"Sean is the MacGuffin," Cassie said around her mouthful of dinner. We were having something I called Everything Bagel Shrimp Gumbo, made of all the stuff I could find, catch or steal from Gary.

The distant radio was playing more Cab Calloway: Everybody eats when they come to my house…

I passed Cassie a little dish of reddish beans. "Try this stuff, I made it for Gardeners, but if we could all eat the same kinds of food it'll save me some steps. What's a MacGuffin?"

Cassie, Schmendrick and I were at the new wooden picnic table at the top of the little hill that let us see out over the forest. The sun was going down and the Gardener's lights were coming on. Strings of rainbow beads, like Christmas lights, traced their way along the treetops, all the way down to the edge of the water.

"You're damn ig-nant," Cassie said. She took a forkful of rice for herself, then fed Schmendrick a grilled shrimp with the same fork. "Alfred Hitchcock, the movie guy, right? He said the MacGuffin is what everyone in the movie fights over. Sean is a ghost one of those."

"Have you talked to him yet?"

"No, sounds like a roofie dispensary, if I may be so bold."

I smiled around the alien rice. "Yeah, that was him. He's different now, usually. Spacier. Full of regret. No actual body."

"Good for him." She was looking a lot better; being one of the Hunt agreed with her. She fed her friend another shrimp from her own fork. Schmendrick was into this; she'd sit there motionless with her mouth open, waiting patiently for a hit of the gumbo, and gobbling it down when it arrived.

Cassie watched with satisfaction. "This kicks ass, Owen. The food here is incredible."

"It's all Gary's thugs and their crops, and Schmendrick's gangsters catching stuff."

"I don't like it," said Schmendrick. "Burned meat. But it makes Cassie happy and fatter." She opened her mouth for another shrimp.

"You do too like it," Cassie scolded. She patted the furry round side of Schmendrick. "Eating for three, after all." She shot me a side-eye. "Ever cook for Mandy?"

"She doesn't eat. Her bodies are war machines, or karate heroes, or teeny little kaijus. Food isn't a thing she does." I didn't want to get serious; it was great she was in a good mood. However: "Sean mentioned something in Harrigan's camp called the pipe. Know anything about it?"

"No." Her brow furrowed. "The pipe. Did he say it was important?"

"I think I might have died trying to wreck it. Or I got close to it without knowing, and…" I made an explosive gesture with both hands.

"I don't think I've heard of him talking about any pipe. And he talked to me before I left." She frowned. "Great man besieged by fate stuff, like Vincent Price but irritating."

"Who's Vincent Price–"

"Owen, time to learn to die less." Schmendrick zeroed in on me, her long skull aimed like a shotgun with a black wet nose on the end. Serious business. "Owen is useless and helpless."

I met Cassie's eyes. She shrugged.

I was confused. "Now? Everything okay?"

"Don't try to escape me teaching, Owen. I'll catch you."

"I just worry, sweetie."

"All the time, worried." She did something very odd: her thin knobby lips pulled back, stretched to the sides of her skull, almost under her ears. Her eyes got huge, dramatic, mournful, and her ears drooped miserably. She was doing an impression of me. "Worried like that, always."

Cassie trembled, trying desperately not to laugh.

I have to admit I saw the resemblance. "Sorry, Schmendrick."

"It's okay. You worry about us. Even about Gary. Look." She held up one of her hands as if she were waving hello. "Look."

Her hands weren't like mine. They were nasty talons, with curved claws that were always exposed, but could be extended further if she wanted. She had four fingers and one thumb, but the fingers were curled, short. The white fur covered the back of the hand and fingers, leaving the palm and pads bare. The skin there was mottled gray and pink. They looked like the hands of a movie monster.

I held up my hand, pressing the palm against hers. My hand was much bigger, more refined, less monstrous and clawed. She shoved it away.

"Look," she said again. And bugged out her eyes as a demonstration. "See."

I looked at her, at the bonus content that let me see a soul. It was a shift in my vision, one I'd gotten used to. I could see her soul, a seething, fluffy, loyal, murderous sort of thing. I could see inside her small body: two smears, wildly unfinished. Her children. Their souls were under construction, but still had a long way to go, by my reckoning. They were hardly anything at all.

"I'm looking," I said. "I see you."

"No, look more. Makers talk using souls. We use souls for more. What word. Look deeper?" She snarled, thinking. Then in español, "Mira más profundo que el alma."

Deeper than the soul? That was pretty sophisticated Spanish; how much had the other Owen taught her? How much had I been teaching her myself? Was the Radio doing this? But I did as she asked. Looked deeper. Looked at her hand.

And I saw. "Huh."

Her fingers weren't her fingers. They were, I mean. But there was another set of fingers, of bones. Her soul formed them, more-than-purple, faint but becoming stronger as I kept looking. Long, graceful but strong. No claws. Neurosurgeon hands. Concert pianist hands. Alien in their grace.

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As I watched, the fingers of the hands (five) waved at me. They formed knuckles, bends, become complex. Then they simplified, shrank into her hand, grew again. Fully customizable. Her ghost hands, her soul hands, were separate from her physical ones.

It wasn't just hands that existed outside her body. Her tiny, pointy skull wasn't where her brain resided, at least not in its entirety. Clouds of thought, of intricate structure, vaguely cerebellum-shaped, orbited her, connected with bands of soulstuff.

The soul-mind was constantly lit with blazes of inner lightning, flickers of insight. Schmendrick's body was an afterthought here; a little nugget of meat and bone. Her true self was made of soul. Of Magic.

She was what I remembered from the book: she was Schmendrick, the great Magician. The Owen who'd named her? He'd been on the money.

I looked again at my hands. My primitive, simple monster hands. My brain was confined to its bone prison, unexpandable and limited. If I could just go one day without getting humbled by the people around here…

"You see. Good, very good at learning. Now watch," she said. And without rising from her loaf-shape on the sand, she used her ghostly magic hands to pick a flower from one of Gary's bean plants. The soul-hands brought the flower to me, holding it right before my eyes, spinning it by its stem.

I flicked my vision back to mere visible light. There she was, just little Cazador Schmendrick, parked on the beach, pregnant and a little crabby. The flower was hanging motionless in midair. I held out my hand, and it dropped into my palm.

"That explains a lot," I said.

"Now you do it."

"What? How? I'm just a dumb Human, how could I possibly–"

Gary burst from the jungle, sending birds screaming into the sky. He was a big round mass, and reminded me for all the world of the old Kool-Aid man commercials on Youtube and Family Guy; the big character who would burst through walls yelling Oh Yeaaah! His voice boomed from the Radio. "Forbidden to assault the crops! WHO DARES?"

"Just us," I said. "Sorry, Gary."

Schmendrick spoke to Gary. I could hear it on the edge of my own senses, similar to her Huntspeak, but buzzier, whistlier. When had she learned his language? Then she swiveled to me again. "Owen. See him."

There was Gary's nasty, spiky soul. Look deeper, she'd said, so I did. It was getting easier.

Gary wasn't just a five-armed balloon with a rotten disposition. He was the center of a network of lines, wispy threads extending from his soul to each of his plants, thousands. They were part of him. A web of his senses. As he moved, the nexus of lines shifted to follow him.

Bits of data trickled from his crops to the center of his being. I could taste the information in the same way I'd gotten names of Harrigan's captives from their tags. Moisture levels, sunlight exposure, immunity from disease…

This odd, delicate being was the god of his forest. His crops were an extension of his body. No, not just the crops…

A thread stretched from the central mass of his body and into my hand. I saw a similar glowing connection from Gary to Schmendrick. All of us. He felt responsible for all of us.

"Yes," Schmendrick said. "Good at learning. You see him. He can be unkind but he helps. He's just like you, just not as much like you. He loves us like you love us."

And look there: a thread stretched from me, my heart, to Schmendrick as well. It gleamed. I was at the center of a network of my own; many threads from me, stretching out into the jungle, into the dome of the Observatory. One especially strong thread leading out into the sea. It was very, very bright.

I nodded. Then I did the Cazador version of that, a side-to-side head and shoulder movement. "Teach me, then."

"I don't love you," Gary said. "Any of you, at all." He stole the bowl of beans and disappeared into the forest again.

Cassie smirked as he left. "I want to learn magic, Schmendrick. I want to be a shape-changing monster like in The Thing. The horror movie."

"Later. First Owen needs to be sad. What else do you see?"

Sad? What did I see…looking deeper. Looking at Cassie.

I saw a thread from her heart stretching across the ocean. It was strong, stronger than the thread binding her to Schmendrick. It glowed and flickered with non-light.

"Armand," I said.

She sat bolt upright, almost knocking the table over. "He's alive? He's okay?"

"I assume it's him. Schmendrick?"

"He's Husband Cassie? Yes, I see. He's alive over there in that place, if you can see the web." She opened her mouth again, I gave her a shrimp.

Cassie sniffed and rubbed her eyes. "Oh god. Doc showed me videos…" She straightened. "I want to get Armand out of there." She looked at me, then Schmendrick. "I don't know what to do. I barely made it out myself."

Her earlier cheerfulness was gone, if it had been genuine at all. "Tell us," I said. "Do you want to?"

Cassie nodded resolutely and continued feeding Schmendrick; nothing for herself. "If I didn't…go over here and…you know… Doc said he would restart everyone. He showed me what that looked like. He said he'd leave everyone unfinished. All except me, and I'd have to … I'd care for them."

"Unfinished," I said.

Her mouth firmed up. She gave Schmendrick a bit of onion, and Schmendrick spat it out.

I swallowed. "You're one tough hombre, Cassie."

"He's still there!" Her eyes were wild. Absurdly she waved the fork around in a sad gesture, a miserable magic wand, ignoring Schmendrick's open mouth. "What if we can't get them away after all?"

"We will," I said, and I knew it was true. One way or another, Doctor Harrigan wouldn't have those people any longer.

Schmendrick shut her mouth, her eyes widened, her ears went up. She was looking out to sea. Without turning, she said: "Owen. I'm sorry. See Mandy. Now, it's time."

"What? Why?" Mandy had left after the war council, off to punch Godzilla in the kidneys or karate-chop Cthulhu, one assumed.

"Do it please. I'm sorry." She ignored the offered forkful of Cassie's gumbo, watching me. "I love you, please do it."

So I did it again, the Bonus Content Vision, and saw the connections leading from my soul, my heart, to the other people I knew.

There. The single strong, bright thread leading to the most smokin' hottest girl in the world. The one who'd gone to the worst place I'd ever been and tried to get me out.

The thread intensified, became more solid. I tried to touch it with my regular old non-magical hands. No dice, it was like trying to grab at a laser pointer.

"What's he doing," asked Cassie.

"Learning sad things. Be quiet, I love you. Give me shrimp."

Sad things?

A burst of pain seared the back of my neck. I yelped and grabbed it with both hands.

Terrible grinding aches jumped from my left thigh.

The pain didn't stop. It kept throbbing with someone else's pulse, not mine. Impossible to think. All-consuming.

"Holy crap Schmendrick what is this?"

"Mandy. You see her."

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