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“What did this?” she hissed to her fellow officer.

“Look inside,” a fellow male officer stated with dread in his voice.

They both saw the carpet of dead bodies over the white marble floor. Both paled and swallowed. The thoughts of the humans present were filled with confusion, fear and anger.

Who did this?

What did this?

Are we in danger?

I’m not going in there. But we have to go in there.

Is anyone still alive?

Oh, my God, I think I saw them on television. It’s that actress--

Is that Councilman Wayner? Wasn’t the mayor supposed to be here tonight? What’s going to happen if they’re both dead? If they’re all dead?

We should get out of their way,Julian suggested as they were still standing at the top of the steps right by the doors.

Daemon agreed. They were standing in a narrow clear space. There was some room by the edge of the stairs on the right side. But between them and that space were bodies. Julian shifted his weight and a woman’s beaded handbag made a slight scraping sound. Like bloodhounds, the emergency personnel lifted their heads as if they’d caught a scent on the wind.

Oh, no,Julian said as he froze. Panic filled his fledgling.

“Someone moved over there! C’mon let’s see!” A paramedic cried.

As five paramedics raced towards them, Daemon put a hand on Julian’s shoulder and teleported them to the empty area near the stairs. Julian clung to him, heart beating rapidly and breathing staccato. He had thought he had given them away. He had also worried how the paramedics would have reacted to bumping into someone who was invisible.

Thanks. Invisible isn’t silent,Julian said with a faint laugh. Watching the paramedics frantically search for a living person, Julian added sadly, I’ve just made things worse. They’re so hoping someone is okay.

Hope is one of the best things about humans.

“Do you have a pulse? Anything?” One paramedic asked the other.

“No, nothing.”

Shoulders slumped. Quick movements slowed. A sort of desperate malaise washed over them.

“No one’s alive out here. We’ve got to get inside,” another of the paramedics said, disappointment written large on his craggy face.

There were three police officers at the doors. They were peering inside the museum looking for signs of life of a victim or whatever or whomever had done this.

“Hang back!” A woman dressed in a police uniform with more bars on her shoulders and at her throat commanded as she stepped out of an unmarked cruiser. “We’ve heard that this could be some kind of gas release. We need to wait on hazmat crews!”

“A gas release wouldn’t affect people outside, would it?” One of the ambulance crews protested.

“Maybe it’s poisonous gas. Like sarin,” another suggested and everyone froze.

“Can’t you die from sarin just by touching affected people? It passes from person to person that way,” a police officer suggested as he stepped back from a corpse. “That’s what happened in Japan when that crazy cult let off a bomb of it on a commuter train!”

Panic swelled among everyone as paramedics looked down at their gloved hands and wondered if sarin could pass through the rubber material and enter their skin.

The woman who had urged everyone back was in her mid-fifties and had an air of respect gestured for everyone to retreat. “I cannot allow anyone to go inside that building. As these poor people are all deceased out here, nothing can be done to help them. We have specialists coming.

She’s an Acolyte! A friend of Rajani’s!Julian cried. His fledgling had touched her mind lightly and read that thought.

Yes, she is. This is a wise story. Make the museum too dangerous to enter,Daemon replied with approval.