The escape hatch wasn't the only project Ivan had been working on. Wanting to keep the local sociopath off-balance as much as possible, he had constructed a fairly plausible rationale (plausible for a junior-high rumor mill, anyway) for the belief that Chadwick Bryce and Damien Mefford were gay lovers. (They were roomies who had known each other since their previous school; they had a strange dominant/submissive relationship; Bryce rarely dated despite his looks and charm; and Mefford just tried too hard to be macho.) He planted the meme by mentioning the rumor to Kelli, with a strict warning not to spread it. Naturally, she told Brandon, who told the whole soccer team (hey, they had to shower with those guys), who spread the story further afield until by lunchtime the entire seventh grade was buzzing with the tale, and upperclassmen were beginning to hear it too. Naturally Brandon and Kelli were on hand to dish the dope to their friends directly, though most had heard it two or three different times already. Tyler and Jasmine looked suspiciously at Ivan, who for his own part pooh-poohed the rumor -- though he did allow that if it *were* true, the two would naturally deny it vehemently. Naturally. So when Damien Mefford came into the cafeteria a while later, he was greeted first with sudden, total silence, followed by hurried whispers and too-obvious looks in his direction. Weirded out, he got into the lunch line, only to be greeted on the way out by a kid who had apparently been elected to ask him point-blank about the story. He was shocked and angry, and vehemently denied it.Naturally.

The afternoon passed with no major events, though Ivan did start to notice brief spurts of passion -- both romantic and violent -- happening off and on across the campus. Invariably the emotions would pass after mere moments, leaving the participants stunned and unsure of what to say. That reminded him that the culprit behind the Night of Raging Lust had yet to be identified, and might well still be at large. Not having enough evidence to pursue anything, though, he filed the information away and went on.

At dinner, the gay rumor had spread even further. Damien Mefford didn't even show his face in the cafeteria, but Chadwick Bryce was there among his usual circle of hangers-on. Clearly, plenty of them were curious about the story, but he seemed to be holding his own with his usual composure and charm, dismissing the tale as an absurd fabrication and getting most of his listeners to laugh at it along with him.

After dinner, though, Bryce faced a tougher audience, as became clear when Our Heroes took up their usual evening surveillance of his and Mefford's room. Damien was stomping around and fuming over having his manhood called into question. He had to deal with his fellow jocks, after all, and was clearly more sensitive to social ridicule than his roommate -- who seemed to find the whole thing amusing, and kept trying to get Damien to calm down. Damien seemed unusually assertive, though, and actually started yelling at Chadwick to take him seriously. Bryce didn't look so amused then, and coolly asked Damien if he wanted "out." Mefford backed down then, turning back into his usual subservient self, and left the room to fume elsewhere.

By that time, certain members of the surveillance team had other matters to attend to. Ivan went on another riding date with Mel, and managed this time to steal a kiss. While that hardly equalled the previous batter's feat of stealing home base in his very first at-bat, it was a definite step forward in their relationship. Ivan was certainly pleased as punch -- so much so that even Simon noticed it when Ivan got back to the room.

Meanwhile, Jasmine was calling around trying to fill Ivan's "shopping list." Her old mentor Nightshade, living in England since the breakup of the Rabbi's chantry, was surprised to get a long-distance call, and quickly suggested an online chat (turning on Jasmine's computer remotely from across the ocean) to save the kid some money. "Aunt Shade" agreed to rent the U-Stor-It, and recommended local hardware specialist T.C. Mitnick as a source for the other gear. Jasmine also requested help in getting hold of a wearable remote-access device for her computer; what with the Bryce business heating up, she was starting to have paranoid fears of waking up in the trunk of a car sans her equipment. Shade sent along some schematics. Jasmine then called Mitnick, who promised to have the bike and weapons ready to deliver in ten minutes. He did it in nine. Just as he was asking where to leave the stuff, a delivery boy knocked on Jasmine's door with the U-Stor-It key. Jasmine immediately resolved to be Just That Cool when she grew up.

Stepping out into the hall after concluding her business, Jasmine ran into Courtney Jacobs and her cronies. The older girl immediately began making snippy comments about Jasmine's age, which soon segued into racist slurs against Melanie. Jasmine resolved to plan some sort of hideous revenge, and in the meantime contented herself with the knowledge that since the recent stalking incident, Courtney had been spending a lot of time in the company of Chadwick Bryce. Maybe she'd get herself butchered by the psycho and save everyone the trouble.

Everyone went to bed after that. At 3am, an insistent beeping from her computer awakened Jasmine, letting her know that both Bryce and Mefford had left their room. She called Ivan, undoubtedly awakening him from pleasant dreams of his date -- but he willingly sprang into action when told of the situation. He got dressed and woke Tyler while Jasmine traced their quarry to the infirmary, where it appeared Bryce was throwing up every morsel of food that had ever passed his lips in 13 years. Mefford was also there, apparently advising a nurse on his friend's condition. The boys finished putting on their favorite "stealth" outfits and headed for the infirmary to see for themselves. They arrived to find Mefford just leaving; Bryce himself would apparently be staying the night for observation. Ivan had a bright idea, and reminded Jasmine to check Bryce's room for his briefcase, and to swipe it if it were there. It was and she did. The boys watched the infirmary a while longer, sure that Bryce's illness was some kind of trick and that he would eventually emerge. But no such thing happened, and after half an hour they retired to the dorm . . . only to get caught sneaking back in by Nate the RA. Ivan briefly considered pulling down knowledge of kung fu from the collective unconscious and beating the crap out of Nate to "put the fear of Ivan into him," but recalled that he had blackmail material on the older boy (Pictures of him and the Girls RA in flagrante delicto) and didn't need to go that far. Nate didn't bother to dispense punishment on the spot, but promised that the boys would see him in the morning.

The gang had plans of their own for the morning, however. Well before breakfast, they all got up and met at the boathouse down by the lake (infamous as the favorite student makeout spot) to go through Chadwick Bryce's briefcase. Working a bit of entropic magick, Tyler spun the dials on the case's lock to the correct combination on the first try. Once opened, the case revealed primarily a compulsive neatnik's idea of storing school supplies -- pens, paper, and other bits of gear all held in their proper places with elastic bands. However, also in the case was the journal the kids had seen Bryce writing in during previous surveillance sessions. Unfortunately, the book turned out to be encrypted -- and not in a cipher that Jasmine might have been able to crack, but in a book code that would require extensive knowledge of Bryce's personal library and a lot of trial and error to even begin working on. The kids were a bit disappointed that their find had come up a bust . . . until they turned a page of the journal and found Bryce's collection of photographs. All were of women or girls, all asleep or unconscious. The ones of Mel and Kelli that the group had seen before were the tamest of the bunch. Most of the other "models" were stripped naked, and many were actually tied up in various disturbing poses. Several of the nastiest pictures featured Courtney Jacobs as the main attraction.

While the group was processing this new information, Tyler was gripped with a sudden chill. At first he figured that his ghostly aunt was trying to get his attention, but when Shannon proved to be nowhere around, he concluded that he had just felt someone die . . . someone nearby. The kids immediately knew in their hearts that Bryce was responsible, that the business of the night before had somehow been concocted to cover up his ghastliest act yet. And then Ivan realized something else. Thanks to his illness, Bryce had an alibi for the entire night . . . but Ivan and Tyler didn't. What they had thought was a clever stakeout on their part had actually been a frame-up, planned by Bryce to pin the blame for his greatest crime on his enemies. No doubt Bryce or Mefford had called Nate to make sure the other two got caught on their way back in. Of course, a check on Bryce revealed that he was just getting dressed and preparing to leave the infirmary. A check of the spy cameras planted on Kelli and Mel confirmed, much to the boys' relief, that both were alive and well. (Mel was even just stepping out of the shower, giving Ivan an early morning treat.)

Knowing that the rumor mill would tell them more than they could find out by wandering around looking for corpses, the boys headed back to their dorm while Jasmine conveyed the briefcase to the U-Stor-It. At the dorm the boys were met by Nate, who looked worried and questioned them (more gently than they had expected) on their nighttime adventure. They explained that, both having girlfriends and worried about the stalking incident of the week before, they had taken on the task of patrolling the campus at night in hopes of catching the one responsible. Nate understood their motivation, but warned them that such behavior was unwise and dangerous, and would not be tolerated in the future. He also told them that Courtney Jacobs had been reported missing earlier that morning, but warned them to keep *that* info quiet. The police were already investigating, and would undoubtedly want to talk to the two later. For the moment, though, Nate seemed to believe in their innocence and sent them on to breakfast.

In the cafeteria, speculation about the police presence on campus had replaced the Bryce/Mefford gay rumor as the morning's topic. Tyler slipped Jasmine a note to fill her in on the identity of the probable victim -- making her feel really bad for having wished just that fate on Courtney the day before. Ivan got a surprise when Damien Mefford "accidentally" bumped into him . . . and dropped a covert note of his own into Ivan's lap. The note was a desperate plea for Tyler and Ivan to meet him at the boathouse that evening, assuming he managed to live that long. Apparently Damien had objected to Bryce's latest and worst escapade, and was now living in fear, willing to turn anywhere for help.

Morning classes were interrupted by an assembly, at which Courtney's disappearance was officially announced and students were urged to cooperate with the police. As they'd expected, Tyler and Ivan were among the first called in for interrogation. They managed to stick to their shared story through several repetitions, though, and their mutual gift for On-the-Fly Bullshit gave the tale just the right emotional tenor. The cops may have thought the boys were foolhardy in their chivalrous vigilantism, but they didn't believe them to be involved in anything nastier.

Meanwhile, Jasmine was walking across campus when she saw one of the visiting cops talking to a group of adults, two men and a woman. One of the men looked disturbingly familiar, and after a second Jasmine remembered where she'd seen that face before -- in photos distributed by the kids' parents to warn them against certain dangers. The man was one of the brutal enforcers known as "Morningkillers," cloned from werewolf DNA by Progenitor-turned-Nephandus Julia Dornfeld, chief henchwoman of Ryan Elliot, Sr. The boys were still in police custody, so Jasmine returned to her room and called the younger Ryan (Tyler's mom), who showed up immediately after hearing the news and began to make a plan.

When Tyler and Ivan were dismissed by the police, Tyler noticed the Morningkiller as well and explained the situation to Ivan. Not wanting to let Mefford's turn of coat slip through their fingers, Ivan decided to continue working on the Bryce problem while Tyler warned Jasmine about the Morningkiller. Returning to his room, Ivan decided that he needed to delay Bryce for a few crucial hours, preventing him from killing Damien until the boys could meet with him. Remembering that there was a police investigation afoot, and that Bryce and Courtney had been seeing each other for a week, Ivan realized that Bryce too would be carefully interrogated. Invoking his favorite spirits of fortune and chance, Ivan asked that there be just one cop present who would see through Bryce's facade to the cold, calculating mind underneath, and keep up the questioning despite Bryce's perfect alibi. Of course, Ivan had no doubt Bryce would eventually talk his way out of trouble, but the delay would give the Good Guys the time they needed. No sooner had he thanked and dismissed the spirits than they gave him a sign of their acquiescence: from across the hall he heard the police knocking on Bryce's door.

Meanwhile, Tyler arrived at Jasmine's room to discover his mom already present. Recently, she explained, her side had made the first move in the familial chess game by arranging for a number of Elliot Sr.'s facilities to be closed down due to "sick building syndrome." These visitors were likely the responding move. Ryan had a plan: the two Elliots would approach the group and try to find out what they wanted, while Jasmine kept watch remotely in case anything went wrong. Ryan doubted her father's emissaries would attack them in public, of course, but she wasn't intending to take any chances. In a weird, Euthanatos kind of mother-son moment, the Elliots checked and readied their weapons almost in unison, Ryan tossing Tyler a clip of silver bullets from her own ammo stash.

When the pair approached the intruders, the latter group became clearly uneasy upon seeing Ryan. The woman, a nervous creature whose gaze kept flicking to the morningkiller and back, did most of the talking. She explained that they had come merely to deliver a message to Ryan through her son, but would be happy to give it to her in person. Ryan wondered why a mere courier would need to bring a morningkiller along, and the woman responded that it was a measure for her own safety; she'd been warned that Tyler might be dangerous. (*That* little ego boost left Tyler sporting a shit-eating grin for some time thereafter. . . .) The woman then handed Ryan an envelope and the three took their leave. Back in the room, Ryan explained that the letter was her father's attempt to make her an offer she couldn't refuse -- a vain gesture, obviously. Corporate responsibilities beckoned, and Ryan bade the children adieu, leaving the clip of silver bullets with Tyler in case of future incidents. It was clear that the upcoming confrontation was preying on Ryan's mind, as she never did ask why the school was crawling with cops.

Shortly thereafter Ivan hooked back up with the other two, and they headed to the boathouse to see if Damien Mefford was there. He was. Leaving Jasmine outside to stand guard, the boys went in to meet him. Though clearly scared out of his wits, Damien was all too willing to tell the pair all he knew about Bryce's evil deeds. Bryce had, in fact, murdered Courtney Jacobs the night before, and Damien had witnessed the act. He had actually tried to stop Chadwick before the fact, poisoning his food to make him ill, but Bryce hadn't been laid as low as he'd hoped. Now that it was clear he had been betrayed, Bryce would be looking to kill Damien, too. Unfortunately, Mefford knew little about the code on Bryce's journal or the locations of any of his hiding places for bodies or trophies. He did explain, however, that his initiation as Bryce's lieutenant had been a gradual thing, with Chadwick urging him on to greater and greater misdeeds and then using those to blackmail him into even worse things. Bryce was doing the same to the rest of his hangers-on, but none had yet gone as far as Damien.

Ivan called up his father and asked Crowley to send a car to take Damien far out of Bryce's reach. Crowley agreed to supply the favor, and Ivan was forced to thank his father -- one of his least favorite activities. Afterward he blew off steam by playing "bad cop" and threatening to beat Mefford severely if he didn't come through with additional information. Damien just didn't know much else, though. Before he left, Tyler pulled him aside and outdid Ivan's tough-guy act, arousing much resentment in his friend. ("You made me look like a candy-ass! Why do you always have to be the tough guy?") Performing the less fatal side of Euthanatos duty, Tyler solemnly warned Damien that he had better take this chance to change the path he was on, or someday his choices would kill him. Damien seemed to take the advice to heart, and was soon driven away under the watchful eye (and loaded shotgun) of Crowley's chaffeur/bodyguard Cambridge.

No sooner had Mefford gone than Jasmine's periodic surveillance checks on Bryce showed that he was on the move and headed their way. The boys decided to make this one their final encounter, and sent Jasmine back to the dorms on overwatch duty again while they readied themselves. While Ivan lurked in the shadows armed with an oar, Tyler would make himself the obvious -- and apparently unarmed -- target. (In actual fact, upon his initiation as a Euthanatos, Tyler's mom had shown him the "family secret" -- a method of storing a weapon in otherspace, proof against both physical and magickal detection -- so that he would never need to go unarmed.) Ivan also opened his mind to the surface thoughts of both Tyler and Bryce. Tyler had locked down his emotions tightly (another lesson of his mother's), but there was still a taste of raw fear to be detected. Bryce's thoughts barely came through as coherent, but it was clear that they were unnaturally fast, flitting from topic to topic with speed Ivan couldn't match.

Bryce arrived a few minutes later, packing a dueling sabre and apparently intending to do a Darth Maul on the boys. His initial attempts to draw them out with taunting failed, so after taking a moment to reassure himself of his superiority (as his thoughts made plain to Ivan), he stepped inside. Spotting Tyler, Bryce closed to attack with incredible speed; only a last-second twist saved Tyler from being sliced like a turkey. But in the same motion, Tyler brought his right arm up and a gun appeared in his hand. Chadwick Bryce had only enough time to realize that he'd unfortunately brought a sword to a gunfight before a bullet pierced his brain right between the eyes and reduced most of that magnificent and malevolent brain to a fine red mist. He fell, very dead.

For a split second, Ivan got a feeling of utter godhood from Tyler's mind. Then it was replaced with revulsion, and Tyler started throwing up violently. When he was done, he called his mom again, this time requesting a cleanup. Ivan looked at the mess that had once been Bryce's head and chided Tyler about using hollowpoint ammunition at point-blank range. Tyler didn't seem to appreciate the criticism. Ryan showed up to conduct the cleanup, and also tsked at her son's ammo choice. After getting a closer look at his face, though, she decided to leave him alone.

Tyler spent the rest of the night brooding alone over his first kill. Jasmine retrieved the briefcase and replaced it, with lid slightly ajar, in the now uninhabited room of Chadwick Bryce and Damien Mefford. She also took the opportunity to remind Ryan that Tyler had been returned in reasonably good condition from his first assassination on *her* watch, and that she expected the same when he went with Ryan to kill her father. Ivan, meanwhile, looked up Mel and finally explained to her the bare bones of the whole Chadwick Bryce affair. She was shocked to learn that Bryce had been in her room taking pictures of her, angry that Ivan hadn't told her, and annoyed that Ivan had *kept* the picture. He gave a long explanation about how his, Tyler's, and Jasmine's upbringings had taught them all to keep things close to their chests and to look out for themselves and the people around them. What really seemed to bring her back around, though, was the devilish grin with which he insisted that, after all, it was a very *attractive* picture. . . . Later, in an unusual gesture of unprovoked kindness, Ivan invited Simon along on one of his and Mel's riding outings, hoping to teach the boy some social skills. Simon remarked that he liked Mel because she was one of the few people who was nice to him. "She's nice to everyone," Ivan replied, and then marveled for a moment at the thought: *Even me.*

It was Simon, later that night, who learned the location of Courtney Jacobs' body from a passing ghost (not hers; Simon didn't think Courtney had stuck around). An anonymous tip got it found posthaste. The next morning, Nate investigated Bryce and Mefford's absence, discovering the briefcase . . . and its contents. Shuddering, he quickly summoned the cops. And so it came to pass that Courtney was laid to rest; her murder was (properly) laid at the feet of Chadwick Bryce (whose own body would *never* be found); and Damien Mefford got himself a new identity somewhere, courtesy of good old Uncle Al Crowley.

All's well that ends well, eh? Next week: God only knows. . . .