"So," said Conrad. "There is a lot to explain, but we should start with the more urgent matter." He turned to Kurt. "Why are you half naked?"

  Kurt turned to Mila, and they shared a guilty look. Then, sighing, Kurt unfolded his shirt, showing its back to Conrad. The young man's expression soured immediately.

  "I... felt some pain in my back while we were waiting for you to wake up." Lied Kurt, averting his eyes. "Mila got worried, and insisted on cheking on me, which is when you woke up."

  "What did that to you?" Asked Conrad seriously as he took a closer look to them. "What happened while I was out? What the hell happened to you?"

  The next five minutes were spent explaining just that. They told him everything that had transpired in his absence. He had been lucid enough when Kurt had carried him and Mila to the hospital, but everything after that was blank to him, and he had no idea of just how much time had passed between that point and his awakening.

  "Holy shit." Muttered Conrad once Kurt and Mila had finished talking. "All of that... in a couple of hours? Hell, if anything, you guys look too good for what you went through."

  "Gotta thank the amber for that." said Mila, trying to sound cheery, and failing. "And... you, obviously. I wouldn't be alive if you hadn't...." She trailed off, ashamed.

  "Mila," Kurt called softly, getting the girl's attention. "This wasn't your fault. If I hadn't left you two alone with her, or if I hadn't dithered, then..."

  "Enough of that." Conrad cut in, firmly. "It wasn't Mila's fault, and it sure as hell wasn't your fault either. There's one person to blame for this whole ordeal, and she's dead. The important thing is that we are all alive and relatively well, so let's cut it with the guilt game." He turned to look at the catatonic surgery team. "At least until we are somewhere else. Uhm, you guys didn't happen to bring any extra clothes, right? Because I'm not all that comfortable getting in the street butt naked."

  Kurt nodded and, without saying a word, reached for his inventory and extracted Conrad's duffel bag from it, quickly handing it to its owner.

  "I took our stuff from the train after dropping you here." He quickly explained. "Just in case we had to stay here for the night."

  "Good thinking, man," said Conrad in response as he put a simple blue t-shirt on. He took a glance at his lap, covered only by a navy blue hospital sheet. "You guys mind turning around for this part?"

  They quickly did so, and a few moments later, after Conrad had given them the okay, they turned back to find their companion standing casually in a pair of grey sweatpants, his feet decked in black running shoes.

  "Okay then," he said, smiling softly. "Time to go."

  Nodding in agreement, Kurt gestured at the enthralled doctors, and the glamour covering their heads was yanked towards them, enshrouding the three of them in an aura of invisibility. By the time the first of the men began stirring awake, they had already made their way out of the room.

  The group rushed through the hospital, no attempts at subtlety beyond not bashing into the passersby, and out, beyond the pseudo police line. They didn't stop until they were five blocks away from the building.

  "Where to now?" Asked Conrad as the shroud of glamour dissipated around them. "Back to the train? It feels kinda pointless, now that we know where we have to go."

  "We can discuss that later." Kurt found himself saying. "But... there's a place I'd like to go to first before we skip town. I... kinda owe it to someone."

  Mila and Conrad both looked at him in confusion. All he could do at this was meet their stares, and hope they could read how important it was to him for the group to take the detour he was proposing without him having to say out loud. After the night he had just had, he just didn't have it in him to explain it. Not right then and there.

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  "I say we do." said Mila, marvelous and understanding as only she could be. Not a sliver of mistrust could be heard on her words. "If it's Kurt propossing it, then it must be important."

  Conrad chuckled slightly, good naturely. "Preaching to the coir, girl." he said with a shrug. "I'm not gonna deny a simple detour to one of the two guys that saved my ass." The sides of his mouth curved mischiveously. "You could say it's... no skin off my back!"

  Kurt tensed for a moment at hearing the words 'skin' and 'back' in the same sentence, and briefs glimpses of all the bloodshed of that night rushed past his mind's eye. None of his companions failed to notice, and the mood of the group cooled ever so slightly. Kurt felt like kicking himself because of it.

  "Shit..." Murmured Conrad to himself before directing his attention to Kurt, a tense smile on his lips. "Sorry man, my bad. It is a bit to soon. It's just, well, my british humor, you could say."

  "Yeah, no biggie." said Mila, her tone just as carefully soft as Conrad's, as if she was talking to a scared child. Kurt felt like kickinghimself again. "He was just trying to lighten the mood. No need to get upset. We can just..."

  "I'm fine." Kurt cut in, more harshly that he had intended to. "I'm just feeling a bit skeamish, that's all. It's been a long night, and I'm tired. So... can we please go do the thing I want to do, figure out our next step, and call it a night?"

  Both of his companions nodded. "Good, thanks a lot." he said, spinning on the balls of his feet and walking down a dimly illuminated street. "Follow me then."

  And so they did, and the three of them began making their way to the mysterious location, silent as ghosts.

  "Wait," Called Mila who, without breaking her stride, turned to look at Conrad. "You're british?"

  Well, almost as silent.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  "Hey guys! I managed to find a brush and a dustpan." Called Conrad as he made his way out the store's backdoor and onto the alley, carrying the implements. Neither Kurt nor Mila answered, their attention set firmly on the pile of dust and clothes that sat besides an old car with a dented roof. "Uhm, if they're appropiate for the... ocasion. They're new, by the way. I grabbed them from a shelf."

  "That's fine. Thanks, Conrad." said kurt, raising a hand but not turning. "It is... not ideal, but we can't leave her like this. If someone comes and sees this, they..." The words got stuck in his throat.

  "They won't think they are human remains." Completed Mila, stepping closer to him and taking hold of his hand. "And they'll probably just... throw them away. You want to give her something better than that. It's very noble."

  "Noble?" Asked Kurt, his tone sour. "I didn't even bother to learn her name. All I had to do was take a quick look, but I didn't bother. Now she's gonna get her last rites from some randos that don't even know her name. " The knot on his throat tightened, and he had to avert his eyes from the pile out of shame. "This barely feels better than having her thrown in the trash."

  "But it is." said Conrad who, having closed the distance between the car and the store in perfect silence, was now standing right besides Kurt. "This is the best she can get now. It's sad, but it is also true. The fact that you remembered her after all the crap that's gone down is worth of praise. So please, please, stop kicking yourself down."

  Kurt sighed, but didn't argue. He knew Conrad was right, after all. How many people went out of their way to know the names of the cashiers that attended them, after all? His powers might have made it a bit easier, true, but reading the screen of someoe he didn't know without a practical, logical reason behind felt... wrong, somehow. Like a violation of their privacy, even if all he got out of it was a title, a name, and an abstract aproximation of their power.

  And yet...

  "I still would have liked to know her name." Kurt said. "So we could actually call her something while we do this."

  "Audrey Matthers." Came Mila's voice from besides. Kurt and Conrad turned to her, and found her holding an old style, red purse in one hand, and a plastic card in the other. She gave them a defensive, demure look. "Her... purse was in the car, and her driver's license in the purse, so...uhm..." A blush overtook her face, and she quickly dropped the card back in the purse. "Sorry. I-I'll put it back where I found it. I should have asked before.

  "Mila." Kurt called, and she forced herself to look at him. She found him smiling, looking happier than at any point since they had first encountered Ruth. "Thank you. You always know what to do to make everything better."

  Her eyebrows raised slightly, and her face grew a darker shade of red. She quickly nodded, and made her way to put the purse back where she had found it. Kurt, on his part, took the tools that Conrad had been holding and, still sad but with renewed vigor, took to work.

  By the time Mila came back, all the remains of what had once been Audrey Matthers were resting comfortably in the dustpan. There was barely enough of her left to fill it.

  "Shall we start?" Asked Conrad. Kurt nodded wordlessly. "What were you planning to do with her?"

  "This," said Kurt, conjuring his wand in one hand, and immediately charging it with the verdant of a wind evocation. Placing the wand's tip atop the pile, Kurt began drawing circles with it, and a slow pillar of rising wind began forming around the dustpan. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Matthers."

  And with that, he violently raised his wand-hand to the sky, and the pillar of wind momentarily became a miniature tornado that launched the contents of the dustpan high into the air, dispersing them to the point they could be mistaken for smoke, floating high above head.

  Kurt's gaze lingered on it for a small while before he directed it to his companions. "Okay, I'm ready to go." he said. They both nodded, and the three of them made their way out the alley and to the street. Conrad and Mila were walking besides him, flancking him as if to protect him. "Thanks for indulging me on this."

  "No need for it," said Conrad, putting his hand on Kurt's shoulder. "Least we could do for her, right?"

  Mila, for her part, said nothing, simply holding Kurt's hand with a gentle squeeze, rubbing her thumb across the back of it.

  They reached the street, illuminated by the orange light projected by the lamp poles, and that's where he saw it. A figure around 9-feet tall, only slightly shorter than the poles themselves, humanoid. And it was when that figure walked close enough to one of those street lights that Kurt could make one final detail about it: It was made out of living wood, with a face as featureless as the trunk of a tree.