Season 1 Episode 31 The Torch Comes to Town

## Cast

The team arrives at a port city on the east coast, chasing down a cult named the Scorched Ones after a lead that suggested that they are connected to the secret cult people's been following.

The team goes to check on a mystery case aboard the cargo vessel Tillinghast Forward. It had just arrived from a different country. In the captain's chamber, there is a lichen of some sort, in the shape of a person's silhouette. The police aren't sure if it's a murder, or disappearance, or something else. It's treated like a biohazard for now. On closer inspection, the lichen trace appears to have been holding something, but it's not there anymore.

After investigating the ship, the group heads to a murder case which seems to be related. The victim is Errol Mauser, a customs agent who has been to Tillinghast Forward the night before, and has reported the missing captain. Only his outline remains at the murder site, in front of his own apartment. Around the site are signs of struggle, and scorch marks.

In the CCTV footage, Errol was found carrying a grocery-sized bag, attacked by men wearing black and red, as well as some jewelry. One of them take the brass bottle out of the Errol's bag, but the men start fighting each other over it, throwing fire at each other out of their hands. During the struggle, the cap comes off the bottle. Something comes out of the bottle and the bottle floats away. The bottle goes missing after this, but the cap stays in the possession of the Scorched Ones.

Em tries to be a bait to try to pull out the cultists, and in an alleyway, she encounters Priscilla, a homeless woman with a golden shopping cart, and a mugger trying to take it away. Em takes down the mugger and saves the day. They introduce each other, and go to a pawn shop to sell the golden shopping cart. The owner tries to cheat her out of it, but the team helps Priscilla get paid properly for it. As thanks, she treats the hunters to a steak dinner, and they all start talking about what's going on. Priscilla explains that the imam of the local mosque knows a little bit about the Scorched Ones and they're not on friendly terms, as well as how her shopping card turned to gold when she idly wished for having more wealth than she could carry not long after picking up a brass bottle.

After hearing this, the hunters decide to go look for the bottle around where Em first saw Priscilla and they encounter a woman who is horrified of her own reflection and fleeing, a smoky insubstantial creature laughing and retreating into the clouds, and a young man dressed as a Scorched One. Em immediately apprehends the man, who's all too happy to be rude and insulting despite the dagger to his throat. Eventually what the hunters get out of him is that the creature is an ifrit, it cannot be killed, it will not hurt anyone who is holding its bottle or the bottle's cap, and the only way to stop it is to perform a ritual to seal it back in the bottle. Furthermore, he expresses concern that The Circle, the cult they're working with, might be betraying them.

Satisfied with this, the hunters bring him to the mosque and the imam, where they learn a bit more about ifrits, the ritual, and the Scorched Ones. The young man, like probably many of them, are being preyed upon/taken advantage by the cult and can maybe be brought back from it. Then, after one more attempt to find the bottle the hunters succeed and can finally start looking for trouble. They walk right up to the Scorched Ones' front door and offer a trade: the bottle for every scrap of information on The Circle that these folks have.

After some deliberation, the cult leader lets them in, and takes them deep into the compound where he shows them that he has the cap there. He also explains a little bit about The Circle of the New Moon's motivations. [tk] Furthermore, they have managed to manipulate the Kennebec Agency to help achieve their goals. Sensing that the conversation is drawing to a close, the hunters immediately explode into action, with Em and Fortuna quickly dispatching the cult leader, and severely injuring another, while Agent Franklin chases off a third member who had been waiting to ambush the team.

With the situation under control, the Em makes sure the wounded member won't die, grabs the cap out of the late leader's magical safe, and the team hightails it out of there back to the mosque, where the imam has made preparations for the ritual to seal the ifrit. Franklin and Em start chanting while Fortuna performs the dance to try and lure the ifrit. They manage to catch its attention and the imam successfully seals it away, but not before the smoky form of the ifrit gets in Em's eyes and is breathed in by Agent Franklin. In the aftermath, Em's eyes burn like embers, and Franklin feels a little bit more in tune with the supernatural than he ever has.