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~~Holiday Special (Day 1/7, Page 6/6)~~
Karkash was not wholly pleased by the woman’s manic smile. “How many must go?”

“Five,” she said. “You, me, Conall, Tessa, and Hanjir. Andres is staying behind with Desmond, who is stuck babysitting the King as usual. Poor guy. I offered to fill in for him, but nobody seems to trust me. I don’t know why.”

‘Why do you need Karkash?’ said Hoyohté. To Karkash’s eyes, the reaper was an orca. Her huge, black-and-white body loomed to the right above his head, casting no shadow whatsoever, and her giant mouth did not move at all when she spoke.

Nola’s reaper floated down to answer, but her dorsal fin still stuck through the ceiling. As Karkash recalled, this one’s name was Vennek. ‘It’s not just about destroying the town,’ she said. ‘If it was, just one servant could do the job. We have to stage things carefully and make sure Rendon is blamed for the attack, which means controlling the flow of information afterwards. Karkash can make that a lot easier for us by knocking out electronics around the town. It’d be annoying if some random bystander captured footage of our activities on a camera phone or something. All the footage that gets leaked has to be of our making.’

Hoyohté gave a nod. ‘I see. Very well. We will accompany you.’

“Great,” said Nola, grinning again. She wrapped an arm around Karkash’s shoulder. “How about we grab something to eat, huh? Get to know each other a little better, yeah?”

Karkash silently removed her arm and walked away.

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Hector awoke to Garovel’s insistence that he answer the phone. Gina’s call didn’t have a whole lot of information for him, but there was only one thing that he needed to know.

Five of them were going to be in Harold.

His heart sank as he heard that number. There was no way he could fight five servants by himself. He knew this, and by the look on the reaper’s skeletal face, so did Garovel.