Oswald Gooding lived in a place called the Werner Housing association. It looked like a wealthy neighborhood protected by tall perimeter walls and two guards at the wrought iron gates at the entrance. Hopper flashed them his Internal Police badge and they let us in.

We made our way up to Gooding's house. It was flanked by palm trees on either sides, had a lush green lawn at the front and a steam carriage in the driveway.

“I can see why Canning’s detectives found Oswald suspicious,” I said. “This place looks like it belongs to a merchant. Not a clerk.”

“Indeed,” Hopper said.

I knocked at the door. The door cracked open in about two minutes. A man’s pale blue eye peered through the gap. “Yes?” he said.

“I'm General Lloyd Hopper from Internal Police. We would like to ask you some questions, Mr. Oswald.”

“Oh, alright.” Oswald slid the chain off and opened the door. We walked in.

The furniture in the living room looked just as expensive as the rest of the house. But as tasteful and pristine the decor was, there didn't seem to be any kind of personal touch to add flavor to the living space. No photo frames, no tapestries or any other addition that would've given the place more of an identity. It didn't look like the kind of place where someone lived. It was more of a movie set modeled after a pretty painting.

“What brings you here, officer?” Oswald said. “Is this about Samantha?”

“Indeed.” Hopper dug into his coat and pulled out a leather pouch that people sometimes used to store tobacco in.

“I thought the internal police were done with questioning me,” Oswald said. His arms were on his sides and his entire demeanor was relaxed and confident.

“Just a moment please,” Hopper said and shook some silver colored powder from the pouch and onto his palm. He looked at Oswald and blew the powder into his face.

The man coughed and waved away the remnant dust that was hovering around him. “What was that for?”

I frowned.

Hopper looked puzzled. “Oh no,” he muttered and grabbed the porcelain vase that was on the coffee table and swung it towards Oswald's head.

The man tried to dodge but Hopper's movements were quicker and the vase smashed against Oswald's skull, making him stumble back. He gripped his head, wincing and whimpering before he crashed into the chair behind him, unconscious.

I watched the scene unfolding with bewilderment. “What was that for?” I asked.

“This is the dust of Ederanth seeds.” He waved the pouch full of silver powder.

“Its purpose was to make Oswald more compliant and vulnerable to some minor hypnosis,” he said. “But it didn't seem to work.”

“Wait, did you use that powder to control that blind man who gave us the address to Rosa’s public house?” I said.

Hopper nodded. “Indeed.”

“Is that powder always effective in doing that?” I asked.

“In some cases, it doesn't work as intended.”

I cocked my head. “Which case may that be?”

Hopper gazed at the unconscious Oswald with a half-puzzled, half-intrigued look. “When I use it on a magic user.”

I didn’t waste any time in pulling out my osteodial and focused on the question: Is Oswald Gooding a dangerous man?

The golden bone pointed at the symbol of “no”. I frowned. It was supposed to be a simple question to create a stronger link with the world beyond the veil. Yet this was the answer it gave us.

Next I focused on the question: “Is Oswald Gooding a magic user?”

The answer was no once again. I was frowning once again. “Did we do the right thing by taking Sydny Canning's word of Oswald being suspicious?” I said. “Didn't you say that this man was only connected to the case because of an instinct?”

“But if ederanth didn't affect him then that means he is a magic user.” Hopper said. “And if he is also the murderer, wouldn't it be easier for him to cover his tracks with whatever kind of magic he uses?”

Hopper slid the pouch of ederanth in his coat pocket and straightened his lapels. “Maybe we should just ransack this place while the man is still unconscious,” he said.

“You can do that. In the meantime I'll try something else,” I said and pulled the curse chaelling cards from my reticule.

At first Hopper was worried that I was going to kill the man. I reassured him that it wasn't going to be as bloody as Wyndham's apothecary.

He snapped a pair of handcuffs on Oswald’s wrists and bound the man to a dining chair with a rope. Then the witch hunter looked at me with an uncertain face. “We are still operating against the law,” he said. “Coming after a man who is more or less deemed innocent. I hope your test of strength doesn't involve killing.”

Only if he deserves it. “No, it doesn't.”

Hopper gave a nod and dug into his coat to pull out a cigarette case. He looked at me and said, “You should pinch your nostrils. You don’t want to smell this.”

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I did as he said. He opened the case but there were no cigarettes within. The little box just had a few seeds the size of a peanut. Hopper pushed the case towards Oswald's face.

The unconscious man opened his eyes, coughing again. “God, that smells atrocious! Take it away from me!” he snapped.

Hopper closed the case and slid it back into his coat. “He's yours,” he said and left the sitting room.

“Where did he go?” Oswald asked as the witch hunter entered deeper into the house as if he had been invited.

“Don't worry about that,” I said, the curse chanelling card still in my hand. I just kept watching him, trying to gauge how he reacted under my scrutiny.

I knew asking him any direct questions about the murder was pointless. He would only deny or try to distract me from the topic of discussion. I decided to ask him something else instead.

“What was your aunt like?” I took a seat opposite him.

His face was blank. His eyes were vacant. He didn't say anything.

“What happened?” I said. “You don't want to talk about it?”

“Not with you,” he said tonelessly.

“Who else would you talk to about it?” I asked.

“Samantha,” he said. “If she was still alive.”

“I wonder what Samantha would say.”

“She would console me. She certainly wouldn't treat me like I killed my own parents and my aunt,” he said. “She knew I wasn't the kind of man who could kill anyone.”

I kept my face straight. He had figured out what I was trying to hint at. Well, Hopper and I hadn't really been subtle with how we had treated him so far either. I mean, we had quite literally put him in handcuffs and I was interrogating him.

“I guess I'll have to believe Samantha then.” I shrugged and decided to take another approach. “How much did this house cost?”

“Five thousand steambolts,” Oswald said without hesitation.

“Must've been hard, saving up that amount with your job,” I said, not without a hint of sarcasm.

“I won a lottery of ten thousand steambolts last year,” he said. “I even have the newspaper that announced the prize and the receipt of the lottery office. It's in the bureau in my bedroom. Next to the dresser. Second drawer from the bottom.”

I called out to Hopper to check for what Oswald had just said. And of course there was the newspaper and the receipt in a file where he had told me. “You are a lucky man, aren't you?” I said.

“Not really,” he said without missing a beat. “I lost my parents. Then my aunt. And now the love of my life. That's far from lucky, if you ask me.” His eyes were still vacant, still numb. I found his relaxed state to be very unsettling.

The curse channelling card was still in my hand. I was starting to feel slightly uncertain about whether or not I wanted to use it on him. On the surface, Oswald did look like a man stuck in the cycle of misfortune and bad luck.

But it was also hard to ignore the fact that Hopper's ederanth powder hadn't affected him. I looked down at the card in my hand again.

This was the only way to find out the truth now. I set the curse channelling card on fire. “Ostendo.”

Oswald frowned. “What?”

The flame that was eating up the card turned white in my hand. I threw the burning card towards the man. As the card passed over Oswald’s head, the entire room turned pitch black.

But I could see him clearly, sitting in the chair a few feet away from me. But then I also saw something else that made me forget how to breathe.

Great red appendages were sticking out of Oswald's torso and reaching down into the inky black ground below us, as if his lower body was a trunk of a grotesque tree and its roots were reaching further below.

The crimson appendages pulsated in a way that made my skin crawl. For a moment, I was convinced that some invisible force was sucking the life out of Oswald. I followed the path of the red outgrowths that were buried deep under the dark ground. As I focused harder, I made out a shape at a great depth below. All the red roots converged like multiple rivers meeting into a bloody ocean.

Except the ocean in this case was a large structure shaped like a teardrop. As I kept watching, I realized something else. The structure was actually an eye.

A terrifying red eye with a black iris at the center. And it didn't stop staring at Oswald even for a second. The red roots pulsated and fed something into the eye and the eye pulsated in response, drinking up voraciously whatever it was consuming.

Then for a split second, the focus of the black iris shifted. The red eye turned to me.

I gasped loudly.

Clap!

The blackness disappeared as soon as I clapped. The red roots were gone, so was the great red eye that had just stared into my soul. The curse channelling card was back in my hand. The white flame had extinguished and the card was half burnt.

I didn't realize that I was breathing heavily as I stared down at the card. And my hand was trembling as I held onto it.

Curses liked to feed on human souls in multiple ways. One of their favorite methods of doing that was by triggering the most intense fear one feels about something.

When I casted the ostendo curse, I triggered Oswald's deepest fear, revealing his most vulnerable aspect to both him and I. That's why when I looked up at Oswald again, his face was pale and perspiration dotted his forehead. For the first time since I had arrived here, I saw an emotion in Osawald's eyes--fear.

Once my heart stopped racing, I took another deep breath. Whatever that red eye was, it certainly wasn't killing Oswald. But there was no doubt that it was draining something out of him.

Those red roots that were growing out of his body looked like blood veins. But it wasn't blood that was running through them.

I thought over it for a few seconds before another idea struck me. Sin. Those pulsating red roots…were feeding Oswald's sins to the giant eye.

I focused on Oswald’s halo. It was green. Not even a drop of red was visible anywhere on the ring.

“Miss Grimly,” a voice called out.

I jumped in my chair. But it was just Hopper calling for me. He was standing in the hallway behind Oswald, beckoning me towards him. I scrambled out of my chair and followed him inside.

“I checked both the floors of the house. There was nothing incriminating or suspicious to be–”

“There won't be!” I snapped in a hushed whisper.

“What do you mean?”

“There's a reason why the ederanth didn't affect Oswald,” I said. “Something is looking out for him. Something very dangerous. That's why even the divinations weren't able to prove him guilty.”

“You shouldn't have come here,” a familiar voice spoke up before Hopper could say anything.

We turned to look. Oswald was standing at the mouth of the hallway.

Both his hands were hanging on his sides again. Blood was dripping from his wrists. The handcuffs were gone.

“You had a chance to leave…” Oswald said. “You had a chance to live. But you missed it. Oh you missed it so close…”