I rushed down the hall to Cat’s room.  Throwing concerns about privacy to the side, I yanked open the door to make sure she was alright, only to find her not to be there at all.  There was a slight breeze, despite no visible source for such being there. Then my phone rang. I pulled my phone out of my pocket. The caller ID said it was Cat, so I answered immediately.

“H-hello?”

“Woohoo!  It worked!” came Cat’s excited cry.

“Cat?  Where are you?”

“I’m back in the Library.”

“How are you calling me if you’re in the Library?”

“I hacked the cell network and connected the portal device directly to it as a new cell tower.”

My best friend, the magitek hacker.  A familiar rift opened up right next to me, and Cat stepped through, the shit-eatingest of grins on her face.  “I’m back!” her voice echoed through the phone.

Billie and Astveig caught up with us at that point, Billie laughing uproariously and Astveig simply covering her face with her palm.

I hung up the phone call.  “You think next time you could warn us before you do something like that?”

“Aww, but where’s the fun in that?” she winked.

“Everything alright?” asked Agent Chandler, bringing up the rear with Arey.

I rolled my eyes.  “Yeah, just my roommate being a mischievous dork.”

“Alright then.  Listen, I think you’ve got things under control here.  I’ve got to get back to the office. That okay with you?”

“Okay,” I said.

****

With Agent Chandler gone, we set to work creating our plan to catch Fenrir.

Billie took the lead on this, being the most experienced hunter of the five of us.  “If Fenrir doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be. It’s that simple,” he began. “We’re going to have to lure him out, and we’ll have to do it fast, probably tonight, to minimize the chance of him striking a civilian target again.  And, fortunately, we have the best bait available: Crys.”

“I was afraid you would say that,” I groaned.

“The problem is that we need a place to do it.  I would suggest some place far from people. I don’t know the region that well, however.  Crys, Cat, do you have any suggestions?”

I shrugged my shoulders.  I wasn’t really an explorer before I got presto-change-o’d.  Cat was more the social butterfly than I, and she was much more likely to know  the geography of Orange County than me. I looked at her.

“Well, pretty much all of Southern California is like one gigantic city,” she said.  “There are several counties here, and the boundaries between cities and counties is almost impossible to identify without looking at a map.  There aren’t many regions without some degree of urbanization here in Orange County, but there are some undeveloped areas further to the south as you get closer to San Diego County.  There’s even a few state parks along the beaches.”

“What’s a state park?” asked Arey.

“It’s a space set aside by the state government for recreational and preservation purposes,” I said.  “They’re mostly just big stretches of empty land that people want to preserve and are only visited by a few people who like to go hiking.”

“That would make for an excellent place to set a trap for Fenrir,” said Billie.

“Only if you don’t mind the occasional hiker,” I said.

“That really won’t be a problem at night,” supplied Cat.

“Oh, yeah, I guess you have a point.”

****

“So,” I said into the bluetooth earpiece I was wearing.  “Anybody got any jokes?”

I was pacing back and forth in the dark on a scrub-covered stretch of land beside the 405 freeway along the border between Orange County and San Diego County.  We’d picked this spot because it was relatively secluded and the others could hide in the rocks closer to the beach to jump to my aid whenever Fenrir shows its head.  I was, of course, also wearing my super suit.

“I got one,” said Billie.  “A seer walks into a bar. She didn’t see it.”  He chuckled.

“That was awwwwfuuuul,” droned Cat.

“You got any better?” Billie challenged.

“I mean, it’d be hard to do worse,” I jibed.  “Hang on, I see another light coming. Looks like another motorcycle.”  The motorcycle came and passed. “Yeah, nothing noteworthy.” I was trying to keep everyone up to date on anything out of the ordinary, which, this far south in the middle of the night basically meant every vehicle that passed by.

“Another motorcycle?” pondered Cat.  “I didn’t realize there were that many motorcycles that rode around here at night.  I guess people like their thrills.”

Billie hummed on the line.  “It’s nearly dawn. I’m starting to think Fenrir might be too clever for this kind of trap.  Might as well pack it in.”

I yawned.  “You mean I stood out her freezing my tits off all night for nothing?”  I giggled a little. I said TITS!

“We’ll have to try another strategy,” Billie answered.

Billie, Cat, Astveig and Arey came out from their hiding place in the rocks along the cliff.

“I can open a portal back to the house,” Astveig said.  “It would be much better and faster than the contraption we arrived in.”  She was referring to Cat’s car, a small, crimson sedan, that we’d driven here in.

“If that’s the case, why didn’t we just portal here?” I asked.

“Well, I didn’t know where ‘here’ was!” snapped Astveig in her trademark grumpiness.  “If I had, I would have. I can only open a portal to a place that I know the proper runes for.”

“Well, I need to get my car home,” said Cat.  “I’ll need to drive it back. The rest of you can take a portal if you prefer.”

In the end, the others elected to take the portal.  I decided to ride with Cat because I didn’t want her to be lonely.

****

We rode in silence a ways before I decided to ask Cat something I’d been thinking about.  “So… you and magic? Where did that come from?”

Cat shrugged.  “I don’t know. I mean, I guess it’s kind of like coding.  You know I worked for Blizzard for a while as a coder before I decided to go it solo and work the indie scene a bit.  Magic just seems to be pretty much the same premise, just using a different programming language based on different written language with a different alphabet.  It all kind of makes a logical sort of sense.”

I nodded.  “Huh. I had noticed it seemed a bit like scripting based on the little bit Arey taught me.  I guess I never considered that your experience as a programmer might actually make you pretty decent at it.”

“Yeah, whoda thunk that magic would be a transferable skill?”  Cat laughed awkwardly, like she was thinking of something else at the moment.

Cat’s voice became a hush.  “I think we’re being followed.”

“What?” I squeaked in alarm.

“There’s a motorcycle behind us,” she said.  “It’s been directly behind us a ways. I even changed lanes a couple times to let them pass, but it just stayed behind us.”

I checked the right side mirror.  Sure enough, there was a single, bright headlight following us in the dark.  “Who would be following us? Why?”

“There were an awful lot of motorcycles passing while we were watching for Fenrir…”  That’s when it all finally clicked into place for me, but far too late. The motorcycle popped a wheelie and sped past us, coming to a stop right in front of us.  Cat slammed on the brakes just in time, stopping just inches away from the silver motorcycle, which grew in size and sprouted fur. Fenrir raised its head in an ear piercing howl.

We’d come out here to trap Fenrir, but instead we wound up walking right into a trap of his own doing.

Breefolk

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