[IC] The Sunday Group - Seeds and Harvests

[Penny]

The sun had passed its zenith by the time they team had regrouped at the turn of the century brownstone which served as the headquarters of the Sunday Group. It was nestled not too far from Chigago’s downtown and blended in with a dozen other white shoe law firms, upscale physicians practices, and various other difficult to define yet clearly lucrative businesses. At least, it blended in if you didn’t know what to look for. A shrewd observer might notice, for instance, that no pigeon would fly directly over the building, or that neighborhood ants always deposited a small piece of whatever food they were gathering on leaves just outside the fence. An observer less prone to fancy, might be able to pick out discrete motion sensors, or the slight shimmer of tempered and bullet resistant glass. People crossed the street to avoid it without conscious intent, and those that did force themselves to approach felt an almost crippling sense of dread as they neared the door. For obvious reasons, The group tended to do business ‘by appointment only’.

The interior of the building was no less a wonder, though this was accomplished more by the judicious application of money rather then less effective forms of magic. Gone were the claustrophobic maze of turn of the century rooms and in its place sprawled open floors lined with offices separated by doors of dark wood. Several were, as always, empty. Nor did Spartan extravagance end with the floor plan, the four stories above ground contained ritual spaces, an impressive library, even a gym.

Eleanor passed her own office and noted that her wards indicated no one had entered. Any reassurance that might have brought her was immediately overwhelmed by the view of Emmaline sitting on one of the comfortable leather chairs, wearing one of her UCLA shits. The witch was either taking advantage of the electrum inlaid casting circle, or using the wi-fi to catch up on Bridgerton. She waved as Eleanor passed but didn’t get up. Eleanor gave the other woman a wry smile which faded as she headed down to the fifth, basement level of the building.

The basement was larger than was usual for the area and contained a shooting gallery, a sealed storage facility and the object of their visit.

Eleanor took a deep breath and then entered the realm of the Necromancer.

The morgue, as always, was overwhelming. It looked like what a particularly sugar high child might draw if asked to envision a morgue. Bright colors covered some walls, others were half painted in murals including a rather impressive combination of Van Gough’s starry night which had been modified to include the silhouette of Count Chocula’s castle. Examination tables lay pilled with odds and ends of ever conceivable type. Brass tubing, balsa wood, duct tape in eye searing neon shades, chemical condensers and flasks, repurposed circuit boards, old laptop computers, a brass astrolabe, all piled in disordered confusion. Several… work benches were the best term, ran along two of the walls. Soldering irons smoked and surgical tools sat on charging racks. The astringent scent of formaldehyde stung the back of Eleanor’s throat.

A sign hung over the door cheerily marked: Life Begins at Dissection.

Jocasta O’Glynn, lay slumped sideways on a couch drinking an off brand energy drink through a crazy straw. She started upright when she saw Eleanor standing in the door. The articulated bones of a human hand scuttled across to close a laptop which looked like it was discord sharing a stream of Bridgerton. The little hand scuttled away and began trying to unobtrusively tiding, gathering up fast food containers and tossing them like three point shots into trash bins. Other such constructions ran wild within the confines of the morgue, moving about on their own tasks. Two other hands appeared to be engaged in a fencing match with knitting needles, while third appeared to be playing a game of solitare. Nor were these creations limited to purely human arrangements. A kind of butterfly made of human finger bones, cellotape and florists wire was flapping its way across the room, attempting to drop marbles onto the fencers. Eleanor repressed a sigh.

“What’s up boss!?” Jocasta asked if she sprang to her feet. She was a small woman, attractive in a manic kind of a way with large green eyes and a shock of almost painfully green hair. She was dressed in cargo shorts and a tank top incongruously paired with unlaced combat boots.

“Oh Shit! She gets a crow! Ele! why does she get a crow! All I want is one mongoose and you are like…”

“I thought I might see if you’d made any progress with the body?” Eleanor asked, a touch acidly. A look of confusion came across Jocasta’s face.

“What body?” she asked quizzically. Eleanor felt her temper rise but caught it as she saw the twinkle in Jocasta’s eye.

“Fine, fine, I’m all done,” Jocasta admitted and lead Eleanor to the one bench not covered with equipment. Jocasta was what was known as a monomagus, a magical talent that expressed itself in on single field but did so with amazing strength. While she could understand the theory she would never be a magical match for Eleanor or Emmaline. In her own area of expertise, necromancy, she was a prodigy. Monomagi also had a tendency to be extremely socially awkward and difficult to deal with, the classic traits of the obsessive. Eleanor had reluctantly agreed that the best way to use Jocasta’s talent was to more or less leave her alone when she wasn’t actively working on a problem. Making severed hands practice sign language was less harmful in the long run then making all men in the Chicago area develop male pattern Mohawks because she was bored.

The body lay on the table, scraped largely clear of black goo. Revealed beneath was a fit looking man of vaguely middle eastern features, comically accentuated where goo still stained the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, like someone had added extra character detail.

“Cause of death, tentatively, stab wound to the chest, incision to anterior portal vein just above the liver,” Jocasta said, pointing to the cut which had been revealed by her cleaning. She punctuated her points with several dramatic stabbing motions. Both sword fighting hands stopped and turned towards her, holding their needles low as if on guard. Jocasta made a quick ‘not now’ gesture.

“No signs of exsanguination at the scene,” Eleanor remarked in a carefully neutral tone.

“All emptied into the peritoneal cavity,” Jocasta explained, pantomiming her stomach blowing up with a mouthed ‘boom’. “Black goo probably sealed it up.”

“Speaking of black goo, any idea what it is?” Eleanor asked, “Alcander seemed to think it might be basilisk bile.” Jocasta snorted.

“Basilisk bile? Keep it in your pants Percy Jackson!” she called with a shake of her head.

“As it happens, its ink, sixteenth century Turkish ink,” Jocasta declared with every appearance of a magician who had just pulled a rabbit out of an obviously empty hat.

“What kind of spell did you use to figure that out?” Eleanor asked, surprised by the specificity.

“Hippity hoppity mass spectroscopy,” Jocasta sing-songed, pointing to an instrument tucked into a corner. “After that I just hopped on the internet and looked it up. You’d be amazed how in the weeds people get about ink. I was DMing this guy who rexpresses tattoo ink from…”

“Jo,” Eleanor broke in gently, “if we can stick to our dead man..”

“Fazel,” Jocasta corrected. Eleanor arched an eyebrow.

“What?”

“His name is/was Fazel Ibrahim Al-Jalasi,” Jocasta explained. “Dental records bear it out.” There was a rattling of bone on steel and Eleanor glanced aside to where several molars appeared to be bouncing with excitement in a specimen tray. Eleanor didn’t bother to rebuke the necromancer for not leading with that information.

“The name is familiar,” Eleanor admitted, not quite able to place it.

“FIAJ! The Thief of Bagdad? Come on boss!” Jocasta exploded. “Home boy here was a FIRST round draft pick on any heist team. Cat burglar, safe cracker, procurer of rare antiquities… uhhh ink guy. I’m kind of fan girling,” Jocasta admitted.

“Ah, he recovered all those artifacts from the Iraqi national museum,” Eleanor realized, dredging the datum from her mind with some effort.

“And he stole all those cuneiform tablets from those ISIS guys, and from those Hobby Lobby guys, and…”

“Right, so what is he doing dead in a Chicago alley?” Eleanor asked. Jocasta rolled her eyes.

“Sort of thing someone should pay a group of occult investigators to find out?” Jocasta asked, batting her eyelashes.

“Any Chicago associates? Seeing you apparently have posters of this guy on your wall?” Eleanor asked.

“Well he usually works with a team, and I know he has done some work for Gretchen Colter in the past,” Jocasta admitted. The necromancer extended her hand, and Fazel’s molars bounced up onto her palm and up the arm with every appearance of delight.

“Questions?” Eleanor asked the team.

Synopsis

The team goes down the morgue and discovers why Eleanor drinks.
our victim (Fazel) was an international occult antiquities thief.
He has a known associate Gretchen Colter in Chicago and he usually works with a team.

[Atalanta]

"Not exactly,” Blythe said.

She still held the crow clutched in one hand, its wings trapped beneath her finger and its legs swinging limp. It had stopped struggling sometime during the car ride over, but it was still very much alert, its neck erect and black eyes shining.

Blythe would have disposed of it already, but there really hadn’t been enough privacy under the wide, clear windshield of her car or in the alley with Adri. And she hadn’t yet fallen so far as to consume small proto-demons with all their mess and noise in front of her coworkers. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing that would foster good company bonding—especially not when one of them was a literal angel.

“And yet, you use your hell-given abilities in front of them.” Kolratheth was basically slavering, pooling so heavily in the hand that held the crow that he was beginning to turn her fingers purple.

There is something to be said for being useful. Besides, even growing claws and sharp teeth is less… visceral than watching someone who ought to be mortal consume a demonic soul.

”Hmph. Then when will you be done here? I won’t wait forever.” Of course, Blythe knew that already. Her demon’s craving was coming through so strongly that she was starting to look forward to crow for dinner.

Instead of answering him, Blythe forced her attention back on the room around them, taking in the once ink-stained body. She’d never heard of Fazel, but she knew Gretchen Colter, at least… professionally. It would be extremely difficult to forget the person who’d sold her the book that had summoned Kolratheth.

“I think I can get us in to speak to Colter if that’s the path we want to take. She’ll probably know what Fazel’s been up to, though there’s every chance she won’t tell us or that she’ll get word back to his associates or killers that we’re looking. As for the ink, I have no idea what that has to do with anything, though I can research it if there’s time.”

”So helpful.” Kolratheth was a dark rumble in her left hand. Blythe just mentally rolled her eyes.

[POOHEAD189]

Alcander descended the stairs, looking for all the world like an unkempt reprobate, his vibes somewhere between aragorn and a particularly wary homeless man. He eyed the colorful explosions around him with the same apathetic disinterest he gave most things that did not pertain to an active investigation. The detective had heard most of Jocasta's spiel without betraying any sort of thought, merely walking up behind the two and eyeing the body as he incorporated the new information into his mind.

After a few moments of thought, he placed a hand on his chin and stepped past Eleanor and Jocasta, to eye the cadaver. He looked at the women, then lifted the corpse's left arm up.

"Careful with him, I've still got some work on this guy!"

"He won't mind." Al replied, looking for any marks. He sniffed the arm, and save for the detergent solution and the antiseptic that was standard operating procedure, he felt he detected a hint of asphalt. It was to be expected. He placed the arm down and rummaged his fingers through the dead man's hair, pulling out a small strand of hair and examining it thoughtfully.

He smelled the copse of strands, smelling a of hint of garlic or decay from it.

"Find anything, Lassie?" Jocasta asked, adding a tut tut tut click of her tongue like she was beckoning a dog, slapping her hip.

"Phosphine in his hair," Alcander said, before turning to Eleanor.

"Would Hercule Poirot like to tell us where that comes from?"

"I prefer detective Callahan, but I'm surprised you've read any Agatha Christie." The investigator remarked, a hint of a smile on his face. "I just thought you watched Bridgerton all day. Gotta catch up so you can catch part 2, right?" He replied.

"Pardon me, we don't wall watch Lost, Surface-level seinen anime and reruns of police procedurals," She quipped, crossing her arms across her chest and smirking.

"You got me pegged," Alcander shot back, but Eleanor raised an eyebrow to draw their attentions to the matter at hand. Alcander cleared his throat, holding up the strand of hair. "This means your ink guy was in the industrial sector before he found himself dead in that alleyway. Either that or he intimately met someone who had. Lucky for us he didn't shower."

"He was kind of offensive in that regard," Jocasta affirmed, pinching her nose for emphasis.

Hider

I have received permission by overlord Penny to write for Jocasta in this post.

[nightmare medx]

Adri had taken a moment to clean up upon arriving at the Sunday Group’s base of operations. After scrubbing her hand raw (maybe not entirely necessary, but you never knew with demon crows) it was carefully wrapped, and she changed into clothes that hadn’t been spattered with her blood today.

She remembered her first visit to the morgue here. She had been warned that she might find the personnel particularly peculiar and not to be alarmed at what she might see, only to be severely underwhelmed. Jocasta would have fit right in with many of the forensic techs she had met working for the police. You had to be a little weird to work that closely with dead bodies- funeral home workers in particular were something else.

She clicked on a voice recorder as she walked in, tucking it down her shirt. It was mainly so she could talk to herself and remember what she had said later, but it was also great to listen back to everyone else’s thoughts while trying to come up with ideas.

For the most part, she listened quietly, occasionally muttering something to herself. The crow was still looking at her, its beady eyes glaring, but it had apparently given up trying to escape for now. She didn’t know why Blythe still had it and didn’t care- at least she didn’t have to deal with it.

“So, you said stab wound to the chest, incision to the anterior portal vein. Do you mean it looks deliberate, or is it just more shallow?” She came over to the body finally, frowning as her eyes swept the body. He was old but not ancient old- maybe in his forties, give or take a bit. He still would have had a decent number of years ahead of him.

“Fazel Ibrahim al-Jalasi,” she muttered under her breath as she typed it into her phone, sending it off to a friend on the force. “I’ll see if he has any other known associates around or if he was being investigated for anything in the area. No guarantee I’ll be able to get much, but it’ll give us a starting point.”

After a pause, she added, “so far, this feels personal and targeted, not random. First we have the wounds, then we have the ink. 16th century Turkey would have been a part of the Ottoman Empire, which definitely included part of the Arab world, so it could be related to where he was born and lived. Or work he did in the area. Is the ink carbon-based or iron-based?”

“Phosphine could also mean meth lab,” she pointed out. “Fazel doesn’t seem like the type, but it’s too early to rule anything out.”

[Penny]

Many people would have been overwhelmed by the sudden barrage of questions, but Jocasta nodded her head enthusiastically. For someone who spent so much time with the dead, Jocasta was annoyingly gregarious with the living. That was perhaps a little unfair, as she talked incessantly to the corpses in the morgue as well, though with somewhat fewer responses.

“The cut was deep, through my man’s abs and through the liver.” She made a pantomime stab with a pen in an underhand grip, coming upwards at a slight angle.

“Probably not aiming for it specifically, just a happy accident,” she burbled, putting her hands beneath her shirt and wiggling them to mimic her stomach bloating with an internal hemorrhage. She toppled backwards theatrically, only to be caught by a pair of her skeletal hands that slowed her fall while she waved her arms, as though plunging off a rooftop. For a moment she lay still, playing dead, then bounded back to her feet. Her head swiveled like a gun turret to fix on Adri.

“I didn’t know you were an Ink Skink!” she all but squealed, pronouncing the words more like ‘ank’ and ‘skank’.
“What forum are you on? Wait, are you Calligrafitti289? She does have a boring cop voice. What have you got: lamp black or carbon black? Are you a salt or a vinegar?” Jocasta demanded.

“How does it feel to have put Alcander back in his ‘most boring investigator’ slot?” she asked, hooking a thumb over her shoulder to indicate a specimen fridge covered in magnetic words. Centermost was a list of all the names of the Sunday Group, starting with Emmaline and ending with Ardi. As they watched, one of the hands scuttled over and moved Alcander’s name down to the bottom, pushing Ardi up into second last.

“If we can focus…” Eleanor cut in, clearly working to hold onto her patience.

“Oh… right, what was the question?” Jocasta asked, completely unabashed.

“Carbon or iron, I believe,” Eleanor responded dryly.

“Oh, iron gall obviously. I did say it was 16th century Turkish; carbon ink went out of common usage in the early Byzantine period, although some monasteries…”

“Iron gall?” Eleanor interrupted, knowing that if she were left to her own devices, the necromancer would run on for hours once her enthusiasm was engaged. Jocasta blinked as though suddenly exposed to bright light.
“Iron sulphate and nut gall, from oak trees, duh,” Jocasta said as though exasperated that she needed to clarify such an arcane point. She gave a dramatic wink to Adri in quest of solidarity.

“Alright,” Eleanor replied.

“Let’s run down what we can, then start paying a visit to local associates. Fasel didn’t steal for himself, which means someone hired him.”

“Hey this isn’t a hentai thing is it?” Jocasta asked, “you know squids and ink and everything?”

“Is that a positive or a negative in your book?” Alcander needled. Both necromantic hands presented their middle fingers in response.

“Moving on,” Eleanor interjected hastily.

“Ardi, shake the tree and see what you can find on the local contact angle. Blythe see what you can find on occult uses of ink. Alcander, you are on weapons and counter measures. If this thing has taken multiple victims we should be ready for anything.”

[Atalanta]

Blythe excused herself first. Maybe it was rude to go so quickly, with nothing more than a quick affirmation and a waved hand—Jocasta’s disembodied hands waved back—but Kolratheth was quickly becoming unmanageable. Blythe’s teeth had sharpened even while the others were talking, her cheeks filling out with the extra enamel. The tips of her fingers were turning dark, even on the hand not holding the bird, and her eyes were starting to itch.

She didn’t make it out of the building. Blythe locked herself into a single restroom on the next floor up and turned her back firmly to the mirror, though not before catching the gleam of too-wide black eyes.

“Yes,” Koratheth groaned. He left her hand and pooled in her center, hauling himself up her esophagus and into her mouth. Her lips stretched wider than possible without demonic aid, and Blythe shoved the lesser demon between them, her eyes watering at the sulfur and feather taste of demons on her tongue.

Then, it was gone, and she had her hands braced on her knees, heaving around the demon in her throat. Tears streaked her cheeks from the gag reflex, and her body convulsed. Fuck! She just wanted this over!

When it was, she vomited breakfast into the toilet while Kolratheth curled, somnolent and quiet, somewhere near the lower curve of her spine.

That shit never got better.

Afterwards, Blythe went home. She took her second shower for the day and then sat down at her computer, alternating between scrolling through modern tips for making homemade inks for spells and scholarly articles detailing why so much written work had survived from the Ottoman Empire. TLDR: their ink did its job well. For a couple of minutes, Blythe got hung up on a Reddit post by a writer looking for interesting ways to use magical ink in their story. The list started with using its acidic properties as a weapon—honestly, their killer might have been better off if the ink had liquified the corpse— and went on to include curses and binding.

This was absolutely not top-tier research, but the idea of binding caught Blythe’s attention. The one thing that each source had in common was the application of ink for its intended purpose. They weren’t mixing it with pigs’ blood or using it to coat voodoo dolls. They were writing with it. So what had the killer been writing on Fazel? Some sort of binding? Unless…

Fazel was a thief-for-hire, and someone had stolen from the auction house. Maybe the ink was a sign that he’d broken some occult contract. Or else, meddled in whatever sixteenth-century Turkish ritual he’d been hired to steal.

Blythe pushed back from her desk and grabbed a jacket. This was getting her nowhere. She needed better sources for occult bindings and contracts than the mundane internet could provide, and her favorite source for books could also have information on Fazel. Besides, it’d been too long since she’d paid Gretchen a visit. Hopefully, Adri wouldn't mind if Blythe butted in a little on her task.

With a quick text to Adri to let her know that she meant to stop by the local contact’s shop, Blythe left her house and headed into town.

Gretchen Colter’s bookshop wasn’t particularly interesting from the outside. She’d occupied the same east-end street corner for a hundred years, across from a drug store and a few bland office buildings. The paperback-laden carts outside were the same rust-nibbled, squeaky-wheeled contraptions that Gretchen had used when the place opened. Blythe was willing to bet that they held many of the same books, too. It wasn’t as though Gretchen’s bread and butter came from selling cheap romances to mundanes.

Blythe slipped in the door to the chime of bells and slid up to the counter, ignoring the shop’s perpetual clutter. Gretchen Colter herself stood behind it, wearing thick glasses above a bright orange Beatles tee that she’d probably bought in the sixties. She wore her steel grey hair short and slicked back like a greaser and seven hoops in each ear. Blythe knew Gretchen was old. She was just the sort of old that might be anywhere between eighty and seven hundred.

Gretchen looked up from her task, scribbling down titles of new arrivals in an ancient ledger, and lowered her eyebrows. “No returns.”

“Of course. I wouldn’t dream of it,” Blythe said, smiling. “How are you, Gretchen? It’s been too long.”

“What do you want, girl?” She looked Blythe up and down. “Or rather, what does it want?”

Blythe decided to ignore the second question. “Do you have any books on bindings or magical contracts? Even better if they’re sixteenth century and/or from the Ottoman Empire.”

“Tired of your passenger already?”

“Just a bit of casual research.” Blythe froze her smile in place and pointedly didn’t think about getting rid of Kolratheth. She didn’t want to wake him up.

“Let me see what I can find…”

[nightmare medx]

“Okay. So we’re not looking at something particularly deliberate in that sense. Is that how he was stabbed?” she asked, mimicking Jocasta’s movements. “Perpetrator is more likely to be a male if it is… well, assuming they’re human. It might hold for humanoid non-human species as well, but I don’t know if there’s really a data set for that.” Though her eyes were in the direction of the body, she wasn’t really looking at it anymore; the gears were turning in her head, sorting the information they had and trying to figure out what the next point on the map was.

The hand on the specimen fridge had been rather casually making its way back to the floor, but paused for a moment at Adri’s musings, and then turned back. It pulled at the magnet with her name on it, silently questioning if her name was to be moved back down, but left it be after a wave from Jocasta. It did seem a little… huffy as it bustled back off.

“A… what or a what?”She blinked hard, momentarily looking a little less far away. “Um… I’m not personally into ink… we did some handwriting analysis workshops, those were interesting, person who ran them was actually super into it, but more pertinently, I know from being to Turkey that a lot of the mosques collected and used their own soot for ink making, you’d probably like the architectural aspect, but anyways… carbon based could have indicated some kind of holy place or other spiritual aspect. Not that this rules out its involvement entirely.”

Jocasta squinted her eyes in a disbelieving manner. “Whatever you say, Ink Skink.”

Her phone vibrated in her pocket and she pulled it out, vaguely wondering what the problem was with squids and ink. “Suheila Ahmad… John Johnston… and Warner… Znamierowski,” she pronounced slowly. “I’ll get more info when I call my contact, but along with Gretchen Colter those are some key persons of interest with ties to Faisal in the area, so if you hear anything…”

[POOHEAD189]

"Yes ma'am," he replied, deciding not to comment on Jocasta's 'boring board.' Clearing his throat, he decided to head up the stairs and grab a cup of coffee. He trudged up, still feeling the light tug of weariness from the usual lack of sleep, and he came into the main office with a yawn. His eyes, slightly red, were still as sharp as the knives he was about to handle. But first, caffeine. He stepped into the break room and grabbed a cup, glancing at the brand of coffee Emmaline had ordered for the office. True to form, it had the skull and crossbones of Death Wish Coffee. His mouth quirked up so little it wouldn't have been noticed even if someone looked directly at him, but in his world, that was a smile.

Pouring in the small teaspoon of sugar and some light creamer, he took a sip and felt a well-balanced acidity, bitterness, sweetness. Not too bad, and if he remembered right, Death Wish had double the caffeine. He'd need it, he guessed. He stepped out of the breakroom, nearly bumping into an intern who swerved out of his path, and made his way to the back of the station, past the smaller offices and the main room, finding the big oaken door made from the ever-rejuvinating wood of a treant. He placed in the code 6167, and heard the door unlatch. He grabbed the handle and pulled it open, flipping the lights on.

One of the lights flickered for a moment, but stubbornly lit itself as he stepped in. The 'war room' they called it, it was more of an armory for wiccan wannabes. It was an austere room, with various charms, poultices, and weaponry stacked, shelved, and categorized. A big poster of the CW show Supernatural had been placed up on the wall by Jocasta, and Alcander thought the choice was only moderate cringe. But to give credit where it was due, Eric Kripke did get one thing right. Rock salt in shotgun shells were a staple, and he pulled a few boxes of shells out, taking out the rock salt bag from costco, and took out his pocket knife to peel them open and begin filling them, whilst carving small latin symbols on them for added measure.

He grabbed a few witch-doctor charms to protect against the undead and malevolent spirits, and he decided since he was not entirely sure what they were up against, he knelt down before a large cupboard and pulled open the bottom drawer. He reached in with both hands, and pulled out a safe made of yew. He unclasped the lock, and pushed the top open to reveal five serrated knives. Made by the dwarf Hunir, each knife had been forged with multiple pieces of ancient weapons. The spearhead of Cu Chulainn's spear, a shard of Fragarach of Lugh, a lump of silver, and a small sliver of the spear of Longinus. Their copper plated hilts were made from bits of the tabernacle of Moses himself. They were only brought out when they really did not know what else to bring, but he thought it was better to be safe than sorry.

After that, it was a fairly standard affair. He grabbed five leviathan fangs on cords to wear around ones neck, small crosses of bronze, some small arms rounds with holy water, garlic, and with silver heads, and a few miscellaneous items in the 'fun bag' for very niche encounters. He refilled the ammo in his own gun, the nickle in his M1911 procured from the blessed bells of notre dame. He stuffed his gun back in his pants, and readied the equipment to be grabbed. As he drained the last bit of his coffee, feeling more awake, he was about to step out of the armory before he realized he forgot something.

Alcander snatched a few grenades of holy oil. Never could be too careful, he surmised.

[Penny]

@Atalanta

Gretchen led Blythe to the back of the store, guiding her past the ancient wooden counter and through a doorway draped with beaded curtains. Beyond the curtain lay a space that seemed a blend of a thrift shop and a monastic library. In some areas, books were meticulously arranged on shelves, while in others they were haphazardly piled without any apparent order. Metal bins held rolled-up pages of printer paper, tied with colorful ribbons. Several iPads rested on chargers inside what appeared to be a Faraday cage, though the purpose of the canary perched mournfully within was anyone's guess. The abundance of items wasn’t limited to books—shelves overflowed with trinkets and baubles. Some were clearly mystical: a Hand of Glory with shockingly bright red nail polish, a dreamcatcher adorned with strange feathers. Others were baffling: a pistol wired to a graphing calculator, a deck of Pokémon cards with bloody thumbprints in the top right corner, a diorama featuring a Barbie doll atop a soda volcano. The overall effect was disorienting, with the smell of old paper mingling with spices, warm plastic, and stale coffee.

"The world would be a happier place if people researched contracts before summoning things," Gretchen remarked pointedly as she led the way to a shelf at the rear, flanked by two red brick pillars. Her hands glided over the spines of the books in a gesture that was almost sensual. Though she appeared relaxed, she kept a watchful eye on Blythe, perhaps wary of what the entity within her might do if it suspected she was cooperating in an exorcism.

"Let's see... Van Eisman's Principalities," she said, pulling a thick, turn-of-the-century volume from the shelf. Its heavy pasteboard corners were slightly bent inward. "Not bad, if you can overlook the parts about wife-swapping... Amazing how often higher powers are into that."

Gretchen moved on to another book, this one bound in a Kinko's sleeve with simple printer paper.

"Stern's Litigative Magics... might be a little elementary for you," she decided, sliding it back onto the shelf.

"Manekidasu Orosu by Takeshi no Yami," she said, tapping a thick volume with Japanese characters emblazoned on the spine thoughtfully. "It's good, but I wouldn’t recommend relying on Google Translate if you don’t speak the language."

"You know, I had a copy of the Ahlam bil-Hibr until about a week ago," she mused.

[Atalanta]

Blythe brightened slightly at the mention of the missing book. She had both Principalities and Manekidasu Orosu in her hands—she didn’t speak Japanese, only English and Spanish, but she was hoping Emma or Eleanor would be able to pick through it. She’d have to mention that Colter had one of Emma’s books, too—the doctor might just be flattered. Despite her load, she managed to get her phone out and open the voice recorder app while Gretchen was humming over another shelf.

“What happened to the Ahlam bil-Hibr?” Blythe asked, pressing the red record button on her phone. Thankfully, the sound was off, so it didn’t give her away with the start chime. “That would have been perfect.”

Gretchen glanced back just as Blythe looked up, narrowing her eyes suspiciously at the now-dark screen resting atop Blythe’s armful of books. She turned back around. “It walked off the shelf.”

“In this place?” Blythe feigned surprise and gave the hand of glory a pointed look. “I’m sure you have all sorts of protections against thieves.”

“I do.” Gretchen Colter finally turned away from her books to look at Blythe straight-on, her hoop earrings swinging as she moved. She crossed her arms over her chest, almost like she was… embarrassed.

“When did the book go missing?”

“About a week ago. Wednesday, I think, because it was inventory day. And not a single glyph went off. There are some risks in a profession like mine—it occasionally takes a… particular set of skills to acquire a rare tomb, and the people that have those sorts of skills?” She shrugged. “Sometimes they work for both sides of the industry.”

“People like Fazel Ibrahim Al-Jalasi?”

Gretchen narrowed her eyes. “What do you know?”

How much to tell? If Fazel had stolen from Gretchen, then she had a motive to kill him. It even made sense to bind her thieving associates under high-consequence contracts if she worried about theft, and he had likely been part of the auction house heist that took place near his body—a heist in which a book was stolen. The question, then, became whether or not his death was a result of stealing books or some larger conspiracy.

Blythe shrugged. “I know that he did some work for you and that he is something of a highly qualified professional in his field.”

“It’s been a while since I’ve dealt with him,” Gretchen said and followed Blythe to the front counter where she charged her for the books.

Before she left, Blythe put a Sunday Group card down on the counter. “Give us a call if you think of any other details. Maybe we can help you find your book thief.”

“Huh. They’ll let anything in these days, won’t they?” Gretchen palmed the card anyway. “Good luck on your… research.”

Blythe slipped out of the door and pointed her car back towards the Sunday Group headquarters. Maybe Eleanor would have a better idea of what to make of all this. Gretchen Colter made an interesting suspect, but somehow, Blythe didn’t think this was her. It had too much of the stink of something more involved than simple reprisal.