"Nothing that doesn't require a reply from someone I wrote."

"I might go wander around town for a bit, maybe head over to the Derby house at some point, then?"

"A reasonable plan." 

"See you guys later, then."

"See you later. Sorry about the awkward." 

"It's alright."

And he's off.

Does he hear or see anything interesting, just wandering around town?

Some people are discussing the building of a new reservoir to supply the town with water. A teenager is attempting to frighten his little brother with tales of a cannibal who escaped the asylum seven years ago. 

Cannibal thing hopefully isn't serious...

He wanders, listening to mostly unimportant rumors, then heads over to the outskirts of town, so he can turn into a fox and circle around to the Derby house.

The Derby house is fairly quiet. 

The car is gone from out front, and a sad-looking female face can be seen peering out of one of the upper-story windows. 

Hmmmmm does the fox recognize the face.

It's not Martina's, no. 

Maybe Derby in Asenath's body?

Hm... Does anything interesting happen if he dithers for five minutes.

Nope. 

He heads back to the hotel.

Helen has, in the meanwhile, procured a dress. "How'd it go?"

"Not much really happened? Unexciting rumors in town, the car was gone from the house when I got there and there was a girl in one of the windows looking sad - if she usually hangs out in that specific room we could probably use that? Also I memorized the window and outside door placements, since usually you can kinda tell where rooms are from windows."

"If the girl was Derby in Asenath's body that would be useful indeed. Martina might know."

"Yeah."

"I've received telegrams back from a few occultist contacts, but nothing terribly promising so far. It turns out that most people who want to reverse aging stop at young adult."

"Yeah - can see how that'd be a problem..."

"Still, that's only the ones I could telegram, I'm not too perturbed."

"Hopefully the general principle's pretty much the same no matter how far you're going?"

"Not necessarily. There's a difference between development and degradation, in terms of aging."

"Huh. So you can heal old age, but it's hard to undo growing?"

"Right. That's why Amity, who died of old age, looks the way she does."