In the interest of keeping things moving we'll have Chance return to the group after taking a glimpse into the past.
Chance steps out of the trailer, chewing on the things she's seen. What were a bunch of bikers doing performing occult ceremonies out in the desert? Just what was it they were hoping to accomplish? Maybe Penrose and a good night's sleep could offer answers.
The group returns the flashlights and piles into the truck (Harper's familiar once again taking to the sky). Fifteen minutes after their arrival they're back on the road. Everyone is alert for a potential ambush by the Dogs of War but the return trip to Nazareth is uneventful. Faye stops for gas in Florence, a town the same size as Nazareth about halfway between there and the site of the group's investigation. Another fifteen minutes after filling up Faye is turning east toward Nazareth on Route 60.
The clock on the console reads 2:11 AM as the Tundra rolls down Main Street toward the tiny outdoor shopping center at its western end. Across the street Cheney's has just closed and the last of its patrons are filing out to the parking lot to head home. Otherwise the streets are quiet and empty. Faye turns into the shopping center, cuts through the empty parking lot, and pulls around behind the shops onto a road lined with dumpsters and truck delivery terminals. At the end of this road, tucked away behind all the other shops and out of view of the street, is the nondescript Nazareth Secondhand Books storefront. The vast majority of Nazareth's residents aren't aware this place even exists.
Faye pulls into a parking space, turns off the truck, and everyone gets out. With a loud CAW Harper's familiar drops from the air and settles in his hood so that it can come inside (Faye was not very pleased when it tried flying around in the shop). A few seconds later Faye's unlocking the door to the darkened store and letting everyone inside before stepping in and securing the door behind her. Faye hustles her way behind the counter and flips a switch on the wall. A few ceiling lights sputter on to reveal the store's interior, dusty and uninviting. Very few of the books here are less than a decade old, just enough to confirm to anyone snooping around that this is indeed a bookshop. The group files past the counter, piled high with Susan Johnson bodice-rippers, through a door marked Employees Only, and down a short hall. To the left is the storage room Harper's been staying in and to the right, through a door with an Out Of Order sign, is a bathroom. The bathroom is plain, with unpainted walls and cheap linoleum floors. Everyone crowds into the bathroom and Faye shuts the door after turning on the light.
Faye crosses the room and inspects the sink and its mirror for a moment before finding what she's looking for and giving the section a push. A thin slice of wall behind the sink gives way and the entire thing slides back to reveal a cramped passage. Faye leans in to grab a cord dangling from the ceiling, giving it a firm yank and illuminating the passage with a single bare bulb. She leads the way through the wall and down a very steep flight of steps that descends perhaps twelve feet underground.
The staircase opens into a cozy living room. The overstuffed furniture and dusty pastels indicate a room that likely hasn't seen redecoration since the 80s. There's a couch and a pair of chairs arranged around a glass coffee table, and on the table a bowl of M&M's and a stack of ancient Time magazines. Deng Xiaoping stares up from the cover of the topmost issue.
"I'll let him know we're here." Faye exits through a door to the south, leaving it open behind her. The door opens into a hall that extends out of sight to the west, and on the wall beyond the door hangs a large oil painting: It's about three feet wide and six feet tall and depicts an armored and sword-wielding man standing victorious over a supine demon. A second man kneels in a bottom corner of the painting, looking up at the first. A copper plate beneath the painting reads Saint Michael Triumphs over the Devil, Bartolomé Bermejo 1468. The painting clashes with the style of the room - it's out of place and eerily difficult to avoid staring at.
This is the furthest anyone but Faye has come into Penrose's sanctum.
3 dice in za pool.)
