Regret is not a strong enough word to describe the lamentation running through Albert mind as thoughts rattled through his awareness like a stream of text on a digital ticker tape in a run down stock brokers office. Misery might have been a better word. It was misery that kept Albert still as his mind slowly put the pieces back together.
He’d walked to school one day, been identified by one of Death’s associates as someone who had spiritual property, and been killed. He’d negotiated with Death, arranged to trade two souls for his own, and done it. He’d had Amy’s help. And the whole time, Hope had been working on his case from the shadows as Amy’s boss. She’d tortured Amy, the only person that had even gotten close to really helping him, and she’d toyed with Albert as well. She’d made it simple for him to get his position with Death’s business, she’d tried to wine and dine him, and she’d set him up to work with Graham on the first and last job he’d been on. Graham had taken him to scout out a new location for Death’s business, but it had already been occupied. They’d been hired to negotiate a truce between two clashing factions of contractors, but the second faction…
Albert remembered everything in its proper order up to the moment he had walked through Madame Offry’s door. But from that moment to the moment he woke up dazed and confused it was like staring through a heavy blizzard. He remembered the smell of incense, the sound of Graham talking, the rustling of a bead curtain, and a woman’s voice. It had been distant, in another room, and there had been a veil of what was clearly a fake accent to fit the stereotype of a fortune teller. But there was no visual memory. Albert couldn’t remember how anything felt, and the further into the memory of the meeting with Madame Offry that Albert tried to recall the more obscured the details became.
“How many souls did you take?” Albert asked. It was the only thing he could bear to ask of Hope.
“More than three.” Hope muttered, confused. Her expression was a mixture of confusion and worry. “Do you even know what happened?”
“Some of it… I think.” Albert held his hand to his head as he forced himself to recall the events in more detail. “I went out with Graham, like you asked, and we were scouting out the area. But there were already two contractors… well, maybe three actually. There were two factions of contractors there. The McClellan’s, the first faction we met, let us go on the condition that we tried to negotiate with their neighbors. But the other contractor was just… too much.”
“Albert…” Hope started, but paused as she bit her lip in contemplation. It was as if she was trying to decide whether or not to say something. And when she finally decided what to say, it was horrific. “That was three days ago. You’ve been missing that whole time.”
“What do you mean? I just ended up back home. I don’t know what Madame Offry did to me, but I just woke up back home. That was maybe… a little over two hours ago?”
“We’ve had Amy watching your apartment, but she hasn’t reported back saying she’s seen you.” Hope extended a hand to Albert’s shoulder. It was intended as comfort, but Albert flinched at the contact and Hope withdrew her hand.
“What about Graham? He should know what happened at the den, he walked in first. He actually made it in and then out before my memory started getting fuzzy.”
“Graham’s gone too. Dad can’t find him or compel him to appear, which shouldn’t even be possible. That’s why the office is mostly empty. Everyone is out looking.”
The realization that his memory had been fragmented even more severely than he’d originally thought and that there was no way to really prove it finally sunk in. Albert didn’t have a ready response, and the fear and regret swirling in his head were going to keep it that way.
“Looking for you, if that wasn’t clear.” Hope continued, her attitude verging on sarcasm. “And Graham. We sent more people out to scout the area, and we found the McClellans. They don’t seem interested in leaving, or talking for that matter, and that’s… fine for now. But we haven’t seen any trace of another faction.”
“There was one, though.” Albert said after a deep breath. “Madame Offry. She was posing as a medium. She sold contact to spirits, probably for property and souls… maybe even as a condition for accepting the souls of half-deads. And she had a line behind her store—nearly a quarter mile long—of spirits waiting for their turn to talk to her.”
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The description changed Hope’s expression from one of concern to one of unease. “Are you sure that’s what you saw? You don’t seem to be in the best head space right now, buddy. You even said that dad had you go out and collect three souls for him… and I don’t recall that ever happening. It’s not in your file either.”
Albert was about to shrug off the question, when Hope interrupted him. “How did you even get here for that matter? You don’t have a quill on you, dad hasn’t been able to detect you, and I’m going to assume your things were stolen since we haven’t been able to contact you by phone either.”
“Hey, I think I was abducted. So could you maybe tone down the accusation?” Albert wasn’t entirely sure if that was the truth, that he’d been abducted somehow, but the blanks in his memory and the duration of his disappearance lined up.
“What do you mean, you think?” Hope was struggling to keep up, her voice was stuck somewhere in the accusation while her face had genuine worry on it.
The mixture of genuine emotion Hope was displaying left Albert confused. He was still regretful that he had allowed himself to share an emotional and vulnerable moment with one of the most despicable people he had ever met, but her consistent display of care—however minimal it was from time to time as she lashed out—for his well being.
“I honestly don’t remember what happened from the moment I opened the door to her den to the moment I woke up in my apartment. And I don’t know how I got here either. I just… I asked to be taken here and I was here.”
Albert’s explanation was met with a gentle meow from his feet. When he turned to look, he didn’t see anything. But with his memories functional again, he was able to fill in the gaps. He didn’t know what it meant, exactly, but he was finally aware of Pincushion’s presence.
“If you were abducted, and you don’t know how you got back home, why do you still have Pincushion with you?” Hope’s question was just as skeptical as it was suspicious; though that suspicion wasn’t aimed directly at Albert, but at the cat.
“I’m not sure.” Albert mumbled as he tried to pin down the location of the cat spirit without being able to see it.
“How did you get here?” Hope asked as she knelt back down to get closer to the spirit.
The cat only meowed again, as was expected. But that it responded so directly caught Hope off guard. She wasn’t entirely clear on exactly how intelligent Pincushion was, but she was slowly realizing that it was nearly human. And that worried her.
“I can’t see her. What’s she doing?”
Hope looked up to double check that Albert wasn’t wearing glasses or contacts before she looked back to the cat and answered. “She’s right by your left foot. But I don’t think she’s just a cat spirit.”
“No.” Albert agreed, his voice low as if he was trying to speak quietly so the cat couldn’t hear him. “But I don’t have any idea what else she could be. And she follows instructions, which could be useful.”
“She follows… okay. Demonstrate.” Hope ordered as she stood up and took a step back to try and evade any potential danger.
“I mean, I can’t see her so I can’t tell if she’s… no… Wait.” Albert sat down on the ground fully as he pondered what the implications of the thought that had just occurred to him.
Hope crossed her arms and assumed something closer to her usual demeanor. “Are you going to give the cat an order or not?”
Pincushion issued a faint hiss directed at Hope, but didn’t budge otherwise.
“I think… Pincushion, do you have my quill?”
The cat spirit meowed casually, and if Albert could see her he would have seen her nod faintly. Hope did see the nod and the shock of the interaction caused her to slump into one of the plastic chairs lining the wall behind her.
“If you do have it then, give it back to me.” Albert ordered calmly. He would have reached out to stroke the cat behind the ears as well, in way of offering, but it was much harder to do without being able to see it.
Touching the cat spirit at all, as improbable as it sounded, would have been a risky choice. As, at the given order, Pincushion began to wheeze and hack. In a display that Albert was glad he couldn’t see, and that Hope was genuinely disturbed to witness, the cat spirit coughed up a mass of inky black slime. At first Albert thought the slime was some kind of protoplasm, but then the quill buried in the midst of it reminded him of another item he’d had in his backpack—ink.
“Alright. Good girl.” Albert hummed. His attempt at praise was strained by the nature of the retrieval, but it was still a useful piece of information to know. “If you have anything else of mine, give it back as well.”
The following minute was a chorus of disturbing retching noises and items tumbling forth from the maw of the spirit. Hope sat silently, jaw barely set as the nearest sensation to nausea that she was capable of experiencing set in. Albert was still glad he couldn’t see what was happening, based off of Hope’s expression alone it was horrific, but he didn’t enjoy his ability to hear or smell the process either. It sounded exactly like a real living cat throwing up a hairball and it smelled ten times worse.
“Albert.” Hope said, one hand over her mouth and nose to obscure the smell. “I never want to see something like that again. There’s a wash room in my office, go clean your things up.”
“I could have Pincushion do something else, though. If you still need proof, I mean.”
“No!” Hope objected loudly, more loudly than Albert felt was called for. “No. Just. Take the cat with you. I’m going to get in contact with my father, write a report, and try very hard to forget what I’ve just seen once it’s all on paper and I don’t need to remember it anymore.”