--An hour later--

That was truly one hell of a meeting. Left without any other choice, Caitlyn accepted Alfonse’s demand, and shortly after was left alone in the building’s foyer. There were other people in the building; frightening adults, walking around with scars and tattoos. Caitlyn didn’t pay them much attention, and was surprised when she saw Ern walking over with the skinny black man. Ern had arms and legs, though after closer inspection, she noticed they weren’t made of skin. Rather, the flesh was a peach colored clay that moved as though it were really one of his limbs.

After that, the black guy introduced himself as Antione. Soon after, the three of them had driven to a nearby Italian restaurant, where the kitchen staff allowed them to sit in a spotless backroom.

They could order anything they wanted, and even though Ern was filling himself to the brim with spaghetti, Caitlyn couldn’t eat anything but a bit of salad and water. There was still so much turbulence in her brain to act properly. This was real. And she was alive. But for how long? Was she really going to be forced to work for some criminal group? What were they gonna have her do? If she did this, wasn’t she just still going to die? Or see things even more horrifying than earlier?

“That’s the purpose of coming here,” Antione said with his soothingly deep voice, as though he had read her mind. “Trust me, I don’t understand half this stuff either. The Boss is a vampire. There are some days where I wake up and just imagine it’s all just a dream, but then I come to work and realize it’s just facts. The truth is: the world is split into two halves; one that’s normal, that us regular people live in, and then another half, where all the weird supernatural and occult stories you hear about exist. So just take it slow. Breathe in, breathe out. There’s no point in stressing out about the details, trust me.”

“I still don’t understand it all,” Caitlyn said, watching Ern eat. He was supposedly a year older than Caitlyn, but he looked and acted way younger. “Vampires? Magic? It seems like dungeons and dragons, or some kind of video game stuff. Weird fantasy crap.”

“Heh, you ain’t wrong. Worst part about it all? You can’t go around telling people. They’d just think that you’re crazy. I’ve been married over ten years and my wife still doesn’t know about it.”

“You’re married?”

“Of course,” Antione said. He lifted a hand up to show off his ring. “Just because you’re a scummy criminal doesn’t mean you can’t live a normal life. Well, I mean, I mostly do accounting and work with the public facing businesses, so I guess I’m a bit privileged in that aspect, but you get what I’m saying, right?”

“Not sure I do.”

“That just because this all seems so unbelievable and crazy doesn’t mean the world doesn’t stop spinning. That’s my other job. Making sure people still have connections with real life. Probably because I’m the only normal one with the Boss’s favor. Ah, no offense.”

“Normal?”

“Yep. I’m just a regular person. Nothing special about me, other than my incredibly mediocre cooking skills and fantastic typing speed.”

“How does someone like you get a job like this?”

Before Antione could answer, Ern burped.

“Alright, I’m done,” he said. He stretched his arms out, which seemed to be a bit too long for his body. “Wait, sorry, were you guys talking about something?”

Caitlyn looked at Antione, who smiled and shrugged.

“Not much,” Antione answered. “Please, don’t mind me. The Boss wanted you two to talk, right? Something like an internship of sorts? I seem to recall him deciding something along the lines of: once Ern trains the girl to do his job better than him, we can wire the money to his account. Until then, the best he gets are some arms and legs.”

That was the rough outline as Caitlyn understood it. Ern was supposedly an ‘exorcist’, and Alfonse wanted her to learn how to do his job. But what that meant escaped her.

Ern cleared his throat.

“There are five different grades of curses,” he started, pushing his glasses up and leaning back in his chair. The way he spoke was deliberate and scholarly, as though he were reciting things directly from a textbook. “Beginning with D-Grade and then ascending all the way to S-grade. Before getting into anything else, you’ll need to understand this, so please, pay attention and take notes if you need to.”

He paused and squinted at Caitlyn, who hadn’t moved.

“Okay, well. We’ll begin with the lowest and weakest, and most pathetic grade of curse: the D-Grade curse. A D-Grade curse is going to be a D-Grade for a few reasons. First of all, they are limited in their overall hate or spite when concerning the applicability or contagiousness of the curse. In layman’s terms, this means basically that the curse has an incredibly narrow focus, or is limited in a way that means it cannot possibly cause harm to anyone or anything unless they fall into a very narrow criteria attached to whatever the curse is meant to achieve.

“The other reason why you would classify something D-Grade is because it’s weak and forgetful. For the most part, these are the basic everyday curses that you would see and receive if you were looking for them. Something so minor, and with little to no conviction that it barely lasts. For example: a child may curse his mother for not giving him an extra scoop of ice cream that night, but after twenty minutes when the ice cream is all finished, he’ll forget entirely about it. A curse may be created in this time and applied if the son, mother, or location has an affinity for it, though the negative emotions attached to it would be so basic that they’d fizzle out on their own without much interference.

“D-Grade curses, like I said, basically kill themselves off on their own really quickly. They’re unsustainable and rarely cause any harm other than minor inconveniences, so to most people who want to deal with curses, D-Grade curses can be mostly ignored. You might start to notice them as your attunement with phantasms start to grow, but just ignore them. In fact, you might just exorcise them simply by being nearby, so that’s fine too. Either way, you can mostly pretend they don’t exist, but to get a good understanding of how curses work, you need to begin at the most basic level.”

Ern was about to keep speaking, but Caitlyn raised her hand, which stopped him. He slowly blinked and pointed at her.

“Sorry, Ern,” Caitlyn said. “But I don’t understand. What’s a curse? Can you, like, start at an even more basic level?”

“I don’t get it either,” Antione said.

“Jeeeeesus,” Ern said, sighing. “Alright, alright. I’ll make it even more basic. Okay! So! You probably have no idea what Od is, right?”

Both Caitlyn and Antione shook their heads in the negative.

“Then let’s start there. Od is the life force that flows between reality. The energy and fuel that keeps reality together, and the spark of power that keeps phantasms together. There’s a lot more metaphysical junk to it, but I really don’t think that matters. You get that, right?”

“So...it’s like mana?”

“Like what?”

“Uh…” Caitlyn felt a bit embarrassed at that. “Like, you know. Mana from video games, or something. You know.”

“Sorry, I don’t play video games so I wouldn’t know,” Ern said. “But if that works for you, good on ya’. Now, phantasms, like vampires and werewolves and all that jazz, live off of Od in different forms. Some of them drain it from human beings, while others receive it from the earth or other rituals. There are all sorts of ways for something to fill up on Od. But regardless, what matters is that humans produce it as well, without realizing it. And without realizing it, when someone feels extreme negative emotions, especially towards certain external targets, the Od automatically reacts and forms what you would call a curse. That should help clear things up, right?”

“More or less, I guess.”

“Good. Then let me continue with C-Grade curses. They’re above D-Grade in all aspects, and while they have enough application to actually cause harm, the general qualification of a C-Grade would be that it doesn’t cause enough of an inconvenience to prevent an ‘average day for an ignorant person’. That’s a pretty standard term for us on this side of the veil, I imagine you know it, right Antione?”

“I do,” the man said. He looked at Caitlyn to take a chance at explaining. “An average day is supposed to mean a day you go through without noticing anything wrong. An ignorant person is someone who doesn’t know about all this fantasy stuff. And the whole ‘side of the veil’ thing he mentioned is about the normal half and the weird half of the world.”

“That makes sense,” Caitlyn said. “Or, well, it doesn’t, but I think I get it. Go ahead.”

“Uh-huh. So. Moving on, C-Grade curses are what you might expect to see in something like an old campy serial killer teen slasher horror movie. Things like Friday the Fourteenth or Screamer are good examples of what a C-Grade curse might be like.”

At that moment, both Caitlyn and Antione said things at the same time.

Caitlyn, quite loudly, said: “That seems like a pretty big jump in levels of danger.”

Antione, at a far lower volume, said: “That’s not the name of either of those movies.”

Ern chose to address Antione first. “Hey, look. I’m not a movie nerd, okay? I don’t really care about any of those old grandpa films. But yes,” he then responded to Caitlyn’s comment. “I can get how the jump between D-Grade to C-grade might seem extreme like that. But take a second and think about those examples. Who actually gets hurt and attacked in those horror movies? What circumstances could you take to avoid the dangers?

‘Because I’m not a movie nerd, rather, I’d consider myself a movie cynic, I’d say that in the movies, the only people who need to worry about those cursed monster psychos are the idiot teenages who decide to throw themselves to fate by doing weird rituals or pissing on graveyards. A C-Grade curse may be strong enough at this level to actually hurt someone, but they typically are very limited in their output. For example, if someone was bullied by a few jocks in school, the curse would only cause misfortune to those bullies a few years later when they returned to school. Or, if someone was killed in a certain spot by certain people, those few would become afflicted when they returned to the spot. You see?”

“I think I’m starting to get it,” Caitlyn said. “But there’s another part I want clarification on. What do you mean by causing misfortune? Or becoming afflicted?”

“Do I really need to cover this basic stuff?”

“Not everyone is as well-learned as you,” Antione said, rubbing his beard. “Come on, out with it.”

“Seriously? But there’s so much to cover...where do I even start?”

“How about with the question?”

Ern sighed, but then composed himself and started the lecture again. “A curse exists to cause misfortune and suffering. What the curse does can be basically anything, as long as the final result is to make more and more negative emotions. Think about it like this: first, a curse is born from the combination of someone’s negative emotions and Od, which form a curse. That curse travels to a certain target (which can be a person, place, or thing), and then it’ll have an effect there. The more intense the darkness of the person making the curse, the more intense the curse will be. And...wait, this is starting to get mixed up. Hold on, let me think. Uhhh...okay, hold onto any questions for a second while I just speed to the important stuff.

“So, curses don’t necessarily need to come from one person. They can be kind of coagulated from different sources, and mold together.” As he spoke, Ern imitated packing a ball of stuff together in his hands. “For example, after World War II, a ton of people were kept prisoners by the Nazis in concentration camps. This was called the Holocaust, and it was really messed up.”

Caitlyn knew what the Holocaust was but didn’t interupt the explanation.

“More specifically, the treatment of Jews was particularly bad. That isn’t to say other people didn’t get majorly screwed, but from those concentration camps, a massive curse was created. It grew and grew as people were tortured and killed, over and over, sucking up and absorbing the curses from all of the other tragedies that were happening across the planet at that time. The curse was like a plague of invisible locusts, clouds over the sky, that made soldiers go insane with rage and fight to the death. It was a massive issue at the time, and took some of the most powerful magi and inquisitors from the Holy Church to deal with it. But even today, you still hear and see vestiges of it pop up. That would be an S-Grade curse.

“And, uh, well, I sort of lost track of the question. Something about what do curses do? Well, like I was saying, they just make people suffer. D-Grade is minor, like stubbing a toe, mispelling a word, or remembering a cringy memory from years ago. The kind of thing that makes life suck just a bit, but goes away pretty quickly. You forget about it without much pain. C-Grade is where it spikes up to be more long lasting. This is also where you start seeing cursed humans, which are people who bear curses on themselves, whether that be intentional or not. These people bring negativity and sorrow to themselves and others around them. But C-Grades are so limited that it is only a big deal to some people. Another example would be a serial killer luring people into his house. There was some historical case where that happened, and when investigated later, the magi on the scene realized that a curse had formed in the house that made people more likely to be drawn in. I feel like I’m getting off topic a bit, but the general gist is that if a D-Grade curse only affects one person, a C-Grade can’t affect more than twenty.”

“That seems like a lot to me.”

“Is it? How many people die every day? Every minute?”

“Yeah,” Caitlyn agreed, nodding. “You’re right.”

Ern was ready to respond with a well-crafted argument about the fragility of human life, but her quick and agreeable response took the wind straight from his sails.

Well…” It took him a second to recover. “Okay then. Let’s move to B-Grade, then. This is where you start seeing people react to the threats, and where you see exorcists start to get called in. They can affect large scales of people or places, and while they may not be incredibly dangerous, they happen frequently enough that ignorant people can start tracking them. Something like Bloody Mary, or the Bermuda Triangle. These curses draw in conspiracy and prey off of it. This level of curse doesn’t target specific individuals...instead, they target the people who search them out.

“A-Grade curses are pretty rare, as you might expect. When one of these show up, they get someone called to exorcise them incredibly quickly. Why, you might ask? Usually, an A-Grade curse is reserved for three possible things: the first would be a curse that simply cannot be exorcised normally. Grudges immaterial, with shapeless forms that transcend our ability to monitor and dispose of them. They bounce from person to person and remain waiting to strike with their own levels of sentience when they believe the time is right. The only way to get rid of them is to seal them, or to make bargains with them. But these Type-I A-Grade curses are so uncommon, I’ve never actually seen an example in any textbook, so it might just be theoretical.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“The second type of A-Grade curse would be one indiscriminate. They aren’t as strong as the others, usually they can’t do much damage, but can affect anyone and everyone, or anything. This would be where you fall in, by the way, as a devourer. That means curses are nothing but food for you, and Type-II A-Grades often end up doing more damage to curses than they do anything else, since they absorb energy but don’t redirect it anywhere. Devourer is the typical name for a cursed human with this trait, and a place would be called a black hole.

“Type-III A-Grade curses are known just because of their raw destructive power. They spawn from terrorist attacks or wars and end up causing natural disasters or mass suicides. The Holy Church usually deals with these, because they’re both easy to spot and exorcise as well as worth preventing.”

“The Holy Church?”

“Yes, they’re not just a bunch of religious nutjobs,” Ern said. “They’re religious nutjobs who actually do something good sometimes. Their main purpose is to prevent phantasms from harming the ignorant or from breaking through the veil, and one of those tasks is dealing with the threat of curses. Oftentimes they’ll just ask magi like myself to do it, but there are risks for them to do that.

“Usually, when the church deals with an exorcism, they completely obliterate the curse or try to purify it. But for magi who deal with curses, we have the messed up headspace to try and salvage the curse’s remains and learn about them. Our scholarly pursuits are usually counter to what the church wants, but they’re lacking in manpower. And that’s pretty much where you come in.”

“Exorcising curses?”

“Exactly,” Ern said, snapping his fingers. “To be a cleaner for the Parci Family, specifically. Here, think about it. What happens when someone gets killed and they’re angry about it? Can you guess what happens?”

“...do they curse someone? Make a curse?”

“Once again, you’re exactly correct,” Ern replied. “So, when the mafia kills someone, they hire an exorcist to rid the curse before it spreads. Because if every time you killed someone, they ended up getting automatic revenge, you wouldn’t be killing many people, would you? So, what our job is, is to exorcise those people’s curses after they get killed. Sounds simple, right?”

“But how do you exorcise something?”

Ern shrugged.

“For you? I have no idea. In the books, it says devourers need to keep physical contact with the curses, but since everything I read was translated years ago, I don’t actually know for sure. Just being within their proximity might also be enough. But don’t worry, I know a guy, and we can figure it out tomorrow night. You’re free, right?”

“...yes. After my homework. I didn’t even finish the work I was supposed to do tonight.”

“Wait, that’s a joke, right?” Ern asked. He smirked. “You’re not gonna actually do homework, are you?”

“I was planning on it.”

“That’s a good idea,” Antione said, butting in after watching the scene for so long. “You’re going to school then, right Caitlyn?”

“Yeah.”

“What school?” It was Ern who asked.

Ah, this was going to be awkward no matter what she said.

“The same one that you do,” Caitlyn finally decided on, trying to pick the words that would seem least passive aggressive. She didn’t want to come off weird, even though she knew it would. She knew him, but he didn’t know her.

“Eh, really?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh,” Ern said, titling his head to the side. “Wow, I totally don’t recognize you at all. Sorry about that.”

“That’s fine.”

“Anyway, make sure that you’re free tomorrow night. Before doing anything else, phantasms need to get themselves recorded. Going around without supervision by the Church is a quick way to get yourself killed.”

Caitlyn nodded.

“So make sure we meet up after school tomorrow,” Ern said. Then, he paused for a second and pulled out a phone from his pocket and tossed it across the table. “Put your contact info inside so I can reach out to you. Sound good?”

“...sure,” Caitlyn said, putting her details in the phone. It felt awkward. There were very few people in the world who had her phone number, and the only one who was male was her dad. She slid the phone over to him and turned to Antione slowly. “Should I be getting yours as well?”

He smiled and pulled a business card from his breast pocket.

“That’s fine. Take this instead. Gimme a call if you need anything, and make sure you do it from a restricted number. I’m trying to limit the data I keep stored as best as possible.”

“Oh, Caitlyn, another thing,” Ern said, checking his phone as he talked. “What grade are you?”

“Sophomore.”

“Year under me, then. How popular would you say you are? On a scale of zero to one-hundred?”

“That’s a wide range,” Antione muttered under his breath.

“I don’t know,” Caitlyn said. “Low?”

That didn’t seem like the answer Ern wanted as he frowned. “No, no, no. Hmm. Lemme phrase this a different way. You don’t have many friends right?”

It was true, but it hurt to hear.

“That expression tells me everything I need to know,” Ern continued. “You probably don’t do much for lunch at school, either. Make sure that you’re free. I’m gonna introduce you to the rest of the squad.”

“Squad?”

***

The two ended up talking for quite a bit longer as Antione lost focus and went to answering emails on his phone. He barely even noticed when the conversations stalled, with the two teens nodding off on the table. Ern’s head was on his finished plate, but the spaghetti sauce was coating his hair. It was past midnight when one of the cooks came in to ask how much longer they planned on staying, and Antione relayed they’d be leaving soon. He rustled the two awake.

“Hey, you don’t mind if I drive you two home, right?”

“You’d better,” Ern said.

“No, I’m fine,” Caitlyn said, yawning. “I can walk.”

“Don’t worry, you’re not imposing,” Antione said. “What’s the address?”

“It’s alright. Make sure Ern gets back.”

Ern grumbled, laying his head back on the table.

“You understand how dangerous these streets are, so late at night, especially for a girl, right?” Antione asked. “And you’ve got at least a half-mile walk before hitting the edge of the residential areas. No point in calling a ride, either, since I can just take you back home right now.”

“Sure, but-”

“No buts about it,” he said. Antione put his arm around Ern’s shoulder and heaved the boy up onto his feet, despite Ern’s unintelligible complaints. “You have school tomorrow. And if my gauge of you is correct, you’re pretty serious about that. Don’t try and act all tough and independent when someone is offering help.”

“How do I know you’re not gonna do something weird? You could be some kind of creep.”

“I’d like to think I’ve proven myself more than random people on the streets or random lift drivers, but maybe not. You seem to get snarky when you’re tired. Is this how you normally act? Or is it because you’re not as stressed anymore?”

“...”

“Sorry if you don’t like being psychoanalysis, I didn’t mean to,” Antione said. He was leading Ern out the door. “Come on. I’m not planning on leaving you to walk home. I’m pretty protective of kids, you know. Got little ones of my own.”

“...right.”

“So hurry up.”

Realizing she wasn’t going to be able to get away without putting up a lot of fight, Caitlyn sighed and followed the two of them. Antione tossed Ern in the back seat, and the boy fell asleep almost immediately, snoring loudly. After waving to the closing staff of the restaurant, they slowly pulled out of the parking lot and got onto the highway. Having been woken up filled Caitlyn with energy, and she no longer felt tired.

“You never told me,” she started. “Earlier, when we were talking, how you got into this business. You’re a regular person, right? Like, normal?”

“Normal is a strange way to put it, but I guess that works,” Antione said. He was focused on the road. “I might seem like a pretty straight and narrow fella, but that wasn’t always the case. I’ve done my fair share of crimes. Mostly white collar, believe it or not.”

“Like what?”

“Heh. I shouldn’t talk about it, but just a bit of fraud. Eventually, I was found out, but instead of the company reporting me or the IRS finding out, I was extended an invitation by the Boss...by Alfonse Parci himself. Since then, I’ve been slowly getting into all this wild stuff. Honestly, at the beginning, I was pretty wilded out. Totally seemed crazy. That’s why I’m surprised you’re taking it so well.”

“...I don’t know if I really am…”

“Better than I did, at least,” Antione replied. “I was married when I got this job. And let me tell you: having to keep secrets like this from my wife sucks! She’s way too smart sometimes. Fortunately, as sharp as she may be, there’s no way she’d guess I’m cleaning dirty books and running HR for a vampire mafia.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“Whether you believe it or not, you are keeping yourself together well.”

Caitlyn didn’t immediately respond. Mostly because it still seemed strange. This type of fantasy stuff was completely illogical. She should be babbling at the mouth and questioning everything, but as each new fact came, it felt easy to accept.

It made her think.

Her mom went crazy in her mid-twenties, right after Caitlyn was four. And so did her grandmother, at roughly the same age. Did that have anything to do with this? As they drove, Caitlyn watched the scenery. It was so dark outside; darker than it should be. Was that real? The moon was gone, and dark storm clouds covered the sky, casting down lazy droplets to earth. Were the shadows at the edges of her vision just illusions, or were they something more? Did her mom go through something like this as well? Hallucinations that caused her to break down and get violent? Could she have been seeing the other side of things, but without anyone to tell her that?

She was young when it happened, but Caitlyn could remember some things from back then. Bad things. Things she wanted to forget, but probably never could.

That was why she could stay so calm about this. Because the alternative was far worse.

Could she say that out loud?

No.

She wouldn’t.

There was nothing to complain about. This was just the true rigor of Caitlyn’s mental durability. She was just ready to accept the loss of her mind, something she knew was coming since her tenth birthday. Even if this wasn’t real, it was absolutely fine. If the alternative was raving at the walls and clawing her fingernails off, indulging in this fantasy was a perfectly sane thing to do. She liked it. It was kind of exciting. Like the books she read, right now, it felt like she was the main character.

A trigger went off in her head, scolding her for thinking like that. It felt so cringe inducing. How could she feel giddy about this? People were dead. An old woman and an innocent store clerk were murdered. And Caitlyn couldn’t even remember their names or faces. Not even what they sounded like. They were good people, and must’ve had families. Why was it they had to die? It was unfair. She should’ve been killed alongside them; her worth was so much smaller. Both of them had tried to fight back against the captors, but all Caitlyn did was sit around and wish she was dead. Even though she was the least deserving of salvation, it was granted to her. Were they cursing her from hell? Knowing what she did now, the thought made Caitlyn shiver, and when he noticed, Antione turned up the heater.

It was a long silence.

Caitlyn didn’t even remember the question Antione had asked that got her onto this train of thought, but she knew she needed to get away from it. This kind of spiral would lead her to depression.

Come up with something to talk about already!

“Who was that woman, earlier?”

Antione wasn’t expecting the non sequitur, so he started and stopped, composing himself.

“You mean Serena?”

“The woman with red hair and an eyepatch.”

“Yeah, that’s Serena,” Antione answered. “Though her codename is Ares. We all have these codenames we’re supposed to go by in the field, since learning a person’s real name could have other effects. Though not many people care anymore, supposedly it’s some old tradition. Anyway, Serena is the Parci Family magus. She’s sort of like Ern. A mostly normal person, except she can do magic and stuff.”

“Magic and stuff? That makes it sound so mundane and boring.”

Antione laughed.

“Well, it sort of is. I mean, when you think of wizards, you think or something like Harry Potter or Gandalf, right? The idea of magic conjures pictures of people shooting off lightning or something in your brain. Something super fantastic. But that’s not it at all, in fact, when I first learned what they did, I felt sort of let down. I don’t know the full extent of Ern’s magic powers, since he’s not technically part of the family, but Serena builds stuff. She makes these clay soldiers. I think she called them golems. And then once she’s made a bunch of them, she programs them, like computers, to make more, and then they start just building things. Weapons, for instance. We never need to purchase guns from outsiders because she can just mass produce them. And that’s about it. Useful, but not flashy, or really cool.”

“Then what was all that with the hands coming out of her face?”

“Oh, okay, yeah, that was pretty freaky. I’m not exactly sure the entire deal with that, but I’m pretty sure she has a little robot in her eye. We went drinking with a few other people once, and she did a party trick where she removed some of her fingers. It was weird.”

“That does sound weird,” Caitlyn said. “What about the suit of armor?”

“Ah, Carmichael. He’s a suit of armor.”

“That’s it.”

Antione shrugged.

“That’s about all I know,” he said. “I’m only supposed to do HR for people that have normal lives. Without a physical body, it would be pretty tough to live and pretend to be a regular person, right?”

“Ah.”

That seemed to be the perfect time to stop conversation, as their car pulled up right in front of a small mansion. It was dark, so Caitlyn couldn’t see much of it, but from what she did see, it appeared to be in disrepair. Overgrown plants emerged from the fence wrapped around it, and one of the gargoyles by the front entrance was missing a head. The most surprising thing about seeing the mansion was when Caitlyn realized how close to her house it was, and that she’d never noticed it before.

Antione got out to help carry Ern inside, and Caitlyn turned up the radio.

It was pretty late. Almost one o’clock in the morning. It would be tough to stay awake tomorrow, and she was worried that whatever Ern had planned for afterschool would be tiring as well. Time seemed to be passing quickly as Caitlyn felt herself getting tired and slipping back into slumber, and the next moment, Antione was shaking her.

“Here, this is it, right?”

Yes, this was it.

“Thanks,” Caitlyn said, bowing slightly. She yawned. “Thanks for the ride. Sorry about the trouble.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Antione replied. “And remember: if you need any help, give that number on my card a call. Using a restricted number, if possible. Anyway, stay safe, you hear?”

Caitlyn nodded again as she left the car, then crossed the driveway to her house.

It was embarrassing to come home.

She lived alone with her father, and his job wasn’t great. Their house was in a different sort of debauchery than Ern’s. Paint chipping off the wood. A crack on the front window. Muddy grass instead of a lawn, like the neighbor’s. Because she didn’t have a key to the front door, Caitlyn undid the lock on the side fence and went into the backyard, and once she was out of vision, she heard Antione drive away. It made sense for him to be nice, but Caitlyn didn’t like it. Made her uncomfortable.

She reached under a fake rock to grab a key, which she took to the front door. It was important to stay quiet. Her father wasn’t home when she left, but as she pushed the gate open, she could hear his snoring and the sound of static on the television, and the smell of alcohol and vomit assailed her. He worked long days, then went drinking with his friends. It was normal.

Letting her eyes adjust to the dark, Caitlyn stepped over beer bottles and made her way to the back door, where she replaced the spare key. After, she returned to her room, and slumped down on her bed. Too much had happened, and now that she was finally returned to comfort, Caitlyn passed out almost immediately.

***

--After the meeting of Caitlyn, Ern, and the Boss--

“Please, do come in.”

The outside doors of Alfonse Parci’s room slowly opened, and a man wrapped entirely in red bandages took a step inside. It would be almost impossible for a normal person to see, but to the vampire eyes in Alfonse’s skull, he could easily see the wilted grey flesh hidden underneath those red bandages. A ghoul. Heh. The vampire's most pathetic cousin, the third wheel to the hematophage classification. A creature that only eats dead flesh. But expressing contempt for this lesser wouldn’t do him much good, so he just smiled.

“Argyle, correct?”

When the man wrapped with red spoke, his voice quivered. Not from fear, but from pain. As though he were in the middle of being tortured.

“Y-yes...tha-that’s-s mee…” He gasped before continuing. “A-as pe-per...ord-ers, I...I bro-bro-brought the...the book. Clea...ned the sc-scene. And...bod-bodies. The...cr...crime l-l-looks...normal…”

Good lord. Heaven’s almighty, Alfonse wanted to destroy this inferior creature. Even little humans like Antione were better than these blights. It was almost embarrassing listening to the creature splutter those words out, but despite his dislike of Argyle, Alfonse couldn’t help but appreciate the work it did.

In Argyle’s hands was a grocery bag, and the man set it down on the floor before bowing.

“T-th-then...my...my mas-ter sends-s his...re...rega...gards…”

“And send him mine as well,” Alfonse said, waving his hand. “I can’t wait to see him at our next meeting. So far, everything is progressing according to plan. Tell him that, will you.”

A short while after, the ghoul was gone, and Alfonse was once again alone, save for Carmichael, who stood silently by the liquor cabinet. In the crime boss’s hands was a thick leather tome, bound in what felt like flesh, and penned with blood. The raw energy the book emitted was stronger than anything Alfonse had ever felt, and it got his dead blood flowing. He hadn’t felt stimulation like this in over fifty years, since he first fought Fernand for the first time. The gears were starting to spin.

“Carmichael.”

“Yes, master?”

“Go and fetch Serena. I need her to translate this.”