Questa turned away from the window with a smile. "Genard an' Zoe are comin' back."

Gris-Gris returned the smile. "Good."

Genard and Zoe, laughing over a joke Genard had told, entered the safehouse and went their separate ways. Zoe headed to the kitchen to get something to eat, and Genard went upstairs with the intention of looking for Emil. He needed his friend to look something up on the computer for him. Genard was a smart man, but he wasn't very computer literate. He usually left that kind of thing up to Emil or Theoren.

Genard was about to knock on Emil's bedroom door when he heard his name being called from down the hall. He turned to where the voice was calling from, and groaned. It was Gris-Gris. He walked down the hall towards the assassin and said,

"What's up, Gris?"

Gris gave his most charming smile. "Come in here for a moment. I have something I want to show you."

Genard paused about five feet from where Gris-Gris was. He didn't trust the assassin, and wasn't about to ignore the alarm going off in his head. "Can' you show it to me out here?"

"Non, non, dat would never do. I can' let jus' anyone see it."

There was something in Gris' eyes and voice that made the alarm in Genard's head start clanging with five-star urgency. Something was up. "Well, y'know, I'm sure it's really great, whatever it is, but I'm kinda in a hurry, so if you'll excuse me…" he said, turning away and going back to Emil's room, where he knocked on the door and waved at Gris briefly before entering the room.

"Okay, what's goin' on wit' dose blasted assassins?" Genard demanded when he was safely in Emil's room.

"Did one of 'em try to railroad you into going and 'seein' somet'ing' in Fifolet's room?" Emil asked.

"Yeah! You too?"

"Yeah. I don' trust 'em. Do you?"

Genard snorted. "Hell no. Dey are definitely up to somet'ing, I jus' wish I knew what it was."

"Maybe we should be careful…I have a feelin' dey're not gon' let our turnin' dem down stop dem from tryin' again." Emil suggested.

"Good idea. Now, in de meantime, can you look up somet'ing for me on de computer? I need some information."

Emil rolled his eyes and grinned. "One of dese days, I'm gon' teach you how to do dis for yourself, mon ami. But oui, I'll look up whatever you need."

"T'anks."

Three hours later, Emil and Genard left Emil's room and went downstairs to the kitchen. It was dinnertime, but amazingly, there was no one to be found. The two thieves went around, looking in the living room and the library and various other rooms in the house, but everyone was apparently gone.

Genard frowned at his friend. "Where'd everyone go?"

Emil shrugged. "You know as much as I do…I've been in de same place you were for de past three hours."

They went back to the kitchen. "Well, since de others obviously went somewhere for dinner an' forgot to tell us, we may as well fend for ourselves." Genard said. "What d'you want, hot dogs, frozen pizza, macaroni and cheese?"

Emil pulled a take out menu for a Chinese restaurant off the bulletin board and waved it in Genard's face. With matching grins, they said in unison, "Chinese take-out!"

Twenty-five minutes later there were six different cartons of Chinese food on the kitchen table and the two thieves were having a grand old time eating and joking around. They stopped suddenly when they heard a sound coming from the living room.

Genard raised an eyebrow. "I didn' t'ink anyone was home but us." He whispered.

"Me neither." Emil whispered back. "I got a bad feelin' 'bout dis, G."

Emil's bad feeling was justified all of a sudden, when they looked up to find three men they really didn't want to see standing in the doorway.

"Well, well, well." Gris-Gris said, a nasty tinge to his voice. "What have we here, boys? Looks to me like we weren' invited to de party. An' I don' know 'bout you, but I don' t'ink it was very nice of our two t'ief friends here to exclude us like dat. What do you s'pose we should do 'bout dis?"

Questa took a switchblade out of his pocket and flipped it open, revealing a shiny ten-inch blade. Genard and Emil didn't have to guess that it was razor sharp. They already knew it was. Fifolet followed his example, revealing a long sword. He smiled evilly at the two thieves and answered his friend's question.

"I'm sure we can t'ink of somet'ing, Gris."

Emil and Genard cast each other quick looks. They knew they could at least try to defend themselves, but they had a feeling that no matter how well they defended themselves, they were going to lose this fight. They weren't the assassins after all, and while they did know how to fight, they weren't prepared to fight three trained killers.

"Now, now, Gris, can we talk 'bout dis?" Emil asked in a fake cheerful voice.

Gris-Gris walked across the room, making the most of his six-foot-five stature. With one of his large black hands, he grabbed Emil by the neck and lifted the red-haired thief off his chair, slamming him against the wall, choking him.

"You talk too much, Lapin. I b'lieve I told you dat b'fore."

"Uh…yeah…I t'ink you…mentioned it…I'll…uh…I'll shut up now." Emil replied, struggling to breathe.

"You have no idea, you little punk." Gris said with an evil laugh, tightening his grip on Emil's neck.

"Let him go!" Genard demanded, jumping to his feet, ready to move to stop Gris-Gris. Instead, he was stopped himself. He froze when he felt the blade of Questa's knife at his own throat.

"Don' t'ink you're in much of a position to make us do anyt'ing, Alouette, sorry. Ain' no one gon' stop us." Fifolet chuckled, moving over and using the tip of his sword to take Genard's glasses off his face.

By this point, the two thieves were starting to seriously panic. Emil was having a very hard time breathing, and felt like his head was going to pop off if Gris kept squeezing like he was. Genard was trying to catch his own breath, which was coming in short spurts. He knew he was no match for two blade-wielding assassins. He cast a quick glance at Emil even though he couldn't see well, he did see that his friend's face was turning blue.

"C'mon, Gris, let him down. If you're gon' beat us up, den get on wit' it, but for God's sake, let him down." Genard pleaded on Emil's behalf.

"Let him down, huh? Okay. If you say so." Gris-Gris replied. Still holding Emil's neck, he pulled the thief away from the wall and threw him across the kitchen. Emil, gasping for breath, groaned in pain as he hit the fridge. He was still gasping as he watched Gris coming towards him, pulling a knife out of his pocket.

Genard decided to take a bit of a risk and grabbed Questa's arm, pulling the knife away from his neck and smashing it against the table, causing Questa to drop the knife. Fifolet swung his sword towards Genard's head, but Genard dodged and ended up with a large gash on his arm. The two assassins lunged after Genard, but Genard had gotten his glasses on again and he dashed to the other side of the table, bleeding all over the place. He tried to keep the table between him and them and they were stuck in a deadlock when there was a loud "Ahem!" from the doorway.

Gris-Gris looked up from his position above Emil. He was holding his knife at Emil's throat and was about to do some serious damage to the young thief, when the voice interrupted. Fifolet and Questa paused and turned around. Both Emil and Genard sighed with relief.

Standing in the doorway was a very angry-looking Remy. Rather than tell the three assassins to put their weapons down, he merely charged the knives and sword with biokinetic energy and watched them blow up. He pointed at Gris, Fifolet and Questa one at a time, and then pointed at the living room.

"I wan' talk to de three of you. You can wait for me in de livin' room. I won' be long. Go."

As the three assassins filed out of the room, Genard went over to where Emil was still on the floor, gasping, and helped him to his feet.

Remy looked at his two friends with concern in his face. "Are you two okay?"

Genard looked at his steadily bleeding arm. "Well, I'm bleedin' like a stuck pig, an' Emil here jus' 'bout got his head snapped off, but I t'ink we'll make it. I'll jus' have to go see Tante Mattie 'bout dis."

"Any idea why dey did it?"

"We were eatin'. We weren' doin' anyt'ing." Emil replied, rubbing his neck. "Dey jus' came in an' got all mad dat we didn' invite dem to join us for Chinese food. But we t'ink dey were up to somet'ing earlier."

Remy frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Dey kept tryin' to get de two of us to go into Fifolet's room to apparently see somet'ing. Dey wouldn' take whatever it was out of the room, an' I'm getting de impression dey really wanted to get us into de room so dey could beat us up." Genard explained.

Remy sighed. This whole thing was just insane. He didn't understand why the assassins were making it so hard for the unification to work. "I really gotta talk to Bel 'bout all dis. It's getting out of hand. But first, I have to straighten dose three out." He said, more to himself than to his friends. Remembering what Emil had said the other day, he sighed again. Getting the assassins under control was not going to be an easy task, he just hoped Bella Donna would be up to helping him with it.

If she wasn't, things could start to get really ugly.