She Hides in the Basement

Lawful arrived after the alley stopped moving.

The officers recognized enough of the scene to know who they were collecting. The stunned attackers were Flesh, or close enough to Flesh that no one needed much persuading. Dhaz showed his Nightshade credentials, and the officers accepted the strange little knot of students, bodies, curse magic, and bad timing as something that belonged to the larger Stormcall crisis.

The mage was still alive.

Maine made sure the mage understood what kind of person was asking questions. He showed the metal of his arm and let the implication do more work than a speech could. The mage's face tried to wake, then fell back into that blank, dazed look as Lawful put enchanted cuffs on him.

Then a note slipped loose.

Maine lifted it with invisible Mage Hand, less suspicious in theory and somehow more suspicious in practice. The note was plain enough to become dangerous immediately.

An address.

She hides in the basement. Make it quick.

No name was written, but the party did not need one. The Tallyman had been their mission from the beginning of Stormcall. A note found on a Flesh-linked mage in the middle of a city attack was not proof, but it was the first direct line they had been handed all day.

Ash could see the trap-shaped hole in the logic. Jonah could see the mission-shaped path through it.

Both were right.

My Alchemical Romance left the alley with a choice that did not feel like a choice: ignore the lead and lose Tallulah, or follow it and accept whoever wanted them in that basement had just moved them there.