Work Text:
Newton Pulsifer was cursed. Electronics died in his hands. It had been that way for as long as he remembered.
He considered himself fortunate to have been born when he was. Most of his toys were made of wood or fabric and stuffing.
After the second time his father had lost the remote control and asked Newt to change the channel on the television, he’d caused a blackout. Newt wasn’t allowed to touch the television after that.
He’d gotten a Nintendo on his ninth birthday. And he’d broken it the first time he tried to play it.
Still, he loved computers. He even went to LSU to study computer science.
Computer science might have been a bust, but he’d met Anathema there. He’d walked past Free Speech Alley, and nearly collided with a lamppost when he saw her.
Green tank top for a band that he didn’t know, batik skirt, and combat boots. She was radiant, standing up and stretching in the sun, running a hand through her long, dark hair and chugging about half a bottle of Snapple. She’d sighed, and looked over at Newt.
“Hey,” she’d said. “Want to help?”
Those were magic words. Newt always wanted to help. More than anything else in the world.
What he ended up helping her with was a counter-demonstration. The Catholic Student Org had put up a bunch of white crosses to represent the aborted fetuses of the world. Anathema and her friends were putting up wire coat hangers.
To represent the women, living and breathing, who died because they couldn’t get a safe abortion.
A wire coat hanger lent a great deal of weight to an argument that Newt had never considered. He thought that his opinion didn’t matter because he’d never need an abortion.
Anathema set him straight on that one.
So he went with her to all the protests, holding signs to save the planet, to establish Safe Spaces for gay students, to stop police brutality, to stop mass incarceration, to help the poor.
He turned out to be very good at painting signs, and he was the exact person that Anathema needed to be on the front lines. He was white, benign, soft-spoken, and he owned two suits.
He spent a bit more time in college than he’d expected, gaining a business degree--which pleased his parents. He ended up with a minor in computer engineering and another one in mechanical engineering.
Anathema brought him back to New Orleans with her, and (because she had a very deep distaste for the whole institution) they’d never married. They happily lived in sin above Madame Tracy’s.
Anathema made some serious bank as a femdom phone sex operator. She got the job through a contact of Madam Tracy’s. Newt couldn’t listen to her work, because it either made him laugh or made his pants suddenly too tight, depending on the client. So he spent a good deal of time out of the house, making money and helping Sergeant Shadwell watch for witches.
Newt made enough money in his assorted odd jobs--bartender, television extra, lawnwork, witchfinder (which was mostly for the benefit of Sergeant Shadwell, who needed a better hobby.)
He had a nice enough voice (and didn’t really let any sense of shame get in his way), so he’d played Brad Majors for the local chapter of Rocky Horror enthusiasts--which paid fairly well, actually. As long as he didn’t touch any of their equipment, which he did not.
Eventually, he and Anathema were able to open a bookshop/crystal shack/head shop in the local mall. Newt didn’t work there often. He’d gotten a job with security. It paid well, and Anathema and Madame Tracy wanted someone to watch over poor Sergeant Shadwell. Newt didn’t mind. The pay was good, and the owner’s accountant said that they got a tax rebate for hiring him as a veteran of the witchfinder army.
That accountant seemed a bit...shady.
About a month into their relationship, when they were both still LSU students, Anathema had brought Newt to meet the rest of the witches that she was acquainted with in New Orleans. There was a discussion amongst the Black Hat Society--including Dean Ligur’s stepmother, a well-regarded local gris-gris woman--and the end result was what Newt had both feared and expected. Anathema and the local witches were fully certain that Newt had been cursed from birth regarding electronics. That he would murder any that he came across, yet would be fascinated by them--drawn to them, yearn to touch them, to fix them.
Fortunately, he was fine with mechanical devices--and organic things, as well. Anathema carved and woodburned his sick for him, and he wasn’t allowed to touch anything electronic without his stick.
His alarm clock was an old wind-up one. His car was almost entirely mechanical. His wristwatch wound up, and he didn’t have a cell phone. He made morning coffee with a French press, and he used his stick to change channels on the television.
Not an ideal solution, but a solid one.
His curse, did, however have some fringe benefits. He didn’t like using them.
But.
He’d do anything for Anathema.
There were a few other head shops in New Orleans--it was New Orleans, after all. One of them was run by a very snobby lady with gatekeeper tendencies, who Anathema did not like. Not one bit.
After the snobby shop had to be rewired twice, they lost their insurance. After the fourth time, there was an investigation, and she was found guilty of insurance fraud.
The big time shop, with goods authentic and fake, was Reverend Voodoo’s. Anathema had a problem with that shop. Not with the Reverend, per se.
But her ex worked there. Newt remembered the first time that he had seen the guy. There was a certain resemblance between them. Between Newt and the ex.
Except that the ex was better-looking, blond, and wore round, gold-rimmed glasses. He didn’t look like the type to work in a voodoo shop. He was soft-spoken with customers and all smiles to everyone.
Anathema had avoided him for most of their browsing. She’d brought Newt to see the shop. Research for their own, she’d said. But, she’d also told Newt to pay close attention to the electrical system--to look for weaknesses.
Eventually, however, as he was carting a box of mass-produced kitsch from the back, he’d noticed her.
“Oh, hi, Anathema,” he’d said.
“Fuck you, Nathan,” she’d spat.
“Who’s that?” Newt had asked.
“My ex,” she’d replied. “Stay away from him, Newt. He’s Order of the Golden Dawn.”
Nathan shrugged. “When you get tired of that one, you know where to find me.”
Anathema glared daggers at Nathan, and then swept out with Newt.
“There is something very wrong with him,” Newt said, though he couldn’t put his finger on it.
Anathema stopped on the sidewalk and stared at Newt, open-mouthed. She finally said, “What? What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know, exactly. I mean--I know you don’t like him. Obviously. But...there’s something underneath. And it’s bad.”
Anathema squeezed his hand. “You’re amazing, Newton Pulsifer. Absolutely amazing.”
“I am?”
“Yes. You are,” she sighed, pulling him along. Away from the shop and her ex. “I don’t know how old Nathan is. Nobody does. He’s...like I said. Order of the Golden Dawn.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“A bunch of tradition bound Hermetics--and that means a lot, coming from me.”
Newt nodded. He knew that her many-times great-grandmother’s old predictions pretty much ran Anathema’s life and family. Spouses predicted, financial decisions, even when the family would immigrate to the states, and where they would live. All of it in the notes of a centuries-old witch from England. A woman named Agnes Nutter.
“Anyway, Agnes didn’t mention him--or else we didn’t translate her visions accurately,” Anathema continued. “The Order of the Golden Dawn, they tend to attach themselves to anybody that they meet who has even the smallest bit of magic to them.”
“So he tried to attach himself to you?”
“He did attach himself to me. I was a teenager, and he was this older, wiser, full-grown man--who is good-looking and was nice to me.” She flushed. “My mother found out and told me what he was, and that he was just using me because I have gifts. I didn’t believe her. But, one night, we were out together. I saw Beelzebub--they were still Remiel, then--and Crowley busking at the St. Louis Cathedral. I introduced him to my little kid friends, and that fucker showed his stripes.”
“What’d he do?”
“I might not have been able to recognize him grooming me, but I could see it when he tried it on my friends,” Anathema said. Her voice was thick with shame and rage. “Thank the Goddess that Remy and Crowley had more sense than I did.”
“Beelzebub,” Newt corrected her.
“Yeah, thanks.” She sighed. “Beelzebub.”
So, Anathema’s ex worked at Reverend Voodoo’s. She hated the man and the place, so she sent Newt into the shop again. It was about a week later, and he was alone. He snuck to the back and fiddled with their circuit box until three of the breakers popped. He escaped in the dark and confusion.
He did this two more times. The last time, less than two weeks ago, left the shop in need of rewiring, just before the start of summer vacation.
He didn’t like doing it, but it made Anathema so happy. And he was good at it. So he did it.
Most days, though, he spent right where he was. Sergeant Shadwell had learned, early in their acquaintance, that Newt was very, very good at spotting patterns and disruptions of patterns. So, after he killed his Segway, Shadwell decided that Newt wouldn’t patrol anymore. Nope, he stayed right where he was, watching the monitors for the cameras.
There were cameras at the information kiosk, outside of the bathrooms, at center court, in the food court, and along the four shop-lined corridors. Nothing outside, as those cameras hadn’t worked for years. And nothing in the shops, because that was the responsibility of the individual store owners.
Nothing inside the bathrooms--that would be creepy! But they had cameras right outside, in case a kid went missing or a purse got snatched.
The mall, though, was a mostly peaceful place. In spite of Sergeant Shadwell’s demands for constant vigilance, which got him teased by everyone familiar with Harry Potter, there hadn’t been any high-stakes heists, nor human traffickers, nor rapes, nor murders at Chez Mall. In the time that Newt had been working security, he hadn’t had to deal with anything more traumatizing than the occasional lost child or a snatch-and-run shoplifter.
It wasn’t a high-anxiety workplace. He watched the monitors and looked for things that weren’t where they belonged, and he made nearly double minimum wage to do it.
Plus overtime and double-time-and-a-half for holidays.
He was good at his job. And the first day of summer was just another day for him. A busier one--more people on the monitors--but unraveling a complex pattern was about the same as unraveling a simple one. He just had to find one thing out of place, and the rest came apart quite naturally.
And, as Shadwell was out on patrol most of the day (and didn’t seem to care one way or the other), Newt picked the playlist on the beat-up old CD player.
It had buttons big enough for his stick, and though he didn’t put it up too high, it had remarkably good quality speakers for a little silver CD player of no particular brand. It had been acquired by Shadwell before Madam Tracy had gotten him to roll his own. Just a nameless giveaway from the Kools company, free with enough cigarette box tops.
It was just before 14:00, and “Clubbed to Death” from The Matrix was playing.
In the years after this day, this day that would unalterably change every life that worked in Chez Mall, Newt Pulsifer would think on that song--played on a mix CD that Anathema had burned for him--as the catalyst. Everything that happened after happened BECAUSE that song played when it did.
Songs meant things, and Newt’s playlist was always on random. Another pattern, to be recognized and taken into account.
When “Clubbed to Death” played, it meant “Newt, my dude, pay attention, because some weird fuckery *might* be about to go down.”
Newt Pulsifer stared at those monitors like his life depended on it. He wouldn’t know until *much* later, that his life did, indeed, depend on what he saw.
The first thing that he saw that was out-of-place was Emily Dagon. She was waiting at the black wrought iron gates that framed the entrance of the Hot Topic where she worked. Dagon didn’t linger at the gates, and when she did, her gaze was usually fixed on the entrance of the GAP. The occasional romances between the denizens of the two stores was the stuff of legends.
Sad legends. Where everybody dies in the end.
But she was looking towards the main entrance of Chez Mall.
Enter Lucifer Masters. He was the regional manager for the Hot Topic. Dagon fairly sprinted to meet him, and that did not bode well. Newt guessed that, if he had the ability to rewind the footage while he was taping, he’d probably see Masters’ older brother heading into the Hot Topic to hassle Beelzebub.
He was creepily interested in that kid, and Newt would be concerned if Anathema hadn’t told him that Beelzebub could hold their own.
Lucifer slipped past Dagon and into his store. She followed, looking stricken. Newt hesitated, wondering if he should call Shadwell in. But this was a family matter, this pissing contest over Beelzebub. Besides, Shadwell was making a loop around the south gate. He’d be too late.
Just then (like a miracle) Aziraphale DiAngelo walked past the store, then reversed course, and walked inside.
Good, Newt thought.
Not long after, Dr. Raphael Masters swept out.
“Good job, Aziraphale!” he said, out loud, to his monitor.
Eyeflick over the other monitors, and the second thing that Newt saw that was out-of-place was Sandy DiAngelo.
Sandy wasn’t supposed to be at Chez Mall until 15:00, but he was walking through the clots of humanity that lingered near the north gate of the Mall, between Anathema’s shop and the obnoxious toy store full of crazy-loud toys--just outside the Sears.
(Anathema had sent Newt there, too. Many very loud toys died in his hands.)
Newt thought that Sandy must have been at work, because he was wearing his GAP polo and he was carrying their hook. He walked with purpose, and Newt assumed he was running an errand for Michael. Helping someone out and being a good neighbor. Sandy was like that.
Sandalphon DiAngelo was a bit of a family tragedy. He’d heard through Anathema and Madam Tracy that his father was a drunk and a violent one. He’d been plastered when he picked up his wailing three-month-old son and shaken him until he was still and silent.
He’d survived, but (thanks to his father’s rough handling) Sandy was never a bright child. Some of the crasser DiAngelos threw around the “r” word, but Anathema and Madam Tracy just said that he was a Changeling child, if they said anything about it at all.
He was a good worker, and the GAP got a tax rebate for hiring him. Hence Neveah hiring him in the first place. He’d had good grades and played football all through Holy Angels, and was good at it. He knew which direction to run the ball and not to let anybody hurt Gabriel 13, his quarterback.
Now, his mother had high hopes that he’d do well at community college in the fall.
Sandy’s father had done the whole family a favor and fallen into a machine at the RC Cola factory and died, just a few months after he silenced his son. That’s when Sandy and his mother moved from New Orleans East to the Lower Garden District, to be closer to Lucia and Gabriel 11 DiAngelo. Sandy’s mom was related to Lucia and his dad had been a DiAngelo, one of Gabriel 11’s nephews. They’d rejoined their extended clan, and Sandy had enough relatives around him to make sure that the world didn’t hurt him too badly.
Seemed smart to Newt, who had only ever had his mother and father around.
Sandy was harmless and sweet, so Newt made a note that he wasn’t where he would expect him to be. However, what he saw next got him on the radio to Shadwell.
Next to the drinking fountain, Sandy set down his long-handled hook and bent down for a drink. That’s when he saw them. The Them.
The Them were a group of pre-adolescent trouble-makers. There was a sign on every door into the mall announcing that children under the age of 13 must be accompanied by an adult at all times. The Them lived in the suburban neighborhood that surrounded Chez Mall, and came and went as they pleased. That included to Chez Mall.
And they were trouble.
Adam Young, their ringleader, was walking backwards, talking to the others. Brian was grubby as ever, and Wensleydale looked fussy. Pepper, however, stole the show. She snatched Sandy’s hook from the wall where he’d left it in order to get a drink.
Sandy didn’t notice the kids. So Newt went to the wall where Shadwell had duct taped his radio. He used his stick to press the relay button.
“Sergeant?” he asked. A quick scan of the monitors told him that Shadwell was at the southern gate, near the J. C. Penney’s.
“Yeah, Private?”
“The Them are in the mall, at the north gate. They just stole the GAP’s long hook from Sandalphon. He hasn’t noticed.”
“Ah...that great pudding. What’s he doin’ at the north gate, anyways?”
“No clue. Probably helping someone out?”
“A’right, young Pulsifer. Radio Aziraphale, would ye? He’s closer than me. But I’m on my way.”
“Copy.”
Newt carefully fiddled with the radio with his stick. Then he pressed the relay button again.
“Uh, Aziraphale?”
No reply.
“Aziraphale DiAngelo?”
Again, nothing.
Newt was still trying to get Aziraphale on the radio when he walked into the security office.
“I’m so sorry, Newt,” he said, flushed. “Sergeant Shadwell didn’t show me how this worked. I could hear you, but I couldn’t reply back to you.”
“Oh, ah, let me show you,” Newt said.
He spent five minutes making certain that Aziraphale knew how to work his radio, and then brought him to the monitors.
“It’s Sandy,” Newt explained.
“Sandy? He’s not supposed to be here until three.”
“Michael might’ve called him in early?”
“I have no idea.”
“Anyways, he was at the north gate, maybe seeing Anathema? I don’t know. He had the hook for the GAP, so I guess he was going to help somebody.”
“Yes, he does that.”
“Well, he set his hook down here, and...ah, here he is. He’s booking it back to the GAP, so I guess he noticed that it was gone.”
“I’m guessing he won’t find it at the GAP?”
“Probably not”
“Where did it go?”
“Pepper grabbed it, uh, this girl. She and her friends, they don’t really hurt anything, but they cause a fair bit of trouble. They’ll bring it back eventually, but I was thinking you could go and get it from them,” Newt explained. “Huh...Pepper doesn’t have the hook anymore...” Newt stared hard at the monitor. He was looking for the hook.
“Oh! There it is!” Aziraphale said, pointing. “That woman has it.”
Even through a grainy black-and-white monitor, Newt could tell that she was beautiful in dark, but not black leathers. Hair swept up and cheekbones for days. She handed her stick to a smaller person, dressed all in white.
That person sent a cold chill through Newt, especially in the way that their fair eyes caught and held the gaze of the camera. They blew a kiss, and Newt knew--in his blood, in his bones, in every part of himself, that that kiss was meant for him.
The redhead went back to talking to a bulky guy in a Kappa Alpha shirt and an LSU hat. That sent a frisson through Newt. Kappa Alpha literally meant Klan First. Those assholes held Confederate Balls on campus and hung nooses off of the cars parked at the Black fraternity house.
That frisson got stronger as an elegant Black man in riding leathers stepped up behind the beautiful mystery woman and wrapped a casual arm around her waist. He kissed the top of her head.
Mr. Kappa Alpha balled up his fists. There wasn’t any sound, but Newt had heard enough of those angry young men bellowing to know the gist of what he said. The Black man started laughing at him.
And, then, so did the woman.
That must have been the last straw. Mr. Kappa Alpha’s balled up fist moved fast, followed by the rest of him. The man and woman parted, and the frat boy, who moved like he was half-trashed, stumbled past them and landed his punch on a woman who had been standing behind them. Her husband started screaming at the frat boy, and then they were in each other’s faces.
And then they were shoving, and a bunch of teenagers had surrounded the two men. The husband looked like he did manual labor for a living. A contactor or similar, all muscle and outrage.
Newt saw his Sergeant, rolling towards deep trouble on his Segway. He radioed for Shadwell, to warn him. “Sergeant?”
“Can’t now, Pulsifer, there’s something going on. Think it’s a fight.”
“It is.”
And it was. The husband threw the first punch, and the frat boy responded by accidentally decking a bystander, a teenager there with all of his friends.
The crowd exploded in fists.
And then, someone cast pool noodles and whiffle bats across the crowd. Squinting, Newt could see Warlock Dowling carrying an empty box with the toy store’s logo over to the door to “Anathema’s Devices”, where Anathema was watching the chaos.
Anathema!
And that’s when the entire monitor bank went black.
“What happened?” Aziraphale asked.
“I don’t know,” Newt said, poking at the buttons with his stick. “I didn’t touch it! I didn’t!”
“I think we ought to get out there,” Aziraphale said.
“Yes. Now.”
Newt slammed through the door to the security center and sprinted towards the north gate, Aziraphale close at his heels.