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With the movie he was working stunts on finished with filming, Jalen again finds himself homeless and now living
with the Oracle and Lorne at the Oracle's small apartment in East LA. Needless to say the arrangement is not working out, and Lorne
is especially annoyed by the lack of hot water after Jalen's early morning showers.
At a rundown bus station elsewhere in the city, Patrick is going through the contents of a locker. Inside the locker
are several odd items, including a duffel bag, an automatic pistol, a vial of strangely colored liquid, a medallion with occult symbols,
and a Polaroid of Patrick with a black man, a woman in goth-like clothing, and a man in an expensive suit. All three of the people in
the photo with Patrick look to be in their early to mid-twenties. Patrick stares at the picture for a minute before opening the
duffel bag and taking out several stacks of money. He puts the cash into his jacket pocket and replaces the duffel bag before closing
the locker. Patrick then turns and leaves the bus station, taking a moment to glance at a newspaper in his hand with a circled ad
for a 1967 Barracuda.
Cut to the offices of Wolfram & Hart where Travis McCauley is just finishing a meeting with Lionel Philip
Randolph. As Randolph and his two bodyguards are leaving, Alexandra Morelli enters the boardroom. She deliberately bumps into
Travis' arm, the one wounded a few weeks earlier by a crossbow shot from Ethan. Alexandra warns Travis to stay away from the
Cassandra Project, that it belongs to her. The war of words threatens to escalate but a third person enters the room and orders
the two to stop bickering. The third person is Andrew Cross, who tells the other two that they will deal with Ethan, Patrick and
the others in due time.
At work later that afternoon, Lauren receives a vision from the Powers That Be and collapses at her desk. Lauren covers
with her usual excuse, that she had a seizure, and her boss, Brian Harker, sends her home for the day. Thankful for such an
understanding (and cute) boss, Lauren heads out to tell the others about her vision. Meanwhile, back inside, Harker shows the real
reason for his understanding nature when it comes to Lauren: he calls Alexandra Morelli at Wolfram & Hart with his regular
report on Lauren and her visions. Lauren calls Dana and tells her about the vision, where she saw an old man in an apothecary shop
being attacked by demons. Dana tracks down the shop and they head there after notifying Patrick and Jalen. They also try to contact
Ethan but with no luck. At Ethan's apartment we see why he does not answer the phone, he is lying on the bed passed out, and open
bottles of prescription medication lie scattered around the bed.
At the apothecary shop Dana and Lauren see that they have arrived before the attack. While Lauren does a little
shopping for scented candles and bath beads, Dana takes an interest in what the old man has behind the counter. It turns out the
owner is an alchemist, and he recognizes a fellow occultist when he sees one. But before the old man can make a sale to Dana,
Patrick informs them that the demons have just arrived. After dispatching one demon, Patrick hobbles the other and interrogates him.
The demon breaks and tells him that they and several other demons were hired by Wolfram & Hart to kidnap several well known
alchemists in the Los Angeles area. He knows Wolfram & Hart are acting on behalf of a client, but he doesn't know who. Patrick
lets the demon go and the group ponders their next move.
At Ethan's apartment there is a knock at the door that grow louder and stronger. Still lying in a stupor on his bed
Ethan does not hear the incessant knocking, nor does he notice when the knocking stops, replaced by the sound of someone working the
lock on his door. The intruder turns out to be Anne Steele, who is desperate to get in touch with Ethan and his friends. When she
sees the state Ethan is in, and the empty pill bottles, she drags him into the bathroom and throws him in the shower with the cold
water running. Despite her best efforts she is still unable to get Ethan to say anything coherent, but she does notice that he had
a missed call on his phone. When she sees that the call display says that the missed caller was Dana, Anne dials the number. She tells
Dana that two men in a black sedan grabbed Jennifer Guerrin from the teen shelter and when Anne describes the car and its license
number Dana recognizes it as Randolph's car and the two goons were probably his bodyguards. Dana tells Anne that they will get right
on finding Jennifer. With her message delivered, Anne makes sure that Ethan is in no danger, then tosses any remaining pills she can
find and leaves him back on the bed where she found him, having made no mention of the real reason she was calling from Ethan's phone
other than telling Dana that Ethan had a "rough night".
Dana, Lauren, Patrick and Jalen head to Randolph's house in the Hollywood Hills where they discover that he has put
a powerful mystic seal around the house. The seal counters the group's every effort at entering the house, and Dana cannot think of
any quick way to disable the spell, it is too strong. Instead she digs into the city's records and reads up on the history of the house,
knowing that Randolph would not have chosen to live there if it did not have a "pedigree". Sure enough the house was notorious
for celebrity parties back in the 1920s. Not only that, but during Prohibition the house still got a steady supply of liquor, allegedly
through a secret tunnel. The four split up and search the grounds, and Lauren stumbles across a boarded up well. Sure enough, at the
bottom of the well they find the entrance to the tunnel, which takes them into the basement of the house. Once inside, though, they are
intercepted by Randolph's bodyguards, Kurt and Rod. Patrick and Jalen immediately move in to attack the two, allowing Dana and Lauren to
slip past. The fight turns out to be more difficult than the heroes anticipated when they realize that Kurt and Rod are not as human as
they appear.
Dana and Lauren soon discover just how big, and how strange, the basement of Randolph's house is. Dana in particular has
a hard time keeping focused on finding Jennifer because everywhere she looks she sees occult texts, tools, and artifacts. Finally the
two locate Jennifer, chained to a table in an occult lab where it looks like Randolph was draining her blood. Also in the room are the bodies
of two other people, each shot once through the head. Dana figures the two dead people were alchemists and that Randolph had them killed after
they accomplished what he needed. Lauren takes the weakened Jennifer with her while Dana looks through the notes in the lab trying to
figure out Randolph's plan.
Meanwhile, Patrick and Jalen have managed to kill the demonic bodyguards, Kurt and Rod. When Lauren arrives with Jennifer,
she and Patrick begin heading back down the tunnel while Jalen goes to get Dana. In the lab, Dana's quick research has uncovered Randolph's
plan. According to his journals, despite his success Randolph always hated the fact that because his family was not well off he was never
regarded as an equal to the others in high society. With this last barrier between him and what he saw as his destiny Randolph had the
alchemists use Jennifer's blood to craft an artifact capable of altering reality, much as Jennifer had once been able to do with her dreams.
Dana also discovers that Randolph has placed most of his more valuable texts in the occult lab and mystically shielded it so that no matter
what happens to reality the room and its contents will remain unaffected. When Jalen finds Dana he tries to get her to leave, not understanding
why she says they have stay in the room, and get Patrick, Lauren and Jennifer back in the room as well. Desperate to get Dana to leave, Jalen
begins burning many of the occult texts, infuriating Dana who grabs a fire extinguisher to put out the flames. Jalen tries to stop her but it
turns out to be unnecessary because Randolph had installed special fire extinguishing systems in the basement to protect his prized possessions.
Even with the fire out Jalen continues to try and get Dana to leave, so she calls Patrick on his cell phone and explains the situation to him.
Unless they all get into the shielded room before Randolph alters reality they won't know anything has changed. If they get in the room at
least they will still remember the old reality and hopefully be able undo whatever Randolph has planned. Patrick agrees and he and Lauren,
with Jennifer, return to the basement lab. There the group waits until there is a strange burst of radiance, and all the lights go out.
Using their flashlights the group cautiously leaves the lab, worried about what has happened. As they explore the basement
it becomes apparent that in the new reality the house seems to have been abandoned years ago. When they head upstairs they see that this
is the case, the house is in bad shape and looks like it has not been lived in for decades. In the main study the group finds a skeleton
seated at a desk, and resting on the desk is a blood red jewel. It takes Dana a few moments, but she begins to suspect what happened, and
she scoops up the gem, wrapping it in her jacket and making a conscious effort to monitor her thoughts while she has it with her.
Outside the house Patrick's car is missing, but Dana points out that in the altered reality they would never have come
to the house in the first place. Some quick checks reveal that nothing appears to have changed, at least nothing drastic. It is not until
Dana researches Randolph and his family history that the truth is learned. The jewel, obviously the artifact that Randolph had made from
Jennifer's blood, did alter reality to give Randolph's family status in high society. What Randolph did not realize was that he had
inadvertently created an Oracle Gem, a powerful magical item that alters reality to grant the user's wishes, but always with a
twist that makes the wish turn out in the worst possible way. In Randolph's case his family had now come to America in the 1800s and struck it
rich in the gold mines. The Randolphs became one of the most important families in California, right up to the market crash of 1927. The
family fortune was wiped out and they were left destitute. The gem gave Randolph his wish, his family became important, but they lost it
all long before he was even born.
Once they are satisfied that the only thing drastically altered by Randolph's actions were Randolph himself, the group realizes
that the now-abandoned house would make an excellent base of operations. Especially since thanks to Randolph the house comes with an extensive
occult library in the basement, Jalen's arson attempt notwithstanding. As the group begins figuring out how to pull the money together to
acquire the decrepit building, a recently awakened Ethan calls up Dana to see if anything happened while he was "recovering".
...and elsewhere in Los Angeles a homeless, destitute man wanders the streets, madly proclaiming that he was once a rich
and powerful man, but that it was a dream yet not a dream.
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