"Is this the sad place of death?" I asked in a low voice, to a sketchy man sitting sketchily chewing on a stalk of wheat standing outside a sketchy rundown building that just screamed I'm being used for a sketchy secret society!! to all walker-bys. Yup, sketchy.

He gave me a once-over, spit out his wheat stalk, and snarled. "Th'meeting is already over."

"We know, but we wanted to meet some members," I said flippantly. I made a show of looking around. "First time, in Midelus."

He narrowed his eyes at me but didn't say anything.

Heart beating in my throat, I raised an eyebrow at him and said, "So, can we go in?"

The man shifted his glance behind me, and his skepticism only increased. "Her too?"

I looked at Rosa. She was standing as straight as one of the poles in the warehouse, and just as stiffly. I held back a sigh and turned back to the man. I nodded towards her and lowered my voice. "She gets, y'know, nervous about this things. A tad paranoid."

He gave her a doubtful stare, but when a weak ehehe leaked out of Rosa's mouth, he leaned back a bit before jerking a thumb over his shoulder. "Go on in, few'll still be hanging 'round."

I gave him a sunny smile. "Thanks, 'preciate it." I grabbed Rosa before she could say anything strange and dragged her through the creaky doorway. Creaky doors were sketchy.

The insides were as dark and as musty as I'd expect from a secret society meeting place. I whistled.

Someone stood up from the only table in the room, which was smack dab in the middle of the floor surrounded by some chairs. "Who're you?" he barked. The short man had a scruffy beard and a beret on his head. 

Was he the final boss? My heart sped up, but I tried to keep myself down as possible. I beamed at him through the heartbeats ringing in my ears. "We're new here," I said, as cheerfully as I could. "We've come looking for the sad place of death." Which, by the way, was the weirdest code word I had ever heard of... though to be fair, it was the only official code name I'd ever heard. Still, who wants to say "sad place of death" to random people and hope to ring bells?

I supposed I should be grateful they relied on codes so easily knowable like this one, though. The warehouse guy (I never did get his name) had somehow remembered the phrase being repeated multiple times, then pointed out a food vendor dude he used to chase out the most when they had previous meetings in his warehouse. From there, Rosa and I had begun infiltrating SAD, the secret society.

Ooh, that sounded just like one of the novels Mother Lily used to read to us when we were little. That would make us spies, wouldn't it? 

"This is indeed a sad place of death," the scruffy beard man was saying, still eyeing us suspiciously. The other people in the room, too, standing around in clusters, were watching us as they spoke to each other in low whispers. "And how did you find us?"

"Oh, we asked around." I flipped a nonchalant hand in the direction of the market. "We knew a couple contacts."

"Never seen you before," he said slowly. Hmm, so he was not dropping his guard. Yet.

As expected of a final boss.

I swallowed back a gleeful laughter and smiled instead. "Of course you haven't. We're actually from the Minstia chapter." Haha, how's that for spy work? Lying through my teeth, like a proper infiltrator. Yes: we were infiltrators, that's what we were.

"Ohh," he replied, visibly relaxing. He even smiled at us. "You too?"

"Yes, us two," I agreed.

We both hesitated, as if some strange miscommunication had just taken place but couldn't be figured out exactly. Something had been a bit off, hadn't it? 

After a beat, the man and I bellowed out some laughter to fill the awkward silence. The other people in the room turned away as well.

The man spread his arms open. "Welcome, welcome, fellow DEATH eaters."

I almost cried. My left eye actually did twitch from the sudden inner cringe that rose from his words. Death eaters? Really? Nobody could come up with anything better? "Yeah. Thanks," I eked out. Don't laugh, I told myself, half-whimpering from the effort to remain neutral. It's all good. No worries. We were professional spies, and professional spies didn't get flustered this easily. I took a few deep breaths.

When I had enough willpower ready in me to raise my eyes again, I saw that the scruffy beard was now looking beyond me to Rosa. Right.

I nudged her. Rosa jumped, then shouted, "YES FELLOW COMRADES WE SHALL MARCH TOGETHER" followed by three consecutive "HA"s. "HA HA HA!!"

Scratch that. I'm the only professional spy here. 

The room paused all together, as if they were all questioning what their senses had told them right that second. The silence ensued for maybe five seconds. Rosa's last laugh kept ringing around my head. Or was it ringing around the room? I wasn't even sure anymore.

Scruffy beard broke the silence first by breaking into hearty laughter. "Bravo!" he said, grinning. "We like that kind of passion. Welcome, DEATH eater."

"Yes," Rosa said, this time in absolute high-pitched monotone. I frowned at her, and she looked at me with a widely unnatural grin. "I eat death for breakfast!"

"Thank you," I cut in, before Rosa gave herself away, and smiled at the man once more. "I'm Tana and this is Mo." Fake names, like true spies.

"Tana and Mo," the man said, nodding at each of us. "I am Wesley. Come sit at our table."

I trotted over to him, with Rosa in tow, pretending not to notice how she was... what was she doing? Was she pretending to have a limp? I gave her a side-eyed look, but she was way too focused on... can that even be called limping? What was that?

We sat down anyhow, and Wesley began giving us the rundown of the meeting that had just passed. "Five more members," he proclaimed, "and a few visitors from other chapters like you."

"Wonderful," I said at intervals, or oohed appropriately, nodded emphatically, gasped wondrously, or clapped my hands together at a new piece of news. 

One time, I heard Rosa chortle to herself under her breath and sensed her getting ready to butt in. I promptly elbowed her as hard as I could and 'aah'ed extra loudly to cover it up. The chances of Rosa saying something extremely unfunny or out of the blue was way too big, and I had to get on this Wesley guy's good graces to get more info.

Or is it intel, like all the spies say?

Heh.

"And that's the gist of it," Wesley finished, one hand brushing his bearded chin proudly. "Any questions?"

"Oh, I have one!" I said immediately, though I had no idea what to say.

Wesley looked at me with expectant eyes under his fancy beret. I churned out practice questions in my head. Now, what would be a good lead-in question? Maybe I could ask about the entire 

"This may seem random," I began, "but what--"

"Have you seen two boys with a little girl?" Rosa blurted out.

I whipped my head around and stared at her. Excuse me?!

Wesley stroked his mini-beard. (It wasn't that long, really.) "Two boys with a little girl? Are you looking for them?"

I shoved Rosa aside before she could say anything more. "Actually, yes," I said, making my voice eager. "We saw them hanging around and thought it would be nice to get to know younger members of the society."

He appeared to think, thankfully not finding the question suspicious. Yet. "We have a couple young people in our chapter, but two boys and one girl..." He turned to the woman sitting on the other side of the round table, who'd been poring over a couple papers while Wesley had been talking. "What do you think, Matilda?"

She looked up. "What?"

He repeated our conversation to her, and she swept back her chestnut-brown hair and adjusted her papers before answering. "Yes," she said finally, and her eyes pierced through her glasses and reached me. "But they weren't part of our chapter."

"Pardon?" I asked, keeping my face as innocent as possible. "Then were they visiting?"

"They were just passing by." She paused, seeming to think. Her eyes narrowed a bit. "What chapter did you say you were from? Minstia?"

"Yes," Wesley answered for us. He smiled. "Glad to see so many visitors from Minstia today."

I grinned back at him, but my mind panicked. So many visitors? That made it sound like we weren't the only ones. Wouldn't that mean...

My gaze wandered back to the bespectacled woman, Matilda, whose eyes had tightened into a glare. She stood up, towering over us (even Wesley) with enormous height. "Who are you, really?" she demanded.

I scooted backwards in my chair, holding my hands up. "Wait, there's a misunderstanding--"

"Matilda," frowned Wesley, looking up at her. "What are you doing? They already said that--"

"The two boys and the little girl said they were from Minstia," she interrupted. She leveled an accusatory finger at me. "Are you truly from Minstia, girl?" she hissed.

I gulped. Shaking my hands, I said, "Look, don't get so angry at us yet. We really are from Minstia."

"Yeah," Rosa piped up, still high-pitched and monotone as ever. "Filly and I are true Minstians."

"Filly?" echoed Matilda. Her glare sharpened even more until she was looking down her nose at us. "I thought you were Tana and Mo."

"That's right!" I squeaked. "I- I'm Tanafilly! I just use Tana for short!"

She leaned towards us. We leaned back. Even with the table between us, this lady's presence was awfully scary. Besides, I wasn't going to risk anything around her long legs. She could kick me clear across the table and find absolutely no discomfort about it.

"How funny," she drawled, and her shadow over the table seemed to almost grow. "We asked the two boys you are looking for about the Minstia chapter, and they said there was only one girl involved in their chapter right now. But here we see two."

Wesley turned towards us and crossed his arms, his eyes narrowing as well. "Anything to say?" he said in a deep, threatening voice.

I stood up and yanked Rosa up as well, backing up slowly. The other members of the society were all inching towards us now. "They could be the ones lying," I said, failing to keep the note of desperation out of my voice.

Matilda scoffed. "One of the boys is my cousin. I would know very well if he had been lying."

I looked around, biting my lip. "We meant no harm, I promise. We're just looking for--"

"Your two boys kidnapped my sister!" Rosa yelled, suddenly going gung-ho and trying to rip out of my grip to go fight the members one on one. "What have you done to her?!"

"Rosa, stop!" I shouted, pulling at her. I barely managed to keep her from running over the nearby SAD member.

"Get them!" someone roared, and I took that as my cue to turn around and speed my way out into safety, with Rosa in tow.

Ohh boy.