Natsuki sat at the table, eating her eggs in silence as she listened to the animated conversation over breakfast, with everybody but Ken present. It had been Harry’s turn in the kitchen, making, as he put it, a “proper breakfast” of steak and eggs. Declaring her to be their guest, he had served her first. The consideration didn’t make Natsuki feel any better.

    At least the steak and eggs were good. Natsuki had plenty of things to complain about, but the quality of the food had not been among them.

    “Now, this is a meal that will put hair on your chest!” Harry bragged, stuffing a large piece of steak in his mouth.

    “For the record, Natsuki and I are women, and don’t need hair on our chests,” Selena said.

    Harry swallowed and shrugged. “Well, it will do you two some good anyway.”

    “So, when is Ken joining us?” Darius asked.

    “After breakfast,” Harry replied. “He wanted to eat with his family, and then hit a bookstore on the way here. He said he’s got a line on a proper English edition of Sherlock Holmes for Natsuki.”

    “Thanks, I guess,” Natsuki muttered.

    “Well, I’ll be happier if you’ve got something to occupy yourself while we’re all out today,” Balthazar said. “Speaking of which, Darius, remember to recharge those barriers this morning.”

    Darius nodded. “I’ll take care of it right after breakfast. You’re welcome to come along while I do it, Natsuki. It’s not like I’d be able to stop you anyway.”

    Natsuki focused on keeping her face expressionless as she shrugged her shoulders. “I may as well.”

    The front door opened and Ken stepped in, holding a bag from a bookstore. He walked over to the table and handed it to Natsuki. “One copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes,” he said. “In the original English, as requested.”

    Natsuki reached into the bag and pulled out two thick paperback books. She took a deep breath and nodded to Ken. “Thank you.”

    “It’s the least I can do,” Ken said. “Bad enough that we have to keep you here in the first place. I’d rather be able to say that I did something good for you in the end.”

    “Well, if we’re all here, let’s have our briefing,” Balthazar stated. “You’re welcome to stay and listen in, Natsuki. I think you’ll like what you’re going to hear.”

    Ken sat down. “We’re going to try to find her friends?”

    Balthazar nodded. “That is the plan. Natsuki being here is an opportunity, and I don’t intend to waste it. We know that if she’s here, Aquila and her friends will be here by now as well, and they’ll be looking for her. By now, they’ve probably established a base of operations of their own. This gives us an opportunity for me to speak with Aquila. So, your job is to locate and make contact with her friends. Tell them that we have Natsuki, that she is unharmed and will stay that way, and that we are prepared to trade her for a meeting between Aquila and myself and a guarantee of her neutrality. So, Natsuki, if all goes well, you’ll be back with your friends and on your way within a couple of days.”

    Natsuki wanted to feel relieved, but a chill went down her spine instead. All the signs were there – Balthazar was concealing something.

    “You’re going to kill her if she doesn’t agree, aren’t you?” Natsuki stated.

    Balthazar nodded. “I’m hoping it won’t come to that. If we can get to her before the other side does, hopefully we can just sit down, talk, and I can hand you over and you can be on your way. I’ll even show her to the edge of this story world galaxy, if she agrees.”

    “The other side will be looking for them too,” Ken pointed out. “We’ll need to be careful.”

    “If you turn off your dampeners for no more than two seconds at a time when you take a reading on the detectors, you should be able to evade detection yourself,” Selena said.

    “If we don’t find them by the end of the day, it means that the other side got to them first,” Balthazar added. “And we’ll have to figure out some contingency plans. And, just in case we don’t find them, there’s something I want you to do, Natsuki.”

    Natsuki stiffened. “I’m not going to help you hurt my friends.”

    “I understand that,” Balthazar stated. “But, I think you would feel much better about being here if you could tell them that you’re with us and safe. If the other side reaches them first, your friends will want to know that. So, I want you to write them a letter telling them. I’ll have to check it before we send it to make sure you’re not giving away our location, but if you write that letter, I’ll make sure it gets to them, even if they have joined our enemies.”

    “How are you going to get it to them?” Natsuki asked, narrowing her eyes. Balthazar’s body language was sincere.

    “There’s this...person...who fell through the information stream on his own a few years ago,” Balthazar replied. “He made himself available to both sides as a line of communication. Today I’m going to be meeting with him to arrange delivery of your letter.”

    “Is that everything?” Ken asked.

    “For now,” Balthazar said. “We’ll meet up at our usual place to discuss progress this afternoon. Could somebody please make a lunch for Natsuki? She’ll need something to eat while we’re out.”

    “I’ll make her something,” Selena volunteered. “And I’ll make sure there are teriyaki rice balls in it.” She gave Natsuki a kind smile. “If you have any other requests...”

    Natsuki shook her head.

    “Well, then,” Darius declared, getting up from the table and stretching. “I’d better take care of those barriers. You coming, Natsuki? After all, you can’t try to plan an escape without knowing about them.”

    Natsuki shrugged and stood up. “I guess I’d better.”

    “Oh, Natsuki,” Balthazar said. “Keeping you here like this doesn’t sit well with any of us. So, I’m leaning towards letting you go within a few days anyway.”

    Natsuki stared at him. No signs of deception.

    “I’ll get that paper and pen for your letter,” Balthazar said.

    Darius motioned for Natsuki to follow him. “I’m doing the doors first,” he said, stepping up to the front door and holding his hand. The barrier glowed and then faded.

    “You have to do this individually?” Natsuki asked as they headed to the back door.

    “Oh yes,” Darius replied, recharging the barrier on the door. “Maintaining a barrier like this takes a lot of energy. If I tried to just create a big barrier over the entire house, it would leave me comatose. Right, on to the windows!”

    Natsuki sighed as she watched him refresh the barrier over every single window. “You’re doing this in part to make sure I know there aren’t any windows being missed, aren’t you?”

    Darius chuckled. “Sure, why not? That’s better than ‘Natsuki’s going to follow me around anyway, so I may as well use her as somebody to talk to while I do it’.”

    Despite herself, Natsuki laughed.

    “There we go,” Darius said. “I knew it was possible to get a smile out of you. It’s going to be okay. Besides, Balthazar would have a rebellion on his hands if he tried to keep you more than a few days. None of us signed up for taking hostages. Let’s take care of the bedrooms on the second floor.”

    “I can see why Selena likes you,” Natsuki said as they ascended the staircase.

    “Ah, you figured that out, did you?” Darius said, going into his room and reinforcing the barrier on the window.

    “It wasn’t hard,” Natsuki replied.

    “My world doesn’t have a lot of honest people in it,” Darius said, going into Selena’s room and taking care of the window barrier. “Not who survive very long, anyway. Trusting anybody is a good way to get your throat cut. And if you’ve got magic powers, like I do, there’s plenty of sex to be had, but it’s all transactional. As soon as you’re no longer useful, she’s gone, assuming she doesn’t try to poison you first to keep you from helping one of her rivals. But, here...let’s just say I never expected to meet somebody like Selena...or to find out that her way of looking at the world is the more normal one.”

    He came to Harry’s door and turned the knob. It didn’t budge.

    “Of course,” Darius said with a sigh, “then you have people like Harry...who are convinced that even among this group somebody is going to try to steal from you when you’re not looking.”

    “Can you do it from a distance?” Natsuki asked.

    “Most of the time, yes,” Darius said. “But it’s got a range – and Harry’s window is just far enough from the door that it’s out of it.” He turned to face the staircase and called, “Harry, will you please get up here and unlock your door so that I can take care of the window?”

    “The door’s locked,” Harry called back. “Natsuki can’t get in anyway.”

    Darius sighed. “You’re both detectives! If you can pick locks, she can pick locks!”

    “I’m a professional, she’s not,” Harry called back. “She doesn’t know how to pick locks.”

    “She could kick down your door! The lock isn’t that good!”

    “The door’s nice and heavy, it will be fine.”

    Natsuki forced down a laugh as Darius rubbed his temples. “So, Natsuki,” he said loudly, “I was thinking about learning how to pick locks. Want to join me? We could get a book about it, and some tools from a hardware store, and then we could practice on Harry’s door. And, if we succeeded, why there would be nothing stopping you from opening the window and escaping, because Harry wouldn’t let me in to reinforce the barrier over his window!”

    Natsuki chuckled as frantic footsteps approached the stairs. Shaking his head, Harry walked over to his door and unlocked it. “Be quick,” he said. “Ken and I are trying to sort out our route for the search.”

    Natsuki peeked into the room as Darius recharged the window barrier. It was unremarkable outside of being somewhat unkempt.

    “Okay,” Darius said, closing the door so that Harry could lock it again. “Just upstairs to go, and then we’re on our way and you get the house to yourself for few hours.” He paused. “Part of me hopes you won’t be here when we get back, but...we’ve been pretty thorough. And I’m sorry for my part in this.”

    Natsuki nodded, and then they headed upstairs.

As soon as they were gone, Natsuki began a thorough investigation of every unlocked nook and cranny of the house. If there was something they missed that would allow her to escape, she needed to find it.

    First floor, nothing. The barrier over the front door hummed with energy. She tested it, just in case – her hand met with first gentle and then hard resistance. Otherwise, they had left her with her new books, food in the fridge, and a television with some streaming services. There was no telephone she could call out on. Everything else was locked away. Natsuki sighed. It was enough to make her wish that she had learned how to pick locks.

    Basement, nothing. Selena’s workshop was messy, but all of the tools that might have been useful had been locked away, as had anything she had been working on that was close to repaired. There were two locked doors, and a guest bedroom. The guest bedroom had a bare bed and an empty dresser. Natsuki sighed again as she stood in the middle of it. At least the room they had given her had a window, which was better than this place would have been.

    Second floor, nothing. The bedrooms were all locked, with the exception of Darius’, which had the same sort of magical barrier over it as the doors. The bathroom was clean, with a full roll of toilet paper beside the toilet and a spare resting on top of it.

    Third floor, nothing. Balthazar’s room was locked. She put her head to the door, hearing the familiar hum of a magical barrier.

    Her search completed, she sat down on the couch and closed her eyes, running through her options in her head.

    First was physical force. Selena was right – in a fair fight, she wouldn’t have been able to take any of them. However, there were plenty of fights that weren’t fair...she could probably take either Harry or Darius by surprise, if she tried hard enough. And, if she could get into Selena’s workbench, she could probably jury rig some booby traps while they were away. Hurting her captors was a possibility. But...she had seen what all that killing had done to Aquila. Natsuki’s shoulders slumped. When it came down to it, she didn’t have the stomach for violence. No doubt Selena and the others would be happy for her, and say that was a good thing...and so would Aquila.

    Second was sabotage, but she dismissed that as soon as she thought of it. She could figure out how to burn down the house, if it came to it, but without any means of escaping she’d die long before the walls gave out and created an opening. The dampener covering the house and concealing her EM signature was outdoors, and therefore out of reach.

    That left the magic barriers. So long as they were recharged, there was no possibility of escape. But, the barriers were also invisible, and the only indication of their existence was a faint hum of energy – something subtle enough to be overlooked when absent. And, if Darius could be distracted by something, and forget to charge the barriers, they would fade, allowing Natsuki to just walk through the front door. Making that happen would be difficult, however. She’d have to distract Darius, and then later convince him that he had done his rounds. That meant lying, and she knew for a fact that both Harry and Balthazar could read people too. So, any deception would have to be done while they were absent. Still, it was a viable escape plan, and worth developing further.

    Her breath caught. There was something else, though, something that would have been plain in everybody’s body language had it not already been spoken aloud. Nobody was comfortable with this situation, including Balthazar. And Darius had been sincere when he said that keeping her longer than a few days would cause the others to rebel. A rebellion against Balthazar would be an unwinnable blood bath, but if everybody already wanted an excuse to let her go, then perhaps all that was needed was to give them one.

    Natsuki smiled. The only reason she was being kept here was for leverage over Aquila. So, if she could just convince him that the longer she was held hostage, the less leverage he would have, then the argument for keeping her prisoner would disappear. And the others would back letting her go...

    Natsuki’s smile turned into a wide grin. She had a plan. And if that didn’t work, she’d work on getting Darius to forget to recharge the barriers.