5:00 pm
Rush hour traffic had snarled the Eds who were engaged in chasing down useless leads. They kept calling in at regular intervals to report nothing. “I'm getting tired guys. I don't know how long I can keep this pace.”
“Go as long as you can,” a Will told him. “Take a nap here when you have to. I'll send one of me down to take over when you can't go any more. Try to last until I get there -- traffic is bad and I can't get there quickly.”
“Tell me about it,” Ed grumbled, “I've got ten of me in police cars basically parked in traffic jams all over the city.”
Ron felt uncomfortable. He could understand the positions of both Kim and Shego, and felt that both of them wanted him to declare she was the truly injured party in their feud. Under better circumstances the two would have been trying to resolve their fight, but right now they were both simply letting the anger fester.
George called. He asked for sandwich orders and promised to be there as soon as possible. The only Ed in the Tower took the call. He thought of telling his father they could call out for delivery, but decided his dad was as worried about Henry as everyone else and wanted to see what was happening. Ed relayed the sandwich, drink, and snack orders. George asked to speak to either Kim or Shego, and Ed, the only one who appeared unaware of the tension between the two, passed the phone to Kim.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Kim? I really wanted to say thank you for bringing the girls with you. It's helped Susan tremendously to have something else on her mind. I think she's had the girls over to three neighbors to show them off.”
“No big, Mr. O'Ceallaigh. We're glad she can watch them.”
“Well, thanks again. And can I talk to Georgie?”
“Uh, no problem.” Kim looked around and saw Ron. “Ron, could you give the phone to that other woman? Her father wants to talk with her.”
Ron was definitely not feeling comfortable.
Wade, with some help from three Wills, was tracing the last several years of Hellpike's life in California which included work on pyrotechnics in film before being fired for carelessness, three police complaints of fights with neighbors in his apartment building, and suspicion of being connected with two arson cases. He had been booked for one of the fights with a neighbor and they downloaded pictures and forwarded them to the Chicago police. Other than the picture Wade wasn't sure of the value of the information he was finding. It wasn't even clear if the name the Alchemist had remembered was his real name or another in a long string of aliases. And the young genius wasn't sure how tracing his last few years in a different state would help find him now.
Shego pulled Dexter away for another consultation. “Bring your bag of tricks out to the kitchen. I want to know what you have in there.”
They sat down across the table from each other and he opened his satchel. “It's been years since I used some of this stuff. Some of my ingredients are pretty stable -- but I know a lot of stuff has gone bad.”
“Any speed potion? That would be great.”
Dexter snorted, “Not since the Wegos tore up all the Devil's Agave in the world. The species is now extinct.
“Resist fire potion” That could come in handy against Hellpike.”
“The shelf life on that stuff isn't very long.” He unstoppered a bottle and gave it a sniff. “It still smells okay. But I'm guessing if you take some it won't protect you.”
Shego tried a sip, then lit a match and held her hand over the flame. It hurt.
“Muscle elixir?”
“Takes two weeks to prepare and will keep up to a month in the refrigerator.”
“What have you got that you think will still work?”
He began pulling various containers from his bag, examining them, and explaining their functions. “You got a HazMat container in here? I should probably get most of this out of my house.”
Shego found a secure container and he dumped in a number of items. Then, looking back into his bag he announced, “The bunny formula is probably good.”
“Pass.”
“Frictionless grease trap?”
“Leave that out on the table, it was nasty stuff to go up against.”
“Stupid potion… that was a dumb idea. It only works if you consume it with grape soda. I've got three kinds of sleeping draughts -- one or two probably still work, but I don't think they'll do you and good.”
“And I'll probably have no trouble falling asleep when this is over. You got any elixir of forgetfulness?”
“Yeah, but I'm not sure what good it will do you.”
“Get it out and tell me how it works. Can you control the dose and just wipe out, oh, an hour or a couple hours?”
“I suppose…” Dexter fished the elixir out of his satchel and gave Shego an explanation.
He took a bottle filled with a bilious green liquid out and held it up to the light. “The invisibility elixir is probably good, but shouldn't be used.”
“You had invisibility? How come you never used it?”
“'Cause it stinks like crap, takes a minute to kick in, gives you about thirty seconds of invisibility, and then five to ten minutes later you get a couple hours of the nastiest flu symptoms in the world -- diarrhea, nausea, vomiting -- you name it.”
Shego took the bottle, opened it and took a whiff, “How could you swallow this junk?”
“I'd advise you not to, but hold your nose if you want to try it.” Shego slipped it into a leg pouch with the frictionless grease trap and elixir of forgetfulness.
“I have a little slap serum left, but don't think it would do any good in a rescue.”
“Give it to me! That stuff is great! I'll slip some to Hego someday after he's been rescued. I remember when you used it on the Wegos. That stuff is funnier than itching powder.”