriage,” said Josie.

  “That would just make things worst,” said Linus. “It was a pleasure to deal with you

  again.”

  “Before I forget, do you know who owns the second building?,” asked Josie.

  “A local lord named Endwright,” said Linus. “The staff have turned away our

  messenger.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” said Josie. “He was sick when we blew through there. Hopefully,

  he has gotten better since then.”

  “All right,” said Linus. “Is there anything else?”

  “I can’t think of anything off hand,” said Josie. “This has been a busy few weeks.

  We’ll look back on this and say where did the year go.”

  “Call when you need the men,” said Linus. “I’ll send the word and direct them where

  they need to go.”

  “Thanks, Linus,” said Josie. She waved at him, and the two sentries. She and Elaine

  started off down the street.

  “The other two think Linus is brave for talking to you like he did,” said Elaine. “He

  is telling him that you are not that dangerous, and not to be scared more than they

  would running into a wolf pack in the forest.”

  “That’s fine,” said Josie. “I didn’t know my reputation was that bad.”

  “It will be a long time before you have a reputation,” said Elaine. She smiled. “Right

  now, you just have people who know you.”

  “That’s fair,” said Josie. “I wonder if that is what happened to Mister Warner. He

  didn’t stay, so anyone not associated with him would just think he was a phantom

  messenger of the gods.”

  “I am glad that he left us his case book,” said Elaine. “That was a book Jack will need

  to move with his watch.”

  “I know,” said Josie. “Who do you want to visit next, Jane or Endwright?”

  “We should visit Jane,” said Elaine. “We should check on her even though I called.

  Then Endwright. He is a noble. He might be harder to see than our friend.”

  “Good idea,” said Josie. “I wish Jack would call. I want to know what’s going on. As

  a reserve, it gets on my nerves not to know things.”

  “Patience,” said Elaine. She smiled. “As Jack’s grandmother says there are two kinds

  of people in this world: patient winners and impatient failures.”

  “Don’t you get started on that,” said Josie. “I met Grandma Lee. She was a gem.”

  “I hope she will come to the wedding,” said Elaine.

  “She can’t,” said Josie. “She died while we were still in school. She came down with

  some kind of pneumonia. The family found her in her bed when she didn’t come to

  get breakfast.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Elaine.

  “Talk to me about this priestess of Kord thing while we’re walking,” said Josie. “I

  don’t think Jack has ever dated a religious figure before.”

  “I would rather not,” said Elaine. “I think that I am going to allow that to stay in the

  past except where I have to sort things out with Jack. He hasn’t really asked me

  anything about myself. I find it odd, but charming. It’s like a fresh start.”

  “He is definitely better with you,” said Josie. She called on Zatanna and sent a bird

  to Jane’s mansion. She could have just whisked them, but she liked the bird better.

  It was less draw on her resources and the ride was smoother when she popped along.

  They arrived at the gate and the gate woman from the other evening was on duty. She

  smiled at the pair of them as she opened the gate.

  “Does she rip ears off too?,” asked the sentry.

  “No,” said Josie. “She makes sure Jack bites the right person on command.”

  “That’s a valuable talent,” said the sentry.

  “I know,” said Josie. She led the way on the mansion’s grounds. “Is Jane around?”

  “I saw her at roll call,” said the sentry. She looked at the tent covered yard. “She

  should be in there somewhere.”

  “We’ll look for her,” said Josie. “We’re going to see if we can get these people moved

  out of here today, and if we can hire people to watch over them until they get better.”

  “That would be great,” said the sentry.