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Purveyor of Whiskey and Sequins
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It wouldn’t be the first time that August and Sairne had snuck home under the lightening of a pre-dawn sky. During their Academy days they had functioned under the willful mischief-making every young person encounters on the way out of adolescence. This meant late night trysts and well-thought-out pranks and nights-turned-days of drinking themselves into a stupor and having to shamble back to their private quarters.
Well, mostly of August drinking himself into a stupor. Sairne had often refrained from drinking in those days.
He made sure to shut the door to their humble townhouse with care, gently easing the lock back into place. The cab’s departure lit their small kitchen a brilliant shade of white. That was when August saw her sitting there, legs curved around the back of one of their wooden kitchen table chairs. She dangled her arms over it and picked idly at the peeling fabric as they entered. At her side, hovering just where her right shoulder found the darkness, a form with pinprick white eyes regard them with a piercing stillness.
August felt as if he were walking into the scene of a murder.
He gave a timorous smile. “Hey, sis.”
Laura Maria Hatch, purveyor of whiskey and sequins, shifted with a heavy exhale, glancing up at the ceiling. The form on her shoulder was drawn forward at the movement. It was a small owl, grey as iron yarn, and it cooed softly in what August knew was likely admonishment. It took off in a flutter to turn on the light with an expertly placed flick of its clawed feet. The yellow flared briefly too brilliant, robbing August of his accumulated night sight, and he held a hand up to deflect it.
“You're late.” Laura said.
“Late?” August huffed a laugh, “no more than normal.”
Sairne slid off his shoulders and manifested into her human form behind him, nimbly taking on an exhausted air that he doubted would lull Laura into sympathy. She ran a hand through her feathered hair. “With all due respect, whatever either of you’ve got to say we’ve already heard it.”
The owl gave a soft hoot and flew towards them, shifting in mid-flight out of their Eidos. Legs hit the floor, wings thinned into arms, wide eyes grew small. Soon a bespectacled man in a tweed suit was standing before them, finger extended to waggle a reprimand.
“You two—” He stopped before August and exhaled, slamming hands firm on August’s shoulders and softly shaking them. “We were worried.” Darin was his sister’s guardian, and August could easily recount the number of times he’d expressed any form of anger outside of mild displeasure. When Darin’s eyes shifted to Sairne he gave a soft shaking of his head, and August didn’t want to turn to see if Sairne averted her gaze in shame or indifference. Eventually the guardian let him go and stepped back to Laura’s side.
“Saints, you two, going off like that…and after someone like the Mad…” Laura’s tone was firm and controlled. She had more recently resorted to wielding the soft disappointment their parents’ always had, its effect not unlike a slow bludgeoning by guilt. Providing frowns instead of rages, the soft shaking of a head in lieu of any outbursts. It always struck August as a more devastating approach, and since their deaths Laura had ceased being an accomplice in childhood mischief and had become a progenitor of their wills and their parenting. It hadn’t been a welcome evolution of responsibility. “What did you think you’d get done?”
“More than anyone else ever does.” August tried, mostly to mollify his own disappointment.
“The Patrol has got enough on their plates dealing with the Roses, they don’t need you trying to needlessly lend a hand where it isn’t wanted.”
“They’ve been unsuccessful in most of their attempts to confront her.” Sairne added with lugubrious scorn. She folded her arms across her chest. “Although it’s no doubt purposeful. To call it a cat and mouse game is generous. It’s a sham.”
“You were working a case with Hook, weren’t you? What happened to promising to put all of this behind you?”
August had dusted off many retorts in his attempts to defend his decision. He felt one jam itself into his throat but kept his lips shut as he studied the shadows under Laura’s eyes and the empty glass rimmed with her lipstick on the table behind her. “We still did good work tonight, all things considered.”
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He couldn’t be certain entirely what the Patrolmen who’d been sent over to deliver the news to her had said, if they’d relayed details or given her an overly simplified rendition of the night. Judging by Laura’s lack of questions, he imagined it was the former.
His sister exhaled through her nose and cast her gaze away from them. “There’s a particular kind of thorn you can pull at, Aug, and this is not it.”
“The Mad’s everyone’s—“
“I’m not talking about her. I’m talking about how insubordinate you think you can afford to be. Whatever is happening with the Grands isn’t your concern anymore. It hasn’t been for months and you deciding that it does isn’t a good reflection on you. It’s dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” August tried not to make it sound as mocking as it was. “Sairne and I have given them four years of our lives, and in return they want us to just stand around at parades and reassure rich people of how very lucky they are to have us watching their backs? We have the power to do more.”
“It doesn’t matter what you have the power to do.” At her words August rolled his eyes. “You know why they don’t want you interfering in any case you damn well feel like pursuing. There’s an order to getting shit done.” She had slammed the side of her hands against her palm, voice rising in volume. “Why do you think they’re shoving you off to these assignments?”
“Myriad reasons.” Sairne offered it as a quip, mumbled out the side of her mouth.
Laura turned with a steely resolve, fixing her sharp gaze on Sairne. “And did you even try and talk him out of it?”
“He wouldn’t have listened.”
“He’s still your responsibility.”
“I’m my responsibility, thank you.” August interjected, frustrated at the fact that this was a common conversation spoken over his head too often: Laura always questioning why Sairne didn’t interfere more, August having to defend her by stating that he was reckless and uncontrollable and would do things anyway, Sairne always conceding that point. The truth was Sairne did try and nudge him towards less precipitous decision-making, but contrary to her often controlled and calm demeanor, she was at times just as incapable of resisting a call to rabble-rouse as he was. The problem was that the consequences always seemed to become her fault, especially in Laura’s eyes.
August had tried to temper his sister’s expectations of Sairne, but she held onto certain pieces of their parents’ beliefs that he found anachronistic. Namely, that guardians were considered more responsible for their wards than their wards themselves were. If someone with a guardian was poorly behaved or rude that was a great sign of failure on the guardian’s part, as it was in their contract to, above all else, teach their assigned wards to be a good person. August understood it at face value, but a facade of refinement was not necessarily reflective of an actualization, which meant that morally reprehensible people who behaved with the utmost graciousness in public were often divested of any suspicions when push came to shove. If they acted good and treated people well, if their guardians were clearly leading them down a path of righteousness, how could they be bad?
On this August disagreed. You could lead a horse to water but not make it drink, as the saying went. It wasn’t the handler’s fault if the horse refused. He could take that metaphor in many directions, but that was plain enough an illustration.
Laura scowled and moved farther into the kitchen, sliding a hand out to grab at a bottle of whiskey that was always stoppered and set on the counter. She poured a finger’s worth in her glass and didn’t offer them any.
“It’s been six months. I know how much you cared about him—the both of you—but Bell’s gone. And all of this sneaking around under the Patrol’s nose is going to make things worse before they help.”
“At least we’re doing something.”
“Very visibly, yes. Everyone else believes his case closed and you run around pretending it’s not. Like you’re in denial.”
He was in denial, August thought, but not because of illusion. Six months was enough for most of the officers to discard Bell’s case and write him off as dead. The labeling of his vanishing as a non-priority was due to the fact that Bell was a guardian-less school dropout who ran in disreputable circles and had a penchant for getting into trouble with the law. It wasn’t as simple as the the lead detectives believing they’d done all they could—it was that they lacked the motivation to do anything more. August remembered standing in the archives with its intimidating depths and dust-coated manila folders; the depressing implications of countless cold cases pressing on him like a miasma, ghosts trapped in paper. Bell’s life was just another addition to those mysteries. When he’d been training at the Academy, Bell had often lambasted his career choice over a few swills of whiskey by the docks, citing August’s idealism as something to be curbed, not encouraged. Now that Bell was gone, and the space he’d occupied beside August sat vacant, it left him to wonder if his friend had been right.
“I don’t suppose you know what the Ecclesiastical think of all of this?” Laura stirred her drink with a flicker of her wrist.
“They find us insufferable, as always.” Sairne spoke matter-of-factly.
“One day it won’t be so endearing to them.” It was Darin this time, his clipped voice indicating concern. Sairne made a point of stepping towards the upper floor and the eventuality of at least a few minutes of rest prior to their having to be at the office. August glanced down at his bare wrist. He reminded himself, not for the first time, that it might be about time to invest in a watch.
“Well, we need to get some shut eye. You can yell at us more when we get back.” He reasoned, following Sairne’s start. His guardian glanced back once over her shoulder to where Laura and Darin remained in a contemplative quiet.
“I did try.” She said.
There was the sound of glass being set on the counter. Laura did not look up.