Muffled shouting and raised voices could be heard from the street as Watson's carriage pulled up outside the large Bath stone mansion. She passed through the gate after showing her MCR license to the police officer stationed at the main gate. Spencer was trailing behind, doing his very best to relate the details he had gained to her, illustrating especially the fact that all the victims had the same mark of the one winged angel, making it blindingly clear that this was, once again the work of the White Demon.

As she entered the building she found a lady sitting on a large sofa in a vast living room that had empty bottles and glasses placed haphazardly over all the furniture.

After getting a full report on the situation Watson opted to take a look around the mansions first. She first went to the main room for a look around, after seeing nothing of importance she made her way into the room where the murders had taken place.

What greeted her were eleven dead men hanging from the ceiling by ropes that were tied to a long railing that stretched across the entirety of the room. There were pools of blood beneath each one of the men that were only partially dried, indicating the freshness of the bodies.

She almost gagged and quickly blocked her nose with magic before moving any further into the room. Below each of the men's bodies was a variety of papers. Some had a great deal more than others. Other than that, all the furniture had been pushed to the side of the room and there was a badly drawn summoning circle on the floor.

Watson looked over the whole room then began to inspect each of the bodies. Some of them looked like pin cushions with holes dotted all over their bodies. One of them just had a clean hole that went straight through his head and that was it. Watson grimaced at the sight of the eleven bodies before crouching down and picking up some of the papers below one of the bodies. She read through them briefly and scowled at what she found.

There were all sorts of things here, evidence of corruption, fraud, illegal trafficking including human trafficking. There were even letters to some quite high up members of parliament that contained some very worrying information.

After having enough of the letters and paper she looked again at the wounds. The first police officers on the scene had said that they had only found very small traces of the white demon's magic being used and that was outside of the room and in the corridor leading to this one. Not in the actual room itself. However, there were bullets strewn all over the place, which were made of the white demon's mana. While it seemed obvious that the White Demon had used a gun, there was no gun in production that could deal this amount of damage to a room and its inhabitants in such a short amount of time. It was equally confusing as if there really was a gun involved, the other people in the building must have heard it being shot, yet no one heard a thing.

After fretting over this problem for a while she moved on to the lady that she had seen sitting on the sofa.

On closer inspection, she looked like she was incredibly angry, her eyebrows were meeting in the middle forming some sort of haphazard inverted bridge of anger and darkness.

“Madam. My name is Ella-Mae Watson. I'm the lead investigator in this case. I'd like to ask a few questions, if possible.”

“Sure.” The woman almost spat back.

“Are you the owner of this mansion?”

“I am.”

“Alright, If possible please let me know what exactly happened last night, spare no detail even if you think it's not important.”

The lady began to describe the party from the very start, later in the explanation, the truly important and somewhat surprising information was finally uncovered.

“...It was at this point that I approached him. I mean, he hadn't touched his whiskey or talked to anyone the whole time. He was the only living man to leave the room. Bastard ruined all my nice furniture...”

Ma'am, did you know any of the men that were killed?”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Of course I knew them, they were at my party.”

...

“And?”

“Well, that's it. They told me they needed to use a spare room so I let them use that one.”

“That's all?”

“What did you expect?”

“I'm not so sure anymore. Tell me what you think about this.”

“Look, all I know is that the men using that room were not good people and the world is probably better off without them. I had received so many complaints about their previous behaviour at other parties. If you need any further information about the man in that creepy white mask I can't tell you anything more, the most I found out about him was that he played the piano, and that could easily be a lie.”

The woman evolved from angry to exasperated as she spoke, she had clearly already been questioned countless times about the matter.

“Understood, thank you for your cooperation. We will do our best to get to the bottom of this case and bring the man to justice.”

“Alright, could you please clean that room out now please so that I can destroy it, I'll have a fit if I ever see something like that again.”

Watson sighed as she clambered back into the carriage, yet another crime scene with no decent leads. She had ordered Spencer to take care of the papers and have them ready for her to sort through by the next morning. She had spent the whole day at that ghastly mansion combing through the residue magic and the mess that was the evidence of the party the night before.

Her head was in her hands most of the journey home, she was trying desperately to think of a way to deal with the corruption, the people that had one winged angel marks and finally the White Demon. You could say she had a lot on her metaphorical plate, and none if it was healthy.

It was dark by the time she got home, she made her way to a small room on the left of her house that was a pathetic attempt at a sitting room and collapsed into a comfortable chair, she knew she shouldn't sleep there but it was just so comfortable, especially with the blanket wrapped around her legs.

Beau had spent the entire day scheming. The papers in front of him represented something far larger than he had the authority or ability to deal with. Seeking help was a viable option and also, after weighing the pros and cons, the one with the most benefit with the least risk. That was considering of course that everything fell into place properly and he was as good at judging people's characters as he though the was.

He had seen the beautiful girl walk into the room and collapse on the chair. He was mildly surprised that she was clueless about his presence. This was not the intended effect so he coughed awkwardly into his gloved fist, only to realise it was obstructed by his mask.

The poor woman jumped with fright and after flinging off the blanket and standing up began to gauge the situation. She had immediately noticed the shadowy figure after a cough.

“Who are you?”

“I think you call me, White Demon.”

...

“Is that so...”

Beau didn't really understand why she was being cryptic so he cut to the chase.

“You are investigating me, but, you have noticed that the people I kill are not good people.”

“I have.”

“The papers I left for you today, did you get them?”

“I did.”

“There's more, those were the ones suitable for public viewing, there are a few here that cannot, will not and must not see the light of day.”

“You're awfully insistent.”

“Look.”

She obliged quickly and leaned forward to receive the papers that the demon held. After hesitating slightly after realising that the man the MCR has been chasing for 4 years was currently relaxing in her living room, she flipped the papers round so that she could make sense of them. Her eyes slowly widened as she continued reading. At some point half way through she noticed that the demon had silently left and she was still only half way through the papers. She sighed as she put them to the side and snuggled into her chair once more, selfishly deciding to deal with the problems tomorrow. She needed her beauty sleep.

'I'm so glad he didn't want to fight, I'm way too tired for that right now.' She thought before falling sound asleep.

Beau was glad he'd judged her character correctly, one that would avoid a fight if at all possible, especially after a long, difficult and fruitless day of work. He pulled his bike up onto the pavement and reached for the key to the door of his house. He paused for a second and looked at the closed sign that hung from the inside of the door.

He muttered something before going inside.

And if the wind had ears it might have heard him saying something about an assistant.