“Just a nightcap-” Darling poured shots with his back to her, of something she couldn’t see. It smelled powerful.

“I don’t really want-”

“Oh, come on, Astrid,” Darling smiled that smile of his, “You deserve it. You’ve been such an integral member of the team. I don’t think we could have done this without you.”

First, it’s yoga class and oat milk, and now its podcasts and sucking dicks? Yoga was a slippery fuckin slope it turned out.

It was mid-afternoon, the sun was high, and so was she.

Astrid leaned over her tray of lunch in the crowded Bureau cafeteria. The chicken and rice was passable, but she was much more occupied with the janitor a few yards away.

Two people sharing a cigarette. Two gods. Maybe two madmen.

Or maybe just two pawns to the wicked whims of The Writer.

Thornton looked down at the dead woman a moment and his face - for just a split second - reflected a clear and genuine dismay. But it was only a moment, a fleeting thought, before something dark crawled across his features.

She had changed from the days of thinking that escaping their captor and getting back to their carefully planned future was all that mattered. Laura now knew that there were bigger and darker things in the world and that sometimes you did really fucked up stuff to save the people you loved.

Three figures of differing heights stepped out of the portal. They were nothing but black outlines in the contrast of the magical glow, one tall and thin, one slightly shorter, and the third even shorter still. As soon as they were clear there was another shivering crack and the portal closed behind them leaving only stunned silence in it’s wake.

“She sussed me out, you know, absolute bloodhound that one. Remarkable woman, really. Voice of an angel and the business sense of-” Barnaby's glass lifted and he barked another short laugh, “-well you actually. Haha!”

He’d grown up wanting to escape a provincial life and instead he was standing in front of a burning pyre shaped like a wonky dragon, sipping home made cider he’d bought for a pittance and wearing a ribbon that one of the local aunties had pinned on his lapel that marked him as a judge in tomorrow’s Fruit and Veg competition.