As they neared Galugod, the traffic slowed considerably, bringing Harmony and Steve to a halt. That was a bad sign. She called Malory again, trying to ignore the hours the other woman could have called them about any change in circumstances and hadn't.

  "Hello?"

  "Malory, we're stuck in traffic, but we're close. Is Loren all right?"

  There was a pause, and Harmony could almost feel her cursed magic writhe within her, calling in time with her heart, asking for her to unleash it…

  "The vigilants went in, but they're still trying to get him out," Malory said hesitantly, and Harmony's heart leapt with both treacherous hope and weighty dread. "But he… seems all right."

  "Put it on speaker," Steve said. He looked like he'd calm down, but his eyes had an intent, focused look to them. "Say that again, Malory?"

  "They're still getting him out, but he seems all right. The ghost managed to hit the ghost expert with a table, so the Spiritualist had to get him out and the Thaumaturgist tried to deal with the ghost without him. From what Norm can see, Loren is using his ghostlight to help them see the ghost, but the ghost keeps attacking him to get him to stop. I tried to go in and help, but the police wouldn't let me."

  Harmony resisted the urge to hit something. Steve had no such compunctions and slammed his fist down on the steering wheel again. Fortunately, the car was stopped this time.

  She looked out over the traffic in front of them. The road was inclined upward, the curve keeping her from seeing the end, but she was relatively familiar with the highway from the times her family had vacationed here. They were so close to Galugod…

  "I'm going on foot," she told Steve, undoing her seat belt. "We haven't moved in fifteen minutes."

  Steve gave her a look, but nodded. "Go. See what's going on and get the nervous energy out of your system."

  Harmony nodded, grabbing her phone and getting out of the car. Moving to the shoulder of the road, she began to run uphill

  It still took her almost an hour to reach the house, an ache in her side from running as much of the way as she could. The road in front of it had cars moving at a crawl, and it wasn't even because people were rubbernecking. The police had decided it was a good idea to block off half a lane on a two-lane, two-way road. It wasn't even because there was a small watertruck and a van with vigilant medical emergency markings denoting it had been converted into an ambulance nearby, those was neatly parked on the shoulder and out of the way. To add to the stupidity, the police actually felt they needed to be standing there and directing the traffic, as if everyone was as stupid as they were and wouldn't know how to drive through a completely straight length of road.

  Her tax money being wasted, right there. Stuff like this was why everyone liked the vigilants better.

  Even at a distance, she recognized Malory by her high ponytail, with Norm standing next to her just outside of the police cordon. Nearby was a group of three—two oni and a human—wearing firefighter pants, all keeping an eye on the house and the ones next to it. There was a bit of smoke in the air, which explained the presence of the water truck and firefighters. She could hear sounds of violence from inside the house, or at least the sounds of things being thrown around. There were high-pitched, angry cries that were occasionally answered by Loren's equally angry voice, though both were unintelligible.

  "Hey," she greeted the two of them tiredly as she sidled up next to them, and the two of them jumped in surprise when they noticed her. She was covered in sweat and different parts of her in various amounts of agony. Being able to keep going despite the pain was because a loved one was in danger was apparently just a load of sentimental garbage, it seemed. Ow, she hurt. "What's the situation?" she panted. "And do either of you have water?"

  Malory wordlessly handed her a half-full bottle of bright blue sports drink with a slender dark-gray hand. Harmony took it gratefully—implied indirect kiss and all—raising the bottle to her lips. She resisted the urge to just chug it all, drinking slowly and in a controlled manner.

  "Loren's still inside, but he seems to be getting more and more tired," Malory said as she drank.

  From inside the house, Harmony again heard Loren's voice angrily yelling something. The words were still muffled and indistinct, but he sounded quite energetic. There was a shimmer of light and colors on the ceiling of one of the house's upper floors, reflecting the light of an open flame—or Flame—before vanishing, resulting into another high-pitched cry of rage. The cry was followed by a crash of something heavy being thrown and a cry of pain. Harmony's heart lurched before she realized that hadn't been Loren's voice, only to immediately feel ashamed at the thought. Regardless of whether or not it had been her best friend, someone had been hurt!

  …

  Yeah, she really couldn't keep up the civic-minded concern, she was too worried about her friend.

  Something struck a wall hard enough that the front windows vibrated slightly, and a part of Harmony wondered if they were going to be sued for this…

  "Hey Norm," a dissonantly serene part of her said, "do you remember if the property is listed as stigmatized?"

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Norm shook his head. "No, it's not on the paperwork. I checked while I was waiting."

  Harmony nodded. While it wasn't guaranteed, the fact this property wasn't listed as such meant they could file a case against the owners—Harmony forgot if it was a foreclosed property or not—for negligence, since they either didn't know about the ghost while in the course of trying to sell the property, or did know but neglected to warn prospective buyers. It was a cold comfort, but at least Loren wasn't likely to be sued for his own injuries.

  She could already imagine the paperwork she'd need to walk when this was all over.

  The thought distracted her until she heard Loren's voice cry out in pain, followed by a high-pitched, gloating cry. Then a hand was gripping her heart again, and she took a step towards the sound, the yellow police tape pressing against her stomach. "Lor…" she cried.

  The nearby, utterly useless police looked towards her, even as Malory pulled her back with a tentacle so the idiots wouldn't do the whole 'please stand back for your own safety' spiel. She was a Symbol, she was safer than they were!

  All Harmony could do was stand there, marinated in her own sweat and unable to move any closer. There were more and more flickering fire light and sounds of impact, and she sometimes she could smell woodsmoke and burning paint, implying some piece of furniture had caught fire. Loren had probably done it because he was running low on Flame and needed to draw magic from something else…

  It was another half hour before the sounds of fighting finally stopped. The headlights of the cars had come on and dusk was setting in, even as high-pitched screams began to echo from the house. "Let me go! Let me go, help! I said let me go! Do what I say!" That wasn't Loren…

  There was the light of flames and a more pained screaming from the high-pitched voice. Ah, there was her bestie.

  Soon after the doors of the converted van open, and two paramedics came out carrying a stretcher. Through the ambulance's opened door, Harmony saw another stretcher already occupied, as well as a third paramedic. It took her a moment to recall the ghost expert that had been injured. It seems like they'd been able to extract him while the ghost had been busy.

  Several nerve-wracking minutes later, they came out carrying Loren. He looked terrible. His clothes were filthy with dirt, ash and blood, his right arm was wrapped a splint, and his face was twisted into a grimace of pain. For that matter, there was something about him that looked strange, though she couldn't quite put her finger on it. He looked shriveled, as if he'd aged, except he didn't have wrinkles… "Lor!" she called out. "Lor, are you all right?-!"

  Loren's free hand rose and flopped in acknowledgement, and Harmony let out a sigh of relief.

  "Harmony, find out where they're taking him," Norm said. "I'll go get the car."

  Loren needed to be held overnight for observation. All told, he'd come out of his encounter with a broken arm, several large bruises and cuts from the various debris that had been thrown at him, and severely depleted fat reserves. They'd put him on a fat emulsion IV as soon as he was in the ambulance, as well as a high-concentration dextrose IV, both specially formulated for Flame mages. Steve met them at the hospital after Loren was admitted, and took care of handling the health insurance stuff. Harmony knew that the company's insurance plans for its employees were a bit on the costlier side, both to cover workplace accidents and things like this, and not for the first time she was glad Steve wasn't some penny-pincher who only did the bare minimum the law required for his employees.

  Having a Flame and Water mage work together to completely fuse the bone back together was still above their insurance—the Galugod Medical Center actually did have the expertise to do it—but it would spring for having a Flame mage doctor get the bone set and lightly connected again with some accelerated healing. After Loren consumed a high calcium alchemical potion, the procedure only took half an hour. Harmony had been allowed to sit in as moral support, holding his hand as the payatin doctor applied a Water-based alchemical anesthetic—so that Loren's Flame wouldn't just burn away the foreign substance—before manually ensuring that the simple fracture was properly aligned.

  Once the bones were in place, small subtle Flames danced on the doctor's fingers as he laid them on Loren's arm and began to get to work. Despite the tight grip her best friend had on her hand, the other limb was as relaxed as he could make it so that the muscles wouldn't exert pressure on the bones. Occasionally, the doctor would say "Relax, please" or "Please allow me to claim that", presumably at something Loren was doing. Beyond that, there was not really anything to indicate any sort of magic was being done… well, besides the fact that Loren's entire forearm was burning with a smokeless Flame. It was an almost transparent, near-invisible Flame, almost like a slightly colored heat haze… although really, wasn't that was a fire was, when you think about it? When the doctor finished, Loren's arm was secured in a plastic cast that the doctor molded into shape around his arm with magic.

  "You'll need to take it easy for the next three weeks, use magic as little as possible to restore your fat stores to a healthy level, and only take wet baths during that time. The cast is heat sensitive," the doctor said as Loren's arm was placed in a sling that would hold the broken arm against the side of his body. It was a mark of how tired and 'done with this shit' Loren was that he didn't even sigh at the admonishment. "If you accidentally deform it, don't try to reshape the cast yourself, understand? Go to a clinic or hospital and have them reset it. You'll need to use Life Flame—internally only, don't get the cast hot—for at least four hours a day, although eight would be ideal. Otherwise you'll be looking at six to eight weeks in a cast."

  It was actually a good deal if you could get it. The only other kinds of mages with that kind of accelerated healing were Symbols, who could literally just Symbolize to deal with most physical injuries. Although the nature of Water mages meant they were easier to treat, making them a provisional third place when it came to quick healers.

  Loren had to stay overnight for observation because of the head trauma he'd taken might have given him a concussion. Given that he'd applied Flame to it, Harmony's experience with first aid, research, and word of mouth from her time at army training said he should be fine, but given all his other injuries it was probably for the best that he had a few hours to recover before needing to get in a car to go back to Selurong. He even got to be wheeled to his bed. It was a ward rather than a private room, but she knew her bestie well enough to know he wouldn't care about something like that.

  Once he was settled into his bed, Steve and Norm showed up, the latter carrying Loren's backpack with his oil and probably his lunch and most importantly his phone, Harmony went off to check on what she knew he would care about.

  "Excuse me," she asked at the nurse's station. "When was the last time this ward was exorcised? Because my friend got attacked by a ghost today, and I don't think he'd be able to rest very well if he knew there were any others around."