The large man behind the desk narrowed his eyes at Duncan.  “What are you whispering about?”

Duncan’s body moved forward into the room while he carried on a subvocal discussion with Bunhill.  She was able to confirm that he’d been influenced, but couldn’t tell what the influence was supposed to do.

“You’ve been around a ghoul,” said Duncan bluntly.

The man behind the desk twitched toward his holster, then relaxed.  He reached for something under his desk, then seemed to think better of it and sat back comfortably.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“He has?” asked Agent Mackie.  “But he can’t talk to us about... Argent division stuff.”

“This room counts as a public space somehow.  Are there cameras?”

“It’s CSIS.  Of course there are cameras.  And not just the ones you can see.”

Duncan nodded.  Moments later small electrical discharges destroyed innocuous looking fixtures in two corners of the room.  Ten seconds later, a third discharge rustled the leaves of a potted plant sitting on top of a filing cabinet.  “There.  We’re private.”

“We can talk about magic?  Boss, why have you been holding out on us?”

“I don't know what you’re talking about.”

Donna ghosted out of her robot shell, standing against the desk and offering her hand.  “We haven’t been properly introduced.  I’m Donna, the one who started and stopped the creature that destroyed four blocks of apartments in Victoria.”

The big man carefully reached out to the crystalline hand, and shook it.  “Just call me Smith.”

Donna turned to Agent Mackie and raised an eyebrow curiously.  He nodded, so she turned back to Smith.  “Fine, Mr. Smith.”

“Assistant Director Smith, if you want to be formal about it.”

“Don’t make me use my titles,” grumbled Donna, to a tinkling giggle in her ear from Gwen.

“Now.  What can CSIS do for you, Ms. Faulkner.”

“So he does read our briefings,” stage-whispered Agent Armstrong, earning himself a glare from Agent Mackie.

“Rather the opposite is why I’m here.  You have a magic problem.  A much bigger one than I first thought.”

“No.  We don’t.  Whatever these two have told you is not the big picture.”

“And that big picture is?” asked Donna.

“None of your business.”

“Then why did you agree to this meeting at all?”

The door behind her burst open, and four men in heavy combat gear rushed inside.  In moments they had robo-Duncan cuffed.  Their efforts to detain Donna were comically and utterly futile.  Attempts to grab her just passed right through her body.  After those attempts failed, the team moved to one side and one of them brought his weapon to bear on her.

“Do you think that will work any better?” she asked archly.  “Silver bullets won’t touch me.”

“Fire!” barked the Assistant Director.

The soldier frowned, and then attempted to work his rifle’s bolt.  “It’s jammed.”

Donna’s focus was on disabling the array of weapons on the soldiers, so she was unprepared for Smith’s shots.  They passed through her without stopping – or causing any harm whatsoever –  and embedded themselves in the wall.

“Enough!” shouted Donna, slapping the gun aside before the third shot could pass through her head.  Unfortunately, it still fired, and a grunt of pain from Agent Mackie made it clear where the third bullet had struck.  “Siddown, all of you!”

Smith and the soldiers collapsed to the floor, pinned by implacable, invisible weights.  “What are you doing?” grunted Smith, with effort.

“Healing the one person in the room that hasn’t tried to take a shot at me.”   Donna turned to Agent Armstrong.  “Get his silver off.”  He didn’t hesitate and had the silver armband off with one swift tug.

“Freaking silver bullets, going to make this ten times as hard...”  Donna groused as she worked.  She hardened slivers of air into tongs, and used them to pull out the bullet and the silver fragments it had left behind.  Once the last one was gone, the wound closed up and sealed over.  

Agent Mackie coughed experimentally, then looked down at his chest.  There was a bullet-hole in his jacket just below his left shoulder, but no sign of the blood that had soaked it.  “You do good work.”

“Give it a minute for your body to catch up, you’re being held together by my will at the moment.  Want me to clean out your lungs while I’m at it?  You really should stop smoking.”

Agent Mackie chuckled weakly.  “In this line of work, I figured it wouldn’t be what killed me.  Shot by my own boss wasn’t how I’d figured on going, either.”

Donna turned back to the man behind the desk and loosened her bonds on him after making sure any weapon he had access to was thoroughly neutralized.  “What the hell was that about?”

“You know too much.  You need to be stopped.”

“I’m here to help, you big lummox.  Who wants me stopped?”

His mouth worked, but nothing came out.  Not even a wheeze of breath.  Soon he was turning blue.

“Do something!” cried Agent Armstrong.

“Bunhill?”

“Deep control.  Same thing you did to me should work.”

“Get his silver off, Armstrong.  Quickly!”  At Agent Armstrong’s confused look she pointed to his wrist.  “His watch band is silver.”

Once that was off, lunar energy suffused the room.  Smith gasped huge lungfuls of air and slumped into his chair.  The glow faded, then Smith shook his head to clear it.  “What on God’s green earth was that?”

“Magic.  Rescuing you, this time.  Whoever instilled your compulsions really didn’t want you to spill the beans.”

“So much for compartmentalization.”

“What was the compulsion, then?” asked Agent Mackie.  “It was obviously more than ‘keep magic secret, even from the guys who are tasked with figuring it out’.”

The Assistant Director shook his head.  “I... I don’t know.  It was subtle, until...”

“Until you pulled a gun on a civilian and shot them?”

Smith put his head in his hands.  “Yeah.  The paperwork on that is going to be a bitch.”  He sighed, and looked up at Donna again.  “Sorry about that.”

Donna shrugged.  “No lasting harm done.”

“Can you let my men up, please?”

The soldiers stood up cautiously.  “Orders, sir?”

“Guard the hallway.”

“Yes, sir.  What about our weapons?  They’re all jammed.”

“I can fix them if you promise not to shoot at me again,” offered Donna.

They looked at the Assistant Director, who nodded.  Their leader made the promise, then wryly noted that it appeared that wouldn’t do much good to try.  The bits of hardened air that were preventing the weapons from cycling went away, and the soldiers filed out.

“What am I going to do with you?  Immune to bullets, tossing us around like rag dolls...”

“You could try being nice to someone who has already volunteered to help us,” suggested Agent Mackie.

Smith nodded, and turned to Donna.  “Thank you for removing my... compulsion, did you call it?  What caused it?”

Donna quickly sketched what they knew about ghouls, and Smith’s frown deepened.  “I don’t remember meeting any crystalline entities like you describe.  I don’t even know how long this has been going on.”

“When did you learn about the compartmentalization of magic, and get ordered to keep Argent Division off the trail?” asked Agent Mackie.

“My first meeting with Celia, the regional Director, immediately after I got promoted to Assistant Director.”  Smith sighed.  “So she’s undoubtedly at the heart of it.  Pity.”

The Assistant Director’s cell phone rang. When he glanced down at the display he, and he glanced down at the display.  “Speak of the devil.”   As the others looked at each other in concern, he answered.  “Smith here.”

“The situation is under control for now, but I need to meet with you as soon as possible.”  His eyebrows lifted, and he nodded.  “Of course.”

He hung up the phone, and shook his head.  “Looks like you’ll have your chance to see how far the rot goes.  We’re meeting her in half an hour.  And she expects me to bring you.”

Donna chuckled softly.  “A trap.  How convenient.  Let’s go trip it.”

“She expects you to be wearing silver, too.”

Donna shrugged.  “Chewbacca gambit, then.  Do you have special silver handcuffs...”  Her eyes widened as Smith held out a pair.  “Well then.”

It was the matter of a minute’s work to create stainless steel linings for the handcuffs so that robo-Duncan could wear them but still be affected by magic.  Once that was done, Smith led Duncan towards his car.  Agents Mackie and Armstrong accompanied them, to provide ‘security’.

“You’re awfully casual about this,” remarked Agent Mackie as the trip dragged on.  “I thought the plan was to avoid Vancouver’s ghoul.”

“We need to sort this out.  Influencing government agencies?  No way I can let that stand.”

Agent Armstrong guffawed.  “Are ye going to go up against every businessman that writes a check to a politician, next?”

“Those people get to make a choice of their own free will.  Ghoul victims don’t.  Don’t forget that this particular ghoul had me shot.”

Somewhat later, Donna felt the a familiar dark miasma.  She looked out the windows to judge the area they were in.  “Figures.  The hospital isn’t far.  How close are we going?”

“The Director lives across the street from it, we’re meeting at her home.”

“Figures.”

Donna pulled her mental shield in tighter, in hopes of making her power harder to detect.  Bunhill made approving noises, and urged her to tighten it even further.  “Those lessons are paying off now.”

“Yeah, but I can barely sense magical activity this way.”

“We’ll work on that.  Later.”

Smith parked on the street in front of a pleasant looking brick house.  “Here we are.  The lion’s den, as it were.  Come along, and look subdued.”

They were met at the door by an armed guard, and showed into a parlor where grey-haired woman with a pinched expression waited in a wingback chair.  Standing beside her was a balding man with an easy smile that Donna recognized.  “What’s he doing here?”

“I’m the one asking the questions,” barked the older woman.

Donna sniffed at the air discreetly then cursed under her breath.  Echoing in her ear, Bunhill agreed.  “It’s here.”

A moment later, a surge of energy pulsed through Donna’s reduced awareness.  A death had happened nearby, and its energy was being pulled toward the parlor.  Reflexively, she hacked off the tendril drawing the power.

The balding man’s eyes went wide.  “He’s not contained!”

Celia calmly said, “Go.”  

The speakerphone on the table beside her crackled, “Acknowledged.  Securing premises.”

“What have you done?” asked Donna.

“Shield!” hissed Bunhill in her ear as Donna’s focus wavered.

Donna put her shield back together.  Then her attention was drawn to her home a hundred kilometers away, where two RCMP officers were entering the front door, pushing past a startled Sidney.

The robo-Duncan that Donna had left at home woke and barked, “You are not welcome here.  Leave now.”

“Sorry buddy, orders.”

The door slammed shut behind them, and the officers fell to the floor.  “Wrong answer.”

Donna flicked her attention back to her self in Vancouver, only to find that she had no control over it.  Bunhill was cursing up a storm, something about shields.  It was hard to focus and Donna tuned out the angry buzzing to attend to the man in front of her.

“Much better,” he purred happily.  “No more interfering in my affairs, little worm.”

“Of course not, Master,” said robo-Duncan.  

“Are you back?” came a thought along the bond connecting Donna to her other companion, Gwen.  Donna’s inner self grasped the bond like a lifeline, sending a desperate plea for help along it.  A shield slammed shut around her, plunging her into the darkness of complete sensory annihilation.  Then it filled with the most welcome feeling in the world, pure lunar power.  The dark bonds on her mind dissolved like mist.

“Back now,” Donna replied along the bond.  “Thank you.  Again.”

The shield thinned slightly, and Donna could see and hear once more, if hazily.

“What have you done?” cried Celia.

Donna chuckled weakly. “Less than I could have.  The RCMP has some new K-9 units.  Well, puppies that could become ones in a few years.”

“You're free?  No!” raged the balding man.  “DIE!”

Donna saw the tendrils reaching toward the hospital and hacked them to bits.  A moment later, a shining bubble formed around the room, cutting the ghoul off from external sources of power.  He tried to pull from the people present, but all were protected by silver.

Donna shook her head.  “Your turn.”

The room filled with brilliant energy.  The balding man laughed.  “This is your attack?”  He sucked the energy in eagerly, his wrinkled face going smooth as the energy filled him.  More rushed in to take its place, and he continued to absorb it greedily.

Then he started to glow, and brilliant cracks spiderwebbed across his body.  They pulsed brighter and brighter, mouth open in a silent scream.  Donna formed a shield and shoved her companions behind it.  “Get down!”

The ghoul detonated, shattering everything in the salon that wasn't behind Donna's shield.  The windows blasted outward into the street, and the drywall of the roof fared little better, chunks of it raining down into the room once the blast ebbed.  Donna ignored the honks and screaming from outside.  She knew her companions were shaken but whole, it was the pulped body of Celia that had her attention.  What was left of her torso lay against a wall, her arms were little more than smears of gore painting the same wall.  Thankfully her silver bracelet had also been torn free by the blast.  Her body was very dead, but her spirit hadn't yet left.

Donna grabbed the woman’s life force and held on to it, purifying it almost incidentally while she rebuilt the body.  As flesh rewove itself into a functioning form, Donna heard shouting behind her.

“What the fuck, was that an IED?” called Agent Armstrong, staggering toward ground zero drunkenly.  There appeared to be blood trickling from his burst eardrums.

“No,” called Donna loudly enough to be heard.  “That was the ghoul.  Give me a hand, the smoke’s dissipating and I need to cover Celia.”

Armstrong stared down at the shifting mass of broken bones and flesh.  “She’s alive?”

“Not yet.  Give me your coat!”

Despite his obvious horror, Agent Armstrong did as asked, and soon the mess was covered.  A little later Donna propped the body up, still in the coat.  It stared ahead blankly.

Smith staggered up to them, and stared down at Celia’s form in surprise.  “How is she not dead?”

Armstrong pointed at Donna, who was busy trying to coax Celia’s spirit back into her body.  It resisted, knowing full well what horrors it had left behind, but Donna soothed it with promises of a healthy body, healthier than she’d known the past twenty years and more.

Celia groaned and opened her eyes.  “I’m not dead?”

“You were.  Luckily I was here to keep it from becoming permanent.”

Celia staggered to her feet, then tugged the jacket closed around her body.  “I’m naked under here!”

“Sorry.  Your clothes got annihilated by the blast.”  New clothes glittered into place under the jacket, and Celia slowly opened the jacket once more.  The dress she revealed was a sequined red ballgown.

Celia cocked an eyebrow at Donna.  “This is hardly appropriate for someone my age.”

Smith whistled.  “You should look in the mirror before you say that.”

The mirror was crazed from the blast, but still intact enough that Celia could see a face that looked half her age peering back at her.  “What?  I can’t look like this, I have to...”  She turned to the rest of the room.  “What a disaster.  Where’s Jim?”

“Right here,” said Agent Mackie.

“No, the other one.”

“The ghoul?  He absorbed too much power and exploded, destroying the room and killing you,” said Donna.

“You killed the richest man in Vancouver?” asked Celia incredulously.  “Oh, there’s going to be hell to pay for this.”

The wail of sirens drew nearer, and their flashing lights stopped outside the shattered windows.

“I’ll chase them off, if you can make me look like I did before.  We’ll deal with this as internal matter.”

Donna nodded.  “You’ll need the jacket again for a minute.”  She used it to cover Celia up, and when she unwrapped it the woman looked mostly as she had before.

Celia checked herself in the crazed mirror once more.  “Good.  Now get out of here, preferably unseen.  I’ll deal with the guards, who must be frantic by now.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Smith.

Once they’d unbolted the heavy door to the parlor and left, Donna turned to Agents Mackie and Armstrong.  “Follow me.”  She led them out of the room and down the corridor opposite the direction the directors had taken.  Once they were around a corner, nobody could see them.

“Ditch the silver.”

“Am I going to regret this?” asked Agent Armstrong.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to,” said Donna with a grin.

Agent Mackie set his bracelet on a side table, and Agent Armstrong reluctantly followed suit.  “Now whaaaieeep!”  

The room was growing around them.  “Why are we shrinking?” asked Armstrong.

“So we can travel quickly without being seen.  Fancy a trip to Abbotsford?”

“In for a penny, in for a pound,” said Agent Armstrong resignedly.

And then they were gone.

Donna could feel curiosity and excitement from her two new companions on this trip.  Invisibly, they flashed eastward.  Donna kept the pace slower until she was sure her new companions wouldn’t be harmed by it.  A few minutes later they were closing in on Abbotsford.  Donna slowed even further, and detoured away from the hospital as soon as she could sense the ghoul there.

They regrew in a stand of trees a half-kilometer north of the hospital.

“Woah.  What a trip,” exclaimed Agent Armstrong as soon as he could speak.  “Beats dealing with traffic.”

“How are you taking this so calmly?” asked his partner.  “Especially after your first...”

Armstrong growled.  “No reminders needed, thank you very much.  And I was to say ‘stop’, she’d stop.”  He turned to face Donna.  “Right?”

Donna nodded robo-Duncan’s head.  “Right.  Might take you a bit to get back to your car, though.”

“I can always call a taxi.”

“So.  Are you saying stop?  You don’t have to confront another of these things.  Without silver, it’s probably a bad idea to be too close.”

Agent Armstrong shook his head.  “You’ve done well by us so far.”

“Is there anything I can do to help with whatever issue Agent Mackie was talking about?”

“Call me Jim.  I think after that we can skip the formalities.”

Armstrong stuck out his hand.  “Charles.  Chuck to my friends.”  As Donna shook it, he added, “To be honest, seeing magic do positive things has helped more than any talking could.”

Donna nodded, then forged her way out of the forest and to a nearby road.  “Then let us carry on.”

As they walked toward the hospital, Donna answered questions about her top speed, why they were walking to the hospital, and what she’d done to the RCMP officers at her house.

“Oh crap.”  Donna stopped short.  “Bunhill, can you mind the shields while I take care of that?”

“Fine, but...  Oh bother.”

“There, back.  They’re changing back now.  Sans gear.  I don’t think they’ll cause any more trouble.”  A moment later Donna started giggling.  “The woman seems disappointed she’s becoming human again.”

“How did you get there and back so quickly?” asked Jim.  “At your top speed it should have taken a couple minutes.”

“There’s a part of me in the robot body I left at the house.  I just changed my focus to there instead of here.”

That brought a furious squawk from her earring, and Bunhill spent the rest of the walk chewing Donna out regarding elementary safety issues like not leaving chunks of yourself that can be used to control you lying around unprotected...

“Fine, fine,” said Donna when the diatribe slowed down.  “I won’t do it again.  Gwen and I will come up with some kind of radio link that doesn’t involve turning my alternate into an arcane link. And maybe some automated defenses.”

They reached the corner of the hospital’s parking lot and Donna turned toward the building across the street from it.

“Hospital’s that way,” said Jim.

“Ghoul’s in here, instead.  Near enough, I guess?”

As they walked closer Donna saw the sign.  “Hospice.  Yeah, that figures.  Come on, let’s see what we’re dealing with.”

“Shields tight,” prompted Bunhill.

“Thanks.  Keep poking until it’s a reflex.”

The receptionist looked puzzled as to why CSIS was investigating the sleepy little facility.  “Not much goes on here.”

Donna smiled.  “I hope it stays that way.”

They found a strange crystal growth in the basement, and Donna built a shield around the entire room before turning to it.  “Game over.  I’d like it if this ended quietly.”

The crystal didn’t react.  The glow inside it was feeble and weak.  Donna sighed, and nudged the tiniest bit of power toward it, not wanting to repeat the earlier incident.  The crystal absorbed it slowly.  The crystal grew clearer, and began to glow with a pale white radiance.

In a voice scratchy with disuse, the crystal said, “Thank you.”

Then it tumbled to dust and was gone.

“What?”  Donna stared at the pile of glittering dust.  “Why did it...”

“He couldn’t live with what he had done,” said Bunhill sadly.  “I knew him, once upon a time.  We were apprentices together.  That didn’t do me any good when I was coming through looking for a place to survive, mind.  We’d already gone half feral by then, and...”

Suddenly Bunhill was human again, and Donna was hugging her tight.  “I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t have brought you here.”

“No!  No, you need me.  And I am not like him.  I will find a way to repay what I’ve done.”

“Bunhill.  You helped save me tonight.”

“Gwen did most of it,” said the black-haired woman, looking away from Donna.

“You were the one that suggested I shield her to break the compulsion.  Without that, we’d all be screwed,” chimed Gwen.

“Bunhill, I consider your debt discharged.”

Bunhill sighed softly.  “Thank you.  Your forgiveness is welcome... but I’m not done here.  Not until I can forgive myself.  And until then...”  She gestured at her body.

A moment later she was a diamond earring once more.

“Is that it?” asked Jim.  “No explosions, nothing to cover up?”

Donna nodded.  “For once.  Want to tag along to Nanaimo?”

The agents looked at each other, then nodded.  “Sure.  I suppose someone has to observe and write it all up,” said Agent Mackie.

“Great.  More paperwork.”

They thanked the receptionist for her help, then found another copse of trees nearby to hide in as Donna shrank them all for transport.

Nanaimo was a complete bust.  Donna and Bunhill could sense that there had once been a ghoul, but it was long gone.  As best they could tell, it had taken up residence in the coal mines.  A hundred years ago, the death rate there had been staggering, but the mines had played out in the middle of the century.

“Well.  That was easier than expected,” said Donna.  “Shall I drop you two off at the CSIS office, or do you want to tag along to the Blue Vixen?”

“I...”  Agent Armstrong looked over at his partner.

Jim grinned.  “There were promises made about dancing on stage, as I recall.  You’re not going to back out, are you?”

Charles snorted.  “I never welsh on a bet.  More of a dare, but...”

Donna grinned.  “C’mon, let’s go!  I can’t wait to see you two Men in Black as ladies in red...”

As they started to shrink once more Charles shook his head.  “This job is not what I signed up for.”