Chapter 26
Denouement
Beaten and bloody but still victorious, the hunters quickly realized that though Haji’s destruction was now all but assured, their work was only beginning. Everyone spent Saturday resting and trying to recover, since they knew they'd have to go back to the park at sundown in case Haji came up from the ground. Charlotte, Melba, Paladin, and Randy snuck into the park, evading the large number of cops who were also milling around the area, and found a hiding place to watch the clearing where they knew Haji was. An hour or so after sundown, the hunters noticed James and a few of his minions also taking up a position near the clearing – it seemed they weren't the only ones waiting for Haji to make his move. Randy also noticed a few men in suits hanging around the crime scene who looked like government agents of some kind, and whom second sight revealed to be "wrong." He used Discern and saw that one of them seemed to have half of his body made out of metal, circuitry, and machinery, like a cyborg. None of the agents seemed to notice the group, however, and went away after making a brief stop. The group waited until sunrise with no sign of Haji, and resolved to try again the next night.
On Sunday morning, Melba decided to spend some time with her mom and find out what was going on. Melba went to church with her mom, bringing Randy along as a handy Discern-using backup tool. There, she met the pastor, a bunch of her mom's bingo buddies, and the man who ran the bingo group. (He explained that the group was actually a private get-together at his house, which was why it took place on a different night from the bingo session listed on the church sign.) Out of all these people, many of the bingo buddies and the organizer all seemed wrong to second sight. Discern revealed that the bingo ladies were supernaturally affected in some way, and that the organizer was half-man, half-machine in the same way that the agent at the crime scene had been. Curious, Melba ate lunch with her mom, then made plans to meet her again that evening to go to bingo (and hopefully find out exactly what was going on), and took Paladin along with her (partially for backup in case something went wrong, but mostly because she knew she'd have to introduce her boyfriend to her mom eventually). The meeting turned out to be exactly what was advertised – a bunch of friends from church getting together to play bingo. However, when Melba looked around with second sight she noticed that the muffins being served contained some sort of tracking device, and that a number of the women who had eaten them now carried the small microchips (which were obviously supernatural) inside their bodies. Melba took a muffins along with her for further study (though when she gave it to Hakim later she didn't learn very much from him – when he saw it he screamed incoherently and disappeared, and hasn't been seen since).
Meanwhile, Charlotte and Randy hit the streets, hoping to find Charlie before once again taking up the "Haji watch" in the park. On their tour of his familiar hangouts, they noticed something rather disturbing. In a back alley, there appeared to be a battle going on between two groups of vampires. One side of the battle consisted of some scruffy-looking guys with claws, and the other was a group of Asians – some of whom Randy recognized as being members of Mr. Saigow's group. It didn't take them long to figure out what was going on: With Haji out of the picture, Saigow was making his move to take control of the Twin Cities. Though Charlotte and Randy were both concerned about Charlie, they decided he could take care of himself and that it was much more pressing to get to the park and make sure Haji wasn't coming out to take on Saigow head-to-head. Randy called Melba and Paladin, pulling them away from bingo and convincing them to come to the park as well. But things were oddly quiet at the park; when Charlotte got James' attention, he told her that her suspicions were correct, and that he wasn't in danger despite his nominal membership in Haji's organization, since he technically did Saigow a favor by getting rid of Haji. With that, the group sat down to wait again and dissect the ins and outs of vampiric politics. Charlotte shared her theory about the Haji-Saigow relationship: Haji had been pretending to be a member of Saigow's group while really upholding the ideals of his own, in the hopes that he could play both sides against the middle and grab power for himself after starting a war between the two sides. Whatever the case may have been, it proved to be irrelevant when, shortly before dawn, James approached the group and told them that since Haji hadn't come up during the night, he would be "sleeping" for a very long time – so long, in fact, that the hunters would probably not have to deal with him again in their lifetime. In other words, the group's problem was more or less solved.
With Haji out of the way for the time being, the hunters could turn their attention to cleaning up some of the mess that he had caused. Charlotte, in particular, was kicking herself for giving out the symbols to Haji, even though it looked like he wouldn't be able to use them (and even though she'd saved Randy's life by doing so). The only solution, she realized, was to create new symbols to use in place of the old ones – a task that could only be accomplished by Visionaries. Immediately she sprung into action, calling Jonas, Pete and Pete, and Kurt and asking them to help her by making their own symbols to replace the ones that had been compromised. They all agreed, and Charlotte and the other Visionaries all began pondering their new symbols. While talking to Kurt, she also learned some slightly distressing information – it seemed that there were very few hunters of a more zealous persuasion being imbued in recent years, and he was becoming concerned that whatever force caused imbuings was being thrown out of balance somehow. She wasn't sure what to make of it, but passed it along to the other hunters anyway. In conversation with their allies, they learned that all the zealous hunters had been imbued a year ago or longer. The evidence to support Kurt's theory certainly existed, but no one could be quite sure what it meant.
Yet another problem also presented itself on Monday morning. Randy checked the vampire P.O. and found a scroll from Saigow requesting another meeting. After consulting with the rest of the group, they somewhat nervously agreed to meet at Chino Latino on Wednesday night. Luckily for them, Saigow did not have treachery in mind – he wanted, it seemed, to congratulate them for getting rid of Haji, in his own peculiar way. As he put it, "When I first met you, I considered you cattle. Later on, I changed my mind and considered you my pawns. But now, you have risen high enough in my estimation that I consider you my enemies." But because of that, he said, he would be ending the pact at midnight in exactly a week. Hunters and vampires would have to fend for themselves from then on. The hunters tried to negotiate a little, but after it became clear that Saigow did not want to negotiate they decided it was best to simply accept his offer and end things on as good a note as they could. Leaving the restaurant, one thing was clear to the group: They would have to let the rest of the hunters know what was going on, and gather everyone together if they wanted the imbued community to survive the night that the pact would end.