Enter Tillingtast

Sonya gets a vision. She doesn't recognize it, but it's the Gernsback Continuum, where she watches mages experiment with a Native American spear that has an evil spirit trapped inside it. The vision shifts to Victoria Station, and then to Darkside Moonbase. She tells the pack, and realizing this is mage stuff, they get Ambrose to explain the dream.

Elsewhere, Ambrose, stopping at a coffee shop to pick up lunch, finds a napkin with a note: "Head to Jellystone."

Meanwhile, the Gurahl Caleb is working at Yellowstone as a park ranger. He's been having trouble with a new Pentex subsidiary called Native Heritage Inc., which supposedly is a charitable organization for preservation of native and culturally important places and artifacts. Needless to say, their idea of preservation is somewhat unorthodox.

Currently, however, he's tracing the theft of a spear from the museum there, which was removed along with a Uktena banetender's staff. They were taken by a Raven Mocker, a corrupt crow spirit, who then lost it to some laser-wielding mages during its escape into the park. Caleb meets a Nuwisha who calls himself Tim Runningaway, and two federal agents who are investigating the case (the Project Twilight partners the group met before, in Pennsylvania). They're heading down to Arizona, where the spear was originally found.

Hearing of the theft and betting it's connected, the pack takes Ambrose out to Yellowstone with them to investigate this dream of Sonya's, and they encounter Caleb there. While they fill each other in, Ambrose pokes around with his gadgets and ends up following around a fomori who's wandering around the museum. He catches the fomori's attention, in fact, and stumblingly tries not to incriminate himself when the guy asks him what he's doing. Jonas drags him back out to the others as they prepare to leave.

Ambrose suggests they check out the Etherite science stations at Yellowstone before they go, and indeed the assistants there give them the names of the Etherites involved and explain what happened. They found the Raven Mocker trying to make off with the spear, shot it down, and then took the spear to the Gernsback to test it once they realized it was odd. They also are able to put clues together to figure out that a Lasombra stole the staff separately.

In Arizona, they learn that the cave complex--old copper mines, dug into an older cave complex--where the spear was found has been bought by the Venetian Equity Mining Corp. Sonya is suspicious, and rightfully so: digging through records turns up that one Antonio Giovanni is in charge of the company, along with stories that the mines are haunted. Sonya makes note of the court records, which point toward some judicial corruption (she stores that information for later use in legally getting the mines back into the proper hands).

RF finds them a Uktena caern not too far away. The Uktena there say that the spear contained an ancient mage spirit-talker named Desire on the Wind. He was an ancient Navajo badass, extremely evil, and knew where even worse objects were: a talisman called the "Wolf's Paw," which granted the fighting abilities of a werewolf, a book called the "Book of Rashalka" which was a legendary BSD artifact that was said to drive you mad if you read it, but also impart great abilities such as the power to wield plagues. It sounds almost like someone managed to set the Black Spiral to paper. The Uktena say that the spirit of the Banetender is said to still be locked in the spearhead with the mage.

Ambrose hacks into the Giovanni records, but gets himself possessed by a ghostly guardian. It takes off with his body, but before the Garou can catch up to him, he manages to force it out of him, then sucks it into a containment jar. Aila makes him release it, and once the ghost discovers he's in safe hands, he's willing to turn over all kinds of information on the Giovanni: the three Giovanni in town, where they're staying, what they want (the book and staff and spear; they think the spear holds a powerful ghost and that the staff can control it). One house is cordoned off. It looks like someone broke in, killed five people--one of whom was incinerated--in a huge struggle. The pack wonders if it was the Inquisition again. It also looks like the Giovanni sent ghouls into the mine.

Ambrose makes a note to self: learn to ward against umbral entities.

Heading into the mines (Ambrose makes a spirit-viewing flashlight), they find Navajo glyphs on the walls across the Gauntlet. The story is that the Uktena banetender hunted the mage and called on Coyote's help to stop him. Coyote gave the spear to the Uktena to guard.

They find a perimeter alert gizmo. Ambrose recognizes the construction as being distinctive to an Etherite by the name of Dr. Gavin Tillingtast. The man is British beyond British, vanished about 30 years ago, studied in similar fields to Ambrose. He was known as a Victorian throwback even among the Etherites. He believed spirits were evil, just about worshipped the fae, made alarming compacts with what he considered "pure" British spirits, and was into crazy revisionist British history.

Making their way onward, the group gets attacked by shadow tendrils. One grabs Ambrose, whisking him off to a dark room where a Lasombra who was apparently hired on wants to know what they're doing there. The Lasombra's just interested in money and entertainment. He has three ugly Nosferatu or something with him. He calls Ambrose a warlock (which Ambrose vocally disapproves of), a Hermetic and a Tremere, refuses any gift or trade when Ambrose tries to talk his way free, and finally deciding not to get involved, lets the Etherite go and vanishes into the murk.

The others arrive just afterward, and united again, they all head down to a ritual room where they're attacked by bane-possessed bats. Aila beats up a spectre (noting that there are many in the area), then steps sideways into the Shadowlands, where she spots a Giovanni, three spectres, and two guys in Pentex lab coats hauling up something from a chasm.

Ambrose rigs up a half-built prototype of a gizmo that thins the barrier between worlds enough to basically just dump them all into the Shadowlands, and they all fight. Sonya knocks the Pentex guys into the chasm while the others tear the spectres apart. A Sluagh turns up to snag a book out of the chasm with his prehensile tongue. Ambrose disrupts the Sluagh's pattern (Rubs the Bones) with a sonic attack, Sonya spin-kicks him into the chasm, and Aila catches the book, which tries to possess her. She calls it a "pervert." RF claws apart the Giovanni, but after it gives him puppy-dog eyes, Ambrose refuses to finish the job on the vampire because he feels too bad about killing someone who's helpless. The Giovanni takes advantage and mind-whammies him so Ambrose will defend him, and then an armband he's wearing starts beeping. Ambrose, who isn't thinking straight, bends down to have a look and gets teleported away along with the vampire.

They get whisked to Dr. Tillingtast's manor in England, where Tillingtast offers him tea and a thirty-minute movie about the glory of the British. Ambrose gets kidnapped by Tillingtast's hunchback (actually the Nuwisha), who stamps him on the forehead with something and tosses him into the English countryside.

A helicopter shows up as he climbs to his feet. "Oh, COME ON!" Ambrose shouts, then waves his hands in futility and turns to walk away. The MiB--seemingly the same one as usual--is incredulous: "Are you walking away?", and shoots him in the knee with a novocaine dart. Ambrose can't get very far when he can't feel his leg.

They argue about who's bad for reality (MiB: "Reality is a 98-year-0ld man on life support." Ambrose; "Well, he wouldn't be so stodgy if you lot hadn't stiffened up his joints!"). The Technocrat is mad about all the dimension-hopping Ambrose has been doing. Ambrose defends that it wasn't his idea! He was kidnapped by a hunchback! This understandably produces a weird look from the MiB, who asks, "Do you expect me to believe that?" Ambrose, ignoring him, announces he'll take a plane back. The MiB thinks he's being naive.
MiB: "When's the last time you had a reasonable conversation with someone who wasn't a Technocrat, Dr. Quintrell?"
Ambrose: "You have no room to talk!"
MiB: "Deep down, you know we're right."
Ambrose: "I think a passenger plane is a perfectly reasonable method of crossing the Atlantic!"

Then there's another metaphor about stealing reality's liver, which eventually they give up on. "We're stretching that metaphor an awful lot," the MiB concedes. After which he offers him a ride back in the black helicopter, which Ambrose passionately refuses.

Ambrose then calls Mark, intending only to let him know where Ambrose has gotten to, but Mark just teleports him back. Ambrose grumbles about the MiB being right, and his fit of pique isn't helped when a letter arrives saying, "Told you so."

The Garou drop the book off with the Uktena, but not before it produces some weird dreams in its attempts to tantalize someone into picking it up and reading it. Then they head back to Chicago. Upon arrival, a letter comes from Dr. Tillingtast, inviting Ambrose back to show him proper hospitality and apologizing for "those random hunchbacks we've been having. This is the third one in two weeks. Have to put up strips or spray or something..."

"I'll never go back to England!" Ambrose swears.