By early January, everyone has moved in to Santa Fe. The Strausses have settled in a rebuilt barn on the Ranch itself, and Gavin and Gwen are living in the Ranch building proper. Angelina and Esteban have gotten apartments near to each other in Santa Fe. Tina continues to live with Esteban, who through application of wheedling and some mojo has gotten her into a pretty good school in the city. Tina is now 14.
Ryan Morrison has come down to be in charge of the Ranch, and Orchid Liu has also taken up residence in Santa Fe. There are a variety of things that the team is tasked with doing. First, find any adepts that live in Santa Fe. Ryan suggests looking around the Palace of the Governors for a local cliomancer. Later on Angelina and the Strausses do in fact spot such a man, and Angelina trails him to his home where she finds that he is named Franklin Otolongo. Frankie is an older man who seems to spend most of his time in various cafes with his cronies or yelling at his television (he lives alone). Esteban's nocturnal ramblings also turn up a man who seems to be a dipsomancer. The bartender says that people call him "Crazy Horse" (he is Native American in appearance) but not to his face! There is also some plotting about becoming part of one or more of the many little new age groups in Santa Fe, but nothing is done about it yet.
Another standing order for SILVER (which is apparently one of TNI's most weirdshit of teams) is to check out the Inquisitions stash of untested rituals. They have one involving two people and a circle and some sort of melding, and another one involving finding a blind dog and... well, none of those rituals are that interesting to the team right now. After all, an earlier ritual test resulted in an Inquisitor getting his brains spread evenly all around the room. Rituals that the Inquisition has on hand include: Seek the Lost Tome, Plague of Hiccups, Scurvy Livestock, the Invisibility Chant, Ryan's collection of exorcisms, the Is Someone Dead ritual involving cats, and of course Blow Your Own Head All Over the Room.
After these preliminary investigations, Esteban watches his sister playing Ytl, which she plays more now, claiming to stay in touch with her friends this way though it confuses Esteban how. Worried about her addict-like behavior, he asks Dr. Atsui about it and only succeeds in getting her into the game as well. She finds it "very Jungian." But the final straw is when Tina is playing the game with Esteban on the phone to Angelina in the other room.
"Estebannnnn? Have you seen the Yellow Siiiiign?" she yells at him.
Van of course freaks out, but Tina denies having said anything. A few phone calls later and the rest of the team is investigating while Esteban takes Tina out (and away from the computer). Orchid Liu is also brought in on the investigations.
A minimal inspection of the game back at the Ranch doesn't reveal anything exciting (except that the city in The King In Yellow is named "Ythill"). It is decided after some debate to have Alexandra play the game after being hypnotized by Orchid in the hopes of provoking it to do something different (for this to make sense the reader has to know that previous people playing the game had often gotten to very different places without any apparent reason). Orchid gets Alexandra to remember Carcosa.
While somewhat zoned out, Alexandra quickly progresses through the streets of Ytl to the palace by the lake, where a masked ball is taking place. There she wanders through the crowd until a hush falls over them and the doors of the ballroom are flung open, revealing a tall, faceless figure in tattered yellow rags. Despite only being a computer game, everyone is pretty freaked out and mostly frozen as the figure comes into the foreground. Thielo decides not to see what happens when it gets there, and turns off the computer. Everyone else shakes themselves out of their stunned state.
There's some discussion about what is going on... perhaps the King In Yellow in the game is some sort of proxy for someone who finds it hard to be the avatar in real life? In order to be that sort of superuser this person would have to be in the game company that is running the game. Someone notes that perhaps the gender of the lead designer, Rebecca Chen, might make it hard for her to be an actual avatar. They fill Esteban in a bit, and he confiscates the game from Tina, telling her it's bad work-related stuff and that he owes her one. At the Ranch, Alexandra asks the others, "Have you seen the yellow sign?" in an earnest voice, but doesn't remember that afterwards.
Meanwhile Orchid has been reporting in. The Inquisition is going to send two teams. One (not SILVER) is going to figure out how to penetrate the secure hosting facility that the game is run out of and shut it down. The other (SILVER) is supposed to go to Carnelian Crusade and find out what the hell is going on. The team packs up and hops a plane to San Diego.