Tearing his gaze away from Caden’s, Joey called, “Mac, I’m showing Caden the safe!”
“Yeah, whatever!”
Leading the way through HQ to Mac’s cluttered office, Joey reached the safe first. It was a relatively small one, black metal, atop a file cabinet in the corner of Mac’s office. Instead of a combination lock, it just had a small handle in the front. “It’s keyed to mine and Mac’s soul signatures since we’re the ones in the office. Someone from Home Office also has access, but they haven’t been here since their ten-year check-in in 2014. You know we have a couple boxes of magical trinkets?” asked Joey, and Caden, face lit with interest, nodded. “Those are just for handing out to clients: mostly just minor protective spells, no secondary uses. But we’ve got three more powerful artifacts in here that feed into our shields.”
Joey didn’t usually talk this much. He cleared his throat, self-conscious, then touched the side of the safe. A tiny tingle went through his finger, accompanied by a little spark of blue light. Pulling the door open by the handle, he allowed Caden to see into the opening. Immediately one of the artifacts within, an antique music box, gold with a visible turning drum, started playing a twinkling little song.
Cocking his head, Caden asked, “Is that…the Spice Girls?”
The music box was playing Wannabe. “Yeah, before HQ got the safe, they just kept the artifacts out and the office door locked at all times. The Planner before Mac liked to listen to top 40 music in the 90s, and the music box liked it so much that it’s all it plays now.”
“Cute,” said Caden, and Joey smiled.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “So that’s the music box. Then we’ve got the pendant.” He gestured to a diamond-encrusted necklace, heart-shaped and tarnished with age. “If you wear it, it makes you speak in verse. I’ve never tried it, but—”
“And the third item?” Caden cut in, and Joey stopped, startled at the interruption. “May I see it?”
“Oh,” rallied Joey. “Sure. Yeah, we call it the watch but it’s really from before watches were wearable.” Gently, Joey lifted the watch from the felted bottom of the safe. It was a small golden orb about the size of a clementine, ornately detailed and with a hinged top. Caden held out a hand and Joey placed the watch on Caden’s palm. “Be really careful, it’s from the 1600s, I think. You can open the top to look at the watch part of it.”
Carefully, Caden unhooked the clasp and pulled up the rounded top of the watch, revealing a perfectly intact timepiece. “Does it still work?” Caden asked. “What does it do?”
“It doesn’t keep time anymore, no. What it does—it used to slow time if a Channeler pushed their magic through it—just for a little bit—but it’s so old now that that’s worn off and it’s just a powerful source of magic. We use it like a battery almost,” Joey explained, watching Caden, enthralled, examine the watch.
“It’s beautiful,” he said quietly.
Joey nodded in agreement, not looking at the watch at all. “It’s the strongest piece of magic we have in HQ.”
“How’d it wind up here?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Joey, just as Mac appeared at the doorway, shattering the quiet moment.
“Home Office bought it at auction sometime in the 60s,” Mac informed them. “That’s when it came here, anyway. Now put it away, it’s time to get going.” Mac patted the doorframe twice and disappeared again.
Oh-so-carefully, Caden placed the watch back in the safe next to the trilling music box, which had moved on to Baby One More Time. When Joey looked up from closing the little door, Caden seemed lost in thought. “Caden?” Joey prompted, and Caden looked up and gave Joey one of those heart-melting smiles.
“Let’s go.”
----------------------------------------
“So this client’s a werewolf?” asked Indira. She pitched her voice to carry over the traffic noises; she was sitting in the way back in the van.
“Yup,” said Mac from the driver’s seat. “Well, sort of. Joey, you want to explain?”
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Joey had already done more talking that morning than he wanted to, but he didn’t like to say no to Mac. “’Werewolf’ is how we classify them in the Company manual,” he explained, turning a little in the backseat so he could speak to Indira. “A lot of non-humans keep to themselves, so we don’t always know everything about them.” Much to Joey’s annoyance. It was better when everything was clarified and put down in writing so there were no surprises. “We call this classification ‘werewolf’ because that’s the closest folkloric term for them, but they’re not, you know, movie monsters.”
“But can they turn into wolves?” Indira said.
Frankie glanced back from the passenger seat. “Didn’t they teach you this stuff at your last position? Suppose I shouldn’t expect much from a literal child,” she finished, muttering the last sentence to herself.
Mac shot a glare Frankie’s way. “Hey, Frankie, before we get there I’m gonna need you to expel whatever’s crawled up your ass today.” Frankie made a disgusted noise. “I can pull over if you need it,” Mac said, and cackled a laugh.
“Yes, they can turn into wolves,” said Caden to Indira from the seat next to Joey, who turned to him, surprised that he was speaking up. “But it’s not dictated by the moon, that would be silly.”
Indira frowned. “Well what is it dictated by?”
“It’s not in the records—” began Joey.
“That’s really none of our business,” said Caden, then looked embarrassed for cutting Joey off. “Sorry,” he mouthed at Joey, who shook his head, dismissing the apology.
“Okay, we’re here,” announced Mac as he parked. “Pile out. Let me do the talking; Frankie, try not to say anything offensive.”
“I’m very polite, actually,” said Frankie as she clambered out of the van.
The client who answered the door of apartment #2B of an enormous townhouse looked like the opposite of a stereotypical werewolf: petite, Latina, and nearly swallowed up by her enormous Pikachu hoodie.
“Hi, I’m Mac, we spoke on the phone?”
“You brought a lot of…people with you,” said the client, clearly overwhelmed.
Joey glanced around at the rest of the group crowded into the dim hallway. Okay, he could see where all of them descending on someone could be kind of a lot.
“I wasn’t sure who I would need from the crew, so I brought all of ‘em,” explained Mac. “On the phone you said something about a tuba?”
“My tuba,” confirmed the client, upset. “Yeah. Come in. We’ll have to go to the living room, it’s the biggest. So many of you…”
The client, who mumbled that her name was Mona, led the group to her cluttered living room but made no move to indicate that they should sit down, so they followed her lead and remained standing. Indira immediately started perusing Mona’s DVD collection.
Wringing her hands, Mona said, “So when I got old enough to live on my own, my dad gave me this tuba, he had it specially made for me. ‘For self-defense,’ he said. It’s imbued with defensive magic: you can use it as a weapon if someone’s out to get you. If you know how to play it and you’ve got magic. I’ve played since high school. Anyway.”
“So it is broken?” asked Indira from the other end of the room where she’d moved onto toying with various My Little Ponys on display. Startled, Mona turned to her.
“N-no,” she stuttered before looking back at Mac. “It’s missing. I don’t need a protective charm on the house or anything, since people like me have stay-away magic, but I’m—disarmed, now. Against threats.”
Frankie looked like she was ready to say something, but Mac got out ahead of her. “Do you remember the last time you saw it?”
“The day before yesterday. Then yesterday I walked out of my bedroom and it was gone from its stand.” Mona indicated a piece of furniture that Joey hadn’t previously recognized as a stand for a tuba. “No one broke in, I would’ve sensed their aura.”
“Did you stay out late the night before?” prompted Mac. “Maybe you were out then came home and didn’t notice it was missing?”
Shaking her head, Mona said, “I don’t like to go outside. I work from home. I haven’t been out since last weekend for a convention.”
“Frankie, did we pack the Detector?” Mac said, turning away from Mona. Frankie shook her head ‘no’. “Rats. Okay, Mona,” he addressed the client again, “I’m gonna go get the office’s device for hunting down magical objects and come back here and look with you. Sound good?” Mona nodded. Turning to the rest of the group, Mac continued, “The rest of you go on to our other gig and after we’ll regroup at HQ. Good?”
A chorus of agreements.
“Thanks,” said Mona, relieved. “It’s just, you know, what would I tell my dad?”
“We’ll hunt it down,” Mac reassured as they all trooped back out of the building. Mona closed the door behind them.
Outside on the sidewalk it was chilly, and Caden huddled a little further into his hoodie. With great fortitude, Joey resisted putting an arm around him. While Indira started crunching leaves with her feet, Mac instructed them on next steps.
“It’s in Old Irving Park,” Mac was telling Frankie, since she was taking point. “I wrote down the address, it’s in the glove compartment. I’ll take the El back to HQ to grab the Detector and my car—no, driving me back is silly at this point, the train is fine, what, am I too precious to take public transit? Client’s neighborhood should be fairly quiet, so Indira, you spend your time keeping the client calm,” Mac ordered. “Good luck,” he said to the crew at large, and strode off toward the closest train station.
“All right, I’m driving,” said Frankie, heading back towards the van.
Indira stopped crunching leaves and instead started swishing through them, following. “Shotgun!” Joey and Caden glanced at each other before Joey shrugged and climbed back into the backseat. Familiar dread settled in Joey’s stomach. Off to deal with a haunting.