#Mystery fiction | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

calicohyde · 11 months ago

Text

Lady In Red: Chapter One of Curse The Messenger Draft 1.4

I reached a follower milestone hosted a poll about what I should do to celebrate, and you all voted that I should publicly post this chapter of Curse The Messenger! I'm posting this here as well as on AO3. If you prefer to read it there, click here. Listen to this WIP's playlist while you read!

Chapter Summary:

Eddie Alfaro is dissatisfied with her job as a clairvoyant private investigator. The community of witches that makes up her clientele are prejudiced against her for her gift of Seeing, and the cases are always inconsequential and boring anyway. Infidelity, stolen heirlooms, that kind of thing. On top of that she's struggling with survivor's guilt, grief, and alcoholism, and she thinks her sibling is starting to get sick of her shit.

Then a gorgeous, elegant stranger shows up on Eddie's door and offers her an interesting case - a murder with no body. The woman says the case is Eddie's to solve, provided Eddie can figure her out first.

ENTICEMENT TAGS: Horror, Detective Noir, Urban Fantasy, Modern with Magic, Murder Mystery, Suspense, Surrealism, Character(s) of Color, Queer Character(s), Autistic Character(s), Nonbinary Character(s), Neopronouns, 1990s, Private Investigators, Romance, First Meetings, Butch/Femme

CONTENT WARNINGS: Body Horror, Sleep Paralysis, Possession, Unreality, Blood, Alcohol Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Suicidal Thoughts, Smoking

All nights are dark, and a fair few are stormy too. On those nights, the trees lining the streets shake in vengeful winds. Water comes down sideways. It could soak a loyal guard cat through all the way down past its thick undercoat. It would have to swim through the intersections.

Human beings don't mind the wet so much, though. No city truly sleeps, and Cane Street still enjoys a sluggish cacophony of visitors even late on a night like this. The chatter of people - and of the things besides people that hover around them - rises above the din of the rain pattering down on the striped awnings. The soft, desaturated glow of decorative string lights in the shallow darkness casts ill-fitting halos over the heads of smoking diner patrons. Lightning snaps bright across the dark sky, forcing any wandering shadows back into place beneath their casters.

On the residential streets, the noise from the commercial block is muffled but still present under the rain. It's darker here too. There's less light pollution of course, but that's not the only thing keeping the night black. Shadows would be wise to stick a little closer when walking here. The cats watch from the trees and the quiet apartment buildings, ready to catch anything that makes itself a little too interesting.

The houses are dark for the night and just shy of uniform, each with brick porches and wrought iron banisters. But every now and then there is one that has the air of witchery about it. Lots of people have power, though there aren't many with enough to do anything with. That's luckier than not.

Barely audible to a particularly sensitive ear is the click click click of someone in heels coming nearer and nearer. Most nights, there isn't anyone there. The gutters are full with rushing water and the stench of stirred up sewage, and beady little eyes. Some of them are just rats.

There is a two family home on the corner of Seventh and Spring, right across the street from a hole in the wall bar that would never let itself be seen closed. The house is exactly the same as every other in the neighborhood - when observed with only five senses.

The pillars are square and brick. The wrought iron railing along the concrete porch steps is the same boring twists as all the others. It has two dark wood front doors, both with even darker curtains covering their thin windows. The birch tree in the yard is ostensibly for shade, but was more likely planted for the benefit of the property value.

The only thing that separates the house that two eyes can see is the lively honeysuckle vine crawling its way up the right side, the buds reading out into the cramped alley in between this house and the next. Currently, it's wilting pathetically under the onslaught of rain. Fragrant crushed petals litter the alley gravel. What makes it special is that it blooms all year round, heedless of the seasons. Rumor among the local coven says that the residents of the building were given the plant by their absent father when he left them.

Rumors are loathsome as a rule. That one is in especially poor taste.

On this particular dark and stormy night, a long-haired person in an ankle length beige skirt comes out of the right side door of the house, crying softly enough not to be heard in the rain. Another person comes out after them - Fred, the elder of the siblings that live here. Xe's dressed in xyr typical ensemble: a fitted suit in some pale color, the exact shade obscured by the darkness of the hour and the ugly yellow of the porch light.

If an observer could look with more than two eyes - as more than one might like to think can do - the house is a stinking, glowing locus of magic. The two people on the porch stand out from it with their own auras of power.

Fred gives the impression of the palest of purples, like the honeysuckle flowers growing unnaturally in xyr yard. The other person isn't as powerful as Fred, but still of note. Their metaphysical shade matches their skirt, a pleasant light tan. The two auras interact strangely with the glaring overhead porch light. Occasionally the thing flickers, throwing their faces into drastically alternating shadows and relief.

Eventually, Fred claps a hand on the stranger's shoulder, ever more personable than xyr sister. Xe steers them toward the steps. The beige person doesn't have an umbrella with them, and yet they don't seem to get wet as they walk out from underneath Fred's porch and into the downpour. Fred does not watch them go.

Inside is dry and warm, but not much quieter. The windows are open to let in the noise and the washed-clean air. The spicy, earthy scent of burned sage almost covers up the smell of grease and salt from Chinese food take-out. Eddie sits cross legged on top of the work desk.

The desk is an imposing piece of work that was given to them by their papá before he left. Unlike the bit about the honeysuckle, that's a fact. It looks just like him too - hard, brown, and square. It's more than a decade old now and it shows; it's covered in scuffs and scratches and condensation rings. There are noodles on top now too, because Eddie still can't use chopsticks for shit.

The strap of Eddie's black coveralls falls down over one of her slouched shoulders. Her thick brown hair is dry and tangled, just beginning to curl over the collar of her white t-shirt. She'll be taking to it with a pair of kitchen shears some time soon.

Eddie's aura is stronger than her sibling's. That means she's more powerful than Fred, but for unfortunates who have to perceive it, that's no blessing. Eddie's presence is angry and sour, dull even despite its strength. It's the same bloody piss shade of brown as the whisky she's gulping down in between bites of lo mein.

"'Watchtower,'" she slurs derisively, continuing on from some age old argument that deserved Fred walking out on it. Her voice is thick, both with drink and with scorn. "What are we watching, anyway? Not shit. We're a joke."

"Don't say that," Fred says quietly. Xe could stand to be a little less feather light on xyr sister, but xe won't be. Not tonight. Tonight xe will fall on her cool and gentle, like the rain as it slows.

"It's not like anyone ever asks us to do anything important," Eddie insists. "And even if they ever did it's not like we could do it. We should just give up." Before Eddie finishes speaking, her sibling is already shaking xyr head.

"Eddie," xe sighs. Xyr voice is half scolding and half preternaturally patient. It's impossible to say how xe does this. "What we do is important to our clients. We help people."

Eddie only laughs, meanly, and drinks.

The siblings sit in silence for long minutes, until all the food has been eaten and the candles have all gone out. Then Fred rises and wrestles the booze away from xyr sister. The painful routine about to unfold is familiar to them both.

Fred tugs at Eddie's shoulder, Eddie grumbling in drunken recalcitrance and refusing to stand until Fred gives up and drags her bodily off of the desk by force. Papers rustle as they're crushed and ripped under Eddie's ass. There's the dull clink of hard plastic falling to the wood floor. The siblings put all their glass away a long time ago.

Fred all but carries Eddie from the right side of the house, the headquarters of Watchtower Investigations. Past the organized chaos of crystals and candles and dubiously legal photographs, through the door with the frosted window, and across the hall to the left side apartment where they live. Fred drags Eddie through there too, and then dumps her into her bed. Xe doesn't let her see xem flinch when she turns away from xyr attempt to kiss her forehead.

It may take hours for Eddie to sink into sleep, or it may take minutes. Inebriation can make telling the difference a little difficult. The drink makes her limbs heavy and keeps her tears at bay, never mind if she might like to cry them or not. She can hardly remember what that feels like by now, after so many years of falling to bed from Fred's arms just like this. Although as drunk as she is, she can hardly remember much else either.

When at last Eddie does sleep, the sky is still dark but now clear.

The moon and the light pollution in the city together are easy to see by, even in the dirty back alleys. She can navigate them without much trouble, each one familiar to her from all her time spent here during the days. She creeps past the cracked open back door of a bar. The lights from inside fall half across her face, the smell of booze and the smoke of cigarettes gusting over her like the bar is breathing.

She expects a rancor of cheerful voices with an undercurrent of tinny rock music. Instead there is silence, heavy to near painfulness in her ears. She wants to pause in the doorway and stare, to take a moment to reconcile the sight with the lack of sound, but her gaze and her body continue on as if she is not their pilot.

Her dirty blonde hair falls into her face and she blows it away with a puff out the side of her mouth. Her hands are full with her camera in one hand and the pocket knife her girlfriend gave her in the other. Her glasses slip down her sweaty nose, and she can't push those up either. Luckily her frames are large enough that she can still see through them, for now.

Finally, a lone noise comes to her ears from up ahead. It's the muffled splat of something wet landing onto the gravel of the alley below it. It's not loud; it must have fallen - or been dropped - from a short distance.

Her heart picks up speed. She hadn't noticed it was already racing, but now it pounds painfully against her sternum, impossible to ignore. Her grip tightens on her camera, her shaking finger hovering preemptively over the shutter button as if it's the trigger of a gun.

If she's right she'll finally be able to prove it, get someone to take her seriously and do something. But if she's right - and she knows she is - that means she's in more danger than she's ever been in before, and that's not saying a little. She should turn and run. She should go back home, or even better she should go to someone else's place. Maybe she could move into Bacchanalia for a while.

But she's never been known for that kind of caution. She's wise in other ways. She takes quiet steps closer.

She's woefully, sickeningly unprepared, she realizes all of a sudden. She has all the knowledge she could possibly have (and knowledge is power; she truly believes that). Her confidence in her evidence is unflinching. When she set out tonight, she knew the pocket knife she wields now wasn't much as far as weapons but it was more than she'd usually carry and it made her feel safer. It made her feel like she could be more of a threat, if she needed to be. But now she can only feel the sucking lack of power in herself. There's a sense of absence there, an unfamiliar helplessness crawling up and down her spine chillingly. It nauseates her, like the slow slimy touch of a giant slug.

At this moment, she is only exactly as she seems. Something about that just doesn't feel right.

Still, she continues forward. She's desperate at this point to turn back. The urge wells up behind her eyes like unshed tears. No part of her pays her feelings any mind. (That, at least, is not so unusual.)

Shaking, she flattens herself against the brick to her side as the building comes to an end at a corner. She takes a deep breath that serves only to make her panic worse, sucking in the scent of damp earth and bar trash and blood, thick and tangy metallic in the air. It's more blood, she's certain - despite the ease with which she recognizes the smell - than she has ever encountered before.

The rough brick of the wall scratches against her cheek. She tightens her grip again on her pocket knife, regardless of her lack of faith in it. She raises her camera with her other hand, pointed toward the other side of the alley, the open corner, the wet redness in the dirt oozing closer to her…

It's still dark, but the darkness is impenetrable. It doesn't matter that Eddie can't see; there are no true surroundings here, no details to parse, nothing more to know than the existence of herself. There is only the weakness of her body, the numbing pain in her wrists, her cold sweat, the chill of the tile flooring against her back through the sheer fabric of her dress. The smell of blood remains.

Eddie raises her arms with great effort. They feel so heavy, and they shake. Her biceps feel the burn of the exertion within seconds, but she doesn't drop her hands. Working past the fatigue, she closes her hands around her own throat. It's hard to get a grip, her hands slippery and slick with warm wetness.

"Please," she begs aloud. Her voice comes out wrong, but familiar. A little higher, a little sweeter, softer, happier. The voice of a distant memory, a voice from her childhood. She wants so badly to take comfort from it. She wants so badly for things to go differently this time.

She tightens her grip.

"My baby, my sweet girl, please, let me live."

Eddie starts to cry, and it's such a fucking relief. Her tears are warm and salty when they fall over her lips. Her stomach roils with nauseous fear and guilt, but part of her has already accepted her fate. Part of her wants it. She continues to beg herself for her life, but she smiles her forgiveness all the while.

Her neck begins to bruise. Eddie feels the almost satisfying give under her hands and the crushing pain in her throat together. Still she squeezes down, her nails digging in to keep her grip, scraping away furrows of skin. Her voice is unaffected somehow, still light, still cheerful and gentle and kind. She gives herself no mercy, until finally she stops breathing and she is at last silenced.

Her body dies and goes stiff and cold, but Eddie remains aware. The stillness of her heart and her lungs fills her with a terror that grows inside her like the opening of a terrible maw. She wishes she could just give into it, let it swallow her up whole and crush her down into nothing. She's already dead, really, so why should she want so desperately to breathe? But she does, clinging to the facsimile of life she still has.

There is movement in the deep darkness. She sees it from the corner of her eye, but she can't turn to look closer. Dead bodies don't move. A whimper builds behind her teeth, but she doesn't have the breath to give it voice. Even if she did, she couldn't open her mouth enough to let it out. The only thing she can do is wait, and hope - that she'll be able to breathe soon, and that whatever the thing is won't make her stop again.

The thing gets close enough to see, resolving itself out of the darkness into her father. He stands over Eddie in the outfit she last saw him in. A brown tweed duster, the same style of overwear that Fred now favors, a denim shirt buttoned all the way up, thin dark brown scarf, pants and a belt and boots that match it. Apá always liked to look just so. Fuck, she misses him so much. She's glad to see him, even though she's dead and he's looking down at her like he might look at any other corpse he stumbled upon in the dark.

"Why did you do that?" he asks eventually. His tone is mild, curious, as familiar and nostalgic as the other voice that came out of her own wretched mouth as she killed herself. He sighs deeply. Eddie's crushed throat and her chest are tight and hot with the need to copy him. To breathe. "Tell me that, querida. Why would you kill your own mother?"

Eddie knows she's dreaming now. She's had this one before. She needs to wake up so that she can breathe. She needs to breathe if she wants to wake up.

If.

She could always just stay here. Maybe it would be just for a minute, but dreams always feel longer than they really are. It might even feel like forever. She could stay here with Apá. He's staring down at her with disappointment and disgust, but at least he's here.

He's wearing his dumb overthought outfit and his stubble is salted and Eddie would bet he probably smells like palo santo and fresh tobacco like he always did before. Eddie can't smell him, and she won't even if she stays, because she can't breathe. But even though her chest is painfully tight and Apá obviously hates her, she can think of worse ways to die.

More importantly, she can think of plenty worse ways to keep on living.

It doesn't matter what she wants, either way. Not in this and not in anything else either. She dies at the whim of her dreams, and she lives on the say of whatever wakes her.

Eddie wakes up.

Her eyes are closed and the darkness and her father are the only reality, and then her eyes are open and she's staring up at the plaster ceiling of her bedroom. She still can't move and she still can't breathe, but she can feel the breeze coming in from her open window tickle over her exposed face and arms. She can hear the patter of the rain. Her sheer curtains billow.

Something moves in the shadows.

Eddie stares hard into the dark, her heart racing and making her need for air even more urgent.

She sees dark hair and two dark eyes, a frown, the suggestion of broad shoulders covered in tweed.

Apá. Still glaring down at her. He mutters but Eddie can't understand what he's saying no matter how hard she strains her hearing. She tries to reach out for him, but her arms refuse to so much as twitch.

Before Eddie's tired eyes, Apá starts to melt. The lighter tones of his skin drip down onto the deep darkness of his clothing. The shadow of his hair ruins the lines of his features. The shine of his eyes in the moonlight snuffs out and his height decreases in a lopsided rush that disappears into the negative space of Eddie's unlit bedroom floor.

Eddie gasps into full wakefulness when the specter of her father is completely gone. She breathes in deep - both the air and the rush of becoming aware of her power again. The late summer air is wet and cool in her lungs; her magic feels heavy and warm like an internal weighted blanket. It would be pleasant, but Eddie can only think about Apá and how he's gone again. That hurts more than getting her throat crushed with no contest.

The nightmare is awful and familiar. It's been a recurring punishment for Eddie ever since Apá disappeared for the last time of many, nearly twelve years ago now. Eddie loses him all over again almost every night and it never hurts any less. It happens so often she might even have been able to get used to it, pain and all, if she could ever be positive he isn't really there. She can't be sure he doesn't blame her too, that he doesn't choose to leave her again and again and again.

The other parts, the sneaking around in the alley to take pictures of something dangerous and bloody… Well, that could just as easily be some random nightmare her brain decided to make up to torment her with as it could be a real premonition. They're tough to tell apart. Most of the time these days, Eddie doesn't even bother to try.

What does it matter, anyway? The nightmare she woke up to is just as real and true and any premonition, if maybe not quite as literal. And there's not a damn thing Eddie can do about either of them. There never has been, and there never will be.

When her chest has stopped heaving, and the tears she cried in her sleep have dried, Eddie rolls over towards her bedside table. Her hair falls into her face, dark brown like it's supposed to be. She pulls open the little drawer roughly and tugs out her dream journal and a pen. She ignores the crumpled pages that fall out, uncaring. There's a lamp on the table but Eddie doesn't turn in on to write, scribbling haphazardly across a page that looks like it's probably blank. She opens her hands and lets the book and pen drop to the floor when she's done, and flops onto her back.

It's supposed to help. Writing it down. Fuck knows how. But it's a habit now.

Eddie lies in bed and stares up at her ceiling. The off-white plaster looks the same now as it had minutes ago when Eddie woke up paralyzed and could only see the rest of her room by straining her peripheral vision. It's gray in the silvery moonlight. The ghostly shadows of her curtains dance across her blanket covered legs when the wind gusts them around.

Eddie holds her breath for as long as she can. Nothing steps forward out of the dim.

The fatigue and painful tightness in the chest when suffocating feels a little bit like a heart attack, Eddie muses idly. Once a client's husband had one while they were working his case. The case had only been to find the guy's long lost auntie or something, completely unrelated to his husband. But Eddie had the privilege to die with him anyway.

The bruising of her throat, her windpipe getting crushed, that could be likened to being hanged. Someone that used to go to the bar across the street had done themselves in that way once. They hadn't been working a case for them, hadn't been introduced as far as Eddie remembers, might not have even ever seen each other in passing. But still, Eddie got to die with them.

The light in the room changes slowly as the night and its storm both come to end and the sun begins the arduous process of rising. The early morning sounds of the city come in through the window with the summer breeze now. The chirping of the early birds is loud and sharp, each tweet stabbing into Eddie's ears like an ice pick. She grits her teeth and rolls away from the window, thinking hard about how badly she wants them to shut up. Maybe if she can just be annoyed enough everything will stop.

There's a prickle on the back of her neck, the feeling of being watched. She ignores it. It could be a holdover from the dream. Or maybe she has a stalker. Who gives a shit.

Soon enough, Fred gets up. Eddie listens to xem going through xyr morning routine from underneath her slightly musty pillow, held tight over her ear. She needs to do laundry soon. She needed to do laundry a week ago.

Fred sings in the shower. Eddie's throat goes tight again, her eyes hot, but no more tears come out. She can't cry when she's awake. Her grief is reserved for strangers.

She's so fucking proud and grateful that Fred can be happy. She's also wretchedly jealous. Resentful. She can't help but want that for herself, and she hates Fred every now and then for having it when she can't. She makes herself sick.

The drawers open and close in Fred's room down the hall as xe gets dressed. The creaky floorboard in the hall whines as Fred passes Eddie's room to go make breakfast for both of them. In short order, the smells of coffee and breakfast sausage join the smoke of Fred's first cigarette of the day.

Get out of bed now , Eddie tells herself. She doesn't move. Her body is so heavy and distant. It feels just as beyond her control now as it does during any premonition or nightmare, except that right now there's no reason for it. She should be able to just get the fuck out of bed . She scolds herself that Fred will want her to get out of bed on her own like a goddamn grown up for once.

Then again, Fred would probably have a better morning if xe didn't have to deal with Eddie at all, in bed or out of it.

Get out of bed , Eddie thinks, fiercer and more frustrated with every repetition. Get up. Get the fuck up. Get up. But she never manages to move.

"Eddie?" Fred asks softly from the doorway. Eddie hadn't noticed her door open, too busy trying to get herself to function. "Are you awake yet, cariño?"

Eddie wants to answer because Fred deserves to be treated nicely, but she also wants Fred to just leave her alone. She ends up splitting the difference and just grunting at xem. Fred sighs deeply, and Eddie seethes. She's not sure if she's angry at Fred or at herself. Probably both.

"C'mon, hermanita," Fred says, xyr voice growing closer as xe comes inside the room. The closer xe comes the tighter Eddie's shoulders coil, until the tension starts to hurt her neck. She dreads Fred reaching her bed without her moving and then having to tell Fred she won't get up today. Either Fred will accept that with a disappointed sight and leave her here, or xe'll insist Eddie get up. Both are equally as terrible as each other.

Eddie continues to demand of herself to get up , to fucking move , frantically now, inside her head. Still nothing happens. Fred's weight settles on the bed at Eddie's side and xyr hand cups her shoulder. Xyr touch is gentle and warm and could easily be comforting, if Eddie wasn't so fucked up that she can only feel one thing - or nothing at all or, sometimes, on bad days, some inexplicable twisted combination of the two.

"Come on, Eddie, get up," Fred says, shaking her gently. Eddie grits her teeth. If a simple urging could do it, Eddie would have been up hours ago. It's not that easy. There's no reason it should be any harder, but still it's just not that easy. She wants to shrug her sibling's grip off, but she can't even do that. She just lies still in her unwashed sheets and bears it.

"Okay," Fred sighs, and Eddie's dread builds. Now is the moment. Either Fred will leave her here all day and continue on living life without her, or xe will make her get up and she'll be forced to listlessly go through the motions of the minimum eight to ten hours before she can come back here to her stale and lonely room.

Apparently, today it's going to be the latter option. Fred tugs the pillow out of Eddie's clinging hands. Xe ignores Eddie's childish whine. Xe tosses the thing down to the foot of the bed so that Eddie would have to sit up to get it back, if she wants it badly enough. Then xe goes back to Eddie's shoulder, xyr touch much less gentle now, not intended for comfort at all. Fred pulls Eddie over onto her back, and then when she doesn't move from there except to turn her face away from xem, xe stands and looks down at her with xyr hands on xyr hips.

Eddie knows Fred probably isn't judging her, or at least not in the way she fears, but since she's not looking at xyr face she can't know for sure. She's too much of a coward to take the risk and double check.

Eddie listens as Fred moves around her bed. Xyr tread is as light as always on the hardwood floors, but the buckles on xyr boots jingle flatly with each step. Fred is like some kind of punk rock souvenir bell. Ting-ting -socialism is cool- ting .

Fred's hand circles around one of Eddie's ankles.

"You know I'll do it, Ed," xe says, and xe's not lying. Fred definitely will drag Eddie bodily out of this bed, and Eddie knows it from extensive past experience. Some days a little tussle between siblings in the morning gets the blood pumping and the rest of the requisite eight to ten hours end up with buttery yellow stripes of happiness coming in like sunlight through the broken drawn blinds of Eddie's faulty brain. Some days it's just another layer of shit on top of the festering pile that Eddie is already buried under.

Eddie tries to convince herself one more time to save them both the humiliation and frustration and just get up on her own. She can even feel the potential energy build up in her extremities; she's right on the cusp of moving, maybe, any second now. But the energy only continues to build up until Eddie feels like she's vibrating with it and her half-desperate half-hateful thoughts go buzzing around her head like angry flies.

"Okay," Fred repeats, xyr voice soft and sad. Then xe pulls.

It takes long unhappy moments to get Eddie upright. Fred does most of the work. In the case of standing on your own two feet, it's not the thought that counts at all. Fred is breathing a little heavily and xyr hair is messed up by the time Eddie is upright and standing on her own power.

Eddie mostly just wants to go right back to bed, or to melt into the floor like Apá did - or her dream of him, but who can tell the difference. The thought triggers a surge of guilt, and it compounds with the shame, making Eddie feel heavier and weaker and heavier and weaker.

Turns out she was right. Fred would have absolutely had a much better morning if not for Eddie.

"C'mon, I made breakfast," Fred tells her as xe turns to leave the room. They both know Eddie already knows that, from hearing and smelling it and from the routine. Fred always breakfast or else nobody will and the two of them will have to subsist on cigarettes and booze, respectively. Fred likes to take care of xyr body, aside from xyr one vice, and so xe makes breakfast. Xe makes enough for Eddie every time out of the goodness of xyr heart.

Eddie vacillates sluggishly between the call of food and coffee and the warmth of her bed before finally following her sibling into the kitchen. She'd love to collapse onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar, but they're too high and she's too short, so instead she has to boost herself up with a foot on the rung between the legs. It's more effort than it should be, but she does like that she can swing her feet like a kid once she's up there.

Fred has already eaten, xyr lone dish already rinsed and sitting in the sink. Xe stands between the back counter and the bar, facing Eddie as she serves herself some eggs on autopilot. They're probably cold by now, and eggs aren't her favorite thing to begin with, but she puts some into her mouth with her fingers anyway. She chews perfunctorily and swallows it down. For a moment she has the uncharitable urge to open her mouth and make a show of proving to Fred that she ate it.

Unaware of Eddie's boorish attitude, Fred makes a face at her table manners. Xe fishes a fork out of the drawer and slides it across the bar to rest at Eddie's elbow. Eddie leaves it where it is and pointedly licks grease off of her fingers. She'll live, fine, but she's not going to be polite about it. Fred sighs through xyr nose, on part exasperated and one part amused. Eddie will take one part over none.

"Jay's case won't be too difficult," Fred says. Xe slips a cigarette out of xyr shiny case and lights it up with xyr zippo lighter. Eddie picks at her food in silence, waiting for the dark and spicy scent of clove smoke to reach her across the breakfast bar. It's the same scent that used to cling to Apá's coat. Same brand and all.

Fred flips the zippo open and closed as xe takes a long, long drag. That particular lighter was a gift from Apá the last time they saw him. Fred likes to say it was for xyr nineteenth birthday, because that was the closest occasion. Eddie closes her eyes and breathes in the smell, remembering.

"Yet another stolen heirloom," Eddie mutters over her cold eggs, referring to the case in question. Jay was here last night. Eddie knows she probably made a shit first impression, though she doesn't remember it clearly. It was past dinnertime and she was well on her way to hosed in preparation for bed. "Riveting stuff. Real important."

Fred takes another long, long drag before speaking, visibly gathering xyr patience. Eddie wonders when that resource will finally run out.

"The diamond isn't just an heirloom, Eddie," xe says once xe has taken the cigarette out from between xyr lips, leaning over the breakfast bar to emphasize xemself. "It's part of an active spell. If some blockhead secular swiped it looking for a payday it could be dangerous."

Eddie doesn't answer. She knows the diamond they've been hired to track down came out of a blessing box passed down to Jay by a great great great grandmother, and that it'll have the family's magic all over it. It could react badly to being separated from the other components of the spell.

She also knows that they're Jay's last resort. Jay didn't say so, but Eddie doesn't need to hear it said to know it. Jay isn't a Clairvoyant, like the two of them are, so there's no way they were a first or second, third, or fourth choice. Eddie doesn't begrudge people their hesitance though. She'd avoid her too, if she could.

"Look, hermanita," Fred says, mostly sympathetic this time, though Eddie doesn't doubt it's at least half put-on. "We've got that little diamond Scrying ball now. I can probably just use like to find like, and you won't need to use your gift at all for this one."

Eddie laughs, bitter and sharp. It stings in her throat, like whisky coming back up.

"You and I both know Seeing isn't a gift," she counters, her mouth twisted up into a painfully wry approximation of a smile. Her dreams from the night well up behind her eyes like her mind is a backed up garbage disposal. Whoever that blonde was is probably dead by now, and all Eddie feels about it is one part gladness that she wasn't there long enough to know and one part resentment over how she has nothing to do with anything in Eddie's life and Eddie still had to feel her terror anyway. "And I don't use it. It uses me. Whether anyone needs it to or not."

Fred just sucks down the rest of xyr cigarette, looking like xe might cry when Eddie pushes aside the rest of the cold eggs and pours herself a glass of red wine instead.

It could be worse, Eddie reasons to herself as she takes a generous gulp. At least this is made of fruit.

Eddie finishes her 'breakfast' at a leisurely pace while Fred lights up another clove. Xe is always getting onto Eddie for her drinking, as if xyr vice isn't just as bad for xem. But Eddie supposes that's what older siblings are for, if you don't have parents to do the job. After the wine is gone and the last wisps of smoke are lingering near the ceiling, it's time to get to work.

The office is just next door. There are two doors out front, one to the office and one to their home, as well as one between the two inside. The door windows are frosted and tinted slightly purple, the color of Clairvoyance. At least they get to be pretty. Both office doors have the business stuck on with vinyl in the window in a compressed serif font. Watchtower Private Investigations, named so after the height of the building, unusual for the street. The hinges and the wood floor both whine in complaint at Eddie's rough treatment of them as she makes her way inside before Fred.

The office is a hodgepodge of the usual administrative office stuff and the more esoteric detritus of witchcraft. The desk is covered with meticulously labeled manila folders, though some of them have been crumpled or strewn across the floor due to Eddie's flawed dismount last night. The bookshelves are filled half with shiny paperbacks on business, finance, and law, and half with yellowed old tomes on dream-working and potion-making. There's an altar set up on cloth on top of the filing cabinet.

Eddie crosses the space, avoiding looking at the files she ruined so diligently that she steps on a few. The windows at the back of the room are still cracked open. The air in here is perpetually hazy from the smoke of Fred's cigarettes and all the incense they burn. Fragrant dust swirls around in the sunbeams from the tobacco stained glass. It's probably beautiful, in its way.

Eddie yanks the curtains closed, blocking out the light. Her head hurts enough already, and she forgot her sunglasses downstairs and across the hall.

Fred sighs through xyr nose at Eddie's heelish behavior, clicking xyr tongue in disapproval at the files on the floor. Xe visibly debates stooping to pick them up, before sighing one more time and turning away from the whole sorry scene. Xyr shoulders are strong, nearly as broad as Apá's, but they droop under xyr neatly pressed seafoam green jacket. Xe sighs so much, Eddie thinks, because she makes it harder for xem to breathe than even all that tar can manage.

While Fred's back is turned, Eddie picks up the files. She does her best to smooth out the ones her ass tore up last night, and the ones she stepped on just now. She doesn't have much luck, but then again she never really does. Except maybe with the ladies.

The wingback chair at Apá's desk is ratty and faded, but still imposing. It's one of Eddie's few joys in life to sit in it and feel it at her back, making her a little bit bigger in her britches. If she wore britches. Whatever the hell britches are. It used to be a deep, velvety blood red, but that was before Eddie was even born. Now, it's a patchy burnt orange with blooms of light mauve where the friction is highest and the pile has worn down to pale threads. The thing is sturdy, though. Sturdier than the fucking floor, apparently, since unlike the floor it doesn't creak a bit when Eddie drops herself into like ice into a glass.

The top drawer on the left has a bottle of Jack in it. Eddie's fingers alight on the drawer's handle, dancing along to the tune the whisky sings from inside. The tinkle of piano keys, of ice in a lowball, promising to bounce anything and everything else at the door. Or at least to charge it a few details to get in.

"Don't," Fred murmurs, across the room and with xyr back still turned. "At least help me with this spell first before you start."

Eddie leaves her hand on the drawer, ornery. I've already started , she thinks of saying. Or maybe, You're not my parent . But she's been childish enough for the first few hours of the day. She curls her hand into a fist, and then she tucks it under her knee.

Fred eventually joins Eddie at Apá's desk, xyr arms full with the paraphernalia of xyr intentions. A small crystal ball, a stand for it, the Scrying board, a cup full of colored chalk, a box of incense cones, and a ceramic tray to burn them on. Eddie clears the center of the desk for xem, files on either side. One of those is probably Jay's. No doubt she'll have to dig it out in a minute.

Fred sets up the Scrying altar in the center of the desk to xyr specifications. Fred's power and process is as much a mystery to Eddie as Eddie's is to Fred. Not that Eddie really has much of a process to understand.

"Like to like," Fred explains idly as xe marks symbols onto the wood of the Scrying board with the chalk. Xe came up with the symbols xemself, sigils to make the ordeal of connecting to the crystals easier, and to help xem actually do what they intend. Even with the help, often Fred still ends up connecting to something that doesn't help them. Xe has near-equal chances here to find Jay's diamond as to end up spiritually trapped in a Shane Company warehouse.

Fred's own diamond is modest, as far as crystal balls go. Just barely big enough to fill the palm of Fred's hand, smoothed into a perfect sphere but otherwise uncut. It glitters with yellow-golden flecks and black impurities, but besides those it's clearer and more reflective inside than quartz is.

Eddie lights the frankincense while Fred sets the ball into its stand. The earthy, spicy-sweet scent surrounds them quickly. Elecampane would be better for this, but it's rare and expensive and often faked. Its only use is for Clairvoyance, after all. Anyone seeking it out is probably better off with the dud. Frankincense is a good enough substitute, magically speaking. And it even smells similar, too.

Fred shoos Eddie out of the wingback chair when the set up is done, and Eddie reluctantly cedes it to xem. Xe contorts xemself into a cross-legged position in it, and then stares into xyr diamond ball intently.

To Eddie, nothing seems to happen. Not outside of Fred, anyway.

It's always a little bit scary to see Fred scry. Xe seems to disappear entirely from xemself, leaving xyr empty body behind. Xyr pupils dilate like xe've done a line. Xyr irises take on an oily purplish sheen, the something else that is controlling the operation showing through. The incense smoke curls around xem like a pet snake, overeager for affection - or for a meal.

Out loud, Fred intones, "West. Dark. Familiar."

Fred's voice is low and quiet, with an inflection that makes xem sound inhuman, but other than that it's as familiar as always. It reminds Eddie of both of their parents; the steadiness of their father, the sweetness of their mother, and the underlying croak they all have from smoking like chimneys.

Eddie writes down the insight, and then the only thing she can do is wait for the crystals to release Fred back into the living world. She leaves Fred at Apá's desk to go collect an Ensure from the minifridge, as well as the communal emergency office back and zippo. It's less because Fred will need these things in a hurry so Eddie had better have them ready, and more so that she can spend less time looking at Fred's blank, reflective eyes and the lack of a person behind them.

That's Eddie's big sibling, her protector, the person who practically raised her, and her only friend, crowded out of xyr own body and replaced with an unfeeling object. Fred is one of the lucky ones, the luckiest in the Alfaro family. Scrying is the least horrible form of Clairvoyance, and one of the safest. It's almost certain that Fred will be able to settle back into xemself with only a few tiny diamond stones to pass at worst. But the risk is never zero.

Crystals grow, after all. Some of them faster than others.

This time, as all the times before, Fred resurfaces. Xyr eyes melt into their natural dark brown and xe blinks back to awareness. Eddie lets out the breath she was holding and collapses into the wooden chair on the other side of the desk that they have for clients. She leans over the desk to offer Fred the Ensure, and then sets it down within xyr reach when Fred seems to be still too out of it to take it from her. Eddie lights a cigarette for xem next. She takes the first drag for herself.

Her hands are shaking. This shit is almost more frightening than it already would be because Fred never seems scared at all. Like it's nothing to xem if xe comes back to her or doesn't.

The scent of burning tobacco revives Fred the rest of the way. Xe gestures greedily for the cigarette first, and Eddie readily hands it over. Only after several fortifying puffs does Fred crack the seal on the Ensure. Xe takes carefully paced, delicate little sips, though Eddie knows xe'd rather gulp it down. The two of them learned that lesson the hard way when they first started this business out - with Fred on xyr knees in the bathroom and Eddie holding xyr long hair back.

Finally, Fred takes a deep breath and asks hoarsely, "Did I find it? Felt like I found it."

"Seems like you did, yeah," Eddie confirms. She slips a second cigarette out of the emergency pack and lights it for herself. She doesn't usually prefer cloves, but she needs to settle her nerves. "You said something about West? Here, I wrote it down."

Fred waves away the notepad Eddie holds out, instead beginning to ruffle sluggishly through the files on the desk. There are dozens. They don't exactly have an organizational system in here, and it's been a full decade now of accumulating them. They get pretty decent work, considering. Eddie hadn't really thought it would work, when they'd started. It had all been Fred's idea, hairbrained, and Eddie had just gone along with it because she couldn't think of anything better.

"Aha!" Fred exclaims when xe finds Jay's file, becoming more and more like xyr lively self the longer xe goes about with xyr head clear of stones. The file isn't one of the ones Eddie ruined last night, though it does have what looks like a coffee ring on one corner. That could have been either of them.

"I assume you don't remember any of what Jay said when they were here," Fred mutters as xe flips over their standard intake sheet to get to the handwritten details underneath. Eddie's stomach clenches. She wishes she could argue.

"I didn't know they were coming," she defends herself weakly.

"No," Fred agrees softly. "I know. I'm sorry." Silently, and without looking at her, xe hands Eddie the intake sheet for her to look over.

Eddie does remember most of this information; Jay's name, the date they took the case, a description of the missing diamond, bare-bones estimated timeline of the theft, how much they're charging. She stares down at the page unseeingly anyway and lets Fred hog the more interesting details. It's not really Eddie's job to come up with suspects anyway - at least not when she hasn't Seen them. She just follows whoever Fred tells her to.

"I'm thinking the niece's boyfriend," Fred says eventually, breaking a silence between them that isn't exactly uncomfortable. Eddie makes a vague noise of agreement. She doesn't remember anything about the niece's boyfriend. Fred highlights something in xyr notes, and then passes them across the desk to Eddie.

Turns out he's a college student who has been dating Jay's niece - who lives with Jay over the summers - for the last three months since the spring semester ended. A secular too, just like Fred had posited at breakfast, who likely would have no idea that the diamond in question is more than just a very expensive rock. He lives to the west from here, and from the diamond's home, in Little Italy.

"Yeah, I like him for it," Eddie agrees around the filter. "Surveillance beat?"

"Ugh," Fred groans, but xe nods. "No job right?" Eddie nods. According to the background they have, the only thing Boyfriend does all week is visit Jay's niece and effusively compliment Jay's cooking.

"A daytime stakeout," Eddie says, in unison with Fred. The siblings smile at each other briefly. They've always had something of a penchant for being on the same wavelength like that. Apá's absence, Eddie's drinking and pessimism, and Fred's apparent ability to just move on from anything may all be doing their damndest to push Fred and Eddie apart, and maybe some days it seems like they'll get their way. But sometimes, they're still the same as they were as kids. Jinxing each other, practically reading each other's minds.

"That's tomorrow," Fred says. Xe turns xyr attention back to Jay's file, shuffling the pages to xyr liking before reaching for a drawer. Eddie tenses. Fred already knows the booze is there, as evidenced from xyr admonishment earlier, but knowing that doesn't stop Eddie from feeling like she'll get in trouble if Fred sees it there.

Luckily, Fred doesn't go for that drawer. The legal pad xe needs is in the drawer above that, and xyr favorite clicky pen is in the top drawer on the other side. When xe has what xe needs, xe starts writing up the mid-investigation report for Jay. Xe delicately picks out straight, even capitals that nearly look typed, remarkably quickly for how neat they are.

Eddie leaves xem to it. She's not great with the customer-facing end of things. A little too negative, a little too blunt, acerbic. A little too to-the-point as well. Their clients want to think every case is complicated. They want to be reassured and validated in addition to having their mysteries solved. Eddie would just as soon write one sentence and be done with it, and then they'd probably lose the case because it wouldn't look like enough work to pay them for.

Eddie much prefers doing the books. She likes numbers because you don't have to interpret them. There's no nicer way to put them. They mean what they mean.

When the report is written, and the budget is calculated, the siblings make up a surveillance itinerary for tomorrow. They'll start early in the morning to make sure they don't miss him if he does go out, and take set shifts to piss or pick up food. They're already familiar with the area, so they don't have to get to know the streets and landmarks in person this time. The nearest convenience store is marked out on Fred's roughly sketched map, the best exit routes highlighted.

Jay's case is the only one Watchtower Investigations has open at the moment, so here is where the siblings separate. For Fred, the workday is done. Xe leaves the building out the front. Xe has enough friends and acquaintances that xe can meet up with someone any time.

Eddie could call it quits too, if she wanted, and she's doing so in all but name. Her mood has improved enough since the morning that she doesn't immediately want to go back to bed and pretend to never have been born, so instead she pilfers one of Fred's post-Scrying Ensures from the minifridge to serve as her lunch. Then she contorts herself into a catlike curled up position in the wingback chair. She opens the middle drawer but instead of the bottle of Jack, she pulls a battered romance novel out from underneath it.

The air from outside the still open window behind her smells green and fresh after last night's rain. There is no breeze, there never is in the summers, but the storm cooled it down enough for the humidity trapped amid the crowded city buildings to not feel so oppressive.

Afternoon sunshine drips sluggishly over Eddie's shoulder like honey, spilling gold over the book as Eddie finds her place by the page number she memorized last time she put it down. It's from Mrs. Zilbersetein, a secular from two houses down, given as part of her payment to them for the pictures of her ex-husband and his mistress that she used in her divorce. The pages are soft and thin from wear, showing how much she'd loved the book before Eddie. The cover is illustrated with a voluptuous blonde ingenue in a red dress and an imposing man with a fedora and a handgun.

Eddie makes it through two chapters and one sex scene before there's a knock at the outer door.

Eddie considers not answering; Jay is paying them well so they don't need to cram in as much work as they can at the moment. But curiosity gets the best of her, despite her general distaste for the kind of work Watchtower usually ends up doing. So, she leaves her steamy book open and upside down in the seat of the wingback and goes to see who's there.

When she swings the door open, Eddie comes face to face with an impressive set of cleavage clad in what could easily be the very same red dress from the illustrated cover she'd just put down. She stares for a moment, briefly mesmerized by the shiny liquid-like fabric draped artfully over smooth dark skin, before blinking herself back to reality and relegating her gaze up to the woman's face.

Her features are just as elegant and striking as her attire. She has a heart shaped face, near-black dark brown eyes, and loosely curled cherry red hair. Her lip color matches her dress and her hair, and her skin glows in the slowly reddening sunlight. Beyond the sight of two eyes, she looks to be secular. The concurrence of exceptionalism and mundanity is dissonant to the third. If Eddie keeps looking so closely, her headache will come back with a vengeance.

"Uh," says Eddie eloquently. "I, uh. I think you have the wrong place. Ma'am."

The woman - the lady, really; the way she's dressed surely she can't be called anything else - doesn't smile, but Eddie thinks she catches a dimple crease her cheek on one side before it's gone again.

"Watchtower Investigations? Miss Alfaro, I presume," she asks. Her voice sounds like one that could be heard at a vintage speakeasy, crooning sad slow jazz tunes to an audience of pipe smoking men in pinstripe suits.

"Yes- Sorry," Eddie says. She steps aside and holds the door for the lady like a gentleman, feeling very nearly as out of touch with herself as she ever has during a premonition. Her body takes her through the steps of this interaction as it should be, without pausing for her to think about it first.

"Don't worry yourself, doll," says the Lady in Red. "I'm overdressed, I know. I usually am." She adjusts the sheer, glittering shawl fathered at her elbows and steps past Eddie into the house. She smells, somewhat unexpectedly, like leather.

Eddie leads the Lady in Red up to the office, holding open the door with the frosted window for her too. She has the half-hysterical urge to pull out her chair as well, but there's no table to pull it from. She sits in the wooden chair in front of the desk and crosses her long legs, a high slit in her dress parting around her thigh. Eddie takes the wingback, stuffing the romance book uncomfortably between her ass and the back rather than reveal it.

"What can I- What can we do for you, Miss…?" Eddie asks leadingly. The Lady's dimple comes back, and this time it stays. Eddie tries to to feel too proud of herself, just for a little politeness. True it's not a skill of hers, and she usually doesn't even bother to try, but still.

"Miz," the Lady corrects smoothly. "Jessica. And I want you to solve a murder."

Eddie's breath catches in her throat and she swallows it down with difficulty, conflicted. The cases they usually take are… not thrilling, to say the least. But murder is maybe a bit too thrilling. Especially when taking into account that Watchtower has only ever dealt with background checks, theft, spell sourcing, and infidelity. They've never even handled a missing person.

"That's not really in our wheelhouse," Eddie admits, as gently as she can. "The police really would b-"

"Oh, I've already tried the pigs," Ms. Jessica interrupts. The disdain in her voice is palpable. Eddie can't blame her. After all, Jessica is visibly not a person cops traditionally 'protect and serve'. Eddie herself isn't one of those either. They usually take murder pretty seriously in most cases though - provided that it's not one of their own murders, and that there's someone left behind who cares enough to report it in the first place.

"I know it can seem like it's taking a long time," Eddie tries again. Jessica's foot twitches irritably, the champagne colored pump on it catching the now purplish light of the approaching dusk in the window behind Eddie.

"No," says Jessica, simple and firm, and Eddie shuts up. "They told me they're not investigating. They don't believe me."

If Eddie's interest wasn't piqued before, it certainly is now. She turns aside her reservations regarding Watchtower's qualifications - or lack thereof - and leans forward over Apá's desk to listen more intently.

"There's no body?" Jessica shakes her head. Her foot stops kicking; she must be relieved to truly have Eddie's attention. It seems likely now that, like everyone else who comes, she's here as a last resort.

"I don't think there could have been much of one left, to be honest with you," she says. Her voice is lower now, a little scratched up, but she doesn't waver. "There was a lot of-" She chokes, and for the first time looks away from Eddie. Her gaze seems to catch on the altar on top of the filing cabinet and Eddie wonders if she'll latch on to the easy subject change it might offer.

Watchtower gets very few secular clients. They're in the phone book, sure, but their business comes almost entirely from word of mouth, and witches and seculars don't tend to cross paths more than incidentally. Eddie has to wonder if that altar is something Jessica was expecting to see. Does she know what they are, or is she even now assuming they're some kind of new age hippies?

In the end, Jessica doesn't take the out, though she doesn't finish what she was going to say either. She concludes definitively, "She's dead. I know she's dead."

Jessica's eyes meet Eddie's across Apá's desk, and instantly Eddie knows Jessica has to be right. In the depths of her brown eyes, Eddie recognizes the same feeling she had when she knew Apá wouldn't be coming back this time. It's the same feeling clients have in their eyes when they already know their spouse is cheating on them, or that their trusted friend has robbed them. Intuition, maybe. Or the brief, terrible omniscience that comes from grief.

Sometimes Fred and Eddie's job is not so much to find out what happened, but why .

"I know this isn't what you usually do," Jessica adds eventually. "But my- Maddie. Maddie Ward. She deserves at least some kind of justice. I had to try. Will you consider it?"

Eddie shouldn't. She shouldn't full stop, but she especially shouldn't decide to take a client without Fred's input.

"Of course," she says.

Eddie forgot to grab a fresh intake sheet from the filing cabinet on her way to the desk when she first let Jessica in (along with the travel pack of tissues Fred always offers to a new client), but she's not willing to backtrack across the room and look foolish or bumbling in front of this elegant lady. Not to mention if she gets up there's a chance the book she's all but sitting on will be exposed. In lieu of that, Eddie drags over the nearest casefile, flips it open, and poises herself to write on the back of the topmost paper, whatever it is.

"You got a last name, Ms. Jessica?" she prompts, looking intently at her own hand wrapped around Fred's favorite fountain pen. Her name, her number. These are professional necessities. Eddie has no ulterior motives, no need for Jessica's information beyond the purposes of solving her case. More to the point, Jessica is out of Eddie's league - and probably playing a different game altogether anyway.

Jessica gathers herself, mentally and physically, and rises gracefully from the very ungraceful chair she's been occupying these last long moments of the day. Her shadow casts itself around the room in fractals not unlike any of Fred's crystals, or like the ambiguous movement of something unknown beneath rippling water. She sees herself to the door while Eddie is still mesmerized.

"Let's see if you can find that out yourself," she challenges over her bare shoulder. "Consider it an interview." Her enigmatic smile seems to imply that the interview could be for the job, or maybe for something a little more personal if Eddie performs well enough.

"Call me when you find me," Jessica says as she slips out the door. Her silhouette pauses behind the frosted window, flutters its long fingers in a coy little wave, and then fades away with the hollow clip of high heels on hardwood.

I will accept constructive criticism on this chapter from mutuals. More in this Universe: Cat's Eye View | Feline Retribution | Beer, Brandy, Belladonna

Taglist: @girlfriendsofthegalaxy @haectemporasunt @jezifster @blackhannetandco @fearofahumanplanet @littlehastyhoneydew @rainbowabomination @antihell @isherwoodj @marrowwife @ashen-crest @wildswrites @ceph-the-ghost-writer @garthcelyn @muddshadow @cohldhands @unrealistic-android @glam-pir @outpost51 @mrbexwrites @vacantgodling @blind-the-winds

51 notes · View notes