Work Text:
It was 2:47 on a Tuesday morning and there was a knock at Doc Worth’s door.
There was never a knock at Doc Worth’s door. People barged in through his door, bleeding or fainting or screaming bloody murder. People kicked his door in, demanding money or drugs or information or all of the above. A select few politely let themselves into his office when they had need of him. But people did not knock at Doc Worth’s door.
He looked up from his novel, the latest in a long line of thoroughly used paperback romances he had managed to steal from the dollar bin. The dead-eyed weirdo that hung around with Hanna had gotten him hooked on the stupid things, and try as he might, nothing else was quite as effective at getting him through long, sleepless nights of waiting for patients. Besides getting drunk, of course, but even he tried to uphold some medical standards. Monday through Friday, if someone were to stagger into the office with a bullet wound or a missing finger, he needed to have his wits about him. On weekends though, he could make no promises.
The cigarette pinched between his teeth coughed ashes onto the raunchy details of Kat and Renaldo’s latest weekend fling as Worth sat listening for the sound again. It might have just been the wind. Or a stray cat, knocking over a rubbish bin. Or the building settling, God knew this office was old as sin and twice as likely to be condemned. Or maybe it was just…
Knock, knock, knock.
God dammit.
He sighed and flipped his book facedown, pushing himself, grimacing, to his feet. Just when his book was really starting to get juicy, too…
“This better be fuckin’ good,” Worth grumbled as he crossed the room.
“Whadda ya want?” he demanded, yanking the door wide. His cigarette trembled in the sudden breeze spewing smoke into the night.
And who should be standing at his doorstep, twitchy, sullen, and disgruntled as ever, but his favorite vampire.
“Nice to see you too, Worth,” Conrad said, coughing and waving the plume of smoke away from his face.
Worth crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway, chewing the filter of his cigarette and looking Conrad over. Something was off about him. The movement of Conrad’s eyes was even more restless than usual, and from the looks of the fingers peeking out from the sleeves of his peacoat, he had been chewing his nails relentlessly. Conrad Achenleck had to be the only immortal being still so scared of his own shadow that he had to chew his nails. Pathetic. Something definitely had him agitated, that was for sure. The past few months had turned Worth into something of a Conrad Whisperer. Detecting Conrad’s levels of agitation was becoming a superpower of his, and deftly provoking Conrad into fits of rage was the closest Luce Worth had ever come to participation in a team sport.
“Huh, well this is an interestin’ turn of events.”
Worth gave Conrad his tallest, toothiest leer, but Miss Priss just avoided his gaze, fixing his eyes somewhere just over Worth’s right shoulder. Hm, not a hint of blind rage. Yep, something was definitely up with Fagula tonight.
“Accordin’ to my records you ain’t due for another feedin’ for at least a day or two,” Worth continued. “Ta what do I owe the great pleasure of yer presence, Princess? Also: what the hell’re ya knockin’ for? I hate to sayit, but ya know you’ve got yerself a permanent invite ‘round here, courtesy of one Hanna Falk Cross. Ain’t your vamp senses got the memo yet?”
“No–I mean yes!” Conrad huffed impatiently. “My choice to remain outside has less to do with my being a vampire and more to do with the fact that every time I walk into your office we somehow end up bruised and bleeding on the floor. We don’t have time for that today, I decided this was the best way to keep this quick.”
Worth grinned and plucked the cigarette from his mouth.
“All business and no pleasure today, eh?” Worth said.
Conrad grimaced.
“A truly gross choice of words, Worth, thank you.”
“Let’s get ta business then!” said Worth, taking another drag from the cigarette between his fingers. “What can I do ya for, Mr. Achenleck?”
Conrad took a deep breath, his face growing serious and his fidgeting worse than ever.
“Don’t freak out, okay?”
Worth furrowed his eyebrows. Something was wrong. Something wasn’t just up with Connie. This was an entirely different Conrad Achenleck than the one he’d tormented for the past year. He’d only met this Conrad a handful of times, and he preferred not to think too much about the seriousness, the uncomfortable silence, the shifty eyes – never quite meeting his, never quite confronting him – that this Conrad brought with him. Worth dropped the spent cigarette to the ground and stubbed it out with his toe.
“Yeah, sure, spit it out already.”
“Hanna is hurt.”
The whole world went still and silent. Worth narrowed his eyes.
“Badly,” Conrad continued, his face impassive, his body language rigid, his eyes fixed to the wall behind Worth’s back. “We were in the middle of an investigation and things went…a little more south than usual.”
Worth said nothing, watching Conrad squirm as the silence stretched and twisted between them and the thick, smoky air drained from his lungs.
“So why,” Worth said stepping out the door, advancing on Conrad until they would have been nose to nose if not for the significant height difference between them. “The fuck. Ain’t he in my office right now?”
At that, Conrad's demeanor shifted so entirely that Worth almost flinched away. Conrad squared his jaw and snapped his eyes to Worth’s, standing his ground even as Worth dug a bony finger into his chest. In the blink of an eye, Conrad had vanished and another, entirely new Conrad had taken his place at the tip of Worth’s fingernail.
Anger rose like bile in his throat. The fucker didn’t even have the decency to rise to the bait.
“You know we would have taken him to you if that had been possible,” Conrad said, refusing to budge, staring him down, silently deflecting the unspoken accusation. “But the police got involved before we could get him out. And to be honest, he was not in great shape when I left. It’s probably for the best that he’s in a real hospital for now.”
A year ago Conrad would have hauled off and started screaming and taking swings at him at the first sign of a challenge or conflict. A lot had changed in that year, but sometimes Worth wasn’t even sure exactly what it was. Sometimes it felt like there was a different Conrad at his door every week; sometimes he was steely-eyed, tired, and brusque, sometimes he was the jumpy, short fuse he’d been the first day they met. Sometimes he was a strange, unidentifiable Conrad who wasn’t angry or thick-skinned, who wouldn’t meet his eye for long, who lingered longer than other versions of him would dare to, and talked too much while he was at it. Worth had trouble enough with that Conrad. But Worth had never met this Conrad before. This Conrad who didn’t flinch or look away, even as he breathed ashes inches from his papery skin.
“Lemme guess,” Worth growled, finally severing eye contact to fish another cigarette out of his pocket. “He went messin’ with ghosts again.”
The lighter clicked and Conrad was finally forced back a few inches as a plume of smoke blossomed in his face.
“Poltergeist actually,” Conrad said, fanning the smoke away from his face and wrinkling his nose in disgust. Heh, still the same Conrad somewhere in there after all…
“Well technically it was a witch controlling a poltergeist,” Conrad continued. “But either way, it fractured Hanna’s skull and gave him some pretty severe internal bleeding. He’s still knocked out, so he could very well be cursed too as far as we know. Moreso than usual I mean.”
“And dead guy is with ‘im I presume?”
“Obviously.”
Worth took a deep breath, inhaling smoke into every cell of his lungs. Hanna was in good hands, he knew that. He’d seen the way that zombie guy followed him around long enough to know that he had taken on the mantle of Hanna’s Protector more effectively than Worth himself ever had. But he still felt sick thinking about Hanna broken and bleeding anywhere else but his office. Those doctors didn’t know the first thing about magical injuries. As Conrad had said, he could be cursed, or hexed, or possessed, or worse and none of them would be any the wiser until he woke up. Or until he didn’t.
Worth rubbed his eyes, then crossed his arms firmly over his chest. Conrad was still watching him carefully, guardedly, as if he half expected him to storm out into the night, demanding to see Hanna for himself. But Worth wasn’t like Conrad. Some people couldn’t afford to parade their hearts around on their sleeves like he did.
“So what’re ya doin’ here Connie? I assume ya didn’t come all th’ way out here just ta share yer condolences.”
“No, actually I…” Conrad paused for a second, chewing his lip. “I mean…Hanna needs your help.”
“Yeah? Wot with? I’m ‘is doctor, and clearly he’s got the medical side’a things all stitched up already. Whatever hoodoo bullshit you three gotcherselves into is outta my jurisdiction.”
“Hanna asked me to get something for him,” Conrad said impatiently. “Right before he passed out, he told me I needed to go to his place and get him…I dunno, some kind of hex bag? It wasn’t super clear, honestly, but he was very insistent. I assume he knew something we didn’t about what kind of magical effects a poltergeist attack might have on him. And he…he told me to ask you for help.”
“He wanted me ta help ya?” asked Worth, nonplussed.
“That is what I said,” Conrad replied.
There was that look again. That strange, inscrutable look in Conrad’s eye that he could never quite come up with an appropriately cutting response to. It pissed him the hell off.
“Well, fuck,” Worth said. “I guess I can’t let the kid die before I even get the chance ta strangle ‘im ta death.”
“That’s the spirit.”
Worth stepped out into the night, locking the clinic behind him and taking a moment to mourn the business he lost by closing up shop just before rush hour.
“Lead on, Princess,” Worth said, pulling the fur lining of his coat up around his ears.
Conrad scowled, but fell into step beside him anyway.
“I really wish you would stop calling me that.”
“Not a chance in hell, Yer Highness.”
~
“So yer tellin’ me that Hanna sent ya all th’ way out here to bring back some all-important voodoo doohickey, and ya didn’t even think to get th’ key to his place?”
“Well he was in the process of exsanguinating at the time, so no, Worth, it wasn’t exactly my top priority,” Conrad snapped.
“Yer damn lucky I’m so practiced at breakin’ an’ enterin’” Worth said, dropping to his knees at the door to Hanna’s shabby apartment to inspect the lock. Damn. He was sure he had an old lock pick kit somewhere in the bowels of the office. If that vampire asshole had made his own inadequacy known ahead of time, this whole venture would have been a hell of a lot easier. Maybe it really was better that he came along; the Princess was like Midas’ deadbeat second cousin once removed: everything he touched went to shit. Worth weighed the merits of asking Conrad for a hairpin (there’s no way that neat little coif was all hair gel) against the possibility of getting kicked in the head for even asking.
“I cannot fathom how you’ve escaped federal prison for this long.”
“Hey, ya wanna help Hanna’r not?”
Conrad sighed from somewhere behind him as Worth stood up.
“Yes, obviously.”
“Well then step back, an’ let me help.”
Conrad sighed and crossed his arms, but did as Worth asked. Worth took a few steps back, looked at Conrad and winked, then ran full speed into the door, slamming his shoulder full-force into the wood. It flew open, the wood around the handle splintering like kindling as the lock dropped to the floor with a heavy thud. For all the fight it put up, the door might as well have been made out of straw.
“Alrigh’, Confag,” Worth said, rubbing his throbbing shoulder and pointedly ignoring Conrad’s openmouthed stare. “Wot exactly did Hanna say?”
As Worth stepped inside, brushing sawdust from his lab coat, Conrad remained rooted to the doorframe, awestruck.
“Worth,” he said, running his fingers over the shattered doorframe. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Hey, the kid deals with stuff way more dangerous than you’r me every day. He should be thankin’ me fer remindin’ him ta get a door that ain’t made’a sticks ‘fore the Big Bad Wolf comes knockin’.”
Conrad gave him a look. Worth hated that look. It was inscrutable and pointed and it made him want to smash those perfectly clean glasses and rebreak that stupid, crooked nose and bust open one of those thin, pale lips. God dammit. Worth gritted his teeth and turned his back on Conrad, resolving not to start a fight. Not now. Not tonight, when Hanna was expecting, for some ungodly reason he could not fathom, their cooperation.
“You really don’t care at all, do you?” Conrad said.
Worth snapped.
“Ya know wot, Achenleck?” Worth said, whirling around. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t give a shit about Hanna, alrigh’? And don’ pretend like yer lookin’ out fer him outta the goodness o’ yer damn heart, alrigh’? Yer only here ‘cause you know if Hanna dies, yer meal ticket expires right then’n there. So quit actin’ like yer some kinda saint among sinners, ‘cause you only care about yer damn self, jus’ like everybody else.”
Cold fingers twisted themselves in Worth’s shirt and his back collided with the wall before his brain could sort out what was happening. Conrad’s eyes bored into his like steel and his face was so close Worth could feel his every quick, cold, unnecessary breath; that look was gone (thank God) and in its place was the shock, the fury, the outrage that Worth knew so well. Worth smiled and tensed himself up for a fight. He had the script for this Conrad. He knew the drill.
“I…you…” Conrad stammered, bleached white knuckles pressing matching bruises into Worth’s chest. “God dammit! I can’t believe I…”
Worth felt the grip on his shirt slacken. Conrad stepped back and released him, running his fingers through his hair. Worth watched him guardedly, waiting for the blow to fall, waiting for the fingers yanking his hair, throwing him to the ground, waiting for the curses and insults and accusations spat in his face. But none of them came.
“Just because you don’t give a shit about anyone else doesn’t mean that the rest of us don’t feel,” Conrad said coldly.
There was a chilly silence. A muscle was jumping near Conrad’s eye and his hands were curled into fists at his sides. Clearly he too had been readying himself for a fight. But neither of them could quite bring themselves to be the first to strike.
“This was a mistake,” Conrad said suddenly, turning his back on Worth. “I shouldn’t have asked you to come. You should go home.”
Worth said nothing, but watched Conrad’s motionless figure. His arms were crossed and his whole body was tense and uncharacteristically silent. If this was some kind of game, Worth wasn’t playing. There were more important things to worry about tonight besides Conrad’s feelings, as pathetic and laughable and mysterious and unfathomable as they might be.
“Nice try Princess,” Worth said, pushing past Conrad to prop himself up against Hanna’s desk, “But ya can’t get rid’a me that easy. Hanna wants me here, here I am, awright? Now I’m gonna ask you one more time: wot did Hanna say?”
Conrad’s whole body was wound tight, just waiting to snap. His arms wrapped around him like a vice and his mouth was pulled into a thin, white line. He opened his mouth as if to argue again, but all that hissed from between his teeth was stale air. Worth watched as Conrad’s lips fumbled on the words he had clearly been readying himself to spit in his direction. Nothing came. Conrad’s eyes, hard and calculating, found his. Worth’s fingers twitched.
“He said he needs a hex bag,” Conrad said finally, his eyes falling to the floor. “Standard issue. And no, he didn’t tell me why. Just that he needed one and that the instructions to make one were in his top right drawer. That’s all he got out before he fainted.”
“Feh, tha’s all?” Worth said, turning his back to Conrad and yanking the drawer open. He curled his fingers tightly into a fist around the crumpled, well-worn piece of paper labeled Hex Bags that floated near the surface. “This great task’o yers comes with a set’a instructions an’ ya still came cryin’ ta me fer help?”
Worth heard Conrad take a deep, rattling breath somewhere behind him. He continued before Conrad could get a word in. His knuckles were turning white around the piece of paper, but he kept his hands still.
“We’ll be outta here in an hour, tops.”
~
“Christ almighty, how the hell does Hanna do this shit?”
Conrad was frantic, poring over the crumpled list of instructions that acted as their only guide. Worth sat hunched over a tiny sachet, sweating profusely and muttering profanities under his breath. A growing pile of small, smoking, torn, pulsating, and otherwise useless burlap bags filled the edges of the desk. They had been at it for hours, trying time and time again to construct a basic hex bag, which Hanna had insisted to be one of the simplest of magical endeavors, only to fail fantastically every time. The ingredients themselves weren’t so tough, herbs and crystal chips were easy enough to manipulate, it was the magic that neither of them could quite get right.
When the 30th bag split at the seams and coughed out clouds of black smoke like all of its brothers and sisters before it, Worth let out a hiss of frustration and threw it at the wall. The shaky, lopsided sigil he had tried to replicate from Hanna’s tiny sketch curled up into ashes on the desk. The idea, Hanna’s instructions hastily outlined, was to charge the bag with magical energy. It was the most important component, the fire that cooked all the ingredients together into a real spell, and their metaphorical stove just would not light.
“I mean the kid ain’t even the brightest crayon in the box, and he’s got the patience of an untrained puppy,” Worth continued to no one in particular. Conrad had tuned out his aimless bemoaning by failure number 13, but that sure wasn’t going to keep Worth from bemoaning to his heart’s content. “I’mma doctor god dammit! Can’t believe this fuckin’…hoodoo bullshit…”
“You should have taken the witch doctor route when you had the chance,” said Conrad absentmindedly.
“Yer a fuckin’ creature of the underworld, and yer tellin’ me you’ve got no idea how to make any’a this shit work?”
Conrad finally looked up from the paper and cocked an eyebrow at Worth.
“First of all: creature of the underworld? And second of all: being a vampire does not automatically make me adept at magic, you know that. Adelaide didn’t exactly stick around to show me the ropes –”
“We ain’t got time fer yer mommy issues right now, Achenleck.”
Conrad shot him a look, but continued as if he had not heard him. “Everything I know I know from Hanna and you know as well as I do that Hanna could not teach a rat to eat cheese. Honestly I’m still deeply concerned for that new he trained to stock shelves at Target last week.”
Worth kneaded his face with both fists, not really listening to Conrad anymore. He tasted bile in his throat, mingling with the lungfuls of ash their many failed attempts had offered up.
Hanna was going to die. That was it. Hanna needed his help and all he could do was sit here blowing smoke rings with his own failure. His stomach seized up like the aftershocks of a bad hangover and he tried not to think about Hanna in a hospital bed, blue-faced and white as the ghosts he couldn’t seem to stop fucking around with. He tried not to think about him coughing up ectoplasm and blood. He tried not to think about his face when Worth told him there was nothing he could do.
He wanted to kill him. He wanted to wring that idiot ginger’s neck for being so reckless. He wanted to smack Conrad until he stopped giving him that look again, God dammit. He wanted…he wanted…
“”Sa shame we’re so useless with runes,” Worth said, thumbs pressing into his eye sockets. “That shit Hanna gives me’s better’n any drug I ever tried. And believe me, I’ve tried a helluva lot of ‘em.”
Worth could practically feel the disparaging look Conrad gave him sear into the back of his head. Fuck him. Fuck him and his holier-than-thou attitude, and his shrill, whiny voice, and those beady little eyes that looked at Worth like no matter how low his expectations were, Worth was always falling short of them. Fuck him.
“I can’t believe you’re still thinking about getting high at a time like this.”
“Well wot the hell else am I s’posed ta thank about, huh?” Worth demanded, head snapping up out of his hands. “Hanna could be as good as dead by now and we’re jus’ sittin’ here twiddlin’ our thumbs. He asked fer my help, and I can’t help ‘im. Hell, might as well get…”
Worth stood up suddenly, a cloud of ash and dust following him to his feet. He was struck abruptly with a thunderclap of inspiration. He had to try. It was the only option left.
“Conrad,” he said. “Gimme that piece of paper.”
Conrad stumbled back as Worth whirled to face him.
“What are you –?“
“Just gimme the goddamn paper, Achenleck!”
Conrad passed it over, stepping back as Worth took off toward the corner of the apartment that served as Hanna’s makeshift bedroom.
This would work. This had to work.
Hanna kept a stack of old cardboard boxes in the corner of his room, Worth knew. They were torn, water stained, probably older than Hanna was, and they were filled mostly with case files and other tools for his night job. Worth couldn’t for the life of him imagine where the streak of conscientiousness that compelled him to such practicality and organization in this area of his life, at the cost of all others, came from. But he knew that if there was one thing Hanna Falk Cross cared about, it was magic and the people who got mixed up in it. He hoped that just this once it might do the kid a shred of good.
The first box was all case files. Some dated as far back as the early 90s, some with muddy brown stains that looked suspiciously like blood, and some that looked like they had just been slid into the box, fresh from Office Depot. Worth tossed the box aside aside. Conrad watched him, bemused and anxious, from the desk on the other side of the room, but at least had the courtesy to keep his mouth shut. Even motionless and impassive and several meters away, Worth could feel Conrad’s eyes on the back of his head, as if he was looking for something as intently as Worth was, though he couldn’t guess what it might be.
By the fourth and final box, Worth was starting to lose hope. The previous two boxes had been full of loose papers and items: talismans, totems, recipes, disassembled machinery of all sorts, but no sign of what Worth was looking for. He lifted the lid.
It was full of folders and folders of runes. Every folder was meticulously labeled and sorted alphabetically by purpose and practical application. In the very back there was even a little tab that read Doc Worth, marking the fattest folder in the box. Worth let out a noise that was somewhere between a whoop, a sigh of relief, and the dry, rattling cough of a man dying of thirst. He thumbed through the folders one by one until he reached one labeled Chargers. Yeah, that sounded about right.
He pulled it out and dumped its contents to the floor, eyes darting from the little doodle on the recipe to the torn pieces of notebook paper on the floor, his fingers separating out the red herrings with surgical precision. Finally, after what felt like hours of searching, one matched.
“Oh, Christ,” Worth gasped snatching up the rune and clutching it tight as if a stray wind might tear it from his hands. “Oh goddamn I fuckin’ hate magic.”
“You found it.” Conrad said the words like he couldn’t quite believe them himself. He drifted toward Worth like he was in a trance. Worth flopped onto his back, exhausted, and held the rune aloft. He felt like he had just tried to run a marathon while smoking five cigarettes and carrying Hanna on his back.
“Just make the damn hex bag,” Worth said from the floor as Conrad tugged both papers out from between his fingers. “If I ever hafta look at another amethyst chip or smell lavender sage again I’m gonna be sick.”
Conrad didn’t leave immediately. He stood there and watched for a moment as Worth recovered his energy. It was only a moment, but Worth caught something strange in Conrad’s eyes as he looked down at him, papers in hand, head cocked at an angle. For the millionth time that night, Worth wasn’t quite sure what it meant. It was an unsettling feeling. Worth had always considered himself to have a knack for picking up on Conrad’s emotional state, his frustration, his anger, his distress. He prided himself on being able to push all the right buttons to send his metaphorical blood pressure through the roof, and he could pick a fight with Conrad like no one’s business. But he these new Conrads, these strange, unfamiliar Conrads he had spent so much time with tonight were slowly making clear to him that that was…just about it. That was it, and he’d never noticed until just now.
Maybe he had been so caught up in antagonizing, in driving him away that it had been there the whole time and he’d never seen it. Maybe something about Conrad had changed tonight. He wasn’t really sure. But either way, tonight was different than the minutes and hours and occasionally nights they’d passed together in the clinic. Tonight wasn’t about them or their egos or their vented rage. Tonight they had a shared goal. And without that smoke screen of fistfights and hissed insults, murkiness of the bizarre and unknowable world of thoughts and hopes and intentions in Conrad’s head slid into sharp contrast with the Conrad Worth thought he knew. The old instinct to send a fist flying in Conrad’s direction to clear up a few of those intentions (in his mind as much as Conrad’s) flared up again, but Worth suppressed it for now. Instead he rolled over, pointedly breaking the uncomfortable eye contact that had settled in between them.
“C’mon, hop to it, Princess,” Worth grumbled, trying to put the curve of Conrad’s eyebrows and the strange softness in his eyes out of his head. “Hanna ain’t gonna save himself from certain peril, that’s fer damn sure.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Worth saw the soundless shape of Conrad drift out of his line of sight. Worth exhaled and closed his eyes. He half expected the smell of smoke and failure to fill his nose again as Conrad puttered around, finalizing their 31st hex bag. But it never came. Instead, when Conrad mumbled a few words under his breath, a soft, golden glow pulsed through the room along with an electric hum of energy. Worth saw red through his closed eyelids and heard Conrad shout in triumph over the clockwork whirr of the activated rune. Fuckin’. Finally.
After a moment the light and sound died away and all that was left was Worth, Conrad, and the little, lumpy hex bag, sitting quietly on the desktop as if it was no more exceptional than it had been just a few moments before. Worth sighed and pushed himself up.
“’Bout damn time,” he said, rolling his shoulders and popping his neck. “Alright, let’s get out of here so I can go the hell home.”
Conrad nodded once, clutching the hex bag like a life raft. He looked positively ecstatic, like he’d never expected in a million years that they would actually get this thing made. Truth be told, for a while there Worth was having his doubts too. It had taken them hours to get this stupid, simple spell right right. Worth had lost track of exactly how many. What time was it anyway?
While the gears were still turning in Worth’s head, Conrad grabbed his keys and went to the shattered remains of the door.
“Shit. Connie, hang on –“
But Conrad had already pulled it open, immediately stumbling back and hissing in pain.
“Fuck!”
Worth crossed the room in a second, slamming the door shut before turning to look at Conrad. A dark red blush was beginning to blossom from his forehead to his collarbones from those few moments of morning sunlight. Hanna’s one, lone window must have been facing west, but the ceiling of hallway beyond his room was full of so many cracks and holes that the lack of windows hardly mattered.
“God dammit Connie,” Worth said, taking Conrad’s face between his hands and inspecting the damage. “Thought ya got all faint an’ headachey durin’ the day! How the hell didn’cha notice the sun was up?”
“I assumed the headache was from listening to you speak,” Conrad said irritably, smacking Worth’s hands away. Worth didn’t resist. The burns were fairly mild, despite their angry color. Nothing burned black or bubbling was a good sign. He would heal in a day or two, though he might not be in tip-top shape until then.
“Fuck,” Conrad said again, touching his face gingerly. “Oh god dammit, what are we going to do if I can’t leave the house? How am I supposed to get this to Hanna? What, am I just gonna have to stay here til the sun goes down? Fuck!”
Conrad was pacing now, running his fingers frantically through his hair and taking quick, shallow, unnecessary breaths. “This was not how this was supposed to go!”
Worth grabbed him by the shoulders midstride and steadied him. Conrad tried to push him away, but this time he didn’t budge.
“Connie, listen good, ‘cause I’m only gonna say this once:” Worth said. “Calm the fuck down. Here’s what we’re gonna do: first we’re gonna cover that there window so ya don’t turn inta vampire fries. Then yer gonna sit yer ass down here and git some sleep, while I bring this to Hanna.”
Conrad opened his mouth, possibly to insist upon coming along, possibly just to protest Worth touching him again, but again, Worth interrupted him before he could get a word out.
“Yer gonna be useless ‘til that burn heals up, and I promise ya, it ain’t goin’ nowhere unless ya sleep and get some fresh blood in yer system, capisce? ‘Sides, what the hell else can ya do? Yer gonna burn to a crisp if ya try ta go outside this time’a day and –”
“Okay, okay I get it! Here,” he fished his car keys out of his pocket and tossed them to Worth. “Just go. I guess I’ll just wait around with my thumb up my ass until tonight.”
“Don’t have too much fun without me, Princess.”
Worth peeled off his omnipresent, fur-collared lab coat and tossed it to Conrad, who looked as though he had just been given a half eaten rat corpse, but caught it anyway.
“Cover up the window,” he said shortly. “Hanna’s gonna kill me if I letcha die in his house.”
He turned and went to the door without another word.
“Worth?”
He stopped with one hand on the doorknob and turned to see Conrad watching him carefully, holding his coat like one might hold a baby wildcat, like he wasn’t quite sure what it might do next. His eyes were sharp and searching and they had that inscrutable look that Worth hated so much again. It was a new emotion behind them. Not pity, not anger or disappointment or discomfort or frustration. None of the things Worth understood or knew how to deal with. Conrad paused for a too-long moment.
“If you crash my car, I will kill you.”
~
A hundred different images of Hanna unconscious, mangled, and broken flashed through Worth’s head as he walked through the clean, electric doors of the hospital. Hanna could be dead by now, or as good as, or maybe even worse. Worth imagined Hanna sharing in his undead friend’s unsettling fate and felt slightly queasy. If the kid managed to survive this one, Worth would definitely kill him.
Taking a breath to steady himself once he reached the end of the hallway, Worth stepped into Hanna’s room, stomach knotting and unknotting itself in anticipation of what he might find there.
“Worth!”
Hanna was sitting bolt upright in bed, digging into a tray of food that consisted of no less than seven chocolate pudding cups. He put down the heaping spoonful currently on its way to his mouth. The only sign that anything was wrong with him were the white bandages wrapped around his head, the IV stuck into his arm, and the doleful look in his undead companion’s eyes as he watched the exchange from a chair beside Hanna’s bed.
“Dude, what are you doing here?” Hanna asked, struggling to get out of bed to greet him before being gently pushed back down by a leathery, green arm. After a moment of struggle, Hanna acquiesced and returned to his chocolate pudding. “I don’t think I’ve seen you outside in daylight like…ever, actually,”
“Well I was plannin’ on comin’ here ta knock some sense into ya,” Worth growled. “But I don’ think yer bodyguard’s too keen on that idea. No ghosts means no poltergeists either, ya half-wit. What the hell were ya thinkin’?”
Hanna had the sheepish, petulant look of a little kid who knows they’re good and caught, but isn’t about to go down without a fight. Worth wanted to be angry, but the cool, clear relief of seeing Hanna alive and in one piece was enough to make him lightheaded.
“I didn’t know there would be a poltergeist!” he whined. “Honest, Worth! We got a call from some kid that a neighborhood witch had been causing trouble. We just went to talk to her and BAM! Turns out she was manipulating a poltergeist! I didn’t even know stuff like that was possible!”
Worth’s fingers itched for a cigarette. This kid was gonna give him an aneurysm one of these days. He reached in his pocket and instead pulled out the hex bag, so small and unimpressive, looking at it now, that he and Conrad had spent the better part of the morning sweating, stressing, and screaming over.
“Brought whatcha asked for,” Worth grunted. “Close enough, anyway. If it explodes and takes us all out, I blame you fer thinkin’ it was a good idea ta drag me outta the office in the middle o’ tha night when I oughta be gettin’ my beauty sleep.”
Hanna gave him a strange look, but took the bag anyway.
“Oh, sweet!” he said. “Thanks dude, I almost forgot I asked for this!”
“So uh…” Worth cleared his throat as Hanna rummaged around in his stuff on the bedside table, pulling out his trusty marker from the folds of his sweatshirt. “This hoodoo bullshit is gonna keep ya from bein’ possessed or cursed or whatever, righ’?”
“Cursed?” Hanna said, looking up from the rune he was scribbling on his hand. “Oh heck no! I wouldn’t go up against a real witch without sigils to protect against that kind of stuff, don’t worry. My damage is purely physical this time.”
“So what…?”
“Hang on!”
Hanna leaned over to rummage in his pockets again, this time pulling out what looked like a single, black hair. He placed it carefully into the little bag, and then held the whole bundle carefully in the center of his rune-inscribed palm. A flash of purple light, and the product of Worth’s long night of toil was nothing but embers and a pile of ash in Hanna’s palm.
“Okay, done!” he said, grinning and wiping his hands on the crisp, white bed sheets. “To answer your question, that ‘hoodoo bullshit’ was a spirit release spell! That witch was controlling some poor guy’s spirit with a lock of his hair; now that I burned it he should be free to go. If we’re lucky he’ll fuck up that old hag bad enough before he moves on that we won’t have to go back and deal with her again…”
Something hot and thick boiled up in Worth’s stomach, burning away the nervous tension that had plagued him since the moment Conrad showed up at his door.
“So yer tellin’ me,” Worth said slowly, “that all this was jus’ so ya could release some spirit that kicked the shit outta ya instead of jus’ takin’ it out and bein’ done with it?”
“It wasn’t his fault, Worth!” Hanna said, shocked. “I know you think ghosts are all dangerous and scary and evil and blah blah blah, but most of them are just regular people who want to move on and get on with their…lives? Unlives? Afterlives? Whatever, the point is that he couldn’t help it. It wouldn’t be fair to hurt him if he couldn’t even control what he was doing!”
“Hanna,” Worth said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Yer gonna care yerself right into an early grave one’a these days. I’m goin’ home.”
Hanna grinned.
“Price of being me I guess,” he said. “Well thanks for coming Worth, it was really uncharacteristically nice of you actually. How did you even find out I was here? I was kinda hoping I could keep you out of the loop on this one, heh…”
“Count Fagula came ta visit,” he replied shortly. “Insisted that yer final request be granted. What kin I say? I’m nothin’ if not a man of honor.”
“Final…request?”
Hanna gave him another strange look and shook his head. The zombie stood up from his silent vigil in the corner, as if readying himself to restrain him if need be. Hanna waved him away with a smile and looked back at Worth.
“All I remember doing was asking Conrad to bring me a hex bag,” he said, rubbing his head gingerly. The zombie stared over Hanna, directly into Worth’s eyes. Eugh, that guy still gave him the creeps sometimes…But as Hanna rambled, searching his spotty memory, he gave Worth the tiniest of head shakes, confirming what Hanna couldn’t quite find it in himself to say.
“Definitely don’t remember mentioning you. I’ve seen you two interact one-on-one often enough to know that putting you together never ends well, but I was pretty out of it, so I guess it’s possible that…hey!”
Doc Worth was out the door without another word, pushing past nurses and patients hobbling to the bathroom on his way down the hall. On his way out the door, he palmed a bag of blood from a countertop into his pocket.
~
Blood was rushing in Worth’s ears as he screeched down the streets away from the hospital, and he wasn’t entirely sure why. He was pissed: he knew that for sure, but he wasn’t entirely sure who his aimless fury was actually directed at. Hanna, for stupidly getting himself hurt and not even having the common decency to need his help? The dead guy, for standing idly by and abandoning his post as Hanna’s voice of reason? Conrad, for…
Worth’s thoughts trailed off. For what exactly? For wasting his time? For lying about Hanna needing his help? For being useless as always? None of those quite rung true. Something was missing. What game was he playing here?
By the time he arrived at Hanna’s place, he still hadn’t made up his mind. He had been so lost in his own thoughts he hadn’t even fully realized where he was going. He was as surprised to find himself stepping up to the seedy, back entrance to Hanna’s apartment complex as the handful of anxious neighbors peeking down at him from the corners of curtained windows seemed to be. He made his way up the creaking stairs and through the heavily cobwebbed halls, building up steam, cultivating his anger to release in a tidal wave in Conrad’s pathetic, insufferable, crooked-nosed direction.
But as he slipped through the door loosely guarding Hanna’s dark, quiet room, all that anger seemed to evaporate into the cool silence. He was so tired. It had been a very long night.
The outline of Conrad lay curled and lumpy under a blanket on Hanna’s naked mattress. Outside, the day was in full swing, birds chirping, the sun high above the horizon, and the streets bright and full of life. But one would never guess it from in here. His coat was draped over the window, as he’d advised. Luckily it was thick enough that it only let in a soft glow of milky pink light that might have been a streetlamp on a particularly foggy night if he hadn’t known better. Conrad had dragged the mattress into the far corner of the room, as far from the light as he could go. As if in a dream, Worth felt himself cross the room, his back hitting the wall, sliding down to a square of unoccupied mattress beside Conrad.
Worth said nothing, but the sudden presence of a breathing, blood-filled, living thing beside him roused Conrad from his half-sleep. Conrad didn’t move from his tightly wrapped cocoon, but Worth could feel his small, groggy eyes searching for him in the dark. He pretended he didn’t notice.
“Worth?” Conrad rasped, like a man dying of thirst. Christ, he needed blood. The sunburn had really done a number on him. The more Worth’s eyes adjusted, the worse Conrad’s face looked. It was blotchy and shiny and approximately the color of mashed beets. “What are you doing here? I thought you were coming back tomorrow.”
“Yeah, well, I was in the neighborhood,” Worth said, immediately irritated, even moreso because even he wasn’t entirely sure what the answer to that question was. He cleared his throat.
“Gotcha somethin’,” he continued, by way of explanation, and slid the stolen blood pouch from his back pocket to the small patch of mattress that separated himself and Conrad. Conrad’s head perked up immediately, scooting over to inspect it.
“Where did you get this?” he demanded, apparently forgetting all about his initial question, much to Worth’s relief. “The clinic is on the other side of town, you couldn’t have –“
“Ya ever heard the sayin’ ‘Don’t bite the hand that feeds ya’? Well askin’ it too many questions is just as bad.”
Conrad gave Worth a suspicious look but quelled his questions and turned his attention instead to the pouch in his hands. Worth watched with vague interest as Conrad made short work of the blood bag, slurping messily at its contents. He wasn’t sure if he was just imagining things or not, but every gulp, the huge, misshapen burn mark seemed to diminish at the edges, the deep maroon washing out to a dusky pink color.
“So how’s Hanna?” Conrad asked when he was done. His face had disappeared under the blanket and his voice came out muffled and distant. “You got the hex bag to him alright, I take it?”
“Yeah.” Worth rolled his eyes.
“And?”
“And Hanna’s an idiot whadda you expect?” Worth said, searching his pockets for a cigarette before remembering they were hanging on the window across the room. He couldn’t bring himself to get up. “Walked in an’ he was jus’ sittin’ there, chipper as could be. The hex bag was ta free his new poltergeist friend.”
“You’re joking.”
“Dead serious.”
Conrad made a noise that sounded like a wounded buffalo, before curling back up into his cocoon. Worth silently agreed.
Worth picked absently at his nails, trying to find something to occupy his hands with in the absence of a cigarette. He felt drained. Empty. It was like all those half-baked hex bags sucked some of the life force out of him. Which, truth be told, they very well could have. His understanding of magic began and ended with what kind of profit he could make from it. He knew just enough to treat some poor sap stuck with a minor jinx or shaken up by a run in with a Fey, and he knew how to manage the worst of Hanna’s “pet curse” (as Hanna affectionately, and Worth not-so-affectionately, liked to call it). Despite being mired so deeply in its workings every day, magic was not his world.
He glanced down at the vampire beside him, fading fast as a full stomach and a steadily rising sun wore his energy down. Magic was not Conrad’s world either. Even after having the rug thoroughly yanked out from under him with his newfound vampirism, he had always kept one foot firmly in the mortal world. He’d never learned anything else. He would never really be one or the other. He would always always have to be both. The two of them weren’t so different in that way, he found himself thinking.
“What else did Hanna say?” Conrad asked, his voice sounding groggier by the minute. But despite his obvious exhaustion, the question had an edge to it. An urgency that didn’t quite match his casual tone. “You said he was awake. Does he…” Conrad cleared his throat. “Does he remember much of anything before he passed out?”
Hanna’s confused, screwed up face flashed in Worth’s head.
Don’t remember mentioning you…
…putting you together never ends well…
“No,” Worth said shortly. “Was too busy bein’ the hero as always. ‘Sides, if I stayed there long enough ta hear ‘im out, I mighta murdered ‘im.”
Conrad snorted, his body visibly relaxing. Worth was never one to admit defeat, but whatever game Conrad was playing today, he couldn’t figure out the rules. Calling Conrad out was a risk he wasn’t sure he was willing to take. A leap into unexplored territory. An admission that he…
“That’s…good…” Conrad said, interrupting his thoughts. His words slurred and trailed off; exhaustion was clearly starting to take over.
“Mhm.”
Worth allowed his eyes to close. You win this round Achenleck, he thought to himself. Can’t fuckin’ believe I’m letting you get away with this.
“Thanks for your help, Worth,” Conrad mumbled, so quiet Worth almost could have imagined it. “It’s nice knowing you care sometimes…”
Something twisted in Worth’s gut, but he said nothing. There was nothing to say. Not yet, anyway.
The last thing he remembered before sleep took him was a soft shuffling of blankets and Conrad’s cool forehead pressed against his leg through his jeans. He didn’t move. He would let it slide. Just for today.
Just for today.