“You know smoking’s bad for you, right?” Barbie started, the
ghost leaned against the hood of my car beside me. A single raised
brow making her shrug, “smells bad too.”
“I’m a werewolf,” I muttered, not that it wasn’t an argument
I was used to, flicking the finished butt onto the small pile of four
others gathering at my feet. Not really wanting another one so soon
and all the same fishing it out with my currently one good hand and
lighting another as I added on, “besides, you’re from the
fifties, not going to tell me smoking’s a healthy part of a woman’s
diet or something?”
“It’s unladylike,” the girl tried countering, arms crossed and
pacing the floor ready to start, “I mean, come on-” before a door
slammed nearby.
The ghost gone before the sound finished echoing, leaving me alone to
think on that for only a few seconds before two familiar forms
started towards me.
Elizabeth familiar enough, she was a tall and pale woman, almost
skeletal in appearance in her black dresses that clung tight to her
body. Today’s a thicker woolen one over which she wore a purple
coat that would have come to her knees and a black sunhat. Her smile
thin, no honest human scent to her behind the roses and vanilla
barely covering the scents of various magical ingredients.
The woman beside her familiar enough, though only for the fact I’d
just recently met her. Today wearing a pair of jeans and a black
sweater, eyes still hidden behind a pair of sunglasses she looked me
over with some curiosity before she asked, “Mary, was it not?”
“Chasseresse?” I did my best to remember, the look of
disappointment in her eyes making me add on, “said to call you
Chasse.”
“Right I was, you make the name sound ugly,” Chasse scolded with
a few clicks of her tongue. The older werewolf strolling over with a
casual air and reaching out, the wolf growling even as she ignored
the gesture to pluck the cigarette from between my lips and took it
to her own. Disappointment turning briefly to disgust as she
complained, “cheap too,” even while she took another draw.
“Nice to see you too,” I complained, fetching another cigarette
for myself the woman at least moved to light for me, “payment’s
on the hood, if there’s any problem with it let me know.”
Elizabeth chuckled at that, taking the bag up and barely looking
inside as she admitted, “I trust you better than most, and I trust
Goodfellow even more. Besides that, it’s no big loss of mine if the
potency is a little off or the amounts less than desired.”
I nodded, ready to ask her more when I noticed Chasse’s eyes on me;
the sunglasses doing little to hide the way they seemed so focused on
me. Her expression unreadable under the look, and my own stare back
doing little to discourage her. The woman only shrugging after a few
seconds and admitting, “The Lady made no lies about you.”
Elizabeth didn’t let me focus on that too long before she started
towards the building once more, gesturing us along as she started,
“come on, Mary, Chasse was just helping me go through some files in
my small unit, that’s mostly just the boring stuff. Your dad’s
present’s in the one where I keep all the fun stuff, need to get a
trunk out of there anyway.”
Chasse and I both following without little question, I realized I’d
lost whatever point I was about to make and instead asked, “The
Lady having everyone working this week?”
“Not work, or… well, finding the right files were, but that
wasn’t much trouble,” the witch brushed off the complaint,
leading us down halls and halls of identical orange doors, “for me
it’s just party preparation, getting Chasse some contact
information I didn’t know if I still had. The Lady does this big
gathering every five years, people from all around the region send
representatives and negotiate territories and treaties again, even
some people from Europe come by. It’s mostly a party, excuse to
make sure everyone knows whose in charge of everywhere and have some
fun, but you know how that goes.”
“Think I saw Tracker talking that out with her, she’s leader of
the local Purists now?” I asked, a quick glance to Chasse as though
the woman would have any idea. Technically
Tracker would have been considered leader of the Purists on
principle, though I doubted very many covenants attended the event,
and probably none from
even the other side of the
Mississippi. It’d probably have been a small miracle if they did
everything that got anything resembling global recognition.
All the same, I hadn’t had any real contact with the Purists in
over a year, and she probably knew more than me if she knew anyone in
the region.
Didn’t mean Chasse let it on if she did, the woman not even looking
at me as she admitted, “work for the fey now, Procya’s cousin
sends me to check on the affairs here every few years. He fixed my
eye.” a quick glance back and wink of her yellow eye making it
actually feel like an almost tempting prospect. I was already
basically owned by The Lady, how bad could working for a fey be if I
could have depth perception again?
Well, probably pretty bad, and I wasn’t leaving the best
impressions with them and they’d genuinely own me after any
deal I could make there.
Eventually we stopped outside a locker door Elizabeth unlocked for
us, holding the door up just long enough for all three of us to go in
before letting it fall once more behind us. My eyes even unable to
see in the resulting dark, though the overwhelming smell of old
assaulting me while I was ordered to avoid moving. Elizabeth
fumbling in the dark for only a few seconds before florescent lights
buzzed overhead and the locker was filled with cold white light.
A pretty large storage unit, or at least I thought it was, the unit
itself was probably a little bigger than my bedroom on all sides.
Shelves and boxes lining the walls and multiple in the center
creating alleyways of space with barely any room to squeeze between
them. Rust lining most of the metal shelves, trunks that looked like
they were from a half hundred decades spaced apart, stacked, and slid
onto shelves, and old cardboard boxes stacked in even more places.
Chasse seeming almost speechless as me even as Elizabeth quickly
looked around, taking up a familiar hand mirror off one shelf and
stuffing it in her pocket with a small glare my way. The woman
muttering to herself several seconds before admitting, “okay, feel
free to dig around a little bit, might take a bit to find everything.
Might… take a minute, but I know everything’s here. Mary, you’ll
know your thing when you see it, mahogany case with gold accents,
family crest and name on the top.”
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I nodded a few times, body barely moving until Chasse smacked my
shoulder and I started to look around. Eyes first scanning a few
shelves hoping it’d pop out to me, especially with some improved
eyesight, before realizing it was probably at least a little buried
and I needed to look through a few boxes.
That not helping either as I opened the first, an old paper ream box
from probably the fifties, and found miscellaneous junk from what was
probably across hundred years tossed in. A sigh escaping me even as I
dug through pocket watches, jewelry, and a number of home tools with
my one good hand before deciding that box was at least probably a
dead end.
My hope for a quick search dying as I opened the box next to it and
was greeted by piles of loose photos. The desire to get this over
with outweighed by curiosity as I picked a few up and asked, “not
big on photo albums?”
“Oh, meant to organize those back in the eighties and never got
around to it. Feel free to look through, nothing I’m horribly
ashamed of in there.” her words the encouragement I needed to keep
going until I found one that made me a little curious.
A black and white photo of Elizabeth in a silky gown that barely
covered her body laid across the lap of a man in black robes, black
beard and hair shaggy and unkempt, eyes bearing down into the camera
with an almost unblinking menace in the still frame as I held it up
for her. Knowing I was probably going to regret it as I asked, “one
of your exes?”
“Mary, that doesn’t narrow it down at all, there’s a glass
harmonica here for a reason. I-” and she stopped herself as she saw
the picture, a small bit of rose to her cheeks as she looked away and
answered, “I was taking a vacation in Russia and was a very
desirable woman, Mary, you need to understand I was wanting to
memorialize getting a night with Grigori. You get it, right?”
I didn’t even bother answering that he didn’t look my type,
tossing the photo back in the box and ready to call it there before I
found the explicit boudoirs when a photo caught my eye. Color, though
with the yellowish tinge old photos had, the sleeve of a leather
jacket barely visible from what peaked over the edge.
A quick glance to confirm Chasse and Elizabeth weren’t looking and
I slid the photo out, keeping it in the box and laying it out as I
took in the scene in front of me.
Not an intimate moment (thankfully) or an extreme close up, but three
woman sat in a bar’s booth together. Elizabeth in a dress covered
in tassels, a woman with black hair I didn’t recognize on sight
wearing a floral patterned button down with her head on the witch’s
shoulder, and a third woman. Curly auburn hair cut to the chin,
leather bomber jacket worn over a flannel shirt, cheek leaning on a
hand holding a burning cigarette with a probably half-drunk smile
across her face.
My face, or at least close enough you could have convinced me it was
mine with only a little prodding. Another quick look to make sure
Elizabeth and Chasse were still searching, heart racing, and another
long look at the photo. Eyes the same shade of brown as mine, though
she still had both hers at the time, a small piece of deer antler
around her neck carved with the Silver Moon’s rune, the jacket
mine, my dad supposedly still repairing it, though with
none of the patches or marks it’d had even when I’d first been
given it.
Fingers flipping to the back only long enough to read Elizabeth,
Judith, Eva. 19th birthday.
January 24th, 1966 and confirm my
suspicions.
My awe only broken by Elizabeth letting out a happy noise as she
declared, “oh found it!” while I quickly shoved the photo in my
back pocket before she rounded the corner. The woman looking overly
proud of herself while she gestured me to follow her through the
aisles to one corner of the room. The box she’d described laid on a
shelf with an old oil painting pulled from against the wall and
propped up across a piano.
A man and woman in powdered wigs, clothes that were similar to though
probably older than the ones Calliope wore. The woman sat in a chair,
the man stood beside her with one hand on her shoulder as they stood
with a proud boredom you saw in those sort of paintings. Elizabeth
almost looking more excited about the painting even while I took the
box up and looked it over.
The wood a little weathered, though no where near as bad shape as I’d
have thought for being stored here, even the latch was still easy to
undo once I sat it down. Loudly opened to reveal a pair of silver
accented flintlock pistols on a soft fabric, alongside all needed to
load them. A quick glance at the top confirming the barely known
crest and the plaque Property of William Taylor.
“His wife gave the dueling pistols to me after he died, bought the
painting pretty cheap at an auction a few decades back out of
nostalgia,” Elizabeth explained with a barely contained laugh while
she looked it over a final time, “she was a werewolf you know?
Pretty well respected family too, before she went to sea. Guess you
got a little of that on both sides, huh?”
“Hunters seem to be bad at avoiding that I’m finding,” I
agreed, latching the box back even as I told her, “Dad’ll love
it. William’s the one who made our name big in America, he was
probably half my bedtime stories. Though… well, the werewolf thing
didn’t get mentioned.”
“Eh, none the kids or grand kids became one so didn’t really need
to be a big deal in the family history I guess. Settled down once she
had the money and a pardon, liked she could call a place home without
needing to become a housewife. Think she mostly just ran a small
trading company with a few ships those last decades she had, helped
pay for a bunch of girls in the areas to get educations and took on a
couple apprentices from them,” Elizabeth admitted fondly, moving on
to start looking through a few of the trunks, “good woman, better
than most at the time if you need one family member to be proud of.”
“Don’t know if I want to,” I admitted.
The dueling pistols a little awkward to carry, I did my best to hold
them under my bad arm before letting out a hiss of pain and went back
to awkwardly gripping it in one hand. The witch looking at me only
briefly concerned as she kept going through trunks and asked,
“injured?”
“Couple mercenaries went after Vergil,” I admitted hesitantly,
only a moment later realizing that I was supposed to tell her as I
quickly added on, “looks like they’re targeting different
supernaturals, figure tell you to be safe. You know?”
The witch let out a small grunt, not seeming bothered by it as she
finally pulled out an old looking leather wrapped trunk. Chasse
summoned over with just a few snaps of Elizabeth’s fingers and
picking up the trunk herself as the witch explained, “I should be
safe, my home has enough wards and spells on it that any attack is
likely to end badly for the attacker without me noticing they were
there. Allie was planning on staying home anyway, and just bought
that… what was it? The silk game? Whatever it was, she brought home
plenty of groceries last night and seemed happy to spend a few days
in her room. Even if I’m attacked out and about, my magic stops me
from dying, so I’m likely the safest person in this room. You’re
the one who should be careful, you’re going to that party in a few
days aren’t you?”
I looked at her for a moment, not sure how to respond and only after
a second reminding her, “I didn’t know about it, why would I go?”
The witch looked confused for a moment and snapped her fingers,
laughing a little as we started out of the locker and she explained,
“so different groups and people get to send different amounts of
representatives. Some of the bigger ones get a few people, some just
get to go alone, most groups get an Ambassador and a Knight,
basically a bodyguard. Martin’s made token appearances to the last
few of these as the representative of the hunters, usually brings his
wife or another hunter with him. I wasn’t thinking, thought you
might have been filling in for him as the daughter but-”
The conversation was cut off by a phone ringing, Chasse pausing long
enough to realize it was hers and lower the trunk to her feet.
Flipping her phone open, which probably surprised me more than it
should have, and letting out a series of grunts into it which didn’t
even both passing as words. The speaker on the other side too muffled
to make out the words of, but the cadence unmistakable as anyone
other than The Lady.
The two continuing like that for only a minute or so before Chasse
hung up, turning back to me with a small nod and announcing, “your
dad got shot, Lady told me not to tell you.”