A woman and her husband sit at their dining room table, enjoying their breakfast while both reading the mornings newspaper. Neither of them are aware of Parker, the young woman standing in their kitchen, watching them. The man sips at his coffee for a moment before turning the page, and placing his right hand back on the table, next to the large hunting knife that hasn’t left his side for nearly eight days.
His wife stands from her seat, collecting her dishes and her own identical knife. She passes within inches of the unseen woman standing in the middle of her kitchen, unaware of the intruder’s presence. The man smiles as he stares her down, watching her clean her dishes with the knife on the counter beside her. The wife smiles lovingly while never taking her eyes off her husband, her neck turned at an awkward angle to keep him in view while she cleans up. She collects her knife, and returns to the table to finish her paper.
The instant she lets go of the knife to read her paper, her husband allows his gaze to return to his own reading.
“What the fuck is wrong with them?” The young woman in the kitchen thinks to herself.
She has been in their house for days, without them noticing her presence, and the longer she watches the more unsure she becomes about what exactly it was she’s been watching all this time. They haven’t left the house in all the time she’s been there, not since she walked in the front door while they brought groceries in from outside. She’d taken things, all she could carry with her safely, but when she had gone to leave she realized the doors couldn’t be unlocked without a key. The two of them had locked themselves in and she hadn’t been able to find the key, starting to suspect they had disposed of it somehow.
She had been hesitant to take too much food in case they noticed any going missing, but she was so hungry now, after days of scavenging when she thought neither of them would notice things moving in the kitchen.
The two of them never let each other move out of sight, and she suspected that a large part of why she had been so successful at going unnoticed was because of how focused they were on each other. She hadn’t seen them ever part from those blades they each carried, and any time one of them was in a position to potentially use them, the other would seem to tense and coil like a spring. Ready to launch into action, ready to… what? She had no idea what. She had watched for days, and still had no clue what was going on in their minds. Her Sight hadn’t revealed anything, and now she was avoiding using it in order to keep from over-exerting herself.
At first she thought it was some sort of abusive relationship, but other than the knives and the tense moments of movement, they seemed to genuinely care for each other. On the second day, they had both begun to seem visibly ill. They had been declining every day, both becoming pale with flushed cheeks as if they were running a fever. But they had nursed each other the whole time, making soup together in the kitchen while both looking like they were on the verge of death, even ensuring the other had properly taken medicine to help with the fever. It made no sense, and she was losing her mind wondering if she had missed a clue somewhere.
Neither had slept the entire time she had been there, always busy or pretending to busy, like now when they both pretended to read the newspaper, flipping back and forth between the same few pages for nearly an hour. They chatted, laughing at each other’s jokes and gossiping about their neighbors, always the guise that nothing was out of the ordinary. Parker was captivated by the confusion of it all, the sheer strangeness of how the two of them were acting. She had looked for ways to leave the house quietly, without either of them noticing, but every exit was sealed tight.
“If Vera was in my shoes, would she try to nudge things, and provoke one of them into killing the other?” Parker thought, not for the first time. She didn’t feel like she could do it, and neither of them had really done anything wrong. They didn’t even know she was here; she had snuck in specifically to rob the place. She’d veiled herself the entire time, and hadn’t dropped it aside from when she hid in closets to sleep. They didn’t know she was here, they hadn’t done anything other than freak her out, but she still felt she needed to intervene somehow. There weren’t any clues about what was even happening here, much less if one member of the couple was somehow a victim of the other.
She couldn’t leave until she’d learned more.
So, she watched, staying out of the way in case either of them finally decided to gut their spouse. When the husband started gathering up his dishes, a noise rang out throughout the house. It was the doorbell, and both husband and wife responded to the sudden noise by snatching up their knives, the husband dropping his dishes to shatter on the floor.
The sweet smiles never left their faces, knives held in white-knuckled grips, both of them walking over to the front door. Eyes mostly on each other, they both hid the blades behind their backs. The wife took a small key out of her pants pocket, causing Parker to nearly slap herself for her stupidity at not even thinking it might be in one of their pockets. She opened the door and the couple peered out from behind the door.
Looking passed them, Parker saw three officers of the Peace Guard standing in the doorway, just on the other side of a large source-less pool of blood that seemed to have formed on the ground outside the front door.
Parkers mind went into overdrive, the presence of the Peace Guard demanding that she focus more than ever. She flipped the switch inside herself, her Sight activating as if she was opening a second set of eyes. She looked at the enormous pool of blood, enough that the person it had come from couldn’t have survived it. The pool looked freshly spilled, it hadn’t even frozen from the cold of the winter morning. Her eyes showed the pool was utterly still, and her Sight showed that even the miniscule spirits in the pool were completely motionless as the pool practically steamed in the cold. When she Saw, Parker could see the flow of the seemingly inconsequential spirits that make up the whole world, the mystical equivalent of molecules. The spirits in the pool of blood weren’t active like they should have been, moving in the pool as they still pulsed with life from only recently leaving somebodies veins. Instead, they were lifeless and still, the very life drained away on the most basic level.
The couple paused for a moment, confused by the puddle of unknown blood outside their front door. “What-” the wife started, before being cut off by the officer at the front as he raised his hand to stop her.
“I’m going to stop you right there. Step outside, both of you.” It was more than a statement; it was an order. The cap of his uniform hid his eyes slightly, in a way that was likely meant to make him appear to be a faceless individual in a much larger force. His two companions were matching with him, the effect more exaggerated when they assembled in larger groups instead of the basic three officer unit. They each had matching grayish-green uniforms, the color of moss that hadn’t gotten enough water or sunshine. Gold emblems of flaming wings embossed the biceps of their uniform coats, as well as the front of their caps. All three were dressed for the cold, as they stood out in the snow while blood soaked into the powder on the ground in front of them.
They were all armed. Standard issue infantry sabers were on each of their hips. More importantly, their belts carried metal and glass canisters of glimmering red fluid. Seeing that, Parkers heart picked up, and she stepped further away from the front door and further into the house. The transparent red liquid at their belts was practically glowing, bubbling ever so slightly in its container. To her Sight, the liquid roiled as if alive, practically lunging at the confines of the glass.
The husband spoke up, all smiles and politeness as the hand holding the knife behind his back twitched with excitement. ‘I think there may be some sort of misunderstanding here officer. Can I ask what’s going on exactly? My wife and I were just having breakfast.’ His tone was sweet and friendly, like he didn’t have a worry in the world.
The lead officer eyed the husband, his hand idly resting on the hilt of his sword. ‘We’d like to know that ourselves. Step outside, hop over the puddle so you don’t disturb the scene too much. I want both of you facing the wall while we find out what’s going on.’
In unison the couple glanced at each other, their identical smiles only growing wider. They both had yet to fully step out from behind the front door, so the officers saw nothing when the husband took the blade from his wife’s hand, tossing it almost casually to the side and onto their couch, along with his own. With the three Peace Guards still oblivious, the two of them stepped out from behind the door, and made the short jump over the puddle of mystery blood.
Parker watched the whole scene, unsure what to do. The door was wide open, her first chance to leave quietly in days. She was exhausted, from regular stress and hunger, but mostly from keeping a veil up for so long. She could make a run for it right this instant, but with three guards just feet away she was anxious to try. Thoughts stumbled over each other, lack of sleep muddying her focus. So she waited, standing near the front door to try and see what was happening.
The officers had the couple facing the wall outside, hands on the side of the house while one of them searched the couple for weapons. The other two officers muttered to each other, inaudible from this distance.
Frustrated, Parker stretched out her arm and channeled just bit of strength, one finger pointing at the whispering mans mouth before drawing an invisible line to her own ear. Lightheaded from even that much, she thankfully heard the mans voice in her ear.
‘-footprints in the snow leading away from the blood, and if you look inside the doorway there’s no blood inside. It’s like someone bled out on the doorstep, just sitting in the snow. But there’s no blood anywhere else, so where’d the body go?’
They didn’t know what was going on any more than Parker did, from the sound of it.
Another damn mystery.
Sighing quietly to herself, she stood straighter and made for the door, almost reluctant to finally leave. Feeling her chest continue to buzz with energy, she kept the veil up as she inched out the front door and over the puddle of blood. Maybe she could come back later when they were further along in whatever investigation they performed, so she could try and overhear what they manage to find. Itching to know what was going on with the couple, and the mystery blood, Parker crept silently away from the scene. She was aching from exertion, her arm itching from overuse. Once she had put a block or two between herself and the scene she’d left behind, she finally dropped the veil. The buzzing running through her chest stopped as she let light properly reflect off of her again, allowing the laws of physics to do what they do best, revealing her to anyone who happened to be walking down the street.
Staggering from the relief now, she kept walking down the snowy street. Her heavy knitted sweater was keeping her body warm despite the cold, and she was silently grateful Ollie had made it for her. Her hands were feeling the cutting chill, and she quickened her pace to get back to the others. Horsedrawn wagons and carriages passed by on the street, as well as a few horseless ones, moving under their own power with a hum of blue light coming from the wheels. The heat given off by the energy in the wheels melted snow beneath them, a cold slush flowing downhill.
Passing by a storefront window, she caught her reflection and knew Ollie would be upset when she got back.
She looked ill, having spent way too long without sleeping or eating properly, and keeping a constant veil up to hide herself had exhausted her even more than the lack of food or rest. She was far from being able to say she thought she looked thin, but her cheeks were more gaunt than usual, and her face was flushed as the cold wind hit her. Her white sweater, pale skin, and silvery hair made her almost blend into the snow. Only the black of her eyes and the red on her cheeks showed she was more than another of Veras ghosts. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she saw in the reflection that she was shaking slightly. Her features were usually soft and rounded, but they now had a slight edge to them, like a portrait with too much shadow. Her hair looked nice at least, her wavy silver locks in a short bob cut, with her bangs loosely covering her forehead. The cold was starting to fog her glasses, she’d been wearing her circular pair with black frames, so she took them off to try and clear the lenses.
When she put them back on, she saw an older woman on the other side of the street staring at her. Parker froze, assuming she’d been discovered for just a moment. It took her a moment to realize, the woman wasn’t quite making eye contact, she was staring at Parkers eyes. It was a distinction she had managed to figure out as she got older, the difference between a person making eye contact and… this. People with Asian heritage weren’t that common on this side of the ocean anymore, with all the conflict between the Orphic States and the United Nations, and there were less and less people from overseas coming every year. They weren’t at war yet, but people felt like it was only a matter of time. Due to that, many people of African or Asian heritage were met with cold suspicion. Even if she told them she’d been born here, or that her mother was white, she often still got odd looks and suspicion. It was something she was used to, and in a way it made it easier to hide other things.
Looking away from the rude old woman, Parker continued trudging along. It was only a few more blocks until she reached the others, but she was having trouble making her feet listen to her. Her stomach growled at her, and she muttered for it to leave her alone, she’s busy right now.
Turns out she didn’t need to make the whole trip, because they found her first.
The translucent image of a man in his pajamas surged out of a nearby alley, rushing toward her before stopping short. One of Vera’s ghosts, an Omen from the way his eyes moved, really taking in his surroundings. She walked into the alley the apparition had come from, and she waited. It was only a minute or so before Vera and Ollie came running into the alley, Vera pulling a bit ahead of Ollie.
Vera was scrawny, short and thin in a way that made petite the wrong word to describe her. If she were a good deal taller then her proportions could be described as lanky, with long limbs and a long thin neck and pointed jawline, but she was shorter than most women despite her proportions. Her seemingly frail physique ran counter to the air of utter confidence she carried herself with. If anything, the contrast of her huge personality with her small frame only made her more attention grabbing, and it could be hard to resist listening to or watching her.
Her dark hair was tied in a long loose braid over one shoulder which bounced as she ran, and the loose strands that constantly got in her face were practically dancing. Her eyes had a smug look to them, resembling bits of amber framed by dark circles from a consistent lack of sleep. When they had first met, Parker had mentally compared Vera to a fox, but the dark circles and small size had made her readjust to viewing her as more like a raccoon. She ran through the cold snow wearing denim overalls slightly too large for her, with only a black t-shirt underneath. She wasn’t at all dressed for the weather, not only were her arms completely bare but she had forgotten to take out the piercings in her left ear and eyebrow, and her tan skin turned red in both spots, showing the cold metal was getting to her. She had a wide expressive mouth, and her lips parted in a grin that revealed her crooked teeth and the gap between her front teeth as she pulled closer to Parker.
‘Finally! You kept your veil up way too long, my Omens couldn’t find you!’ Veras voice had a very slight accent, though it wasn’t until Parker had asked about it that she’d found out it was from Veras parents originally hailing from Mexico before moving to Louisiana when she was born. She had grown up speaking English with her peers, but Spanish and French were often present in her home.
Parker stood straight and replied. ‘There were three Peace Guards outside the place when I got out, I couldn’t risk dropping it too early, I don’t have the energy for a chase right now if they’d seen me.’
Vera cocked an eyebrow and smirked, the face Parker so often associated with small trickster animals like foxes or raccoons. She patted Parker on the arm as she chuckled, ‘Well duh, who do you think sent the guards? Seemed to work pretty well, from what I can see.’
Parker blinked, realizing the mystery of the pool of blood had been partially solved. Frowning, she asked ‘Where the hell did you get so much blood? Tell me you didn’t gut some drunk in an alley or something.’
It was then that Ollie caught up, panting heavily. ‘Not quite. Promise you won’t be mad?’
Ollie was like one of those big dogs that didn’t realize yet that it wasn’t a puppy anymore. Well over six feet in height and muscular, she had a constant bounce in her movement that was more fitting for a small sugar-fueled child. Her strawberry blonde hair was a bit shorter than Parkers, swept to one side of her face and lightly hand combed to leave it intentionally messy. Her smile was big and goofy seeing Parker was safe, the freckles covering her nose and cheekbones shifting like stars with the expression. Her blue eyes roved over Parker, looking her over for injuries now that she was closer. She was dressed for the weather more than Vera was, wearing thick neon pink leggings, a knee length neon pink winter dress with yellow patterns at the waist and chest, and a heavy leather jacket specially treated to match her style with neon blue base and pink trim. Her big pink and blue leather satchel rounded out the outfit.
Parker thought the style was a little too garish and attention grabbing considering their particular lifestyle, but she couldn’t deny that it matched Ollies personality. It also made it much easier to see the dark red seeping through the stomach of her dress.
Alarm mixed with Parkers growing exhaustion when she saw how much Ollie was bleeding.
Stumbling forward to reach up and grab Ollies broad shoulders, Parker frantically looked Ollie up and down, now seeing how pale the taller girl was. ‘You’re hurt! What happened while I was in there?’ Exhaustion was briefly ignored as adrenaline filled her at the sight of her friend hurt again. The burst of energy was what she needed to use her Sight one more time, looking Ollie up and down. Ollie’s blue eyes swirled with the movement of the most minor of spirits, revealing that she was using her own unique method of Seeing to give Parker a once-over, probably searching her for any sign of injury or illness. Her square jaw was set as she focused, carefully examining Parker and checking for any major ailments. The flow of spirits in the air shifted imperceptibly in response to Ollie’s gaze, following the focus of her pupils as they settled on Parkers midsection, probably noting her empty stomach as she searched for anything physically wrong.
Parker’s own eyes traveled down to focus on the bloody front of Ollie’s dress. She stopped the moment they did, seeing that the blood that Ollie had lost had the same drained and lifeless quality that the bloody pool that the guards had been investigating. Anger and frustration hit her hard as she put the pieces together.
‘That was your blood all over the ground back there!’ She hissed, holding back a shout to keep from drawing attention to the three of them. ‘What were you thinking, that’s way too dangerous!’
Ollie smiled awkwardly and rubbed the back of her neck, like a nervous child who got caught doing something they shouldn’t and felt both embarrassed and guilty. Vera on the other hand only grinned, like she had just won some prize.
‘She’s fine, don’t worry so much! She lost the blood itself, but she used the energy she got from expelling it to manually keep her body in functioning shape. She overloaded the blood she still has with all the necessary nutrients and whatever else, and she’s accelerated her bodies production of new blood cells, so she’ll be back to full strength in no time. We had the blood in a few buckets and dumped it on the porch, then I went and got the guards and drew their attention to the house so they’d get suspicious and get the door open. I wore a different outfit and used makeup to change my appearance so I won’t match my wanted posters, they didn’t even recognize me.’ Vera explained it all with a casual confidence, the risks and danger something she breathed. It was irksome, that she so readily went for the most risky path, simply because it would be more exciting. More irksome because it usually worked out for her, and it was hard to call her out on it when she got results.
But Parker would try anyways. ‘That’s still an insane idea, I’ll admit I don’t have the medical training she does, but I can still tell that doing all those precise functions and processes by force is going to put a ton of stress on the body. I don’t even want to guess what overloading blood cells past what they’re supposed to handle will do to her. Not to mention you, what, stabbed her in the stomach to get it all? What if you hit something more vital and she didn’t have enough blood left to heal herself?’
Rolling her eyes, Vera gestured to Ollie. ‘I wasn’t the one doing the stabbing, miss medicine woman here did it herself. She has a better innate sense of how much blood is too much, and she could see past the skin to make sure she didn’t hit any organs, or anything that would bleed too much. She knows what she’s doing, and she wanted to help get you out of there safely.’
Parker looked incredulously at Ollie, who seemed more bashful than anything else, like she was embarrassed by the conversation. ‘You actually stabbed yourself in the stomach? That’s horrible, why would you do that?’
The taller girl wouldn’t meet Parkers eyes as she said ‘I was worried about you being trapped in there so long, I wanted to help however I could. Besides, I’ve had worse, you know that.’
Parker didn’t know what to say to that. This wasn’t the first time that Ollie had done something like this, and it wasn’t any easier to deal with as time went on.
‘There had to have been other ways to make an opening for me to leave, there’s no way that gutting yourself was the only option. You just wanted to do something you thought was clever, am I wrong?’ Parker said while pointedly looking at Vera.
The shorter girl snorted and crossed her arms. ‘Maybe. But I could say something similar back at you, you know? You’re not stupid, did you really have zero ideas of your own on how to get out before we rescued you? You were in there for days, completely hidden, and you couldn’t think to just break a window or something? Sure they would have been suspicious, but you could just keep your veil up and disappear without them knowing what happened. You stayed because you wanted to.’ Veras amber eyes burned holes into Parkers as they stared each other down, Vera still smiling her smug grin. ‘I had an Omen take a peek in the place at one point, the people living there were acting weird, right? You had no clue what was going on, and you couldn’t bring yourself to leave until you figured it out, solved that puzzle. You put yourself in danger because you couldn’t bear to leave that mystery behind, forcing Ollie and I to create a situation where you had to leave or risk being found by the guards. Sure we could have done something different if we just wanted to get the door open, but we also needed you to feel pressured to escape, hence getting the guards attention. And what do you know, it went perfectly! So what’s the issue?’
Parkers cheeks burned, flushed with embarrassment at the fact that she knew Vera was right. There had probably been ways for her to get out of the house, but she’d been more focused on watching the husband and wife, trying to puzzle out what exactly had been going on in that house. She hadn’t found anything, and she knew that logically she should have left far sooner, but her curiosity had gotten the better of her.
Angry and embarrassed, she opened her mouth to say something else to Vera, but was cut off when Ollie let out a weak groan of pain. Looking towards her now, Parker saw that Ollie seemed to be sagging more, and had her hands pressed to the wound at her stomach. Hurrying to her side again, Parker helped her to stay standing.
Ollie looked down at her with a grateful smile. ‘Could we maybe talk about all this another time? I’d love to get home and rest for a while, and I’m not loving this cold right now.’ She chuckled a little, a small smile on her lips but her eyes betrayed how weak she obviously felt.
Parker hesitated to drop the subject, but she had to admit that both of them could definitely use the rest. Her own empty stomach and the heaviness of her body was screaming at her to take care of herself. ‘Alright, we can get back to our place, then we all rest. You especially, I want you to heal up as much as possible, no getting out of bed for anything.’
Ollie just smiled weakly down at her, accepting a supporting arm as they turned to head in the direction of ‘home’. Vera stuck her hands in the pockets of her overalls and followed a bit behind the other two, smiling absently as she looked up at the clouds.
It was a long walk, they had gone out of their way to scout and rob a place that wasn’t near where they were staying in order to make it harder to follow them. As they trudged through the snow, Parker dazedly allowed her eyes to wander, taking in her surroundings after finally getting outside again.
She looked up at Ollie, every detail more obvious because of how close they were as they kept each other standing. Ollies nose was red from the cold, and her freckles popped more than usual from how pale she was from blood loss. Snow was caught in her eyelashes, glittering slightly from the sun shining off it. Parker had one arm around Ollie to help her walk, and the contact made it clear how sturdy Ollie was, the muscles of her torso standing out even through multiple layers of clothing.
Ollie glanced down and Parker looked away, turning her head to observe the buildings instead. Toronto was a Garrison city, so most of the buildings were solid stone and rebar, built to withstand attack and be easily defensible. Tall and resilient, everywhere she looked was tempered glass and metal shutters to be pulled down at a moments notice. The people who lived there knew there was almost no possibility of the city actually coming under attack, but the standard of architecture wasn’t questioned, simply a part of the cities culture. They passed one building still under construction, workers milling about as they set the foundations. Lumbering around the construction site was a hulking figure, easily twelve feet tall and nearly as wide, its massive form obscured by the tarp it wore to keep the weather at bay. As they got closer, Parker saw that the creature was hefting great slabs of stone and steel, placing them where its handler commanded it to. Under the hood of the tarp, she saw a face not unlike a grey skinned hippo, with large blunted teeth and a wide mouth. An ogre, they were originally forest dwelling giants in Europe, but the rise of the Orphic States eventually led to the destruction of their homes. Now most of them were ‘domesticated’, used as beasts of burden and battering rams in wartime. This one wore a wooden collar around its neck, inscribed with runes primed to knock it unconscious if its handler lost control. The creature bore intense scarring on its arms and chest, likely remnants of the process its trainers would have needed to perform in order to make it obedient.
Parker sighed sadly at the casual cruelty, wishing she could do something to free the ogre, or punish its handlers. Another time, maybe. For now, the three of them continued forward.
Turning onto another street, the tallest buildings were being left behind, giving them a view of higher ground, the center of the city where the Garrison itself stood. Styled like a medieval castle, the building was a fortress, the city around it almost forming a maze for invaders to weave their way through before arriving at the city center. Dragon riders flew over the city, coming to land on a landing strip along the roof of the Garrison, the beasts holding pens somewhere on the premises. The structure was intimidating, and the knowledge that only a few months ago they had barely escaped being brought there was heavy in Parkers mind. They had gotten lucky, when so many like them hadn’t been as fortunate.
As they grew nearer their hideout, the conditions of their surroundings became lower class. Even Garrison cities had slums, the parts of a city where those less fortunate were pushed to live. Many of the buildings here had been condemned by the city, and had sat in limbo for years. It was common enough for buildings like that to be illegally occupied, the trick was simply to avoid being obvious enough to attract guards. The three of them had been able to stay in the same building without being caught for nearly a month, and hopefully that streak of good fortune would remain consistent.
They approached their hideout, a run down old library that hadn’t had a book on the shelves in years. The boards covering a back window had been loosened, allowing them to climb inside.
Parker and Ollie immediately collapsed into their respective bed pallets, both exhausted and unable to move any further. Ollie groaned, speaking up and pointing at Parker. ‘You need to eat something, at least something small before you let yourself lay down. Otherwise you’ll just wake up even hungrier and resting won’t have helped at all. We got the stuff for sandwiches while you were gone, have one of those, doctors orders.’
Parker whined, but managed to sit up and roll dramatically towards the bag they kept the food in. She loosened the drawstring and felt cold air flow out, the contents kept chilled at a low temperature. She made herself a sandwich, and then another, her stomach threatening violence if she didn’t do something to satisfy it. Looking up, she saw Vera was sitting behind the libraries old reception desk, her head propped up on one hand and her eyes locked intently on something, her smile absent.
Parker followed her gaze, only to see Ollie, fast asleep already on top of her blankets. She looked back to see Vera was looking at her now, just a second of staring before Vera stood and went further into the building where she would be alone.
‘What was that about?’ Parker wondered. She could never tell what the other girl was thinking, and it was something she worried about. Starting in on her first sandwich, Parker pondered that particular mystery until she finally allowed herself to fall asleep, her pallet between Ollie and Veras.