The room looked more like a museum than a bank — its lobby was decorated with stone statues of the bank’s employees, their faces frozen mid-scream. The glass doors had been smashed to bits, as had the windows and the plexiglass barriers that were supposed to have protected the tellers from burglars — a purpose which had evidently not happened in this case.

“For the love of God, what happened here?” breathed Monica Dean1.

Cassandra Pham knelt down to pick up a finger that had fallen off one of the statues.

“Petrification,” she said. “Whoever – or whatever – that perp was, it used a rare and dangerous weapon to turn all these poor things into stone.” She placed the finger on the couch. “You familiar with Petrification, Monica? Think you can undo it?”

“Maybe,” she said. “I’ll have to study it. Where’d someone even get one of those weapons anyway?”

“I found a survivor!” a cop interrupted. “He was hiding behind one of the desks.” The cop was leading a small, trembling man by the arm.

“Th- the person – the thing – stole it,” the small man wailed. “Took my – my Pet-Petrification Weapon – and t-turned ever-everyone into stone…” His voice trailed off into a stream of high-pitched wailing.

Cassandra resisted the urge to clobber him on the spot.

“You had a Petrification Weapon? Here!? You really thought it was a good idea to keep a hazard like that?” she said, rubbing her forehead. “What the hell, man.”

“I know it’s against the Charter!” the man squealed. “But, it just looked so beautiful, and cool, that I couldn’t help but –”

“Save your breath,” Cassandra snapped. “We’ll deal with you later.” She seized the man by the collar. “Now, what did the perp look like? Tell us everything you saw!”

The man scrunched his face in an effort to remember.

“Think!” Cassandra shouted.

“Um,” the man said, “He… was wearing a black hoodie. And baggy cargo pants… and… Oh, I don’t know! His hood was covering his face. It’s not like I got close enough to see all the details!”

Cassandra let the man go. He fell to the ground, gasping for breath.

“What the hell, man,” she repeated.

“At the very least, his description matches what little we could make out from this bank’s grainy security feed,” remarked the cop, who was studying a video on his phone.

“We need a better lead,” Cassandra groaned. “Outfits like that are a dime a dozen.”

A second cop came running over. “Captain!” he shouted. “I found a match!” He showed the others a video on a tablet screen. “Look! Security footage of our suspect getting on a train at Union Station!”

The two cops and two witches crowded around the tablet. Sure enough, amid the crowds of commuters, they saw a figure in a hoodie and cargo pants slip onto a subway train.

“I stand corrected,” Cassandra conceded. “Where could the perp be now? Any ideas?”

She had no idea how to begin to answer the question. As a recent transplant in Los Angeles, she couldn’t tell her streets apart, much less navigate the transit system. But Monica was LA born and raised, and she had spent her childhood riding the buses and rails. Even with the recent opening of new lines, she knew the Metro map and schedules like the back of her hand. She closed her eyes to think.

“The video was from about ten minutes ago,” she said. “It would a D Line train, judging from the timestamp. Assuming the suspect is still on the train… he or she would have just passed Wilshire/Vermont – in Koreatown.”

“Shit!” Cassandra exclaimed. “We’ll never catch up. We gotta buy some time. Send some folks to hold the train at Wilshire Whatever-the-next-station-is,” she said to the cops. “Oh, but it wouldn’t be a good idea for them to get on the train alone. They’ll need some magical backup.”

“And where would we find this ‘magical backup’?” asked Monica. Then, her eyes widened. “Surely, you don’t mean…?”

“Our good friend Doctor Lavender just so happens to be in the area,” said Cassandra. “Give her a call, will ya?”