About a week passes with little significant. Gavin buys Gwen a lot of innocent-looking flower print dresses, which only serve to enhance her aura of naivete. Tina joins the field hockey team at St. Ignacius.
Friday night, however, the Portland weather turns hot and humid, causing various dreams.
Alexandra dreams of being on a broad balcony overlooking a lake, with a strange city around her. She leaves the balcony and goes back into the palace - for it is a palace, and joins the strange masquerade ball. For a while she mingles, but all the time a feeling of disquiet is growing until she realizes that while she has a mask on a stick which she holds up before her face, the rest of the company hold up faces on sticks in front of bone-white blank masks.
Thielo doesn't dream, but rather spends some time integrating his memories. He thinks about the memory used to create him... the memory of the original Thielo's death wouldn't be enough, there would have to be more. But he can't think what it would have been.
Esteban dreams of working at Taco bell. A familiar blonde woman comes in and orders a large taco meal with a root beer. Esteban gives her an orange soda instead. Half way out, she tries the drink and says "This isn't what I ordered. You're just like your brother!" "Uh-oh" says a little voice to Esteban's right, and he turns slowly to be confronted with the sight of the Taco Bell chihuahua staring at him, blood running down its chin and soaking its chest.
Saturday Orchid Liu arrives to see Gavin and ushers him into the library, closing the doors firmly on everyone in the hallway. Naturally they all stand around and listen as Ms. Liu takes Gavin to task. "Gwen? GWEN?" She isn't pleased by his choice to emulate the more angstful knights of history, and announces that while Alex Abel was very interested in Gwen, she has advised him (and he has taken her advice) to be officially not interested in Gwen at all. She does become convinced that Gavin didn't pick the name on purpose and leaves without any major portions of his anatomy.
Sunday Angelina Ravella arrives at the Hospice and takes up residence in the spare attic room. She gets her box and a broad briefing, and gets along well enough with everyone (although she finds Gwen disturbingly innocent). Van takes it upon himself to tell her a bit about what they've been up to, but although she listens it may well be that most of the stranger points don't really sink in (except maybe the "attack deer"). Van decides against trying to charge up on Angelina, heeding the advice of his mentor.
Also on Sunday Thielo gives Gwen a little lecture on the broad points of pretending to be human. She should pretend to sleep, or at least go into her room at night, and maybe try to eat (although she isn't very well equipped for that, having no stomach). Gwen says several things which make Thielo wince a little but doesn't notice.
"Sometimes, I like to sneak into Gavin's room and look at him." - Gwen
Late Sunday night, or early Monday morning depending on how one looks at it, Dan gets a phone call and awakens the team to brief them on an emergency mission. It seems that Inquisition diviners have located John Claver, a notable child-kidnapper (who then sells them to unsavory occultists). A man who is definitely on TNI's most wanted dead list. He's in a cabin near Mt. Hood, and might only be there for a day or so. The team is instructed to go kill him. Or capture him if they can do so at no risk to themselves, but he's a nasty customer and may well have various magical artifacts from his many dealings.
During the car ride there is a spirited debate between Gavin and everyone else on the merits of asking a dangerous man to surrender instead of just shooting him if they get the chance. Faxed pictures and brochures are also read about the hunting cabin that Claver has rented for a few days.
They arrive at the cabin at dawn and scope the place out, quickly locating the bedroom by its drawn blinds. Claver seems to be still asleep. Thielo unlocks the front and back doors and then goes in the front with Gavin while Angelina goes in the back.
Gavin kicks in the bedroom door shouting "Claver! Surrender yourself!" while Angelina goes in from the bathroom. Claver is inside with a shotgun and in the ensuing gunfight a lot of bullets are shot and only a few actually hit anyone - Gavin takes some buckshot to his chest (but is wearing a bulletproof vest and is only bruised) while Claver takes a round to the side and suffers an attack crab pinch and a slash to the hands (causing him to drop the shotgun) before Angelina puts him down with a round to the neck. Elapsed time is perhaps a minute.
Unfortunately while trying to save the man's (already lost) life Gavin discovers that he is wearing a mask. Removing the mask causes his appearance to change drastically: he now looks like an old man totally different from the picture of Claver. Gavin walks out into the sun, while Thielo stands in shock. The others are less effected - after all, he did shoot at them with the shotgun after they told him to surrender. A search of the house reveals that he's the only one here. They call Dan who tells them to take everything about the guy, lock up, and TNI will send in a cleanup team.
The papers include a business card for "The Bad Man" with a New York address. Angelina remembers him and Dan calls up some files indicating that he allegedly can procure absolutely anything, including intangible assets like a good sense of balance or an extra year of life. The TNI files instruct agents not to deal with him. Photos in the old man's suitcase show him with his daughter's family. Her youngest daughter looks quite sick in many of the photos, having no hair in a few of them. In one photo the old man is by her bedside at the hospital. Alexandra supposes that the old man traded with The Bad Man for a cure for his granddaughter and that his payment was to take Claver's place. It is unclear whether he was meant to be discovered or whether that was Gavin's attention to the weird that found the mask. It is also unclear whether the old man knew that he would likely be killed.
A little follow up work by the New York office discovers that the old man's granddaughter has in fact had a miraculous recovery from Leukemia in the past week. "Well, at least some good came of all this."