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That last break before the last class on a Thursday afternoon--it's a golden moment.  Even with bleak winter howling outside, the light that seeps through the windows seems warm and soporific, so it's startling, perhaps, when Sylvia seems to come out of nowhere, stepping into Jakob's path like she's been waiting half an hour for him to pass.  She gives the drifting crowds of students a searching glance and puts her hand on Jakob's shoulder just to make sure she has his complete attention.  "Hi," she says.  "Are you busy tonight?  Do you have something to do?"

"Nothing I can't get out of.  I'm sure my uncle has some other crazy idea for a home improvement project waiting for me which I'd just love to get out of.  Something going on?"

"Sort of," Sylvia says, eyebrows knitting like she's not sure of herself or her plan.  "Want to come over to my house for dinner?  I've got something I could use some help with, and you might be just the guy to render assistance."

She pauses.  "That didn't sound like a come-on line, did it?"

Jakob laughs.
"Is that what a come-on line is supposed to sound like?  I haven't heard very many to compare it to - home school and life on a farm doesn't leave a lot of time for a social life.  What time would you like me to come over?"

"You can just come over and hang out till after dinner if you want," Sylvia says, "but after dinner we've got plans."  She gives him a canny squint.  "You're not one of those guys who never lies, are you?  'Cause that was why I figured it should be you and not John.  John can't lie.  Mitzi would threaten him with a warm bowl of bread pudding, and he'd crumble like yesterday's shortbread."

Jakob nods in appreciation of Sylvia's food metaphors.

"Lie, no.  Willing to bend the truth if it works to the benefit of all involved, sure.  Does that work for you?"

"That'll do.  It's just, I saw something strange earlier today, and I'm worried there's evil afoot.  But I don't know for sure, so it doesn't seem like it's worth getting the moms worked up."

"We can't have that now, can we?  Ready when you are."

Dinner at Sylvia's house is a casual, homey affair.  Mitzi has cooked up a melting concoction of lentils and vegetables that manages savoriness despite its lack of meat.  Home-baked bread, dessert from scratch, a salad of organic vegetables that she manages to coax out of the aeroponics garden in the basement--it's all perfect and all turned out of her kitchen with such perfect ease that there must be magic at work.

Afterward Sylvia tells her parents she and Jakob are going to meet their friends to work on a project, and she leads him out into the night, heading for the train into Chicago proper.  "This would go a lot faster if we had motorcycles," she complains, bundled to the eyebrows against the cold.  "I'm starting to think we got the short end of the stick, not being able to fly or teleport or anything.  You don't happen to fly, do you?"

"Fly?  No.  I'm pretty much built for smashing things and absorbing attacks aimed at my friends."

He doffs his jacket and wraps it around Sylvia.  "You look cold."

They walk in silence for a few moments.

"So... has it always been so, what's the word... volatile at the freak table in the lunchroom or is that a more recent thing, say, since the group got, um, salsa-fied?"

She smiles gratefully at him for the extra jacket.  "You're talking about Alicia, right?  Generally speaking, before Alicia showed up, the only arguments at the table were between Colin and me, and with us it's always . . . well, you know how satisfying it is to pick a fight with someone when you're not going after someone's feelings, just their ideas?  That's how it is between us.

"Alicia always seems to think that, when you're talking, you're talking about her.  And she's willing to jump to conclusions about you, like you never existed before she came around.  'Benefit of the doubt' is not in her vocabulary."

Sylvia purses her lips and pulls her mouth to one side.  "She's like a black hole for angst.  She desperately wants to be understood, and she won't extend anyone else the same courtesy."

Jakob shrugs.  "I guess I'm just not real good at picking these things up.  I tend to deal with life as it comes."

He looks around him as they walk.  With every step towards the train station Jakob is treading on new ground for him.

"Where are we going, anyway?  Other than to Chicago.  That much even I could figure out."

Sylvia tries to describe the neighborhood.  She even tries to name it.  But she's not a native.  She could tell Jakob all about the little boutiques on Haight-Ashbury, but to her Chicago is all concrete and windchill.  "It's this place that sort of looks like the seedy patch between downtown San Francisco and Golden Gate, all little old buildings made of brick, with awnings.  We were driving past it this morning, and--do you ever see someone and get a bad feeling?  There was this guy standing on the sidewalk, staring across the street, and there was something really creepy about him.  I just . . . I got the feeling he was up to no good, you know?  And I thought it was worth checking out.

"You don't mind, do you?  This could turn out to be really boring and pointless."

"You mean more pointless then being up working on a roof at night - in January?"

He shakes his head as he thinks of his uncle's cockamamie idea to fix the roof in the middle of the winter.

"Yeah, I know what you mean about getting a bad feeling off of someone... definitely worth looking into."

They take the El into the city, and while Sylvia couldn't have told Jakob anything about the landmarks, population, or terrain of the neighborhood she sought, with the power of Google behind her she can lead them off at the right stop and then navigate to an older, artsy neighborhood that's on the cusp of gentrification.  No doubt in a year the pizzeria next to the pawn shop will become a Starbucks, and the year after that the place that sells international handicrafts will become a ballet studio for rising prima donnas.

Somewhere between the two sits a store called Fine Old Things.  The lamp post in front of its security-barred door flickers and buzzes, and the dim orange strobe only intermittently illuminates the hand-painted sign on the store's cracked window glass.  It gives a latent, patient awareness to the tangle of old tea sets, wall clocks, and porcelain dolls inside.

The store adjoins an alley somewhat hidden from where Sylvia and Jakob stand.  It rises two stories, and a light upstairs suggests the fluted silhouette of an old lampshade, a room more sparsely furnished than the crowded shadow box downstairs.  Perhaps the owner of the store lives up there.

No one seems to want to be outside tonight, and the sidewalks in this neighborhood are abandoned.  It's too damned cold.

"He was standing right about here," Sylvia says, "and he was looking that way."  She points at the antique store.

Jakob has been entirely silent for most of the trip in - and goes even quieter once they hit the streets of Chicago.  Sensory overload doesn't even begin to describe what's going on in his mind.

Of course, he's heard of places such as this before, seen them on TV, but he is wholly unprepared for the experience of actually setting foot in the big city.

The smells alone - mostly of the variety of foods available - have his head swimming.

It is with great effort that he remembers that he's here on business and forces his wonder to the back of his brain in order to be of some use to Sylvia on this venture.

He stands where she indicated the creepy guy had stood and looks at the antique store.

Sylvia was hoping Jakob would have something to say, some direction to give, but she realizes how slim the chance is that she caught a crime in the offing.  "What time do people commit crimes, traditionally?  Is it, like, midnight?  Later?  How long do we hang around before we know for sure no one's showing up tonight?"

Halfway through the last word out of her mouth, the slide and slam of a van door comes from the alley next to the store.  Sylvia leads the way across the street and sidles up to the corner, so she can peer around the building.  Whatever she sees excites her, and she steps back and beckons to Jakob.  Three guys, maybe four.  Looks like they're trying to break open the side door into the store.

"I guess we don't have to hang around very long."

He takes a look at the situation developing.

"So... how do we want to do this?  My way or your way?"

She looks almost injured.  "What makes you think there's a difference?"

"Well... there's the smart way - your way - get into their heads & make 'em give up quietly, or at least feel woozy enough for us to take 'em without creating an... incident.  And leave us with a chance that they'll be able to tell us what they're after in there.  Or the dumb way - my way.  The way that usually ends up with a lot of noise, multiple contusions, and considerable property damage."

Sylvia stares at nothing, thinking that over.  "Getting into their heads and making them give up quietly.  I'm not sure I can do that."  She looks sidelong at Jakob as if striking a bargain.  "I can make them a lot more afraid of you, and you can ask them to give up quietly.  That'll be the half-smart way.  Or, hey, optimism--the half-dumb way."

"Sounds like a plan.  Ready when you are."

Jakob strides out away from the wall and towards the antique store.  He stops when he's standing near the side door.

"Hey fellas... could one of you tell me where Luigi's New York-Style Pizzeria is at?  I need some real pizza - this thick Chicago-style crap is for the birds."

He waits for any of them to turn to look his way - and times his shift into metal form to coincide with it.  The shift is a free action - he'll charge with the intent of bowling for crooks the second he has their attention.