"How are you doing today?" Thompson asked me the next day. "I'm much better. I spent the night Underhill again. It helps me recover faster." "Good. I wanted to give this to you to return to that library. Tell Connie thanks." He handed me an old book. I frowned as I took the book. "What is this?" "It's a book from the library Underhill. Connie gave it to me the other night. She said she thought it might help me. Did you tell her about me?" "No. I asked for help finding books for human mages, but I never said whom, just a little girl. We were looking for books on empaths for Lorraine's niece. Maybe she guessed the other night." I glanced through the book. "I didn't know we had any books in English." "If you can call it that. That's old English." "Middle English. êow ne tôcnâwan frôd Englisc.” “Excuse me?” “I said, ‘You wouldn't understand old English’ using old English. Connie did most of the looking through the library while I fixed my armor. She must've found something then." "She really cares about you. I think she's in love with you." I shook my head. "She's a phantasm, a construct. She's not real." "Her emotions seemed real the other night. And it looked like love." "She's not real," I said again. "When I went Underhill for a few days, I was thinking about her. I was depressed and accidentally created her." "There is a real Connie out there with your people?" I nodded. "Her name's not Connie, but yeah." "Who is she?" "I don't know. I met her my first solstice as an adult." "You live thousands of years. How old is it before you're an adult." "Eighteen." "You remember someone from 1000 years ago?" I grinned. "Could you forget your first?" "Your first? You slept with her? Does this have any bearing on why you disappeared for three days?" "No. I told you, I slept the whole time. I try to avoid having sex with her. She's not real. How would you feel if someone created your likeness and had sex with it?" Thompson shuddered. "That would be creepy." "Yeah," I agreed. "You said you try…" "Sir, don't ask me about my sex life." "Sorry." "I don't mind bragging. It's just we don't have that kind of time." I grinned again. Thompson rolled his eyes. Robert came in. "Sir, I think you should see this." Thompson followed, as did I. "So, we have a car watching the house and Kat showed up. She said she wanted to help since the guy took her friend." "If she ruins this case I'm going to kill her," Thompson growled. "All she did was pull up to the house, and ask for directions. Then she left. But it gave us a chance to see the guy and get his picture." "He didn't think it was odd she didn't use GPS?" I asked. "She had a flip phone. Anyway, having a photo allowed us to do more image searches. We couldn't find anything in facial recognition, but we found some pictures of him on the web. His name is Hines Garner. We confirmed it with the DMV. He hadn't renewed his license since getting the scar." Robert showed us news articles about Garner. "Two years ago, his house burned down. He was the only survivor. That's when he got that scar. His wife, Marissa, and kids, Lisa and Joe, were killed." "That's the names Terry said he called her, Julie and Robin," I reminded them. Robert nodded. "And look at this picture of them." "A blonde and two redheads." Thompson groaned. "He's trying to re-create his family." "Do you think we have enough for a warrant now?" I asked. "We can talk to a judge." It wasn’t until I was back at my desk that I thought to wonder how Thompson had taken the book from my apartment. Even if Connie had given it to him Underhill, the spell wouldn’t recognize him carrying it in.