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She picked up her phone, “Yep?”

“Illsaaaa! I need help!” Jack’s voice was tight with panic.

She chinned the phone and started grabbing her emergency gear, the stuff she usually didn’t carry in her jacket pockets, “What and where?”

“I think I got a date!” he wailed.

“Jack,” Ilsa paused, dialing herself back from her combat response before going on. “You are a man grown and do not need a chaperone.” Ilsa put her dagger and vial of blessed saline back in her desk. “And what do you mean ‘you think’ you have a date?”

“There’s an engineering grad student in my comparative theology class that asked me out for coffee and he asked me to meet him Saturday gototheplayinthepark,”

“Breathe, hon.” Ilsa chuckled into the phone, “You like Shakespeare, it’s a public place, it’ll be fine.”

“But what if he wants to string me up by my thumbs and beat me while he listens to me read the original draft of Dostoyevsky's *Notes from Underground*? I don’t know Russian!” her friend’s voice spiraled up in panic.

“Not on the first date, surely.”