The offices of the Serious Crimes Division are quiet and that’s exactly how Agent Angel Fernandez likes it. The soft patter of rain against the windows melds seamlessly with the gentle clicking of keyboards and the occasional wisp of paper being shuffled into submission.
At the desk next to Angel, sits the hunched figure of Wild Neverbee. Besides Angel’s hair, which is a vibrant green, Wild’s crimson wings are the only splash of color amongst the dreary blacks and grays of the office.
Normally, the office is a low grumble of activity with occasional bouts of frenzied activity, but with Christmas past and New Year’s Day on the horizon, time seems to hang suspended in a liminal space between work and vacation, between old and new.
The procedure for filing a case report, however, does not care about liminal spaces and holiday cheer, and although that particular deadline is after January 1st, Angel would rather get the task out of the way before then. Start fresh, with an empty inbox and a clear desk and all that.
This is, of course, an entirely unachievable goal. There will always be another email, another call, another case. And yet, this fact doesn’t deter Angel; they work diligently, filling out the forms, saving photos to the database, and ticking the appropriate boxes so that the entry will be searchable later.
Some days, Angel misses this sort of tidiness, forms filled out completely, all questions answered. Angel started off in the Bureau Archives, taking comfort in procedures and checklists. But, as Angel thinks, with comfort comes stagnation. Angel grew tired of blindly following rules and procedure, and found a new sort of satisfaction in field work, solving murders with the Suspicious Death Squad, where although every case begins the same—with a dead body—the individual components vary greatly. Angel has even relied heavily on their Archives and extensive magical history knowledge over the years, even one using a location spell to find a potential witness.
And yet, there is some small part of Angel that yearns for a simple answer, like they used to have when they worked in the Archives—because Henry Faulkner’s case is not complete. How could it be when it was tied to so many other deaths that are still missing pieces? Faulkner’s death was the result of a curse; that curse also caused the deaths of Sunny Blackwood, Rowena Little, and Leon Cruz. And even then, the curse goes back to the accidental death of Maisie Myer, whose body was recently recovered from the Inger Caves in Ilton, an island just off the coast of Valkaria.
What Angel is really curious about, however, is the timeline. Angel can document the progression of the curse through the subsequent deaths, particularly through Henry Faulkner. Angel was there when he was informed of the death of his friend, Sunny, who had listed him as an emergency contact. There was no evidence of the curse then, and Angel calculates that it took at least two days before symptoms began to show.
So, why did it only take a handful of hours to take Leon Cruz’s life? Angel can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to it all. Leon Cruz held onto the secret of Maisie’s death for forty years, as they all did. However, when he found Maisie’s necklace while cleaning out his attic, he confessed the truth in a letter to Maisie’s family.
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Could that written confession have been enough to activate the curse in his blood? And if so, would it have activated when he committed the words to paper or when they words were subsequently read? And would a written confession be enough to even activate the curse in the blood of the three witnesses who were there when Maisie died? Magic, like radiation, has a half-life. Spells flow like a river until they magic has exhausted itself. The curse laid dormant for forty years—would it really still be so strong as to kill four people in less than a week?
Possibly, but Angel would rather be certain.
So, Angel sends in a request to the Bureau office in Austin, asking to have Leon Cruz’s file sent over.
The response comes back surprisingly quick, and Angel is pleased that Nguyen sent over the full file, including the complete autopsy.
“Huh,” says Angel, clicking through the report.
“What?” asks Wild, glancing up from his computer.
“Leon Cruz had significant scarring in his brain. They think he was compelled a lot right up until his death.”
“Compelled? By a vampire? For how long?”
A bit more clicking. “Doesn’t say. I’ll follow up,” Angel says, already typing an email reply to Agent Nguyen—but a soft ping from their phone distracts them. With a sigh, Angel looks up at Wild. “A body’s been found downtown. They want us on scene as soon as possible.”
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Harvest glances at her phone, but just long enough to see Hazel’s name pop up with a message. She’ll read it in a minute, she decides, returning her attention to the mirror and to the careful application of mascara. She’s running late and she wonders, not for the first time, if she’s made the right decision.
She straightens up and looks at her outfit. She angles her body to the side to view her silhouette. Disappointing but familiar. She is herself, and her date will just have to deal with it. Of course, he was interested enough to ask her out in the first place, so she can only hope her lack of curves is a point in her favor, or at the very least, not something that will be held against her.
It’s an odd time to start a new relationship, in between Christmas and New Year’s. The days stretch out in between the holidays, amorphous and aimless. It feels momentous and yet overshadowed by the traditions on either side. Harvest feels similarly, excited about her date and yet heavy with a sense of grief.
She watched someone die just a few days ago, after all. Rowena Little’s death may have been inevitable, but the memory of it is still unsettling. It doesn’t help that Quinn held Rowena in his hands and sped her along toward death. The memory exists in jarring halves: gentleness and brute force sitting side-by-side. Like a double-exposed photograph, two opposing forces overlaid on each other in a jumble of shapes and colors.
Her phone buzzes a second time, and she looks down, expecting to see Hazel’s name again, but the message is not attached to a contact in her phone. It’s a random number, though it has a local area code. She clicks to read the message.
Did you like your Christmas present?
She mentally sorts through everything she’s received this holiday season, but nothing immediately stands out. Most of her gifts were from family or friends—people whose phone numbers are saved in her contacts. Maybe it’s someone who got a new phone?
Regardless, the time on her screen shines brightly at her, and she curses under her breath. She’s officially fifteen minutes late now.
She swipes the notification away, making a mental note to investigate tomorrow. After all, if someone sent her a Christmas present, she should thank them for it.