Chapter Text
“Don’t look now,” says Hunter in a low, firm voice, “but there’s another one coming up on your left.”
“Thorns.”
He’s right. If it weren’t for the near obnoxiously mournful moans and groans of the specter in front of her, Willow would have caught the clinks of a laden key ring fast approaching. Hunter quickly readjusts them so that they’re back-to-back, enough that she’s able to cut a swift warding knot into the air with the blade of her rapier. The shade recoils instantly, stilling, and she can’t help but feel a little worried. If things have already escalated three hours into darkness, that’s not a good sign.
“Any luck?”
“Groundskeeper.” She sighs, taking in the state of him. It’s tricky to catch a proper glimpse, seeing as that isn’t her area of expertise, but when she flits her gaze front and center to catch him out of the corner of her eye, she’s able to pick up on some resemblance of the human form. In life, he’d probably been quite a jolly fellow, if the crows feet were anything to go by. In death, well. Let’s just say he didn’t have much left to smile with. Missing jaw bones were so overkill these days.
“I can hear his keys. He’s got a lot of them. Door hinges, hardwood floors, spades… there used to be a garden shed nearby, I think. He never walked far. He’s not like the others, though.“ She assures him. “He won’t give us any trouble.”
“Specter, or shade?”
“Shade. Definitely a Type One, but just barely.”
“Not our ghost, then.”
Hunter punctuates this observation by cutting a warding knot of his own into the air. The specter at his front hisses in time with the silver sing of metal. She can feel the pull and stretch of his muscles against her back when he brandishes the point, shoulder blades rolling in familiar paces. She knows every stance, every stretch, has felt them in her own body when they sparred together back at the house. Even though they last marked temp for –7 degrees Celsius, he’s a welcome warmth in the biting chill brought on by their current company. No doubt he’s making that tense, contemplative expression… the one he gets when they’re getting into the swing of things… when his brow furrows and his eyes go sharp and blazing…
Willow forces the blush away from her cheeks, chiding herself. Not the time, definitely not the place. Instead, she turns her attention to towards the pale figure hovering nearby in the distance.
Only…
“Hunter.”
“Oh, that is definitely not a happy voice.”
“Hunter, there’s two now.”
He curses under his breath.
“How many people does this guy keep buried in his backyard?”
Willow’s eyes skim and catch on lumpy earth through the hazy green fog that’s settled around their calves, past briars and cold, grey stepping stones. The clearing is relatively empty and awkwardly close to the house – that is to say, what’s left of it – for a garden like this. All she can find are limp birch trees and overgrown greenery that looks to be scarcely fifty years old. Hardly enough to form any kind of hypothesis, unless…
…Scarcely fifty years old. Scarcely fifty years old?
Wait.
“…I’m starting to think this isn’t a backyard.”
Hunter stills.
“You’ve got to be joking.”
“I really wish I wasn’t.”
“But it was registered! We had the floor plans!”
The specters start to release shrill little wails, reacting to the intensity of his agitation (talk about toxic empaths), and Willow gives Hunter a gentle nudge with her elbow. Forcing a deep breath into his lungs, he continues in a much steadier voice, “What are you thinking.”
Willow shrugs helplessly into his back. “Another part of the house? They must have torn it down because these plants are still young. It was a family estate, right? But if I’m right, then…”
“Why the party?”
“Exactly. I mean, there shouldn’t be this many, not unless they were murdering each other. I don’t know. Can you get anything from yours?”
She hates to ask, but Sight isn’t her area – hell, it’s not Hunter’s, either, but anything helps – not like it is for Gus. Willow’s long since come to terms with the fact that Touch is more her thing, although her Listening is unsettlingly fine tuned as well (to the point where she’s unsure which is which, in truth, and that frightens her at times), but Gus? Gus gets death-glows older than dirt on a good day. He says it’s like living life in technicolor, which suits him just fine, but she knows that they can be overwhelming sometimes. It’s death. It’s the shadow under your feet, the movement in the corner of your eye, the sharp cramp in your lungs when you take a deep breath too quickly. It’s a hard thing to ignore, and his abilities are far beyond anybody else Willow’s ever known in the corps despite him being younger than almost any agent on the street.
Hunter clicks his tongue in frustration.
“Other than the fact that he’s an awfully chatty fellow?” He laughs drily. “Nope. Can you pick out what he’s saying? I’m only getting the sensations.”
Willow strains her ears.
Give them back… give them back to me…
“I think…” she starts slowly, “he’s asking us to give him his bones.”
Incredulous silence falls between them.
“…Oh. Lovely. Shame we don’t actually have them, though, isn’t it?”
Willow can’t help but smile, even as two brutishly mangled psychic impressions of dead men twist their bones at her.
“Shame.” She echoes cheerily.
“Well, I’m guessing the source has been disturbed, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many – hey, ease up, pal, put your severed hands where I can see ‘em.”
She feels Hunter cut two more complicated knots, steadily widening his stance, and his blade catches a crescent of moonlight out of the corner of her eye. There’s death again. She mirrors him. The two rakish forms hanging out on her side of the grove (minus the shade, of course, who’s been lumping about somewhere to her left) have started getting restless, too. They’re going to have to figure something out now if they want to get out of here unscathed and finish the job they were hired on to do.
She gives Hunter another reproachful nudge, half teasing, half serious.
“Don’t taunt them, you know they hate that.”
“I wasn’t taunting them.” Hunter insists quickly, “In fact, I think I was being very polite, all things considered. I just know he’s waving his wrist ligaments at me like he wants to squeeze the jelly from my eyes!”
“See that? Now you’ve gone and hurt his feelings! He just started wailing like a banshee!”
“Oh, sure. He’s the one who gets all the sympathy. What about me? Where’s my sympathy? He could be making rude gestures at me for all I know!”
“Well, you are alive. I’d say that’s already a massive improvement in his eyes. Hardly worth sympathizing over. Actually, he probably feels like you’re rubbing it in his face now, breathing and moving all over the place like that. Have some compassion.”
“Did he tell you that? He didn’t tell you that.” Hunter pauses, sounding unsure. “…He didn’t tell you that, right?”
Willow grins. At her refusal to provide an answer, Hunter’s voice rises in volume, sounding significantly more panicked than before.
“Willow. Willow, he didn’t.”
A long groan echoes from within the ruins of the house fifteen feet away.
“Oh my god, are you two quite finished, or are you going to sentence me to death by third wheel?” Gus interjects mournfully.
Hunter sputters. “Isn’t that offensive to the dearly departed?”
“Oh, spare me.” Gus sighs. His voice turns serious as he calls out in a measured volume, mindful of their undead company. “You’re right, though, Willow. I have the original plans from the house from when it was built in the 1840s, and it doesn’t show a room, buuuut-“ There’s a pause. The sound of rustling papers echoes through the grove. “-I also have some plans from the 1900s, and it does list a clearing where they planned on doing some construction! Guess they got around to it. They must have bricked the archway up sometime in the late fifties I’d say, but because nobody’s been taking care of the place, it’s all falling apart. That’s probably why everybody’s waking up. I think I found a cavity in the wall, though. Might be the source!” He pauses before tacking on in a playfully snide voice, “Now, are you two going to join me, or are you too busy flirting over the remains?”
"In a bit of a tight spot here actually, if you didn’t notice!” Hunter gripes. Clearly the specters are starting to lose patience, because he cuts through one of them with the silver-tipped point of his rapier. It gives a pained squeal, and there’s a brief moment of silence before the others begin to shriek. Willow catches the top of Gus’ head through the hollow chest of her own apparition as he peeks around the tone arch, disappearing as quickly as he came.
“Ooh, that is a nasty lot you’ve got there, isn’t it!” He comments brightly. “It’s like a lightshow! Which one is our ghostie?”
“Couldn’t tell you!”
A labouring sigh. Willow’s ears prick at the sound of iron filings spilling onto stone like an hourglass tipped sideways. He’s prepping a circle, by the sounds of it, or widening one that’s already been laid down. Either way, it’s good news for them because the specters have started convulsing at odd angles and chittering like demonic birds, which is usually a telling sign that points to “Death Imminent! Maybe Let’s Not!” Hunter seems to have realized this too, given the way he tenses, though he can’t hear them the same way Willow can. Despite having none of the three standard Talents, his senses are sharper than any one without them would usually be. She’d never met someone with such a fine-tuned intuition before him. It was no wonder he was once the top supervisor of the EC.
She can feel him at her back, taut like a bowstring.
“How far between us and the steps?” He asks softly, face turned down to whisper out of earshot of the specters (not that they have much presence of mind outside of their obsessive tendencies, mind you, but they do have a little sense of the living). She shivers at his breath on her cheek. He must hear the filings too.
Willow takes in their position with a calculating pause. “Fifteen feet, give or take?” she estimates.
“Clear path?”
“Literally or figuratively? I’m think I’m looking through seven ribs right now. They’re ghastly.”
Hunter sucks in a hasty breath of air through the gap in his teeth. “We’re going to have to get through your entourage, then.”
“Can’t we get around yours? He’s just a little guy, isn’t he?”
“Three little guys, in fact, if I’d have to guess. Who are also very large. Three very large little guys. Who are quite massive.”
Willow groans. Sugar.
“My sentiments exactly. I think we’ll have a better shot getting through yours.”
“Agreed. Plan?”
“Reach around me and grab one of the salt bombs on my belt. Yours aren’t the right size.”
“What, no flares?” She teases. Hunter huffs a laugh. They both know the real reason for that.
“We’re economizing.” He says instead.
“Oh, good. I like my partners environmentally conscious.”
Hunter releases a very subtle, very strangled choking noise. Willow bites back a devilish grin, feeling entirely too pleased before chiding herself.
Focus, girl. No flirting on the job!
If they’d had their way, Hunter would have broken out the magnesium flares long before now. That’s one of the best weapons an agent can have on a case, especially in the face of such a large haunting (although, Willow thinks with no short amount of bitterness, their client had certainly been scant on the details of just how many apparitions they’d be dealing with tonight) – but the lady who’d reluctantly hired them on had made her feelings about the potential of a fire hazard on her valuable land very, very clear. Something about how she didn’t want to damage the property any further before she could sell it, which was, incidentally, why she’d sought agents out to begin with. Who wants to buy a haunted house in this day and age? With The Problem rearing its nasty head all over the country? Honestly, any sane agent would have put their foot down at that death sentence of condition.
Unfortunately for The Owl House agency, however, desperation makes for one hell of a motivator, and when you’ve got bills to pay? You start cutting corners.
Case in point.
Carefully, Willow reaches behind her with a free hand, rapier brandished high at the two specters who have since decided they’d like to cuddle with her (and by cuddling, of course, she means to say squeezing the life out of her… so, yeah, cuddling). Even though the blurry sight of them is enough to make her insides shrivel up like dry weeds in a desert, she fixes her gaze on them without hesitation, pushing through the beginnings of what would have been a ghost-lock if she’d been an inexperienced agent. Lucky for her – or unlucky for them, she supposes – Willow’s had more than her fair share of practice from the Night Watch alone. She holds fast. It would be foolish to look away at this distance, and to be truthful, she wasn’t really feeling getting blue skin tonight. It wouldn’t go with the pretty green of her checkered raglan.
She leans back, searching. Her fingers come in contact with Hunter’s side and he squeaks.
“A-a little further to-to the, um, the left.” He guides her in a high voice. How is he so warm still? The chill outside tonight is literally supernatural, even in the height of summer. Goodness, what she wouldn’t give to be bundled up tightly in –
FOCUS.
She blushes as her knuckles graze denim, cotton, skin–
“L-little lower!” His voice is a shrill whisper.
There’s the buttons of his vest… the hem of his dress shirt, messily tucked in… now, if that’s the top seam of his jeans, and that’s the loop on the far left, the belt should be right…
“Got it.” Willow whispers triumphantly. Her fingers grasp the salt bomb tightly, ready to pull it free.
“Okay. On the count of three.” Hunter mumbles, readying himself. “One… two…”
Showtime.
“Three!”
The specters (and the unsuspecting shade, which had been moping studiously along the edge of the garden during the entirety of this conversation) shriek and scatter at the blast of salt, their pale fingers sparking like flint. Hunter ushers Willow forward with a firm hand at her back.
“Go, go, go!’
They duck under flailing opalescent arms, ectoplasm splattering on the tops of their coats, and leap over the stone steps into the rotting structure of the (former) dining room. They skid to a stop when they clear the landing to hop inside of the line of iron filings where Gus has already set up to start hacking away at the wall with a small sledgehammer. The back of his head is illuminated by a ghost lamp. Safe.
Only the circle is way smaller than they anticipated.
They stumble into it together, mindful of the carefully constructed line, but it’s a tight squeeze. There’s hands and feet and knees and elbows, all jumbled and bumping and digging into one another, and Willow squeaks when one of the specters takes a swipe at them from behind. It’s warded off by the iron circle (and the subsequent stabbing of Hunter’s rapier into its translucent abdomen) with an acidic hiss and a wet gurgle but already she can tell that the filings are starting to scatter at their feet. It won’t take much longer before the line breaks. Hell, it won’t take much of anything.
“Wait, wait – fuck.” Hunter hisses. He hooks his arm around Willow’s waist and draws her closer, blade brandished high in his other hand.
“The circle’s too small-“ Willow breathes, hand coming up to rest on his sternum for balance. He squeezes her tighter in response. Another series of outraged shrieks and wretched, deranged sobs prick at her sensitive ears (goodness, specters are always so chatty) and she winces, turning her face into the soft cotton of his shirt and vest in an attempt to drown out some of the sounds.
Give them back, give them back to me!
And there, in the quiet, something colder, something that doesn’t quite fit…
…Knocking?
Something smooth and cool – leather gloves, she realizes – comes up to cup the back of her head, buried in her curls. Deft fingers soothe the tender, pulsing base of her skull, pressing into the pressure points the physiotherapist told her to make use of.
Willow opens her mouth to ask “Did you hear that?”, but the words fall flat on her tongue as soon as another horrible cry sounds out from behind her. She shudders.
“Gus.” Hunter starts through gritted teeth. His voice is low in warning. “I know for a fact that you’ve never drawn a flawed circle in your life. What the hell is going on?”
A strained cough. Gus’ voice echoes from behind them where he’s been steadily chipping away at the wall. There’s a forced air of casualty to his tone.
“Oh, well, you know, inflation… I mean, why use more than we need, right?” He laughs nervously. Hunter and Willow both turn to look at him with narrowed eyes.
“Gus.” Willow prompts evenly. Gus purses his lips.
“…The chains are in the bag.” He confesses.
Hunter squints.
“Yes. I know. I packed them.”
“And the bag-“ Gus goes on, “-is in the foyer. Which we are decidedly not.”
It’s probably worth pointing out that this is around the point where Hunter lets loose a string of restrained curses that are, to be completely honest, quite unfit for mortal ears, so it’s a damn good thing that the majority of their company is already dead. Honestly, at any other time it would be hilarious listening to him when he usually can’t muster so much as a single fuck (in every sense of the word) without two spots of colour blooming in his cheeks. Something about being on the job always seems to shake that filter loose, though. Maybe it’s the confidence he gets from a rapier in his hand, or maybe it’s just the high levels of adrenaline that come from constantly putting your life at risk.
Maybe it’s just cathartic. Lord knows he needs more outlets for stress.
After he calms himself (not that he’d had much of a choice, mind you – the specters could sense his growing agitation and had started snapping the psychic impressions of their own bones threateningly at the threshold, so Willow took over to count his breathing with him until it evened out), he gives a tired sigh.
“We have got to start wearing knapsacks.” He mutters. Exhaustion weighs him down.
“Hey, if you wanna go around with fifty pounds of iron on your back, be my guest.”
“…Wait, so if the chains are in the porch, that still doesn’t explain why we’re only using, like, a tablespoon worth of filings.”
Gus laughs nervously again. The plaster has finally started to fall away at his fingertips, bleached wallpaper underneath flopping over forearms like flimsy folds of snowy skin, and the specters give a deafening shriek at the reveal. No doubt they sense his proximity to the source. Willow certainly can, given the clink of glass and fizz of champagne bubbles filling up her head. She reaches a hand into Hunter’s belt and grabs another salt bomb to launch at the corner of the room where one of the specters gears up to leap at Gus from the side. It disappears for a moment with a sharp crackle and a blinding flash of light, disintegrating through a squeal, before starting to reform at the end of the hallway where its manifestation is marked. Last they clocked it, it took about two minutes and forty-three seconds for the visitation to begin, so that only left them a small window of opportunity. Not that it did them much good, mind you, because unfortunately, the rest of the specters were still happily hanging about their heads like threatening crystal Christmas bulbs. If Christmas bulbs shrieked uncontrollably and spilled their spectral innards out over the floor and were made of ectoplasm, that is. Obviously. What a cheerful Christmas tree that would make. Maybe they ought to make ghost ornaments this year.
“Well, you see,” Gus starts with a faux cheeriness, “The thing is that, uh, because we had the chains, you know – and, well, the last few weeks have just been so busy-“
“Oh my god.” Willow breathes in realization. Hunter stills around her. It seems he’s come to the same conclusion. “We didn’t refill the canisters.”
“We didn’t refill the canisters?”
“We didn’t refill the canisters!”
The board underneath the flopping strips of wallpaper comes loose, clattering to the ground in a heap of splintered wood and nails to silence them. Willow peers inside from over the swell of Hunter’s bicep where he’s been crushing her against his chest this entire time, wrapped around her securely like a snake, and her eyes catch light as it ripples through the corner of an oval jewelry box coated in a century’s worth of dust and dried plaster.
There it is again – the knocking.
“Do you hear that?” Willow whispers. She feels Hunter shake his head, and his voice is apologetic when he replies,
“I’m sorry. I can’t hear anything.”
Gus pulls a face at the sight in the wall.
“So disrespectful.” He mutters under his breath. Carefully, he plucks the box free from its hiding place with gloved hands and a delicate touch. Every swipe of his fingers comes away caked in smudgy grey fingerprints, revealing a glossy porcelain face underneath that’s decorated in swirling cerulean and paisley tongues. The specters give a piercing wail at the sight of it, forcing Willow to cover her ears as they begin to moan in some sort of disjointed chant. Their distorted voices echo in starbursts of pain behind her eyes.
Betrayed, betrayed, betrayed, betrayed, BETRAYED-!
The knocking continues, pounding like iron against stone.
“Hey, no pressure or anything,” Willow wheezes through the clamouring in her skull, and she can feel Hunter’s fingertips work the tightness at the top of her spine, “but could we maybe speed this along a teensy bit?” Gus nods.
“I hear you. We’re almost through!”
With a dainty click, Gus flips open the glass lid to reveal a modest set of jewelry mixed in with a number of odd trinkets. Among them: an old multi-tool, a carving knife, pearl cuff links, a pair of earrings, the mismatched buttons of a blouse, a handful of sewing pins, and a scarlet feather
Hunter groans at the sight. “Aw, geez, there’s a bunch.”
“Time to swap!” Gus chirps, rising to his feet. It’s times like this that his small stature really comes in handy. If he were any taller there simply wouldn’t be enough space for the three of them to stand. Willow is practically on top of Hunter’s toes as it is, and the ghastly ghost gang filling up the room are far cozier than they should be. “Careful, Willow – I can feel the cold through my gloves.”
Willow nods and goes to offer her hand expectantly, mentally preparing herself for what she knows is to come. Before she can take the box, though, Hunter gently catches her by the elbow.
Their eyes meet.
It’s the first time she’s actually seen his face, she realizes, since they stepped foot into this horrible place. He looks... invigorated by the night, and yet, so, so tired. The bruises thumbed under his eyes by lack of sleep are darker than ever. There’s a thin sheen of cold sweat on his brow, furrowed deeply at the sight of her, and his lips have thinned out in concern. And yet, when he speaks, his voice is gentle. Not coddling.
“What do you need?”
Willow doesn’t melt. She doesn’t. She can’t. She’s a professional, first and foremost, and she’s been doing this for a few years now, but she’s also his friend, and it totally doesn’t matter that he asks what she needs instead of if she’s capable, because he knows she’s more than capable, or that he holds her to him like she’s worth touching preciously and is somehow still unafraid of grasping her tightly, or that he reserves the softness of his words for reassurance through service.
Willow does not melt.
She does allow herself to slide her hand gratefully up the inside of his forearm, though. She can’t help it – she thrives off of touch, and he knows it.
“Just the company.” She assures him softly, smiling. “Trade you?”
Hunter huffs a low laugh into the space between them, eyes glinting. They look scarlet in the dark. Piercing. Watchful. Dangerous.
He doesn’t scare her, though. He could never.
“Trade you.”
She and Gus swap places within the tiny circle, placing her between them and the gaping maw blown into the wall, though it isn’t nearly as much of a squeeze for him as it is for her. She pulls off her glove by the teeth and holds her other hand out for the jewelry box. Hunter is already arming himself with another salt bomb, face turned outward to gauge the specters with an unyielding quality of sharpness to him and arm raised, rapier brandished to eye level. She can’t see his expression. For a moment, she thinks she catches a glimpse of a curved canister of Greek fire, but that would be ridiculous – he knows this job isn’t worth the resource, and he knows the conditions of the contract, stupid as they may be.
Centering herself, Willow’s eyes flutter shut. Cold porcelain kisses her palms.
She isn’t sure why the darkness amplifies her Talent, but it does. Maybe because apparitions are so fond of the night. It's about as odd as any other Talent can be, which is a lot, considering they all have to do with the dead. It isn’t quite like Sight in that it allows her to see the blinding blots of white where people have passed or the grotesque details of an apparition, though it does share some commonalities with Listening, she supposes. Because both her Touch and her Listening have always been particularly strong, though, she’s never been able to truly draw the line between where one Talent begins and the other ends. The two often inform one another within her.
It isn’t that it’s uncommon to show prowess in more than one Talent, necessarily. It’s well established within the corps that the Blight siblings in particular are known for their sharp Sight in combination with their other Talents, but Willow does find it a little strange not to be able to differentiate the abilities soaked into her bones. It’s a strange thing to be in conversation with yourself and not know who’s speaking. Terrifying, too, to feel this power within her that she doesn’t always understand and seems permanently unable to decipher in its nature. Lucky for her, she doesn’t need to understand it to do her job. And what she does know is that she’s good at it.
Unfortunately for her, however, that’s as much to her detriment as it is her success. Willow knows her Talents are a little too refined, although she didn’t always know that. It’s why she was a liability back on her old team – back before Gus and Luz and Hunter and the Owl House Agency all came to be. Anyone who’s anybody knows what they call her in the corps.
Weeping Willow.
Weeping Willow.
Weeping, weeping, weeping Willow.
Too soft, they’d say, snickering behind her back, too open. A real Listener wouldn’t be such a crybaby. If she could control her Touch better, maybe the others would have survived.
To be entirely honest, Willow can’t recall the number of times she’d gone near catatonic from her teammates forcing tools of death and memory into her hands just for the fun of it. How many times had Boscha done that? Wrestled pain into her palms?
What? she’d jeer, aren’t you supposed to be an agent?
Turns out most agents just… didn’t get the same influx of emotions from the dearly departed as directly as she did. Not like they were her own, not like they were made by her, for her. For the longest time, that scared her.
Now, though, here in the dimly lit hallway of this old, odd house missing a room, the moment glass touches Willow’s skin, she’s the furthest thing from afraid she’s ever been.
She knows her friends are here with her. She knows she’s not a liability anymore. She knows that they’re counting on her, and she knows that they’ll keep watch. It’s these things that help her tip the jewelry box into her waiting hand, mind open and waiting.
Come on in, she thinks as kindly as she can, it’s okay.
The first thing she notices is that it’s cold.
This is, of course, the truth of all sources. Such a concentrated haunting would naturally be the same in nature, and in an instant, ice crystals begin to flake against Willow’s palm, binding her skin to the porcelain. The chill burns in a way only the cold can.
Such momentary discomfort of the physical form doesn’t come close to the mental anguish brought on by the onslaught of memories beating against her brain like a baseball bat of misery and betrayal, though, even when she’s expecting them. It’s always like this. There are too many – they overlap with one another, scream over each other – and Willow treads water as best she can in them, but it’s so much. One minute, she’s filled with the echo of some righteous sense of justice and jealous fury, the next, she’s brimming with despair, knuckles bloodied from some fight or another. There’s laughter, the sound of a crackling fire, the call of birdsong, the wet squelch of pierced flesh, the screams of a woman, the crunch of bone, and oh, she’s being held down, down, down into the grass by her best friend, and she doesn’t understand, how could he, how could he? But – no, no, she’s holding him down, and the rage eats her up from the inside, scorching her innards, scraping the goodness from her, and who’s blood is this? Whose blood is this? Is it hers? Is it his?
Who is she?
Smooth leather against her face, holding her. The sensation pulls her from the depths of the dead’s waters by a hook in her chest, and when Willow comes to herself, she’s half braced against the wall, half against Hunter’s broad shoulders. She’s reminded distantly of their first case together. Where did the knocking go?
Consciousness clobs her over the head, and Willow gives a shuddering gasp, blinking back tears as a hand flies to her neck.
“I don’t know.” She whispers, horrified. “I need – I need another second–” Her throat closes up, but she pushes through it, clutching at the glass to feel.
(How could he, how could he, how could he-?!)
The carving knife.
Who were you?
The knife.
Who were you?
The weapon.
“It’s the knife.” She chokes.
Gus pulls a silver net from his coat and gives her a reassuring smile from where he’d taken over cutting warding knots into the air to keep the specters back. His touch is solid when he takes the jewelry box from her hands, flakes of ice falling to the floor in fluffy clumps of starlight white. He slams it shut like a castanet in his fingers and begins to unravel the net for sealing, all the while pursing his lips in thoughtful consideration. “I’m so feeling fries after this. I want salt. Do you want salt?”
“Sugar for me, please.” Willow sighs, mouth pulling into a weak smile. Hunter smacks his lips.
“Ooh, ditto.”
“Boo.”
"Boo yourself, I'm craving chocolate."
Before any of them can even think of continuing that train of thought, though, the fifth specter re-materializes with vengeance. A powerful gust of wind splits their circle down the middle, and the three of them are sent flying in different directions; Hunter blown backwards into the hole with a pained yelp, Gus sideways, and Willow thrown flat against the wall. The jewelry box – where is the jewelry box? – is sent clattering somewhere in the room. The disorientation from the explosion of psychic power is almost enough to tip Willow into unconsciousness when her head smacks painfully against the boards, but she wrestles with the hilt of her rapier to ward off the foggy forms floating around her vision in a menacing haze.
Prioritize.
Three to the left, two to the right.
Quickly, Willow pulls three salt bombs from the clasps on her belt and launches two to her left. They explode with a snap, scattering the specters with pained squeals as they loop around Gus where he’s gathering his bearings on the floor. He shoots her a shaky thumbs up and stumbles to his feet, rapier in hand. The other bomb, Willow sends to the right, detonating in front of the gaping maw of the wall where Hunter was thrown and warding the other specters back. The flash of light catches on the curved face of the porcelain jewelry box where it lay at the foot of the hole.
Gotcha.
Willow scrambles to reach for the box just as Hunter emerges, coughing up dust. His eyes widen in alarm as the specters converge at the center of the room, grappling for them, and he ducks down to throw an arm over Willow’s head.
“Everybody down, now!”
He wrenches a magnesium flare from his belt, pulls the seal, and the room is engulfed in a flash.
They’re lucky it lands. Hunter’s Sight is already nearly non-existent, and he can’t Hear either, but his intuition is spot on. The flare catches on the hem of the largest blot of ghostly green light (Willow can see the gaping holes of a fractured skull and the wispy dredges of golden hair when she looks out of the corner of her eye) and they go up.
The specters shriek, flames licking through their translucent forms, and the burst of light gives Willow enough time to snatch the jewelry box from the floor and launch it across the room into Gus’ waiting hands. He catches it. The sound of the silver net kissing porcelain fills her ears at last, and the overwhelming malaise of the specters is lifted suddenly as they disappear at once – like opening the window in a damp room.
Willow gives a sigh of relief, leaning into Hunter as they fall back against the wall and shutting her eyes in a moment of reprieve.
“…What happened to... economizing...?” She asks with a dizzy giggle, grinning. Hunter chokes on a startled laugh. A puff of ash follows. She can taste metal on her tongue.
“…What our client doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” He surmises at last.
Gus groans, leaning against the doorframe for support. “Oh my god, fries. Fries now. We deserve fries. I deserve fries.” He grumbles. Smears of magnesium and dust mar his cheeks in smudgy greys. He looks more ghost than boy.
Willow laughs, breathless.
“Speak for yourself. I’m making double chocolate chip cookies the second we get home.”
“Ooh, the ones with the white chocolate chips?” Hunter interjects excitedly. “Wait, no, it’s like, two in the morning. You both need to sleep.”
“White chocolate chips and milk chocolate chips. Actually, do we have any of the Belgian stuff left? When did Eda go shopping last?”
Hunter rises to his feet with a pained groan and offers his hand for Willow to take. She does so without hesitation, and he pulls her to her feet, palm flat against her mid back. Carefully (and ever so mindful of their bruises) they stumble into the center of the room to begin tidying up what remains of their gear. Iron fillings part at their feet in pools of fine dust.
“Ignoring me isn’t going to keep me from throwing you back into your bed the moment we get home.” Hunter grumbles. His hand is a comforting weight against her as they spill lavender water and iron across the floors, as per standard procedure after a successful purge. “I mean it, captain. I’m not above throwing you over my shoulder and carrying you up the stairs myself.”
Gus whistles. The sound echoes throughout the rotting wood of the creaking hallway. “Wow, Hunter. That’s pretty bold for you!”
“Wha-! Not like that! To sleep! She needs to sleep!” Hunter squawks, scarlet faced and gaping. This is what Willow likes. What she most enjoys. The end of a case, when they can breathe and Gus gets to relax and Hunter falls back into himself like this – this easily flustered boy with odd eyes and more heart than he realizes.
His squeaking of is no use, though – Gus has already started wriggling his eyebrows suggestively, all smugness and dark, sly eyes. Willow giggles through her own embarrassment, pink in the cheeks and beaming shyly. Despite his mortification, though, Hunter doesn’t push her away. If anything, he just draws her closer with a stubborn huff.
“You know what I mean, don’t you, Wills?” He pleads under his breath.
Willow bats her eyelashes up at him, feeling playful.
“Do I?”
He croaks.
This is what she likes.
They turn the corner of the hallway into the stairwell, casting lavender water as they go and flicking filings along the path. Gus slings their ghost lamp over his shoulder and wraps the carefully sealed source inside of a container of silver-glass for good measure before tucking it into his inside pocket. While he deals with the source, Willow organizes her belongings back in their rightful places; scattered salt bombs clipped onto her belt straps, her rapier sealed up in its sheath… She sighs when she realizes one of her gloves went missing in the scuffle, rubbing away the chill in her fingers.
Willow shivers suddenly.
...Knock.
It’s… really cold for a house that’s just been freed of a mass haunting.
“…Hunter.” She begins softly. He hums in acknowledgement, tucking his own rapier away. “What’s the temperature now?”
Something about her voice makes Hunter pause. Carefully, he rifles through his front pocket to pull out a scanner with a click, measuring the chill. He eyes the screen studiously.
The sudden pinch in his brow makes her straighten at once.
“…Negative thirteen.”
That’s low. That’s really low, and the three of them know it, if they way they exchange glances is anything to go by. Any temperature below zero could be an indication of an apparition, be it shade of specter, but thirteen? Thirteen? There’s no question. That’s too low.
They’ve missed someone.
…
Knock knock knock.
The three of them had already come to a standstill in the middle of the hall, but the suddenness of a ghost-lock as it shocks its icy grip into their bones is a surprise. They’d been caught unawares. A rookie mistake.
Willow’s lungs catch.
“…Gus.” She breathes. “In the doorway.”
Gus swallows audibly, forcing his head to the side through the psychic hold so that his trained eyes can scan the space between the frame. Where all Willow can get is a fuzzy green glow belonging to something hazy – dress skirts and thin fingers, she thinks – Gus nearly hurls. She doesn’t need to see his face to know his eyes have gone wide with fear. “I see her.” He whispers shakily. “She’s – hrk – yeah, she’s, um. Oh boy. She’s something.”
Hunter’s breath comes fast and shallow at her side. “I don’t understand. We sealed the source, didn’t we?” he asks. His voice is low, low enough that she struggles to hear it.
Willow strains her ears.
Something fragile – a whisper, she thinks, or humming – brushes against her cheek in an ice-cold breeze. She can barely make out the words for how soft they are, and yet, it’s as though someone is speaking directly into the crook of her neck, kissing her skin and coiling her curls around their finger.
Knock knock knock.
The sensation makes her want to scrub herself clean with scalding hot water.
…So cold. It’s so cold. So, so cold.
Willow struggles not to choke on the overwhelming suddenness of a powerful malaise as it washes through her, thick and sludgy like black tar filling up her lungs.
“I think – I think–“
I'm COLD…!
“–I think she’s a Type Two.”
“Fuck.”
“We need those chains.” Willow breathes urgently.
Gus sucks a pained breath through his teeth. “They’re still in the foyer.”
“Which has coincidentally been blocked by our new friend.” Hunter notes drily. The tremble to his words doesn’t fool anybody.
“Yep.”
“Knapsacks, guys. We need to start wearing knapsacks.”
“We can talk about this later.” Willow cuts in decisively. “Hunter, what are our options?”
Hunter breathes hard through his nose, calculating.
It’s easy to forget sometimes that he was once a well-respected member of the EC with dozens of trained units under his strict supervision, especially when he grins and bares the cute little gap in his teeth or pouts when he loses in anything or trips over his own two feet on his way to call dibs on the last slice of pizza before Luz can shove it into her mouth on Thursday nights. Now, though, watching him like this as he weighs the chances of their survival on a scale in his mind, that reality slaps Willow sharply in the face. This is the expression of somebody with years of tactical experience under his belt. This is the practiced resistance of an agent who’s worked hard to brick bridges around his weaknesses and made himself stronger for it. This isn’t just Hunter – this is the Golden Guard of the EC.
He releases a measured breath. The greenish-grey haze hovering in the doorway doesn’t stir.
“…The floor plans showed another route through the parlour.” Hunter murmurs. His eyes skim the hall quickly, taking in their position. “If it hasn’t caved in already, we can get in and grab the chains, and then we have a clear shot at the front door. If it has, then we can double back through the dining room to get outside and retreat. Worst case scenario?” He pauses, looking pained. “…We leave the chains.”
Gus winces. “Eda’s gonna kill us.”
“I know. “ Hunter sighs mournfully, but he continues in a firmer voice, “But we’ll get them back tomorrow morning. Then we can head home, get the rest of our gear, and come back in the evening to finish the job. Our client can fuck off. She should have given us a better description of the situation. It’s either that or –“
He cuts himself off as the haze turns, no doubt sensing the breeze, and Willow wills the invisible fingers gripping her throat in a frigid hold to loosen. The woman doesn’t seem to have noticed them yet, though, because she still hasn’t moved. Why hasn’t she moved?
Hunter’s voice continues, noticeably strained. “…or upstairs.”
“Quick question.” Gus whispers nervously. Willow can’t even imagine what horrors he must see through the strength of his Sight, especially if the ghost is already strong enough that Willow can catch flickers of her like this. “What do we do when we get upstairs, and she follows us?”
Hunter curses under his breath. The haze flickers.
“Fuck. Fuck. God, okay… how many filings do we have left?”
“Three canisters.” Willow whispers back. “One each.”
“Fucking hell.”
Realization lodges a weighted stone in her throat, but Willow squeezes words around the blockage to state as calmly as she possibly can, mindful of their company, “We may have to look for a source if we can’t get out.”
Hunter nods stiffly. His eyes never leave the doorway.
“Can you hear anything?”
…Knock knock knock.
“I think so. Let me listen.”
And Willow listens.
There are memories in this house, that much is certain. Some good, some bad. Most mundane, but the mundane isn’t what scorches psychic echoes into floorboards and banisters and peeling, sun-bleached walls. She doesn’t want to close her eyes – she doesn’t want to look away from the blot of green in the doorway for fear of the harm it might cause to the people on either side of her, these boys who mean the world to her – but it’s that same fear that drives her to do it, because if she can find what it is they’re looking for, she can keep them safe.
The clock is ticking, and Willow shuts her eyes. She listens.
…
….
…..
……Knock.
She listens.
…Knock knock knock.
She listens.
BANG.
“…It’s upstairs.” Willow whispers, breath hitching.
At once, the haze turns. She can pinpoint the exact moment it happens from the way Gus chokes on his tongue, the way Hunter tenses, and Willow knows instantly that she’s looking at them. They have no choice, no time, no resources.
Upstairs it is.
“Go.” Willow whispers urgently. She turns towards Gus, wide eyed and frantic, and he mirrors her expression like a frightened doe. “Go, go, go-!”
The haze – the woman – releases a piercing wail that shoots through the back of Willow’s skull like a long glass pin, forcing her to bite down on her tongue until she bleeds, but she shakes herself free of the pain to shepherd Gus up the steps two at a time. Hunter is quick to follow, pushing her forwards, and the three of them scramble up, up, up, round the skinny landing halfway up the steps, up the other side, past the rail, and into the hall. The second floor seems to be in better shape than the first because there are more picture frames and cracked stands and thick carpets lining the way.
Four doors spread out before them, two on the left, two on the right. Hunter pivots on his feet to raise his rapier high, buying Willow time to listen for what direction they need.
She squeezes her eyes shut.
Where, where, where, where, where, where-
Humming.
You .
The haze floats atop the stairs now, still shrieking. The sound is torturous.
“Last room on the left!” Willow shouts through the cry, gripping the back of Hunter’s vest and dragging him along with them as Gus forces the door open with his shoulder. It’s a bedroom; decayed, dusted, decomposing. The four-poster bed has all but collapsed at the center of the room, its moth-eaten duvet of indiscernible colour slung across the floor, and a mottled mahogany desk stands awkwardly by a massive window – no, not a window. A glass door, leading to a small balcony lined in empty flower baskets. There are no bookshelves, no bedside tables, no lamps. In fact, it’s suspiciously empty, aside from an unusual trail of papers littered across the room. Books, it seems, torn apart and scattered like seeds.
The screaming continues.
Gus holds out his hands. “Canisters.” he prompts, panting. Willow all but pushes her tin of filings into his palm and Hunter does the same, scanning the room. Gus immediately sets to work tipping iron out onto the hardwood floor.
“Alright.” Hunter breathes. “We try and hold her off here until we can locate the source. How many salt bombs do we have left?”
“Five.” Gus whispers.
Willow does the math quickly. “Three.”
Hunter nods. “And I have four. That makes twelve. We also have two flares left.”
“What about our client?”
Hunter’s expression turns thunderous on their behalf.
“She either lied to us or she’s incompetent.” He huffs. “Either way, we have justification, and we’ve already broken the terms of the agreement. If we leave a couple of scorch marks on the ceiling, that’s her problem. She can paint over them.”
“Agreed.” Willow winces. She slides her palms under the frames of her glasses to press into her eye sockets with a shuddering breath. It does little to ease the pressure building up from the shriek rising in pitch just outside the thin, rotting walls, though, and the needles in her brain begin to prickle numbly.
Hunter’s voice pierces softly through the ache, soothing.
“What do you need?”
Willow drops her hands away to meet his searching gaze. There’s that notch in his brow.
She musters enough strength to smile tiredly at him.
“Double chocolate chip cookies. Will you help me when we get home?”
It’s hard to say, given that the only source of light they have in this foul place is the moonlight as it spills through the entrance to the balcony, but when Hunter smiles at her like that, softened and crooked, he almost looks – well, this obviously can’t be right – but he almost looks–
“Of course.” He vows softly. “Are you ready?”
He almost looks loving.
Willow nods, lips pinched shut. She isn’t sure how she has the energy to turn pink right now, but she does.
“Ready.”
Listen.
This room isn’t a happy room. That much Willow knows without seeking, because the moment she closes her eyes, she wants to cry tears that don’t belong to her. She wants to scream from somebody else’s throat. These floors have seen blood, and the walls have seen sorrow, and these books have seen rage. She feels herself well up against her will, fat, salted tears slipping down her cheeks in clean streaks through smears of ash and magnesium dust, but she ignores them in favour of combing through the swells of pain like files as they come to her. They’re not hers anyways, she reminds herself. They never were.
…Knock knock knock.
…That isn’t a door.
Knock knock knock.
It isn’t… the wall, either.
Knock knock knock.
Dread fills her chest. This time, it is hers.
“…Willow…”
Underneath? But she was certain, she was positive…
“…Willow!”
But wait – no, it’s still here, it’s still this room, she’s certain of it. She can feel it burning her heart from the inside out.
“Willow!”
But if not the door, and if not the wall, then where…?
BANG BANG BANG
Her feet.
“WILLOW!”
Willow’s eyes snap open with a gasp, and her vision is filled with green light. The woman is here, shrieking, wailing, reaching for them in outrage – has been for a while, it seems, given the fact that Gus and Hunter have both unsheathed their rapiers and they’re down to six salt bombs. Who was that calling for her? Why didn’t she hear them? Why didn’t she…?
…Her feet. Her feet!
Under her feet!
“The floorboards!” Willow gasps in realization. She drops to her knees, examining the wood. “She’s in the floor!”
Gus whips his head behind him to look down at her, incredulous. “What?!”
“We have to pry them up!”
“What do you mean she’s in the floor?! Are we about to dig up a body?!”
“Gus!”
Groaning, Gus concedes and pulls his sledgehammer free from where he’d clipped it to the side of his belt. He offers it without looking, eyes having returned to the figure of the woman, but nods once when Willow takes it gratefully. Calculating, she searches.
Now, then – where are you? She rips her second glove off and slides her palms flat against the crinkling floor, feeling for any sort of echo as she goes. I know you want to be found.
Quiet, quiet, quiet, humming.
Willow presses. The board bends with her, hollow underneath. There. She raises the sledgehammer up, bracing her arms –
And she swings.
Hunter jumps at the sudden splintering of wood right behind him, the head of the hammer landing clean between where he’s planted his feet wide in a defensive stance. He chokes on a surprised yelp, parrying an instinctive swipe from the haze in front of him even though he can’t see it.
“Oh! Okay! That’s fine then!”
“Sorry!” Willow squeaks apologetically. She brings the hammer up again. “Switch!”
“Got it!”
He moves to slide in behind her, covering her blind spot, and she swings. The wood gives way like peanut brittle under the weight of the iron, mighty as it is small, and the hammer lodges itself between broken boards for a moment before she wrenches it free in an arch above her head. She swings again, and again, and again, until finally, one of the boards springs upward like a broken bone. She drops the hammer to grab the frayed edge in both her hands, hissing when splinters of wood pierce her bare fingertips in a dozen painful kisses. She ignores it and pulls, pulls, pulls, pulls –
There you are.
How melancholic, Willow thinks distantly, this body. Curled up in fetal position and clutching at her own bones as though perpetually shivering. It must be so cold in death. So very cold. There are still wispy strands of dead hair clinging to her skull like spun sugar, hanging down across her thin face and the gaunt line of her skeletal cheekbones. Her dress, whatever colour it used to be, had long since lost its shine. Willow thinks it might have been scarlet once upon a time. There must be a hole somewhere in the foundation of the house, too, because a bird’s been nesting in her riibcage. There are feathers everywhere, caught in the fragile folds of her dress and between her crooked bones like beads of dried blood. A draft slips through.
She’s wearing a necklace. Willow listens.
Humming in her ear. Lips smiling warmly into the skin of her throat. A warm, calloused palm holding her close by her ribs. He brushes her hair to the side with reverence and clasps the chain around her neck, kissing the top of her spine.
“There we are, little bird.”
Willow shivers, scarlet and gasping.
That’s it.
“I’ve got it!”
Murmuring a quick apology under her breath, Willow reaches into the makeshift grave and clasps her fingers tightly around the pendant. It’s too dark to tell what shape it is, but it digs strangely into her palms, like a shard of flint. She counts in her mind before wrenching it free.
The chord snaps.
A lot of things happen at once.
At the sight of her own body, the woman releases such a mournful wail that Willow doubles over from the sorrow forced upon her, hands tucked into her chest and pendant clutched close. In that same breath, the door to the balcony flies open, shattering glass, and wild winds fill the room.
For the second time that night, their circle breaks.
We have got to start wearing knapsacks.
“Heads down!” Hunter barks sharply, and before a ghostly hand can scratch him across the face, he lights another magnesium flare.
This time, he isn’t quite so lucky.
The flames catch, sure enough, and the woman squeals in pain as she’s set ablaze – and for this, Willow aches, as much as she knows it’s necessary for their own survival – but so too do the books, paper trails dry and brittle and all too eager to act as kindling.
The room is up in seconds.
“We need to move now!” Gus shouts above the roaring flames, steering them towards the entrance, but the frame catches fire in an instant. The wood is too old, too dry. The bed frame follows suite. Everything is this house seems itching to smother them.
Willow scans the room. Smoke prickles her tongue and teeth in a husky breath, and she coughs, squinting through the sting in her eyes.
The balcony.
“Gus!”
“On it!” He calls back.
Stumbling over broken glass and splintered floorboards, the three of them scramble onto the balcony as quickly as humanly possible. Whatever gear’s been left behind can’t be salvaged now anyways – not if they want to live.
Willow looks down. There! She knew she remembered shrubs lining the side of the house. They’re not very old, but it’s better than hard, unforgiving earth.
“We’re going to have to jump!” Gus calls out over the fire. Willow nods resolutely, steeling herself.
“Try for the bushes! They’ll break our fall!”
Hunter hops up onto the rail, offering his hands to pull them both up alongside him. “On three!” He shouts.
Something inside creaks dangerously.
“One!”
There’s a snap.
“Two!”
The bed frame tips sideways, knocking over the desk. Flames swell at their backs from the force of the fall, and strong arms circle tightly around Gus’ shoulders. Around Willow’s. Around the two of them, tucking them close in a protective cradle.
“Three-!”
They leap.