We got Chinese from the same place that Saorise and I had used on her second night at mine, and it was hard for me not to think back to that night.

It had been such fun, so carefree. How on earth had Saorise managed to be in that happy frame of mind when her situation - knowing that people were actively hunting her - must have been weighing down on her. I liked to think that I had done a little to alleviate that stress, that spending time with me had helped her forget her worries, as much as that was possible, and be the carefree person whom she was by nature once again. That said, I also understood now why she had reacted with such fear when I had said, 'I'm never letting you go'. Even in a joking sentence, the idea of confinement must have cut her like a knife.

The four of us spent most of the afternoon talking through possible scenarios, and ways to get into the club and out in one piece with Saorise in tow. It became quickly apparent that there were far too many unknowns and it would require some recon, so we scoured the net for images of the place.

To my disgust, there were dozens of pictures hidden on the dark web of leering humans beside captive magical creatures, and although they were purported to be fakes, Saorise’s brothers assured me that they were very real.

We forced ourselves through the process and were able to get some good information on the layout of the building. Once we had a plan A, B, and C, we sat talking about anything but Saorise and watching bad TV until the weight of it all seemed to be too much, and we all separated to sleep as much as we could before the rigors of the day to come.

The three Selkie males made themselves comfortable in my living room. Declan was on the sofa - having won the toss - while Patch and Connor curled up in easy chairs with a blanket draped over them.

I dearly would have liked to suggest that Connor spend the night with me, but it would have been impossible to do that without letting on to the others what had happened between us - which I was not ready to do yet and nor, I thought, was Connor. Anyway, that would probably not have ended in either of us getting a lot of sleep. I had to keep my mind focused on what all this was about. But, equally, that was the thing I wanted to think about the least because I could not stop picturing Saorise in her aquatic prison, like a goldfish in a bowl.

I closed my bedroom door and went to lie awake in my bed, trying to sleep but finding the events of the day rampaging through my head. A hell of a lot had changed since yesterday. The existence of magic and the supernatural, which I would have scoffed at, had now become a part of my life. My best friend had turned out to be a mystical creature, was currently an exhibit in a freak show and I was going to rescue her along with three other mystical creatures. One of whom I had slept with. That was something to think on. On the one hand, I had had the best sex of my life, on the other, it had been with someone who I didn't really know. And, of course, he wasn't human.

Still; the best sex of my life. The memory of it still made me tingle in all the best possible places. I drifted off to sleep imagining Connor's strong arms around me.

I was woken what felt like a few minutes later, but was, in fact, hours later. Connor stood over me, gently shaking my shoulder.

"Still insist on coming?"

"You could have just gone without me if you didn't want me there."

He shrugged. "Yeah. But I reckon I'd never have heard the end of it."

"Damn right."

“And, honestly, she might be able to reach out to you.”

I got ready quickly, and in the living room found the guys ready to go.

"There's coffee in the pot," said Patch. "We helped ourselves, I hope you don't mind."

Perhaps the oddest thing about playing host to three supernatural creatures was that they were all so disturbingly normal. Nothing about them said 'supernatural'. Nothing about them shrieked the fact that, in the small rucksacks they all wore on their backs, they carried a seal skin, which enabled them to turn into an animal. They were just three guys having coffee in my living room.

"Muffin?" offered Patch, as I sat down. "I found them in the freezer and thawed them. I hope that’s all right."

I took a cinnamon swirl and sipped my coffee. However odd the lack of oddness was, it was also the most comforting thing about the situation. We were just four people having breakfast. There was no suggestion that we were about to embark on a commando raid of an underground club trading in supernatural creatures. Of course, all that would change soon enough, but it was nice to be able to enjoy the calm before the storm, rather than worrying about it.

Though it was a lot earlier than I would usually leave for work, the walk to the club was also almost frustrating in its normality. It was a route I walked five out of every seven days in my life. There was the shop where I would oftentimes stop to buy donuts for the other nurses to give them a morning treat. There was the florist where I might pick up something to brighten the reception desk. There was Stanley, the homeless man who I would give loose change to, or buy a sandwich for when I had the time - he was asleep now, but still there. It was all there, it was my walk to work, but today I was walking it for a very different purpose.

"Let’s run through it one more time,” I said as we walked.

"You and I are going to knock on the front door to get their attention while Patch and Declan kick in the back," Connor said, his face intense with concentration.

"What if they have guns?"

Patch laughed hollowly. "I don't think there's any 'what if?' about it. They will definitely be armed."

“Luckily, we’re stronger than the average human, and we can handle it,” Connor said.

They’d assured me of that the night before, and I didn’t doubt it, but I was still worried.

Declan nodded. "Saorise is depending on us."

And that was the problem. Taking time to formulate a better plan and get together weapons of our own was all very well and good, but it would take time. We had no way of knowing what her mental state was, and if her condition when she’d escaped the first time was any indication, she wasn’t handling it well. They’d likely kept her even more restrained to keep her from getting away again, and I shuddered to think how she was dealing.

It had been bad enough that we had had to wait the better part of a day, the brothers were willing to wait no longer. Perhaps it was foolhardy, but was there ever a good way to break into a cellar guarded by armed men? We could spend a few days planning better and still come up with nothing better than what we had now.

"Don't worry," said Connor, his voice now slightly softened. "We’re also fast. Just stay behind me. Once we're in, it will get progressively easier."

"How so?" I asked.

"We start smashing cages."

That was a good point. This wasn't a raid on a zoo housing animals who, when released, might just panic or eat each other, this was more like a prison break. The inmates, when released, would be on our side. Once we were in, the odds shifted significantly in our favor.

And what powers might those inmates have?

All the creatures in there were magical in some way. True, they had all been captured in the first place, but that did not mean that they were powerless. And when they were set free, I had a hunch they would be looking for some revenge.

It would be too much to say that I started to feel optimistic, but I started to feel better.

We split up and went our separate ways, me following Connor. He checked his watch as we approached the alley that led to the staircase down to the club.

"Declan and Patch should be in position now. Ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

I wanted to be here, but at the same time, I would have given anything to be somewhere else. I went for runs - did a half marathon the other year for charity - I hit the gym when I could, but I was no GI Jane, and I had never felt any less like GI Jane than I did at that moment.

"Let’s go, then."

For all my anxiety, I didn't hesitate. I followed Connor, running into the alley.

There was no guard at the top of the stairs as we entered - clearly, we had picked the right time to make our move. Connor checked his watch again then banged on the door.

It swung open.

That seemed to make matters a lot easier but I could see the shock on Connor's face. He wasn't sure what this meant, and definitely wasn't assuming it to be a good thing.

"Stay close behind," he breathed. "And I mean behind."

Clearly, he was wondering if this was a trap. Could they have been expecting us? Had they guessed from yesterday that we might be back? Or, a horrifying thought, could they have found out that Saorise had sent me a message?

We crept in, our footsteps seeming unnaturally loud on the bare concrete floor. A left-hand turn led to another staircase, bare, unadorned and currently unlit. Connor flicked the light switch - we'd already blown any element of surprise by knocking and it would otherwise have been too dark to see. A single hanging bulb lit the stairwell.

I had expected something a bit more lavish and exotic, given the nature of the club, but perhaps the entrance was kept like this to fool any would-be trespassers. We crept on down, stair by stair till we reached the bottom, and another door. Still not a single sound had reached us, nothing to suggest that there was anyone or anything else in the building.

Could the main club be sound-proofed? That would make sense.

Connor pushed the next door, which swung open as easily as the first, and peered into the dimly lit room beyond. There were hints of habitation scattered across it - empty boxes, discarded bottles and the like - but other than that, the large basement room was as bare as the stairwell.

"Fuck all. They've done a runner."

I jumped out of my skin as Patch snarled, his voice coming from off to my right.

"Sorry," he said, raising a hand in apology. His voice was dour and his face, utterly despondent.

The three men and I stood in the middle of the bare room and looked about. We had come to a dead end in our search.

"Son of a bitch!" Connor punched the bare wall with his fist and the plaster cracked and crumbled.

"It's not your fault," said Patch, reading his brother well.

"It is. We should have gone yesterday, together. I should’ve come and gotten you when we got there and I suspected. We could’ve all gone. Instead, I gave them a heads up and then time to clear out. We should have gone straight away as a team."

"Half-cocked and having no clue what we were walking into. If the place was crawling with guards like you said, we’d be dead, and Saorise would still be in their clutches."

"Saorise still is in their clutches!"

"But we're still looking for her," pointed out Patch. "Which we wouldn't be able to do if we were dead. We'll find her."

"How?" Connor snapped the question out like a whip crack. "Answer me that, Patch. Answer me that or stop being so fucking upbeat. It was only luck that led us here."

"It was Saorise who led us here," Declan put in. "She was strong enough to find a way to get word to us. And she will be again."

"She may not have the choice," growled Connor. "She may have already used what little strength she had left to give us this chance and we - I - blew it. I never even considered they’d close up shop and move like that."

I wanted nothing more than to reach out and squeeze him, but I held back.

"Will you stop the pity party," snapped Patch. "This is about Saorise, not you."

"You think I don't know that?"

"I think you're wallowing in your own grief rather than trying to solve the problem we now have." He went to his brother, speaking more kindly. "This isn't Eileen. It's not the same. We won't let it end the same way."

I saw Connor flinch at the name Eileen and wondered who she might be.

"And how do you plan to stop that?" asked Connor again, unable to see anything beyond the oppressive bare walls of that empty basement.

"You can't move a club-full of supernatural creatures, plus, all fixtures and fittings, without someone noticing," pointed out Declan. “And they can’t have gone out of the country without papers and the like. Clubs like this only thrive in wealthy cities surrounded by other oddities and almost hiding in plain sight, and there is no better place than here.”

Patch nodded. "There you go. Out of the mouths of pups.”

Connor looked a little less certain now but still clung on to his relentless negativity. "Who do we ask? Who on earth is around at that time of night to see them go and how would they know where they were going?"

A flash of inspiration hit me. "I know someone we can ask."

"Thanks, Miss." Stanley sat up in his doorway to take the coffee I had brought him, along with a breakfast bagel. He looked around at my companions.

"Not cops, are you?"

Like most homeless people, Stanley had a pathological fear of the police, which is sad when you think about it.

"No," Patch chipped in cheerfully. "We're friends of Sienna here, just wanting to pick your brain."

Stanley shrugged. "For a coffee and a bagel, you can pick anything you like, even my nose."

"Well, we'll start with your brain and see how it goes,” Patch said with a grin.

"Stanley," I said, taking charge, "did you see or hear any trucks going through here last night? They'd have been moving furniture and some...livestock," I finished, swallowing hard.

Stanley sipped his coffee, wincing at the heat, and nodded. "You mean the Twisted Club? Yeah, they moved on last night."

I blinked at him in shock as the guys all gaped, just as stunned. "You know about the club?"

Stanley smiled wanly. "One thing about being homeless, you become invisible. People talk about all sorts around you, like you're not even there - because you don't really count as a human being."

"Sometimes, that’s a good thing," muttered Connor.

But Stanley clearly heard him. "I thought as much. And if I'm guessing right, then I can answer your next question; yes, they had a female with them. They had her in a covered tank but I caught sight of her for an instant when the covering slipped as they were moving her. And she looked just like this fella here,” he added, jabbing a dirt streaked thumb toward Declan.

His words left me reeling but luckily, Connor stepped in.

"Do you know where they were heading?"

Stanley shook his head. "No."

We all slumped; the trail had hit a dead end.

"But I can give you a list of all the possibilities because they were talking them through the whole time they were loading up. I actually jotted them down.”

Our hanging heads all shot back up again and my heart pounded wildly. "What?"

“I try to mind my own business about this kind of stuff, mainly because I don’t want to end up in a cage myself and you’d be surprised how quick they are to throw you in one when you start spouting off about magical creatures and disappearing freak shows, but then I came across a couple things that had me considering calling in an anonymous tip."

He took another sip from his coffee and handed it to me before he loped away, toward a makeshift tent constructed of an old tarp and some rope.

When he emerged, it was with a bag in one hand and a wrinkled piece of paper in another. He held the latter out to Declan, who took it with a nod of thanks.

“We appreciate this more than you know,” he said solemnly.

Stanley shook his head and let out a sigh. “They’re an evil bunch, and I’m glad to see the last of them. Now I just have to find a resting place for this fella. They tossed this in the dumpster on their way out, triple wrapped in packaging and the like, but I knew it was something bad. Brace yourselves."

A nauseous feeling swept through me as I braced myself as much as I could but nothing could have prepared me for the sight when Stanley opened the bag to reveal what was inside.

I drew back with a gasp as I peered down at a tiny body. The creature was only about nine inches long, but looked elderly if the lines on its face and its gnarled hands were anything to go by. It had a large nose, pointed ears and a mouth that was almost a muzzle. Its unseeing eyes were jet black.

"It's a Kobold," said Connor, his voice level with barely controlled rage. "A type of German gnome."

Stanley nodded.

"Well, at least he’s out of the hellhole now. Will you give it a decent burial for me?"

Connor lifted the dead Kobold reverently and wrapped it in his jacket. It was a reminder, as if we needed one, of just what danger Saorise was in.

“We will,” I said, fighting tears.

And we would make sure to put these bastards out of business for good so they could never dump another creature in the dumpster like trash again.