“Please, come in. I’m Mike Dixon and this is Richard Darke. We are the trustees behind this project. I hope that you found us without too much trouble.” Mike gestured to a chair in the well-furnished study.
Paul Kidson smiled and sat down. “The roads are a little tricky up here in the wilds of the Pennines, but I checked a map before I came and I have a very good satnav.”
“Would you like a tea or a coffee, Paul?” Richard asked. “I think that anyone who makes it as far as my house deserves some refreshments.”
“Thank you, a cup of tea would be nice.” Paul looked around the study. “Is this where the job is?”
Richard shook his head. “I’m afraid it isn’t. Hang on, I’ll just shout for my housekeeper.”
Mike shuffled the papers in front of him as Richard yelled for Carol, his housekeeper. There was something about Paul that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. The man had come for a job interview. He should be the one shifting nervously in his seat. Instead he seemed to be completely in control. “So, your last place of work shut down?” he asked.
Paul nodded. “The owner wanted to retire. None of his family were interested and, to be honest, it was an old fashioned business that wasn’t keeping up. Mr Andrews, my boss, wouldn’t deal with emails, for example. I had to print it all out for him. He refused to have a website. It was a shame because it was a nice place to work.”
Mike flicked through the papers. “You ran the office, according to this. Does that mean all of it?”
“I sent the accounts to the accountant once a year,” Paul said. “But I did everything else. Mr Andrews paid for me to take courses at night school.”
Mike met Richard’s eyes. The qualifications looked promising, with a lengthy list of certificates. “A small cottage comes with the job, or rather, the job is inside a small cottage. Are you prepared to move here?” The man was too controlled. There didn’t seem to be a stray movement.
“As you can see, I left a foster home a few years ago,” Paul stated. “I’ve lived in house shares since. I don’t really have any roots. Moving here would be a bonus. The area is beautiful.”
“Do you have any connection to the area?” Richard asked.
Paul shook his head. “No, I just saw the advert and thought it would be interesting.”
“It’s interesting, alright,” Mike said. “There is a mass of documents and books that need cataloguing. There are boxes of diaries that need transcribing and, well, just a load of stuff that needs sorting out. The cottage has a room full of paperwork and, to be honest, we don’t know where to start.”
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
There was a knock on the door and a young woman came in with a trolley. “Sorry to interrupt.” She held up a teapot and looked questioningly at Paul.
“Milk, no sugar,” he said. He stretched out a hand to take the cup and his shirt sleeve rode up, exposing part of a livid burn.
“That looks bad,” Richard said. “How did you get that?”
Paul looked at his arm. “On the oven,” he lied. “To be honest, I’d forgotten about it.”
Carol smiled brightly, handed Mike and Richard their cups and left.
“That was my housekeeper,” Richard said. “She gave the cottage a bit of a clean for whoever gets the job, and we’ve supplied a few basics. Some of the work will be done up here, and she’ll be around. She’s very efficient.”
Paul sipped the excellent cup of tea and smiled. “I’m sure she is. The job said that those of a superstitious nature should not apply.”
Mike had been dreading this sort of question. “A lot of the papers refer to folk beliefs,” he said airily. “We think that there may have been a sort of code, or perhaps ongoing mental issues…”
Richard jumped in to help him. “If you are bothered by the idea of ghosts and such then perhaps it isn’t the job for you. And some of the books are of what could be considered an ‘occult’ nature.”
“We think that people got carried away. I mean, no-one believes in magic anyway,” Mike added.
“Of course not,” Paul said. “But I’ve always found folk belief fascinating. It would be interesting to see what’s there.”
“We might consider publishing some of the papers later, or donating to a museum or library,” Richard said. “For academic purposes only,” he added quickly. “They would need to be in order for that.”
“Are there a lot of papers?” Paul asked.
Mike shuddered in spite of himself. “There’s about a ton of them. And all the little diaries and notebooks in leather bindings, stacked three deep in the bookshelves. We expect the work to take at least a year.”
“So we have to ask about how you would feel being so isolated,” Richard said. “We can be all but cut off over the winter, and the power goes down regrettably often.”
“The chance of some peace and quiet after the last few years sounds good,” Paul said. “I’ve been cooped up with roommates and the thought of a bathroom that I don’t have to share sounds wonderful.”
“Would you like to take your tea into the living room and wait,” Richard asked. “I’d like to have a word with Mike.”
They watched Paul pick up his cup and leave. Mike closed the door carefully and then the werewolf and vampire looked at each other. Mike shook his head. “It’s got to be him. I mean, I don’t think that he’s the one but he’s the one meant to do the project. No-one else has applied.”
“There’s some strange forces at work,” Richard said. “I hope that he isn’t too interested in occult documents. We would have our hands full then. But we need the stuff in order for when the Paladin turns up.”
Mike shook his head. “It feels wrong. The Prince hasn’t been out of his domain for, what is it?”
“I haven’t seen him out of his lands for about two hundred years,” said Richard. “He was never really interested in vampires like Nathan and I anyway. I’ve heard that he’s become too susceptible to iron, like all the old and powerful elfen. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was replaced.”
“And that’s a war I want our pack to stay out of,” Mike said. “It never ends well for the werewolves. But, well, it’s not right that we’re looking out for a Paladin.”
“What choice do we have?” Richard sighed. “I suppose we had better tell him that he’s got the job.”