The door to the inn burst open and Bill stepped in, fully clad in his gleaming armor, helm held under his arm.

  “There’s another missing person,” Bill declared as soon as he entered.

  The door had swung open for only a moment before falling free of its hastily repaired hinges and crashing to the floor with a loud thud.

  “Read the sign!” Sherry yelled.

  Bill Looked down back to see “Close gently” written on a piece of paper on the door.

  “Uh… I’ll pay for that too,” Bill apologized.

  “Why don’t you just fix it with magic?” Grom asked Ellen.

  “I don’t have that spell,” Ellen said.

  “Why not? It seems useful,” Grom asked.

  “Yeah, well so is blowing things up and teleporting. I have to prioritize what spells I spend the time to learn,” Ellen said.

  “You have, what, three magical spells for cleaning?” Grom asked.

  “So? I was forced to clean a lot as a child, I told you that. The fey had brownies for fixing things,” Ellen explained

  “Why didn’t they clean?” Grom asked.

  Ellen’s eyes went distant, recalling a traumatic experience from her past.

  “Don’t ever ask a brownie to clean,” she warned in a quiet but serious voice.

  “Can we focus on the missing people?” Bill asked.

  “Sorry,” Grom said. “We got distracted. Some big oaf broke the door again.”

  Bill ignored the barb.

  “A single woman in her forties went missing two days back,” Bill said. “It was just reported. She does laundry for a few people and when she didn’t return their clothes, they reported it to the watch who put up the posters. It’s a fresh lead.”

  “Do I have time to go get my armor?” Grom asked.

  “No,” Bill insisted.

  “But you had time to don yours?” Grom asked.

  “I slept in it,” Bill said proudly.

  “Why?” Ellen and Grom asked together.

  “I… uh… and staying in a hostel. I don’t trust the other residents not to steal it.” Bill admitted, looking down.

  “You can’t afford anything better than hostile!?” Ellen asked. “You should have something left over after buying the armor.”

  “My wife—ex-wife’s —lawyer was much better than mine,” he said. “The rules on splitting treasure are very clear. If I choose a magical item for myself, I have to pay her half of what my gold share would have been had I selected that.”

  “But you didn’t keep the belt,” Grom said.

  “Yeah… there was no clause in place for the eventuality of a cursed item,” Bill said.

  Ellen let out a heavy sigh and rubbed her forehead.

  “When we get back, I’m going to need to see that contract,” she said.

  “If this is some way for you to try to get me interested in you again, I’m flattered but that ship has sailed for us,” Bill said, looking very uncomfortable.

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  “Who in the seven hells would take me offering to review your divorce settlement as an attempt of seduction!?” Ellen shouted.

  “I don’t know!” Bill yelled back. “Sorry, I misread that.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder if you can read at all,” Grom muttered under his breath.

  “What was that?” Bill asked.

  “I said I’m going to put on my armor, and you can go get yourself killed without me if you don’t want to wait.”

  Bill, having died multiple times at this point, elected to wait for Grom.

  He sat across from Elen, both avoiding eye contact.

  “Do you, uh, want a drink?” Ellen asked into the silence.

  “I quit drinking,” Bill said.

  “What? You were drunk the other day,” Ellen asked.

  “And then I quit,” he said, leaving it at that.

  “What was that? You need help?” she shouted towards the stairs after a moment, in response to a request that hadn’t come. “I’ll be right up.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Bill asked

  “Grom,” Ellen said. “You didn’t hear that either? You really should get your hearing checked.”

  ***

  “What’re you doing here?” Grom asked when Ellen knocked and entered his room without waiting for an answer.

  “Getting away from Bill,” she said. “Did you know he quit drinking?”

  Without waiting for his agreement, she cast a spell, and the armor plates moved from a pile towards Grom in the tentacles of her tiny invisible servants.

  “Thanks,” Grom said, seeing that Ellen—or at least her servants—knew what they were about. “I can’t imagine that’s going to make him any easier to deal with. Are you really going to help him with his divorce?”

  Ellen shrugged.

  “I’d rather the idiot standing between me and scary things with big teeth have had a good night sleep,” she said.

  They worked with amiable chit chat until Grom was ready and then headed downstairs, collected Bill, and went out into the city to track down a missing washerwoman.

  ***

  They found her house in short order after speaking with the men who had reported her missing. She lived on the boarder of the Blue and Gray districts, where the poor who provided services to the middle class resided. The door to her small home, built in what appeared to have once been an alley between two more impressive homes, was locked.

  “Doesn’t look like the guard came to investigate,” Grom said.

  “How do you know?” Bill asked.

  “The door’s still here,” he explained. “They tend to just break down locked doors if they find them.”

  “I got this,” Ellen said, walking up to the door.

  She leaned over, looked through the keyhole, and vanished from sight. A moment later, the door unlocked and she stepped out.

  The two men followed her in.

  “Spread out and look for anything interesting,” Ellen said.

  “Spread out where?” Grom asked, gesturing at the small confines.

  The door opened into a narrow room filled with baskets of clothes in various stages of washing. The door to the next room was open, revealing a hearth, small kitchen and a third door that was closed.

  Ellen went first, poking around for anything of interest while the others followed. In the kitchen they saw a ladder up to the roof, and Bill climbed it to find the whole place covered with clotheslines. Through the last door was a room with a modest bed, a small nightstand, and an altar to some grotesque figure that was almost certainly a demon.

  “I think I found a clue,” Ellen said.

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