CHAPTER 71

Mehkhkahrel regarded all of them in silence for several seconds. War tried to say something, but Pestilence put a hand over his mouth.

"I have much to ponder," Mehkhkahrel finally revealed. "Both sides have shown much logic this day, and I see that this child is right. To dismiss this case would be to unfairly punish the defense."

Beth let out a sigh of relief.

"But the prosecution has rights as well. So it would seem we are at an impasse." Mehkhkahrel looked at the horsemen. "I think it would behoove both sides to think of what they want the outcome to look like. In forty-eight hours time, we shall reconvene. At that time, we shall determine Death's fate, as well as the world's." He lifted his gavel and slammed it down. A shockwave rippled out, causing him and the horsemen to vanish in its wake.

Beth sank to her knees, her heart pounding and her mouth dry. She had come so close!

"Countess Bethany, I know this may be a bad time, but someone is trying to get your attention." Death pointed at the house. When she looked over her shoulder, she saw Cecilia frantically waving her arms.

"Of course they are. And I don't like that title, either. Too stuffy." Beth rose and straightened her skirt. She was almost to the porch when Cecilia grabbed her by the hand and pulled her through the open door. Inside, Tink was on the couch in the living room, her eyes closed and her breathing shallow.

Kisa stood over the goblin with tears in her eyes. "I found her in the basement," she said. "Just outside the Vault. She won't wake up."

"Tink? Tink!" Beth knelt on the couch and gave her a shake. She put her head on Tink's chest and heard the dim thumping of her heart. "What was she doing outside the Vault?"

"I don't know." Kisa stood. "But it's open. I tried to shut it, but the door won't close. I could hear something inside whispering to me, it wanted me to come in. It's some kind of spirit, so it didn't really have any effect on me."

"Okay, let's move her to my room. Our visitors outside are gone for now, so let's get everyone accounted for. Cecilia, please go find Reggie and Jenny." She stood at the bottom of the stairs and raised her voice. "Lily! I need you right now!"

The door of Mike's room opened and the succubus came out, still in child form.

"What's happening?" she asked.

"The usual. World is ending, evil entity in the basement. Sound like fun?"

Lily hopped over the railing and fell three stories, her body expanding as she became an adult again. She landed in a crouch, her tail whipping out behind her.

"I could kick a little ass." Lily grinned. "Let's go see what's haunting the basement, shall we?"

"Okay, looks like we're ready." Eulalie had a mass of equipment spread out on Murray's dining room table, and she snapped the casing of the small drone she had purchased shut.

Sofia stood nearby, her face in awe.

"How did you afford all of this?" she asked.

Eulalie had purchased a trio of laptops, some headsets, two phones and a drone. It had been a couple of years since she had played with one. She used to have a racing drone that she lost to an accident with a barn owl, and just hadn't had the heart to build a new one after.

Besides, testing military drones was far more fun.

"My entire life, I've lived in a house with no bills. My father used to make spare money selling wood carvings so he could afford some luxuries, it isn't like we didn't have plenty of time." Eulalie had finished setting up the third laptop. Though they weren't top-of-th- line models, they were very capable of downloading and installing a modified hard drive backup she had stored in the cloud for just such an occasion. "After I finished school and started doing government work, all I had to do was make some key investments based on rumor, speculation, and maybe a little market manipulation."

"You bought stocks?"

"Nah. I don't really understand stocks." She smirked. When she sat in front of a computer screen, it was possible to see so many patterns in the data that she examined, to scrutinize code at an inhuman speed. "I did mine a ton of Bitcoin when it first came out. Hacked a bunch of university computers to do it when class wasn't in session. May have been slightly illegal. Tried to convince Dad that we could afford to buy our own place wherever we wanted once the price went up, but he was against it. Apparently, money can buy everything but a magical barrier, and even those aren't a hundred percent foolproof. I even faked a human identity to cash out, but don't want to pay taxes on it yet."

She picked up the drone and handed it to a rat. "Can you take this outside, please?"

The rat pondered the object in its paws, and sniffed the edge before nibbling on the plastic.

"No, not food. Take it outside." She held up the piece of paper she had drawn on earlier. It was a cartoon rat holding the drone in the air outside of the house. She had found some pens and paper in Murray's junk drawer and put them to good use.

The rat nodded and left.

Eulalie looked at the screen to her left. She had set the middle laptop up on top of a book to elevate it, and the other two were on the sides. She watched a rat's eye view video feed on the screen and waited until it was outside to launch it. When its motors came to life, the rat nearly dropped it, then bolted back inside as the drone took off facing the wrong way.

On the middle screen, she logged in to her custom VPN and bounced the signal around the world a few dozen times before jacking into some local government accounts. She had been paid almost a decade back to do a threat analysis on a similar system, and apparently, these guys had never acted on the memo she sent about vulnerabilities.

On the third screen, she went through a similar process but also tried to dig up any cameras operating in the area. It took a bit longer, but she eventually used an old government contractor account that enabled her to d******d video logs from doorbell cameras around the neighborhood.