> U.S. Department of Magic
>
> 935 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest
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> Washington, DC, 20530
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> (202) XXX-XXX
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>
>
> Miss Iona Bennett
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> Head Archivist
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> Archival Division
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> 206 State Street
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> Witchsrow, MA, 021XX
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>
>
> June 1st, 2023
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>
>
> Dear Ms. Bennett,
>
>
>
> On behalf of the United States Department of Magic, thank you for the time, talent, and expertise you have given to the Office of Magical Investigation’s Archival Division. You have made a difference through your active efforts and dedication to the Archival Division during your eleven years employed.
>
>
>
> We are holding an awards ceremony on July 23rd, 2023 at Rebirth Square Hall in North Elmford. You have been nominated for the Chairman's Award of Excellence for your assistance in the capture of the notorious assassin ‘Silent Memory.’
>
>
>
> For any further information or query, you can speak to your supervisor or email us at [email protected]. Also, please keep in mind that should you receive the award you will have the opportunity to give a short speech.
>
>
>
> Again, we thank you for your contributions, time, and efforts in your time serving as Head Archivist at the Office of Magical Investigation’s Archival Division.
>
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
>
>
> Robert Phillips
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> Robert Phillips
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> Chairman
>
> Office of Magical Investigations
**
They always hated winter. Winter meant wet shoes and wetter socks and frozen toes. It meant hoping you left your coat by the door and shoes on your feet when the screaming started. It meant squeezing tight and shivering into the corner of the shed that creaked with every breeze and praying rotting boards and rusted nails would be the last thing you saw instead of a fist and cigarette smoke. Winter came all the same, unyielding and unabating, refusing to halt its harsh, endless march, overtaking the last remaining vestigials of warmer months.
Nana had loved the snow: big, fat flakes floating softly down and settling at her windowsill. She’d watch it for hours, staring with wrinkled eyes and the slightest of smiles. She would turn and ask, “Beautiful weather, isn’t it? Do you want to walk with me?”
She always loved the snow, and regardless if she was running marathons or bedbound, she would always ask.
It had snowed the day she died. It was a bittersweet thing; it started right after she drew her last breath. The nurses had seen the flurries and had said it was Nana saying goodbye. It was a cute sentiment when the snow was just flurries. But flurries turned into flakes turned into a blizzard. Everything had been closed for days and people were trapped in their houses by frozen doors and ice. Nana’s funeral had to be delayed several times because the excavator couldn’t make it to the grounds and when it did, the damn thing wouldn’t start. The nurses said it was Nana, causing her last bit of mischief before she rested for good. Problems continued to arise till a woman, short and stocky, came marching to the maybe-not-so-soon to be gravesite, staring out at headstones buried in snow and said, “That’s enough Ma. Let us put you to rest.”
There was no viewing, no eulogy, no obituary. Nana didn’t want any. All she asked for was a box and a hole to bury it in. There weren’t many tears shed at the burial, not due to lack of care, but a deficit of people left alive who knew Nana and, of those people, a lack of willingness to trudge through feet of snow to see the inevitable funeral of a 97-year-old with Alzheimer's.
In the end, their hatred of winter morphed into a hatred of snow. Not even Nana’s love could stop the closing of their throat and clenching of their fists every time the shit fell from the sky, creeping over the landscape, freezing all remaining plant life still left from fall. They hated the snow and the cold and the feeling of tears freezing tracks down their face as they buried the last person who fucking cared in the ground weeks after her hand had gone slack in their shaking grip. They fucking hated it.
“You’re glaring at that snow like it personally offended you.”
Ross snorted, tossing a half-hearted glare over their shoulder. “Maybe it did, ever think of that, Har?”
Harley Mora, who stood five full inches taller than them, looked down with eyes squinted and nose wrinkled. “How the fuck did it do that?”
“Ate my second cousin.”
“Bitch, you’re an orphan.”
“Ate the rest of my family, too.”
Harley sucked in her bottom lip and bit it, physically restraining herself from throttling them. She stopped walking and squatted next to a snow bank. Not even a second later, Ross’s head jerked forward and they felt something cold and wet drip down their neck and into the back of their shirt. They stopped immediately, still facing away, and their shoulders formed a straight line. They sucked in a breath and counted. Before reaching three, they whirled around and glared at Harley, still crouched next to the snow, now with a noticeable divot carved in it. “You are so fucked now, asshole!”
**
Some would say that having a snowball fight in the middle of a busy sidewalk in near negative temperatures was a poor choice, but others would tell them to ‘shut the fuck up’ and ‘maybe you wouldn’t have gotten a snowball to the head if you didn’t say stupid shit all the time.’ Some would then say that, perhaps, being late to work because of said snowball fight would probably count as ‘stupid shit’ in itself. This would, of course, lead to the other realizing that it was five till her shift at the coffee shop three blocks away and if she booked it down the street without a proper ‘goodbye’ or ‘thanks for not letting me be late for work for the fifth time this month, Ross,’ she would, maybe, make it in time for her shift.
Ross was not bitter that Harley didn’t say thanks. They weren’t, so stop thinking it.
Ross watched Harley’s back as she disappeared around a corner and rolled their eyes. Harley, for all her claims of being superior in time management, always forgot her shift at work. Ross had to remind her every week or so because she would, unfailingly, forget she did, in fact, have a job and time in which she was contracted to show up for it.
They had tried to force Harley to ‘set a reminder or an alarm or fucking something, you forgetful hoe,’ but Harley had a total of too much faith in her ‘infallible time management skills’ and refused all of Ross’s very helpful and good suggestions. Ross then tried to have Harley send them her schedule so that they could remind Harley themselves, but Harley took offense to that and quite adamantly told Ross to ‘hop off my ass.’ Ross, taking this as a slight to their honor, resorted to sneaking into the kitchen of the ‘Latte on the Rocks’ to steal a picture of the schedule. They were quite rudely interrupted midway through their theft by the front-of-house manager, Doug, who, luckily, knew who Ross was and thought their quest to ensure Harley kept her job was a noble one and joined forces with Ross, sending Harley’s schedule to them every week.
Harley remained oblivious to this betrayal and was absolutely baffled at how Ross always knew when her shifts were. She swore up and down that Ross must be blackmailing one of her co-workers to give out ‘private company secrets’ and began a full-fledged investigation of all personnel to ‘sniff out the mole.’ Harley, being six foot one, was quite an intimidating figure, when she wasn’t gremlin-crouched next to a snowbank with an ‘oh-shit-oh-shit-I-fucked-up’ look on her face, and was willing to use said intimidation to interrogate her co-workers. Doug, when asked if he was the ‘weak-willed little mole rat,’ gave Harley a flat look and told her to stop threatening the others and to get back to work. This was taken as an admission of guilt and she immediately began giving Doug shit for ‘conspiring with the enemy.’ Doug, in all of his magnificently-bearded glory, informed her that she had yet to be late since he started sending Ross her schedule and if the cost of having her show up on time was being a traitor, then he was more than willing to accept the brunt of her ire.
Harley was smart enough to know when she had been defeated and took it with absolute dignity and grace by breaking into Ross’s apartment at two in the morning to steal all of the cheese in Ross’s fridge.
The whole saga ended with Harley still forgetting her shifts and Ross continuing to remind her, but at the very last minute to make her ‘run off that cheese you ate, asshat.’ Ross knew Harley wouldn’t apologize and they didn’t want her to. Mutual pettiness was the basis of their friendship and it was what had kept them together through the years.
Ross turned on their heels and headed in the opposite direction from where Harley had run off to. Due to the nature of their current employment, Ross had quite a bit of downtime in between jobs. As they didn’t have anywhere to be at the moment, they decided to make themselves useful.
Witchsrow was a large and populous city and, having lived in it their entire life, Ross felt more than confident in saying that she was as unwelcoming as she was dangerous. People who came to visit were often reluctant to come back, not because of the cracked and uneven brickwork, corroded piping clearly visible in every back alley, or even the graveyards on every fifth street. No, those were ‘timeless’ and ‘showed the history of such a historic site!’ It was the way the buildings loomed overhead, casting reaching shadows, and the way the streets seemed to curve in on themselves the further you wandered towards her ancient, beating heart. It was every person who passed glaring and the ever-present homeless population. People who visited Witchsrow often didn’t return and told their loved ones not to visit, that the people are unfriendly and the streets confusing and that its beauty was overcast by ‘undesirables.’
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Yet the tourists still came and the residents still glared and buildings still loomed. Tourists didn’t return, but that didn’t stop new idiots from showing up every year in summer, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, with a brand new diploma declaring their independence and maturity, thinking they could make their break in the ‘New Capital of the Old World.’ Despite every article and travel blog warning otherwise, people came and then were spit out within weeks of coming, with significantly less money than they showed up with.
Ross had thought it was funny when they were young. They saw people twice their age breakdown on the street, having had their application refused from the eighth, ninth, and even tenth place, or cursing movers for jostling never-unpacked boxes into yet another moving van. Ross had laughed and said, “You should have known better, Witchsrow only accepts her own!” Now, they just found it annoying. Those bastards were sinks on their community, wasting people’s time trying to be one of the special few that found their niche. They took up jobs and homes and food, just to leave the second Witchsrow took back.
Ross reached for the rusted handle to the employee entrance in the alley, twisting it and quickly stepping inside. They took a few steps down the short hall towards the kitchen, slipping in and heading to the Head Chef’s office. They smiled at Head Chef Jim, who was henpecking his keyboard, before snagging one of the black aprons hanging off the cheap, plastic hook on the door and pulling it over their head.
“Anything I can get started on, Chef?” Ross asked, tying the apron behind their back.
Chef didn’t look up and said, “I’d ask Leia, she’s making breakfast right now.”
“Got it. You think Leia is gonna stab me today?”
“Naw, I’m sure she’ll try, but it’s only stabbing if it breaks skin.”
Ross squinted at him. “That’s not comforting.”
Chef looked up and gave a quick smile. “It wasn’t meant to be.”
Ross snorted before leaving the office, heading left toward the front of the kitchen. Leia was, as per usual, wearing her white coat and rosy-pink chef’s hat. She was shoveling steaming scrambled eggs into a small metal pan resting on the edge of the flat-top griddle. She turned, pan in hand, and spotted Ross leaning against a table next to the dishwashing station. She narrowed her eyes and rested her free hand on her hip before asking, “Don't you have anywhere else to be, Ross?”
“Nope, I’m all yours!” Ross stated, shooting her a bright smile.
She rolled her eyes and chuckled softly. “There’s plenty to do, per usual. Food’s almost done and I’m sure people are going to be heading toward the hall soon. Could you prop open the doors and wipe down the tables out front? We had a party last night and the girls forgot to clean them.”
Ross nodded once and walked to the chemical closet, grabbing a spray bottle of Purell and a ratty dish towel off a shelf, before moving to the door connected to the large communal dining hall. Ross set down their supplies on a nearby table before performing the ‘where-the-fuck-are-the-doorstops’ dance. Finding the doorstops, which were squirreled away behind the large decorative pots of some tropical-looking plants by the entranceway, Ross wrenched the large, heavy doors open wide before striking the doorstops in the gap between the tiled floor and painted white wood. Giving the doors one last yank, Ross stepped back to the tables and began cleaning them one at a time. After most tables were clean, a few residents started to meander in, a few greeting Ross with a curt nod or simple ‘hello’, before plopping down at what each deemed to be the best seat.
‘Huffman Social Services’ wasn’t a particularly large shelter, all things considered, but Ross thought it was the best in the sprawling city. After what some would call an excessive amount of research on the non-profit and its management, Ross decided that HSS would be the best to donate their time to. The owners, despite all odds, weren’t complete human garbage. Ross couldn’t help but question their motives in the beginning, but Mary and Freddie Huffman genuinely wanted to help their community. They had even bought one of the older and shittier buildings to completely remodel and refurbish. The building had been a real eyesore for years, not that abandoned buildings were a completely uncommon sight, but the Huffmans had taken it and turned it into something really nice, even if a couple of people complained that they had turned it into a completely different kind of eyesore.
The Huffmans went out of their way to personally ensure that each and every person that stepped through their doors felt welcomed and safe. They screened every employee that applied, did routine and surprise inspections, and had trained staff on the ready to intervene should an intervention be required. They had therapists available at all hours and a full, but admittedly small, medical wing. They were always looking to improve and it genuinely seemed HSS was their personal passion project. Really, the biggest problem HSS had was the lack of people applying to work for it. Ross only wished the Huffmans’ had established the shelter sooner, it would have saved them a lot of trouble when they were younger.
“Hey Ross, how’ve things been?”
Ross turned around and smiled at Mack, one of the more regular visitors. He’d been coming to HSS for about four months now, which was five less than Ross had been volunteering there, and had made a point of chatting with them whenever he saw them.
“I’ve been good Mack, how’s the job hunt going? Didn’t you have the interview for that dishwashing job a couple days ago?”
Mack rubbed the back of his neck and grimaced. “Dunno if it was the homeless or werewolf thing that made ‘em reject me, but let's just say I wasn’t talkin’ with them for very long.”
“Ah shit, that sucks man. Fuck them, they didn’t deserve you anyway.”
Mack huffed out a laugh and stole the seat closest to the kitchen door. He smoothed down his frayed jeans and leaned back into the metal fold-out chair. “What we havin’ for breakfast today?”
Ross paused from wiping the table and gave Mack a blank stare. “Mack. Dude. You ask me this every day. The answer has not changed in three fucking months.”
Mack gave Ross a shit-eating grin and said, “Well you never know, Chef could have changed up the menu!”
Ross squinted at Mack before slowly turning away, spraying down the plastic fold-out table and aggressively scrubbing a purple stain that had been there since the table had first been bought.
A while ago, HSS had a large influx of visitors and the staff scrambled to throw together some temporary accommodations until permanent ones could be made. One such accommodation was the shitty fold-out furniture in the dining area. Mary Huffman, who had been on-site for an inspection, had taken one look at the temporary furniture before casually strolling into the Head Chef’s office and asking him how much money he would need to let her burn them. The dining area had gotten new tables and chairs within a couple days and Chef Jim insisted on keeping the folding furniture in storage, just in case they would be needed one day.
They did end up coming in handy when a new bill was proposed requiring Abhumans applying to jobs to disclose their disability. It was a good idea, some had said. That employers would be aware of accommodations that applicants require and would be able to respond accordingly. It was clearly bullshit and Abhumans knew it, those ableist bastards in Congress clearly just didn’t like that the ‘creatures’ were getting jobs that good and ‘normal’ Americans should have. Abhumans rallied and petitioned and rioted against the bill and demanded things be changed, that all it would accomplish is streamlining hiring discrimination and that the bill should include some sort of protection for Abhumans, prohibiting rejection because of someone's disability. This wasn’t the first time the government had tried to fuck over Abhumans and, unsurprisingly, people weren’t exactly happy. To be more precise, riots were in the news for weeks and one particularly vocal congressman was found dead in his home. After the government was able to find fuck-all in regards to who killed the bastard, they decided that they might have messed up. The bill in question was summarily withdrawn for review and had yet to be resubmitted. Still, a good portion of Abhumans ended up on the streets regardless of the success and HSS quickly ended up at max capacity. Mary Huffman wasn’t exactly happy they needed to use the fold-out furniture again, but she was glad that they at least had something.
The kitchen door was knocked open and Ross turned to see Leia rolling the first cart of food out to the buffet table. It wouldn’t be long until more people started filtering into the dining hall, so Ross focused on finishing cleaning the tables.
Ross waved at a younger visitor that shuffled into the hall. The young adult had gauze taped to the inside of their elbow, so Ross guessed that they had just finished their bi-weekly blood transfusion. They blinked at Ross, raising their hand and hesitantly waving back before scuttling to the buffet table. Blood transfusions tended to make vampires hungry, processing the new blood always burned a lot of calories. This particular visitor had just started coming to HSS a couple weeks ago after a regular had dragged them in. They had nearly starved on the streets, being too stubborn or scared to seek help. Ross and the others hadn’t yet gotten a name out of them, but it was only a matter of time and patience.
Ross put their hands together and cracked their fingers. They then made their way back into the kitchen to see if Leia needed any help.
Leia was a hyper-competent and independent woman. She was strict, with a fuck-around-and-find-out attitude. If anyone had any problems, they would go to Leia first. Leia got shit done and got it done fast.
That being said, Leia did not know how to ask for help. It's why when Ross stepped back into the kitchen and saw Leia juggling three different pans of food, they weren’t particularly surprised. They waltzed up to Leia and took a tray from her hands, earning a glare for their troubles, and set it in the oven. As they turned the timer to 10 minutes they asked, “What’s next, boss?”
**
The streets were cold this time of year, even more so at night. Ross hugged their worn, wool-lined jean jacket closer to their chest as they strolled past the boarded shop fronts and defaced buildings of the West Rosler district, more specifically, down Strikes Row or, as the residents affectionately called it, ‘Shits Row.’ Shits Row wasn’t exactly what you would call the best part of town, the exact opposite, actually. It was the shittiest of the shittiest, thus the nickname. Witchsrow in general was one of the crappier cities in Massachusetts, hell, one of the crappier ones in the whole of the eastern seaboard, but Shits Row was a special place that even the most hardened locals wouldn’t step foot in.
Shits Row was the gold standard of communities overrun by crime, and jack-shit was happening to fix that anytime in the next decade, by Ross’s count. Not that Ross minded very much, considering that they were walking straight towards what was considered the lynchpin of crime in Shits Row. Ross glanced up at the sign of the ‘Drunken Rabbit Saloon,’ or the ‘Drnen Rbt aloon’ if you were going by the half-lit blue letters, and pulled open the scratched black wooden door, careful not to touch the permanently tacky back of the worn brass handle.
They let the smell of shitty beer, shittier food, and the obligatory acidic tinge of vomit wash over them while they stepped confidently through the door and strode unhurried to one of the cracked leather bar-top stools. Plopping down, they waved a hand at the Bartender, Darren, who was busying himself with wiping down the same glass for, what was probably, the fourth time. He glanced over at Ross before setting down the glass, swinging the towel over his shoulder, and nabbing a cold bottle of coke. He took the two steps over to where Ross was seated and cracked open the bottle with a quick twist of his wrist and set it down in front of them, before adding a white straw to it. Ross rolled their eyes and gave Darren a deadpan look, taking a pointed sip from the quite unnecessary straw. Darren settled his elbows on the bar across from Ross. He smiled warm and sharp and asked, “How’s our favorite murder baby doing on this lovely, snowy evening?”
Ross raised their eyebrows and tilted their head. “How the fuck you think I’m doin’ Dare?”
Darren smirked and said, “If I was a bettin’ man, and I am, I would say you woke up cursing the couple inches of snow we got overnight.”
Ross wrinkled their nose and attempted to drown themselves in their drink. “Well fuck you too, man.” Ross flicked their eyes back up to Darren. “Anything interesting pop up recently?”
Darren rolled his neck before bracing his head with one of his hands. He looked away, humming to himself. “Nothing that you would be interested in, at the moment. Though, I think you might want to know that Scout popped in the other day.”
“Scout? Wasn’t his ass in prison?”
“He was, seems he got off early for good behavior.”
Ross snorted. “Good behavior? That ain’t the Scout I know. He could start a fight with a paper bag and lose.”
Darren shrugged before straightening up. “He was asking ‘bout jobs, warehouse ones. Seems he’s got himself a baby on the way and is looking for something stable, for once.”
Ross gave Darren a lopsided smile and said, “Good for him, tell him I wish him the best of luck.” Ross took a second to glance around the near-empty bar, before turning back to Darren. “Slow night?”
He grimaced slightly. “Not so much. Some rich fuck up in North Elmford hired up a bunch of muscle for some sort of event tonight. No clue ‘bout the details, seems they are keeping things wrapped up pretty tight. Hopefully nothing too bad, but I got a bad feeling ‘bout it. They were specifically asking for people with experience in aura weaponry, which is half the people that normally stick ‘round here. I’d imagine that they were paying out the ass to hire everyone.”
Ross paused for a second and hummed. “Rich assholes and guns, never a good sign.”
“I’d say,” Darren huffed. He took his phone out of his pocket before sitting on a stool against the back wall of the bar.
Ross folded their arms and squinted at their drink. It was none of their business what was happening in North Elmford, really. Just a bunch of rich folks and their friends all gathered up with their artisanal coffee shops and Wholefoods, set up all the way across the city, as far away from Shits Row as possible. It was the Manhattan of Witchsrow, full of money and business. And Harley’s Parents. Ross cursed softly to themselves before grabbing their phone and dialing Harley’s number. It was a fifty-fifty shot whether or not she was awake at this hour and Ross really didn’t want to have to walk all the way back toward Middletown.
Their phone rang twice before Harley picked up and Ross cried out a silent victory to themselves. Harley grumbled into the phone before asking, “The fuck do you want at three in the morning, Ross?”
“Your parents are still living off Payne Drive in North Elmford, aren’t they?”
Ross heard some shuffling of fabric over the line before Harley answered, “Yeah? What about it? Don’t tell me you’re planning on putting up more ‘eat the rich’ posters again. You know those upset Mama.”
“First off, I only did that once and secondly, no it’s not about that. I’ve just heard a rumor from one of the folks at HSS ‘bout some bad stuff going down up there and wanted to tell your parents to be careful going out the next couple of days.”
There was a pause from the other end of the line. “‘Bad stuff?’ What kind of ‘bad stuff,’ Ross?”
Ross rubbed the back of their neck with their hand. “Just bad stuff, Har. Just- please tell them to watch out.”
Harley sighed. “You know, you can call them and tell them yourself? I know you have their numbers, I’m sure they would be glad to hear from you.”
Ross ground their teeth and glared at the bar top. “You know why I can’t do that, Har. Tell them, or don’t. It’s up to you. I’ve got to get going, now. I’ll let you get back to sleep, or whatever.”
Harley sighed again. “Okay, I’ll make sure to tell them. See you tomorrow for lunch?”
Ross unclenched their jaw, popping it. “Yeah, tomorrow. Bye, Harley.”
“Night, Ross.”
Ross ended the call before placing it face down on the bar. Darren glanced over with raised eyebrows, to which Ross shrugged and folded their arms on the table. “Any chance I can get anything stronger, for once?” Ross asked.
Darren just smirked and said, “No chance in hell. You know the rules, rookies don’t get drinks.”
Ross grumbled and took another sip of their coke. “I’ve been a member for two years, I’m hardly a rookie.”
Darren laughed and said, “Still the baby, Ross. Ask again in two years.”