Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dipper likes L.A. more than he expected to.

By all rights, he should hate it here, and some days he kind of does, because this town (city, it’s a city, why do people in major urban hubs spend so much time acting like their place of residence has any kind of small-world charm) is ridiculous all over. It’s hot, it’s crowded, and it’s full of people trying to break into one oversaturated industry or another. Almost everyone here is either annoyingly embittered or painfully hopeful, desperate to be anywhere but here, anyone but this.

The self-conscious weirdness on every street corner doesn’t bother him as much as he thought it would, though. If anything, it’s kind of charming. Dipper knows weird – he grew up on weird – and… well, he’s certainly learned some new ways that people can be weird since he moved here, but for the most part, he finds the Los Angeles brand of strangeness comfortingly mundane. He’s used to heat – he was born in California, after all, this is just a more populous part of it, and even his other hometown, out in Oregon, has more wildfires every year. He’s still not a huge fan of crowded, but at least it means people outside of work don’t usually feel any need to talk to him.

So, on balance, L.A. is… fine. At least, it is for him; he has a decent-paying job, albeit one that about a third of his family disapproves of. He has an apartment with air conditioning and his own car. He’s doing okay.

Mostly.

He is currently rounding off his workday at one A.M. with the world’s most annoying eyewitness interview. A drive-by, except the shooter promptly drove themselves straight into the body of a two-tonne truck. Some people didn’t start their getaway driving career aged twelve, in a golf cart, with a thousand gnomes in hot pursuit, and it shows.

Dipper sighs and fights the urge to rub his temples. His examination of the victim revealed very little the first responders hadn’t already found – female, early twenties, extremely dead. She was some mid-tier famous person – Delilah, he corrects himself. Use her name; you haven’t been a detective long enough to be dismissive of dead people. He offers her a silent apology; it’s been a long day.

The shooter is proving harder to identify, since he had the presence of mind to leave his driver’s license at home when he set out to kill someone – although that might also be to do with the several hundred grams’ worth of assorted narcotics in the glove compartment. Male, or at least masculine-presenting. Brown hair. Car and clothes both inexpensive, which obviously makes money a potential motivator, except for the ten-thousand-dollar watch tucked away alongside the drugs – and that would have been puzzling enough on its own without the engraving on the inside of the band. It's small – he’s lucky he didn’t miss it, it just happened to catch the light as he held it up – but stamped firmly into the metal. It looks a little like a backwards musical note with some flourishes. Almost like a sigil.

Unusual, but not immediately useful.

That leaves the eyewitness, the owner of the upscale club this all took place in front of. Like literally everyone calling themselves a businessman in this part of town, he’s L.A.-handsome (very white teeth, blond, impeccable haircut, expensive suit), with a couple of obligatory eccentricities. In his case, there’s an eyepatch – either he has just the one working eye or he likes his affectations problematic – and two identical tattoos, one on the back of each hand. Considering the rest of this guy’s style, they’re surprisingly understated, fine black linework. The design is almost like a simplified Eye of Providence, a triangle with a slit-pupilled eye in the centre. Something about it makes the back of Dipper’s neck itch; he doesn’t like looking at them.

So far, the interview is really making him appreciate examining corpses.

“How long would you say you’d known the victim for?”

“Victim?” Bill Cipher – which is seriously his name – looks affronted. “She had everything. Money, fame – and all I wanted her to do was pull herself together! She was embarrassing us both. Do you know how pathetic you need to be for the devil to cut you a break?”

Eyewitnesses to a traumatic event may not be entirely coherent in their testimony. Dipper counts, slowly and deliberately, to five. “She was a victim. Of murder. Sir.” The last twenty minutes have pretty much been like this; he needs to wrap this interview up before he says something his supervisor will make him regret.

“Right, right.” Cipher stares moodily at the drink he’s holding – Dipper assumes it’s one of those whiskeys that cost as much per bottle as the rent on his apartment. “Whatever. She used to work here. That was, what, three years ago? She sang up here a few times before she got her big break. We didn’t exactly stay in touch.” He looks abruptly up at Dipper. “How much is getting this investigated gonna cost me?”

Dipper blinks. “Sir?”

“This is my business. It happened on my property, and she was my associate.” Cipher sets his drink down and steeples his fingers, intent. “What’s it gonna take for your corrupt little organisation to do something about it?”

Dipper swears he can hear his patience creaking as it stretches another inch past its limit.

“It’s getting late,” he says, trying not to longingly imagine a universe where he can punch this man in the face. “I’m sure we both want this interview to be over so we can get some rest – “ Cipher makes a non-committal noise that Dipper blows right past “ – so I’m going to pretend that you didn’t just try to bribe me, and we’ll try one last question instead.” He flips his notepad open to show the other man the symbol he copied from the watch. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

“You know what the problem with human brains is?” Cipher makes a face. “You’ve got three pounds of meat and electrical impulses running everything. Everything! Reflexes, unconscious thought, feelings –” he shudders theatrically “ – and memory. I have laid waste to entire dimensions, Detective. I’ve tangled with beings beyond your comprehension. You could live a thousand miserable mortal lifetimes, and your experience would still look like after-dinner theatre next to mine.”

Dipper checks his phone for the time. Cipher doesn’t seem to notice.

“And that’s before we even get to this half-stuffed sandwich of a planet!” The other man is warming to his theme now, eye bright and animated. “I’ve seen what passes for civilisation around here rise, and fall, and rise again. I’ve started wars and I’ve ended ’em. Hell, sometimes they were the same war!” He gleams for a second – and then he frowns. “I had to take all of that knowledge – everything I’ve learned from millions of years around this miserable rock – and cram it into a Raspberry Pi made of ground freakin’ beef. I don’t have everything to hand anymore. I gotta prioritise.”

Dipper stares at him for a few seconds, in case there’s going to be anything else. When it becomes clear that Cipher is done, he takes a slow, deep breath, and tries again. “Is… that a no?”

That seems to put the other man in an even worse mood; his face turns sullen. “It rings a bell,” he says, reluctantly. “But I don’t remember where from.”

“Right.” Dipper takes the pad back, makes a note, flips it shut. “I think that’s all I need for now. We have your details, so if we need to contact you again –”

“Hey!” Cipher starts out of his chair. “You’re telling me that’s it? I told you, Detective, this is important to me! You need to -”

“It is one forty-five in the morning.” Dipper has had enough; he tucks the notebook into his pocket and folds his arms. “I’ve been working since eight A.M. I am going to do my absolute best to look into this case, and to do that, I need to go home and sleep for at least six hours before I review the evidence we collected this evening. Unless you have anything to add to that evidence – sir – I think we’re done here.”

Cipher is studying him. Inexplicably, having his lack of consideration for other people’s sleep cycles pointed out seems to have cheered him up; he’s smiling again, broad and toothy. A finger of unease works its way down Dipper’s spine, and he wills it away.

“The last person who talked to me that way,” he says, sounding almost pleased, “became my hood ornament for two thousand years.”

“I’m sure they appreciated the experience.” Dipper moves towards the door, pausing once to look back over his shoulder. “Don’t leave town.”

“I would never, Detective.” Cipher has settled back into his chair and reclaimed his drink, smile wide. “This is my home.”

Despite his extremely snappy, efficient and effortlessly cool manner of collecting eyewitness testimony, Dipper still has to call in at the station to drop off paperwork, so it’s about 3A.M. when he finally gets home. Which he’d made a really big deal about doing to someone potentially pretty influential, because rest is important, for more than just keeping him able to accurately evaluate evidence. He carries a freaking gun around all day, for crying out loud, and he’s expected to know exactly the right time and place to use it to defend himself and others. A lapse in judgement could be literally deadly. They often are. Any contributing structural factors behind that aside, the very least he can do is make sure he keeps himself sharp when he’s on duty.

So, of course, he can’t sleep.

Not because of the interview – although he was stewing over that in the car all the way home, who the fuck even is that guy – but because of the case itself.

“This seems pretty open-and-shut,” Espinoza had told him when he dropped off his case files.

“You think so?” Dipper had frowned. “I dunno, man. I thought so at first as well, but something about it is bugging me. The watch, for one thing – ”

“Listen, kid.” (Dipper is twenty-six, but pointing this out to people who want to call him “kid” has historically only made them laugh really hard and then do it more, so now he just grits his teeth and lets it go by. Incidentally, he’s getting a lot more tension headaches lately.) “She was a down-and-out pop star. He was a drug dealer. Can I make it any more obvious?” His grin had faded in the face of Dipper’s answering glare. “Look, any idiot can get his hands on a knock-off watch with a weird symbol on it. These things happen. It’s not that deep.”

“But –”

“Pines.” Espinoza’s eyes had been intent on his face. “I’m telling you. Okay? There’s no point in looking at this one too closely. If I were you, I’d stay out of it.”

Dan Espinoza is a jerk, but he’s the annoying kind of jerk who doesn’t always stay firmly in the “jerk” box. He’s condescending, Dipper doesn’t like the way he talks to civilians, and there are rumours about his conduct that you can’t seem to stop hearing even if you really want to – but he was the first person to genuinely welcome Dipper to the LAPD, and he’s basically the only person who’s remotely friendly to him anymore, after… well, after. If he’s warning Dipper away from this case, there’s a reason.

That doesn’t mean it’s a good reason.

By the time he’s showered and changed it’s pushing four o’clock, but he’s still wide awake, so he calls Mabel. He’s not necessarily expecting much – it’s sometime in the afternoon where she is, she could be doing anything – but she picks up almost immediately.

“Bro-bro!” She sounds delighted; it makes him smile. “Hang on, I – ” There are some muffled rustling sounds, and the video blinks into focus. It’s always weird seeing her in daylight at this hour. “What the heck are you doing up, huh? It must be, like, five A.M. over there!”

“Four,” he agrees, resting his chin on his hand. “I can’t sleep. Where are you?”

“Train!” She grins. “Me and Grenda spent the weekend in Venice, and then we figured, hey, you know what I really wanna see before I leave Europe? A rusalka! Early June’s meant to be the best time to see ‘em, so we hopped the train to Vienna. We can get to Poland from there, easy! I’m thinking Gdańsk. It just sounds cool.”

Dipper listens as she tells him several of the things she expects to be cool about Gdańsk, making appropriate noises to prompt her along. She looks good – she’s animated, lively, and at some point over the last six months she’s gained some plumpness around her face and arms. It suits her.

Mabel surprised the both of them by leaving the U.S. pretty much the second they turned eighteen. High school was rough on them both in pretty different ways, and it made sense that they’d have struck out on their own afterwards. She was determined to go to college once it became clear she had the grades for it, and when one of your best friends is dating the Prince of Austria, it turns out that things like “visas” and “money” can be more administrative blips than actual barriers to entry. Dipper could have gone with her – a part of him had wanted to – but he’d wanted to carve out his own path, and besides, Mabel had wanted to keep monster-hunting in a way he’d sort of burned out on, after… everything. Essentially, they’d each wanted their own kind of fresh start.

So he had stayed in California for college and joined the LAPD, while Mabel has spent the last four years in London doing a Masters, following on from a BSc in Amsterdam. She’s studying forensic science; she’s interned in two or three different labs around Europe, sometimes doing stuff she’s legally prohibited from discussing. Meanwhile, she’s made twenty to fifty new friends, she spends weekends and vacations travelling around documenting various supernatural phenomena, she’s dated – and broken up with – three different vampires, and she’s done all of it without losing a crumb of her relentless optimism, because she’s Mabel.

Abruptly, and for a long moment, Dipper misses his sister so much he can’t breathe.

“ – and it has sixty-four mountains!” Mabel finishes, gesticulating so emphatically that she knocks her phone over. Dipper gazes patiently at the roof of the train car while she rights it. “So there’ll be tonnes of places for me to look, even if my first lead is a bust.”

“Sounds fun.” Dipper hesitates for a second, but – old habits die hard. “You’re not – going out there alone, right? I mean, you’re being careful?” He doesn't know a lot about rusalki beyond surface details – even if he were still monster-hunting, they’re not exactly native to any area he’s familiar with – but they’re still malevolent spirits, and if anything happens to Mabel before she leaves –

Wait a minute. “What do you mean, ‘before you leave Europe’?”

“Relax, brosephalis!” Mabel grins at him. “I’ve got noise-cancelling headphones, I’ve got high-beam torches, and rusalki kind of haven’t got the compulsory heterosexuality memo yet, y’know? They’re mostly interested in men. I’ll be fine.”

Dipper sighs. His sister is absolutely going to try and make out with a deadly water nymph.

Later, after they’ve said goodnight, he lies in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about Delilah. He has to admit that Espinoza has a point; weird watch or no weird watch, her star was in decline, and people in that position have been known to get into all kinds of things to try and stay relevant. It would be easy enough to chalk this one up to unpaid drug debts and move on.

Only…

A quick Google (with a few modifiers – maybe that’s why she never made it, her stage name had terrible SEO) turned up basically nothing recent on the woman, bar a few particularly rapidly-typed obituaries. No being thrown out of parties for being too trashed, no scandalous love affairs, no controversial social media posts. Usually people who are going down in flames for attention do it with more enthusiasm. And Cipher said he’d made her promise to get her shit together. It doesn’t add up.

Espinoza would have known that, on some level.

He sighs and pulls the sheet over himself. There’s nothing more he can do about this until the morning; he really needs to get some sleep, or he won’t be able to do anything about it then, either.

He dreams of Delilah singing to him from the depths of a mountain lake. Every fibre of him wants to go to her, but when he looks out over the water she’s gone, and anyway, he doesn’t have his bathing suit. Mabel laughs at him and plunges in fully-clothed – no, you can’t, it’s dangerous –

He wakes up in a cold sweat. The time on his phone reads 09:17.

It is only at this point that it occurs to him that Mabel never answered his question.

The next day starts out relatively calm, even promising. In retrospect, he should have taken that as a warning.

The first piece of good news he finds waiting for him is that they’ve identified the shooter – his name was Eddie Deacon, a low-level dealer with a few previous possession-with-intent charges. The second is two sets of call logs – Delilah’s and Eddie’s – which, when cross-examined, point him towards his first real lead.

Delilah’s relationship with rapper 2Vile had ended, publicly and acrimoniously, about two months ago, and there was no whisper of them having reconciled, which made it very interesting that he’d been calling her – no, scratch that, they’d been calling each other – for about two weeks prior to her death. More than that, 2Vile had called her as recently as the previous evening – and more than that, he had called someone else yesterday night as well: one Eddie Deacon, recently deceased. Definitely enough to check out.

Espinoza would have told him not to. But this is his case, and anyway, Espinoza isn’t here.

2Vile lives out in Sherman Oaks, a theoretical 20-minute drive that ends up taking the best part of an hour. There are a lot of cars in the driveway, and Dipper can hear low, thumping bass as he parks up. Not great; even people who feel positive-to-neutral about cops tend to re-evaluate when one of them interrupts a party. But he has a job to do.

“I’m afraid this is a private function,” the butler – a real butler, he’s even British – tells him at the door. “Master 2Vile will be most displeased if he is interrupted.”

“LAPD,” Dipper says flatly. He already has his badge out, so he vaguely wiggles it, in case that helps. “I just need to ask him some questions.”

“Perhaps if Sir would care to return with – ”

Screaming, and a loud crash. Dipper and the butler exchange looks, and then they both take off running up the stairs. The door is locked, but the help is on his side now – he even lets Dipper go first through the door, presumably because –

“LAPD!” Yep, there it is; every gun in the room turns from Cipher’s direction to his. “Put your weapons down on the floor, guys. Hands in the air.” He looks at the butler and jerks his head at an ice bucket. “Empty that out and collect everyone’s guns. Now.”

While all of this is briskly settled, he takes a second to survey the scene. There’s a lot of glass lying around, presumably the remnants of the shattered floor-to-ceiling window leading to the balcony, where 2Vile is –

Where Bill Cipher is –

Why is he here?

Okay, no, first things first. He can question everybody in a minute; right now, his prime suspect is being dangled off a balcony by someone who seems to be taking every opportunity to audition himself for the “prime suspect” position.

“Put him down, Cipher,” he calls, taking a few steps forward. The other man looks contemplative, his fingers start to loosen – oh, shit – “Up!” It comes out a terrified bark. “Pull him up. Get him back on the balcony, and then put him down.”

“Spoilsport,” Cipher huffs. He does, at least, haul 2Vile unceremoniously back onto his feet.

“Hey, wait a minute.” That’s one of the grunts, who is – well, everyone’s looking at Dipper reasonably intently, that’s to be expected when you bust in with a gun and take away all the other guns in the room. But he’s… focused, suddenly, in the way his compatriots don’t seem to be. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

“I don’t think so, sir.” Dipper smiles cautiously. He’s been out in public with Grunkle Stan enough times to know that questions like that can take an exchange in a lot of directions, and that only about three per cent of those are pleasant. “Now – ”

“No, I totally do!” The guy snaps his fingers. “You’re the guy from Wolves Who Are Also Teens, aren’t you? You’re Mystery Twink!”

Dipper’s smile freezes on his face.

Like most of their high school projects, Wolves Who Are Also Teens had… well, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. It was 2017, after all, the year shows like Vandals!: America were all the rage, and also the first year the twins had been given phones with decent-quality cameras. So when Mabel’s Gravity Falls friends had told her about the increasing hair growth and scent-marking behaviours going around the local high school lacrosse team, it had seemed only natural for her and Dipper to investigate – and record their investigation. They’d even managed to secure the name “Mystery Twins” on VideoTube. And, after all, what were a couple of missed weeks of school compared to the potential of unveiling the existence of the supernatural, once and for all?

As for the Mystery Twink thing…

Look, everyone was seventeen once. Everyone’s had the experience of looking down at themselves and realising that hey, actually, they’ve spent the last five summers chopping wood and dragging exhibits to and from the basement, and they’ve grown ten inches, and maybe they’re not as… as noodly as they used to be. Everyone has thought that this might be the summer they actually look good shirtless.

What everyone doesn’t have is a sister whose speciality is parlaying their worst impulses onto the small screen.

“You said one of us has to be bait, right?” she’d reasoned. “I’m the face of most of the rest of the documentary – this is your chance to shine, Dipper!” (In his memory, Mabel starts to slowly stroke the long-haired white cat on her lap at this point. Candy did have a cat that summer, but Dipper is willing to concede this might be mental embellishment on his part.) “What’s the worst that can happen, huh? Nobody’ll watch it, and we’ll be right back where we are now!”

Wrong, Past Mabel. That is not the worst thing that can happen to someone who voluntarily commits to being shirtless werewolf bait on camera.

The worst thing that can happen, Past Mabel, Dipper thinks, watching recognition bloom on about twenty per cent of the faces in the room, is that it can become a viral cult classic.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait.” Cipher sounds ecstatic, and Dipper does not want to see the expression on his face. “Wait.” Now he’s holding up one finger. “You’re Mystery Twink?”

Dipper’s ears have gone red. He takes a breath, and tries to ignore the creeping prickle of embarrassment spreading over the rest of his face.

L.A. is a big city, and he’s been on the force for five years now; he’s spoken to a lot of people on the job. It’s not the first time he’s been recognised. Frankly, a distressing number of people seem to be able to call the worst decision of his life to mind with astonishing speed and clarity, and while LAPD training prepares you for a lot of things, it’s light on dealing with this specific brand of extreme social embarrassment.

The best thing to do is act like it doesn’t bother him. But Cipher’s eye is intent on his face, and he can hear him starting to chuckle –

“W-we are not here to discuss decade-old Internet media!” Perfect. Flawless. At least your voice didn’t crack this time. “We’re here to talk about – ” Ah. There it is. “Delilah.” He clears his throat, takes another breath. “We ran her cell records; she called 2Vile the night before she died.”

“Oh, that.” Bill waves his murder investigation away with one airy gesture. “We went over that already. He didn't do it.” He glances in 2Vile’s direction; his eye narrows. “Unless,” he says pensively, “you lied to me, in which case – “

“No!” 2Vile holds both hands out, shaking his head. There are marks on his neck and chest where Bill had a hold of him. “No, no, no, man, I swear.” He looks beseechingly at Dipper. “He’s right, okay? Me and Delilah, we were – we broke up, it got kinda ugly for a minute. She cheated on me, and I kinda – I lost it. That woman… she made me crazy.” He swallows hard. “But we were good when she –” His voice falters. “We were good yesterday.”

Dipper keeps his face neutral, but he feels a pang of empathy for the other man. He doesn’t know a whole lot about heartbreak, but either 2Vile is an excellent actor, or he’s genuinely going through something.

That doesn’t make him not a murderer, he reminds himself. “Delilah was killed by a man named Eddie Deacon,” he says. “You called him last night. Why?”

“Eddie?” 2Vile looks confused. “He hooks me up sometimes. He was meant to come by this morning; I thought he was blowin’ me off.” There are some scattered nods and murmurs of assent around the room. “I swear, if I’d known what he did to Delilah, I’d’ve – ”

“He’s dead, too,” Dipper interrupts. “And maybe you shouldn’t disclose your revenge fantasies to the police.”

“You’re wasting your time here, Detective,” Cipher pipes up. “I told you, this isn’t our guy.” (The word “our” immediately makes Dipper bristle.) “You’re not gonna find any new suspects this way – ”

“I think I am, actually.” Dipper has heard enough; he steps past 2Vile, his eyes focused on Cipher’s face. “Hands behind your back; we’re taking a trip downtown.”

“Me?” Cipher looks genuinely surprised. “I’ve made more progress on this case than you have – ”

“And isn’t that interesting?” Dipper cuffs him, which Cipher seems to find amusing; he can hear the other man chuckle as he steps away. “You just happened to know where to find and physically threaten 2Vile before the police did. In fact, you’re all over this case – right up to having been the only person to see Delilah die, while you walked away without a scratch. You’re under arrest, Cipher. Move.”

His sense of triumph at having made literally any progress lasts all the way down the stairs and into the courtyard. He turns away from Cipher for one moment to unlock his car, and the other man taps him on the shoulder – what – and slaps the cuffs smugly back into his hands.

“How did you – ”

“Sooooo,” Cipher drawls, leaning against the car. “Mystery Twink, huh? I thought I recognised you from somewhere.”

“Do not call me that.” Dipper can feel himself starting to turn red again.

“Hey, you shouldn’t be so embarrassed!” Cipher’s grin inches a little wider. “That video was a hit for a reason, kid. Personally?” He brings a hand to his face and kisses his bunched fingers before letting them airily spring open. “I loved it. The blood, the screaming, the adolescent hubris… it had everything.” He thinks for a moment. “Well, it coulda used a few actual casualties. But everyone’s gotta start somewhere!”

“We are not talking about this.” Dipper’s hands have balled into fists. He makes a conscious effort to relax them, which is immediately aborted when he nearly drops the handcuffs; he tucks them away and folds his arms. “How about we discuss instead how you’re the prime suspect in a murder investigation?”

“You’re still on that? I told you, Detective,” Cipher says, irritatingly patient, “you are wasting your time. I’m on your side here, you dig? Do you know how many humans have ever been able to say that about me? You should be flattered! I’m an asset.”

“Really.” Dipper idly wonders if you can solder handcuffs shut.

“I found 2Vile, didn’t I? Before you did, even.” (Reluctantly, Dipper concedes that he may have a point there.) “Say what you like about my methods, but our little chat got results. In fact, I got something out of him that you didn’t!” He taps the hood of the car delightedly. “Don’t you wanna know who Delilah’s other boyfriend was?”

“We already know about Jimmy Barnes – ”

“Pfft, that guy?” Cipher waves a hand, dismissing him. “She dumped him, like, three times over. Plus, he’s a total sad sack. Couldn’t murder his way out of a paper bag if you covered it with lighter fluid and handed him a match!” He pops both his hands open, miming an explosion. Dipper is not sure about this metaphor. “No, I mean the other guy. The one she cheated on 2Vile with?”

Dipper’s eye twitches. “Cipher,” he says, “if you have relevant information to a police investigation, you have to – ”

“Please! If we’re gonna be working together, you should just call me Bill. And I’d be happy to cooperate – if you let me help you.” His eye is alight now, focused. “Come on, I’ve got more than just intel to bring to the table! I’m great with people. In fact…” He straightens up, dusting his hands off. “You might say it’s my speciality. Check this out.”

Dipper might have protested, but Cipher – Bill – is suddenly making extremely direct eye contact. His amber gaze is intense and unwavering, and Dipper’s control of the situation was already on the shaky side, and there’s a very real possibility this man is about to dangle him off a balcony, only they’re sort of out of balconies, so what could he possibly be about to –

“Tell me, Detective.” Bill’s voice is low. “What is it that you want, more than anything else in the world? What’s your deepest, darkest desire?” His smile is suddenly all teeth, the sharp, self-satisfied expression of a predator with nothing left to do but open its jaws. “When you close your eyes, what is it that you see?”

Dipper feels the change.

He can feel the air stretch taut, coiled and tense, reverberating around him as if struck with a tuning fork. His ears pop; his heart thrums and rattles in his chest.

For a split second, he thinks he might be about to answer, like if he opens his mouth the words will spill out of him to pool, sizzling, on the concrete between them. I know things, he might say. I want people to care that I know them. I want to be taken seriously. I want to matter. I became a cop because –

“I want…”

Wait.

Bill’s face has changed, too.

Or has it? Dipper leans forward a little, almost involuntarily. No, it’s the same – cheekbones, white teeth, eyepatch – but the feeling of it is different, like he’s looking at a painting of a photograph. The angles are there, they’re correct, but they’re also not, there’s something missing, or is there more of it than there should be? It feels like he could dig his fingers into that face and pull, like he could get his hands underneath Bill Cipher’s mask and expose him –

The tension drains away, leaving Bill staring at him. The smile has slid right off his face; his expression, for once, is completely unreadable.

Dipper straightens his back, scrubs his sweaty palms on the sides of his pants. He feels a little bit sick.

“I want this conversation to be over,” he says heavily. “Just get in the car.”

Chapter Text

“Grey Cooper? Are you sure?” Espinoza sounds… actually, less surprised than Dipper had expected. Suspicious, sure, but more tired than anything else.

“I think so,” he says, cautiously. It’s not true – or, at least, it’s not the whole truth – but he doesn’t think This information came from someone potentially criminally insane, and he’s in the back of my car, and I need to check this out before I decide whether or not to try and arrest him again will necessarily be more reassuring. “Sure enough that it’s worth a look, anyway?”

Espinoza sighs into the phone. “Pines – ”

“If this doesn’t go anywhere, I’ll drop it,” Dipper says. “I just need to be completely sure. Can you just… take a look at the cell records? See if his name comes up?”

“She mighta had him in there under a different name,” Bill chimes in from the back seat. (It had taken a solid five minutes to convince him that he wasn’t riding shotgun, and he’s clearly not happy about it.) “She was pretty paranoid about that kinda stuff. He was in Fifty Shades of Donkey Stabling, right? Try Christian Bray.” He catches Dipper’s eye in the rearview mirror and winks, an admittedly impressive feat for someone with just the one eye. “See? I told you I’d be great at this!”

Dipper can feel the gentlest, softest stirrings of an impending headache, right at the back of his temples.

“He might also be referred to as Christian Bray,” he dutifully relays. “Look, I know how this sounds – ”

“I’ll take a look.”

Dipper blinks. “Wait – really?”

“Look, I’m not saying you should get your hopes up,” Espinoza says. “I still think this is open-and-shut, and I wish you’d open and shut it. But you’re a good cop; if you say there’s something there, it’s at least worth checking out.”

A faint warmth blooms in Dipper’s chest, battling with his irritation at himself, because he should definitely be past needing approval from more experienced coworkers at this point. “I…” He doesn’t quite know what to say. “Thanks, man.”

“I’ll call you later.” Espinoza hangs up.

“Your partner’s kinda hands-off, isn’t he?” Bill has his hands tucked behind his head, eyeing Dipper idly. “What, you always do the running around while he sits in the background, pretending murder doesn’t exist?”

“He’s not my partner.” Dipper does not want to have this conversation.

Which Bill seems to be aware of, because he sits up straight again, leaning forward a little in his seat. “You didn’t strike me as the lone wolf type, Detective.”

“I’m not.” Maybe if he just keeps his answers short –

“So what happened?” Bill is resting his elbows on his knees, now, voice filled with entirely insincere, gleeful confusion. “Car accident? Gunfight? Pit of acid? Did you sleep with their wife?” He taps his chin, pretending to think for a second. “Maybe you took off your shirt and attracted some werewolves to –”

“Not every detective has a partner, okay?” Dipper almost doesn’t realise he’s turned around in his seat until someone swerves past him and honks; he pins his eyes back to the road, hands shaking a little. “I’m…” He tightens his hands briefly on the wheel, searching for the version of the truth that will generate the least follow-up questions. “My sergeant and I decided I’d be better off working alone for a while,” he says at last. “To build independence.”

Bill’s response to that is a startlingly accurate impression of a gameshow buzzer. “Not the answer we were looking for! That was sad, kid.”(Dipper’s eye twitches.) “Do you know how many humans are even physically capable of lying to me? It’s less than five! Which is a total waste of a cosmic gift if you suck at it.”

With an effort he frankly thinks ought to be rewarded with hazard pay, Dipper doesn’t reply to that. Let Bill get his dig in; if he just lets it go by, surely he’ll move on to something else.

They drive in silence for thirty seconds or so.

“So nobody wants to work with you, huh?”

Dipper is going to drive this car into the sea.

“Is it the, y’know – ” Bill vaguely waggles his fingers in a way that somehow manages to be insulting “ – general air of frazzled incompetence, do you think? Or maybe just the haircut?”

Dipper is going to drive this car into the sea, dismantle it piece by piece, and leave the entire mess for the sharks.

“Is it the fact that you wear the same outfit every day? You do wash it, right? Or do you just have a closet full of identical black T-shirts? Did you buy them in bulk?”

“I wash my clothes,” Dipper says, suddenly tired. He actually does have five identical black T-shirts for work – he was late his first three days as a plainclothes officer before he decided that the decision paralysis over what to wear was just not worth it – but he’s definitely not throwing that delicious morsel of a fact into the churning maw of this conversation. “I don’t have a partner because – ”

His phone rings, and he presses several unrelated buttons on the console in his haste to pick it up. He can hear Bill snicker to himself as he scrambles to turn off the windscreen wipers, but he doesn’t care; whoever is calling him is a hero and a saint. “Pines.”

“It’s me.” Espinoza; he’s done much faster than expected, and he does not sound happy about it. “You were right. There are a lot of texts between Delilah and Christian Bray.” His voice lightens a little. “You owe me a drink, man. I can’t unread some of what I just read.”

“Whatever you want is on me.” Dipper’s mouth is suddenly dry; he can hear his heart pounding in his ears. “Do we know anything about where Grey Cooper is now?”

“You’re in luck, actually; he’s shooting his latest picture at a hotel in Beverly Hills. I’ll text you the address.” Espinoza hangs up before Dipper can thank him.

“I hate to say I told you so,” Bill sing-songs, clearly delighted at the prospect of saying ‘I told you so’. “So, where are we headed?”

“We are not headed anywhere.” Dipper’s phone chimes; he pulls over to take a look at the address Espinoza has sent him, taps it into his GPS. “I am going to Beverly Hills to question a potential suspect. You…” He takes a moment to rub his temples, thinking.

The fact that his information was good doesn’t mean he has to take Bill with him. It doesn’t even really discount the potential criminal insanity of the man; it’s not like no murderers have ever tried to throw the police off their trail by pretending to cooperate. He could take Bill to the station, hold him in custody while he questions Cooper, and then take things from there.

It’s just…

Obviously Bill isn’t really a supernatural entity. At least, not in the way he’s claiming to be – some kind of devil or demon or something. The only way demons can access the physical plane over the longer term is through possession, as Dipper knows perfectly well. He’s only seen a couple of cases of that himself, but he’s also had access to everything Grunkle Ford has ever written, along with several in-depth conversations with the man himself. He knows what it looks like. There are signs – no demon fits fully comfortably into a human suit. The eyes are often a dead giveaway, if you know what to look for. There is absolutely no indication that Bill Cipher has ever been anything other than a snappily-dressed, overly privileged, entirely aggravating human.

Besides which, there aren’t any demons in Los Angeles. There isn’t any anything in Los Angeles. There are only theories as to why, but anyone who knows anything about monsters knows that they’ve historically skipped most of Southern California entirely, with L.A. being the most famous paranormal dead zone of them all. There might be a handful of non-human beings around, but certainly nowhere near enough to constitute what you might call a presence. It was the main reason Dipper came here in the first place, the closest thing he could think of to an entirely fresh start.

So there’s no way Bill is telling the truth; Dipper is sure of that. But…

He did something, back in the parking lot, or he tried to. And he dangled a man off a balcony with more ease than should have been possible for someone his size; Bill has some muscle, but he’s more wiry than buff. And then there are those creepy tattoos, and just… the way he is, his odd way of speaking, the way his presence fills a space like smoke. He might be human, but there are a lot of ways to lose your humanity; Dipper has only been a detective for two years, but he knows that well enough by now.

Bottom line, there’s something off about Bill Cipher.

Best to keep an eye on him.

“You can come with me,” he says at last, and regrets it immediately as Bill visibly brightens. “But you follow my lead, okay? No threats, no – balcony stuff. Or anything like that,” he adds firmly, seeing Bill start to smirk. “If I see you even think about trying to pull anything, you’re going back in the cuffs, and you’re staying there.”

The other man clasps his hands together in front of him, not the slightest bit deterred. “Oh, Detective,” he purrs. “Do you promise?”

The sea is always an option, Dipper reminds himself. He sighs inwardly and starts the car.

Any L.A. hotel prestigious enough to have a Grey Cooper movie filmed in it is going to be ridiculously lavish, and M-Suite: The Beverly Hills Edit is no exception. Dipper feels like he’s going to be asked to leave just for standing in the entryway.

Bill, of course, seems to feel right at home.

The clerk at the front desk is alarmed, and then worried, and ultimately about as helpful as Dipper could have hoped for. Mr Cooper is filming at the moment, they tell him, and nobody is allowed on the upper two floors until this scene wraps. They can send someone up to inform him of the situation, but in the meantime the two of them will have to wait down here. There’s a bar, if they’d like?

The bar is, at least, air-conditioned and basically empty, and they don’t seem interested in charging Dipper for what turns out to be a pretty mediocre coffee. Bill orders something complex and multi-layered that Dipper loses track of the ingredients of halfway through; he’s not even sure whether or not it’s alcoholic. It comes with a crazy straw, something Dipper hasn’t seen or thought about in at least five years. Whatever they’re paying the bar staff here, it isn’t enough.

He sips his coffee, his eye drawn to the TV behind the bar. Bill starts to say something to him, but he holds up a hand. Ordinarily he wouldn’t care about a daytime TV interview, but under the circumstances –

“It’s just hard to believe she’s really gone,” Jimmy Barnes is saying. “That woman – she made me crazy, you know? She had this way of making you feel like nothing else in the world mattered. And that voice…” He runs a hand through his hair. There’s a faint band of paler skin around his wrist, a break in his tan.

“Obviously Delilah made a huge impact on a lot of people,” the interviewer says soothingly. She’s smiling, but she looks vaguely uncomfortable. “Your professional and personal relationships were so closely intertwined. What was that like?”

“She made me crazy,” Jimmy repeats, a far-off look in his eyes. He blinks, seeming to come back to himself a little. “I mean – she was a force of nature. Larger than life. You know? Like the tide, she just – pulled you in. I lost everything when I lost her. Not just money – it was like being out in the ocean, in the dark.” Now he’s looking at the camera, although he doesn’t seem to be fully aware that he’s doing it. “Alone.”

The interviewer clears her throat, her smile all but gone. “Well, Jimmy, that sure is some insight! Live With The Living will be back after these messages…”

“He doesn’t seem… okay,” Dipper mutters, half to himself.

Bill snorts. “Who, Jimmy? I remember when they started working together.” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively on the word ‘working’. “Thought he’d found his meal ticket in pretty much every sense of the word. That he’d be able to control her.” He takes a sip of his drink; between the complicated straw and the odd viscosity of the beverage, this takes a good fifteen seconds. “Shoulda known he’d never be able to handle someone like Delilah.”

“What do you me – ”

“Detective!” Grey Cooper claps him on the shoulder, making him jump. “Sorry for keeping you waiting – life of an actor-producer. You know how it is.”

Dipper does not know how it is. He gets up, anyway, and smiles politely while Cooper shakes his hand. “Sorry to disturb your work, Mr Cooper,” he says. “I’m Detective Pines, and this is – ”

“Call me Bill.” Bill obligingly takes his turn on the handshake carousel. “Private consultant; the Detective here called me in to assist on this case, and I was more than happy to help.” He leans in, voice dropping conspiratorially. “Between you and me – he called me just in time.”

Dipper glares, dropping a hand to hover over the handcuffs on his belt. Bill beams back at him.

“So, what can I do for you, Officers?” Cooper settles into a chair opposite them.

A detective is not an officer, and Bill is definitely not either of those things, and Dipper can see the delight on his face at the mistake, and he unfortunately does not have the time to squash it. “We’re investigating what happened to Delilah,” he says instead. “We had some questions about your – relationship.”

“Oh – sure.” Cooper rubs the back of his neck, his eyes darting to the door. “I heard the news. A real shame, right? She was a sweet kid.”

“Oh, she was more than that,” Bill pipes up. “Wasn’t she? I heard you two were real close, back when you were working on Much A-Duke About Nothin’.”

“It was Much A-Duke About Muffin,” Cooper corrects him. “The one about the Regency baking competition.”

“Right, right. Didn’t see it.” Bill stirs his drink with his straw. “You guys worked together, for, what, six months? Day in, day out. I bet you saw each other all the time.” He leans over the table, just a fraction, and Dipper watches Cooper mimic the motion. “All those lingering glances. The brushes of the fingertips. Nerve endings, am I right? Those things have a mind of their own. And you’ve got so many! Who could blame you for getting carried away?”

“She was a hell of an actress,” Cooper agrees, something dreamy and faraway in his tone. “So intense. She just… drew you in. And that voice…”

Dipper frowns. “She sang for the film? Was it a musical?”

“What?” Cooper glances at him for a second, thrown. “No, Officer – ” Dipper is a detective “ – I mean, like, how she spoke. I can’t – I can’t describe it.” He sighs. “That woman drove me crazy.” He blinks, and clears his throat. “But, uh – I’m a married man. I’d never do anything indecent on a shoot.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Bill says soothingly. “So then tell me, Mr Cooper.” He leans a little further in, and Cooper inches forward, again, in response. “What is it that you really want? More than anything else in the world? What’s your deepest, darkest, most forbidden desire?”

Dipper tenses as the air in the room shifts again. It’s not quite as overwhelming, this time, perhaps because whatever Bill’s doing isn’t directed at him, but he can still feel it. Every molecule around them charged, vibrating; Bill’s face, intense, intent, and other –

He sneaks a glance at Cooper, but the other man doesn’t seem unsettled at all. If anything, he looks…enthralled.

“I…” he breathes, a strange kind of rapture in his voice. “I want to be President of the United States of America.”

Dipper chokes on nothing, and has to take a gulp of lukewarm coffee to hide it. Bill, meanwhile, laughs warmly – if there’s a mocking edge to it, Cooper doesn’t seem to realise – and claps the actor on the arm. “Of course you do!” he says, as if the star of Fifty Shades of Bray has set himself on a perfectly natural path to the White House. “Who wouldn’t? But lemme tell you, my friend, you’ll need to get a lot better at lying if you want that to pan out.”

And Cooper – as if he hasn’t just been called out lying to the police – laughs right back, relaxing back in his seat. “God, I know, right?” He pulls his sleeves up a little, and a flash of silver catches Dipper’s eye.

“It’s alright, Mr Cooper – or can I call you Grey?” Bill pats his arm a couple of times before withdrawing. “We’re all friends here. You can tell us the truth.” He stirs his drink again, the ice cubes in it clinking reassuringly. “I know you want to.”

Cooper opens his mouth – and then a flash of doubt crosses his face. “I don’t know if – ”

“That’s a nice watch.” Now it’s Dipper’s turn to interrupt, and frankly it’s a bit of a relief to disrupt… whatever that was. “You mind if I see it?”

“Huh? Oh, sure.” Cooper obligingly unlatches the watch and hands it over. “Actually, uh, I think it was a wrap gift.”

“From who?” Dipper examines the watch, flips it over. There – now that he knows what he’s looking for, it’s easy enough to find. He pulls out his notebook, fumbling for the right page; as he expected, the symbols are an exact match.

He becomes aware that Bill is looking at him, a slight frown on his face. He drops the watch onto the opened notebook page and slides the entire thing across the table at him.

“I – I don’t remember exactly.” God, Cooper really is a terrible liar. “Just, um, another cast member, I guess.”

Dipper raises an eyebrow. “Do random cast members often give you ten thousand-dollar watches as wrap gifts?”

“Answer the Detective.” Bill has been looking at the watch; now he sets it back down on the table. His smile has taken on a thin, metallic edge. “Where did you get this?”

Cooper gulps, his eyes darting over towards the door. Dipper wonders if he’s a good actor. He doesn’t know anything about acting, of course, but it seems like some of the skills ought to transfer.

“A watch identical to this one was found on the man who killed Delilah,” he presses. “Was that yours, too?”

“What? N-no!” Cooper’s eyes fly to his, panicked. “Look, she – we were – ” He sets his hands on the table, takes a breath. “You were right, okay? We – had a thing going on on-set. She gave me the watch at the wrap party, like I said, and I – I broke it off. She wanted me to leave my wife, and I…” He shakes his head. “But that’s it, I swear. We haven’t spoken since then. I would never have hurt her, I swear.” His eyes dart to Bill, still smiling that razor-edged smile. “I swear.”

“Where were you around midnight last night?” Dipper says quietly.

“Home. With my wife! Look, call her – call her and ask.” He scrabbles for his phone, unlocks it, slides it across the table. “Call her right now!”

Bill reaches for the phone; Dipper has to smack his wrist away. “We’re not gonna do that,” he says. “We’ll take her details and contact her to see if she can confirm your story.” He can see Bill gearing up to object, and levels him with a look that’s two parts We talked about this, asshole, to one part I think I know what’s going on here. We’ll talk about it later.

To his surprise, Bill quirks an eyebrow, folds his arms, and settles back in his chair. He doesn’t say anything else as Dipper wraps up with Cooper and sends him on his way; it’s not until they’re on their way back to the car that he pipes up again. “So why aren’t we arresting Fifty Shades of Bray over there?”

“It was Fifty Shades of Donkey Stabling,” Dipper says absently, although he has to admit Bill’s version would have made a much catchier name. “And he didn’t do it. We’ll check his alibi, but, I mean…” He rubs the back of his neck. “For one, there was no reason for him to lie about the watch. Why would Delilah give someone two identical watches?”

“He could have bought the other one,” Bill protests. “You people love shiny things.”

“To give to a drug dealer?” Dipper shakes his head. “Anything that expensive and distinctive will have a purchase record visible from space. If he bought either of them, we’ll know in the next half-hour, but I really doubt it. And for two…I mean,” he pauses, slightly abashed, “you saw the guy. Even bad liars usually lie better than that. I just – don’t think he was hiding anything.”

Bill clicks his tongue, thinking it over.

“He did seem pretty lacking in initiative for a guy who wants to be President,” he says at last.

“I wish him all the best with his campaign.” Dipper lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “Come on. I’ll give you a ride back to Lux.”

“Can I ride up front this time?”

“Absolutely not.”

Cooper’s alibi checks out – his wife and several of his staff are able to confirm it before they even arrive back in the city. Exactly what he expected, but it still makes Dipper’s heart sink; they’re pretty much right back where they started.

Perhaps that’s why, despite being mere inches from being able to walk out of Bill Cipher’s life for good, he accepts the other man’s invitation inside.

He hadn’t really examined the interior of Lux last night beyond noting that it was pretty ironically dark in there. But the club is quiet now, mid-afternoon light drifting through the windows, so he takes a second to fully appreciate how tacky it is. The entire place screams opulence and excess, from the chandeliers to the tiny black-and-gold triangular tiles that cover the walls. It’s a maximalist nightmare. Maybe he should bring Mabel here the next time she visits.

The only other person around is the bartender, who mostly seems annoyed to have been distracted from watching the TV on the main floor; she mutes it and introduces herself as Ronnie. She has dark brown skin, with a few patches of what look like vitiligo wrapping, almost flamelike, around her lower arms, and bright pink hair that violently matches the rest of her outfit. She’s also at least six feet tall and wearing high heels. Again, Dipper thinks of Mabel, half an inch taller than him since they were twelve and constantly wearing platform shoes to make the most of it. For a second, his heart squeezes painfully.

“You said something earlier about Delilah,” he says to Bill as they settle into seats at the bar. “That Jimmy couldn’t… handle her? What did you mean?”

Bill thinks for a second.

“I coulda told her it was going to be a mistake,” he says. “It made sense with her choice of profession, and hell knows she was never a great judge of character, but…” He shrugs. “I gotta give it to her – she had incredible control of her voice, even before she asked me for help. She used to sing here; she’d have driven half the clientele insane if she hadn’t known what she was doing.” A flash of his grin. “I tried to persuade her! But she was never any fun like that.”

Dipper stares at him, momentarily speechless.

“You’ve, uh, lost me,” he says at last.

Bill accepts a glass of something bright blue from Ronnie. It’s garnished with two maraschino cherries, an olive and what looks like an anchovy. “That shit bleeds out of you, is all. Hard to make a long-term relationship with a human work if any emotion in your voice hits them straight in the amygdala! She needed someone way better adjusted, or at least willing to learn.”

“What he means,” Ronnie says, slapping a Pitt Cola down on the bar and sliding it in Dipper’s direction, “is that you can make it pretty easily as a human pop star if you’re a siren, but it’s hell on your personal life.” She smirks a little. “Case in point, I guess.”

Dipper tries to take a drink from the cola, realises too late that he hasn’t opened the can, and sets it numbly back down on the bar.

“Delilah was a siren?”

“Hm?” Bill is methodically eating the garnishes out of his drink. Dipper has to look away as he reaches the anchovy. “Of course. You didn’t know that?”

A spark of pain fizzes merrily along Dipper’s right temple, and he takes a second to consciously relax his jaw. “Did you not think,” he says slowly, “that the fact that your friend the murder victim was not human might have been relevant information to the detective on her case?”

“Why?” Bill’s teeth crunch into the cocktail stick, making Dipper wince. “She was killed by massive organ failure and blood loss from a bullet or three. Far as I know, that works on humans pretty much the same.” He gestures with the mangled fragment of wood. “Besides which, most of you wouldn’t believe that the literal devil was standing in front of you if he explicitly identified himself. Twice.” He meets Dipper’s eyes. “Why would I waste my time trying to get basic cryptozoology through your heads?”

Dipper doesn’t even know where to start with that. He opens his mouth to try anyway, but Ronnie clears her throat before he can.

“As much fun as this is,” she says, and points at the TV, “you might wanna see this.” She unmutes the sound.

“ – and Ain’t Muffin Without You, Delilah’s lead single for the Much A-Duke About Muffin soundtrack, has peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100,” the news announcer is saying. “Barnes Records, who retain the rights to most of her discography, say they’re planning memorial releases of two albums – ”

The rest of the sentence goes straight over Dipper’s head; he’s flipping back through his memory at high speed.

That woman made me crazy…

I lost everything when I lost her, not just money…

The watch in Eddie Deacon’s car; the pale patch of skin on Jimmy’s wrist. The haggard, haunted look in his eyes.

Bill’s gaze meets his, a moment of mutual recognition.

Dipper pushes himself to his feet and snags his keys off the bar.

“Well?” he says. “Are you coming or not?”

The drive to Barnes Records is short and tense; Dipper can’t even bring himself to protest when Bill gets in the passenger seat. He all but flings himself out of the car when they stop, leaving his keys in the ignition and Bill behind.

It takes the other man a moment to catch up with him; when he does, Dipper notices that his suit jacket is missing. He’s rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and undone his first two buttons, flattening the collar down slightly. There’s another of those tattoos on the back of his neck.

“Gotta have all the eyes you can get,” he says in response to Dipper’s quizzical look. Dipper’s skin creeps; he decides not to ask any more questions.

The Barnes Records building has seen better days. It was clearly styled ambitiously once upon a time – marble floors, intricate moulding on the walls – but it has the vaguely dusty feel of a place cleaned only sporadically, and the furniture is about ten years out of date. The only sign of life in the foyer is one bored-looking receptionist who clearly does not appreciate having their game of Sweets Demolition interrupted by two strangers. (“Third floor,” they say flatly when Dipper asks for Jimmy, their eyes sliding right back to their phone. Dipper thinks it might actually have been ruder of him to thank them.)

Jimmy is alone, tapping vaguely at a keyboard. He looks up when they burst in, but doesn’t stand.

“LAPD,” Dipper says. He’s being curt, but the lift was out of service; making him run up two flights of stairs might be Jimmy’s biggest crime of all. “We need to ask some questions about Delilah.”

“Leave me alone,” Jimmy says heavily, a little slurred. Dipper can see a half-empty bottle of bourbon sitting on the floor next to the desk. Great. “I’m grieving.”

“I bet,” Dipper says steadily. “You took quite a blow when Delilah left you, didn’t you? That must have been hard.”

“It was everything,” Jimmy breathes. “She – she took – ”

“Sweet mountains of madness,” Bill groans from somewhere near the door. “We get it, you sad little skeleton wetsuit. You loved her, her voice made you feel things, she took it away, you had her killed, now you feel conflicted because you can’t even commit to the whole ‘spurned-lover’ bit.” He throws his hands in the air. “Are we right, or is there anything interesting about your dumb little murder?”

“It wasn’t all about the money, but the money was part of it,” Dipper says. He and Bill are going to have words about how to talk to suspects later. “Losing her from your label tanked your profits. Which is why you had to pay the killer with the watch she gave you.”

“That bitch owes me,” Jimmy breathes, lurching to his feet. Dipper’s eyes follow him uneasily. “She got what she deserved. I’m not fuckin’ going down for this – I won’t – ”

The desk is huge and piled high – papers, food wrappers, other junk. Which is why Dipper doesn’t see the gun until a split second too late.

There’s pain, because of course there is. Two searing spikes of it, right through his chest, filling his lungs when he tries to breathe – icy but also molten, like the burn of walking barefoot on sun-bleached sand. You could choke on pain like that; you could drown in it.

(The air wheezes and bubbles in his lungs. That’s probably not a good sign.)

Mixed in with the pain is an odd sort of numbness, spreading down his left side. Dipper tries to look down at himself, and realises that he’s on the floor, that the ache radiating through his lower back is from his impact with the marble. I didn’t need to do that, he thinks, slightly hysterically. You don’t have to fall down when you get shot. We learned that from movies.

The ringing in his ears makes picking out any other sounds difficult, but he hears two more vague popping sounds – more shots. Slowly, agonisingly, he tucks his elbows underneath his body, levers himself just a fraction more upright – the spikes in his chest flare and scream – and lets his shoulders sag against the wall behind him. Just making contact with a new surface is painful enough that his vision blurs, but when it clears, he’s vaguely propped up, and he can see…

It’s hard to really react to anything from his current vantage point, but Dipper still feels his eyes widen. Because Bill is hit, he can see the dark wet spray on the floor behind him, and he feels an icy split-second shock of concern, but it doesn’t last, it can’t last, because the other man is somehow, inexplicably, moving with purpose, turning towards him –

Dipper’s fists clench involuntarily. His feet scrabble weakly, uselessly, for purchase on the blood-slick stone.

The left side of Bill’s chest has almost completely caved in. There are red dots standing out vividly against the white of his shirt, but not nearly as much blood as Dipper would have expected, because he’s not –

The space is full of what could only be described as a yellow-edged, pulsating blackness, except that’s not quite right – no, the dark mass is alight, somehow, at once organic and almost glitching in its movement, like a low-res digital composition of an oil slick. It’s almost beautiful; it’s definitely nauseating. For a second, Dipper stares, entranced, and then his gaze drags itself away, upwards, towards the face –

There’s a gash on Bill’s forehead, and his face is streaked with grime and gore. The eyepatch is missing; he has one hand pressed over the eye it covered. That strange tattoo stares implacably out at the scene before him. There’s something dark and viscous dripping sluggishly from under his hand that Dipper, against all odds, really hopes is more blood.

And he’s still grinning.

His eye sweeps down over Dipper, and he tuts – somehow that noise reaches him, although Dipper can barely hear the laboured rasp of his own breath – and leans down, reaching out.

Dipper hears a low, agonised whine; it takes him a moment to realise it’s coming from him. His shoulders jerk faintly, ineffectually, against the wall.

“Oh, grow up,” he hears Bill say, as if from very far away. “You’re gonna be fine – ” as if that’s Dipper’s biggest problem right now, trust this asshole to upstage being shot as a going concern “ – and anyway, we are not finished yet.” He presses two long fingers against Dipper’s forehead; the blackness inside him ripples and churns, and when he pulls away, Dipper feels…

…about the same. But something seems to have shifted, a little bit. He doesn’t feel like he’s about to come apart anymore.

“There.” Bill taps the tip of his nose with one finger – seriously? – and straightens up, grin widening. “Don’t go anywhere, okay? I’ll take care of this.”

He turns away, pulls his hand from his face and cracks his knuckles. Then he rounds on Jimmy, who chokes as he sees that ruined face, trying to scramble backwards.

“You know,” Bill says, “I’m supposed to be retired. The whole ‘punishing the guilty’ thing was funny the first time – even the first few million! – but I was pretty done, you know? Not even my choice of career to begin with.”

“I’m sorry,” Jimmy whispers. “Please, I’ll do anything – ”

“After all,” Bill continues, ignoring him, “morality is a construct. And it’s not even a cool one! You ever see a fourth-dimension railway interchange? The signage alone is enough to pull a mind apart and stitch it back together inside out. That’s a construct. Why should I care what you gross little skin-sacks do to each other?” He sighs theatrically. “Oh, but I was good, though. Give me a mortal with a guilty conscience, I’ll spin you a torture that would make Dante blush. And I did. You shoulda seen what didn’t make it into those books.”

“Delilah wouldn’t want this.” Jimmy’s voice cracks on the last two words. “You can’t – please, you can’t kill me – ”

“Oh, I definitely can.” Dipper doesn’t need to see Bill’s sneer to recognise it. “And you’ll definitely wish I did! But that’s the problem with human minds, I guess. Too narrow. No vision. You think you know what makes a good punishment – a fair punishment – but guess what? You don’t.” The churning mass inside him roils, sickeningly, one last time, and his hands burst into brilliant blue flame. “I do.”

Dipper feels warmth on his face, and faint pressure. He smells something ugly and acrid. The last things he hears before the world greys out around him are Jimmy’s screaming, sobbing pleas, and Bill’s laughter, raining down on him like cut glass.

Dipper’s entire upper body is one solid ache, throbbing and insistent. His mouth feels like sandpaper that was, at some point, soaked in the mystery liquid at the bottom of every trash can. He smells bleach, disinfectant, and smoke.

Worst of all, someone seems to have glued his eyelids shut. He forces them open, millimetre by treacherous millimetre.

White on white, or at least faint grey. He’s flanked on each side by metal railings, and there’s a soft, steady electrical beeping coming from somewhere nearby. Hospital, his mind supplies helpfully. He tries to grope for one of the bed rails, pull himself upright, and stops when his right arm screams in protest; a look down shows it taped securely against his side. Shuffling his hips backwards works marginally better; his back isn’t happy about it, but it leaves him propped up slightly more upright, at least.

“Well, you took long enough.”

Dipper starts, his eyes flying towards the source of the voice. Bill is sitting in the plastic chair near the bed; his eye is closed, but he has one hand outstretched along the arm of the chair, facing out towards the door. His eyepatch is back in place and seemingly undamaged; he’s wearing a fresh suit, and his face is pristine. He opens his eye and stands in one fluid motion, no evidence of pain or injury.

The left side of his chest caved in, the ruin of his face, the blackness –

“Your sister is on her way,” Bill says, rolling his shoulders a couple of times. “They said it might take her a couple of days; sounds like she was somewhere in Poland when they found her. That was yesterday, though. She oughta be here soon.”

Mabel. Dipper bites his lip hard enough that he tastes copper. “Did they say anything about – ” Don’t. There’s no need to give – whatever this is – any more ammunition than he has already. “How long have I been out?” His voice is a gravelly rasp; he coughs and grimaces.

“Twenty-five years,” Bill says solemnly. “Not much has changed, but we live underwater.”

Dipper gives him an unimpressed look.

Bill snickers. “I’d say Jimmy took out your sense of humour along with part of your thorax, but we both know you never had one to begin with.” He takes a step towards Dipper, dragging the plastic chair along with him. “It’s been about three days. They said I got you here just in time, so you’re welcome – and by the way,” he stops at the head of the bed, “nice ink, Pine Tree.” He jerks his head vaguely in the direction of Dipper’s torso. “What, were you worried you’d forget your own last name?”

Dipper feels heat creeping up his chest, and he glares. The tattoos had been Mabel’s idea, the summer before she’d left for college, something for them to do together and take with them while they were apart. Hers was a shooting star on her inner right forearm, a motif she’d been stitching into her sweaters for years. He’d gone for something easier to hide under a shirt, a pine tree just under his collarbone, mimicking the design on the trucker hat he’d worn throughout his first summer in Gravity Falls. It’s personal. Bill has no right.

“What did you do to Jimmy?”

“You’re worried about him?” Bill looks genuinely slightly baffled by the question. “Did you forget the part where he’s a murderer?” A faint frown creases his forehead. “Wait, you do remember he’s a murderer, right? And that he shot you? I didn’t think there was any serious interruption to your cerebral blood supply, but you guys are such a weird mix of fluids and jellies, it’s kinda hard to tell – ”

“I remember what happened,” Dipper interrupts, filled with a sudden wistful longing for the relative peace of his coma. “That doesn’t mean I wanted – ”

“Don’t kill me, please, I’m sorry, I’ll do anything – ”

“ – whatever it was that happened to him.” He closes his eyes for a second, takes a breath. “Is he – did you – ”

- blue fire in Bill’s hands, smoke and heat and pressure, laughing, laughing, laughing –

“Relax.” Bill rolls his eye, looking faintly disgusted. “I know my own business, okay? Revenge killings are fun, but they’re usually not effective.” A brilliant, chilling smile spreads over his face. “Much better to give someone…an idea of what they did. Of what it means.” He shakes his head slightly, looking deeply pleased with himself. “Don’t worry, kid. Jimmy Barnes is alive and well and safely in police custody. By his own choice! He was begging to be taken in by the time your guys showed up.”

Rarely has Dipper ever been so comprehensively reassured and unnerved at the same time. But he does have to admit that it’s hard to summon up too much sympathy for Jimmy, remembering how quick he was to blame Delilah for her own murder. Things could probably have turned out worse.

“Okay.” He rubs a hand over his face, grimacing slightly at the feel of three-day-old stubble. God, he’s going to have to ask Mabel to help him shave; that might actually be more hazardous to his health than armed confrontation with a criminal. “Thanks. I think.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” Bill pushes the chair into position and drops into it, propping his elbows on the bed railing. “There’s still the matter of our unfinished business, Detective.” His smile is all teeth. “I think it’s about time we had a little chat. Don’t you?”

Chapter Text

Mabel stays for two months, and it’s everything he could have asked for. She cleans the apartment and does his laundry, and he only finds a tiny bit of glitter in his clothes afterwards. She cooks and cleans up the disaster scenes she leaves in her wake. She drives him to his physical therapy appointments and takes him out for brunch after and listens to him complain about how much he hates physical therapy. She lets him pick what they’re watching every night and only whines about his selections when she knows he’ll find it funny.

(He doesn’t ask about their parents. She doesn’t mention it.)

She sits with him when he needs company and steps out of the apartment when she thinks he needs time to himself. She helps him shave and only cuts him, like, four or five times before they give up and go shopping for an electric razor; she helps him wash and barely blanches at the grisly sight of his chest and back, treating the wounds instead with a breezy, exaggerated disregard that he wouldn’t know was forced if he didn’t know her. The day after the appointment where they’re told Dipper will be getting the cast off his arm soon, he wakes up from a nap to find that she’s quietly bought him a selection of flannel shirts and zip-up hoodies.

“You have a chest injury,” she says. “I know you’re getting better, and I know you have a whole uniform thing going, but trust me – you’re gonna want to avoid things that need pulling over your head for the next few months.”

It’s the most thoughtful thing anyone has done for him in years.

He hates it.

He hates all of it, and it’s so unfair, because he needs this – he is in pain, and he does need help, and as much as he loves his sister, Mabel at her full Mabel-ness would have been too much for him right now, and he might hate that most of all. They haven’t occupied as much as the same continent for two years, and, damn it, he has missed her so much. He had had visions of her coming back glowing, full of stories about her accomplishments from her time away, and him showing her the city he’s made his home, happy, relaxed, confident.

He didn’t want to be this version of himself, meeting this version of her.

It's not just that she’s obviously toning down some of her wackier impulses to help him feel comfortable while he heals. They haven’t really lived together since Mabel left for Europe, and that was over eight years ago. Being around her like this, on a daily basis – especially with not much else to do and, at least for the first few weeks, really not enough energy to do anything that might involve leaving the apartment – gives him a lot of time to notice all of the ways she’s changed. She takes her coffee with less sugar. She has opinions about cheese and beer and the correct ways to make tea and eat a scone. A few days after she arrives, he walks in on her having an animated video chat in what sounds like German. Because Mabel speaks what-sounds-like-German now. Apparently.

And of course she does. She’s been bouncing around Europe for nearly ten years. It would be weirder if she hadn’t picked up any other languages. It would be weirder if she hadn’t changed at all, if she hadn’t made herself a life where she went, if that life hadn’t been big and rich and complex, if it hadn’t included new friends who he doesn’t know but who are apparently important enough for her to call days after her brother has been shot.

And of course he’s having some messed-up feelings about it, too, because he has just been shot. It would be weirder if he didn’t feel scratchy and gross and uncomfortable in his own skin, if his emotions were all appropriate and predictable, if Mabel’s soft smiles and deliberate gentleness didn’t make him want to ram his stupid useless fist through a wall. If he didn’t resent his sister for both having her own life and for putting that life on hold, unasked, for two months, all because he’s hurt and she loves him.

He really wishes he could have been weirder about this.

Two weeks before Mabel is due to leave, he finds her crying in the living room. The lights are off and she has her sweater pulled up over her face, and he’s about to ask why she’s sitting in Sweater Town in the dark, but then he hears her hiccup softly and sob, and he knows why.

God help him, he turns and goes back to his room.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“This again?” Bill makes a disgruntled noise. “Kid, if I wanted you dead, all I had to do was nothing. You were shot in the chest – and that wasn’t even me! – in a burning building, which, I mean, you gotta admit that office was a fully operational collection of fire hazards. All those electronics.” He trails off, wistful.

This is an admittedly good point, which doesn’t mean Dipper has to like it. He shuts his eyes for a second, takes a deep breath through his nose.

“Okay,” he says. “So why didn’t you?”

There’s a moment’s silence. Dipper opens his eyes to see Bill staring at him, incredulous.

“You’re kidding me,” he says.

“Uh.” Dipper has no real answer to that. “I’m not?”

“Seriously?” Bill makes an annoyed, abortive gesture. “Aren’t you supposed to be a detective?”

Is he serious? Dipper actually laughs, a short, bitter sound that ends with a small coughing fit. He scrubs his left fist over his eyes.

“Dude,” he says. “Maybe devil comas work differently – “

“Demon, technically,” Bill chimes in. “Devil’s a courtesy title.”

“ – but I’ve been unconscious for three days,” Dipper finishes wearily. “I don’t even know what time it is. I’m not – detecting right now.”

“Seven-oh-five,” Bill supplies. “P.M.”

“Great.” The pain behind his right temple is back, curling tenderly around his eye socket. “That really helps. I know exactly why you decided to drag me out of the building you set on fire now.”

“Carried you, actually,” Bill says happily. “You bled all over me. I was pretty impressed – I thought you’d be outta fluids by that point, but I guess it was just the angle – ”

“Please – stop talking about my fluids.” They’re getting off-topic, and Dipper does not want to think about his life literally being in Bill’s hands for a second longer than he has to. He digs the heel of his hand into his temple, willing the pain to subside.

“You wanted to talk,” he says, slowly, after a moment. “So talk, Bill. Why hand Jimmy over to the police? Why not just let me die? Why are you here?”

“Jeez. Fine.” Bill’s smile is thin, all edge. He settles back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other. “Fact is, kid, it would be stupid of me to kill you before I’ve figured you out.”

“What do you – ”

“Come on, Detective.” Bill leans forward, his eye focused on Dipper’s face. “You’ve noticed it too. I don’t work on you, do I?” He lays one hand delicately on the bed railing. “I appeal to some of the – baser instincts in your average human. Y’know, your envies, your greeds, your lusts. You can’t help it! Some of you are tougher nuts to crack than others, but everyone’s got something they want, and when I’m around, it comes out. One way or another. I can do pretty much what I want with most human minds, but you…” He shakes his head. “You’re as human as they come. I checked! But your mind’s not…on my wavelength. You haven’t had any experimental brain surgery, have you?”

This is a lot to take in; Dipper’s going to need time to process all of it, but he resolves right then and there to not ask exactly how Bill checked that he was human. “Uh. Not to my knowledge?”

“No demonic possession?” Bill starts idly walking his fingers up Dipper’s cast. “Run-ins with sorcerers, angelic beings, oversized cosmic salamanders?” He strikes like a snake, his grip suddenly intense and unrelenting, digging his fingers into Dipper’s injured shoulder. “Did that loathsome little amphibian send you? Did they?”

“Nobody sent – ” The pain is blinding, he can’t even try to pull free, fuck – “Let go of me,” he pants. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! This is not not-killing-me behaviour!”

Bill’s grip tightens further for a second – a noise Dipper can’t even really identify grinds out of his chest – and then releases. He pulls his hand back, looking contemplative. He’s not even breathing hard. Dipper is covered with a thin sheen of sweat.

“Eh, whatever,” he says. “You could be lying, but I’ll find out if you are. And that’ll make it so much worse for you!” The prospect seems to give him energy. “Here’s what’s gonna happen, kid. You’re about to get a promotion! From the LAPD’s lowliest, nerdiest, most pathetic detective – ”

“I am not – ”

“ – to my lowliest, nerdiest, most pathetic sidekick!” Bill’s face is lit up, his grin eye-hurtingly brilliant. “I wanna offer you a deal.”

Mabel is leaving in two days. She's not actually flying back to London yet - she's heading down to Oregon first to see Waddles (and Grunkle Stan, his current caretaker) – but she’s declared she wants to do something “American” before she leaves L.A. She wants to go to The Cheese Factory.

“Don't they have cheese in England?” Dipper asks, slowly levering on his boots.

“Of course they do!” Mabel ties off the end of her plait and lets it fall with a flourish. Despite the mid-October warmth, she's wearing her newest sweater: it's dark green, showing an image of a pig backing out of a garage, shamefaced. The caption underneath reads “PORCHEGGIO VIETATO”. “But that's England cheese, y’know? They have five different degrees of cheddar sharpness! Regional cheeses made to centuries-old family recipes! I want American cheese, done the way we do it best.” She pumps a fist in the air. “Melted.”

So they go to The Cheese Factory. It's a Tuesday afternoon and early for lunch, so the restaurant is quiet, which makes it uncomfortably obvious that Mabel has fallen silent as well. She's taking even longer than usual to inevitably decide that she wants the three-cheese fondue with two extra cheeses, and she's torn her napkin into so many shreds that Dipper wants to throw them in the air like confetti, just to try and make any of this feel like normal Mabel behaviour.

“Are you okay?” he asks, watching her flip through her menu. “You’ve ordered three different sodas.”

“Gotta stay hydrated.” Mabel gives him a wan smile. “You know what you’re having yet?”

“Cheese steak.” Dipper sets his menu to one side. “You’re having the three-cheese fondue, extra Monterey and pepperjack. You’ve ordered it every time we’ve come here since – ”

“Hey, don’t rush me!”

“We’ve been sitting here for twenty minutes, Mabel!” Dipper smacks the table in frustration, sending a jolt of pain up his injured arm. Bad start to life with both hands back. “You’ve sent the server back, like, five times. Aren’t you embarrassed?”

“Oh, am I embarrassing you?” A hint of temper flares in Mabel’s eyes.

“No! I mean – that’s not what I said.” Instantly, Dipper feels guilty. He’d thought, on some level, that an argument would be better than Mabel’s quiet, unhappy restraint. It’s not. “I just – I can tell something’s wrong.” He can’t quite keep the pleading out of his voice.

Mabel’s shoulders hunch defensively. She turns to look out of the window, stays silent for a long moment.

“I defended my thesis,” she says at last, quietly. “I’m graduating next spring.”

“What?” Of all the things he might have expected to hear, this wasn’t one of them. “But – that’s great! Why didn’t you tell me?”

Mabel’s shoulders tense a little further. She digs her phone out of her pocket, unlocks it and starts stabbing methodically at the screen.

“Mabel?”

Silence for another thirty seconds or so as she flicks through a few windows. Eventually, she finds what she’s looking for, sighs deeply and slides the phone across the table towards him. She still won’t look him in the eye.

Dipper picks up the phone. It’s open to an email, dated the day after his run-in with Jimmy. It reads:

Subject: Re: Graduation

Hey pumpkin,

Good news re: your masters, finally. Your father and I have a conference in Belize next April, so we’ll have to wish you well from afar – but mazels anyway!

Love,
Mom

P.S. Can you check on your brother? We had a call from UCLA Medical; he’s had a workplace incident. They said he’ll be fine, but he might need someone around for a little while.

Dipper reads this a few times. Then he stares, unblinking, at the text for a few moments. Then he tries to scroll down beyond the bottom of the screen, in case more words might materialise. They don’t.

“This is how you found out?” He’s pretty sure he knows the answer; he still needs to be sure. Mabel nods, her mouth set in a thin, unhappy line.

Benjamin and Madeline Pines separated just after their children turned thirteen, adding a nice extra layer of emotional complication to the transition to high school. It didn’t last – their father moved back in a year or so later, and they never made much of a secret of going to couples counselling together. In theory, it should have been a brief, unsavoury footnote in their family history.

Dipper’s given up trying to unpack exactly what happened.

“We need to spend more time together,” they’d explained when Mabel had asked why they were going back to Gravity Falls the summer they were fifteen. “Otherwise we’d just be staying together for the kids, you know? And you two have always taken good care of each other.”

(Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t. Dipper maintains it was kind of a messed up thing to say to a pair of fifteen-year-olds.)

It’s not that their parents don’t love them. If Mabel had said she couldn’t make it over, one of them would probably have come instead. If they’d thought there had been a risk Dipper might not pull through, he’s sure they would have turned up.

It’s more that they live separate lives: him and Mabel, and then their parents. He tried during his first year at UCLA, calling every weekend, going home for holidays (gritting his teeth through the arguments, texting furiously under the table), but it never quite felt right. It was like they didn’t know what to do with him without Mabel there; they would either try to take care of him the way they assumed she did, or try to be his friend the way she was, assuming a kind of mocking familiarity they hadn’t earned. And he hadn’t really known what to do with that, so he’d gone back to Gravity Falls that summer, and they hadn’t seemed to mind.

And now it’s just sort of…how they are. He doesn’t call, and neither do they; they text on birthdays, Hanukkah, Christmas, and that’s about it. Piedmont is seven hours from Los Angeles, but they’ve never seen his apartment, and he hasn’t been home since he moved here.

He and Mabel don’t really talk about their parents anymore, but he knows it’s been hard for her, as well. Mom and Dad fought against her leaving in a way he never did; he’d been sad about it, but ultimately he’d understood. They didn’t. Sometimes, he thinks they’d have found it easier to take if he’d gone as well, that what had scared them so badly about her leaving was that he wasn’t, that they were going to have to imagine their two children as separate people, rather than…you know. The twins.

He's heard their father say before that if Mabel hadn’t left, they might still be a family. He’d always hoped nobody had ever said that to Mabel herself. Looking at this, he fears that hope may have been in vain.

None of that makes this any better. They should have called him; they should have called her, if only to make sure everyone was on the same page about what was going to happen to him. And they shouldn’t be brushing off her getting her Masters like it’s nothing, when he knows how hard she’s worked, and for how long.

They both deserved better.

He hands the phone back. They sit in silence for a moment longer.

“Should I call them?” he says at last.

Mabel shakes her head. “I don’t think that would help,” she says, resigned. “I came, right? So they got what they wanted. I mean – ”

“Not about that.” It does sting a bit that him getting shot in the line of duty didn’t merit more than a line or so of postscript, but Mom’s been communicating with them like that for years; he’s used to it. Mabel’s here for him, just like he knew she would be, just like they always have been for one another – he needed that more, and ultimately, he has it. “You spent years working towards this, Mabel. They should at least try to show up for your graduation.”

Mabel’s face crumples, just for a second. She swallows hard.

“It’s so stupid,” she says thickly. “I’m so stupid.”

“Mabel…”

“No, I am.” She drags the back of her hand angrily across her face. “I knew they were gonna be like this. They’ve been like this for years. They don’t care about my – ” She waves her hands expansively. “ – any of it. It is what it is. You know?” She swallows again, and sniffs. “If they didn’t show up for the first one, they were never gonna care about this. I just…I thought…” She stares miserably at the water-stained tabletop. “They’re our parents,” she says. “I thought it might be different this time.”

Mabel sees the best in everything and everyone, in spite of everything they’ve been through. It’s one of the greatest and least explicable things about her. Sometimes Dipper forgets that there’s a flipside to that – he envies his sister her ability to hold onto hope, forgetting that there are some hopes she’s kept long past their expiry dates. When those hopes are dashed, the disappointment hits her twice as hard – and the older they get, the worse it is, because now she feels like she ought to have known better.

But these are their parents. There shouldn’t be any shame in hoping your parents will come through for you.

For a second, Dipper hates them.

“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” Mabel is saying. “I can leave London pretty much whenever I want. I don’t have to go, either – ”

“Hey.” Dipper reaches across the table for her hand. “Yeah, you do. This has been your entire life for, what, four years? You deserve a graduation. And what about your friends, huh? You’d hate it if anyone wanted to say goodbye to you and didn’t get to.”

Mabel worries her lower lip between her teeth. She’s listening, but she doesn’t seem entirely convinced.

“Besides,” he continues. “I’ll be there, so it’s gonna look super weird if you’re not.” He smiles a little. “That would be pretty embarrassing.”

That earns him a watery snort. “Only if you’re a coward.” She wipes her eyes again with her free hand. “You mean it?”

Dipper’s been lukewarm on graduation ceremonies ever since high school (the Wolves Who Are Also Teens debacle came just in time to ruin that particular bit of teenage pageantry). It’s mostly just a list of names being read out, and it’s usually accompanied by some kind of social event for him to be awkward at. Finishing his college degree while working had given him an excuse to skip his own.

He squeezes Mabel’s hand. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Okay, then.” She takes one last deep breath, and then smiles at him – really smiles at him – for the first time that day. “Thanks, Dipper.”

They order. Dipper’s cheese steak is comfortingly underwhelming – every time, he’s drawn in by the fantasy of a perfectly melted center, and every time they somehow manage to cook it just shy of enough, so that it’s warm and rubbery with a vague suggestion of softness in the middle. He ends up stealing about a quarter of Mabel’s fondue instead.

“Just get your own next time,” she grumbles, flicking a bread cube at him. He grabs it off the tabletop, sweeps it through some of the congealed cheese on his plate and pops it into his mouth, just to prove a point. She retaliates by throwing more bread; he tosses a few cubes back at her, and one of them gets in one of her drinks, and suddenly they’re playing the world’s most chaotic one-on-one game of Bread-And-Soda Pong. He ends up having to down half a kiwi-lime soda, with attendant soggy carbohydrate. It is disgusting. Mabel doubles over with laughter at his face.

Later, as they’re waiting for their check, he realises that she’s studying him.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Her smile fades a little bit. “I mean…you’re gonna be okay, right? Do you need me to stick around any longer?”

“I’ll be fine.” He means it; his range of motion is getting better every day, he’s even been cleared to drive himself to his terrible physical therapy appointments. It’ll be good for him to remember how to function normally before his medical leave runs out.

It does remind him of something he’s been trying to figure out how to handle, though.

He hasn’t really discussed Bill with Mabel. The demon has sort of come up obliquely in conversation – Mabel obviously asked how Dipper got hurt, and that meant telling her how he survived, and he couldn’t cut Bill out of the story completely – but so far he’s mostly just a creepy blond man to her. Early in his recovery he was too tired to really think about how to frame it, and by the time he had the energy to consider telling her everything he’d been distracted by how weird she was acting.

They don’t tell each other everything – he only found out about some of those vampires in retrospect – and there’s a strong case here for not needing to worry her more than she already is. But she’s leaving soon, and he has no way of knowing how his…situation is going to pan out, and he really doesn’t want to end up explaining himself hurriedly over the phone six months down the line and having to also defend himself against never having mentioned any of this before.

“Actually, though,” he says, “while we’re talking about stuff, there’s something else I should probably fill you in on.”

“So let me get this straight.” Dipper has given up on trying to get rid of this headache without morphine, so it’s going to have to wait; he needs to be able to think clearly, to the extent that that’s possible right now. “You want to come along on my cases so you can figure out what makes me different from other humans?”

“If you wanna look at it in the most boring way possible, yeah.” Bill rolls his eye. “C’mon, Pine Tree – “

“ – don’t call me that – “

“ – gimme some excitement! Or some gratitude, at least. There are a million ways I could do this, and this is definitely in, like, the bottom ten per cent of Most Lethal Ones For You.” He thinks for a moment. “Eh, maybe twenty per cent.”

This is probably true, in a roundabout way. Bill is also trying to distract him from the substance of the deal. It might have worked on someone who hadn’t been taught how to negotiate by a conman.

“Okay,” Dipper says, slowly. “And what happens if you do figure it out?”

“When I figure it out,” Bill chides, “I guess that’ll depend on what, exactly, I find.” He taps his chin, thinking over the possibilities. “Maybe nothing,” he says. “Maybe you’ll get real lucky, and I’ll find something I like! I could be looking at my next Henchmaniac.” He grins, slowly. Dipper has some doubts as to whether he would agree that this would be lucky.

“And if I don’t get lucky,” he says. “Then what? You kill me?”

“Morbid little grab-bag of neuroses, aren’t you?” Something hitches infinitesimally in Bill’s smile; if Dipper hadn’t spent his last day or so of consciousness staring down the barrel of the demon’s grin repertoire, he’s not sure he would have noticed. “Why focus on the negative? We have no idea what’s up with you right now! Maybe you’re secretly unkillable! Maybe you’re a hivemind of nanobots that I can reconfigure into something useful!”

He pauses here, waiting expectantly for a response. Dipper folds his arms – well, arm – and waits right back. The silence rings faintly between them.

At last, Bill shrugs. “We might part on less-than-friendly terms, sure.” He waves a hand dismissively. “But think about it! If I’m around studying you, you get the chance to try and figure out what makes me tick, as well. Maybe you can figure out how to keep yourself alive at the end of all this.” He smirks. “Probably not. But it’s more of a chance than most people get!”

Twenty per cent is starting to sound pretty generous. Dipper shuts his eyes for a second.

“So you get to study me from close up,” he says, “and when you’re done, you get to try and… dispose of me… as you see fit.” He keeps as much emotion as he can out of his voice, aiming for vague disinterest. The current state of his vocal cords is doing a lot of heavy lifting here; he pretty much sounds like he’s inches away from death, but he’d probably still sound like that if he’d just been proposed to, or told he won the lottery. “What do I get?”

“Uh, only the best partner in the multiverse!” Bill does a sort of lazy jazz-hands motion, snickering at Dipper’s unmoved expression. “Think of all the criminals we could put away together, Detective. All the institutional powers we could abuse! It might end your career – and your life! – but with me on your side? We’ll make it one for the history books.” He sees that Dipper’s face is unchanged, and pulls a face of his own. “But if none of that is enough for you…” He raises his hands, the very picture of infernal magnanimity. “I guess we can talk terms. What do you want? Power? Money? Sex?” He looks Dipper over. “Probably not sex, huh. Maybe a psychic D20?”

Dipper ignores the jab. He’s trying to think.

There’s no way – or, rather, there are very few ways – that taking this deal ends well for him. At best, whatever makes him immune to Bill’s power will turn out to be something the demon thinks he can use, which is only going to make things harder. At worst, he’s living on borrowed time, and all Bill is doing is extending a new line of credit.

The only reason he’s considering it anyway is that Bill, once again, unfortunately has a point. He can say yes, and deal with a demon helping out with his cases while he tries to find out absolutely everything about him, or he can say no, and deal with a demon stalking him. He knows Bill is powerful; he’s also stinking rich (or possibly able to magic money out of thin air, which amounts to the same thing). There’s no way of knowing what kind of resources might be deployed against Dipper, if he makes this difficult.

And he can’t deny that there is something… perversely intriguing about the scenario Bill is proposing. He has resources of his own – he’s smarter than most people give him credit for – and he has a better idea than most would of where to start investigating. If he can play this right – if he’s thorough, and he keeps his guard up and his head clear…

Playing with human lives is well-trod territory for most any supernatural being. Not a lot of humans even get as far as being told they’re on the board, let alone a chance to compete – or win.

And if Bill is telling the truth about what he is – who he is – then he’s not just a demon, he’s the demon. And he’s offering Dipper a shot, however infinitesimally small, at beating him.

The man who defeated the devil…

He would be the first human to ever strike that kind of blow against an otherworldly force. The only mortal to pull anything like that off.

Nobody would be able to make him feel like he doesn’t matter, ever again.

“First of all, I want to set some boundaries,” he says. “If you work with me, we keep the same rules as the last case. This is my job. When we’re working a case, you follow my lead. No…rogue demon-ing.”

Bill makes a disgruntled sound, but he doesn’t argue.

“And,” Dipper continues, “this is just about the two of us. You’re looking into me; I’m looking into you. Nobody else is involved. That means you can’t use anyone else to get to me. Okay?”

It’s the closest he can get to putting a ‘stay away from my sister’ clause into this mess. He tries to keep his face neutral.

“Chaos and hellfire,” Bill groans, pressing a hand to his forehead. “You’re like a tax return with arms and legs and a head.” He sighs. “Fine, killjoy. I can work with that. Anything else?”

“The devil has been around since the beginning of mankind – ”

“Ha! I predate you hairless primates by millennia – ”

“ – which means you’re coming into this with more knowledge than me,” Dipper says firmly. “You promised me a chance at the end of all this; I want it. I want information.” His fingers clench in the blanket covering his lap. “For as long as we work together, you answer any questions I have about – you. Demons. Truthfully.”

“Hah!” Bill’s grin is sudden and dazzling. “That’s nearly smart, kid! Well done.” He steeples his fingers. “No dice, though. I’m the devil. I have more knowledge in one wrinkle of this stupid meat-brain than you could accrue over a million lifetimes. I know things you’d need five advanced degrees to begin to understand. I’m not some infinite wisdom vending machine you can try and tip over.”

Shit. Dipper consciously keeps his fingers from tightening any further on the blanket, tries to breathe. Can Bill hear the rate his heart is beating at? Is he breathing too fast?

You can do this, he tells himself sternly. Just think. What would Grunkle Stan do?

…okay, now take that down a couple of notches.

“I need something to level the playing field,” he says, and pauses for a moment. “Unless… you think you’ll need me at a disadvantage?”

“Careful, Detective.” Bill’s eye narrows. “I’m playing nice right now. Don’t try my patience.”

Yes. Dipper lets a hint of a smile touch his lips.

“Or what?” he asks. “You said it yourself: you can’t kill me until you figure me out. That’s not much incentive for me not to be honest with you when you’re being…you know. Kind of a co – ”

Bill glares at him. Dipper cuts the word off, but lets it come to an unhurried stop.

“Three questions a day,” he offers.

Bill’s face turns back to thoughtful. “One,” he says. “A month.”

Dipper pretends to think about it. “One a day.”

Silence. The smirk reappears, spreading across Bill’s face like syrup.

“How about this?” He crosses one leg over the other. “Each case we work on together is gonna tell me something about you. Mostly I think it’s gonna just be ‘I’m a boring mortal dork with no fashion sense’ over and over again, but, eh, that’s still science at work. So…” He holds up one finger with a delicate flourish. “One question per case, on the topic of your choosing. Asked and answered. No tricks.”

Dipper takes a second to mull this over.

“One question per case,” he agrees. “But I pick the question. If I just ask, like, ‘is that a bagel?’, you don’t get to claim that was my question – you have to check first.”

“What if I answer it truthfully?” Bill props a hand on his chin, smirk tugging at his lips.

“Cost of doing business.” Dipper shrugs – as best he can – again. “If you don’t check, that’s your problem, not mine.”

Bill snorts half-heartedly, his eye gazing into the middle distance. He’s thinking about it. Dipper fixes his eyes on a spot on the wall, trying to think about why that particular patch of plaster might be different from the plaster around it. Is it slightly discoloured? No, it’s just the light. Maybe the texture is –

“Okay.” Dipper’s eyes dart immediately back to the demon’s face. “You pick the questions – one per case. You’re Boss Detective, and our business stays between us. And you get exclusive access to the jewel in Hell’s crown into the bargain.” He straightens the lapels on his jacket. “I think I’ve been pretty freaking generous, Detective. Do we have a deal?”

And he holds out his hand.

Dipper hesitates. It’s not going to get better than this, he tells himself. I know it’s dangerous, but – there’s a chance, this way.

But –

“Tick tock, kid.” Bill’s smile takes on that bladed edge of annoyance again. “I’m a busy guy with a lot of interested clients. My offers are strictly time-limited.”

Okay. Okay. He’s doing this, or he’s not.

(He gives it an extra five seconds, against his own better judgement, just to watch Bill’s expression flit subtly between annoyance and disbelief a few more times.)

“…yeah.” His bravado immediately curdles uneasily in his stomach. “Yes. Okay. Deal.”

He takes Bill’s hand. It is warm, and firm, and altogether unremarkably hand-like. There’s no clap of thunder or explosion as they shake. If not for the circumstances, it wouldn’t even have been a particularly memorable handshake. Firm, but not too firm. Bill must shake a lot of hands.

God, he really must.

“Well, I’ll let you rest up,” Bill says, essentially the instant he’s released Dipper’s hand. “You got a lot of healing up to do! What were you thinking, keeping me chatting like that? Humans are so self-involved.” He leans over the bed as he rises and fully ruffles Dipper’s hair, making Dipper immediately regret not asking for enough jaw strength to be able to bite a man’s hand off at the wrist into their bargain. “You look after yourself, Pine Tree! I’ll see you at work.”

Talking Mabel through all of this takes some time.

They’re both a little tipsy by now. They’d decided to walk while they talked, and stumbled across a dive bar Mabel thought was cute, so they’d stopped for one drink, and one drink had turned into three, because in retrospect there was never going to be any getting through this conversation without some kind of chemical help. (For either of them; contemplating Bill sober is a heavy lift in and of itself, never mind explaining him to another person.)

Mabel is, predictably, not happy.

“You’re supposed to be the smart one,” she says, nearly knocking over her margarita as she gestures. “Making a deal with a creature is not smart! Don’t you remember what happened with the pixies in Piedmont?”

“Hey, those were pretty good deals,” Dipper protests.

“We got blacklisted by every colony in Rockridge!”

“Yeah, because that was the year you learned about signing things in triplicate, and most of our pens were bigger than any of them.” He smiles a little, then lets it fade. “I know it’s not great,” he says. “But he wasn’t gonna let it go, and he’s – you know.” He makes a face. “It seemed like the best I could do at the time.”

“I guess.” Mabel contemplates her drink for a minute, then finishes it in one swallow.

By the time they leave the bar, it’s early evening, and Mabel has given fake numbers to three different people. Well, two fake numbers; Dipper’s pretty sure she gave the last guy Grunkle Stan’s.

(“He talked about fishing for three straight minutes,” she’d said brightly. “I think they’ll have a lot in common.”)

Now they’re standing on a street corner, waiting for an Uber. Mabel sways a little in her ridiculous heels.

“So is he gonna, like… be a cop?”

“I don’t think so?” Dipper tries to imagine Bill interviewing for his job. Qualifications: long experience of crime. He snorts to himself. “But, I mean…” He sighs. “He makes people weird, Mabel. Like, he knows what they want, so they wanna give him what he wants. If he wants to play detective, I don’t think anyone’s gonna stop him.” He checks his phone. “Cab’s three minutes away.”

“Best brother,” Mabel declares, and gently faceplants into his good shoulder.

Later, as he’s lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, she knocks gently on his door.

“I’m awake,” he says. “What’s up?”

She opens the door and steps into his room, moving over to sit on the bed, pulling her legs up underneath her.

“You made a deal with the devil,” she says, accusingly.

Dipper sighs, letting his head fall back onto the pillow. “Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

“God.” She huffs, shakes her head. “That is so extra, brospacito. Couldn’t you have started smaller? Work your way up to trading your immortal soul for – ”

“He’s not getting my immortal soul,” Dipper interrupts. “I don’t – I actually don’t know what he’s getting. Neither does he.” He sighs. “I just…gotta make sure he doesn’t get it, I guess.”

“I guess.” Mabel sighs. “I know it was probably the best choice you had at the time. Just…” She frowns. “You only just got over being shot. You know?”

“I’ll be careful,” he says. “I’ve got some time to figure this out, I think. I mean, he doesn’t even know what he’s looking for. I’ll look through my old hard drives, and... you’ll help, right?” He peers up at her. ”You’ve seen a lot of stuff over the last few years.” It’ll be kind of nice to work on something with his sister again, even if it is, well, this.

“Of course I will!” Mabel brightens for a second, then looks down again.

“I’m gonna worry about you,” she says. “You know that, right? I mean, we’re adults, and you’re, like, the smartest guy in the world. You’ll be fine. I just…” She makes a disgruntled noise, flopping onto the mattress next to him. “I thought I was the reckless dumbass twin, bro. You can’t let me have anything.”

That makes him laugh a little, warmed by her concern. “I’m sorry.”

They lie in silence for a few seconds.

“You’re not, you know,” he says into the dark. “A dumbass.” He thinks for a moment. “I mean, the amount of times you forget that there’s edible glitter you could put in your drinks is a bit of a concern. But I…” He grimaces a little. This doesn’t come naturally to him. “I don’t like you thinking about yourself like that. You know it isn’t true.”

“Don’t try to distract me with emotional sincerity.” She doesn’t sound fully convinced, but he can hear the smile in her voice. “…thanks, though.”

More silence.

“I’m gonna ask Grunkle Stan to my graduation,” she says. “I don’t know if he’ll come – he’s not so great with travelling these days. But he might.”

“I figured.” Dipper rubs his forehead.

“He asks about you,” Mabel continues. “Every time we talk. You should call him.”

“Mabel…” Dipper sighs. “I really don’t think he wants to talk to me. You remember what he said after Ford’s funeral. He hates cops.”

“But he loves you,” she insists. “And he’s worried about you, too. When I told him why I was coming over, he pretty much freaked out, you know? I had to stop him from driving down from Oregon himself.”

Dipper hadn’t known that. He breathes deeply against the sudden tightness in his chest.

“I know it’s hard,” Mabel says gently. “He’s kind of – I mean, he can be a little – he’s Grunkle Stan. But he misses you.” The sheets rustle as she turns to peer at him. “And I know you miss him. Just…think about it.”

The tightness resolves into a loose, tender knot, tucked behind his sternum. Dipper doesn’t quite know what to say.

“Okay,” he manages in the end. “I’ll think about it.”

The bassline reverberating from downstairs rumbles against the floorboards, a comforting, syncopated heartbeat. Bill smiles, leans back in his chair, and takes a sip of his drink.

He might – might! – have been just about ready to be on the verge of thinking about giving up this whole venture. Five years of human-adjacent existence? It’s been instructive, for sure! But he’d been starting to get… not bored, exactly. Itchy. Like there’s something building up in his limbic system, a blockage in all those squishy little pipes and flues. (If he’d known installing a human-style brain was going to be this much trouble, he’d have manifested as an octopus or something. He would have been a great octopus.)

Much more of this, and he might have been forced to tell Pyronica she had a point. He hasn’t been quite himself lately. The urge to investigate Delilah’s death might have been the final straw, if it hadn’t brought him the Detective.

This twitchy, careful, observant little guy, whose mind is completely closed to him. Not fearless, not at all – if he turned the kid upside down and shook him he thinks the terrors might come spilling out of him like so many marbles – but aware of himself enough to act in spite of his fears, when he thinks it might count. Even with him, and even after getting a glimpse of what he’s actually capable of.

Bill’s instincts have never failed him yet. He came up here for a change of pace, as much as anything else – a sort of unauthorised furlough. This arrangement was never gonna let him take over in much of a meaningful way – although it’s amazing what you can do with a bank account and some persuasion skills! – but he’d always known, deep down, that there was something on Earth worth having. Something he wanted.

He's found it now. Solving the Detective is what he needs to get himself back on track. He’s going to find out what – and how – the kid is hiding. It’s gonna tell him everything he needs to know – about humans, about this world, about the loopholes he’s had to navigate to get here. This is going to change everything.

And once he’s done, he’s gonna crack that mind open like an oyster, and feast.

He’s toasting the brilliance of his plan when he hears the rhythm underneath him slow and distort. The colour bleeds out of the room, leaving only the brilliant yellow of today’s suit and the vibrant green of his drink.

Over the faded music, he can clearly hear the whirring and clicking of someone appearing behind him.

Bill rolls his eye in annoyance and tosses the rest of the beverage back, setting it down. He’s gonna need it for this conversation.

“Amenadiel,” he says, getting to his feet. “We gotta stop meeting like this! By which I mean, this is my club, and I didn’t invite you, and I don’t want you here. Don’t they teach basic social skills in angel school?”

Amenadiel ignores this, or seems to. For someone with at least six hundred eyes, he really doesn’t give a lot away, although one of his cogs does speed up a little in annoyance. Good.

This has been going on long enough, he says, half-unfurling one of his pairs of wings. You need to go back.

“Yeah, yeah.” Bill stretches upward, lazily, before dropping back onto his heels. “Multiverse is out of balance, consequences if I stay here any longer. Bad news, though – I just got myself a new project! Gotta see this one through, ya know? Big things on the horizon. Can’t take a trip home just yet.” He grins. “Or ever! Good talk, though. Same time next year?”

I mean it, Bill. The words drop into his head so heavily that he can see their ghosts behind his eyelid when he blinks. Do you have any idea what happens in Hell when its appointed guardian abandons it?

“Nope!” Bill adds an extra centimetre or so to his smile. “And I’m pretty sure I don’t care. Here’s an idea, though – if you’re so worried about them, why don't you take a trip downstairs? I hear there’s a leadership position open! Real high-profile. Have ’em take a look at your resume.”

I am warning you. Three of Amenadiel’s wheels speed up at once, spitting out a faint shower of sparks. I’ve been patient with you –

“Real big of you,” Bill interrupts, “considering literally nobody asked you to do this – ”

- but there are some things that are too big for even you to play with.

“As the bishop said to the actress,” Bill adds, cheerfully. All of Amenadiel’s eyes turn on him at once. He sniggers.

I’m done trying to reason with you, Bill, the angel intones, sombre as a cathedral bell. Consider this your final warning. If you refuse to heed your responsibilities, I will make you.

Before Bill can respond, the room around him blooms gratefully back into full colour. The pulse under the floorboards returns, full-force. Amenadiel is gone.

Bill mutters a curse, picks up his glass, and strides over to the door, yanking it open. Of course the feathery little prick had to have the last word.

Doesn’t matter, anyhow! What’s an angel gonna do to him? If Amenadiel wants to drag him back to Hell – which is the only way he’d be able to get him there – he’ll have to manifest the same way Bill did. He chuckles to himself at the thought. Even he had to adjust to everything that came with that particular bargain, and he’s been through hundreds of human vessels. He doesn’t think Amenadiel has ever possessed a single human.

This’ll go great! Nothing to worry about.

He has everything under control.

Chapter Text

Once Mabel has gone, Dipper gets to work. He has to wait out an additional month of desk duty, which ordinarily is something he’d find frustrating and demoralising; right now, it’s actually perfect. A clear month with no new cases and plenty of time to archive things.

He spends all of that time looking into Bill Cipher.

The administrative side of his investigation doesn’t turn up much that he didn’t already know, except that there’s absolutely no trace of the man until about five years ago, at which point he turned up out of seemingly nowhere, bought Lux and started congenially terrorising the local population. (There’s not much evidence of that, to be fair – Dipper is extrapolating based on personal experience – but he’s also pretty confident in his analysis.)

He looks into Ronnie as well, just to cover his bases, and finds an ID matching her description for a Pyronica X. Smokes, a name so obviously fake-sounding that he has to stare at the wall for a few minutes after he reads it for the first time. Is it this easy to create an identity? No wonder Grunkle Stan has done it so many times.

(He still hasn’t called his uncle. He’s trying not to think about it.)

So far, so… very little.

The research he’s doing on his own time isn’t turning up a great deal, either. He spends hours searching through his and Ford’s old records – digitising them had taken up most of his college summers, and now looking through them makes him curse his past self for not refining the internal search function. There are a few things that hint towards something possibly Bill-related – a few drawings of triangles with question marks around them, hastily scribbled out in the margins of other notes – but nothing concrete. He’s not surprised to not find much about the devil, either. Ford was a man of science; the devil is still mostly folklore, unless you are Dipper Pines and you’ve just had the weirdest two months of your life.

There’s a little on demons, though. Summoning (“NOT RECOMMENDED”), communing (“HIGHLY, EXTREMELY NOT RECOMMENDED”), and – yes. Banishment. Just enough to get him started down his own avenues of inquiry.

He starts simple – a quickly-sketched spirit board on a fragment of an old cardboard box, a carved wooden planchette Mabel brought back on one of her first visits home. Nothing fancy, and he’s not expecting a great deal; just a toe over the threshold of the other side, a chance to ask some basic yes/no questions. Proof of concept. He sets up a salt circle and some candles, just in case.

He gets as far as the second L in “BILL” before a chill wind whips through the salt, extinguishing the candles. The planchette, frankly, explodes; a fragment of it wings his temple as he ducks, covering his eyes. The biggest piece embeds itself in his bedroom wall; he spends a good ten minutes trying to pry it out, to no avail.

It's around this time that the eyes start showing up.

It takes him a few hours to notice the first one, scrawled as it is in the corner of one of the five takeout menus that come through his mailbox every week. It’s so small he almost didn’t spot it at all, except that this particular place changes their menu layout every single month, so he’s looking for where the logo is this time when he stumbles on the tiny, slit-pupilled triangle. (Tr-eye-angle. Eyeangle? He makes a mental note to workshop this with Mabel later.) There’s a battered, rusted grill sitting on his tiny balcony; he takes the menu outside and burns it, making sure that the symbol is ash before he goes back inside.

After that, he starts checking his mail more carefully. The eyes don’t come every day, but they do show up regularly, on envelopes or junk mail. One appears on a stamp, which raises a lot of questions. He burns them all.

Ford mentions having some success with using a spirit bowl to trap and repel demons, including detailed notes on the right protective incantations to inscribe and suggested ways to link the bowl to its target. Tracking one down is not easy – with his right arm still healing, he can't inscribe it himself, and finding someone willing to carve custom Aramaic into pottery takes a bigger chunk out of his savings than he'd have preferred – but the Internet comes through for him eventually.

He finishes it off himself, using a pyrography pen to burn that strange triangular symbol into the bottom. Then he drives the two hours to Joshua Tree and buries it under an ironwood at midnight. The desert is bitterly cold, and it takes him a while to bury the bowl to his satisfaction, but he eventually stomps back to his car, thoroughly chilled and triumphant.

He gets home around 4A.M, and the first thing he sees when he flips on his bedroom light is his bed covered in ash, grit, and fragments of singed pottery. He spends the rest of the night picking up pieces of spirit bowl and throwing out his ruined sheets.

When he leaves for work the next morning, he finds an eye scribbled on the wall in the stairwell of his apartment building. After a brief but alarmingly sincere debate with himself on the relative merits of evacuating the premises and burning the entire block down, he blacks it out with Sharpie.

(He still can’t get the wooden planchette fragment out of his wall. Eventually, he starts hanging his keys on it.)

On the nights he’s not fruitlessly searching for devil-banishment rituals, he goes to Lux. He avoids the bar, hoping not to alert Ronnie to his presence, but on the night of his third visit she appears by his seat with a tray and eases a long-stemmed glass of something lemon-drop yellow onto the table in front of him with businesslike efficiency.

“He told me to make you something you’d like,” she says, expressionless, and vanishes into the crowd before he can protest that he doesn’t want it. (It’s bittersweet, flavoured with some species of citrus that he can’t quite place; annoyingly, he does like it.)

He’s not sure what he’s hoping to find, exactly. It’s pretty unlikely that Bill has “THREE EASY-TO-FOLLOW STEPS TO DEFEATING ME” pinned up in the men’s bathrooms. But if he’s being watched, he’s going to watch right back; there has to be something he can learn through observation.

He learns that Bill likes to make an entrance – except for when he doesn’t. Often he’ll burst through one of the doors up on the club’s mezzanine, alight with pleased smugness – sometimes accompanied by literal fireworks, a clear OSHA violation that consistently earns him cheers and applause. Sometimes he plays piano. He’s good. He’s probably really good; Dipper doesn’t know that much about piano-playing skill.

A few times, though, he doesn’t appear at all. At first, Dipper thinks he might just not be there – there are a couple of nights he’s genuinely not sure about – but it doesn’t take long for him to figure out where to look. He only gets glimpses, on those nights – a shadow by one of the pillars, a brief appearance at the bar. A figure slipping seamlessly between the bodies on the dance floor, moving among them like a ghost.

Bill knows how to avoid drawing attention to himself, then; he just chooses not to, the majority of the time.

Dipper waits for one of those rare nights to make his final move, after the spirit bowl fails. It’s the least-documented of all of the options he’s found, and he’s not even sure what an exorcism will do – Bill has to be in a human vessel of some kind, but it’s not like any case of demonic possession he’s ever seen or read about. There’s a very real chance this will leave him with an angry, disembodied demon and a corpse. But it’s all he has left to try, so this time, when Bill heads for the side door out into the alley, Dipper counts slowly to ten and follows him.

Bill is leaning against a wall, staring contemplatively at the sky, humming softly to himself. He doesn’t look around when Dipper steps outside, which is so unbelievably lucky that Dipper launches straight into the ritual before he can lose his nerve.

“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas,” he begins, and Bill’s eye immediately flashes in his direction, going wide with surprise as Dipper continues.

“Vade, satana, investor et magiste omnis fallaciae, hostis humanae salutis…”

Bill’s mouth falls open, goes slack. He backs up against the wall, his breathing picking up speed, his eye darting around the alleyway as if looking for a way out.

Holy shit, is it working?

“Ab insidiis diaboli, libera nos, Domine,” he says triumphantly. “Ut Ecclesiam team secure tibi facias libertarte servire – ” He hesitates for a second, faltering for the next word. “Libertate servire…”

“Te rogamus, audi nos,” Bill finishes helpfully, straightening up. The panic wipes itself neatly from his face. “You really shoulda written it down if it’s your first time, kid. Nobody’s handing out style points here.” He grins. “Except maybe me.”

Dipper’s shoulders slump. So much for that.

“Aw, chin up,” Bill says, voice full of feigned sympathy. “You’ve been on a whole journey for the last few weeks! The thing with the spirit bowl? If I were ten aeons younger and, like, really badly injured, you mighta almost had me!” He smirks. “But an exorcism? You had to know that wasn’t gonna work. Especially not that one.” Beat. “Your Latin pronunciation is terrible, by the way. You’d be a laughing-stock in ancient Rome.”

That is, Dipper supposes, at least a new way Bill has insulted him. He runs a hand through his hair. “You can’t blame me for trying,” he says, now surreptitiously looking for exits himself. Bill doesn’t seem angry, but who knows how quickly that could change –

“Guess not!” Bill stretches, folds his arms. “Relax, kid. I’d’ve respected you less if you hadn’t made some effort.” He grins, flashing teeth. “Honestly, it’s endearing, it really is. Like watching a Cerberus trying to figure out which head’s gonna catch the tail. Face it, though – you’re gonna need way more on me than you’ve got right now to have a shark’s chance on the beach of it working. All you’re doing right now is wasting your time.” His grin sharpens, just a fraction. “And, more importantly, mine.”

Dipper’s heart sinks, but he’s not wholly surprised. Everything he’s tried so far has been a pretty long shot, and there was no way Bill wasn’t going to notice him messing around with banishments; he’s taken it in stride so far, but he was always going to run out of patience eventually. They’re going to have to do this the hard way.

“Fine,” he sighs. “But can you at least stop trying to infiltrate my mail? I don’t have the secret to my – ” he makes a vague hand gesture intended to encapsulate the concept of immunity to infernal powers “ – in my sock drawer or anything, and those things are really creepy.”

“Sure!” Bill tips him another of those odd, one-eyed winks. “No sense in straining our professional relationship, right? We can call it a draw for now.”

The ease with which Bill acquiesces makes Dipper instinctively suspicious, but the demon doesn’t seem inclined to speak further on the subject. Dipper might have pushed the point, but it feels like a bit of an ambitious follow-up to trying – and failing – to send Bill back to whatever hell he came from.

“I have my fitness-for-duty evaluation this week,” he says instead.

“Hope you’ve been studying.” Bill drums his fingers lightly on his upper arm. “Human healing processes are interminable. It’s almost not worth however many extra years of human you get for ‘em, especially when you freaky little primates are everywhere.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.” Dipper shakes his head. “Anyway, if they clear me for active duty, I’ll be taking on new cases… soon.”

“You will, will you?” Bill’s grin returns. “When do we start?”

“I don’t know yet,” Dipper says, patiently. “But I’ll…” He sighs. “Find you, I guess. When we do.”

“Good enough!” Bill rubs his hands together. “I’m usually here.” He thinks for a second. “When I’m not anywhere else.”

Having established that this is about the level of ‘helpful’ Bill is operating at today, Dipper excuses himself and heads home, tired and a little deflated. Something gives him pause as he turns up the street towards his apartment; he stops, frowning, as he looks up.

There’s a billboard at the end of his block – it’s not exactly prime advertising space, so it’s been the same poster for a local realtor (“SUNSHINE ESTATES – MARK PUNCH UP THIS SLOGAN BY FRIDAY PLZ”) pretty much since he moved in. A useful landmark for delivery drivers, at least – and visitors, not that he has very many of those.

Now it seems to have been repurposed. The smiling face of the sun on the poster has been all but blotted out by vivid red spray paint, and the triangle is huge and looming, its slit pupil impassive as always. (Whoever did this seems to have decided to use the larger surface area to take a little artistic license, because the triangle looks like it’s wearing a top hat.)

There’s a fresh slogan, too, in messy but legible all caps. It reads: “I’M ALWAYS WATCHING”.

Great.

Coming off desk duty seems like the kind of thing that deserves a little fanfare. Like, not a lot – Dipper hadn’t been expecting a party or anything, not with Mabel safely back across the Atlantic – but he’d thought someone might have at least mentioned it. “Welcome back to active duty,” someone might have said to him. “Try not to get shot again before next January; your health insurance is good, but it’s not that good.”

Instead, a mostly-empty case file is slapped into his hands at the end of the morning briefing, and…well, there it kind of is. He flips through what little information he has on the way to his car. Carolyn Kendall, mid-forties, journalist. The next step is to check out the scene.

Well, the second-next step. First, he has (he suppresses a sigh) a stop to make, and something to deliver. He double-checks the back seat of his car for the item he signed out from Equipment last week, and then he’s on his way.

It’s nine thirty in the morning and the ‘Closed’ sign is up, but the front door to Lux still opens when he tries it. This is good, because he doesn’t have Bill’s phone number – which seems like an oversight, in retrospect, but there was a lot going on the last time they met. Picking the lock on the devil’s place of business is technically within Dipper’s capabilities, but it doesn’t seem like it would have been a good idea. Delivery package tucked under his arm, he heads inside.

With the morning sun streaming in through the windows and the space clean and empty, the club’s atmosphere takes on a kind of hushed, rarefied quality. Dipper finds himself treading softly, trying not to make too much noise. There’s no sign of life, save an abandoned dish towel at the far end of the bar. He pads up to the mezzanine level: still nobody. There’s a second set of stairs set slightly back from the main walkway; the door leading to them has a sign on it that reads “STAFF ONLY” in bright red, businesslike letters that fill him with an inexplicable sense of foreboding. The door is unlocked when he tries it, though, and he’s sort of exhausted the possibilities of the mezzanine, so he swallows his unease and heads up.

The stairs bring him up to a small landing with another door at the end of it. This door is solid wood, covered with ornate carvings and inlay. Most of the symbols are ones Dipper can’t identify – they make his heart race and his skin crawl, and he has to swallow back nausea as he looks at them – but there’s no mistaking the slit-pupilled… eyeangle staring out at him from the middle of the door. Not only is this door not locked, but it’s ajar, and he can hear voices coming from behind it. That’s where he’s going, then.

It takes almost every ounce of willpower he has to reach out and touch the carved wood, but once he does, the panicked nausea ebbs away almost immediately. He pushes the door open and steps inside.

This room is… big. Stylistically, it resembles the rest of the club, except that this place is clearly set up for quiet and comfort more than for general entertaining. There’s a corner sofa, another piano, several dressers and coffee tables, each covered in papers and various knick-knacks. Part of the space is walled off, but as he follows the voices further into the room, he glimpses an archway further back; he can see a huge four-poster bed through it, draped in yellow and black silk.

Does Bill… live here?

Set off to the side is a tiled kitchen area, complete with yet another bar (which seems like overkill, but nobody asked Dipper). Bill and Ronnie are standing behind it, their voices rapid and agitated. Their conversation doesn’t stop as Dipper draws closer; they don’t seem to have noticed him.

“ – been five years,” Ronnie is saying, her voice a low hiss. “How much longer do we just hang out here? Is there even a plan?”

“Five years is nothing.” Bill’s voice is carefully neutral, controlled in a way Dipper has never heard it before. “Are you really gonna tell me that ‘hanging out here’ – ” this complete with air quotes “ – is worse than Hell? ‘Cause you can go home if you want, but I have something in the works – ”

“Right, your volunteer policing,” Ronnie sneers. “Do you even hear yourself, Bill? What are you even doing anymore? Punishing petty criminals? Playing personal assistant to a cop? Maybe Amenadiel was right – ”

“I am warning you, Pyronica.” Bill ends this sentence on a growl, a real growl, like a dog about to bite; it would be almost comical if it weren’t for the flash in his eye, the way the air almost crackles as he rounds on her. “The back-talk is fine – funny, even, up to a point! – but you are dangerously close to forgetting your place here. Do not make me remind you.” His voice deepens and distorts on the last two words; Dipper finds he’s taken a step backwards without quite meaning to.

Ronnie, if anything, has the opposite reaction. She straightens up, her face contorted into a grin, her voice thrumming with savage delight. “There he is.”

Dipper clears his throat, mostly just to avoid having to witness wherever this is going to go next. He regrets this slightly when two sets of eyes immediately snap to his face, as if he’s attracted the attention of a pair of infernal meerkats.

“Detective!” Bill turns away from Ronnie, the tension seemingly evaporating from his body. “Back on your feet, huh?” His eye narrows for a second, focusing on the door. “What brings you all the way up here? I coulda sworn I just changed the locks.”

Now is not the time to dig into that statement, but Dipper files it away for later pondering. “It was open,” he says, for lack of a better reply. “We have a case.”

“We do, do we?” Bill beams at him; Dipper feels his jaw clench reflexively. “What’ve we got? Murder? Embezzlement? Overdue parking fine?”

“I’m a homicide detective,” Dipper says wearily. “It’s usually murder. I’ll brief you on the way, but we need to leave – ”

“That’s it?” Ronnie’s voice is verging on a snarl; her hands have balled into fists. “Your new pet snaps his fingers, and you’re just outta here? Does the LAPD assign you a leash next, or – ”

“Enough.” There’s no growl or distortion in Bill’s voice this time, but the finality in his tone pulls Ronnie up short. “I am busy, Pyronica. We’ll finish our discussion another time.”

His eye meets hers for a long moment. Dipper has no way of interpreting what passes between them.

At last, Ronnie shrugs. “Whatever,” she says, her face settling into a scowl. “There’s a day rave down in Santa Monica. I’m gonna snort ketamine off a supermodel’s tits and check out how flammable the basement is. One of us ought to act like a demon today.” She stomps out, her heels rattling on the stairs. Dipper watches her go, a little uneasy.

“Do you, uh, think she was being serious?”

“About the day rave?” Bill shrugs. “Pretty sure it’s actually in Long Beach.”

Not what Dipper meant, but by the blossoming smirk on Bill’s face, he can tell there’s not going to be much mileage in pointing this out.

Instead, he hefts the package under his arm. “I almost forgot.” He lobs it in the demon’s direction. “Put this on.”

Bill makes a faint questioning noise, but he catches the package and unwraps it, wrinkling his nose as he makes his way through the layers of plastic.

“A bulletproof vest?” He tilts his head a little, frowning. “The protective instinct is touching, Detective, but you do remember bullets aren’t exactly a concern for me?”

“I know that.” Dipper scrubs a hand through his hair. “But you did kind of… dissolve into nightmares the last time you got hurt, and if anyone else sees that, it’s gonna be way harder to explain than a civilian consultant wearing Kevlar. Put it on.”

For a second, Bill looks like he’s about to argue; then a disgruntled look flashes across his face, and he shrugs. “You’re the boss.” He unceremoniously shucks off his blazer and starts to unbutton his shirt. Dipper instinctively averts his eyes – who the hell starts getting changed in the middle of their kitchen? – and then, slightly awkwardly, thinks better of it. If Bill has no problem stripping down in front of him, he can at least take the chance to collect some data; the less he has to ask about demon physiology, the better.

He sneaks a look at Bill’s chest. It’s not hard to call to mind the way it looked that night two months ago – the shattered ribs, the torn, gaping flesh, the roiling oil-slick blackness – but now, in the morning light, there’s a clear absence of so much as a bruise. No swelling to make it impossible to find a comfortable position to lie in; no scabs to pull and tear and make a mess of the bandages; no scar tissue to palpate nightly into agonising submission. His own chest pulls and throbs, as if in outrage at the unfairness of it all.

“My eyes are up here, Pine Tree,” Bill says cheerfully.

“I told you not to call me that.” It comes out sharper than Dipper intended, which only makes him more annoyed. That’s just going to encourage him.

“And your objection is noted!” Sure enough, Bill’s tone makes it pretty clear that by “is noted” he means “really improves the experience for me”. He shrugs on the vest, looks down at himself and grimaces. “You couldn’t at least have found one in black?”

“That is black.” Dipper keeps his voice flat and even, trying to access the same level of imperturbable patience he’s seen in Mabel when she’s trying to teach Waddles how to use the microwave.

“This is very dark grey,” Bill informs him, primly. “With a green undertone that will not work with this ensemble. I’m gonna have to change.”

“Are you kidding me? We’re already late to the crime scene – ” Dipper is suddenly hit with the vivid mental image of a day spent with Bill Cipher complaining about how his outfit doesn’t match his bulletproof vest. He raises his hands in surrender. “You know what? Fine. Just… make it quick.”

Bill does not make it quick. Moreover, the suit he emerges in (slate grey, with a black shirt and forest-green tie and, for reasons best left unexplored, pocket square) hides the vest pretty much entirely, rendering the entire colour-matching exercise a waste of time. There is, Dipper reminds himself, no point in mentioning this.

“You couldn’t have just changed the shirt?” he grumbles anyway, opening his car door. “It’s not like anyone’s gonna know what you’re accessorising to match.”

“I will.” Bill settles into his seat and straightens his tie. It is covered in tiny black outlines of human teeth.

This is about the response Dipper was expecting, so he lets it drop. “So,” he says instead, starting the car, “what was all that about, earlier? With Ronnie,” he clarifies as Bill glances over at him. “She seemed pretty… upset?”

“Is that your question?” Bill’s tone is mild, but Dipper feels an infinitesimal shift in the air between them. It takes him off-guard a little – he hadn’t really expected this to count as a Demon Question – but, thinking about it, he supposes it is. It’s also one that Bill doesn’t seem to like, which makes him instantly curious about the answer. He needs to be careful with his questions, though, and he doesn’t feel right burning his first one this quickly.

“I guess not,” he says reluctantly.

“In that case,” Bill says, “I fucked her mother. You’d think she’d be over it by now, honestly; there are solar systems younger than that dalliance! But she holds a grudge.”

Dipper raises an eyebrow. “Her father didn’t have anything to say about it?”

“Fucked him too,” Bill responds promptly.

“Right.” Dipper sighs. “You know you don’t have to answer questions that aren’t part of the deal, right? You can just, like, move on. You don’t need to make shit up.”

Bill grins like a shark. “Who says I am?”

Dipper rolls his eyes and gives up. Bill is still laughing as they pull up to the scene.

Carolyn Kendall died in a dirty alleyway behind a CVS. The first thing Dipper sees as he steps out of his car is her off-white Honda Civic, crumpled into the brick wall. The second thing he registers is a cluster of paramedics, huddled around a girl who looks to be in her early- to mid-teens. She’s wrapped in a blanket, holding a mug of something warm and steaming that she’s ignoring in favour of staring into the middle distance. There’s blood crusted in the hair at her temple, and something pinched and bleak in her expression that Dipper is, unfortunately, very familiar with.

That means he needs to keep Bill away from her. He can’t think of any good that the demon’s brand of questioning would do for either the investigation or this poor kid.

“I need to talk to the on-scene staff,” he says as Bill gets out of the car. “They’ll tell me what they know so far. You…” If he forbids Bill from talking to the girl, that’s the first place he’ll go. “Take a look around,” he says instead. “Work your way towards our victim’s car; there might be something interesting in there. Don’t, uh, touch anything, okay?” Bill fires a lazy finger gun in his direction and stalks away; Dipper watches him for a second, and then approaches the medical examiner. Fortunately, he knows Dr Singh by sight. Unfortunately, he’s pretty sure they don’t like him.

“’Bout time,” they say as he comes into earshot. “What, was your intern hungover?” This with a sharp look in Bill’s direction.

Dipper sighs. “He’s… a consultant,” he says, sincerely apologetic. “He’s new.” He might also be hungover; Dipper doesn’t know what that looks like on the devil. “What’ve we got so far?”

“White female, mid-forties,” Dr Singh says, briskly stripping off their gloves. “Rammed herself into that wall around seven thirty. Not sure what she was doing all the way out here, but she started driving increasingly erratically and then crashed. She’d have died on impact. Small mercies, I guess.”

Dipper frowns. “She… crashed?” He lowers his voice a little. “Could it have been an accident?”

“Not a chance.” Dr Singh says, crisp and final. “But I’m not the person to ask about that. You’ll need to talk to her.” They jerk their head in the teenager’s direction. “Officer Mallory tried to take a statement already, but she won’t talk, and she won’t leave, either. Says she’ll only speak to the detective in charge.”

Oh, no. This kid has probably just had the worst experience of her life, and she’s waited over two hours just to talk to him, all because some one-eyed jackass had to make his suit match his vest. Dipper swallows a mixture of guilt and frustration, and goes to talk to Officer Mallory.

“Her name’s Jennifer Kendall,” Mallory tells him. He looks exhausted; Dipper hopes this is the end of his shift. “Carolyn was her aunt. Kid’s got an interest in investigative journalism; she’d been tagging along on some fact-finding missions. That’s about all she’d tell me.”

Dipper makes a note. “So Carolyn was a journalist?”

“Carolyn Kendall? Sure.” Mallory scratches at his beard. “Broke some huge stories back in the day. That IVF scandal down in Washington? That was her. She spent, like, five years talking to families in King County. Tracking down medical staff. It was a big deal.” He sighs at Dipper’s blank look. “It was ten years ago,” he says. “You were still showing your chest hair off to werewolves.”

Dipper grits his teeth and lets that slide. “So… what happened?”

“Before she got herself killed, you mean?” Mallory shrugs. “Dunno. I mean, she kind of went weird around 2016 – a lot of people did, I guess. Started posting a lot about Big Pharma. That was the last I knew of her until today.”

“That’s a… pretty bleak career trajectory.” Dipper tucks it into his mental back pocket to mull over later. “Thanks. I’ll go talk to Jennifer now and then take a look around. We’ll, uh, try to make it quick.”

“No rush.” Mallory takes his glasses off, squints at them in the sunlight. “I haven’t slept in twenty hours; one more’s not gonna do anything much.”

Another pang of guilt – although, in fairness, he’s not in charge of shift scheduling, or he might actually have a weekend off this century. He shakes it off; he has a witness to talk to. One who definitely does not deserve any residual office-politics energy.

The girl looks up as he approaches, fingers tightening around the mug in her hands.

“It’s Jennifer, right?” There’s nowhere to sit that she’s not already sitting, so he drops into a kind of awkward half-crouch next to her instead. “I’m Detective Pines,” he says, as gently as he can. “I’m in charge of this case.”

It sounds ridiculous. You were in high school five minutes ago, says the thirteen-year-old who lives in his head and is completely impossible to impress. You tried to put your car keys in the coffee maker this morning. You’re not in charge of anything.

I’m twenty-seven. Arguing with yourself is one of the first signs of madness, or at least worrying levels of self-absorption, but someone needs to put this little shit in his place. And she doesn’t need to know that.

Jennifer Kendall – Jen – is sullen, sarcastic, and scared. Her speech is low and rapid, as if she’s been rehearsing what to say in her head and wants to get it out as quickly as possible, and Dipper feels a pang every time that means he needs to stop her and ask her to repeat herself.

She had been accompanying her aunt chasing down a lead somewhere in Koreatown, about twenty minutes from where they are now. They hadn’t made it that far, because of the person following them –

“Following you?” He hadn’t meant to interrupt, he really hadn’t, but – “Are you sure?”

Jen gives him the kind of withering stare that only a teenager can manage; he’s pretty sure it will lose potency, year on year, once she hits sixteen. “Uh, yeah,” she says. “It was six in the morning. There were, like, three other cars on the road.”

Fair enough. “I’m sorry,” he concedes. “Please go on.”

From there, the story unfolds - halting, slow, brutal. They had been going to get breakfast, but Caroline had abandoned that plan and doubled back, trying to shake whoever was tailing them. Jen’s memories of the drive are vague in the way that truly awful things sometimes are: back streets, driving too fast, her aunt seemingly panicked and distracted at the same time.

“She was acting weird,” she says. “Like, Aunty Caro’s a great driver – I mean, she was – but it was like she couldn’t see things until they were nearly right on top of us. She was taking every corner at the last second. I… ” She swallows hard. “Then we crashed. I mean, not right away. It – it all kind of seemed to happen at once.”

“I understand.” In a way, he actually does; obviously he never went through exactly this, but he does know what it’s like to be a kid, and to suddenly be in danger because of grown-ups doing grown-up things that don’t have anything to do with you. To be hurt, and scared, and to only have half the story, and all just because of how the world works.

I was never alone, though. His heart aches for Jennifer.

“I need to ask you one more question,” he says, eventually. “It might sound – harsh, and it’s okay if you can’t answer, but… can you think of anybody who didn’t like your aunt? Did she ever talk about – maybe people who were mad at her? Who would want to hurt her?”

“Um.” Jennifer stares into her half-empty mug for a second, and then sets it aside. “I guess.” Her words are slow and careful. “Aunty Caro talked a lot about people in power, you know? Maybe some of it was true and maybe it wasn’t, but… she always said her work might get her in trouble some day. And…” She presses her fingertips together, looking on as her nail beds whiten under the pressure. Dipper waits, quietly, for a long moment.

“She wasn’t very nice,” Jen finishes. “Not even to people she liked. Not even to me, and she loved me. Mom says she used to have a lot of friends, but – I don’t think she does anymore. Did.” Her voice breaks a little on the last word, and Dipper’s heart lurches in sympathy, one last time.

“Thank you.” He shifts a little in place; he can’t really feel his feet anymore. Getting up is going to be interesting. “Has anyone called your parents?”

“They’re at work.” Her shoulders hunch. “Dad’s on the road, and Mom can’t call out again this month or she’ll get written up – ”

“Okay, okay. That’s fine.” It’s not fine – why is she worrying about getting her parents into trouble at work at a time like this? – but he’s not really in a position to force the issue. “Is there anyone you can stay with?” he says instead. “I guess the paramedics already checked you out, but even so, you shouldn’t be alone at a time like –

“I’m fine.” She scowls at her feet. Dipper is the King of Normal Conversations With Traumatised Children.

“Alright.” He stands, feeling the blood rush, screaming, back to his ankles, and pulls a card out of his pocket. Strictly speaking, it’s not so much a business card as “one of the blank cards he bought and wrote his phone number on” – he’s never figured out how to get business cards printed and at this point he’s too embarrassed to ask – but it seems to get the job done. “If you remember anything, or there’s anything else, just…call me, okay? Any time.”

“Sure.” She’s still scowling, but she takes the card. Dipper hesitates for a second.

“I’m sorry about your aunt,” he says, and turns away.

“Is all police work this boring?” Bill whines.

Carolyn’s Civic seems like it had been a mess even before she rammed it into the back wall of a CVS; it’s full of old coffee cups, takeout wrappers, receipts and the occasional crumpled water bottle. The only things of interest in there are a quarter-ounce of weed and a ragged card for a place called “STRIKE NINE COLLECTIVE”. Dipper makes a note of the address, and makes arrangements for the rest of the evidence.

He’s frustrated, obviously, by the lack of anything substantial at the scene, but he hadn’t really been expecting much else; it’s not like there was likely to be a murder weapon, beyond the… well, car and wall. On the bright side, it seems to have annoyed Bill, who didn’t get to do anything as exciting as watch a teenager cry this morning.

On the downside, Dipper reflects as they head back to his car, this means he has to hear about it.

“Seriously,” Bill says as Dipper backs out of the alley, “is it always like this? ‘Cause I’m starting to think I mighta opted into the wrong line of work. I thought you’d at least have made a wrongful arrest through profiling by now.”

“I try to leave that to the TSA.” It occurs to Dipper that he probably shouldn’t be throwing other government departments under the racism bus, however justifiably. “It’s not exactly official procedure for them either, though.”

“You sure about that?” Bill smirks, needle-pointed.

Dipper is not, so he changes the subject. “I’ve had worse crime scenes,” he says. “At least we have somewhere to check out this afternoon. You ever heard of this Strike Nine place?” He’d given it a quick search; it looks like nothing so much as a group of journalists who’ve banded together to rent out a coworking space, but at least that means Carolyn might have had colleagues she spoke to regularly. If she was as widely disliked as Jen said, someone ought to be able to tell him something.

“Nope.” Bill pops the ‘p’ at the end. “Sounds fun, though. You think they named it after the poison?”

“They’re journalists.” Dipper is getting hungry, and there’s a parking garage nearby that backs onto some shops; he heads for it. Maybe something to eat will make his "intern" easier to tolerate. “We’ll need to talk to as many of them as we can. You may not use your devil mind tricks on all of them,” he warns, seeing Bill’s eye light up. “It’ll make them suspicious, and I need some… warning before you do that.” Seeing Bill in action is… cool, in a way, but it’s still deeply unsettling. Besides, he doesn’t know if he’d be able to keep a straight face through hearing about the darkest desires of an as-yet-to-be-determined number of strangers. What if all of them want to be President? He barely managed to keep it together though Grey Cooper.

Bill makes a disgusted noise, digging around in his jacket pocket. “It’s like you don’t even want my help,” he says, accusingly.

“Oh, is that what it’s like?” Dipper pulls into the nearest space, turns off the engine and takes a second to rub his temples, eyes closed. He hears a soft clickety-hiss from the seat next to him, and jerks upright just in time to see that Bill has produced a small, black-and-gold lighter, and what looks like –

“Hey!” He makes a grab for the lighter, but it’s too late; Bill has already lit up, filling the car with a distinctively grassy smell. “You can’t smoke in my car, asshole,” he snaps. “You certainly can’t smoke weed in here. Put that out.”

“Did you personally remove the parts of your brain that make humans able to appreciate fun, or is it just a birth defect?” Bill sounds genuinely interested. Dipper tries to snatch the joint from his hand; the demon whisks it easily out of his reach, then takes a long, pointed drag before pinching it out.

“I am a cop,” Dipper says, tiredly. “People trust the law a lot less if it shows up high. Where did you even get that?”

“From the car.” Bill shrugs. “She left a few pre-rolled. Musta been a pretty heavy user.”

“From the – Bill, are you smoking evidence?”

“Well, not anymore.” A beleaguered eyeroll, as if Dipper is the one being unreasonable here. “What’s the big deal? It’s not like she needed it.”

“You stole evidence from a crime scene!” Dipper is vaguely aware that his voice is rising, and he doesn’t care; if there were ever an appropriate time to yell at someone, surely this is it. “Where in ‘don’t touch anything’ did you get the idea that that was going to be okay?”

Bill tilts his head slightly, looking at Dipper with a mildly bemused expression.

“Right,” Dipper fumes. “Sure. Who do you think is going to get in trouble for this if anyone finds out, huh? It’s not going to be the rich asshole who holds my investigation up matching his bulletproof vest to his goddamn shirt – ”

He cuts himself off, frowning. Because Bill hasn’t reacted to anything he’s said in the last ten seconds; he’d have expected a threat or an insult or something by now, but instead the other man is just... staring at him, still looking mildly confused. Dazed, almost.

“Hey.” He snaps his fingers in front of the demon’s face. “I’m yelling at you, jerk. Pay attention.”

This only earns him a slow, earnest blink. Dipper notices that Bill’s pupil is dilated.

“Bill?”

Bill blinks again. He shakes his head – once, twice – and opens his mouth, as if to speak.

Then he slumps forward, and Dipper has to lunge across the car to keep him from stabbing himself on the parking brake. For a split second his vision goes white with sheer panic – did the devil just die in my car? – and then his brain catches up with him, and he realises that he can feel the other man breathing.

He props Bill awkwardly against the passenger side window, checks his pulse; it’s a little fast, but strong and steady. His breathing is slow, deep, and even. As Dipper looks on, he shifts a little in place, tucking his chin more securely against the window, and makes a muffled, neutral noise.

… Did the devil just fall asleep in my car?

Now that he’s had a second to think about it, it’s not a huge stretch to think that Bill’s invulnerability to bullets might extend to other methods of being hurt; a human drug, even one that’s been laced with something else, would likely hit his system differently. He… seems fine, and God alone knows what a hospital would even find if he took Bill there. If he’s right, then calling for help doesn’t seem wise, and if he’s wrong…

Well, if he’s wrong, then the devil just died in his car, which would open the door to an entirely new set of problems.

… Broadly speaking, he actually might prefer those to the ones he has now.

He has a few sets of plastic gloves in his car – so I don’t go around touching things at crime scenes, Bill – so he digs one out of his glovebox, puts it on, and plucks the joint from the demon’s unresponsive fingers. He examines it; it looks like a half-smoked joint, burned down significantly further than would have been possible from what Bill just inhaled. He must have smoked some of it at the crime scene.

Great. He gives the joint a hesitant sniff. It smells, entirely predictably, like burnt cannabis.

That about does it for his field forensics capabilities. He pulls the glove off, turning it inside out to envelope the joint as he does so. He unscrews the top of his travel mug, tips the dregs of his morning coffee out of the window, puts the entire nitrile-wrapped mess inside, and seals it back up. Then he calls Dr Singh.

“It’s lunchtime, Pines,” they say by way of greeting. “This better be good.”

“Yeah, I know.” He sighs. “Sorry. Listen, the cannabis we recovered from Carolyn Kendall’s car – has it been tested?”

“Not yet.” Dr Singh sounds wary. “Kendall’s medical records showed a long-standing prescription, and the packaging was pretty clear; this wasn’t street stuff. We were going to dispose of it. Why?”

“Please – don’t.” Dipper wets his lips nervously. He’s used to asking favours from people who don’t like him, but it never exactly gets easier. “I think it might have been tampered with. Can you test it? And I think we need a tox report on Carolyn, um, urgently.”

“What makes you think that?” They sound almost amused. “Unless your intern had a bad reaction to the joint he swiped earlier, of course. Or did he think he was being subtle?”

Dipper groans inwardly. Of course Dr Singh noticed. “I know,” he says, trying to project his – very real – sense of frustrated despair down the phone line without sounding too desperate. “Look, I know he broke procedure at least two different ways. I – I’ll talk to him, but – ”

“I get it.”

Dipper blinks, surprised. Are they really not going to give him a hard time over this?

“You do,” he says, cautiously. Not quite a question.

“Rich kid wants to play detective, right?” If he didn’t know any better, he would call this tone genuinely sympathetic. “Figures they’d have stuck you with him – no offence.”

“N-none taken.” This is true. He’s too stunned.

“No point in reporting him, then,” Dr Singh continues, oblivious to the paradigm shift they’re causing in Dipper’s brain. “I know the type. Probably has friends in high places.”

“Um.” The place location is probably wrong, but the rest is a deeply plausible explanation that’s close enough to the truth, and Dipper is going to grab it with both hands. “Something like that.”

“Okay, then. I’ll see what I can move around my list. Full autopsy will still take a day or so, but I can try to get the tox report by tomorrow. And I’ll check out your drugs.”

“I – thanks.” What do medical examiners like? Should he buy them a new stethoscope? Would that be offensively generic? “I owe you one.”

“No problem. Hope your intern’s okay,” Dr Singh says, dry. “Try to keep a better eye on him next time.”

They hang up. Dipper stares at a spot on his windshield for a second, trying to process what the hell just happened.

He looks at Bill, still passed out against the passenger window.

“Well, at least you’re good for something,” he mutters.

Then he cracks the window and gets out of the car. Let Bill sleep off his latest crime adventure. Dipper is going to get some goddamned lunch.

He spends a pleasant half-hour or so eating tacos and texting Mabel (“what’s a good strictly professional gift for a medical examiner you work with and are kind of afraid of”). She doesn’t respond; it’s something like 10P.M. where she is, she’s probably busy. He looks forward to the string of texts he’ll get later this afternoon to ask if he’s trying to date Dr Singh (who he’s pretty sure is married, and who he is, as aforementioned, a tiny bit scared of).

By the time he gets back to his car, he’s in a better mood, something that’s thrown immediately into conflict when he sees that the demon therein is stirring. He slides into his seat and pulls the door mostly shut, taking a moment to look the other man over. Bill’s eye opens a crack, and then shuts again, a little too tight, as if the afternoon light is painful, as if his head hurts. He almost looks… worse for wear. Not vulnerable, exactly, but… maybe humbled, just a little, however briefly.

Dipper considers this for a moment.

Then he slams the car door the rest of the way, hard. Bill jerks upright with a muttered curse, glaring at him.

“Welcome back,” Dipper says, loudly. “How are you feeling? Did that go how you thought it would?” He holds up the paper bag he brought back with him. “I got you a burrito.”

Bill makes an unhappy questioning noise, peering at him.

“Bu-rri-to.” He tosses the bag into Bill’s lap. “Rice, beans, meat, cheese? You’ve been around for five years. You must have had Cali-Mex before.” He starts the car. “You’re in luck; it’s still warm. I thought you were gonna be out for longer.” He hadn’t exactly been rooting for the whole Ending The Week With Bernard scenario – kind of in spite of himself – but he had allowed himself to dream of being able to get through a few interviews in peace. At least he got lunch.

Bill still looks baleful, but he pulls the burrito out of the bag, sniffs it suspiciously, and then takes a bite, foil and all. Dipper tries to keep his wince internal.

“I put a rush on Carolyn’s tox screen,” he says, still pitching his voice just a little above normal indoor volume. “I think someone did something to the weed.”

“Nofphu – “ Bill swallows, clears his throat. “No fuckin’ kidding,” he says. He takes another big, metallic bite. “You figure that out all on your own?”

“After you collapsed, yeah.” Dipper pulls out of the parking lot. “We might hear back this evening. Am I taking you home, or are you feeling up to interviewing some journalists?”

“I,” Bill says, with a wounded dignity that’s somewhat undercut by the sliver of foil caught between his teeth, “am an interdimensional being of unknown power. Even I don’t know what I’m capable of. You’d need poisons that haven’t been invented yet to even come close to bringing me down.”

“Suit yourself, man.” Dipper switches on the radio, cranks the volume. “Hope you like BABBA.”

The burrito seems to revive Bill substantially, which is probably for the best, on balance; interviewing suspects while also running interference on a cranky demon does not sound like a recipe for a productive afternoon. He does not, as it turns out, like BABBA, which does at least make for a highly enjoyable drive downtown; it’s been a while since Dipper has really blasted music in his car.

Strike Nine Collective is on the fourteenth floor of one of downtown’s many forgettable skyscrapers. The entryway is dim, dingy and smells faintly of bleach; they ride what might be the oldest surviving elevator for three agonising minutes.

“I hope this thing doesn’t fall,” Bill comments, after one particularly vicious judder. “That’d be a stupid way for you to die.”

“Stupider than smoking poisoned weed that I stole from a murder investigation?” Dipper says mildly.

“That stuff was great at first,” Bill protests. “Besides, if I hadn’t found it right away, who knows how long it woulda taken for you to realise? You should be thanking me.”

Pause.

“Anyway, poisoned weed doesn’t break both your legs and disintegrate your spine.”

“Which makes it stupider,” Dipper points out. “If the elevator falls, people will think it’s sad that I was taken out by unsafe building management practices. If I stole poisoned weed, I pretty much got what was coming to me.”

This argument is cut short when the lift finally shudders to a halt.

The Strike Nine offices are clean, and that’s about the kindest thing Dipper can say about them. There’s a small front desk, piled high with papers, that nobody seems to be manning; beyond that, he sees a U-shaped bank of desks, each containing their own unique brand of organised chaos – open folders, more piles of documents, five or six battered-looking laptops. There are a few other rooms branching off the main workspace; he can smell something greasy from one of them, suggesting a kitchen. It mixes unpleasantly with the faint, persistent funk of some kind of generic room fragrance. There are people sitting at some of the desks, but nobody looks up when they walk in.

“Um,” he says, after a moment. He pulls out his badge. “LAPD?”

This is not enough to attract the attention of three of the desk workers, but the only person not wearing headphones jumps to his feet immediately, rushing over to the front. “Sorry!” He sounds harried – panicked, almost. “We’re – people are still coming back from lunch, so we thought – “ He wrings his hands. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Maybe.” Dipper feels bad for this guy; it can really suck to be the only person in the room paying attention. “I’m Detective Pines, and this is my…” He squashes a sigh. “Associate, Bill. We’re investigating someone who we have reason to believe is linked to this place of business. Is there anyone around here who oversees your records that we can talk to?”

“Oh. Oh. Yeah, you want Joss.” The man looks relieved. “Let me get her.” He practically takes off running towards the kitchen.

“I do not wanna be him when he finds out we have to interview everyone,” Dipper mutters.

Bill grins, wide. “Please let me do it.”

“Not happening.”

“I hear there are detectives in our foyer.” That’s a new voice; a woman emerges from the kitchen, the man who greeted them half-hiding behind her. She looks to be in her fifties, with dark eyes, a mass of dark brown curls, and an open, friendly face; when she smiles at Dipper, he smiles back without quite meaning to.

“I’m Jocelyn Herrero,” she says, holding out her hand to shake. “People call me Joss.” Her grip is businesslike; her tone, pleasant, if not exactly warm.

Dipper introduces the two of them again, and then takes a quick look around; the people at the desks are starting to look at them, now that they can see other people paying attention. One nudges another and says something, low and urgent; they both look anxious.

“Is there somewhere private we can talk?” he says. “This is a little…sensitive.”

“We can go to the conference room.”

This turns out to be a cramped little space with one large desk, a paper flipchart, four chairs and no windows. Joss closes the door and sits down across from them.

“Now, what can I do for you boys?” Her voice is steady, but Dipper thinks he detects a hint of tension in it.

“Are you in charge here?”

That gets a strained chuckle out of her. “We’re a collective,” she says. “Nobody’s in charge, in theory. In practice, somebody has to keep records of our members, allocate them desks, liaise with our landlords, chase people for their share of the rent…” She shrugs. “I’m about as in charge as you can get in a place like this, I suppose.”

“Okay.” Good enough. “We’re looking for someone who works here,” he says. “Is the name Carolyn Kendall familiar to you?”

“Caro?” She frowns. “Sure. She hasn’t been in today, though. Do you need me to see if I can get in touch with her?”

“That… won’t be necessary.” Dipper sighs. “I’m afraid there was an incident this morning.”

“Oh.” Some of the colour drains from Joss’s face. “Is everything alright?”

“For her, sure,” Bill says, propping one foot up on the remaining free chair. “Your day is about to get a whole lot worse, though.”

“Stop helping, Bill.” Dipper shakes his head. “Ms Kendall was in a car accident,” he says. “With her niece.”

“Jennifer?” Now Jocelyn looks properly stricken. “Is she okay?”

“She’s – fine.” Ah, the old ‘soften the blow with the one tiny piece of good news’ trick. You’re an asshole, Dipper Pines. “But Ms Kendall – Carolyn – was pronounced dead at the scene.”

“Oh, no.” Joss’s hand flies up to cover her mouth. “Oh, how horrible.” Her throat works for a second, and then she squares her shoulders. “What do you need from me, Detective? Is her death being treated as – as suspicious?”

“We found some irregularities at the scene,” Dipper says carefully. Jocelyn seems nice, but he’s met a lot of suspects that did; moreover, she’s a journalist, which is a great reason not to tell her anything more than they absolutely have to. “We’ve… only just started looking into it.” He watches her expression carefully. “I’ll need a full list of your members. Names, contact information. Did Carolyn keep any papers here?”

“Some. She was pretty private about her work, though. I’ll find you anything she might have left lying around.” She sighs, getting to her feet. “I suppose you’ll need to talk to everyone? You’re in luck; we’ve got a pretty full house today. I think Caro – ” She swallows. “I thought Caro was the only one missing.”

This is lucky, although it means everyone is in for a long afternoon. “Can we set up shop in here?” Dipper asks. “I’m gonna have to ask that nobody leaves until they’ve spoken to us.”

They can, and the coffee here is pretty good, which is the beginning and end of the good news for the afternoon. Strike Nine has ten members – ten surviving members, that is.

They are all, in their own ways, kind of insufferable.

“Yeah, I knew her.” This is Krystal (“with a K”); she looks to be a few years younger than Dipper. She’s tiny and blonde, with an air about her that he can only describe as “terrifyingly capable”; he has the strange feeling that, if he let her loose in his apartment, she might be able to discover whole kitchen cabinets that he had no idea existed. “Not to speak ill or anything, but she was kind of…” She makes a face.

“A bitch?” Bill winks at her. Dipper glares at him.

Krystal-with-a-K just giggles. “No,” she says. “But… yeah, kinda. She was a pretty intense person, you know? She was a big deal back in the day, and she just… couldn’t really deal with how far off the rails she’d gone. And she was totally flaky. Always behind on rent.” She shakes her head. “Honestly, she made us all look bad. I would never have brought her in.”

“Brought her in?” Dipper keeps his face neutral.

“I do recruitment,” Krystal explains. “I mean, like, kind of. The rent on a space downtown doesn’t come cheap, you know? I keep an ear out for people who might be interested in what we do.”

“What is it that you do?”

“Not a whole lot.” This from Parvinder, a soft-spoken man who doesn’t seem to really understand what’s going on. “We’re a collective; our mission is to spread knowledge, but each of us pursue that in our own way.” He makes a face. “Most of us do. Not Carolyn.”

“You don’t think so?”

Parvinder’s face darkens. “That woman,” he says, fervently. “Not in nearly ten years has she published a single true word. Did you see her latest interview? With the so-called ‘fluoride expert’?” He scowls. “That woman should have been laughed out of respectable journalism years ago. Instead, she keeps on getting published! In the name of balance! I suppose it’s too much to hope for that she’s ashamed of herself, wherever she is.”

Dipper and Bill exchange a look.

“Um,” Dipper says carefully. “You do know that we’re talking to you because Carolyn is…”

“My God.” That’s Jack, the man who had first come to talk to them; he’s visibly sweating by the time he comes to be interviewed. “S-she’s really dead?”

“Nah.” Bill is idly rocking the second chair he’s commandeered with his foot. “We’re piloting a new police programme: crime drills. Just to see who’ll respond appropriately to a real-life crime scenario.” He leans forward, dropping his voice to a stage whisper. “So far, you’re not doing great.”

Jack looks uncertainly at Dipper.

“That’s not true,” Dipper says wearily. He is not going to let Bill suck him into a game of Good Cop, Mad Cop. “And you’re doing fine.”

He isn’t. In fact, this might be the most excruciating set of interviews Dipper has ever had to endure; fully half of these people are more interested in trying to pump them for information than in telling them anything, and the other half keep asking if he follows them on PageTunnel. He can tell he’s getting tired when he catches himself thinking about how much worse this would have been if he’d been alone, a line of thought that takes him dangerously close to being glad that Bill is there.
God, he needs a vacation.

By the time they loop back around to Jocelyn, it’s gone six. If she minds staying after hours to talk to the police, she doesn’t show it. She sits opposite them, upright and regal, and takes a sip of her water.

“My name is Joss Herrero,” she says, unprompted. “I’m fifty-six years old, I’ve been an investigative journalist for – ” she thinks for a second “ – twenty-one years, and me and Caro founded Strike Nine together just over ten years ago.”

“How did you meet?”

“Work.” She smiles. “Caro was younger, but we came into the industry at around the same time. Investigative reporting has never been the friendliest environment for a woman, particularly not a young woman. We were lucky to find each other.”

“Is that why she still worked here after she went crazy?” That’s Bill, relaxed in his chair.

Joss gives him a sharp look (so does Dipper), but doesn’t protest the wording. “Caro had a hard life,” she says. “She was never an easy person – it was one of the things I liked about her – but she… hardened as the years went on. She alienated a lot of people. I wanted her to still have a place somewhere.”

“We’ve heard that Carolyn’s reporting went in a… different direction, after a while,” Dipper says. “It sounds like you knew her well. Did that surprise you?”

“Not really.” Jocelyn looks at the desk, a hint of tiredness in her eyes. “Not after what happened to Micah.”

Dipper frowns.

“Micah Wenton. He was one of our first members.” Jocelyn traces a finger around the rim of her water glass. “He took a magnifying glass to celebrity scandals; he wanted people to see those stories for what they were. He used to say that the scrutiny we give to the rich and famous was a dehumanising force in and of itself, and he wanted to restore their humanity. I had such a crush on him.” She smiles, and then lets it fade. “You have to understand… it’s not easy, doing what we do. We study systems, Detective Pines. We hold up a mirror to them. But…” She sighs. “No matter how much you uncover, there is always more, and nothing ever seems to change. You reveal one cover-up, and five more seem to take its place overnight.”

“So what happened?” Dipper leans forward a little.

“To Micah?” Jocelyn folds her hands. “He went from reporting on the gossip rags to writing for them himself. Once he saw how easy it was for rumour to spread, how hard it was to stem the tide once it had… He told me it was a business decision, but it felt like something had extinguished inside him.” She looks sad. “We lost him,” she says. “About three years ago. He jumped from the fire escape at our old offices. We had to relocate after that.”

“I’m sorry,” Dipper murmurs, already making a mental note to pull Micah Wenton’s case file.

It’s dark when they leave the Strike Nine office, and the lights are out in the reception area downstairs. Dipper is using his phone as a flashlight while he signs them out at the front desk when a hand shoots up from behind it, grabbing his wrist and making him shriek in a way he is not looking forward to Bill’s commentary on later.

“Sorry!” It’s Krystal-with-a-K; she flicks a switch behind the desk, and some low lighting comes on. “I just…” She looks around. “I thought about it,” she says, “and I didn’t feel – right, letting you guys go without telling you.”

“Okay?” Dipper’s heart is still pounding from what felt like an attempted abduction into secretarial work. “I mean,” he tries again, “telling us what?”

“I don’t think…” Krystal sighs and shakes her hair back. “There’s something about Strike Nine that we’re not supposed to – talk about. Kind of, um…” She throws her hands up in frustration. “I can’t,” she says, sounding desperate. “I can’t talk about it.” She pulls out something small and cloth-wrapped from behind the desk and pushes it towards him. “Take this, okay? Look into it. I – I can’t help you any more. I’m sorry.”

Before Dipper can say anything else, she’s flipped the lights back off and vanished towards the back of the building.

“Nice prey instincts,” Bill says, dryly.

“Shut up.” They step out into the street, and Dipper unwraps the object Krystal has given him. It looks like half of a performing arts mask – the tragic half of the tragedy/comedy duo, mouth turned down. It’s silver, or at least silver-plated.

“What the…” He flips it over, and his eyes widen. There’s a symbol stamped into the metal. It looks almost like a musical note, but it’s styled in a way he’s seen before, and recently. He fumbles for his notebook, just to be sure. Flips to the right page.

“Shit,” he hisses. “Bill, are you seeing this?”

“Yeah, kid.” Bill is staring, too, his head tilted slightly to one side. A hint of a smile touches his lips. “The one eye is inconvenient, but it works just fine.”

“Why is it here?”

“Don’t know.” Bill plucks the mask from his fingers. “Good news, though! Humans are idiots.” His smile blossoms into a grin, and not one Dipper likes the look of. “And I know exactly who we’re dealing with.”

Chapter Text

“Her name is Melpomene,” Bill says, swirling his drink. This one seems to be mostly bourbon, although there’s a dash of something bright red in it, reaching bloody tendrils through the whiskey as it dissipates. “She’s a Muse.”

They’re back at Lux; traversing a fully-operational nightclub to get to Bill’s place was a weird experience, but there was no way Dipper was inviting the devil back to his apartment, and this beats talking through the case in the car. (Ronnie, mercifully, is nowhere to be seen. Hopefully the ketamine has put her in a better mood.)

“A Muse? As in, like…” Dipper frowns.

“Don’t they teach little humans to read anymore?” Bill makes a disgruntled noise. “As in, the ancient Greek goddesses of inspiration? Daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus? Turn people into birds if they get too uppity?” He drums his fingers lightly on the arm of his chair. “Melpomene is the Muse of Tragedy,” he says. “Also known as the mother of sirens. Tacky of Delilah to be handing out her ancestral symbol to her fuckboy of the week, but good judgement was never her strong suit.”

That explains the watches, but… “I thought ancient Greek tragedies were, like, plays and stuff. Why would a group of journalists have her symbol?”

“Who knows?” Bill shrugs. “I’ve acted as a muse myself before, but mostly as a hobby. Dunno how it works as a career path.” He nods to the mask that Dipper is still holding. “They musta worked something out, though, if they had that lying around.”

“Why do you say that?” Dipper looks at the mask with new interest.

“Because that,” Bill says patiently, “is not just a relic; it’s a summoning object. Whoever holds it has a direct line to their favourite Muse, 24/7, no long-distance fees or hidden charges. And someone snuck it out to us, which means – ”

“ – it’ll be missed,” Dipper murmurs. “So they’re using it.”

Now that he has a second to examine the mask in full light, it does look… used, in a way. The silver is polished to a high shine, for the most part – it’s clearly well looked-after – but he can see the tarnish in the grooves around the eyes and mouth, and a few faint scratches on the surface. At least one person is handling this on a regular basis.

“Why would Krystal give us this?” He flips the mask over again, rubs his thumb over the symbol. “We’re cops, not – paranormal investigators. As far as she knows,” he adds, seeing Bill poised to interrupt. “Why would she give us their main occult object?”

“Guilt.” Bill’s absolute confidence in this analysis gives Dipper pause – he gives the demon a sharp look, and Bill rolls his eye. “Jeez, kid, didn’t you listen to a word that squeaky little busybody was saying? She does recruitment. She brings people in. You think Muses give out divine inspiration for their health or something?” He snorts. “Back in her heyday, Melpomene woulda had a full-on cult. Hardly a surprise she’ll want as many people around her as she can get. Krystal’s been bringing in the fresh meat, and now someone’s pissed off the butcher, and it turns out she can’t handle the sight of blood.”

Right. Dipper swallows, thinking of the panicked, desperate look in Krystal’s eyes. He can feel something cold sitting heavily in the pit of his stomach.

“But what are we even supposed to do with it?” He sighs. “We know who they’ve been worshipping now. So what? We don’t even know what kind of… arrangement they have with Melpomene, or if it has anything to do with Carolyn’s death.” Or Micah’s.

“Sometimes,” Bill says, pensively, “I wonder if you’ve ever actually had a useful thought, or if you just go through life trying to pull coherent sentences together from whatever was on the back of your cereal box that morning.”

Dipper gives him a tired glare.

“Kid. Pine Tree. You are holding the woman’s summoning object in your hand.” Bill gestures to it, just to drive the point home. “Why don’t you ask her?”

Dipper stares at him. Bill stares right back, apparently either unaware of or completely unperturbed by the balls-out insanity of what he’s suggesting.

“Ask her,” he repeats, slowly.

“Should be easy enough,” Bill says brightly. “Getting hold of a relic like this is the hard part, and they just handed it over! Of course, by yourself, you’d be chasing down the correct ritual form for, oh, days, if not weeks.” He grins. “Luckily for you, you’ve got specialist help.”

“You want me to… summon a Muse. For interrogation.”

“You need to talk to everyone who’s involved.” Bill shrugs. “Why not?”

“Because it’s a terrible idea!” Dipper makes a vague, spiky gesture with the mask. “She’s a goddess. Like, a really old one. She could – I don’t even know what she could do – ”

“Will you relax?” Bill takes a sip of his drink, lets out a satisfied sigh. “You do a summoning right, there’s not much she can do to you.” He thinks for a second. “Probably.” Another sip. “Besides, the chatty evangelist as good as told us she’s behind whatever’s going on here. It’d be the quickest way to get to the bottom of it.”

“Or,” Dipper says, tightly, “she could get really mad and turn me into a bird. Which would be bad,” he clarifies, seeing interest blossom on Bill’s face. “Why can’t you summon her? If it’s such a great idea.”

“I’m a consultant,” Bill says loftily. “Not a secretary. Besides, I doubt she’d come if it was me calling. Wrong pantheon.”

“Right.” Dipper sighs. “I’ll think about it,” he says. “But we’re trying police work first.”

“Profiling?” Bill brightens a little.

“Research.” Dipper rolls his eyes. “We need to know more about these people. They’re journalists; a lot of their work will be a matter of public record.” He runs a hand through his hair, slowly. “We’ll start there,” he says, tugging thoughtfully at his curls. “While we wait for the tox report. If we’re really lucky, they’ll find the car that was following Jen and Caro, but I doubt it. Too many places to dump a vehicle around here.”

“And then what?” Bill sounds surprisingly interested; when Dipper looks up, he can see that the demon is watching him intently.

He sighs. “We see if we can narrow the suspect list down,” he says, exhausted. “Then we talk to them again. Krystal first, then anybody else who seems like they’re hiding something.” He stares at his hands for a second; he doesn’t like the idea of this next part, but it might be the only edge he’s got in a situation like this one.

“We’ll need,” he says at last, reluctantly, “to dig into their motivations. What they… want.”

“Sounds like you’re asking for something in particular, Detective,” Bill says. His face has lit up. Dipper hates it. “What’re you saying?”

“I mean…” Dipper fixes his eyes a few inches to the left of Bill’s head, so that he doesn’t have to look at him. “I’m gonna need you to do… you know.” He waves a hand vaguely. “Your thing.”

“My thing?” the demon repeats, delighted. “You gotta be more specific, kid. I have millions of unique talents that you are horrible at utilising.” Pause. “And it wouldn’t kill you to ask a bit nicer.”

Dipper grits his teeth. “Can you please,” he grinds out, “use your weird devil mind-powers on our suspects in the name of law enforcement?”

“Why, Detective,” Bill purrs. “I thought you’d never ask.”

They call it a night shortly after; Dipper needs sleep, and Bill has unexplained “business” to attend to. Dipper has the presence of mind to get the demon’s cell number this time around; he’s already home when he realises that the contact is BILL CIPHER, as if the other man is announcing his telephonic presence through a megaphone. (He tries a few times to correct the capitalisation, only to find that his changes to the contact card won’t save, and also that his phone is getting alarmingly hot. Whatever, BILL.)

Sleep is elusive, as it normally is for Dipper when he’s working a case – he’s never been great at putting his thoughts away for the night – but he manages a few fitful hours, and he’s up in time to be at the city library when it opens. He spends some time going through the newspaper archives, photographing relevant sections on his phone. He calls Bill, but there’s no answer, so he heads to the station, retrieves Micah’s case file, and starts to read.

Of the ten journalists he interviewed last night, only three failed to provide verifiable alibis – Jack, Krystal-with-a-K, and Jocelyn herself. Jack claimed to have overslept and not left the house until nine; his colleagues confirmed that he’d turned up to the office around 9:45A.M., but that still leaves him unaccounted for before then. Krystal and Joss are acting as alibis for each other – both said they’d been at the offices since 5:30 that morning, catching up on admin. There are security cameras at the front of the building – he’s requested the feeds – but not the back, the direction Krystal vanished in after her Drag Me To The Reception Desk routine.

They’re each decent writers, in their own ways – Joss’s investigative work has the depth and polish he’d expected from her twenty years of experience, but Dipper also enjoys Krystal’s finance reporting much more than he expected to, and considering his nervous manner, Jack’s work on crime statistics is surprisingly lucid, although Dipper is not brave enough to attempt his podcast. Still, going through old columns and blog posts gets repetitive pretty quickly, and all he’s really learning is that the working journalists he’s investigating are all, in fact, working journalists. He turns his attention to Caro and Micah instead.

Carolyn’s journey from writing about medical news to writing about medical conspiracy theory is gradual until it isn’t; Dipper traces the development of her ideological shift from early 2016 (“perhaps over-treatment is having a bigger effect than we’d like to admit”, she writes in a guest post on rising rates of allergies in children), and by the time the 2020s hit she’s either off the bandwagon or fully on it, depending on your perspective.

Looking at the progression, he can see what Joss meant about what might have happened in Carolyn’s head. Her early work is searing and earnest, the facts she’s worked to uncover laid out, simple and clear, alongside sparse, biting commentary. As he works he way through it, he can see her frustration, her growing despair. (“It feels like I’m always writing the same story,” says one of her blog posts, dated January 27th, 2013. “Is anybody even listening anymore?”) Her last few columns are hard to read in more ways than one: her writing is less precise, her ideas jumbled, her crisp phrasing blurred at the edges. Buried in the mess, though, is something else that tugs at his attention.

“The establishment, of course,” – this from a blog post dated last week – “despises any deviation from their rubric, however minor, however justified. Communities you were once safe in can turn, can pulse, can push you out. It’s enough to make one wonder, sometimes – just how much time do I have left?”

Pronoun inconsistency aside, it’s hard to tell how much of this is paranoid rambling or if the glimmer of fear he senses is genuine. He bookmarks the post, anyway.

In contrast with Carolyn, Micah’s journalistic about-face is abrupt and deliberate, at least on the face of it. One day his blog is packed with media analysis, gossip roundups and commentary; the next, he’s announcing its closure, and his move to writing part-time for We The Weekly.

“I recognise that this change may be hard for some of you to accept,” he writes in his last blog post. “For some of you, it may be impossible. I respect that, as I have always respected you, my audience, and you, my colleagues. If there are consequences, rest assured that I shall bear them alone.”

Strange wording from a journalist with a new job, Dipper thinks. What sort of consequences had he been expecting?

The Micah Wenton suicide is sparsely documented; at the time it was treated as a fairly clear-cut case, and apart from a few short tributes from other Strike Nine writers (as well as an editorial in We The Weekly comparing Micah’s death to the change in seasonal fashions that Dipper finds, frankly, to be in shockingly poor taste), there’s not a lot of reporting around it. The most fleshed-out writing he can find is from Joss, which doesn’t surprise him.

“Micah was a dear friend,” she wrote. “He saw the humanity in every story he worked on, no matter how challenging or salacious. He reminded me to prioritise people over structure – to let each individual’s experience stand alone, rather than trying to fit it into any one overarching narrative. I will spend the rest of my life regretting the ways that I failed him.”

This proves nothing, but he can feel it itch in the back of his skull. He likes Joss Herrero, but he’s liked a great many people over his years as a detective who turned out to have crime or crime-adjacent skeletons in their closets. If she had something to do with Micah’s death…

He mulls this over, along with a very disappointing sandwich and his fifth cup of coffee. If the same person who ran Carolyn off the road yesterday was responsible for what happened to Micah Wenton, that rules out Jack, who joined Strike Nine two years ago, well after Micah’s death. If Micah really did kill himself, Jack is back under suspicion, although Dipper supposes there could be some kind of Journalism Collective Death Squad that he was inducted into. For that matter, they could all be involved, alibi or no.

Or maybe a Greek inspiration goddess killed them, he thinks, dejectedly, in which case my entire morning has been a waste of time.

Krystal first, then, and then Joss. He fires off a text to Bill (“couldn’t find you this morning, pick you up at 2?”) and jumps as his phone rings, as if in response.

“It’s me.” It’s Dr Singh; Dipper immediately reaches for his notebook. “I have good news and bad news.”

Dipper taps his pen against his hand. “What’s the bad news?”

“Your intern is a cast-iron dumbass.”

That surprises a laugh out of him; he tries to turn it into a coughing fit, with mixed success. “I’m sure he’ll appreciate the constructive feedback,” he says. “What else have you got for me?”

“Well, Kendall’s tox report came back.” A shuffling sound on the other end of the phone. “There was THC in her system when she died, but she was just under the legal limit for driving. We know she used regularly, and she had no DUIs on record.”

“So whatever made her driving so erratic…?”

“I’d be surprised if it was cannabis alone.” Dr Singh sounds amused. “But the joints in her car had been soaked in formaldehyde, so that might have had something to do with it.”

Dipper drops his pen. “Soaked in – I’m sorry?”

“Formaldehyde.” Apparently Dipper is reacting to this news the way Dr Singh hoped he would, so at least someone is happy. “Or maybe some other kind of embalming fluid. I’ve heard of people doing this, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it myself.”

“What would that… do?” On paper, it doesn’t seem like smoking formaldehyde would be a good idea, but Dipper’s never been a particularly adventurous substance user. Maybe it’s a great experience if you’re not driving; certainly Bill seemed to have a nice nap.

“Well, longer-term, it can cause severe neurological damage, but I don’t think that’s a concern here,” Asked and answered, then. “Most people see an increase in the psychoactive effects: paranoia, hallucinations, emotional disturbances. Probably pretty scary, especially if you didn’t know what you’d just been smoking.”

“Definitely.” Dipper makes a note. “So… where would someone go to get formaldehyde?”

“The Internet.” There’s a shrug in Dr Singh’s voice. “You’d normally need to buy embalming fluid in bulk, unless you know a funeral home director, but you can buy formalin in some pharmacies. Maybe even a pet store; some people put it in fish tanks. It’s not that hard to come by, if you’re looking for it.”

Dipper sighs. “Well, thanks for the update,” he says. “Let me know if the autopsy gives us anything else.”

“Sure. Good luck.” Dr Singh hangs up.

A quick Internet search confirms that there are no hot formaldehyde joints nearby where all the local embalmers go to pick up their supplies. So much for that. Another thing to look out for – receipts, packing slips, bottles with skulls on them. (It’s probably too much to hope for that the murderer has left formalin lying around the Strike Nine offices, but he can’t rule it out.)

He spends a few minutes categorising the articles he has bookmarked so that he knows where he’s lost them; then he goes to Lux to pick up Bill, who has so far left him nine angry text messages asking where he is. At least, he thinks they’re angry. It’s hard to tell when someone has all caps as their default setting for written communication.

“Ditching me already?” Yep, Bill is definitely annoyed; he’s waiting outside Lux’s front door, for one. “You said I’d come with you on your cases.”

“You weren’t answering your phone.” Dipper shrugs. “I can’t put off doing police work until you think it’s convenient. Besides, this morning was mostly reading. You’d have hated it.”

“I love reading,” Bill says, stiffly. “I’m incredible at reading. I can read five manuscripts at once and still hit a wasp with a poison dart at fifty paces. You’ve never even seen reading before.”

“Sorry to have missed you, then,” Dipper says, dry. “Look, are you coming or not? I thought you wanted to torment some journalists.”

Bill’s expression clears immediately. “Is that today?” He claps his hands, turning towards the car. “All is forgiven, Detective,” he says, his annoyance apparently forgotten. “Lead the way.”

They say that detectives develop a sixth sense for a situation on the turn, or one that’s already gone bad. In fairness, they say that about pretty much everything – Dipper’s heard similar things about doctors and patients, or taxi drivers and traffic.

It is, in his experience, only true as far as it goes. Sure, his gut has warned him a few times about situations that seemed pretty innocent on the surface but that turned out to be anything but – Delilah being a case in point – but he’s also had plenty of bad feelings that turned out not to be connected to anything at all. Instinct is like any other sense: it's there to be used, you can fine-tune it through experience – and sometimes it misfires. Forgetting this would be as big a mistake as dismissing every gut feeling out of hand.

Still, despite the Strike Nine office building being pretty much the same as they left it the previous evening, he feels his hackles rise as they walk through the front doors, and an invisible fist clenches in his chest. Something’s wrong.

“What’s with you?” Bill says, idly, as they wait for the elevator. “You look like a rabbit in front of a firing squad.”

“That’s… vivid.” Dipper taps his foot, watching the elevator sign tick down through the floors above them. “Just a feeling.”

“What kind of feeling?” Bill raises an eyebrow. “Joy? Fear? Primal, all-consuming lust? Inertia?”

“Increasing irritation,” Dipper says, blandly, just to contain the smirk on the demon’s face. Then he sighs. “I… I don’t know. It might be nothing, but something feels… off. I guess we’ll find out when we get up there.” He scowls at the button, presses it again. “If we ever get up there. How old even is this elevator?”

“Twenty-three years, two months, six days and five hours.” Bill squints at the doors. “Hard to tell exactly, climate conditions being what they are, but I’d say it’s got… eh, another six and a half, seven years before it gives up the ghost with a group of unfortunates inside.”

Dipper stares at him.

“Perk of the job.” Bill grins. “I can tell anything the exact time and date of its death.” He thinks for a second. “With some margin for error.” His smile brightens, full of his teeth. “Wanna know yours?”

Dipper does not, but threatening to tell him keeps Bill occupied through the elevator ride, so he supposes that’s something. The fist around his heart squeezes tight every time the elevator shudders.

It might be nothing, he tells himself, sternly. Get it together.

The entryway to Strike Nine’s floor is deserted today, which only adds to his unease. The papers have been knocked off the front desk, and the organised chaos on the desks has spread and mutated into full-on pandemonium. There’s a half-eaten bagel on the floor, knocked off its plate, which is still sitting on the desk. Next to it are two paper coffee cups.

So maybe not nothing, then. Good detective-ing, Pines.

“Hello?” he calls out. He motions to Bill to stay back; the demon pointedly steps up beside him, making him switch tracks to a more appropriately frustrated gesture. Be like that. “Is anyone there?” He hears something clunk in the kitchen and takes a step forward, resting a hand on his belt, above his holster. “Joss?”

“Detective Pines?” Joss’s voice, shaky. Dipper lets his hand drop.

“I’m here,” he says, moving towards the back of the office. “Is everything okay?”

He’s nearing the kitchen when Joss bursts out of it. She’s a little dishevelled, her face wet, her eyes red; her hair is wild, half-out of its ponytail, as if she’s run her hands through it repeatedly.

“I – I was going to call you,” she says, and then stops and takes a deep, shuddering breath, swiping the back of her hand over her eyes. “I’m sorry, Detective. Bill. There’s been…” She takes another breath. “I was going to call you,” she repeats. “I should have done it right away, but I – it was kind of a shock. I found her about twenty minutes ago.”

Found her. Whatever pride Dipper had been feeling in his detective’s intuition turns to ice in his veins. “Show me.”

They walk to the meeting room together, avoiding the scattered papers as much as they can. Dipper’s heart beats out a tight, stuttering rhythm, choked by the fist around it.

By comparison, the meeting room seems quieter, almost tranquil. Not as many papers around here; a few scattered receipts from the purse she dropped on the floor, but otherwise, not nearly as much mess, except that there’s another paper cup lying in the doorway, the smell of the spilled coffee mingling with the metallic scent of blood.

And then, of course, there’s her.

She’s prone on the scratchy blue carpet, her eyes blank and staring. One of her arms is at an odd angle behind her, as if she’s tried to catch herself. There’s a half-hearted streak of blood on her forehead, but it’s deceptive; there’s a dark burst on the desk behind her, and more on the carpet under her head.

It’s Krystal with a K.

“You might want to step outside,” Dipper tells Joss, gently. “I need to take a look around before I call this in. It might be – unsettling.” In general, it’s a good idea to get civilians away from bodies, especially if they knew the deceased. He tries his best to hold people’s humanity in his mind while he works, but ultimately, he needs to stay focused, and that means assuming a level of detachment that people who knew a victim might find objectionable.

“I’ve been an investigative reporter for twenty years.” Joss folds her arms. “This isn’t my first crime scene, and she’s – she was my friend.” Her voice trembles a little, but holds firm. “I won’t get in your way, I promise.”

Dipper turns this over in his mind for a second. “Alright,” he says, slowly. “Would you mind getting me some paper and a pen? I forgot my notebook.” Joss gives him a dubious nod and leaves the room.

“You didn’t forget your notebook,” Bill comments, dropping into a crouch next to the body.

“I didn’t want to upset her.” Dipper kneels next to him. “But she’s a suspect, so it’s better if she hears as little of this as possible.”

He desperately wants to close those pale, clouded eyes, but he doesn’t have any gloves on him, so all he can really do is look. It seems pretty obvious what the cause of death was here, at least; the hair at the back of Krystal’s head is snarled and matted with blood, and likely other fluids. Something hit her head, very hard – probably the desk, judging by the blood splatter. Not a fall, unless she’d somehow started on the ceiling. At least it was quick.

“Head trauma,” he says, just to make it official. “Someone pushed her, or… threw her, maybe. She must have hit her head on the corner of the – hey!” Bill has two fingers pressed against Krystal’s forehead. “Didn’t we just talk about touching things at crime scenes?”

“You think they’ve laced her with fentanyl or something?” Bill shakes his head. “Shut up for a second. I’m trying to concentrate.”

“That was not the only reason – ” Something twangs, so faint as to be almost imperceptible, in the air between them. Dipper frowns. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to concentrate,” Bill repeats, supremely aggravating in his reasonableness. A couple of beats pass, and then he pulls his hand back. “She’s been dead way longer than twenty minutes,” he says. “A few hours, maybe. Hard to say for sure.”

“How do you know?”

“Consciousness is kinda finicky.” Bill straightens and gets to his feet, wiping his hands on his pants. “Takes a while for the human soul to get the memo after its vessel dies; it’s rare you see ‘em run off immediately after the body dies. Usually they hang around for, eh, twenty to forty minutes? If you’re lucky, that means you can call ‘em back for a quick chat.” He makes a face. “Your window’s short, and they almost never have anything really fun to say. Figured it was worth a shot.”

Dipper looks up at him, digesting this new information.

“Can you do it with gloves on?” he says at last.

“Probably.”

“Then do it with gloves on next time,” Dipper says, tiredly. “You can’t just touch things at crime scenes.”

“You almost never have anything fun to say either,” Bill grumbles. There’s an odd texture layered somewhere in his tone – a warmth, almost – that Dipper delicately puts to one side to avoid thinking about later.

He decides to press on. “If you’re right – ”

“Which I definitely am – ”

“ – then either someone came here, killed her and left the office empty until Joss showed up,” Dipper continues, determined, “or Joss is lying to us.” He leans a little closer to the body. There are matching finger-shaped bruises on Krystal’s upper arms, ugly and livid. “Nobody’s moved her,” he says. “She’s bled a lot; we’d have noticed stains elsewhere in the office.”

“Kind of a shame,” Bill says cheerfully. “Mighta livened up the décor in here a bit.” Dipper can feel him watching with that weird intensity again.

“Apart from her head,” Dipper continues, ignoring him, “she’s not badly hurt. No bruises on her face or neck, just her arms. Nothing under her nails.” He gets to his feet, thinking, just as Joss steps back into the room, holding a notebook with half the pages ripped out and a pen. He accepts them with a nod of thanks.

“Probably not a fight,” he says. “At least, not a physical one. Probably not planned, either, or it wouldn’t be so messy.” An argument, if he had to guess, one that got out of hand.

It doesn’t make sense. He’s read articles from Krystal dating back to two days ago; she has a fact-based reporting record going back years, even publishing a couple of redactions here and there of articles based on data that she’d later learned was flawed. As a journalist, at least, her reputation was solid.

So she was killed over something else. He thinks about the ransacked office, about the light glinting off the silver mask.

He turns to Joss. She looks drawn, sallow and tired, but she doesn’t flinch from his gaze.

“I need to know exactly what happened,” he says, as gently as he can. “Start with when you got here. What time was it? What did you see?”

“We got here this morning.” Joss rubs her eyes. “Me and Krystal, that is. I guess around ten? It was just us; Parvinder and Jack were meant to come in this afternoon, but after I – ” She swallows. “I stepped out around 2P.M. for coffee. I guess I was gone forty-five minutes or so.”

She’s been dead a few hours, maybe more. Dipper meets Bill’s eye over Joss’s shoulder; the demon tilts his head in her direction, a question in his gaze, and Dipper shakes his head minutely. Not yet.

“On a coffee run?” he prompts.

She smiles, wanly. “It’s been such a shitty week,” she says. “I wanted to do something nice, and Krystal loves – I mean, she loved the pistachio lattes at Panopticon. So I went down there. The line was halfway around the block.” The curl of her lip turns bitter. “I should have just gone to fucking Starbucks.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Dipper says, before Bill can say something like Probably.

“I know,” Joss says wearily. “And you know that doesn’t help.”

Dipper doesn't really know what to say to that.

“When I came back, the office was ransacked,” she continues, after a second. “I called out, and I didn’t hear anything, so I went looking for her, until – until I found her.” She gestures at the coffee cup in the doorway. “That was meant to be hers. I dropped it when I saw her. I – I’m sorry, but that’s – all I know.”

“Is there anything missing from the office?”

“Krystal’s laptop. Mine was locked in my desk.” She presses her fingertips together. “Other than that, I – I don’t – think so.”

“And did she…” Dipper sighs. “You know I have to ask,” he says. “Did she have any enemies?”

“Not Krystal.” Joss shakes her head. “I mean, she was – kind of a lot, and she was a female finance reporter, so she obviously had her critics. But nobody was out for her the way they were for Caro. She was always – fair. Level-headed. Even the people who didn’t like her tended to respect her.”

“All right.” Dipper thinks for a moment. The crime scene team will comb over this place for them; right now, he wants to keep Joss talking, and it’s probably best if they don’t do that here.

“I need to call this in,” he says. “They’ll want to work uninterrupted, and, um, to be honest, you look like you could use a drink. Is there anywhere quiet near here?”

She gives him an arch look. “Are you trying to get me drunk, Detective Pines?”

“I’m trying to make my witness more comfortable,” Dipper says evenly. “It looks like she’s had a shock.” He gives her a hesitant smile. “It doesn’t have to be alcohol, if you’d rather not. I just thought you might want to get out of here.”

Joss balks for a second, but her desire for bourbon clearly outweighs whatever reserve she feels about drinking with a cop, because once Dipper is off the phone with dispatch, she takes them to a bar nearby. As they’re leaving, Dipper takes one last look around at the overturned office: the displaced desks, the whirlwind of papers.

The two abandoned coffee cups on the desk.

The bar is a small place, comfortingly dingy, and completely deserted. They order Joss’s whiskey and claim a table in the back, leaving Bill to order whatever concoction he has in mind today. (And pay. Buying drinks for suspects is not in any police budget, and Dipper considers it the least he can do.)

“So,” he says as they take their seats. “Why a reporter? You said it was a hard industry to break into.”

“It was.” Joss draws a finger thoughtfully around the rim of her glass. “It might actually be harder across the board now; the industry doesn’t value writing the way that it used to.” She thinks for a second. “Which was never much. But I… like stories. When I was a girl, I thought that meant I should be writing fiction, but… it never quite clicked. I always felt like there was something I could be doing that I’d be better at.” She takes a sip of her drink. “Anyway, I gave that up when I got married.”

Dipper blinks. She never mentioned a spouse.

There must be something in his expression, because Joss smiles and lifts her left hand, showing her bare fingers. “It didn’t last,” she explains. “We had… different ideas about what a partnership should look like.” She cups her hands around her glass, cradling it. “After my divorce, I started thinking about stories again, and I realised that I wanted to talk about… true things. Real things.”

“So you started a journalism collective.” Dipper raises a hand at Bill in silent greeting as he joins them; today’s drink is a sparkling, clear blue, complete with maraschino cherry and cocktail umbrella. How does he keep doing that? If Dipper had asked for a cocktail umbrella in a place like this, he’s pretty sure he’d have been punched in the face. Maybe being the devil comes with the ability to manifest garnishes.

She laughs a little. “That came later. It was just me for a long time – me and Caro, that is.” Her expression dims. “We almost never worked on the same stories, but we’d stick around each other as much as we could. Travel together, share an office. We were even roommates for a while.” She bows her head over her glass.

“You were close,” Dipper murmurs.

“We were.” She downs half of her drink and sets the glass down. “Strike Nine was – it was meant to be a place for us to bring other reporters together. I was…” She sighs. “I’d hoped, somehow, that we could make things easier for the generation following after us. Give them somewhere to go, a model to follow.”

“That sounds like important work,” Dipper says, carefully. “It must mean a lot to you.”

“It’s – everything.” Joss looks away for a second, blinks something out of her eyes. “It was going to be everything.”

“I can understand that.” Dipper darts a sharp, meaningful look in Bill’s direction. Be ready. He presses his palms together under the table, squaring his shoulders a little. “Is that why you weren’t honest with us earlier?”

Joss straightens in her chair, her eyes snapping up to meet his. “I’m sorry?”

“You said it was just you and Krystal this morning,” Dipper says, keeping his voice steady. “You went on a coffee run for the two of you, but you dropped hers when you found her. But there were two more cups out in the main office.” He leans forward a little. “Who else was there?”

“There wasn’t – ”

“Please, Joss.” Dipper sets his hands on the table. “I know you’re trying to do the right thing, but this… whoever did this killed Krystal. Maybe Caro, too. We need to know who you’re covering for.”

Silence. Joss clutches at her glass, her fingers trembling. Her pulse is a panicked flicker at her throat.

Across the table, Bill raises his eyebrow, a question in his eyes. Dipper hesitates for a second – she might be about to talk, maybe, just maybe – but he doesn’t think she’s going to, and this might be their best chance.

He inclines his head, just a fraction. Fine. Do it.

“You should tell us,” Bill says, his voice soft as velvet. Dipper feels the atmosphere start to tremble and tense around them. “Why put all this work into protecting someone who just leaves you to face the music by yourself? We can help you.” He rests his elbows on the table, his eye intent on Joss’s face. “What do you really want?”

The air churns and pulses, the smell of liquor mixing uneasily with the thrum of Bill’s power. Joss’s eyes have flown wide; for a second, her throat works, as if she’s trying to force something out, or keep it back.

“I – I have to go,” she gasps out. She scrambles out of her chair, a hand pressed over her mouth, and – runs out of the bar.

For a second, Dipper thinks about going after her. He could probably justify it – he could even arrest her on the spot, because running from a police interrogation is definitely suspicious behaviour. But he has nothing to hold her on, and besides, “the non-police consultant asked me some weirdly intense questions about my deepest personal desires over hard liquor” is a conversation he doesn’t particularly want to navigate, either.

He turns, instead, to Bill, who is looking thoroughly entertained.

“What was that?” he demands. “I thought you said I was the only human who could resist you.”

“Jealous?” Bill smirks. “Don’t worry, Pine Tree, you’re still my one and only. That worked just fine.”

“But – ”

“The simpler the human mind, the easier it is for me to get in,” the demon says, taking a sip of his drink. “She was always gonna be a tougher nut to crack. You saw how she ran outta here – she practically had to gag herself. She knew she was gonna talk, so she got herself away. A little analogue for my tastes, but you can’t argue with the results.”

“Right.” Dipper sighs and lets his shoulders slump. “Well, I’ve asked for today’s security tapes,” he continues. “They’d be our best bet for finding whoever else was here today. And in the meantime…” He chews his lower lip, thinking furiously.

This is not a good idea. He should focus on the scene, and on his research; there must be a way of piecing this together without plunging headlong into summoning something with literally untold power. There’s no way to know what he’s getting himself into.

But there isn’t time. He’s had two bodies in two days, and one of them belongs to someone who was trying to tell him something in giving him the mask, and if he doesn’t find out what it was –

They were too late to save Krystal. He owes it to her to follow the lead she gave him.

“I guess we’re interviewing a goddess,” he says, resigned. “But if I get turned into a bird, you have to explain it to my sister.”

“Perfect.” Bill rubs his hands together. “You know any good eulogies?”

Chapter Text

Being neither a habitual funeral-goer nor a particularly morbid classicist, Dipper does not know any good eulogies, which means that finding one is their first step once the crime scene is squared away. His command of ancient Greek and Latin are, as it happens, nonexistent, and there simply isn’t time for him to learn, much less get a handle on the metre of your average eulogy. That limits them what’s available in translation on the Internet, which isn’t very much; it takes them the best part of an hour to track down one that Bill deems suitable. Luckily, the rest of the supplies seem fairly easy to come by: wine, grave dirt (Bill has several bags lying around, something Dipper decides not to inquire further about), salt - and the mask, of course.

Most summonings are easier around the witching hour, and, conveniently, 11:30P.M. is a great time to discreetly hop a graveyard fence. (“Like calls to like,” Bill explains when Dipper asks about the location. “She's the Muse of Tragedy. Where d’you think most of the stories she inspires end up?”) Bill boosts him up, then tosses the bag of ritual ingredients over to him.

“I’ll wait here,” he says, tucking his thumbs into his pockets.

Dipper frowns. “You’re not coming?”

“Best I don’t.” Bill’s expression hovers between frustration and something Dipper can’t quite identify; a kind of eagerness, almost. “She might take it as an insult.” He smirks. “You’ll be fine, kid! Just scream real loud if you need me. Y’know, so I know.”

As offers of backup go, that’s not a great one - Dipper has a distressingly vivid mental image of yelling for help, only for Bill to show up with popcorn, and perhaps a giant foam finger - but the clock is ticking; if he’s going to do this, it has to be now.

He slings the bag over his shoulder and makes his way deeper into the graveyard. It’s a nice night - mild, with a slight breeze. He can hear a few crickets chirping, smell something floral on the wind. A jacaranda, maybe. If it weren’t for all the headstones, he could be taking a pleasant midnight stroll.

He sets up in front of what looks like an honest-to-goodness crypt - probably some kind of old-money burial plot. He mixes the salt with the grave dirt, scatters it in a rough circle around himself. He pours out the wine (hopefully Farmstead Favour in a travel mug will be good enough for Melpomene - he’s not a big wine drinker at the best of times, and he’s spent a lot of money on spirit bowls recently) and sets it at his feet. He unfolds the printout with the eulogy on it and sets it in his right hand, the mask in his left. Then he begins to read.

“So, oddly, reminiscent of Prometheus chained
to the Scythian crags with the relentless bird gorging
on his too-big heart: The guy acting the part of the mime
show bandit, Laureolus. Naked, helpless, hanging on
no make believe cross, and offering up his guts to
a Caledonian bear. His torn apart parts, dripping. Joints
still writhing alive in a body no longer anyone’s body.”

It’s strange, hearing himself read these words; he feels like a child running lines for a school play, trying to fit into a dramatic grandiosity far too big for his voice. His voice falters a little on the thought; he pushes it aside and keeps going.

“Justice at last. (But tell me again what he did?)
Did his guilty sword slit his master’s throat? Or
did the harebrain burgle a temple looking for secret gold?
Or maybe this savage was even plotting to put you—
gentle Rome—to the torch? Does it matter?
He’s certainly outdone the old storybook desperados.
Their crimes are fables; his punishment, the real thing.”

He reaches down for the wine and drinks a sip, coughing a little as it goes down. He pours the rest out at his feet.

Here goes nothing.

He fits the mask over the left-hand side of his face.

For a moment, the world slows, the seconds trickling by like road markers in traffic. He can feel the silver against his skin, a metallic chill with the faint warmth of his hand behind it. There’s no fastening on the mask, but it still clings to his face after he pulls his hand away.

And when he looks up, there’s a woman in front of him.

This is, of course, what he was hoping for, but he still flinches a little in surprise; he had almost managed to convince himself this wasn’t going to work. Melpomene is tall, olive-skinned and magnificent, her hair wine-dark as the sea, her eyes deep and unfathomable as the waters of Lethe. Looking at her is strange and disorienting, and it takes him a second to figure out why: he can only see her through the eye covered by the mask, so half of his brain is telling him that he is looking upon a Muse, to whom are due great gifts and eternal thanks, and the other half is screaming that there’s nobody there.

He takes a deep breath, and tries for some kind of a middle ground.

“Hello,” he says. Then, because she is a Muse, and he did summon her: “Ma’am.”

That makes her laugh, deep and pleasant. “Inelegant, as manners go,” she says, “but sufficient. Hello, child.”

“Um.” Ordinarily, he’d protest the epithet - “child” is even worse than “kid” - but he supposes most humans are children to a being like her, and besides, something about her voice is making it hard for him to summon his usual outrage.

Dipper isn’t a huge drinker - he usually tops out at around three beers - but he’s had a few nights in college, the booze flowing, the company engaging and electric, where he stood up from the bar to realise, far too late, that he’s had one too many. Melpomene’s voice, rich as liquor, heady as summer wildflowers, reminds him of that feeling - he can feel it behind his eyes, down his spine, and in the pit of his stomach. It’s intoxication mixed with dread: the knowledge that something is attacking his synapses, unfurling, mist-like, around every sense, and he wasn’t ready, and he cannot predict this, or control it.

Maybe this was a bad idea.

“I just want to talk,” he blurts out, trying to take deep breaths, hoping the night air will clear his head. “Can you answer some questions for me?”

“I can do as I wish,” Melpomene says easily. She takes a step towards him, and even through the mask he can see that her bare feet leave no indent in the grass. “What can you offer me, Dipper Pines, for the knowledge you seek?”

He’s on firmer ground with this line of questioning, at least. “I brought you wine,” he says, indicating the bottle. “I’m – sorry. It was the best I could get before payday.” She raises an eyebrow, but otherwise doesn’t react to this. “And… and I found Delilah’s killer.” That seems to get her interest; her eyes snap to his face. “She was family to you, wasn’t she? I got justice for her.”

“All sirens are family to me,” she agrees, leaning against one of the marble walls of the crypt. “Very well, child. Ask your questions. We’ll see how many answers my revenge can buy.”

This is better than nothing. Moreover, whatever effect her voice was having on him seems to have retreated a little; he’s not sure whether he’s getting used to it or whether Melpomene herself has dialled its potency back somehow, but while his train of thought still seems to be a little delayed, he does at least feel like he’s back in the driver’s car.

“I want to talk about the Strike Nine Collective,” he says. “Who are they to you?”

“Ah.” She smiles. “You mortals have made quite a mess of cults, have you not? To be a member of mine would have been a great honour, when I first began to share my gifts with your kind. Times have changed, alas. Call them my disciples.”

“Right.” Dipper frowns a little. “So they’re all people you… inspire?”

She inclines her head.

“But… aren’t they journalists? I mean, I thought you were the Muse of Tragedy. I figured that’d be more like… plays. Poetry.” He swallows, seeing her eyes narrow a little. “Ma’am.”

The goddess shrugs. “Modern problems call for modern solutions,” she says. “My power comes from the successful use of my gifts. Almost nobody reads poetry anymore. I had to diversify.”

“Right.” Dipper worries at the sleeve of his hoodie. “What about Carolyn Kendall?”

“Caro?” Nothing changes on Melpomene’s face. “She’s dead. What about her?”

“She was a member of Strike Nine.” Dipper frowns. “So she was one of yours. You don’t care that she’s dead?”

“I didn’t say that.” Melpomene brushes an invisible speck of dirt from her dress. “I liked Caro a great deal, and it always hurts to lose a follower. But I could see that she was… adrift.”

Dipper lets this hang in the air for a second.

The goddess sighs. “Caro was with me for a long time, by human standards,” she says. “At first, she was unstoppable. Tenacious. I lit a fire in her, and she channelled it in a way I’ve rarely seen before. She was a joy to work through. Truly.”

“And then?”

She shrugs. “You saw,” she says, matter-of-fact. “It became too hard for her. The stories I inspired, they were - too much work, for too little gain. My gifts have never guaranteed material wealth; inspiration means nothing to the free market.” She smiles, crookedly. “A true believer would have persisted. She did not. She sought out… other avenues.”

Something chill seeps its way under Dipper’s skin.

“She was writing things that weren’t true,” he says slowly. “You didn’t like that.”

“I have no use for liars,” Melpomene says serenely. “Fiction, I welcome; every story has a grain of reality in it, no matter how far-fetched. Widely read, a good story feeds me well. Caro, like Micah before her, produced neither truth nor allegory. I tried, but they had all but snuffed out the spark inside them. They were chasing something else, and claiming my favour as they did it.”

“You killed them.” Dipper’s mouth is dry.

“I?” Melpomene smiles. “I am the Muse of Tragedy, child. I was once revered throughout the earthly realm; today, my followers number in the hundreds, if that. My power is great, but it is not what it once was. Why should I bestir myself to murder misbehaving humans? If I make my displeasure known - if I suggest that corrective action might be required - and one of my disciples takes some initiative…” She spreads her hands, the picture of aggrieved innocence. “That is a mortal matter, and no business of mine.”

Dipper feels sick. This is progress; he should feel good about it. Someone from Strike Nine killed Caro, and Micah before her. Testimony from a supernatural being is obviously not going to hold up in court, but it knows he’s looking in the right place, as least.

He does not feel good about this.

In real terms - in terms of what’s true, what’s factual - he’s found the murderer, if not the killer (or killers). As far as he can see, his accusation holds true; if Caro and Micah were, indeed, killed by Strike Nine members acting on her instructions, then ultimately those deaths are on Melpomene, no matter what she says.

Practically, though - to say nothing of legally - he can’t say that it matters. It’s not as if he can arrest her. He’s not sure what kind of authority you could even ask to extradite a being like her to Los Angeles, but he can’t imagine them hearing his petition, much less caring. More than that, “my Muse made me do it” barely even counts as an insanity defence. He has a culprit, but in the process of identifying her, he’s basically ruled out the possibility of any real justice here.

“Was Krystal Jones a liar too?” He has to force it out.

“No.” The answer is a little too quick, a little too firm, and there’s something in Melpomene’s eyes that Dipper can’t quite identify, a frustration mixed with sadness. “Poor girl,” she says, and for the first time, he hears genuine regret in her voice. “So devoted, so scared. I would never have punished that betrayal with death, not after everything she had done for me.”

“Do you know who would have?”

“I do not track mortal affairs day-to-day.” This with a touch of haughtiness that almost reminds him of Bill. “And I hear from some of my disciples more often than others. It might have been any of them.”

“Right.” It feels leaden in his mouth. “Who do you hear from more often, then? Who did you talk to about Carolyn Kendall?” Silence, soft as quicksand; he lets it flow by for a moment, then pushes, one last time. “Was it Joss Herrero?”

“Ah.” The goddess smiles at him, but there’s something brittle in it. “I think your revenge-based credit may have run dry.”

Of course it has. “I – ”

“But there might be a way to extend it,” she says, mildly. Still not looking at him. “I respect drive, Dipper Pines. Not a lot of humans would track someone like me down just for answers.” She lifts her head, staring straight into his eyes. “Who knows what you might do with a little inspiration?”

She doesn’t raise her voice, but it seems to rise and swell around him all the same, filling his head, drowning out his sickness, his doubt. It feels like she can see him, really see him - his dreams, his flaws, his ambition - and her words loom large and bright in his head, resonant with sincerity.

A little inspiration.

“Step out of the circle, child.” Melpomene holds out a hand. “I can give you your answers. You’ve come this far; don’t you want to see this through?”

He does. For a second, Dipper wants everything she’s offering. He could solve this case in a heartbeat, and then he could do so much more. He’s always been determined, but with that spark… He’d see what truly mattered, have that innate sense for what the next best thing for him to pursue is. He’d have someone on his side, really on his side, invested in his success. He could -

His head pounds, a sickening beat thrumming against his temple. A drop of sweat drips down his face under the mask, leaving a faint salt sting against his skin.

Melpomene has used her followers to kill two people. The only reason he’s even here is that her gifts come at a price, and when it comes due -

You’re better than them, something whispers in his head. You would never resort to gossip, or give air time to fluoride conspiracies. You wouldn’t end up like Micah, or like Caro.

But Caro wasn’t the only person who paid her price. He thinks about the blood on Jen’s face, the fury and pain in her voice, wound tight through her hands, her shoulders. Her life changed, for ever; her frustrated helplessness.

Could I do that to someone? For inspiration?

Step out of the circle.

The sky wheels above him, a few stars winking through the smog. Dipper stumbles, and drops to one knee.

He hears movement beside him. Something - some loose, lightweight length of fabric, faintly warmed through by someone else’s body - drapes over his shoulders. The effect is immediate; Melpomene’s voice in his head dims to a faint echo. That heavy, drunken feeling retreats, leaving only a faint ache in his temples.

“You’re overstepping, lady.” Bill doesn’t sound angry, exactly, but there’s some kind of strain in his voice; Dipper, still panting on the ground, doesn’t have it in him to study the other man’s face for clues. “It oughta be pretty clear that the kid’s spoken for.”

“Ought it?” Melpomene sounds amused. “I don’t see your name on him. Do we not label our possessions anymore?”

“It’s an informal arrangement.” Bill folds his arms. “Still pretty clearly in force. Back off.”

“I have the right to offer my services to whomever I wish.” Melpomene’s equanimity seems to be irritating Bill even further. If he weren’t struggling to get back on his feet, that would almost be enough to put her back in Dipper’s good books. “And he has the right to make his own choices.”

“You call that his own choice? With you dripping your influence in his ear?” Bill’s face twists into something like a snarl. “At least I had the decency to threaten him out in the open. We had a negotiation.”

“Ah, yes. The honourable businessman.” Laughter ripples through Melpomene’s voice. “You’d have done it my way, Bill Cipher - if you could.”

“That’s enough.” Dipper staggers to his feet. The weight around his shoulders nearly slips off as he does; he grabs at it, fisting his hands in what turn out to be the lapels of Bill’s coat. “Stop – objectifying me. Both of you.”

“I’m helping, Detective,” Bill snaps, still not looking at him. “She wants to use you. For food, no less. You wanna be a piece of meat?”

“I don’t want to be running a work placement for the devil,” Dipper points out. “These things get sprung on you sometimes. I’m rolling with the punches.”

“I’ll say! She had you punched right down to the floor when I showed up – ”

“You could have warned me this might happen.” Now Dipper is getting annoyed himself. “I might’ve been ready for it if you had – ”

“I thought you might be able to resist her,” Bill grumbles. His arms fold a little tighter. “Didn’t realise you’d fold like a dropkicked flamingo at the first proper hit.”

Dipper stares at him. “Seriously, dude?” His hands drop from the lapels of Bill’s coat. “You’re mad because her powers worked on me and yours didn’t?”

Melpomene clears her throat. He looks back at her, suddenly embarrassed.

“This is fascinating,” she says, and it sounds like she means it. “But I can see I’ve become surplus to requirements.” She gives Dipper a smile, and then – inexplicably – winks at him. “I enjoyed our conversation, Dipper Pines. You know how to find me if you change your mind.”

The mask drops away from Dipper’s face, and Melpomene is gone.

“It wasn’t a total waste of time.” Dipper needs a minute and some water before he can drive anywhere, so they’re sitting in his car. He still has Bill’s coat draped around his shoulders; the demon doesn’t seem inclined to ask for it back, and as much as Dipper dislikes the fairly obvious territory-marking attempt, it did keep him in the summoning circle, and he can’t deny that the feel of it is vaguely reassuring. It smells like ozone carried on a desert wind, cold and hot and clean and sharp.

“You think?” Bill doesn’t look impressed. “Sounds like she didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know.”

“Maybe not,” Dipper admits. “But she confirmed some things for me.” He takes a swig of water, sighs. “She had Joss kill Carolyn,” he says. “I’m sure of it. Probably Micah, too.” He looks out into the darkness around them. “She knows how to make it hard to say no. And for Joss…” He squeezes the water bottle for a second, feels the plastic give a little under his fingers. “She started Strike Nine. It’s everything to her, and the success of everyone there depends on Melpomene. If she thought they might lose her…”

“A classic,” Bill agrees. “Cut out the weak links, prove your loyalty to your power source. People used to do it for me all the time.” His teeth flash, briefly, in the gloom. “What about the other one?”

“Krystal? I don’t know.” Dipper leans back against the headrest and shuts his eyes, listening to the soothing rush of traffic outside. “I think someone found out what she did, giving the mask to us, and they got angry.” He curls his fingers absently in the sleeve of Bill’s coat, realises what he’s doing, and abruptly lets it drop.

“It could have been Joss,” he continues, mostly to himself. “But I doubt it. She’s smart enough not to lie to the police about a murder she just committed, and she’s protective enough of Strike Nine to try and cover for one of her people.” It might have worked, too, if she’d thrown that extra cup away; they’d only have had Krystal’s suspected time of death on her, and that would have been hard to prove.

He shakes his head a little. “So far, all of this is circumstantial,” he says, opening his eyes. “We need concrete proof to make an arrest. We can go back to the crime scene tomorrow, see if we can find anything else without everyone in the way, and I’ll try and get in touch with Joss; she’ll know she’s a suspect by now. If I can’t reach her, or she won’t meet with us, I can put out an APB.” He looks over at Bill. “I want you to tell me something.”

“I did ‘em consecutively,” Bill says easily. “Pyronica’s mom would have been way down for a group thing, but her dad was kind of a prude. Well, at first.”

“That… was not it.” Dipper rubs his forehead. “But this is my question, yeah. Whose body is that?”

Bill cocks his head. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re – ” Dipper waves a hand in the demon’s direction. “You’re here. Walking around. You’re in this reality. So you’ve taken a human form somehow, but that vessel – ”

“Vessel?” Bill sounds offended, but Dipper can see his eye glittering with amusement. “You think your average piece of meat baffling just comes off the rack looking this well-tailored?” He straightens his collar, as if to prove his point. “I made this.”

Dipper stares at him.

“You made it,” he repeats, as if he can somehow explain it better to himself.

“Whole cloth,” Bill says proudly. “Well, mostly scrap ichor and meteorite ore. Maybe a few rubber bands.” He brushes an invisible speck of dust off his sleeve. “I gotta say, it was disgusting. And iterative. Even with blueprints! You ever try crafting a human genito-urinary system from scratch? An intelligent designer woulda put in some redundancies.”

“This may surprise you,” Dipper says, aware as he does of the futility in the statement, “but I wasn’t asking about your genito-anything.”

“All works fine down there now,” Bill volunteers innocently. The smirk, never too far away in spirit, has worked its way back onto his face.

“Mazel tov.” Dipper shakes his head, incredulous. “So you… built your own body?”

“Sure did.” Bill wiggles his fingers, as if to demonstrate his finger-making skills. (They do, in fairness, look very much like human fingers.) “What about it?”

“I mean – lots about it.” This is unheard of. It’s impossible. Dipper has his own miniature library of books on the paranormal, and even Ford never even so much as hinted that demons could just whip themselves up a corporeal form. “For one thing, how? And… how?” He frowns. “If you guys can just – make yourselves bodies, why didn’t Melpomene? Couldn’t she have done her own dirty work?”

“Sorry, Detective.” Bill hasn’t looked this happy since Dipper’s earlier invitation to mess with some journalists. “That’d be two whole extra answers, and I’ve already given you the one you paid for.”

“But – ”

“Ah, ah!” Bill shakes a finger at him, grinning so widely that Dipper thinks he might be able to knock out a tooth without even splitting his lip. If only. “We have a deal, kid. I gotta stick to the rules. If word gets around that I’m giving out freebies, everyone’s gonna want one, and then who knows what could happen? If you can get favours from the devil, who else might start thinking they can give their shit away?” He shakes his head in mock-horror. “This is how communism gets started, you know.”

“Fine.” Dipper drains the rest of his water and tosses the empty bottle into the back of the car. “Your reputation is safe for another night.” He rubs his eyes, briefly, and reaches for the key in his ignition, twisting it so that the dashboard lights come on. They catch on the mask, currently resting in his lap.

He ponders it for a long moment, then scoops it up in one hand, holding it out to Bill. “Can you destroy this?” he says. “Melpomene has people in this city willing to kill for her. Probably best to shut down this line of communication.”

The demon blinks; for a split second, it almost seems like he doesn’t know how to respond. It’s only the barest flicker of discomposure, but for as long as it lasts, Dipper could have sworn he looks genuinely surprised.

“Easy,” he says, snagging the mask from Dipper’s fingers. “Magical objects are hard to destroy completely, but you’re working with a professional, Detective. I can have this obliterated in no time.”

A tiny, delicate pause. Then:

“She seemed pretty taken with you.” Bill sounds utterly unbothered, entirely casual. His shoulders are entirely relaxed; any perceptible tension, however infinitesimally slight, in them is clearly a trick of the light. “No accounting for taste, I guess. You don’t wanna hang on to it?”

Dipper controls his immediate impulse, which is to laugh in the demon’s face. Why would I want another one of you people hanging around? For a being of unfathomable power and highly dubious morality, Melpomene had seemed okay, but between her willingness to try and mould his free will to suit her and what seemed like, at best, a data-informed approach to the value of human life, he’s happy to cut their acquaintance short.

Clearly, though, the idea that he might feel otherwise irks Bill, and he enjoys that immensely. So he lets a few more seconds slip by, as if he’s thinking it over.

Then he shakes his head. “I don’t want any Strike Niners trying to track it down,” he says. “Besides, it wouldn’t go with the rest of my stuff.”

“You’re the boss.” Bill shrugs, the very picture of a man who had no investment at all in the answer to the question he just asked. “Annihilation it is. Pyronica’ll be stoked to visit the forge again.”

“Give her my compliments.” It’s probably too much to hope for that the chance to melt the magic out of a summoning object will be enough to win Ronnie over, but Dipper can dream. “Oh, right – ” He slips the coat off his shoulders, wriggling it awkwardly out from under his butt, and holds it out. “Here, by the way.”

Bill starts to reach for the coat, and then stops. A slight frown creases his forehead.

“Keep it,” he says at last. “For now.”

“Uh.” Dipper blinks. “Are you sure? I mean – it’s not really my style.”

“I know,” Bill says, wistfully. “What a sartorial sacrifice, am I right? This’ll get me a Medal of Honour, for sure.” He snickers, then shakes his head. “Keep it,” he says again. “Might come in handy.”

“Um. Okay.” Dipper doesn’t really know how he’s supposed to react to this. “Thanks, I guess.” He folds the coat in half and slings it into the backseat.

“Treat it better than that,” Bill mutters. Dipper rolls his eyes and starts the car.

It’s early enough, when they head back to the crime scene, that the office building isn’t open yet; they have to use the set of keys the management staff gave them to get in. Other than the absence of Krystal’s body and the eerie, grey-tinged morning silence, it’s much the same as they left it. (Somebody has, at least, cleared away the dropped bagel before it can attract flies.)

“We’re looking for anything that looks like it might be related to Carolyn’s death,” he tells Bill as they duck under the police tape. “Car rental paperwork, receipts from online pharmacies – anything.” They have the contents of Carolyn’s phone and laptop, which turned out to be disappointing – plenty of rambling arguments carried out over text and email, but nothing that ended in any kind of credible threat.

“Didn’t you say they had security cameras here?” Bill pulls the pair of gloves Dipper forcibly stuffed into his pocket earlier out and ostentatiously puts them on, snapping the elastic around each of his wrists.

Dipper ignores this display of adherence to basic procedure. “They do,” he says, pulling on his own gloves, “but they’re dragging their feet on giving us the tapes. Something about the feeds going to a offsite local server.” Which is pretty good operational security, in fairness, but he can’t help but feel a little cheated. This place hasn’t had anything new in years – that elevator is nearly as old as I am – but this is where they make sure they’re doing things by the book.

“You want me to go down there?” Bill looks up at him. “I could get ‘em handed over.” He grins. “And then some, I bet.”

“I’m sure you could.” It is too early in the morning to parse out the ethical implications of sending your devil consultant to retrieve security tapes. “Uh – we can talk about it later.”

They start combing through papers. A large part of this is sifting the “definitely useless” from the “maybe something”, and after about fifteen minutes Dipper is losing the will to live. Apparently the good news about binder clips only made it to about half of Strike Nine, so there are a lot of papers scattered around that turn out to be page fifteen of a thirty-page report, the rest of which is probably buried under five other reports missing a page or two. There are receipts everywhere, and for all kinds of different things; at one point Bill finds a whole stack of receipts for condoms, some dating as far back as 2005. Dipper has to believe this is some kind of office in-joke. He wonders if it’s funny.

“You know how I said police work was boring?” Bill says, at length. “I take it back. This is hilarious.” He holds up a toy car stuffed with rubber bands. “You could kill someone three different ways with this, and they just had it lying around! Humans get stupider every single day.”

“I’m glad you’re having fun,” Dipper mutters. Bill will be bored again in five minutes, and while he is kind of interested in how Rubber Band Car could be used as a weapon – short of force-feeding someone the contents – he doesn’t think it’s relevant to the task at hand.

He’s about to start dismantling another stack of papers when something gives him pause. He has the crime scene photos from yesterday on his phone, so he pulls them up and flicks through, trying to find a decent angle of this part of the room –

“These weren’t here yesterday.” He picks up a small bundle of pages, their edges ragged. He still has the half-gutted notebook Joss gave him yesterday; it looks like this might be what she tore out. Bill wanders over as he rifles through them. Most of them are blank, save a surprisingly competent doodle of a ball python that spans two, and he’s just about to set them down in despair, when –

There. Towards the end of the bundle, there’s a folded piece of paper with a slightly different texture. He pulls it out and unfolds it. It’s a packing slip from somewhere called SOMETHING TO POND-ER: YOUR ONE-STOP SHOP FOR ALL YOUR FISHY FRIENDS!, addressed to a Mrs Jocelyn Bianchi. Just the one line item: SKU 154 – 250ml Formalin, 30%.

“I’d bet she didn’t do her research,” Bill scoffs. “Forty dollars for that tiny bottle? You can get enough formalin to pickle a horse for half that.”

“I don’t think that was on her mi – ” A distant, juddery groan catches Dipper’s attention; he grabs Bill’s arm, his voice dropping to a low murmur. “Was that the elevator?”

Bill opens his mouth to answer; Dipper shakes his head firmly, and the demon shoves him a little in protest, but stays silent. The groaning stops, quickly replaced by voices, harried and indistinct, and approaching footsteps.

Dipper thinks quickly, dragging Bill along with him as he makes for the nearest door. This turns out to be a bathroom, which is great, because it has a door that locks, but is also not great, because it’s barely bigger than a storage closet. They have a brief, mercifully silent scuffle in the dark over the best way for them to both press their ears up against the door, the upshot of which is that Dipper is now flattened against the surface with Bill pressing in behind him. The demon’s breath is a warm whisper through Dipper’s hair, sending a shiver down the back of his neck; he digs his elbow into Bill’s ribs, slowly but insistently. Stop breathing.

“ – told me it would be here,” a male voice hisses, harsh and breathy with apparent panic.

“I said I thought it might be here.” That’s Joss; she sounds tired. Resigned, almost. “Krystal might have hidden it somewhere. But it won’t do you any good, Jackie. Even if we find it, she’s not going to help us. Not now.”

“Don’t say that!” There’s a muffled thud, and a cry of pain. “Oh – oh, shit,” Jack pants. “I’m sorry, Joss. I’m really sorry. I just – we can still fix this. We have to.”

“I tried,” Joss says steadily. “I tried to clean up your mess, just like I said I would. It didn’t work.”

“Because of your stupid fucking – ”

“Because I was panicking.” This with a hint of anger. “We can have this conversation the day one of your employees commits an unscheduled homicide.” A pause, and a deep, heavy sigh. “I’m sorry. You’re right; I was stupid. I started all of this. I thought I could lead us through it.”

“You can – ”

“I can’t.” Joss is calm, now. Implacable. “The cops are onto me; it’s only a matter of time. And even if I could, I shouldn’t.”

“No.” There’s a wild edge in Jack’s voice that makes Dipper shift uneasily. “I – I can’t go back, Joss.” He sounds nearly on the edge of tears. “I was nothing before her. Before any of you. If you won’t fix this…” There’s a shuffle, and an all-too-familiar metallic click. “I can,” Jack breathes. “I’ll miss you, Joss. But if you’re gone, they won’t look any further.”

Oh, shit. Dipper shoves Bill away from him – he’s definitely going to hear about that later – and bursts through the door, drawing his own weapon. This has the advantage of drawing Jack’s attention; he fires in Dipper’s direction, but the shot goes wide, thudding harmlessly into the wall. Good. Getting shot again this quickly would have just been humiliating.

“Put it down, Jack,” he calls. “We can talk about this.”

“About what?” Jack is still aiming at him, but his hands are shaking; Dipper’s grip on his gun is steady, and it’s trained on the other man’s chest. He doesn’t feel great about the idea, but if it comes down to it, he’s pretty sure he’ll be able to shoot first. “You heard her.” He jerks his head towards Joss, who’s half-crouching on the floor. One of her eyes is purplish-red, swelling almost shut. “She started all of this. It’s her fault. I just want things to go back to the way they were.”

“When?” Dipper raises an eyebrow. “Before Carolyn? Or before you killed an innocent woman and left your boss to cover for you?”

“That wasn’t – ”

“Did she make you angry, Jack?” Dipper is vaguely aware of Bill behind him, but Jack doesn’t seem to notice; he’s pretty reasonably fixated on the other gun-haver in the room. “Krystal knew what she wanted. She didn’t want anybody else to get hurt. And that wasn’t what you wanted; you wanted all of this to just go away. You were already scared, and then she made you mad.”

“I didn’t mean to.” Jack’s eyes are bloodshot; he licks his lips. “It happened so fast – ”

“I know you didn’t,” Dipper says. “Joss knew it, too. She wanted to protect you. Is this how you want to repay her?”

Jack falters, going silent; his grip on the gun sags, just a fraction. Slowly, cautiously, Dipper begins to take a step forward –

“No!” Jack swings his arms back up. “Don’t come any closer, or I’ll – ”

“Alright, that’s enough.” Bill shoves Dipper inelegantly to one side, sending him careening into one of the desks; he just about manages to avoid discharging his weapon into an innocent slab of MDF. “The posturing mighta been cute – if you didn’t look like some kind of a blobfish with feet, that is – but the whining is just annoying, and anyway, I can’t have anybody putting more bullets in the Detective. I am not waiting around for another two months while his fleshy bits regenerate.” He takes a few steps towards Jack, who fires once, and then twice, and then realises that this is doing nothing to halt the demon’s advance, and that he doesn’t have any other ideas. He makes a strange, open-mouthed whimpering sound as Bill plucks the gun from his hands and drops it to the floor.

“There,” he says, satisfied. “Much better.” He looks at Dipper. “What are we doing with him? Is police brutality still in fashion?”

“Not here, it’s not,” Dipper says, pulling the cuffs from his belt. He ignores Bill’s disappointed expression and moves over to Jack. For a few moments, everything is rote, formalised; he cuffs his perpetrator, reads him his rights. He calls the station to request backup; a few more officers, nothing too huge. It’s over too quickly, and then he has to look at Joss, still slumped on the floor.

“Tell me something,” he says, quietly. “Your ex-husband. Is his last name Bianchi?”

Her hands clench tight, but she meets his eyes without flinching. “It is.”

It’s nothing more than he expected, and it ought to be a relief. It’s not.

“She was your friend,” he says numbly.

“She was.” Joss rises to her feet, her movements slow and stiff, her hands out in front of her. “And I saw my beautiful, brilliant friend turn into a terrified, credulous shell of herself with enough of a platform to do some real damage. The lies she spread could have killed someone. Maybe they already have.”

“Is that what Melpomene told you?”

If this surprises her, she doesn’t show it. “No,” she says. “And yes, and then again, no. She told me what to do, and how. She told me that this was the price of trying to have it both ways – of twisting divine inspiration into something base and foul. She told me that this was how I had to serve her.”

Dipper nods, slowly.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he means it. “You have to come with me now, Joss.”

“I know.” She smiles, brittle and sad. “Don’t worry, Detective Pines. It’s going to be all right.” She sags a little against the desk, laces her fingers together. “It’s over now.”

The remaining Strike Nine journalists go their separate ways immediately after Joss’s arrest. Dipper spends an unhappy half-hour three or four days later compulsively going through each of their disavowals of everything the group, and Joss, had ever stood for. He supposes he can’t blame them – there’s no playbook for reacting to two of your colleagues killing several others – and he kind of does anyway. You were all in it together. She did it for you.

He goes to her hearing. He doesn’t need to be there – she’s pleading guilty, the prosecution understands, so they’re not calling on him to testify – but he hadn’t been able to sleep that night until he’d finally decided to go. Joss has blood on her hands, and she needs to answer for it, but she also has nobody left. Her closest friends are dead, her colleagues shocked and grieving and scattered, and he himself destroyed her last remaining link to her goddess. Somebody ought to show up for her, even if it’s just to bear witness.

She’s clear-eyed and calm when she takes the stand, her shoulders straight, her head high. She lays out her testimony with the practiced ease of a veteran reporter, one detail after another, factual and concise; buying the formalin, tampering with Carolyn’s medicine, following her car to make sure it worked as intended.

She talks about Micah, too, about a dark night in February three years ago, about her anger at his betrayal of their principles, her despair, and her split-second decision that changed everything. That confession hits Dipper in the chest and sits there, icy and aching, because Micah Wenton’s case would never even have been reopened if she hadn’t said anything; there had been nothing concrete tying her to his death. Admitting to it, though, is tantamount to sacrificing her possibility at parole – at best.

She would have known that, just as he does.

“There is no excuse for what I’ve done,” she says, as she draws to a close. “Nor can I even explain it in a way that makes my actions make sense. I put a vision of my life’s work above everything, even the lives of my friends.” Her voice trembles here, for the first time. “I was proud, and I was weak, and I was wrong. There’s nothing I can say that would begin to make amends, but, for what little it’s worth, I am sorry. I – I’m sorry.” She draws her shoulders back, steadying herself. “That’s all I have to say.”

Her implacable remorse eats at him for two weeks. It nags at him in quiet moments – waiting for his coffee to brew in the early morning, going from the bathroom to his closet after a shower, watching the sky turn from black to grey-pink from his balcony after a sleepless night. It sits in the back of his head, a quiet, insistent itch, until one day he makes a call to California Central Women’s Facility and asks if she’ll allow him to see her. To his surprise, she agrees; he makes the four-hour drive out to Chowchilla the following week, the blood humming anxiously in his veins.

The first thing he notices when he walks into the visiting room is that she’s thinner, and that there are dark shadows under her eyes. He offers to buy her something from the vending machine; she declines. They sit, for a minute, in awkward silence.

“You’re here for a reason,” Joss says at last. Not a question.

“I – yeah.” He fiddles with a loose thread at the edge of his sleeve. “I’m… I guess I just want to understand. It’s – I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Try,” she says, not unkindly. “I have time.” She glances at the clock. “Only about fifty minutes, I should clarify.”

“I – sure.” He presses his fingers against the edge of the table, tries to corral his thoughts into some kind of recognisable shape.

“You told them everything,” he says, at last. “You didn’t have to. You could have kept some of it to yourself; nobody would ever have known.”

“I have to say that this is an odd rebuke from a police officer.”

“It’s not – it’s good that you did.” He doesn’t sound as certain as he might prefer. “But I don’t understand why you didn’t try to make this easier on yourself. You didn’t set out to murder anybody.”

“I suppose not.” Joss’s face is unreadable. “But I did.”

“Only because she made you.” It comes out a little louder than he meant for, a little more emphatic.

Silence, for a moment. Joss sighs, and shakes her head.

“I met Melpomene when I was twenty-three,” she says. “I had married, too young, to a man whose disrespect had long since turned into cruelty. He never hit me – he wouldn't have dared, even then – but we fought, hard and often, and one evening he found the manuscript for my novel, and he burned it. She came to me that night, and she comforted me. She told me that I had something inside me that was hard and bright as diamond, and that no man could ever trample it out. She said that she could help me, if I let her.” A hint of a smile touches her lips. “I would have risked much more for much less.”

“You took her offer.”

“QED, I suppose.” It’s a ghost of a smile, but it doesn’t fade. “It wasn’t just that she helped me to write – although that would have been a gift enough by itself. She helped me to become myself again. I had believed myself to be one thing, and a pathetic, worn-down stub of a thing at that; she showed me that I was something else. I got a job. I went to night school. I left my husband.” Her eyes are wistful. “I met Caro, and we made plans to create something bigger than either of us, so that even as two single women, we would have something to leave behind. I met Micah, and suddenly I was respected, and successful, and I had friends who were more family to me than anybody had ever been. And I knew that all of that – every crumb of it – came about because something outside of human understanding had taken pity on me when I was in need.”

“That’s not true.” Dipper’s skin feels tight, his eyes hot.

“Isn’t it?” Joss shrugs, as if it doesn’t matter. “Melpomene saw me at my lowest point, and she understood who I was outside of it. I could not forget that. I could not take it lightly. So when she told me that my friends were a danger – to me, to themselves, to everything we had built – and that if I didn’t act, it would all crumble…” She looks at him. “I killed them.”

“Because of her.” Why does he sound like that? It almost feels like he’s pleading with her.

"I killed them," Joss repeats. "I didn't want to, and I hated it, and I knew that nobody would help me if it came to light. I still did it. And I would do it again."

"Why?"

"Because she asked me to." Joss folds her hands in her lap. "I would say you could never understand, Detective Pines, but I've seen the young man you're hanging around with, so..."

She trails off for a moment, takes a soft, slow breath. Her eyes are focused on something Dipper cannot see. A prickle of cold seeps down the back of his neck.

"So you might," she says. "One day."

Chapter Text

HAUNTED DOLL KATALINA POSITIVE ENERGY WHITE LIGHT SPIRIT DOLL VERY ACTIVE!!!

Seller: occultwarehouse

Price: $35

Condition: Used (Good)

Item description from seller

Hello spirit seeker, katalina is pleased to meet you. She is a POSITIVE ENERGY spirit doll who will bring you comfort and cheer and surround you with positivity.

Katalina is the last of a long line of Russian witches with TRUE WHITE MAGIC dating back generations. she died at the age of 14 during one very cold winter where she went out for a walk and became lost in the woods surrounding her house. Her loving parents searched long and hard, but by the time they found her, it was too late. Being powerful witches, they summoned her spirit into this doll so that they could pass on their secrets to her and pour all the love and kindness they had for their daughter into her new vessel. She was passed around her small Russian town for generations until 1971, when she was taken to the USA. I found her in a yard sale and she spoke to me immediately. She communicates best by dowsing and automatic writing, which is how she told me her story.

WEBHARBOR IS MAKING ME SAY THE FOLLOWING: this listing is for a PHYSICAL OBJECT (i.e. DOLL), which is what you will be purchasing today. any spiritual experience or positive energy alongside is a free gift to a loyal customer 😊 😊 😊 have a blessed day!!!

 “You still using that, Pines?”

The question brings Dipper back to reality with a start; he blinks a few times, then shuffles awkwardly out of the way of the coffeemaker, letting Espinoza take his place. “Yeah,” he says sheepishly. “Sorry. Zoned out for a second.” He takes a gulp from his mug; it's reassuringly close to still being too hot, which means he escapes burning his tongue but that swallowing is still uncomfortable enough to make his eyes water. Perfect.

“More like a full two minutes.” Espinoza knocks his shoulder lightly against Dipper's. “You doing okay? Haven't see you around much since the Delilah case.”

“I've been – busy.” Dipper leans against the counter, mostly to try and stop himself from fidgeting. “I mean, I haven't been around the station much. I'm working with someone who's – not used to the field.” Actually, he was around the station a whole lot right after his medical leave ended, but now that he thinks about it, he didn't see Espinoza or his partner around during that time pretty much at all.

“Right, your intern.” Espinoza smirks a little. “Dr Singh's been telling everyone how he nearly killed himself stealing evidence.” He laughs at Dipper's answering grimace. “That bad, huh?”

You have no idea. “It's been – okay,” Dipper says instead. “He's, uh, a little too quick on the draw sometimes. We'll get there.” He takes another fortifying sip of coffee. “He should be here soon, actually.” This with a furtive glance around the room, although it's not as if Bill could have snuck up on him here; the coffee station is at the back of the office space, he has a clear view of the rest of it.

It's one of the reasons he's waiting here, specifically. This will be the first time Bill has come to the station rather than waiting on his own private LAPD chauffeur. Honestly, Dipper would have been happier just going to pick him up – wrangling the demon around civilians is exhausting enough, he really doesn't want to navigate them both through interactions with other cops more than he has to. If there's one thing Bill is good at, however, it's insisting on his preferred course of action until just going with it becomes less psychologically draining than continuing to argue. So here he is, at 7:55 in the morning, scoping out his own office to make sure that Bill doesn't try to talk to anybody unsupervised. Mondays, am I right? 

"He's coming here?” Espinoza shakes his head. “Man, Cercis will be pissed. He's been dying to meet this idiot.”

“He's not an idiot.” It comes out a little more emphatically than Dipper had intended; he has no particular interest in defending Bill's intellect, least of all to Cercis Hawthorne, but underestimating the demon is a trap he doesn't want Espinoza falling into. “Sorry about Hawthorne's luck, though.”

He's not actually sorry. Dipper doesn't know Detective Hawthorne very well – he's Espinoza's partner, and while Espinoza has always been friendly enough, Hawthorne has only ever treated him with a sort of detached, poorly-disguised contempt. In the years Dipper has been working for the LAPD, he remembers them having had two conversations of any substance. The first was early in his training and involved some weirdly invasive questions about why the child star of Wolves Who Are Also Teens might have picked a career in policing, and the second was...

Well, it was after The Incident. Dipper doesn't remember it too clearly – his memories from around that time have a certain blurred, painful quality, like the mental equivalent of pressing down on a bruise. He does, however, recall Hawthorne making his opinion of Dipper's responsibility for what had happened, of Dipper as a person and a detective, and of his suitability for continued employment as an officer of the peace abundantly clear.

The bottom line is that Dipper avoids Detective Hawthorne as much as he can, and Hawthorne has, so far, seemed content to let him. If that means Hawthorne is going to be annoyed that he missed the devil's inaugural visit to the station, Dipper is honestly fine with that.

"He'll get over it.” Espinoza dumps sugar into his mug. “Not like it'll be his last chance to pass judgement on a newcomer this quarter.”

Dipper frowns. “What do you mean?”

“You didn't hear?” Espinoza takes a slug of coffee, makes a face, and picks up the creamer. “We got that new detective transferring up from Sarasota Springs, and Captain Daniels is retiring at the end of the month. I hear his replacement's kind of a hardass.”

“Same as the old boss, then.” Dipper grimaces; it's taken him three full years to reach the uneasy truce he has with Daniels. If the new captain is like him...

“Maybe not.” Espinoza nudges him again, gently. “Think of it this way, kid: Daniels was already a fixture when you arrived. Hell, he was pretty much part of the furniture when I was starting out. He had all his preconceptions pretty much locked in by the time he met you.” He meets Dipper's eyes, gives him a smile. “You get a second chance at a first impression with a new captain. Might be kind of a fresh start for you, if you play it right.”

Dipper shifts a little, uncomfortable. Espinoza is the closest thing he has to a friend at the station, and certainly the only other detective who's ever really been in his corner. More to the point, he's right; this could be a good thing for Dipper, if he's careful. Between the new captain and this new detective, if he can show that he's competent – that he's good, that he's better than good – then maybe he can get them to see that, first and foremost. Maybe if he does, the other detectives will stop acting the way they do around him – the knowing glances, the careful reserve, the conversations that stop abruptly whenever he comes into earshot.

Maybe he can finally shake what happened three years ago.

That doesn't mean he likes hearing it from Espinoza, who called him a “good cop” the last time they spoke, and stuck his neck out – a little, not much – as a result. Who clearly thinks he's smart, but not smart enough to be able to get by without the advice of someone older, more experienced. A mentee, not a fully-fledged, adult detective.

The back of his neck prickles. This is stupid. A colleague is looking out for him; he doesn't have enough people willing to do that around here that he can afford to overthink it this much every time it happens. He should be grateful. He's going to be grateful. In a second, he's going to smile, and he's going to open his mouth and thank Espinoza for –

“Detective!” A hand lands on Dipper’s shoulder; he jumps, nearly spilling the rest of his coffee, only to find that the mug has been plucked smoothly from his hand. Bill takes a sip, makes a disgruntled noise, and reaches for the sugar.

“That’s mine,” Dipper says, ineffectually.

“LAPD Employee Handbook, section 2, point 3.1.6,” Bill replies, still spooning sugar into Dipper’s mug. “‘Any and all equipment necessary to personnel for the performance of their duties shall be provided and maintained by, and at the expense of, Los Angeles Police Department’.” He takes another sip and hums, apparently satisfied.

The problem with arguing with Bill is that his statements are usually absurd on so many levels that it’s hard to pick which one to address first. You’re not an LAPD employee would be the simplest rebuttal, but one that would prompt a lot of follow-up questions from Espinoza – who, Dipper is painfully aware, is watching all of this. That’s not necessary equipment is a decent candidate, but that would open him up to whatever opinion Bill is going to decide he has today on the definition of “necessary”, “equipment”, and, if they’re all really unlucky, “personnel”.

And, anyway, none of this is going to get Dipper his coffee back.

“I think that still means you get your own drinks,” he eventually settles for, grabbing another mug from the counter, only to find that the jug is empty. There’s no time to brew a fresh pot. Mondays.

“I’ll take it under advisement.” Bill grins. “Why so grumpy, Detective? I’m on time.”

He’s actually six minutes late, but that one just plain isn’t worth it, and he can’t give Bill too much shit for ruining his coffee in front of God, Espinoza and anybody else who happens to be in earshot, or Detective Pines’ inability to control his “intern” will be station-wide gossip for the next month. “I’m not grumpy,” he mutters instead. “We have a new case. I’ll brief you before we head out, but first, uh…” He waves vaguely between Bill and Espinoza. “This is Bill Cipher,” he says in the other detective’s direction. “Bill, this is – ”

“Divorced Cop!” Bill's smile takes on a sort of low-level, non-specific malice. “How's being divorced?”

“Fine.” Espinoza's tone is utterly flat. “What are you doing here, Cipher?”

That's odd. For one thing, Dipper's quite sure he's never discussed Espinoza – who is divorced and did, admittedly, talk about very little else for a while a few years ago – with Bill. And for another, now that he looks, Espinoza's face has been schooled into the same studied neutrality most detectives pull out from time to time, but there's something else... off about the other man. His hands are clenched a little tighter around his mug, and his face is pale under its tan.

“I work here.” Bill's grin doesn't budge an inch. “Didn't you hear the Detective? He wants to brief me.” (Dipper's eye twitches. He didn't have to make it sound like that.) “Looks like we're colleagues.”

“Right.” Espinoza scowls. “Because you just, what, needed some work experience?”

“Why not?” Bill takes a long drink from Dipper's mug, sighs with satisfaction, and dumps the rest of the contents – a good half-cup of coffee, still steaming – into the sink. Dipper hates him. “Gotta find something to fill your time, right? It's not like I have a kid to get home to.” His eye meets Espinoza's. “How is your Divorce Spawn, by the way?”

That does it; Dipper sees the other detective flinch, and he knows exactly why. He only knows Trixie by sight – Espinoza avoids bringing her by the station as much as possible. Even by police standards, he's protective of her to the point of paranoia; not everyone at work knows he even has a child. There's no reason Bill would, unless...

“Do you two know each other?”

“I gotta go.” Espinoza drains his coffee and sets the empty cup aside, a little harder than he needs to. “Good to see you, Pines.” He claps Dipper briefly on the shoulder, his eyes still on Bill's face. “Be careful out there.”

And he's gone.

“That was fun,” Bill says brightly. “What's the murder today, Detective?”

The murder today is one Harold Palmer, 39, pronounced dead at his apartment in Hollywood in the small hours of this morning after the neighbours called in their third noise complaint of the evening. (Dipper's first instinct had been to judge whoever's reaction to “screaming, banging, and weird crackling noises” had been to complain about the noise rather than to see if their neighbour was alright, but in fairness, most apartment-dwellers in Hollywood have probably heard weirder sex noises. He elects not to voice this observation to Bill.)

“What's a ‘ghostfluencer'?” Bill inquires, flipping through the photos.

"What it sounds like.” Dipper shrugs.

“It sounds like one of your airborne winter viruses,” Bill points out. “You're tellin’ me this guy worked as some kind of spiritual cold? Not that I'd put that past your species.”

“Can you please not be more of a jerk than you have to be this morning?” Dipper runs a hand through his hair, grimacing. “I dunno, man, it's like an influencer for ghost stuff. He had a VideoTube channel for reviewing ghost-hunting gear, haunted objects, the like. I think he had a side hustle on WebHarbor as well.” He sighs, holding out his hand for the file. “If you're done with that, let's head out.”

Bill flips through a few more pages, raises an eyebrow, and hands the file over. “What's with you today?” he asks as they head downstairs. “You're even more of a buzzkill than usual.”

“Nothing's with me,” Dipper snaps. “I just want to get this over with.”

“Why?” Bill looks over him. “Isn't this, like, your entire deal?”

“My ‘entire deal' is solving crimes.” Dipper fishes in his pocket for his car keys. “It's not like I get some kind of special kick out of dead peoples’ apartments.” Especially not this guy's.

“Seemed fine to me.” Bill shrugs. “Bloodier than your usual human digs, but, honestly, it sets off the beige, and you're not scared of a little viscera.” He looks Dipper over, his eye narrowing. “Something's going on.”

“Besides you ruining my coffee and being super weird with my coworker?” Dipper clenches his hand around the car key. The metal digs soothingly into his palm.

“You don't really care about that,” Bill says, irritatingly sure of himself. “You'd be more fun if you were really mad. This is something else.” He frowns, tapping his chin. "Something you don't wanna tell me.”

“There's lots of stuff I don't want to tell you,” Dipper mutters.

“Oh, I know.” Bill clasps a hand to his chest, the wounded dignity in his tone completely undercut by his smirk. “Really, Detective, you could be a little more open with me. Communication is crucial to any partnership – ”

“We are not in a partnership – "

“ - and here you are, making me forage for scraps.” Bill shakes his head sadly. “Like, were you just never gonna tell me you have a coconut allergy, or that you’re a Virgo? Or that you dropped out of college to join the LAPD?”

“I didn’t drop out.” Dipper unlocks the car, refusing to look at the demon. “I finished my degree while I was working. And how did you even know all that? I thought you couldn't get into my head.”

“I can't.” Oh, Bill is really pleased with himself; Dipper can practically hear the teeth in his smirk. “Your personnel file, though? That's pretty much an open book. Literally, if you know who to talk to.” He clicks his seatbelt smugly into place. “And I always know who to talk to.”

Dipper’s blood runs cold; a wave of nausea sweeps through him. He runs through three to five potential responses in his head and discards them all.

If Bill has seen his personnel file, then that means –

“There are some sweeping redactions in there, by the way,” Bill says, as if this is normal information to be discussing with a colleague. “We’ll be talking about those later.”

“We will not.” This doesn’t come out as final as Dipper would have liked; the rush of relief coursing through him drains some of the emphasis out of his voice. He takes a deep breath and tries for slightly firmer ground. “It’s not like you’re exactly forthcoming,” he says. “I have to solve a murder just to get one straight answer out of you.”

“And they're worth way more than you're paying for 'em, kid,” Bill returns. “If anything, that deal's weighted in your favour.” Another aggrieved sigh. “I shoulda put in an honesty clause for you,” he says. “Then we wouldn't be having this problem.”

The really great thing about arguing with Bill is that his statements are usually absurd on so many levels that sometimes, if you're quick, you can find the one that gives you enough leverage to improve your position. Dipper lets a small smile – barely a hint of amusement – just touch his lips.

“You know, Bill,” he says, mild and reasonable, “everyone has trouble negotiating from time to time. It's nothing to be ashamed of.”

“What?” Dipper can feel Bill's stare burning into the side of his face. It's a real struggle not to laugh.

“It's quite normal,” he continues, keeping his tone measured. “Common, even. You're tired, you're stressed, maybe you get just a little bit too in your own head.” He turns to look at the demon, schooling his face into an expression of polite concern. “Is it your first time dealing with performance anxiety?”

Bill opens his mouth, closes it again. His eye flares, molten; for a second, Dipper thinks he might have pushed just a little too hard.

Then the other man turns pointedly away, looking out of the window. Dipper grins inwardly and turns the key in the ignition. That was petty of him, and maybe ill-advised; there's a zero per cent chance that Bill is not actively planning his revenge right now.

Still, though.

Worth it.

Because whatever cosmic force designed this morning seems to have done so specifically with inconveniencing Dipper Pines in mind, Harold Palmer's apartment turns out to be a fourth-floor walkup. They trudge up to it in resentful silence – Bill still sulking, Dipper cursing the inventor of the concept of stairs – and, thankfully, without encountering any of the neighbours.

“Good morning, Pines,” Dr Singh says, cheerfully, as the two of them step into the apartment. “Intern Bill. This is messy, isn't it?”

Dipper sneaks a look at them as he pulls on his gloves. He doesn’t know much about medical examiner etiquette, so maybe it’s normal that they seem so weirdly excited by the scene before them, but it’s unsettling, either way. Still, he has to admit they're right; he's seen some gruesome crime scenes before, but even examining the file photos wasn't quite enough to prepare him for what he's seeing here.

For one thing, there's the… hygiene situation. It was pretty clear, even from the photos, that this is – was – the residence of a pack rat who didn't place too much importance on cleaning, but it's even worse in person. At least part of that is the smell: the air is thick with dust, the faint smell of rotting food, and something musty and vaguely sweet that turns Dipper's stomach. All of this is overlaid with the reek of new death: iron, stale urine, and the disquietingly floral note of young putrescence. Palmer obviously didn't think to open a window or put the A/C on before his untimely demise; the resulting miasma makes Dipper begrudgingly grateful that his last cup of coffee fell victim to a demon attack.

The other thing is the sheer volume of clutter. Even Grunkle Stan, determined to wring the full dollar value out of every square inch of Mystery Shack floor space, understood the basics of curating a collection in a way that Palmer either failed to grasp or just never troubled to learn: every available surface in sight is crammed with a vibrant miscellany of objects. Dipper counts at least five EMF meters, three different brands of spirit board, and seven or eight different types of goggles before he has no choice but to acknowledge the... rest of it.

Which is, overwhelmingly, dolls. Dolls everywhere, from every angle: small dolls, big dolls, porcelain dolls, plastic dolls; dolls on the bookshelves, on the sofa, in the dish rack next to the kitchen sink, arranged on the countertops. There's even a set of Russian nesting dolls precariously balanced on top of the wall-mounted TV. He knew they were going to be there – he had a solid hour or so to steel himself against the hundreds of dead, painted eyes now following him wherever he turns – but he can still feel the cold sweat gathering at the back of his neck. Harold Palmer wins the coveted Dipper Pines Award for Least Upsetting Corpse By Comparison.

This is a real, if tragically posthumous, achievement, considering that Palmer’s remains are currently liberally spread in six or seven bloody chunks across his living room floor. (There might actually be more chunks; nobody's checked under the couch yet.) The walls are splattered and streaked with gore; there's something dark and wet-looking stuck to one of the baseboards that Dipper thinks might be a stray kidney.

The crowning glory of this macabre tableau is the poor man's head, which has been dumped unceremoniously on the coffee table; next to it is another doll, a porcelain figurine of a girl. This one almost entirely soaked in blood and… well, the other fluids that come out of a dead body. Weirdly, this actually makes her easier to look at than the silently watching hordes around them; at least this doll has something objectively wrong with it.

"Any idea what might have happened?" he asks Dr Singh, trying not to breathe through his nose too much.

"Well, it was probably the blood loss that got him," says Dr Singh, who clearly thinks they're funny. "Hard to say much beyond that, except that this was definitely planned."

"Planned?" Dipper frowns. "I thought a planned killing would be, uh – neater."

"This is neat," says the medical examiner. "That's what I mean. You've got the organs and stuff, sure, but other than that?" They gesture around the bloodied apartment. "There's barely anything out of place. No property damage to speak of, except that broken chair. It's kind of hard to tell if there was a struggle, but his hands were clean when I found 'em." They shrug. "Pretty impressive, considering he was likely alive when the dismemberment started. Whoever it was must've snuck up on him."

"So it was someone he knew?" Dipper glances at the door; the lock has been forced, but from the briefing file he knows that that was done by the first responders. There was no sign that someone had broken in.

"That's your area of expertise, not mine." Dr Singh shrugs. "But I'd say so. That, or the roaches unionised."

"Unlikely," Bill pipes up from the kitchen area. He's rifling through the dolls in the dish rack; mercifully, he is at least wearing gloves. "Roaches know when they've got a good thing going. I don't think this guy even knew where his garbage disposal was."

"Thank you." It comes out extra-dry, mostly because that comment made Dipper have to fight not to gag. "That's disgusting."

He makes another slow circuit of the apartment, forcing himself to look directly at the shelves full of dolls. The first thing he notices is that they're the only thing in the space largely untouched by the blood splatter, which is quite something, given their sheer numbers; a few of them have caught a little bit of spray, but for the most part, they're pristine. Was that on purpose? It seems like it would have been hard to achieve by accident.

The second thing he notices is that a few objects have been obviously moved. The one upside of all the dust is that it these are relatively easy to track, so he spends a few minutes photographing each one before bagging it for evidence: a matchbook, a glass vase containing a single artificial rose, a keychain with a small stuffed bear attached to it. (The bear is wearing a tiny sweater that says "YOU'RE BEAR-Y GREAT!", which is cheesy, but at least motivational.)

Finally, he crouches next to the coffee table, looking into Palmer's disembodied face. It's set in a terrified rictus, his eyes blank and staring, a disturbing contrast to the serene little smile on the face of the blood-soaked doll. Dipper reaches for her, reluctantly; as he picks her up, the air conditioning kicks on with a shuddering sigh, sending a cool, mildewy stream across the room.

"Turn that off, Bill," he says, without looking up. "This is an active crime scene."

"I resent the assumption that I have ever – ever – been anything other than flawlessly professional, Detective," says the man who defiled his first crime scene in order to poison himself with tainted drugs. "This is a hostile work environment. I oughta report you to HR."

"I would actually love to see that," Dipper mutters, and hears Dr Singh chuckle across the room.

"Every accusation is a new crack in the foundation of trust between partners – "

" – we are not – "

" – but I'm an upstanding guy," Bill finishes, smirking. "So I'll let it slide."

"Big of you." Dipper sets the doll down on the ruined carpet, and the air conditioning clicks back off. There's some kind of paper where she had been sitting, jammed halfway under the stump of Harold Palmer's neck. An envelope? He leans a little closer. "Come take a look at this."

Moving the head is awkward - it's surprisingly heavy, the dried blood has stuck it to the surface of the envelope, and while obviously its owner is too dead to object, it feels disrespectful to grab it by any of the obvious handles. He ends up wrapping both hands around what's left of the neck, picking it up, and peeling the envelope away. The outside of it is obviously ruined – the address is illegible, and as he lifts it the stamp comes off, fluttering defeatedly to the floor – but it's of the padded variety, so hopefully the bubblewrap will have preserved the contents.

Bill crouches next to him; Dipper shoves the envelope into his hands and strips off his ruined gloves, digging in his pocket for a fresh pair. Bill hums thoughtfully, pulling out a small sheaf of papers and tossing the envelope aside; mercifully, apart from a few yellowish-brown spots at the edges, they seem largely unscathed. Dipper leans over the demon's shoulder as he rifles through them.

For a long moment, there's silence as Dipper tries to wrap his head around what he's looking at.

"Huh," he says, at last. "This doll has a lot of backstory."

"She also has a name," Bill says reprovingly, although Dipper can see the tug at the corners of his mouth in his peripheral vision. "You could at least use it. Hasn't Katalina been through enough?"

"I think anybody who's survived the wilds of wintry Russia has bigger things to worry about than my social skills," Dipper points out.

"Uh, excuse you," the demon tuts. "If you'd actually read the card, you'd know that Katalinska here famously did not survive the wilds of wintry Russia. That's why she's here. And priced to move, as well." He shakes his head sadly. "She's one of the great tragic heroes of your time, and she deserves our respect."

"Oh, well, in that case," Dipper mutters absently, scrutinising the packing slip. He frowns. "This came from WebHarbour, but the store is pretty local," he says. "Looks like they're based out in Agoura Hills." He snaps a photo of the packing slip. "We'll need this doll and these papers bagged," he calls to Dr Singh. "Can you tell the cleanup crew? I've covered the rest of it, but I don't have enough bags left for everything, and we need to head out."

"Sure," Dr Singh says, clearly only half-listening. "I need to take a few more samples before I'm done here, anyway." They look up at Dipper as he stands. "I should have tox screen results by tonight," they say, a little more focused. "I put a rush on them. Not sure what's gonna happen by way of autopsy, given he's pretty much already been dissected, but I'll let you know."

"Thanks." Dipper peels off his gloves and turns his back, gratefully, on the Council of Dolls. "C'mon, Bill."

"I liked that place," Bill says cheerfully, as the apartment complex door swings shut behind them. "Coulda used some ventilation, but at least it had character."

"It had, like, seventy-five characters," Dipper says, a little more vehemently than he'd intended. "I'm surprised he had any room for furniture." He's several paces away before he realises that Bill isn't in step with him any more; when he turns, the demon is looking at him, eye narrowed. Dipper sighs. "Now what?"

"Detective," Bill says slowly, "are you telling me that your problem with that apartment was the dolls?"

Oh, shit. "I just meant – "

"Is that why you've been such a downer all morning?" Bill almost seems to inflate, his chest swelling with barely-contained glee. "You can't look an artificial face in the eye?" He takes a step forward, his voice dropping to a dramatic whisper. "They can smell fear, you know."

Dipper feels heat creeping up the back of his neck. "We have a long drive ahead of us," he says, trying to sound calm and authoritative, "and I wanna beat the lunchtime rush. Can we please just go?"

"Oh, sure, sure." Bill grins. "Don't you worry, Detective. I'll keep you safe from any more children's toys we encounter along the way."

"Shut up."

"Just watch out for fidget spinners. I hear this is their breeding season."

"Shut up."

The drive out to Agoura Hills passes by uneventfully enough, unless you count Bill trying to protectively cover Dipper's eyes as they pass a shuttered We R Toys and very nearly causing a five-car pile-up in the process. That makes Dipper threaten to revoke Bill's front seat privileges and make him sit in the back, handcuffed, at which Bill accuses Dipper of flirting, at which Dipper accuses Bill of being a self-centered infernal nuisance of such magnitude that he wouldn't know flirting if it chained him to a radiator and menaced him with a hot poker. (Bill has a lot of weirdly detailed follow-up questions about this scenario, which is not the test of his ingenuity Dipper was expecting this morning, but it's one way to kill forty-five minutes in traffic.)

They have the shipping address for occultwarehouse from Katalina's packing slip, but Dipper thinks that they might have been able to identify it without any help; there's a doll head mounted on each of the gateposts (Dipper can feel Bill's intense, gleeful stare on his face as he guides the car through, and he carefully doesn't react), and someone has planted plastic skeleton hands at various points in the gravel lining the driveway. There's a man who looks to be in his sixties standing outside the garage, holding a scrubbing brush and frowning. He whips around as the two of them step out of the car, his expression abruptly clearing.

"Can I help you boys?" he says, cautious, but apparently not hostile. Dipper squints over his shoulder. The garage door is covered in the remains of what looks to be graffiti: red, drippy letters, messily scrubbed away in a few places. They say: I K OW WH T OU ID.

"Having some trouble, sir?" he asks, jerking his head towards the vandalism.

"What?" Something indefinable flashes across the man's face and is gone. "Oh – no, not at all!" He smiles, warm and only a little forced. "We're known around here as the spooky house; some of the neighbourhood kids like to surprise us for All Hallow's. All in good fun, you understand! But the cleanup, you know." He sighs. "We just repainted."

Dipper makes what he hopes is a neutrally sympathetic noise.

"So, what can I do for you?" The man drops the scrubbing brush into a bucket by his feet.

Dipper produces his identification and proceeds with the pleasantries. "I'm Detective Pines," he says, "and this is my – " (Bill beams at him, tucking his hands into his pockets. Dipper fights the urge to rub the bridge of his nose.) " – this is Bill. You're, uh…" He tries to find a polite way to say it. "Running a business from this address, aren't you? Occultwarehouse?"

"Why, yes." The man's eyes round with worry. "Is something the matter, Detective? We submit our tax returns in full every year – in twenty years, we've never had an irregularity –"

"Oh – no, sir," Dipper says hurriedly, passing over his badge for scrutiny, "we're not with the IRS." They're nowhere near this polite, he does not say, thinking, with a brief pang, of Grunkle Stan. "Actually, we have some questions about some of your products. Do you have some time to talk?"

Phil Bridges, as he introduces himself, has plenty of time to talk. In fact, he relaxes visibly in the knowledge that they're investigating a death rather than tax fraud. Dipper has questions about both his bookkeeping and his priorities.

"You must come inside," Phil says, opening the garage door. "My wife handles most of the shipping and packaging, and we've got fresh lemonade. She'll be thrilled to have visitors. Come on through. Alessandra!" He moves deeper into the house, motioning them through. "The kitchen is just through there," he says, gesturing to a door at the far end of the garage. There's a tiny, rickety-looking staircase right next to it, presumably leading down into some sort of basement. "Feel free to take a look around, if you want. Lessie! We've got guests!" He vanishes into the main house, leaving Bill and Dipper alone.

Dipper steps into the garage, which is, in the way of suburban outbuildings, somehow both dank and stuffy at once. There's no car in here; instead, the space is entirely full of shelving units, cardboard boxes and plastic crates. A lot of these shelves are also lined with dolls – there's a huge, floppy clown drooping halfway off one of them, its face set in a silent howl – but there are plenty of other curios, too. Dipper peeks into a crate labelled SCRYING ORBS. It is full of EMF meters.

"Their filing system needs some work," he comments, picking one of them up. The plastic around the screen is cracked; as he peers at it, something greyish-black leaks out onto his fingers. Oil? He rubs it between his fingers, gives it a cautious sniff; it smells of nothing, but for such a tiny amount of fluid, it spreads surprisingly quickly, covering his hand, dripping down his wrist.

There's a crackling sound, and the lightbulb overhead goes out.

"Crap," Dipper mutters, trying to reorient himself towards the garage door. It's surprisingly difficult; the space isn't all that big, but there seems to always be something in his way, blocking the light, blocking the exit. He can feel that greyish-black substance spreading, still, in a way that feels weirdly… purposeful. He tries to sop it up with his sleeve, but it flows over his clothes, and suddenly it's not running down his arm anymore, it's running up, over his elbow, his shoulder, towards his face –

The light flickers back on. Dipper stares, heart pounding, at his perfectly clean hands.

"Did you see that?" He turns around, looking for Bill – only to come face-to-face with the clown, now held perfectly upright at his eye level. He yelps, reflexively throwing the EMF meter, and leaps backwards, colliding gracelessly with a pile of boxes and used bubblewrap as Bill throws his head back and cackles.

"That was not funny," Dipper snaps, getting, a little shakily, to his feet.

"Agree to disagree, kid." Still chuckling, Bill sets his brightly-coloured nightmare to one side. "See what? The busted light?"

"I don't know if the light is busted." Dipper retrieves the EMF meter, which is looking pretty battered at this point, and passes it to the demon. "There was something leaking out of this. It vanished when the light came back on. I think maybe – "

"Ooooh." Bill pokes at the cracked screen; his fingers come away stained greyish-black. "Ectoplasm! I haven't seen ectoplasm in years." He giggles as the fluid drips over his palm; it runs over the back of his hand, encounters his eyeangle tattoo, and then – almost sheepishly – seems to retreat, fading into nothingness.

Dipper frowns, producing a pen from his pocket and approaching the SCRYING ORBS crate. He gives one of the other EMF meters an experimental poke with the pen; when he draws it back, a thin, viscous string hangs in the air between it and the meter for a few seconds before vanishing. He tries this on a few more of the meters, with the same result.

"I've seen hauntings before," he murmurs, "but never anything like this." Ghosts are actually not that uncommon, especially in older buildings, and they're mostly harmless. His UCLA dorm had been haunted by a frat boy from the 1950s, and while he could be pretty annoying when he wanted to be, that still made him much less so than any of his living counterparts; by the end of the year, he'd almost been a friend. Plus, his presence had creeped out Dipper's roommate so much that he'd basically ended up with the place to himself. I wonder what Frankie is up to these days.

"Could be a few things," Bill says, tossing the first EMF meter back into the crate. "With this much ectoplasm, though, I'd say it's a pretty well-established haunting. Either a bunch of people died here, or…" He grins. "One person did, and they're really pissed about it."

Dipper makes a noise of agreement, still thinking. It's hard to say if this is relevant to, well, anything; certainly Palmer's death was unusual, but it also happened thirty miles away, well outside the usual radius of this kind of haunting.

"We should get inside," he says, after a few seconds. "Talk to these two, see if they can tell us anything. They might just be hobbyists who happen to have a ghost in their house." The light flickers again as he says this; he squints up at it for a moment before heading towards the main house.

Because Dipper is having, oh, just the best day, the Bridges also have a lot of dolls lying around their house. They're more spaced out than Palmer's collection, which at least dilutes the concentration of ambient creepiness, but at the cost of raising the percentage chance of Dipper getting jumpscared as he steps into the kitchen. There's a little doll in a chef's outfit perched on the microwave, as well as a slightly larger one with a spatula and what Dipper considers an altogether too menacing smile next to the stove. He leans against one of the countertops, keeping it in the corner of his vision. Bill, predictably, seems delighted.

"These are adorable," the demon gushes, gesturing at Spatula Doll. "Your private collection? I saw some others on our way in."

"Oh, you like them?" Alessandra Bridges is taller than her husband, and surprisingly elegant; she looks like the kind of woman who might smoke a cigarette in a long, overly-stylised holder. The overall effect might be intimidating, but the enthusiasm in her voice and the warmth of her smile blast through that impression almost immediately. "They come from all over – we used to pick up a new one every time we travelled."

Like bringing back a tiny, creepy hostage, Dipper does not say. "You have a lovely home," he says, trying to steer the conversation away from dolls.

"You're too kind, young man." Alessandra immediately turns her focus back to Bill. "Which one is your favourite?"

"Oh, gosh," Bill says, earning himself a raised eyebrow from Dipper. "It's so hard to choose! That clown in the garage is so cheerful, don't you think? But I really like the guy you have hanging up outside the living room." Dipper doesn't remember that one – he'd been too distracted by the three ceramic figurines holding hands on the radiator, their expressions painted in different stages of happy, sad, and what looked like a case of mild constipation. "The harlequin outfit? Really sets up a whole atmosphere." His smile inches up a little further, just shy of turning into a smirk. "I thought he was inspired."

"You really have an eye!" Alessandra lights up; apparently all she's been waiting for is someone to compliment her collection of monstrosities. "You know what? You boys have a seat – " she indicates the polished wooden dining table at the far end of the room "– and Phil will grab your drinks. Won't you, dear? I'll be right back." Without waiting for a response from any of them, she bustles out of the room.

Dipper gives Bill a look as they move obediently towards the dining table and sit down. Was that really necessary? Bill curls his lip eloquently in response.

As Dipper wonders if there are any new techniques in eyerolling he can employ to spice up their non-verbal conversations a bit, a blur of movement catches his eye. For a second he's on high alert – I knew those dolls were up to something – but then his brain catches up with what he's actually seeing, and he relaxes. A small tortoiseshell cat trots over to Bill with a curious chirp, sniffing at his ankles.

The demon regards it with a mixture of suspicion and bemusement. "Detective," he says, in a low voice, "what is this?"

"What do you mean, 'what is this'?" Dipper raises an eyebrow. "It's a cat."

"I know what it is," Bill huffs, as if Dipper is the one being deliberately obtuse. "What is it doing?" Having exhausted the olfactory possibilities of his ankles, the cat headbutts Bill's calf; when he doesn't respond, she repeats this several more times, looking at him expectantly.

"Uh." Dipper reaches a hand towards the offending feline; she sniffs his fingers, briefly rubs one fluffy cheek against them, and then turns her attention back to Bill with another chirp. "She wants you to pet her?" He snorts at Bill's wary expression. "She must like you, man. I don't get it either."

"Huh." Bill mimics Dipper, stretching his hand out; the cat lets out a pleased trill and bumps her head against his knuckles. "Must be an evil cat," he says approvingly, scratching her under the chin as she closes her eyes in delight. "Animals don't usually like me. Are you evil, small creature? Are you deep undercover? Hm?"

The evil cat starts purring.

"I think it's just a cat, Bill," Dipper says, amused. Whatever argument they might have had over their new friend's alignment is cut short as Phil approaches, bearing a tray with a pitcher of lemonade and four glasses.

"So," Phil says, sitting down with a grunt. "What brings L.A.'s finest out to the suburbs?" (Bill visibly preens at the epithet; Dipper hides something dangerously close to a smile in his lemonade.)

"Just some questions," he says, taking a sip. It's good: tart, sweet and cold. "Does the name Harold Palmer mean anything to you?"

"Sure," Phil replies. "He's one of our best customers." He shrugs at Dipper's frown. "The occult community around here is pretty small," he explains. "Obviously, we send our finds all over the world, and there are always a few new faces dipping their toes into the spiritual waters, but over the years we've developed a customer base closer to home. Connoisseurs, you know?" He flashes them a conspiratorial smile. "And connoisseuses, of course. Enthusiasts of the darker arts who are happy to support a small local business."

"How dark are we talking, exactly?" Bill inquires, innocently. Dipper kicks him under the table.

"Oh – well." Phil looks a little sheepish. "Obviously we're not, um, practitioners." He glances at the doorway, lowers his voice a little. "Between you and me, Detectives, a lot of this is aesthetic, it's – marketing. Which isn't to say that we don't believe, of course."

"Of course," Dipper reassures him. It really makes no difference to him whether or not the Bridges buy what they're selling, but it's interesting to see Phil draw the distinction between "the darker arts" and "my house that I've designed to give children nightmares and the plastic junk I sell out of it". "So you do everything from here?"

"Everything," Alessandra confirms, re-entering the room with a hint of dramatic flourish and heading straight for Bill. "Packing, posting, marketing, all adminstrative work. We've been a two-person team for years." She sets something down in front of the demon. "This is for you, dear."

Dipper has to fight not to recoil. If Katalina had been your average creepy doll (before her blood bath, that is), this one is… Well, it's significantly less standard. It looks a little bit like an Elf on the Shelf that's aged three hundred years and undergone unimaginable hardship; the hair is straggly and streaked with white, the face weathered-looking, with dark pits for eyes. Next to him, Bill lets out an ecstatic gasp, making everything roughly twenty five per cent worse.

"Do you like him?" Alessandra smiles. "We found Björn here when we were vacationing in Norway, ten years ago. He's uninhabited at the moment, of course, but he's attracted a few strays over the years. Nothing you would need to worry about, of course." She pats Bill on the arm. "I sense a deep affinity for the spiritual in you." (A noise Dipper wasn't really expecting wobbles out of him – half-laugh, half-croak. Bill, petty to the bone, kicks him under the table.)

"I'm honoured." Bill picks Björn up reverently, tilting him back and forth for examination. "I'll take great care of him."

"You're too kind," Dipper interrupts, trying to somehow communicate to the demon with his eyes that this is supposed to be an interview. "I'm sorry, I did still have a few more questions. Did you ever communicate with Harold Palmer about the purchases he made from you?"

"I suppose." Alessandra takes a seat, crossing one leg over the other. "We traded messages back and forth every now and again."

"Did he mention anything… unusual about his last purchase?"

Phil looks at his wife. "Was that Katalina, or was it the night vision goggles?"

"I think it was Katalina," Alessandra says. "I don't remember him saying anything about her – apart from being thrilled when she arrived, of course." She frowns at Dipper. "Is there something we need to know?"

Dipper sighs. "Harold was found dead this morning," he says. Alessandra gasps; Phil sits back in his chair, some of the colour draining out of his face. "His, uh, body was… arranged next to Katalina, and your packing slip." He studies their faces. "We just want to know if there's any reason you can think of why that might be."

Alessandra presses her pale lips together. "Surely you're not suggesting –"

"Of course not," Bill soothes. "But, you know, there are all sorts out there, isn't that right?" He leans forward a little, his voice filling with a warmth that Dipper remembers from their conversation with Grey Cooper – soft, spreading and entirely artificial. The Bridges relax under its glow. "All we're asking," he says, "is if you know anyone who might want to use your good name for… nefarious purposes." A smile tugs gently at the corner of his mouth; Dipper feels the ringing tension whisper through the air as Bill's power rises. "You're decent people; surely you'd want us to know."

It barely takes a second. Phil's face crumples; Alessandra gives him a resigned look, sighs, and flaps a hand in his direction. Go on.

"We may as well tell them," Phil says. "I know it sounds ridiculous, but – they're here, and they're asking – " He turns to Dipper. "This is the third time this year." A note of desperation colours his voice. "I swear we don't know who, but – someone's killing our customers."

He barely gets a chance to finish his sentence; Dipper certainly doesn't get a chance to reply. For a split second, he's aware that the temperature in the room has plummeted; he could have sworn he can see his breath in the air in front him.

At that same moment, Bill's hand snags on his wrist, dragging him abruptly off his chair and onto the floor, under the dining table. And before Dipper can even ask what the fuck is wrong with him this time, frost creeps up the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the dining area.

For one more breathless second, the air is still. Freezing. Silent.

And then every piece of glass in the kitchen explodes.

Chapter Text

There’s no easy way to predict how somebody is going to react in a crisis. Dipper’s trained for enough of them – been in enough of them – that he’s got a decent grasp of his own response to the kind of stress brought on by, say, all of the windows in a room being exploded by what all signs point to being a malevolent spirit, but he knows better than to project his reactions onto other people. There’s no one way to respond to something like this, and this is his job, not his home. I’m not here to judge, he tells himself, grimly and for the fifth time, as he sweeps up glass.

The Bridges had gratefully accepted Dipper’s offer to help clean up while they retreated to the doorway, talking softly to each other. That is, he supposes, within the bounds of normalcy, if slightly rude – they might have been in shock, after all. And he did offer to help. And he’s not here to judge.

(Bill is leaning against one of the now-empty window frames, watching Dipper work. This, at least, was entirely predictable, and Dipper feels just fine judging him.)

But something does feel… a little off. For one thing, nobody is hurt. That’s a good thing – Dipper can even begrudgingly admit that Bill’s intervention came at exactly the right time – but he had been ready to scold the demon for not thinking of the civilians in the room, only to find that they’d had the same idea as him. They had huddled under the dining table together as glass rained down around them like spiky, malignant hail.

For another, Dipper had caught a glimpse of Alessandra’s face as she watched her living area disintegrate, and he’s studied both Bridges in the aftermath. And while it’s true that neither of them seem happy – and there are, of course, multiple ways to react in a crisis, and he is not here to judge – mostly what he’s seen from them has been a sort of tired resignation. He would have expected shock, or anger, or at least confusion.

These two don’t even seem surprised.

“I don’t think our home insurance is going to cover this,” Phil Bridges says gloomily, watching Dipper scoop up the last of the glass.

“They should be able to do something.” Dipper carefully tips his final pan of shards into a cardboard box – the Bridges had pulled a few out of their basement for the purpose – and sets the broom aside. “I’m not an expert on this kind of thing, but as long as you can prove the windows were installed by a qualified contractor – ”

“Won’t help.” Phil sighs. “We’ve had the windows replaced twice already – I was surprised they even paid out the second time.”

Dipper stares at him. “Are you telling me this has happened before?”

“A couple of times.” Phil looks at the neat row of glass-filled cardboard boxes. “I guess this place was built on shakier foundations than we realised. I’ll need to pay for an inspector…”

Dipper makes a vaguely sympathetic noise, running a hand through his hair. “Have you had any other problems with the place?” he says, cutting Phil off. “Other – issues with the temperature, say? Malfunctioning electronics? Lights flickering on and off?”

“Oh, I mean…” Phil looks a little uncomfortable. “It’s an old house.”

“Humour me.” Dipper folds his arms.

“Then, I suppose – yes, we've had a few more problems over the last year.” Phil scratches his chin. “And this issue with the glass, of course, which is very inconvenient. Are you sure we need to inform our home insurance? The premiums – ”

“I’m not an insurance representative, sir,” Dipper says, patiently. “You’ll need to ask them about that.” He looks around what is now an open-air kitchen. “I’ll need a list of all your clients from the last year,” he says. “And copies of any interactions you had with the other two that passed away. Competitors, too, anybody you can think of. And…” He sighs. “I’m afraid I’ll need to ask you to pause your business operations.”

“You’re shutting us down?” Now Phil looks surprised – verging on horrified, actually, given the way the colour drains from his face.

“Temporarily,” Dipper assures him. “It’s just a precaution. I don’t know what’s going on here, but if your customers are being targeted, it’s possible that someone is using your business to get to them.”

“But it’s just the two of us here – ”

“You don’t mail packages out through the postal service?” It’s sharper than he’d been going for, a little whiplash of frustration breaking through his professionalism. These people clearly care about their business a whole lot, and thousands of dollars’ worth of their house did just explode, but at the same time, this is a murder investigation, and also, Dipper has just single-handedly cleaned up a lot of glass. “Take out ads with any other websites or local businesses? Buy inventory from outside suppliers?”

Phil Bridges gulps, stammers, looks helplessly down at the floor. Dipper breathes in through his nose, forces his shoulders down a half-inch.

“I know this afternoon has been a lot,” he says, carefully measured. “But if somebody is targeting your customer base, they could be using your business to do it. This is the safest way for us to move forward for now.”

“And how long is ‘for now’?” Phil folds his arms, mulish. Dipper sighs, fighting the urge to rub his forehead.

“Not long,” he says, hoping he isn’t lying through his teeth. “Just until we figure out what’s going on.”

Dipper has absolutely no idea what’s going on.

The good news is that the Bridges, having established that their continued business operations depend on getting this case closed, were more than willing to provide him with a list of customers and competitors. He’s spent the last three days making calls and sending even more emails; the occult enthusiast community in the greater Los Angeles area and beyond has been, for the most part, extremely chatty so far. He’s learned a lot. Most of it is useless – he now knows far more on such diverse topics as native grasses, the benefits of ayahuasca ceremonies, just how many times you can get tonsillitis before a physician will agree to take those suckers out, and Harold Palmer’s alleged tastes in pornography than he ever cared to learn.

Buried somewhere in the noise, though, have been a few interesting tidbits.

For example, he’s learned that it’s not that the Bridges have no enemies; it’s that they seem to have nothing but enemies. Mentioning the name “Occultwarehouse”, or either of the Bridges themselves, over the phone consistently garners him an immediate, heavy sigh and an eyeroll. (Probably, that is; it’s admittedly hard to tell, under the circumstances, but Dipper has been a detective for a while now, and he knows a near-audible eyeroll when he doesn’t quite hear one.) Everybody he’s reached out to so far has been consistent in saying that Phil and Alessandra Bridges are stuck-up snobs who perform occultism because they think it’s quirky. One person called them “shitty ex-hippies that got bitten by a shitty ex-goth”. Ouch.

The thing is…

Well, there are two “the things”. One is that, as best he can tell, none of these people seem to like each other, either. He’s followed up a couple of leads passed onto him by people on the Bridges’ list, and every time he tells a new contact who gave him their information, near-palpable disdain radiates from his phone or laptop screen. It might just be that the occult enthusiast community of the greater Los Angeles area is made up entirely of enemies, period.

The second thing is that, for all nobody seems to have a nice word to say about the Bridges, when he presses further – when he asks who’s heard about the deaths – the tone of the conversation shifts in a way he can’t really describe. Any complaint a customer has, any vitriol he’s heard from a disgruntled competitor, is dampened and washed out by something careful and curt. The email threads stop abruptly; the phonecalls are immediately cut short. It’s hard to put his finger on the vibe he’s getting, but he does recognise it: it’s the same kind of thin-lipped diffidence his mother would present whenever something truly awful happened to someone she didn’t like. Something too raw and terrible to even passive-aggressively poke fun at; something too horrible to even name.

She never did have what it takes to survive academia, she would say, dismissively, of a colleague – and then her cheeks would pinch, and she’d shake her head. Not that I should be saying that, of course, after what happened to her husband. Poor thing.

This is what he’s been hearing through call after all. They’re like if someone threw black paint at a Foods Entire, people will say. Still, though… I don’t know how they’re doing it, with the year they’ve had. It’s like… (and they always trail off at this part, although the rest might vary) Like they’re cursed.

Pity, despite their dislike; pity with an edge of something almost like fear. People know something’s up with the Bridges, all right – and they’re scared of it. Too scared to even talk about it, lest they invoke its spectre.

No pun intended.

“I don’t get it,” he says, hanging up his second-last call of the day and tossing his phone onto the table. “What’s got all these people so scared they won’t even gossip? There’s nothing else they won’t talk about.”

“They’re not gonna give you their best tea,” Ronnie comments from her perch on Bill’s private bar. Normally, Dipper would insist on doing his research at the station, but considering that they've now got a ghost on their hands, he eventually consented to set up shop at Lux instead. The bright side of this is that nobody is going to call a wellness check on him for talking about hauntings; the... other side is that he now has to fend off commentary from double the demons. “You sound like a total cop.”

“I am a cop,” Dipper says, neutrally.

“Ugh. Sure.” Ronnie’s mouth twists in a sour sort of smirk. “And you’re holed up above a nightclub at 4P.M. because cops are just so open-minded about the occult, right?”

This is, admittedly, a decent point. From Ronnie, no less, which makes it marginally less infuriating than if it had come from Bill. Dipper still does not care for the experience.

“What about the old-timers?” Bill leans forward, propping one elbow on his knee; he does this carefully so as not to dislodge Björn, who's currently perched in his lap, gazing vacantly out over the room.

“I don’t know.” Dipper stares out of the window, watching the sun set behind the Los Angeles skyline. “They’re definitely not telling us everything,” he says. “But... is their situation even related? I mean, the ghost is in their house. They're not even selling real haunted objects; we'd have noticed. Wouldn't we?” He glances at Bill.

“I woulda.” Bill taps his fingers thoughtfully on his leg. “And you're right. Nothing in that house was the real deal, not even this little cutie.” He strokes the top of Björn's head lovingly.

“I wish you'd put that thing somewhere I don't have to look at it,” Dipper mutters.

“He's cruel, isn't he?” Bill lifts the doll up to his eye level. “Don't mind him,” he croons at it. “He's just jealous that you got the best seat in the house.” He plants a smacking kiss on Björn's weathered forehead before plopping it back into his lap, ignoring Dipper's grimace. “Anyway,” he continues, “it depends on what kind of a haunting we're dealing with. Most spirits, yeah, they'd be confined to the property line. But...” He plays with a strand of the doll's hair, looking contemplative.

“Ghosts get their power from spiritual tethers,” he says. “You know, your ‘unfinished business’. A powerful enough ghost might be able to hitch a ride in any vessel with potential, if it's in service of their mission. They wouldn’t have long, but any geist with enough polter behind it doesn’t need long to explode a human.” He smirks.

“Why don’t you just ask it?” Ronnie yawns and stretches, shifting positions so that she's cross-legged on the bar. “Ghosts are easy to interrogate; all you need is a ghost trap and a name.”

“We don’t know who it is,” Dipper says, before Bill can voice his support for Mission Super-Illegal Séance. “And we can’t just get the Bridges to let us into their house to talk to their ghost.” He doesn’t even know what kind of a warrant would cover that, but he’s extremely sure he won’t live to see the first one issued. He scrubs a hand through his hair and picks up his phone. “Shut up for a second, okay? This is my last call today.”

His last call today, thankfully, answers on the third ring. “State your name and business,” she says, clipped and precise. No greeting. Honestly, Dipper kind of respects it. Maybe I should start answering the phone like that.

“Is this Danica Houston?” He waits for an affirmative before proceeding. “My name is De – Dipper Pines,” he says, catching Ronnie’s eye across the bar. “I’m a… paranormal investigator working with the LAPD.” Technically – technically – there’s enough truth in this statement by volume that the FDA would classify it as a statement rather than a lie. He hopes. “Do you have a moment to answer some questions?”

“I have twenty-three minutes and fifteen seconds,” Danica replies. “You can ask me questions for that amount of time.”

“Um. Okay.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Does the name ‘Harold Palmer’ mean anything to you?”

“Harold? He’s dead; Hattie told me yesterday.” Danica takes an audible sip of something; there’s a faint ‘clink’ as she sets her glass aside. “Filthy boy, but pleasant enough. But you shouldn’t be asking me about him. Or the others, God rest their souls.”

Dipper thinks about this for a second.

“Should I be asking you about Phil and Alessandra Bridges instead?” he says, cautiously.

“Those jumped-up old kooks?” (There it is.) “They’re getting what’s coming to them, for sure.” Danica gives a short, dry laugh. “No, Mr Paranormal Investigator. You should be asking me what happened to Hunter.”

Dipper frowns. “Who’s Hunter?”

It takes them a full day to piece together the entire story.

Hunter Sakamoto – who went by Warehouseoftheoccult on WebHarbor, a fact Dipper finds simultaneously deeply irritating and kind of funny – was the Bridges’ primary competitor until about eighteen months ago, when he went missing from his home in Berkeley. There's technically no such thing as a cold missing persons’ case, but to the extent that there is, this is one; one day he was selling black magic sigils and protection amulets, and the next he was nowhere to be seen. When Dipper had asked about his relationship with the Bridges, Danica had laughed for a solid twenty seconds.

“They were friends for a while,” she had said. “Same age bracket, similar interests, you know. But those two were never great at hanging onto friendships. Too needy; too jealous. They tried to hide it, but the day they realised they weren't the only game in town, they pushed everyone away. Pathetic.”

That had made Dipper frown. “This is the first I'm hearing about Hunter,” he'd said. “Why do you think that is?”

“Because he was even worse.” Danica's voice had been bone-dry. “He moved to the West Coast ‘cause his own kids didn't even want anything to do with him; they're out in Boulder. Nobody talked to Hunter if they didn't have to. I'd be surprised if anybody even remembers him.”

“But you do.” (He hadn't been able to resist that.)

“I'm eighty years old, boy.” Danica's cackle had rattled his phone. “My kids are grown. My wife crossed over five years ago. What else do I have to do?”

Fair enough. So, between them, Dipper and Bill – mostly Dipper – have spent the last twenty-four hours trying to dig up information on the Sakamoto case. The SFPD was happy enough to share case notes, and even a copy of the hard drive from Hunter’s laptop.

“I think I might hate this guy,” Dipper admits, ninety minutes into sifting through chat logs.

Like most of the Internet-connected occult community, Hunter is... opinionated. He's also prolific; archived pages from his WebHarbour message history show pages upon pages of discussions, “debates”, and outright hostile exchanges between him and basically everyone – clients, customers, casual acquaintances. There's a mostly-capslocked argument between him and another website user about the normal expected range of a dowsing rod that spans well over a hundred messages. Being unpleasant on the Internet seems to have been part of Hunter Sakamoto's personal brand, and one he took extremely seriously.

“I like him,” Bill says, unsurprisingly. “Sincere, confident, misguided; just my kinda human.” (Dipper casts him a sidelong glance at this, but decides to let it slide.) “Of course, he's wrong about basically everything, but most of you are! It's what makes you so easy.”

"That,” says Ronnie, currently busy behind the bar, “is the kind of attitude that gets you trapped in a cursed artefact for three hundred years.” She raises an eyebrow at him. “Remember Cleopatra?”

“I said most.” Bill scowls at her. “And I did not get trapped. That was the setting for a perfectly-timed and entirely hilarious explosion.”

Dipper looks between them, interested. “What happened?”

“Is that your question?” Bill says, sweetly, cutting across whatever Ronnie had been about to say.

Dipper thinks for a second, and then sighs. “I guess not.” He does want to hear the story of how someone trapped Bill in a cursed object – it might give him some ideas – but he has other priorities for his questions right now.

He does make a mental note, though: Get Ronnie alone sometime. The other demon has been working with Bill for a long time; she has stories, and she's clearly not shy about sharing them – or about portraying her boss in a less-than-flattering light. More to the point, she doesn't have a solemn bargain with Dipper that limits his ability to pump her for information. (There is, of course, the slight problem that she really doesn't seem to like him. Maybe he can ask Mabel for help winning her over.)

He turns his attention back to the chat logs. Hunter's message history with Occultwarehouse is by far the longest – it goes back nearly a decade – so he'd left it for last. There's something almost sad about watching their early messages go from warm to cool, and then all the way through frosty and into some kind of eternal winter. Danica said they had been friends, once; over the first year or so of the logged messages, Dipper watches that friendship die.

“It's weird that they kept in touch,” he muses, scrolling further up the chat. “Every time they talk, it turns nasty. Why wouldn't they just block each other?”

“Same reason people still use Cheepster.” Bill shrugs. “Humans like the things they like, but they love the things they hate. You hit ‘em with a strong enough emotion, they don't care if it's good or bad; most of ‘em will still come back for more.”

This is surprisingly grounded insight coming from Bill, which might be why it sticks so heavily in Dipper's craw. He's suddenly very aware of the demon's eye on him; he forces his shoulders away from his ears and keeps reading.

The sniping continues, sometimes with breaks of weeks or months; each time, the hostility rolls and crests like a wave before it breaks, dying down to wait for the next trigger. They fight about product listings, stock suppliers, the correct care and feeding of haunted dolls; there's even a lengthy exchange about whether or not the Bridges had the right to adopt a cat, knowing that Hunter can only afford pet-free accommodation. Eventually, he gives up and starts skimming, slowing down when he hits the last year or so of messages.

As it turns out, he probably didn't need all the additional context. The last exchange between Hunter Sakamoto and one or both Bridges is long, rambling, and comes to a sudden and abrupt end. By this point, Dipper isn't even sure what they're arguing about; nominally, it's about stock pricing, but it devolves quickly into old grudges and name-calling, until:

[Warehouseoftheoccult]: it's not my fault your washed-up wrinkly asses can't FUCKING HANDLE HEALTHY COMPETITION

you do know everyone hates you guys right

[Warehouseoftheoccult]: it's a good thing you couldn't have kids, Lessie

you'd just have ruined the rest of the fucking world for them

[Warehouseoftheoccult]: like you're ruining this community for EVERYBODY ELSE

Yikes. There are no good people in this chat, but Dipper feels a pang of sympathy for Alessandra Bridges that lasts all the way until he reads the response from Occultwarehouse, which is simply:

[Occultwarehouse:] Come To Los Angeles And Say That To My Face
[Warehouseoftheoccult]: omw

Dipper double-checks the first report of Hunter's disappearance. It came in on February 17th, but his daughter notes having last heard from him late at night on January 22nd; these messages are dated January 23rd. There's a statement from the Bridges saying that they never heard from Hunter again after these messages. This is suspicious, and whoever looked into this clearly thought so as well, because there's a note saying the investigating officer had requested footage from the couple's property cameras but received nothing. (“Suspects claim they purge stored feeds every 4 weeks”.)

“What do you think?” he asks Bill, at length. “They hated each other for nearly ten years, and...” He makes a face. “It's not looking good for the Bridges,” he says. “If anyone had reported Sakamoto missing earlier – if they hadn't had time to scrub their feeds...” He jogs his knee restlessly against the floor. “But it's all circumstantial. I get why they were never charged.”

“A ten-year grudge and a huge miscarriage of justice?” Bill smirks. “That’d put some power behind a haunting, sure. Shame we can't prove anything.” He steeples his fingers, propping his elbows on the table. “Of course, we've got a name now,” he continues, innocently. “If we could just get into that house – if it's the right name, that is – calling him up for a chat would be child's play. Who knows what evidence he could point us to?”

Dipper glares at him. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“That. You're – reasoning with me.” Dipper folds his arms. “It's not gonna work,” he says, firmly. “Breaking into a graveyard after hours was one thing. You cannot convince me to break into someone's house.”

Breaking into the Bridges residence is, frankly, disturbingly easy; the hardest part is having to leave the car ten blocks or so away and walk uphill with all their supplies (which would, admittedly, have been a lot simpler if Dipper had been able to convince the superhumanly strong member of this duo to actually carry anything).

Beyond that, it's almost beautifully simple. Dipper had been worried about security lights and cameras, but as they approach the house, Bill looks into the eye of the nearest camera and blows it a kiss; there's a faint crackle, and then he nods, satisfied. No lights come on as they scale the gate.

“Keep your voice down,” Dipper mutters to him as they come up to the door. “There are people asleep in here.”

“Don't mansplain breaking and entering to me,” the demon replies in an amused undertone. “I have more than one trick up my sleeve; they won't wake up unless you really holler.” He brushes his knuckles genteelly against the doorknob; there's a click, and the next time he tries it, the door swings open. “You worry too much, partner.”

“We are not partners,” Dipper hisses, following Bill into the garage and heading for the stairs. They've agreed to set things up in the basement. Staying up in the garage would make beating a retreat easier if they need to, but there's a chance this will get noisier than Bill can cover for with whatever trick he's employing, and the more insulated they are from the main house, the better.

The basement is cool, damp, and small. Dipper's phone flashlight reveals more boxes, some with slightly mildewed edges, and five or six disgruntled spiders. He pushes a few boxes to the side and starts pulling things out of his bag; water, granola bars, a travel mug of coffee, and the ghost trap Pyronica spun up for them over the course of the afternoon, a rowan-wood cross carved with Hunter's name and carefully strung with red thread. He sketches a quick protective circle in chalk, lays the trap inside, lights a candle.

After that, there's nothing they can really do except settle down to wait. There's so little space that this is a challenge in and of itself if they don't want to disturb the circle; they end up reshuffling some of the surrounding boxes until they're stacked in such a way as to allow them to each sit on one. It's a tight fit; Dipper can't move his arm without brushing the sleeve of Bill's jacket. He waits until they're situated to put out his flashlight.

“That really bugs you, doesn't it?” Bill tips his head back, getting comfortable on his box.

“About you?” Dipper raises an eyebrow. “You're gonna have to be more specific.”

“Us being partners.”Bill smirks at Dipper's faint, semi-involuntary noise of protest. “What's the big deal, kid? We're working on cases together. It's a police term. Not like I'm asking if you wanna hold hands.”

Dipper takes a steady, slow breath. “It bugs me,” he says, “because it's inaccurate. You're not my partner.”

“Why not?”

“Because you're not.” It's quiet, fierce, and final. Bill snorts, but doesn't try to push the matter any further.

They lapse back into blessed silence, for maybe one to three minutes.

“Detective?”

“What, Bill?”

“You got a question for me?”

That surprises Dipper out of his irritation; he blinks. “What, right now?”

“You got any better ideas?” Bill stretches, shifting a little in his seat. “We could be down here for hours. I'm bored already, and you gotta keep your neurons firing.” His teeth flash in the gloom. “Go on,” he says, easy and genial. “I'm all ears.”

“Um. Okay.” Dipper scrubs a hand through his hair, trying to think of how best to start. He does have something in mind, actually – he's pretty much had this question picked out since he asked the last one – but he hadn't expected Bill to bring it up. He'd thought he would have more time to decide on his phrasing.

“You, uh, made your own body.” He looks cautiously in the demon's direction. “That's not a question. I'm clarifying settled facts.”

“Shoulda been a lawyer, not a cop.” Bill sounds amused. “I made my own body, Your Honour. Proceed.”

“You're a… demon.”

“Taxonomically speaking, sure.” Bill examines his nails. “Are we still clarifying settled facts, or are you going somewhere with this?”

Actually, “taxonomically speaking” raises even more questions, but Dipper forces himself to set them to one side; now is not the time.

“Okay,” he says. “So you're a demon, currently residing in your own human body – that you made – here. On the… physical plane. So I guess my question is…” He sighs. “How? I mean, like – ” He waves a hand in the demon's direction. “Entities like you can't just manifest on Earth at will. Melpomene couldn't, and she was a goddess with a full cult behind her. I thought possession was your only way through. So how did you do it?”

“Kid, you're killing me,” Bill sighs, altogether too cheerfully for a man under deadly verbal assault. “I know there's something going on in that brain, or I'd have lost interest by now, but seriously, didn't you at least watch Pepitas Place when you were a kid or anything? They had that vampire math puppet – what's his name – ”

“Numeratu the Counter,” Dipper supplies, against his better judgement.

“Him,” Bill says, with a nod. “I thought he taught a whole generation of fleshy mortal babies to count, and yet it seems to elude you. What gives?” He snorts at Dipper's tired, frustrated glare. “There are two questions in there, Pine Tree.”

Damn it. True to form, Bill excels at being right in the most annoying way possible. Dipper digs the heel of his hand into his right eye, trying to stave off another twinge of pain. “Is pedantry one of the seven deadly sins?” he says into his wrist. “It'd explain why you love it so much.”

“Nah.” Bill grins, his eye glinting in the dim light. “They didn't take any of my suggestions.” He looks Dipper over for a long, contemplative moment.

“Tell you what,” he says, in the reasonable tone he seems to reserve for suggestions he knows Dipper is going to hate. “You know I can't give out freebies. But if you want both questions answered…” His grin widens a fraction. “Maybe we can figure something out.”

“Another deal?” Dipper raises an eyebrow. “Not happening, dude.”

“Who said anything about a deal?” Bill leans forward a little, his tone turning conspiratorial. “I'm talking about a trade, kid. You give me something I want, I give you something you want. A… one-time supplement to our contract, if you like. Totally off the books! I won't even make you shake on it.”

Dipper frowns. This is definitely not reassuring, but he can't deny that he is – against his better judgement – listening. “What did you have in mind?”

“Nothing crazy.” Oh, Dipper does not like that smile; it means Bill thinks he's already hooked. “Just a simple exchange.” He props his chin on his hand. “Like for like. I'll give you your extra question – if you answer one of mine.”

Dipper eyes him warily. The demon's smile stays steady and unwavering.

“What question?” Dipper says at last.

“Haven't decided yet,” Bill replies, just a little too quickly. “C'mon, Detective. It's your lucky day! I almost never do this. I'll even go first” – there's the smirk again – “while I think about what I wanna know. You can't say fairer than that.”

Dipper thinks this over for a second. He doesn't like it – he has a feeling he knows exactly what the question is going to be – but Bill has already shown he can get into any official record he likes. Plus, he's been to the station now without setting anything on fire or traumatising anyone, so Dipper has no great grounds to keep him away in future. It's only a matter of time before the demon goes ferreting for gossip. Whatever he wants to know, it's probably better if Dipper gets a chance to control the narrative.

Besides which, he does really want to know how Bill got here. He's never even heard of anything making itself a human body and shoving itself inside, unsummoned, autonomous. It shouldn't be possible. It's clearly not easy, or every extradimensional creature would be doing it. He might be the first human to ever possess this knowledge.

And, he reminds himself, if I understand how he did it, maybe I can figure out how to send him back.

“Fine,” he says. “Go on, then.”

“Your wish is my command.” Bill's teeth flash in the gloom. “Okay, so – you're right about possession. Your average being gets one route onto this plane, and it's pretty milquetoast. Not saying I haven't had some great vacations in a vessel, mind! But…” He makes a face. “It's like wearing a suit that doesn't fit and doesn't want you in it. Even if your ride stays on board the whole way through – which is rare – their body knows you're not supposed to be there, and it… fights. Muscle cramps, stitches, the odd hallucination. Uncomfy, you dig? And they wear out in six months, tops, even if you feed 'em right. You fleshbags just aren't built to contain us.”

“But you found another way.” Dipper realises he's leaning forward in spite of himself, unsettled and fascinated.

“And how.” Bill straightens his lapels, his eye alight. He's enjoying this, Dipper realises – the reveal of his genius, his power, his ingenuity. Having someone understand what he was able to pull off. What he's capable of.

“Making the body was easy enough,” the demon continues. “You get the right materials and the power to make 'em go, it's not a problem. I could do that in my sleep. But the possession thing… it's a universal rule." He says that last part like it leaves a bad taste in his mouth. "I can bypass most boundaries, but the universe is… finicky. It wants things the way it wants 'em, and being as it's, you know, kinda everything…” He scowls. “You break a universal rule, it'll just override you. Best-case scenario, we'd have been sent back to Hell the second we left. Worst-case…” He laces his fingers together, his expression smoothing out to neutral. Another person, Dipper guesses, might have shuddered.

“You're here, though,” he says. “You broke the rule.”

“Eh, I more sorta bent it.” Bill smirks. “Turns out even the universe will negotiate. You just gotta have the right leverage.”

Dipper stares at him.

“Just to clarify,” he says, slowly. “Are you saying you made a deal with the universe?”

Bill's smirk blossoms like a firework.

“You made a deal with the universe to let you out of Hell?”

The firework sizzles and pops; Dipper can practically feel sparks drifting into his hair. He has five, ten, fifty follow-up questions, and he can't ask them – how do you talk to the universe? Is it, like, a person, or – what can you even offer it that it might accept in payment? What kind of a deal did Bill strike with… everything?

“That,” he says, “might be the most insane thing I've ever heard.”

“Aw, you're just saying that.” Bill waves him off, self-satisfied as a cat in a sunbeam. “Anyway, that's my travel story!" His smirk drops to more manageable levels; Dipper feels a hint of foreboding ghost across the back of his neck. “Time to hold up your end, kid.”

Dipper blinks; the bombshell of I made a deal with the universe to let me out of Hell had temporarily driven the other half of their deal from his mind. His stomach clenches briefly; Bill definitely has a question in mind, and he's not looking forward to it, and his mind is still racing from what he's just been told. He wants to ask for a second to digest this new information, but… fair is fair, he supposes.

“Alright.” He rubs the back of his neck, trying to brace himself. “Hit me.”

“Why does nobody want to work with you?”

And there it is. Dipper feels his heart try to retreat back into his ribcage, but he squares his shoulders and swallows back the bile in his throat. You knew this was coming, he tells himself. He was going to find out eventually. Time to get it over with.

He sighs, clenches his eyes shut. “Fine,” he says to the darkness behind his eyelids. “A deal’s a deal. You'll get your answer. But you need to shut up and let me talk, okay? If I'm gonna get through this, I need you to not be all...” He waves a hand, opening his eyes. “You about it.”

Bill makes a disgruntled noise, but when Dipper turns his tired gaze to the demon, he makes a zipping motion over his mouth and folds his arms, then makes an impatient hand gesture in Dipper's direction. Go on.

Dipper sighs. “Alright, then.”

He takes a moment to compose himself, fixing his eyes on a particularly inky patch of the darkened basement so that he has somewhere to look that isn't Bill's shadowed face. He takes a few deep breaths, lets his heart rate settle a little, runs a hand through his hair.

Then he starts the story of the worst thing he's ever done.

"The first year after I made detective was amazing," he tells the darkness. "Captain Daniels paired me up with a more experienced detective, and – I figured I'd just be on grunt work for a while, but she was – great, actually. I learned a lot from her." Detective Madden had been a no-nonsense butch woman in her forties; he'd been expecting matter-of-fact condescension from her, been surprised and thrilled when she'd actually been interested in his theories and ideas.

“I was brilliant,” he says, as calmly as he can manage. “That was what everyone told me. I loved the work, and I was – really good at it. I was all in, and whenever something stumped me, Madden always seemed to know what to do. Our solve rate was, like, crazy high, and the other detectives kind of hated us, and we kind of liked it.” His smile is thin and bitter. “We never talked about it, but I got the feeling nobody had ever really taken her seriously either.” It occurs to him now that he can't remember her face, that all he can call to mind is a vague impression of grey hair and a wry smile.

“Alice,” he says, around the lump in his throat. “Her name was Alice.”

3.21AM, and Dipper has severely underestimated how much harder it is to run a stakeout by himself. He offers Alice a silent apology; he's definitely been crankier than she deserved over the course of their last few stakeouts, dismissive of her insistence on coffee and snacks and fidget toys. Now he's out here on his own, and he didn't think to bring any of that shit, and he's freezing cold and starving, and the most interesting thing that's happened to him in the last two hours has been having the entire left-hand side of his body fall asleep.

It's gonna be worth it, though, because he's found out where the hostages are being kept.

At first, they’d thought they had a serial killer on their hands. Three murders, nine weeks; all seemingly random. The only thing the victims have had in common is the manner of death – throats torn out, presumably posthumously, given the relative lack of blood. Now there’s been a fourth – and a ransom note. Five more hostages; five days to pay up before they start dying.

The good news (for Dipper, at least) is that the fourth murder confirmed a pattern he’d been mulling over for a while. He hasn’t mentioned it to Alice yet – he wants to be sure – but each murder so far has taken place in this same five-mile radius, converging on the abandoned warehouse on Palmetto Street that he’s now sitting outside. Over the last few days, he's swung by here a few times, and there are definitely signs of activity, in that someone's blacked out or boarded up all of the windows.

Weird, considering this place has been allegedly abandoned for over a decade.

So he’s been coming back. Carefully, and sometimes on foot, in case anybody recognises his car. This is going to have to be the last time, though, because this time, he has photos of somebody going in and out, and he needs to figure out what he’s going to do about it.

To anybody else, the photos would be useless. They’re blurry and dimly-lit – he didn’t even dare use the flash on his phone camera. Nobody’s going to be able to identify a suspect from these. But he has a few shots of his subject standing under the only working streetlight on this block, and in those… in those, you can see the eyes, bright and luminous, reflecting the lighting back like a cat’s.

Nothing human has eyes like that.

“I thought, a vampire nest,” he says. "It was the thing that made the most sense. I'd never – I hadn't thought I'd ever bring this stuff up at work. I had only signed on to solve human crimes, and… I mean, I didn't think anyone would listen to me. But Alice did.”

“This is insane, Pines.”

“I know how it sounds – ”

“You do not know how it sounds.” Alice thumps the desk she’s sitting on before swinging herself off it. “‘Hey, Al, you got a second? ‘Cause I’ve got a fun new theory about the hostage situation we have –” she pulls out her phone, squints briefly at the screen “ – three days left to resolve before more people start dying. Oh, what is it? How are you on 19th-century gothic horrors?’” She throws her hands in the air, her eyes wild. “What are we supposed to do, go in with garlic and holy water?”

“The garlic thing is a myth,” Dipper says, pleadingly.

“Oh, well. Fuck me, I guess.” Alice runs her hands through her hair, then buries her face in them, taking a few deep breaths.

Dipper tries again. “I do know it sounds crazy,” he says. “But – can’t you see how it adds up? The victims barely had any blood in them, but the crime scenes were almost spotless. The throats being ripped out – wouldn’t that cover any suspicious neck wounds? And the warehouse – why would your average squatter bother blacking out all the windows?”

Alice’s face is still in her hands, but her breathing slows as Dipper talks. Some of the tension eases from her shoulders.

Emboldened, he presses on. “Most vampire nests are nomadic,” he says. “They can’t stay in one place for too long – people get suspicious. If I’m right, this group realised we were on to them, and now they’re desperate. It’s… what, twenty thousand dollars they’re asking for? Doesn’t that seem like kind of small change for a ransom?” He tugs at his hair. “I think they just wanna leave town.”

Alice looks back up at him, dropping her hands to her sides. Her stare is direct and searching; Dipper fights the urge to cringe back from its intensity.

“Dipper,” she says at last. Her voice is low, quiet. “I need you to understand how absolutely unhinged what you’re saying is.” She tucks her hands into her pockets. “If we act on this, and you’re wrong, your career could be over.” She smiles grimly. “Scratch that. My career would be over, and I’m less than a decade out from retirement, so if I’m going down, I’m taking you with me.”

We had a good run, I guess. Dipper swallows his nausea, waiting for the blow to fall.

“I’m not saying I believe you,” Alice continues, “because, as we just covered, this theory is so tinfoil-hat, shit-your-pants insane that it makes dianetics sound like molecular biology.” She starts to pace, smoothing her hands over the hair at the back of her head.

“But say I did,” she says, slowly. “What would we do about it?”

He's still not looking at Bill, but he can practically feel the demon's urge to interject building up between them. It must be killing Bill to not point out every single point of human fallibility in this tale. Weirdly, that thought helps Dipper find the strength to keep talking.

"We had a plan," he says. "Nothing fancy. Load up a small team with holy water and crossbows and the like. One person goes in to negotiate; the others break in elsewhere and get the hostages out. Me and Alice were the only ones who knew we weren't dealing with humans, so we had a chance to get the drop on them. I wanted to go in with the extraction team, but she insisted I let her handle it; I don't know what she told the others, but they were on board, especially after they found out they'd get to carry flamethrowers." He tugs at his hair absently. "It should've worked.”

“Quiet so far.” Alice’s voice crackles over the radio. “We’re in, but I don’t see any signs of life, except – okay, well, that's a rat.”

She’s trying to made him feel better about being stuck outside, and Dipper knows it, but he stifles a chuckle anyway. “They’ll be around the basement levels,” he returns, keeping his voice low.

“I know, smart guy.” She sounds almost fond. “Man, it’s filthy in here. If this turns out to be a group of murderous crustpunks, you’re never living it down.”

“It’s an abandoned warehouse,” he protests. “It’d be weirder if it were clean.”

“Criminal standards ain’t what they used to be. Okay, we’re heading downstairs.”

Silence for five long, tense minutes. Then:

“Holy shit, kid.”

Dipper snaps to attention. “What is it?” He drops his hand to his waist, double-checking: gun, stake, crucifix. “What’s wrong?”

“Never tell anybody I said this,” Alice hisses into the radio, “but I think you were right. We’ve found them. Everyone’s alive, but some of them are looking pretty weak. They’re saying…” Her voice fades out on the end of the sentence, but Dipper is pretty sure he knows what they’re saying.

“Any sign of the… captors?”

“Not yet, but – ”

Dipper hears a heavy thunk. “Alice?”

“ – the fuck – “

More static. Dipper’s heart pounds. “Alice, what’s going on?”

“ – away from them, you – ”

It’s only now that Dipper realises his eyes are watering. Following on the heels of this is a heavy, acrid smell that hits him like a punch to the gut: when he looks up he can see the smoke pouring from the upper windows of the warehouse, black against the blush-pink sky.

“Alice. Alice!” He’s yelling into the radio now, all pretences of stealth forgotten. “The building’s on fire. You have to get out of there. Can you hear me?” He shakes the radio desperately, as if that’s somehow going to help. “You gotta get out. Right now!” He takes a few steps towards the building, but the fumes are coming thick and fast now, bringing with them a noxious roil of heat that forces him back. He coughs and swears, dragging a hand over his eyes, and keeps punching the transmitter, shouting himself hoarse into the staticky silence.

Eventually, his voice runs dry. At some point, he must have called for backup, because he can hear sirens in the distance, but he doesn’t remember it. The radio falls from his nerveless fingers as he stands, eyes streaming, watching the smoke boil and churn across the pre-dawn sky.

“How many?” Bill’s voice makes Dipper start; he’d barely registered that he’d stopped talking, let alone the silence they’ve been sitting in for the last few moments. He doesn’t need clarification, though; he knows exactly what the demon is asking.

“Nine.” The word rasps in his throat, stings his eyes. Bill makes a soft, thoughtful noise, but doesn’t otherwise react. The silence spins out between them, soft and delicate as a cobweb.

Eventually, Dipper sighs. “The only other person who knew what we'd been doing was Alice,” he says. “So they chalked the whole thing up to a tragic accident, and they closed the case. I reacted… badly.” He scrubs at his face, exhausted. “They put me on six months of mental health leave, and now everyone thinks I’m insane. And that's why nobody wants to work with me.”

A brief pause.

“I’m done,” he says, wearily. “You can react now.”

“Eh.” They're sitting close enough that Dipper can feel the air shift next to him as Bill stretches out. “I mean, the flamethrowers were a nice touch, and I really liked the bit where your mutual bond of trust and friendship killed nine people, but on balance, I'd say…” He wiggles his hand in the air, considering. “Maybe a six outta ten.”

That makes Dipper sit up straight. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you know you were set up, right?” Bill says, as if they were discussing being cut off in traffic rather than the day Dipper inadvertently choreographed a massacre. “The sudden time pressure for a solve, the trail heating up at just the right time, the bait…” He snorts. “It's textbook. And the flamethrowers were barely even in it. You even had a fire they coulda started! What a waste.”

Dipper's head snaps up, his hands balling into fists as he glares at the other man. “That's not funny.”

“Fire is always funny, kid.”

“No, I mean, you can't just – “ Dipper thumps the ground next to him lightly. “I wasn't set up. I was stupid.”

“Oh, yeah, definitely that too,” Bill says airily. “I’d’a seen it coming a mile away, and if I hadn't, the miserable little flesh-eater that pulled it off would be dissolving in a swamp somewhere by now. But why beat yourself up? You had a whole grown-ass detective on your side, and she didn’t spot it either. Kinda sounds like you were both idiots.”

“Don’t talk about her that way.” Dipper’s nails are digging into his palms with how hard he's clenching his fists. He barely feels it. “Alice was – ”

“Yeah, yeah.” Bill flaps a hand in his direction. “She trusted you, she believed in you, you led her to her untimely demise. Very tragic! I’m into it.” He sits up a little. “But even if she let you call the shots on the method, she shoulda known better on the execution. Not to mention the genre-typical attempt at heroics! I mean.” He rolls his eye. “Talk about going off half-cocked – ”

“We didn’t have time!” Dipper remembers just in time that they are technically trespassing at the moment, managing to temper his voice to a low hiss. “Why the fuck did you even ask, huh? So you could make fun of me?” Something raw and molten bubbles up in his throat. “This is exactly why we can't be partners,” he spits. “You just – you smash your way into my life, and you pull out all my secrets, and you treat them like garbage. Maybe I’m stupid, and maybe Alice was too, but at least she knew how to be a person!”

Bill’s eye glints in the gloom; his expression is otherwise unreadable. There is no way he doesn’t have a response to that; a part of Dipper is even kind of looking forward to seeing what it’s going to be. Before he can start, though, a tendril of cold snakes its way between them, making the threads of the ghost trap hum like a plucked harp string.

“Would you look at the time? Looks like we've got company.” A half-smile hikes up one corner of Bill's mouth, needle-pointed and vicious. “Hold that thought, Detective.” His voice is soft, a fur rug over a hidden trapdoor, sending a shiver down Dipper's spine that has nothing to do with the sudden chill in the air. “To be continued.”

Chapter Text

It’s been years since Dipper has really considered himself a paranormal expert; since Alice, he hasn’t even really felt comfortable with the word “enthusiast”, considering where his last bout of enthusiasm for the supernatural got him. Got – us. During his days in that world, though, he was active, engaged, driven – and, whenever Mabel was with him, basically unstoppable. He’s seen plenty of phenomena, including some pretty rare and impressive stuff. Hell, he doesn’t even need to reach back that far in his memory; he had a chat with a goddess just a few weeks ago. Next to that, your average house ghost starts to look pretty mundane.

Even so, he feels his pulse quicken a bit as the threads in the ghost trap start to vibrate, the wooden frame rattling against the floor as the spirit inside tries to find a way out. The temperature in the basement drops from merely ‘chilly’ to ‘freezing’; his breath steams in the air in front of him, and he regrets not bringing anything heavier than a hoodie. He rubs his arms briskly in the sudden cold.

Eventually, the rattling stops, and the ghost trap settles back onto the floor with a resigned clack. The threads phosphoresce briefly - barely a glow, more a pulse of pale, sickly light - and the shape of Hunter Sakamoto resolves sulkily in the air in front of them. He looks remarkably human, if translucent; Dipper can still clearly see the flame of the candle behind the ghost’s form, but in that light he can also pick out the fine details of the dead man’s face, down to the mole above his eyebrow and the dusting of acne scars across his cheeks.

That’s a bad sign. Most spirits start to lose their definition quite quickly; Frankie had been by far the most persistent ghost Dipper had ever met, his entire existence centred around the simple desire to keep going, at all costs. And while Frankie had been perfectly and impressively recognisable - Dipper had easily found him in old UCLA photos – there had been no denying the softening and blurring of his features, even in comparison to a 1950s photograph. Dipper’s theory had been that only Frankie’s habit of befriending students had kept him grounded enough to remain himself for seventy years, even as the world he’d lived in had slipped further and further from his grasp, as his connection to it had decayed. Most spirits that old have lost the majority of their humanity, manifesting instead as clouds of freezing mist with the barest suggestion of a face.

Hunter hasn’t been dead that long, of course, but it’s been over a year. He should have lost at least some details. Dipper shouldn’t be able to count his eyelashes. The fact that he can means that Hunter’s sense of self is unusually powerful, that whatever wellspring of anger and resentment and pain he’s drawing on runs deep, its roots stable and well-fed.

A trapped ghost can do no physical harm. He can’t hurt you. Dipper buries his numb fingers in the sleeves of his hoodie and stands, his knees stiff in the freezing air.

“It’s Mr Sakamoto, isn’t it?” he says. “I'm – ”

“I know who you are.” This surprises Dipper enough that he doesn’t even consider protesting the interruption, as does the petulant note in Hunter’s voice. “What are you doing here? It’s not time yet.”

“I...” Dipper looks over at Bill; the demon shrugs. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“I planned everything out,” Hunter says, as if it should be obvious. “You’re not even past stage one. There’s no way you’ve figured it out yet.”

Dipper and Bill swap another glance, a wordless, rapid-fire do-you-know-what-he's-talking-about-okay-me-neither exchange. Dipper sucks in another frigid breath.

“Seems like you're a few steps ahead of us,” he says, hoping flattery is the way to go here. “Why don't you walk us through it?”

“Unbelievable.” Hunter drops into a sitting position on the floor, startlingly fast – although Dipper supposes he's not really concerned with hurting himself on the concrete. “I laid it all out for you! I thought you'd be excited! Doesn't anybody take pride in their work these days?”

Dipper sits back down. He can feel Bill's warmth at his side, a flicker of relief from the unnatural chill that he refuses to acknowledge.

“We found Harold and Katalina,” he says, carefully. “They brought us here. That was you, wasn't it?”

“Oh, sure.” Hunter huffs. “Is this what policing looks like to this generation? You just pay attention to the flashy stuff, huh? What happened to detective work?”

“That was detective work.” Not to mention the twenty phonecalls and hours spent poring over case files and Internet-based social dysfunction. Dipper bites down on his frustration, tries to steer his tone in a more conciliatory direction. “What did we miss, Hunter? What were you trying to tell us?”

Hunter looks up at him with unbridled scorn. “If you'd been paying attention,” he says, “you've have noticed the rose, and the matchbook, and the keychain.”

“With the bear on it?” He had noticed those things in Palmer's apartment – they're sitting in Evidence somewhere right now – but he hadn't thought much about them since the far more solid lead of a missing person's report and several pages of archived vitriol had emerged. “What about them?”

“They were puzzle pieces,” Hunter says, with wounded dignity. “The matchbook from Bar Omni-Science, where we used to meet for brunch. The rose, for every time I sent Lessie flowers for her birthday. And the bear, from – well, isn't it obvious?”

“I think you should just tell him,” Bill says in a stage whisper, propping his elbows on his knees to learn forward. “He's obviously not capable of giving your work the respect it deserves.” He smiles blandly in the face of Dipper's sidelong glare. “What? I'm connecting with the witness.”

“Victim,” Dipper and Hunter correct him, simultaneously.

“See? You're bonding already.” Bill smirks. “Go on, Ghosty Ghost.”

“Well, it was going to be a springboard into stage two,” Hunter says, his shoulders slumping. “’YOU'RE BEAR-Y GREAT', you know, like – like how the three of us used to communicate in bear memes? You know, for a minute?” (Dipper vaguely remembers some cartoon pictures of bears from the logs he reviewed – some markedly less charming than others – but nothing specific. He must have been skimming by that point.) “But you've shut down their sales,” the ghost continues, mulishly. “So what am I supposed to do now? I had my next message all planned out – ”

“Hold on,” Dipper says, holding up his hands. “Are you saying you've been – exploding people – just to talk to us?”

“Not just.” Hunter rolls his eyes. “Phil and Lessie killed me. You can't just go around doing that to people and expect it not to hurt your business. It's not like I can do any review-bombing in this state.”

“Word of mouth is crucial to any independent entrepreneur,” Bill agrees, solemnly. Dipper clenches his jaw and, painfully, does not react to this.

“You wanted the Bridges’ store to suffer,” he says instead.

“Obviously,” Hunter replies, sullen.

“And you wanted somebody to know what happened to you,” Dipper continues. “Do you... want to tell us about it?”

“I was trying to – ”

“I know,” Dipper soothes, holding his hands out placatingly. He’s not really interested in more arguing about whose fault it is that Hunter cast him in an episode of Ghost?! Detective!! without his knowledge or consent. “You, uh, clearly put a lot of work into it. But we’re here now. Isn’t that what matters?”

“Obviously it's not,” Bill chimes in, sounding bored. “He wants revenge, not a therapy session. Right?”

“I – ”

“Just because he wants revenge, doesn't mean he doesn't also want to tell his story,” Dipper snaps, cutting Hunter off. “To someone who'll respect it, anyway.”

“You don't ‘respect his story',” Bill shoots back, wiggling his fingers mockingly on the air quotes. “You just want to be able to say you got him to tell you what happened. You want to solve the mystery. What difference does it make how anyone feels about what he says?”

“Maybe it matters to him, ” Dipper grits out. “Maybe having the chance to be heard by someone who gives a shit is enough.”

“Actually – ”

“Careful, Detective,” Bill says over Hunter's attempted interjection. “You'll have to start moonlighting at a movie theatre if you keep projecting like that.” He bares his teeth in a facsimile of his usual smirk. “You want people's stories for what you can get out of them, just like I do. Don't tell me you suddenly care about respect.”

“That is not true.” The words catch in Dipper's throat as he hisses them out. “Nothing this guy has to say is admissible in court. It can't solve the mystery.” He tries to mimic Bill's mocking air quotes, but his hands are shaking; he ends up dropping them angrily back to his sides. “But I wanna hear it, because – because how many murder victims get a chance to talk about what happened to them? Aren't you even a little bit curious about how other people experience the world?”

“Why would I be?” Bill stirs in his seat, agitated at last. He completely ignores Hunter's attempt to interject. “I don't know how to be a person, remember?”

Dipper gapes at him. “Are you seriously opting out of empathy on a technicality?”

“You said it.” Bill's voice is razor-edged, sharp as his smile – although he is not smiling now. “Do you even know how old I am, kid? How many trillions of beings I've seen come into existence and flail around and kill each other and fade away?” He folds his arms, his eye narrowing. “Why should I waste my time with anyone's dumb little inner life? They're all the same.”

“Well, what if they're not?”

The words echo around the basement as Dipper claps a hand to his mouth. He had, for one second, completely forgotten why they weren't yelling.

There's a moment of strained silence while all three of them listen for any sign of stirrings elsewhere in the house. It is broken, slightly anticlimactically, by Hunter's pointed, throat-clearing cough.

“If you're quite finished,” he says, with a disapprovingly condescending edge that Dipper supposes he deserves, “maybe we can get to what you came here for?”

“Right.” Dipper rubs the back of his neck, a little chastened. Next to him, Bill inspects his nails, grumpy but silent. “You’re – right. We’re sorry.” Bill looks up for a second at this, opening his mouth to interject; Dipper barrels on before he can. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

“Finally.” Hunter sighs, high and sharp, like the whip of wind through the branches outside a bedroom window. He straightens his spine, steeples his fingers, and starts to explain.

“I was Phil's best man at their wedding,” Hunter says. “Did you know that?”

Dipper shakes his head mutely.

“Typical.” Hunter huffs out a disappointed breath. “I met him in college. Freshman year. We were roommates for two years, and then after sophomore year he spends a year doing some placement in Italy, and he brings back Lessie. The three of us...” His gaze drops to his hands, still interlinked in his lap. “We were always together, even after they got married. We shared an apartment until I got the Berkeley fellowship and moved out, and they started trying for a baby. Never took. That woman's uterus is toxic, just like the rest of her.”

This seems like fundamentally unsound gynaecology to Dipper, and while he supposes you're allowed some unkindness when you're talking about your murderers, it's still not ground he's all that comfortable on. “Can you tell me why you fell out?” he asks instead, hoping to steer Hunter away from Alessandra Bridges’ uterus.

Hunter shifts, hunches his shoulders together. For the first time, he looks uncomfortable.

“Sometimes life doesn't go where you think it will,” he says, a little unsteadily. “I had an – unsettled period after I moved cities. A few girlfriends, a few kids. You know how it is.” (Dipper can't say that he does, so he says nothing.) “I had planned to come back to Los Angeles eventually, but Lessie... she didn't like how I was living. You know. Judgemental.” He scrunches his shoulders again, his face sour. “She said she'd kill for a child of her own, and it made her sick to see me treating the ones I had like trash. Like she knew what I was going through. What it's like. What was I supposed to do, spend my life driving all over SoCal, visiting my exes? I had a career!”

There's no way Dipper is going to weigh in on this – one ridiculous argument with a total jerk at a time is more than enough for him, Bill – but, considering that none of the dead man's children had been on speaking terms with him at the time of his death, he thinks that maybe that was exactly what Hunter was supposed to do. “That must have been hard,” he says, neutrally. “I could see you kept in touch over the years, though. Why was that?”

“I didn't do anything.” This is a bold assertion to make to anybody who has access to all ten years’ worth of your chat logs, but Hunter is so vehement that Dipper decides to let it slide. “They wouldn't leave me alone. I wasn't trying to compete with them! How could I, from a whole different city?” The ghost's voice turns smug. “Is it my fault I knew how to market spectral slime better than they did? It's not my fault.”

“Right.” Dipper fights the urge to rub his eyes. “But you, uh, ended up in competition anyway, right? And eventually things came to a head.”

Cold bites into his arms through the hoodie; the temperature has dropped another degree. Dipper shifts in his seat, only stopping when he realises that he's inched a little closer to the warmth of the demon next to him. Bill, thankfully, does not seem to notice.

“I just wanted to talk,” Hunter says, with a touch of diffidence. “But when I got here, they were – on edge. They wouldn't calm down.” He sighs. “I guess I might have – said some things,” he admits. “It was – we were – ” He wrings his hands, stumbling over his words. Dipper waits, chilly but patient.

“I think it was all we had left,” the ghost says, at length. “We'd been so – close, before, and then it all got so, so complicated. So intense. It was – horrible, but they couldn't let it go.” A pause, and then, with obvious difficulty: “I guess I couldn't, either.”

Memory hits Dipper like a swift kick in the ribs. His Grunkles had never managed to patch things up all the way after Ford came home. Looking back on it now, he can see how they'd both been trying, in their own ways – how they'd even made some headway, especially in the years before Grunkle Ford's death – but it was like whatever anger and resentment had driven them apart in the first place had taken on a life of its own while Ford had been away, like it was almost a creature in its own right.

Whatever that creature was, it was too strong and too vital for them to vanquish; they might put it to rest for months or even years at a time, but it would always, eventually, recover, and it would inevitably make an appearance every summer the twins spent in Gravity Falls as teenagers. Mostly, he remembers huddling with Mabel at the top of the Mystery Shack's rickety staircase, listening to Stan and Ford have the same fight, over and over: Ford's ingratitude, Stan's irresponsibility, Ford's lack of respect, Stan's lack of consideration.

At the time, he'd thought it was dumb grown-up bullshit. “We have to listen to Mom and Dad fight at home all year,” he'd seethed to Mabel at least fifty times. “Why do we have to hear it from them too?” And a part of him still kind of thinks it is. Listening to Hunter, though, he can feel the tendrils of something else trying to push through the surface of his memories. The way Stan talked about his brother with barely-veiled longing, like he missed him desperately, years after Ford came back home. The frustrated anguish in Ford's eyes every time Stan gave him the silent treatment.

Did they feel like that too? he thinks to himself. Like the anger was all they had left?

Maybe, someday, he'll be able to ask Grunkle Stan about it. His stomach clenches painfully at the thought. And, in spite of everything, he finally feels bad for Hunter Sakamoto.

“What happened after that?” he says, softly. There must be something in his voice, because Bill looks over at him quizzically. Dipper swallows, unable to meet his gaze.

“I don't remember,” Hunter says bitterly. “Not well, anyway. Lessie got in my face, so I pushed her, and then Phil got involved. He had, uh, a shovel? Or maybe a pitchfork. I think he hit me.” Something flickers over his face, not quite pain, not quite fear. “It didn't even hurt that much,” he says, sounding almost offended. “But when I woke up, I was...” He looks down at himself.

“Did they bury you?” The question feels frankly indelicate, but Dipper has to know; if Hunter has physical remains left, those will be their best shot at getting rid of him.

“Hah. No.” The floor seems to shift a little as Hunter says this, a movement just shy of a tremor, like a sleeping animal on the verge of being roused. “There's a firepit in the backyard,” he says, still staring down at his hands. “They cut me up.” The ground shifts again as he clenches his hands into fists. “I felt all of it,” he says, his eyes pitch-black and glittering in the candlelight. “Each limb. Every organ. They burned me until there was nothing left. I think it took them about three days.”

“I’m sorry.” It’s not the first time this has felt wholly inadequate as a response, and it definitely won’t be the last; Dipper still feels it curdle in his mouth.

“Thanks,” Hunter says acidly. “It’s not okay.”

Dipper takes a beat before responding. “It really sounds like you've been through a lot,” he says, carefully. “But don't you think the way you've gone about this might have been... I mean, kind of overkill? No pun intended,” he adds hastily, seeing the ghost's eyes narrow. “I just mean – you did this because the Bridges killed you, right? Don't you realise you've just been putting other people through the same thing?”

“So?” Hunter folds his arms. “Do you have any idea what it's like to die and live through it, Detective? Have you ever had to watch your two best friends burn your bones and scatter your ashes in their yard, like you're – compost?” He flickers a little on the last word – for a second he's sharper, his outline more defined, his colours more saturated. The shelves around them rattle as the ground shifts and creaks. “And nobody looked for me,” he hisses. “Not once! It took them three weeks to even tell the police!”

A fine sifting of dust drifts down over the room; the candle gutters, casting strange shadows around the basement. A grinding, creaking groan ripples across the floor, reverberating up the walls; a few assorted knick-knacks are shaken unceremoniously from their assigned shelves. Dipper hears the tinkle of breaking glass from somewhere. Hope that wasn’t expensive.

“Now look what you did,” Bill says cheerfully. “He’s all riled up! And so close to bedtime, too.”

Dipper ignores this dig at his spectral babysitting abilities, but he can’t hide a stab of anxiety as he looks around. Hunter can't cause any direct physical harm from the confines of the ghost trap, but he clearly has an affinity with the house. It’s difficult to tell how much of this Hunter is doing deliberately and how much is the house reacting to his pain, but if he pulls the basement down around them, that distinction is going to become really irrelevant, really fast.

He elbows Bill, who still looks altogether too relaxed for a scene this structurally unsound. “Can't you calm him down?” he hisses.

Bill raises an eyebrow. “Does that really seem like my area?”

“You're the devil,” Dipper snaps. “He's a dead guy! Don't you have any leverage here?”

“Ugh.” Bill unfolds himself, resentfully, and gets to his feet, popping a few muscles in his back as he stretches. “Fine. But for the record, I am retired, and this guy would be way below my pay grade even if I weren't. He's barely even a murderer.” When Dipper refuses to acknowledge this, he ‘hmphs’ and snaps his fingers in Hunter's direction. “Hey. Hey! Ghost of Tantrums Present?”

Hunter whirls towards him and howls, an unearthly, drawn-out screech that sends grit raining down into Dipper's hair. Bill rolls his eye, his expression flat and unimpressed.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says. “Thou unquiet spirit, thy rage unbounded by even the grave. Boring.” He hooks a finger through the strap of his eyepatch and pulls it down. “I have other things to get to tonight, okay? Cut it out.” The distortion of his voice mixes with the rumbling moan of the ground beneath them, vibrating in Dipper's bones.

The effect is immediate. Hunter flinches back; his scream cuts off with eerie abruptness, as if Bill had pressed STOP on his playback function. The ground hums and buzzes; a final light, petulant sprinkle of grit bounces off Dipper's shoulders before the basement settles.

Bill replaces the eyepatch and turns back to Dipper, dusting off his hands. “Better?”

“Uh.” Dipper steals a look at the unquiet spirit, now floating nervously above the ghost trap. “Yeah, I guess.” The air has warmed a little, which is something. “Now what do we do?”

“Beats me.” Bill flops back onto his box.

“This was your idea!”

“This is your job,” Bill shoots back, crossing one leg over the other. “Not my fault you didn’t think it all the way through.” He thinks for a second, resting his chin in his hand and rubbing a thumb along the lower rim of his eyepatch.

“I could always eat him,” he offers.

Dipper twists to stare at him full-on. “You’re not serious,” he says.

Bill grins at him.

“You mean, like…” Dipper swallows. “Literally?”

Bill's grin stretches unnaturally wide, a perfect showcase for two neat rows of flawless, gleamingly white teeth. Dipper is suddenly extremely aware of just how many of them there are.

“What would that…” He can feel cold sweat gathering at the small of his back. “Do to him?”

“Break him down into something I can absorb for nourishment.” Bill shrugs. “Same as everything else.”

“E-excuse me,” Hunter pipes up, uncharacteristically polite. “Please, um – please don’t let him do that.” He’s looking at Dipper, doubtless appealing to the most likely source of sympathy in the room. “Detective Pines? I – I don’t want him to eat me.” He wrings his hands, sounding almost panicked. “Please.”

Dipper does not want this either, and he really wants Bill to put those teeth away. “Let’s, uh, make that plan B,” he agrees hastily. And then, because there's no point in throwing away a perfectly good advantage: “But you need to keep it together, okay? We're here to help; we don't want anybody else to get hurt. If you keep shaking the house like that...” He trails off, feeling a little bad. Hunter is definitely annoying – whiny, entitled, possessed of extremely reductive opinions on generational work ethic. But he’s still a person, even if he is a dead one. It’s not Dipper’s place to sentence him to – to infernal ingestion. Whatever that even entails.

Still, the implicit threat has the desired effect: Hunter gives him a shaky thumbs up and lapses into nervous silence. Dipper ignores the roil of guilt in the pit of his stomach.

“Your call, killjoy.” Bill snorts. “Any ideas about a plan A, or do we all just wanna glare at each other some more?”

Actually, glaring at Bill some more sounds like a pretty great idea to Dipper; luckily, he can do that and think at the same time. He allows himself this luxury as he turns the facts over in his brain.

“I don’t know if we can banish him,” he says at last. “They burned his body; there's no physical tether to destroy.” Given how thoroughly Hunter seems to have seeped into the house, he supposes they could always try burning it down and salting the yard, but there's no guarantee even that would work, and he has a feeling the Bridges might object. Let's make that plan C, he thinks, grimly wondering how many letters he’s going to have to get through before he can assign a value to A.

“As long as the ghost trap is intact, he can't go too far from here,” he continues out loud. “That means he can't... go on any more mail adventures, right? Or explode people?”

“It's not like there would be any point,” Hunter interjects, some of the petulance returning to his voice. “Since you interrupted.” Bill turns a dazzling, beatific smile on him, and he visibly quails. “I – I mean, since you figured it out.”

“Range on that thing is pretty limited,” Bill agrees, turning back to Dipper. “With some practice, he might be able to push it a little, but he’s basically under house arrest, and he can’t cause any direct harm.” He clicks his tongue, thinking.

“I might be able to do something,” he says, after a long moment. “But you’re not gonna like it.”

Dipper eyes him warily. “What is it?”

“We-ell,” the demon says, innocently helpful in a way that makes Dipper instantly suspicious, “With the right spell, I could put the ghost trap somewhere it won’t be found or tampered with. Down in the foundations, maybe?” He drums his fingers on the box. “It’s not a banishment, but he’d stay mostly harmless. No more hitchhiking through USPS.”

This… sounds like it might be genuinely helpful. Dipper folds his arms, raising his eyebrows. “What am I not supposed to like about that?”

“Universal rules,” Bill says, with a sort of shuffly aw-shucks shrug that doesn’t suit him one bit. His mouth has started to creep upwards at the edges again, which is definitely not helping. “You know, like we talked about? Material manipulation like that, it gets – complicated if you’re extradimensional. I’d need to work through some kinda conduit, and you’re the closest.”

Dipper rubs the bridge of his nose. “Bill,” he says, slowly, “it’s two in the morning. Try that again in words of one syllable.”

Bill rolls his eye, but his smile doesn’t fade. “I can’t move things around ‘cause I’m not from here.”

“Right.”

“But,” the demon continues, “you are from here. So to move things around, I’d need to – ” he flutters his fingers vaguely in midair, miming some kind of space-time magic Dipper clearly isn’t advanced enough to understand “ – work through you. Kinda.”

Dipper blinks, momentarily distracted from his annoyance. “How does that work?”

“Really well,” Bill says airily. “I’m incredibly talented.”

“No, I mean – ”

“And,” Bill interrupts, “you are out of questions for the evening. Sooo…” He wiggles his eyebrows. “You want me to do it, or not?”

He extends his hand in Dipper’s direction, palm up. Almost like he’s asking me to dance, Dipper thinks, and then, immediately, I bet that would be even worse than senior prom.

Bill can’t hurt him until their deal expires. And if this works, Hunter can’t hurt anyone else.

He sighs. “Fine,” he says, proffering his own hand. “Just make it – ” He’s still halfway through the first vowel sound in ‘just’ when Bill grabs his wrist and bites his fucking hand.

Dipper’s voice chokes off into a startled, screechy yelp that leaves his chest feeling heavy and raw. It must have been louder than it sounded over the pounding in his ears, but the noise was pulled out of him before he could even think about trying to muffle it.

His entire world narrows to the feeling of teeth – Bill’s teeth – sinking into the flesh at the side of his hand. It's not pain so much as a shivering, sparking shock; his ears pop, the world lurching drunkenly to one side. He can feel his heart racing, an icy flare running up his spine; he wants to scream, or throw up or, strangely and overpoweringly, start laughing.

It feels like a strange, echoey eternity, but it can't actually be more than a few seconds before Bill pulls away. A wave of relieved lassitude rolls warmly up Dipper’s arm, loosening his tense shoulder, unclenching his teeth. Endorphins, he thinks, vaguely, or something. He has to squash the temptation to giggle again.

His eyes follow Bill as he straightens back up, looking somehow focused and far away at the same time; the demon’s eyelid flutters briefly before his eye snaps open, darting briefly in the direction of the ghost trap before coming to rest on Dipper’s face. Red glosses the demon’s lips and washes over his teeth as he grins, plucking some deep, knotted answering chord somewhere in the pit of Dipper's stomach. He watches, a little dazed, as Bill licks a coppery smear from the corner of his mouth.

“You piece of shit,” Dipper manages at last. “You could have warned me.”

“I told you I needed to work through you.” Bill smirks. “It's not my fault you don't have any basic thaumaturgical principles tucked away in that sloshy sack of electrical impulses in your skull.”

“You knew exactly what you were doing, you – ”

“What is going on here?”

The voice is familiar, but it isn't Bill's. It's not Hunter's, either.

Dipper looks around and freezes. This turns out to be a great idea, because Phil Bridges is standing in the doorway, wearing plaid pyjama pants and, apparently, very little else. He's hefting what looks very much like a shotgun.

“This isn't what it looks like,” Dipper blurts out, before his brain can come up with anything less suspicious to say. Next to him, Bill snickers; Dipper elbows him in the ribs.

“It looks like a cop broke into my basement in the middle of the night for some weird candlelight ritual,” Phil barks, making Dipper wince internally. Okay, so it's exactly what it looks like. “Both of you put your hands in the air.”

Bill lifts his hands obligingly, looking thoroughly entertained; Dipper follows suit, a little shakily. Something warm trickles down his wrist. He tries very hard not to think about what.

You can't blame Phil, says the world-weary thirteen-year-old still floating around Dipper's frontal lobe. This is exactly what Grunkle Stan taught you to do in a home invasion.

Thank you, Dipper snaps back at himself. That really doesn't help.

“I can explain all of this,” he says out loud, trying to sound like he believes it.

“I'm sure,” Alessandra Bridges says, dryly, from behind her husband. “Put that thing down, Philip. Can't you see Detective Pines is hurt?”

Phil lowers the gun, sheepish, leaving his wife to study her home invaders. Dipper feels, if anything, even more nervous under her unflinching gaze.

“These nice young men will come upstairs without a fuss, I'm sure,” Alessandra says, eventually. (Dipper doesn't dare look at Bill's face, but he does stomp down hard on the demon's foot, just in case he's of a mind to do anything charming with his expression. He feels a tremor through the other man's shoulders that might be suppressed amusement.) “You're bleeding, Detective. I'll get the first aid kit, and we can all talk about this like adults.”

As Dipper follows the Bridges up the stairs, he sneaks one last look over his shoulder at the basement. He watches the candle flicker, one last time; in the split second before it goes out, he can see that Hunter is gone.

So is the ghost trap.

During their first summer in Gravity Falls, long before Pacifica Northwest became anything close to what the twins could have called a friend, Dipper had spent an evening at a Northwest family party, trying to solve their ghost problem. He mostly remembers a stupidly itchy shirt, trying to avoid small talk as much as possible, and being briefly turned into a wooden statue by an angry dead lumberjack.

At the time, he'd thought that must be the most socially awkward ghost-hunting experience a person could have. He's not sure how it stacks up against breaking about seven kinds of police protocol, being caught red-handed in a disturbingly literal sense, and then being patched up by the owner of the home he'd broken into. Certainly he can feel the tension in the air as Alessandra Bridges passive-aggressively dabs disinfectant into the wounds on his hand. You could cut the atmosphere with a knife, he thinks, trying not to wince when she presses down a little too hard. Not even a very sharp one. A spoon might do just as well.

With nowhere else to turn his eyes, he looks down at the crescent of teeth marks neatly perforating the back and palm of his left hand, just under his pinky. It looks, weirdly, a lot better than he'd been expecting; red wells up in each wound when Alessandra applies too much pressure, but other than that even the bleeding seems to have mostly stopped. Demon bites heal fast, he notes mentally. There is, however, a burning itch building under Dipper's skin; it's like he can feel his nerves protesting being rushed through the healing process, like he’s been bitten by some kind of giant, bipedal mosquito. (As metaphors for Bill go, that one actually isn’t bad. Unfortunately, there’s probably not a big enough bug zapper in the universe.)

They're sitting around the kitchen table. The blown-out window frames have been covered with plastic sheeting; it feels a little like being in his mom's greenhouse, albeit with a lot more appliances. Phil is watching his wife work, his face stormy. Bill is looking around the room, drumming his fingers on the table and whistling softly. He perks up when the evil tortoiseshell cat trots into the room, tail up, and makes a beeline for him immediately.

“Oh, hello,” the demon says, sounding pleased. “You're still here, huh? Got something long-term in the works, or was this your way of going to ground?”

The evil cat chirps in response, sniffing his outstretched fingers briefly. She sits back on her haunches for a moment, regarding him solemnly, and then jumps into his lap. In spite of the situation, Dipper stifles a chuckle at the annoyance-to-surprise flickering across Bill's face.

“This is undignified,” Bill informs the evil cat. “Also, gross. You're getting cat leavings all over me.”

The evil cat begins, diabolically, to purr.

“Stop that.”

She doesn't.

“You can start talking,” Alessandra says, her voice clipped and carefully neutral. “We're almost done here.” She unrolls a length of bandage and cuts it to size, then tears open a gauze pad.

“Um.” Dipper swallows. “Okay.” He indicates the bandage with his unbitten hand. “Thanks for this, by the way.”

“Human decency,” says the woman who carved up a human body and burned it in a firepit. “What were you doing in our basement, Detective Pines? I can only assume you don't have a warrant.” She raises her eyebrows. “Normally I’d call 911, but it seems a little redundant, under the circumstances.”

Dipper fights the urge to squirm under her gaze, which is difficult, because technically he is in the wrong here. There’s no getting past that; he let Bill talk him into doing something straightforwardly unethical, and he’s been caught. It’s right that he feels bad, especially with one of the owners of the house he broke into currently halfway through wrapping his injured hand in bandages.

The thing is, he’s also just spent twenty minutes talking to the man these people murdered. Two wrongs don’t make a right, of course, but they do make Alessandra’s stern self-righteousness a little harder to stomach than it would have been otherwise.

Besides which, it’s weird how calm she’s being about all this. Phil, at least, seems adequately shaken – the whole thing with the shotgun seemed pretty frantic. Alessandra is clearly more self-possessed than her husband, but even she is taking this far more in stride than Dipper would have expected.

It’s this, more than anything else, that decides him on what to say next.

“We came to talk to Hunter,” he says.

Phil’s eyes go round and wide. Alessandra draws herself up in her seat, just a little, but Dipper sees her fingers shake a little as she folds her hands together.

“Excuse me?” Her voice is tight, but even.

“Hunter Sakamoto?” Dipper is in no mood to play along. “You know, your old frenemy? Nobody’s been able to find him for the last year and a half.”

The Bridges stare at him.

“Because you murdered him,” he says, helpfully.

Alessandra’s lips have gone pale. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she croaks.

“He was pretty talkative once we managed to pin him down.” Dipper props his elbows on the table. “He’s got a lot to say.” He shakes his head. “I just hope you saved something of his.”

“What do you – ”

“Look,” Dipper says, wearily. “I’m – really sorry about your basement. And for disturbing you; I know it’s late. But I really am trying to help, and you’re not making it any easier. You know spirits can attach themselves to sentimental objects as well, right? If all you did was burn the body, he might still be anchored to – ”

“We burned everything,” Phil says, faintly. “The body, his clothes, uh, documents – everything.”

“Phil,” Alessandra hisses.

“Ghosts aren’t real,” Phil continues, with a tinge of desperation. “They can’t be. There has to be some kind of other explanation.”

“There isn’t,” Dipper says, simply. “Shame you couldn’t have figured that out before he started killing people to get your attention.” He looks at Bill. “Where did you put the ghost trap, by the way?”

“Foundations,” Bill scratches the evil cat behind the ears. “Like I promised. Had to displace some concrete, though.” He grins. “I put it in the washing machine.”

“You put concrete in our washing machine?” Alessandra sounds, for the first time, genuinely horrified. Dipper wonders if severely misplaced priorities are what brought this couple together.

“How long did you ignore the signs?” he asks. “He’s a pretty motivated spirit; it couldn’t have taken too long for them to start showing up. A few cold spots, some busted wiring; maybe that’s just regular house stuff. Maybe you saw him a few times and figured it was just your own guilt playing trick on you. But you must have suspected. The dolls? The dead customers?”

“That is enough, Detective Pines.” Alessandra’s voice is icy enough to douse Dipper’s flaring temper. “Whatever my husband may or may not have said under pressure – ” this with a warning look at Phil “ – outside this house, it’s our word against yours. All of your evidence is circumstantial, to say nothing of the absurd idea that we are harbouring a ghost.” She folds her arms. “So what is it that you intend to do?”

For a long second, Dipper gapes at her. Then he starts trying to think.

The problem is that Alessandra is right, and it’s nobody’s fault but his. If he’d taken some more time to build his case, he might have been able to convince somebody to search the Bridges’ yard – it would have been a long shot, but it’s hard to burn a body completely. There might have been bone fragments, or some shred of DNA evidence clinging on somewhere.

Now, though, all he has is the completely-inadmissible testimony of a ghost that he broke several key rules of police investigation to get. He doesn’t know if even Espinoza would back him up on this. (Allegedly, Espinoza may well have done worse things to move an investigation along, but – even so, the whole “spirit realm” thing makes this a much harder sell, and anyway, the idea of being only slightly less unethical than the coworker he’s closest to makes him feel faintly sick.)

That also means he has no way of making things right. Hunter’s emotional ties to the physical plane are too strong; he won’t move on until he has justice, and Dipper can’t give him that. The Bridges could, of course, but he already know he’s not going to be able to convince them of that.

Unless…

The ghost trap is still buried in the foundations. The shock of being moved down there will take Hunter some time to recover from, but he’ll find his way back up into the main house eventually. He can’t do any more killing, but he also can’t leave this place unless the Bridges are willing to literally raze their house to the ground. All he really has left is his haunting of them; all they really have left is their house, with its trapped, angry spirit. They’re stuck with each other.

Maybe, ultimately, that’s going to have to be enough for all of them.

He's not okay with this, of course. It's not real justice, and even if it were, it's not in his gift. The Bridges murdered a man because he was a threat to their profit margins with an unpleasant personality, true. It's also true that they spent eighteen months letting a ghost murder people guilty of nothing worse than a severe lack of taste rather than even try to face what they did. But to trap them with the consequences of their actions for the rest of their lives? To make the price of not doing the right thing a daily reminder that the fear and pain they caused has literally seeped into the walls of their house?

... actually, the more he thinks about it, the more he feels like he might be more okay with it than he thought.

“We're not going to do anything,” he says. “Come on, Bill. We're leaving.”

"We are?” Bill raises an eyebrow. “They killed a man, Detective. You're not gonna punish them?”

“Not my job.” And a weird way to phrase that. “Actually, not really the stated aim of the justice system, and it's – we can talk about that later.” Dipper shakes his head. "My job is to find out what happened, and I have. And you're right – ” this to Alessandra – “I can't prove anything. Congratulations: you pulled off the perfect crime. I'm closing the case. You can go back to your lives.”

“Thank you,” Alessandra says, stiffly, and with a touch of wariness that Dipper has to admit is entirely appropriate.

“Oh, I wouldn't do that,” he replies, rolling his shoulder as he gets to his feet. “I'm not going to do anything, but you should. My unofficial recommendation would be to go and talk to the police yourselves. Maybe find someone to look after your cat first.” (Bill, still idly stroking the evil cat in his lap, looks thoughtful.) “It's not too late to turn yourselves in.”

“Why would we do that?” Phil looks outraged.

“Because it's the right thing to do,” Dipper says mildly. “Whatever happened between the three of you, you kind of lost the argument when you brought murder in as a debate tactic.”

“But he – ”

“Please don't tell me he started it.” Dipper can't quite keep a trickle of exhaustion from his voice. God, these people. “This isn't the second grade. You killed someone. There's no getting the moral high ground back from that.”

He rests his hands on the back of his chair, looking between the Bridges’ faces. Phil looks flustered; Alessandra's expression has returned to being almost entirely unreadable.

“You also,” he continues, “burned any objects that might have been keeping him on this plane, and he's still here. That means his link is emotional, and it's strong enough to keep him grounded, even without anything solid for him to cling on to.” He contemplates his bandaged hand for a second. “The best I could do was keep him from hurting anybody else. You're his unfinished business; unless you figure things out somehow, you're stuck with him.”

“He's been killing our clients.” Phil's face is pale, now, blotched with red. “He keeps destroying our house. Aren't you supposed to keep people safe? Can't you do anything?”

Dipper has never thought of himself as a particularly intimidating individual. (Honestly, he's never thought of himself as particularly anything; whichever cosmic force set his design specifications was clearly playing Middle Sliders Only that day. Between his average height, average build, and terminal case of Resting Neutral Face, he's resigned himself to a lifetime of going basically unperceived.) But something of his thoughts must have made its way onto his face, because as he turns his eyes on Phil Bridges, he sees the other man flinch back from his expression.

“What else do you want me to do?” he says, in the most scathing tone of polite inquiry he can manage. “I bound him. He can't hurt you, and he can't leave the house to hurt anybody else. You burned his body, and his effects. There aren't any physical tethers I could break to send him on his way. All he has is his anger, and you gave him that.” He lets go of the chair and straightens. “Either you break that link yourselves, or you live with the consequences. I don't see how it's any business of mine.”

“You made it your business,” Alessandra says quietly, “when you broke into our house. You're quick to tell us we should turn ourselves in, young man; why shouldn't we return the favour to you while we're at it?”

“Go ahead.” Dipper has had enough; it's creeping up on 4A.M., he's lost a not-insubstantial amount of blood, and he's staring down the barrel of the most frustratingly carefully-worded case report he's ever had to put together, all because three people used to be friends and none of them seem to be capable of admitting they might have been wrong. “Heck, give it a few hours and I'll drive you down to the station myself. Tell them whatever you like. You're a white, married pair of middle-class eccentrics and my captain hates my guts, so who knows? Catch the right person at the right time, maybe you can even get me fired.”

He pauses for a second, looking around the room. Phil's expression wavers between righteous indignation and confusion-shading-to-unease; he's clearly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Alessandra's face may as well be carved from stone. Bill looks as if this is the most fun he's had since the clown doll.

“You do that,” he continues, “and the LAPD will question me. They'll ask me what I did and why, and I'll tell them the truth. That will give the investigative committee no choice but to look at this case very, very closely.” He smiles without humour. “You know, when you're not popular around the station, you get used to having to justify your every move. My case notes are detailed. Anybody with enough resources and the right motivation...” He shrugs. “Maybe they take another look at this place,” he says. “Maybe they comb over the yard. Maybe they find a fragment of bone you missed, or they take soil samples. You'll have cops looking over your shoulder for months. Maybe years.”

The silence rings faintly in the air. Phil's face has taken on an interesting grey tinge. Even Alessandra looks stunned.

“So I guess,” Dipper finishes, “it depends on how confident you are that you didn’t miss a single thing.” He grabs his bag from the floor, hefts it onto his back. “Talk it over. I’m sure Hunter will be happy to give you his opinion, once he wakes up.” He gives them one last astringent smile, and then looks back at Bill, now contemplating the cat in his lap. “Are you coming?”

Bill clicks his tongue, puffs out a breath, and scoops the evil cat up with one hand, holding her up to his eye level. She flails vaguely and unhappily in the air as he says something quiet and firm; apparently satisfied, he dumps her unceremoniously on the ground and stands, brushing cat hair off his pants.

“What?” he says, in response to Dipper’s quirked eyebrow. “Let’s go.”

It’s a short, quiet ride back to Lux. Bill seems unusually disinclined towards quipping; he barely even makes fun of Dipper when he almost runs a red light. Considering the night they’ve just had, Dipper actually kind of misses the demon’s ability to fill a silence; trust Bill to discover “being quiet” when it’s least convenient.

He pulls up outside the club, switches off the engine. There are a few seconds of further silence.

“Okay,” Dipper says, at last. “Uh, goodnight, I guess.”

Bill makes no move to get out of the car. He's watching Dipper with a slight frown on his face, his head tilted to the side.

“What was it like?” he says, abruptly.

“What?” Dipper’s eyes dart instinctively to his bandaged hand. Heat prickles, guiltily, at the back of his neck.

“When your partner died,” Bill says, dissolving the heat into something icy and gripping. “Alice. The whole – thing.” He folds his arms. “What was it like?”

Dipper blinks at him. This should make him angry, maybe. He probably could get angry about it, if he wanted to; there's enough frustration still simmering from their talk in the basement that he's pretty sure he could manage at least some solid sarcasm. Something with teeth, if not actively biting. But there's something in Bill's voice that stops him; not a tremor, of course not, but something in the shifts and currents of his speech that's almost... hesitant.

Uncertain.

It's like he's actually asking.

“Uh.” Dipper rubs his forehead. “It was like...” He sighs, thinks for a moment.

“I knew a guy in high school,” he says at last. “Evan Battista. He saved for, like, ten years for his first car. Ten years. He started saving when he was eight. He got two jobs the day he turned fifteen. Nobody ever saw him buy anything.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, our last year of high school, he finally gets enough money. He buys the car. Three days later, he turns too fast off the freeway, rams it into the guardrail. Totals it.” He rubs his thumb against the steering wheel. “I guess it was kind of like that. I could have - I almost earned it, you know? And then I just... did the worst possible thing. I ruined it. And I have no one to blame but myself.”

Pause.

“Also, it wasn't a car, it was nine human lives.” He taps the steering wheel with his fingers. “Including my...” He takes a breath, steadies himself. “My friend.”

Bill makes a thoughtful noise, straightening up. His eye doesn't leave Dipper's face.

“Must be hard,” he says, at length. “Being a person.”

Something awful - something an uninformed passer-by might describe as a quiet, genuine laugh – escapes Dipper while he's too surprised to stop it. “Uh.” He tries to get this terrible new impulse under control, but there still seems to be something smile-adjacent on his face. “It is.” The rawness in his throat has eased a little. “Thanks.”

“All that in some oily meat-sponge that needs special training to even contemplate extra-dimensional dynamics – ”

“Wow, dude.” Dipper stifles another huff of laughter. “You almost had it.”

“I’m just saying.” Bill folds his arms. “Your entire existence relies on the right membranes being semi-permeable. Of course it’s a challenge.”

“Sure.” Dipper shakes his head. “Great job relating to me, Bill.” Oh, God. He's even still smiling, a little. “See you tomorrow.”

Later, back in his apartment, Dipper takes off his boots, pads into his room, hangs his keys up on the planchette fragment in his bedroom wall. He sits on his bed, buries his face in his hands, and lets out a deep, exhausted sigh.

Then he takes out his phone and opens up his contacts. There aren’t that many in there. A few colleagues (Espinoza, Dr Singh, BILL), a few of his old friends from Gravity Falls, some people from university he hasn’t spoken to since he started at the police academy. Mabel.

Grunkle Stan.

He stares at the name for a long moment as he unfolds himself to stretch out on the mattress. It’s 5AM and Grunkle Stan is not an early riser, but he’d answer the phone if Dipper called. Or, at least, he’d call back when he woke up, and Dipper would be the one shaken from his sleep, startled into alertness. He’d pick up immediately, of course. He’d have to.

“Hey,” Dipper might say. “It’s me.” Something simple and direct; it wouldn’t come close to touching the heart of the matter, but Grunkle Stan would understand. He would know exactly why Dipper was calling.

Surely, he’d know.

He turns his phone screen off and tosses it onto the bed next to him.

It takes him a long, long time to fall asleep.

Chapter Text

Dipper is just finishing getting dressed when his phone pings. This is not that unusual; it's sometime in the middle of the afternoon in London, which is prime Mabel Boredom Hours, and Bill will text him at pretty much any hour of the day or night. He’s not even that surprised when it’s pinged another three or four times in rapid succession before his jacket is all the way on.

“I’m getting to it,” he tells the offending device, thumbing past the lock screen. It’s Mabel; he can see the typing dots pop up again as he reads what she’s sent him so far:

brobro
bro
brooooooo
BRODODENRON
BROMELIAD
BROCCOLI

I was getting dressed, Mabel
stop giving me plant names
what’s up?

The dots vanish, reappear, vanish again. About thirty seconds elapse.

Mabel?
Mabel we’ve talked about this
you know it freaks me out
are you okay?

The dots appear again – and vanish. Dipper rubs his forehead, huffing out a sigh.

it's 6:30 in the morning here, Mabel
if this is about the baby in the pumpkin again I’m gonna be pissed off

HE WAS WEARING IT LIKE A JUMPSUIT
OH MY GOURD
sorry
it’s not about that
I just don’t know how to say this without sounding insane

?

can I uh
can I come stay with you?
for a couple of weeks?

!!!
I mean yeah, of course?
what's insane about that?

OKAY GREAT
SEE YOU TOMORROW
LOVE YOU BYE

wait

By way of response, Mabel sends him a blurry selfie of her in the Heathrow departure lounge, giving the camera a big thumbs up. She is clearly not interested in waiting. Dipper rolls his eyes, a smile spreading across his face as frustration at his sister's commitment to never planning ahead wars with a warm, loose-tooth ache in his chest. For all that he'd appreciated her last visit, it had been rough on both of them, and saying goodbye without knowing when he'd see her again had left him feeling oddly forlorn. Now she's coming back, and he has two working arms and no favours he needs to ask of her.

He sends one last message to remind her to send him her flight information, then stuffs his phone into his pocket and proceeds to the door. He's late – he's going to have to throw himself on the mercy of the traffic gods if he wants to make his morning briefing on time – but even the prospect of twenty tense minutes in traffic can't chase away the remnants of his smile.

"Before we wrap up,” Captain Daniels says as the briefing draws to a close, “some of you might have noticed the new face among us this morning.” He indicates the tall, Black man standing at the back of the room. (Dipper had, of course, noticed him – he's been a detective for long enough that the presence of a total stranger in his morning meeting had registered as unusual – but he sees blank surprise on the faces of at least three of his colleagues, so he supposes there was some point to the warning.) “You wanna introduce yourself to the squad, Detective?”

“Sure.” The newcomer smiles vaguely, looking appropriately uncomfortable at having been singled out. “Detective Adam Caanan,” he says, giving the room an awkward wave. “Just transferred. Looking forward to working with you all.”

There's a chorus of polite welcoming mutters, and people start filing out of the briefing room in twos and threes. To Dipper's surprise, Detective Caanan falls into step with him as he makes his own exit.

“It's Pines, right?” He holds out his hand, and Dipper has to stop walking to take it. In spite of this, they manage a passable handshake, although it's cut short by someone in too great a hurry to witness ten seconds of third-party pleasantries shoving her way between the two of them.

If he'd been new at the station, this faux pas would have probably made Dipper consider calling in sick so he could try again tomorrow, but Caanan just laughs. “Wider corridors at my last station,” he says, by way of explanation. “Not to brag.”

Dipper shrugs. “This is the big city,” he says, offering a smile of his own that he hopes squares the circle between friendly and professional. “Same amount of space, twice the people. We need to make our square footage count.”

That gets a polite chuckle out of Caanan. There's a brief silence while Dipper tries to think of other avenues of small talk.

“Uh, it's nice to meet you,” he tries, eventually. “Where did you transfer from? Have you been in L.A. long?”

“Only a few weeks.” Caanan shakes his head. “It's been... an adjustment, but I think I'm getting there. And I've heard all about you, of course.” He sees Dipper's expression freeze and holds his hands up placatingly. “All good things, I promise. Espinoza thinks highly of you.”

So Espinoza got to the new guy before the rumour mill did. He didn't have to do that. Dipper feels a fresh twinge of guilt at his reaction to his colleague’s advice during their last conversation. He should buy Espinoza that drink.

“I heard,” Caanan continues, “that you're running some kind of internship programme. Isn't that kind of unusual?”

Great. Of course that tidbit would have made its way into their conversation. He supposes it beats ‘I heard you caused the deaths of nine people'.

“I hear your intern's kind of a nightmare,” Canaan prompts. “How did you come by him in the first place?”

Wariness draws Dipper's shoulders up, just a fraction; it's not the first time he's had to field questions like this (although most people have taken Bill's presence unnervingly in stride), but he hadn't been expecting it in quite this context. He needs to take a beat to regroup, and Caanan seems to be aware of it; Dipper can feel the other man's eyes on him.

“He's not – I mean, it's more of a consulting arrangement,” he says, a little cautiously, as they round the corner.

“He gets paid to consult on your cases?” Caanan raises an eyebrow.

“No, I – ”

“There you are.” Bill straightens up from the wall he'd been leaning against. Dipper has never been so relieved to see him, which makes this a new low. “I've been looking for you all over.”

“All over the break room wall?” Dipper raises an eyebrow.

Bill shrugs. “They wouldn't let me into the briefing room. Something about me ‘not being an officer’.” He takes in Dipper's escort, and his eye narrows.

"Detective,” he says, his voice suddenly dangerously soft, “what is he doing here?”

Dipper looks between the two men, baffled. It was one thing for Bill to recognise Espinoza – he lived in L.A. for several years before Dipper met him, after all, and considering the demon's frankly acrobatic sense of morality, it made sense that he might have run into trouble with the LAPD before. Caanan has been in town for about five minutes; what does Bill have against him?

For that matter, what does he have against Bill? Because Caanan is eyeing him right back, his gaze cool and assessing and distinctly unfriendly. There's a faint smile on his lips that Dipper does not like the look of.

“He's, uh – he just transferred,” he offers, in case this might drain away some of the tension. It doesn't. “Bill, this is – ”

“Detective Adam Caanan," Caanan cuts in, offering Bill a hand. “It's nice to meet you.”

“No, it isn't,” Bill snaps. “’Adam’? Really? What, did you not even have it in you to read the whole first page of the Big Book Of Biblical Names?” He grabs Dipper's wrist and yanks him sharply away from Caanan's side. It's unexpected and not very graceful; Dipper stumbles, nearly cannoning into the demon before he manages to catch himself.

“Well, this has been fun,” Bill continues, his voice vibrating with barely-concealed fury, “but the two of us have a murder to investigate. Real important stuff, ya know? Life or death. Mostly death.” He still hasn't released Dipper's wrist; Dipper tries, in vain, to reclaim it, but Bill's grip just tightens to the point of pain.

“I'll be taking my Detective,” he says, “and you can stay away from him until I figure out what to do with you.”

Dipper throws Caanan a desperate, apologetic look, but the other detective just smiles, his dark eyes calm.

“I look forward to it,” he says. “Nice meeting you, Pines.”

Dipper doesn't get a chance to reply to this, because Bill has already started walking away, and he has to follow or be dragged. The demon doesn't release him until they've reached the parking lot. Dipper looks at his wrist; it's already starting to bruise.

“What the hell was that?” he hisses at Bill. “Is there anyone in this town who doesn't already hate you, or was I the last one?”

“First of all,” Bill returns, “I am a dazzling beacon in your stupid, mundane sky, and most people love me. It's not my fault you're perceptive. Secondly, you don’t hate me.” He leans against the car, still fuming. “And thirdly, that guy is a sanctimonious, rules-lawyering pile of third-hand clockwork and used eiderdown, and if he comes near you again, I'm gonna trap him under a giant magnifying glass and pull his wings off, one by one.” He grins savagely. “All of them.”

That's... confusingly visceral, and it does not explain anything, so Dipper latches onto the one thing in Bill’s diatribe that he feels he can confidently respond to. “What do you mean, I don’t hate you?”

“We are on a case, Pine Tree.” Bill’s voice turns syrupy with condescension. “I don’t have time to walk you through the concept of emotional self-awareness. Let’s get out of here.” He slaps the car door expectantly.

Bill is never in a hurry, especially not for anything he considers to be work. Dipper looks the demon over, taking in the steady tap-tapping of his foot against the concrete floor, the tense set of his shoulders. The other man’s eye is focused on nearest entrance to the parking lot; at a second glance, Dipper can see the hand not currently resting on the car door tucked behind his back, palm inward so that his tattoo can look out behind him.

Bill is – jittery. Not excited, in the way that he sometimes gets when events get bloody and/or chaotic enough for his tastes; this is something else, something that has him on edge, his awareness fragmented, as if he needs eyes on multiple angles at once. As if he’s expecting a fight, and not one he’s confident he’ll –

“You’re scared of him,” he says, slowly.

“What?” Bill’s eye is on him immediately.

“Adam. Detective Canaan.” The way Bill’s shoulders ruck up an extra inch as Dipper talks makes him very confident that a) he’s right, and b) it was not smart to make this observation out loud. He carries on, because at this point it seems like it might be worse not to. “You weren’t expecting him, were you? And now that he’s here, you’re – freaked out. You want us to leave in case he follows us down here – ”

“It’s called taking pride in your work, you – ”

“ – and you don’t want me near him.” Something else clicks into place in Dipper’s brain. “He’s not a danger to me at all, is he?” he says. “You’re worried about what will happen if he talks to me. You’re scared we’ll – ”

Bill is on him in an instant, grabbing the collar of Dipper’s hoodie and slinging him easily – almost casually – against the body of the car to bring them face to face. The movement forces Dipper onto his toes; he twists uselessly in Bill’s grip, feeling the demon’s knuckles pressing more bruises into his skin through the fabric. Bill ignores his struggles, leaning in until their foreheads almost press together. Dipper stills, trying unsuccessfully to keep his breathing even.

“I give you too much license, Detective,” Bill hisses. “You’ve forgotten exactly who you made a deal with. I promised not to hurt you until our business is concluded. That does not mean I need to put up with your bullshit – ” he gives Dipper’s shoulders a rough shake “ – when it stops being amusing.”

His voice drops low, something ugly and molten flaring to life in his eye. “Detective Canaan,” he continues, “is not your concern. He is not your problem. And – and you’re not gonna believe this, because it’s me saying it, but Jude help me if I can’t resist a lost cause – he is not your friend.” His breath is hot on Dipper’s face. “Do not think you can help yourself by getting involved in my business, kid,” he says. “Your idiot head has just enough knowledge with just little enough sense in it to run itself straight into trouble, and if you cut yourself off from my protection, don’t think you can count on his.”

He lets go. Dipper crumples back against the car, trying to steady his legs underneath him, his breath coming in short, shallow pants.

Bill is right, he thinks, sick shame welling up in the back of his throat. I forgot. Somewhere in the last few weeks of near-constant arguing and being talked into insane and occasionally illegal plans and unexpected help and the odd terrible, awful moment where some jagged refraction of Bill’s energy lit up his nerves in a way he couldn’t say he unreservedly hated – he had forgotten who he was dealing with.

He's the devil.

He wants to kill me.

If I’m not smart enough, he’s going to kill me.

He takes one deep, slightly choked breath. There is one other thing he has to remember from this morning. Something he can use, if he’s very, very careful.

He’s definitely afraid of Detective Canaan.

Bill is right about one other thing, which is that they have a case on, which means that Dipper needs to rapidly compartmentalise the events of that morning and get it together enough to drive them out to Downey. It's half past ten by the time they arrive, and a blast of heat smacks Dipper in the face as he gets out of the car; he considers relinquishing his hoodie, thinks about the developing finger-shaped bruises on his wrist, and decides against it. Bill, dressed today in a sky-blue suit with navy pinstripes that frankly makes him look like he ought to be trying to sell Autumnville a new light rail system, doesn't seem bothered.

The Iron Temple is an odd, small complex. They've pulled into a what's less a parking lot than a thousand-square-foot rectangle of concrete, half-heartedly marked up with faded lines of white paint. The rest of the landscape isn't much more inspiring: there's a gravel path leading up to the main building that branches off halfway to point any interested parties towards two smaller, flat-roofed outbuildings. The only relief from this parched utilitarianism comes in the form of a few scrubby patches of desert grass, some anaemic-looking bushes around the outbuildings, and a towering California sycamore at the fork in the path.

It's quiet out here, almost eerily so; even the crunching of Dipper's boots on the gravel seems oddly muted. He pushes open the door marked MAIN ENTRANCE, Bill at his heels, and is immediately assaulted once again by temperature – the air conditioner is running full blast, which at least feels like a vindication of his hoodie decision.

“Oh, you boys made it,” Dr Singh says, cheerfully, as they file inside. “I was starting to worry they were gonna send someone else.”

Dipper blinks. “You asked for us?” That does answer one question; he'd been wondering why they'd been assigned this case in the first place. There's nothing in the report that suggests anything happened here except an accident, with a possible side of OSHA violation, neither of which is really his area. (Or Bill's. Dipper had had a few OSHA violation jokes queued up for the drive over, but they'd ended up passing the time in tense silence instead, so he'll never know if they'd have landed. The thought gives him a faint pang that he stuffs immediately into the IGNORE WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE box, never to be revisited.)

“Sure,” Dr Singh replies, matter-of-fact. “Well, Ward tipped me off; this was his scene initially, but he called me for a second pair of eyes. Good catch on his part; this seems like exactly your kind of thing.”

This clarifies nothing, unless Dipper has somehow cultivated a reputation for being interested in freak fitness accidents that he doesn't know about. But Dr Singh has done him more than one solid over the last couple of months; if they want his eyes on their crime scene, the least he can do is take a look.

“Says here the victim was crushed to death,” he says, flipping the case file open. “By a... Smith machine?”

“It's probably easier if I just show you,” Dr Singh says. “The owner just stepped out; he should be back by the time we've finished going through it.”

The gym floor is a surprise. Well, in some ways it's not; there's the usual selection of free weights, treadmills, and various intimidating-looking racks and pulley systems. The slogans painted on the wall aren't a surprise, either: they say things like “DON'T WISH FOR IT, WORK FOR IT” and “SWEAT IS YOUR FAT AND INHIBITIONS CRYING” and “KILL THE YOU BETWEEN THE YOU YOU ARE TODAY AND THE YOU YOU WILL BE TOMORROW”. (That last one seems unusually aggressive to Dipper, but perhaps the incident with Grunkle Stan's old copier has made him sensitive to the suggestion that he should be slaughtering different versions of himself. What was wrong with Tyrone?)

What is odd is how... well, for lack of a better word, nice it is, especially compared to the scrub and dust outside. The machines all look new or recently purchased, and the air is fresh, cool and smells faintly of something inoffensively herbal – weirdly festive, almost, like fir trees – rather than the usual mix of sweat and chemicals Dipper associates with any kind of establishment geared towards exercise. There are a few sleek, unobtrusive vending machines humming away in one corner, advertising products such as “BOY JUICE: THE SHAKE THAT MAKES A MAN OF YOU!” and “MUSCLE++, TO LEVEL YOU UP WHILE YOU COOL DOWN”.

He follows Dr Singh further into the gym. There are a few sets of dumbbells strewn across one of the mats, along with a water bottle (still sealed, but lying on its side) and a duffel bag. He pauses for a second to look them over.

“Those are weights,” Bill says helpfully, stepping up beside him. “Humans lift 'em up and put 'em back down without moving 'em anywhere, to make their muscles swell up and themselves feel like they're strong enough to handle the crushing weight of their own pointless existences.”

“I've been inside a gym before,” Dipper says, keeping his voice carefully steady. “I did police academy training, just like every other detective.” He can still remember it, if he tries – the early mornings, the barked orders to give me five more, cadet, the very detailed discussions about protein and macros he'd hear in the locker rooms at an hour when all any sane person would be interested in consuming was coffee, or possibly some kind of amphetamine. (That was, admittedly, probably the best shape he'd ever been in, before or since.)

“Oh, really?” Bill pokes experimentally at Dipper's bicep; Dipper swats his hand away, fighting off the instinct to flinch. Don't show him that he scared you. Don't. “You seem pretty squishy to me.”

“If you'd seen the LAPD gym locker rooms, you'd understand why.” Neutral voice. Don't engage more than you have to. “Besides, my muscle mass is fine for my job.”

This is true as far as it goes; Dipper had left his police academy training with the best of intentions vis-a-vis maintaining his exercise routine, and quickly realised the limits of his willpower – and his tolerance for the LAPD gym facilities – to keep up with those intentions. It's not like he's unfit; his job is hardly sedentary, and he's been known to spontaneously grind out some pushups or pullups off his doorframe or just wander the city in increasingly long, nonsensical loops at 3A.M. when he can't sleep.

But he's a detective now, and that comes with weird hours, lots of overtime, and an absolutely garbage diet. Mabel had shown him, at one point, how to prepare two or three easy, nutritious meals in bulk to eat throughout the week – she'd even made it look easy – but, when it comes down to it, there's always something Dipper would rather be doing than cooking. That means he lives on tacos and instant ramen and gets most of his exercise running towards or away from danger, and he's mostly comfortable with that tradeoff. You get decent legs out of it, at least.

This time yesterday, he might have said some of this to Bill. Now, he picks up his pace a little, trailing after Dr Singh. He has a body to examine.

The body is in the Smith machine. Well, not in it – that would have taken some doing – but sort of underneath it, the corpse slumped, supine, on a bench. The dead man's face is reddish-purple and bloated, probably because of the fully-loaded iron bar crushing his throat; his arms trail on the ground, hands palm-up to show ripped callouses and torn skin.

An accident, is his first thought. Smith machines are designed to prevent exactly this; between the counterweight and the support hooks on the frame, this man should have been able to either rack the bar before it hit him or get out of the way. This is a twenty-four hour gym; if the machine was defective and the victim using it late at night, when nobody was around, this is all perfectly explicable, if tragically preventable.

Still, the entire gruesome tableau sets off alarm bells in Dipper's head for reasons he can't quite identify. He steps a little closer.

“What am I looking at?” he asks Dr Singh. “The cause of death seems kinda obvious.”

“It is,” Dr Singh says. “Poor guy dropped two hundred pounds of iron on his neck. That'll usually do it. Look at this.” They indicate the emergency stop catches, which are less ‘engaged’ and more ‘resting ornamentally on the side of the frame’. “These need replacing, and the owner says the cable on the counterweight has been fraying for three weeks.” They point out the cable. “It must have snapped. He unracks the bar, the weight comes down faster than he expected, the emergency stop fails.”

“Right.” Dipper frowns. “So why is this a murder and not a maintenance issue?”

“You tell me.” Dr Singh folds their arms. “Look around. What's missing here?”

Dipper looks. There is something wrong – he can feel the itch in his hindbrain morph into a full-on searing scream – but it takes him longer than it probably should have done. In his defence, it's been a weird morning, even by his standards.

In the end, it's the smell that does it. Or, rather, the lack of smell. The room is cool and the body reasonably fresh, so he's not surprised by the lack of putrefaction, but he'd have expected to smell something – blood, at the very least, or maybe a faint ammonia tang if the poor man pissed himself in his final moments. Instead, there's nothing but that faint, herbal scent. No trace of anything else, not even the dead man's sweat.

In fact, he can't even see any blood. Most of the bleeding would have been internal, considering the injury, but there should still be some. The open wounds on the hands would have left blood on the bar; there might be some seepage from the neck itself, a few dark splashes on the floor. Instead, there's nothing, not even dried blood on the hands themselves. The dead man's clothes and hair look freshly washed; he even smells like the rest of the gym around him, which is a hell of a trick for someone who died in the middle of their workout.

There's no way this was an accident, Dipper realises. It's all too –

“Clean,” he mutters. “Someone cleaned this up before we got here.”

“Not just cleaned up,” Dr Singh agrees. “Someone washed the body. And dried it. He was like this when the owner found him. And before you ask, the security cameras show him leaving at ten yesterday evening, well before our victim showed up for arm day. This poor meathead died around 4A.M., and the owner didn't come back until 6, and he called it in at 6:03. Crime scene team was here by 6:25.”

“Anyone else check in here between 10 and 4?” Dipper's sure he knows the answer already, but he has to ask.

“Nope. And – get this.” Dr Singh is animated, now. “I took swabs from the wounds and under his fingernails in case I could at least identify a detergent, but...” They shake their head.

“Nothing?” Dipper's frown intensifies.

“Just traces of blood and some skin flakes.” Dr Singh grins at him, pressing their hands together in what honestly might have been an aborted attempt at an excited clap. “Now do you get why I thought this would be your kind of thing?”

“Every client signs a liability waiver when joining,” is the first thing that the gym's owner says to them.

“I'm Detective Pines,” Dipper replies. It's a little pointed, but this is the second case in a row in which he's been mistaken for somebody who knows or cares about civil liability, and he does not want it to become a pattern. “I'm just here to figure out what happened.”

“Darko Nedić,” the other man mutters, looking sulky.

“Call me Bill,” Bill chimes in, helpfully. “I'm the Detective's – ”

“Consultant,” Dipper interrupts firmly; the idea of religitating whether or not they're partners right now makes him nauseous. He presses his hands together, absently running a thumb over the bite marks scarred into his skin. “Mr. Nedić, the man who died on your premises this morning has been identified as one James Cranston. Did you know him?”

Nedić shakes his head. “Not more than any other client,” he says. “I gave him his induction when he joined; we said hello sometimes when he came in. That was all.”

“Did he ever come in with anybody else?” Another headshake. “Maybe he was on friendly terms with some of your staff?”

“It's just me here,” Nedić says. “Some local personal trainers pay me to take clients from the gym, but...” He shrugs. “I started this place with my wife.” A hint of sadness enters his expression. “She passed two years ago. I probably should hire someone, but with running costs the way they are...”

“I understand,” Dipper assures him. “I'm sorry for your loss.”

“Big gym,” Bill interjects. “How come it smells like Christmas in there, if you're the only member of staff?”

“I keep the place clean.” Nedić folds his arms. “Everything gets wiped down at regular intervals, and the floors are swept and washed when before I open and close for staffing hours.”

Bullshit. Dipper and Bill exchange a look. Nedić's alibi checked out flawlessly, which means that he was, indeed, singing karaoke until 1A.M., at which point he crashed into bed and slept a solid four hours. That is, granted, not very much, but while he definitely looks tired, he seems far healthier and more energetic than someone running a small business singlehandedly. Plus, how many business owners have time for karaoke night in the first place? (Bill doesn't count; his unfettered wealth gives him more than enough resources to staff Lux, and anyway, Dipper is not convinced that he sleeps.)

But the place is clean. Horribly, forensics-confoundingly clean.

“No part-time workers?” Dipper says, very cautiously – Nedić will shut down immediately if he thinks they're accusing him of something. “You're a local business; you must get high schoolers asking if you need help all the time.”

“Just my trainers.” Nedić shrugs, blandly. “If you want access to my accounts, go ahead. I have nothing to hide.”

Bill looks at Dipper, sparkling and excited; Dipper fights the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. He'd been hoping Bill wouldn't have a chance to do his thing today. Frankly, he'd been hoping Bill would be nothing but withdrawn and sullen today, that'd he stay spiky and menacing, that he'd keep trying to invoke the shadow he'd cast over Dipper back at the station. He doesn't want Bill to be helpful, much less eager. He doesn't want to be exchanging looks or fending off attempts at banter. If Bill is going to make him feel like this, squirmy and powerless and angry and heartsick, Dipper would rather – he just wants to be left alone.

He tips a nod in the demon's direction, anyway, because they're getting absolutely nowhere.

“That's a lot of work,” Bill says, the air stirring and tightening as he looks Nedić in the eye. “A real ambitious venture. What made you invest so much time into it? What's your endgame?”

“I –” Nedić blinks. “Me and Dunja started this place together,” he says. “She wanted it to be a – community space. I just want to keep that dream alive.” He blinks again a few times, shakes his head as if to clear it. His face crumples, just a little.

“But it's so hard,” he says, almost to himself.

There's not really much Dipper can say to that, so he wraps up the interview and goes outside to brood. The sun is high and fierce overhead now; he unzips his hoodie, closes his eyes, and turns his face to the sky, letting it scour the last of the chill from his skin.

Your kind of thing, Dr Singh had said. An accident that's too perfect to be an accident; a victim unconnected to the most logical suspect. Too easy, too neat – too clean – to be possible. Even a criminal mastermind with a street team of accomplices couldn't have staged this natural-looking an accident, cleaned an entire gym, and washed and dried a body in just under two and a half hours. There's something else going on here.

Do I want this to be my kind of thing?

There had been no real reason for Dipper to stay in California after college. In fact, he almost hadn't – he'd applied to a few different police departments. Even when his first plan – take a job in Portland, move back to Oregon – had fallen through after Ford's death, he'd had other options. In the end, he'd chosen L.A. as the scene of his reinvention, partly because it was one of the few cities that seemed big and hungry enough to swallow a grieving, jittery kid whole, but mostly because it didn't have this kind of thing. It wasn't that he'd explicitly set out to excise the supernatural from his life, exactly; he'd just wanted some time... away. A few years, maybe, to discover who he was without it.

And then there had been Alice. And now... there's Bill.

For a city that doesn't have this kind of thing, L.A. is turning out to have a hell of a lot of this kind of thing.

Dipper doesn't believe in destiny. The paranormal isn't seeking him out in particular: he just knows exactly what markers of the supernatural to look out for in any given situation and he's always been too curious for his own good. If there's an undiscovered spooky scene in Southern California, it makes sense that he'd have been the one to stumble on it, and he knows just enough about this stuff to be a danger to himself and others.

That means he can walk away from this, if he wants to. (The sudden turn of his cases, that is, not his working relationship with Bill, which is going to need more brute force to shift.) He doesn't need to become L.A.’s first and only detective with a specialism in the paranormal. He can pass this case off to someone else and go and find himself a normal murder.

...and then nobody will ever know what really happened to James Cranston.

His family will never know what happened to him anyway, he reminds himself. Even if you take this case on, you're not gonna be able to tell them the truth.

But someone would know. I would know.

That would have to count for something.

Wouldn't it?

“You're about to burn,” Bill says, stepping up beside him. Dipper jumps and fumbles to zip up his hoodie again, and the demon snickers. “No need for that on my account, Pine Tree.”

Dipper ignores that. “What do you want, Bill?”

“Oooh.” Bill shudders theatrically, rubbing at his arms. “Never mind. No sunburn's gonna make it past that chilly reception.” He nudges Dipper lightly, and Dipper can't quite hide his flinch in time. Bill snickers.

He knows he scared me, Dipper thinks, a kind of melancholy weariness sucking, bog-like, at the edges of the thought. He's enjoying it. Bill isn't wasting his time mourning lost pun opportunities; he's not chilled by the sudden coldness between them. He's too busy laughing at how easy it was to freak out his indentured plaything.

Of course he is. He's the devil. Dipper's eyes burn, cold and dry; he drags his gaze deliberately away, trying to find literally anything else to look at. That's when he sees it, hanging out at the base of the sycamore, curled in loose coils in the dirt.

It's a coachwhip snake. A red coachwhip, to be exact; Dipper's done a few hikes around Joshua Tree, so he's seen plenty of them before. At first it seems like it might be asleep, soaking in the midday sun, but as his eyes linger on it, beady black eyes snap to his, a scaly head unwinding from the coils.

What is it doing? It's unusual enough to see any kind of snake at all in an urban area, but even discounting that, coachwhips aren't exactly sociable, on account of being, well, snakes. They certainly don’t make calm, extended eye contact; it’s one of the things Dipper likes best about snakes. You know, the genre. Of… of animal. Why is it still staring at me? God, this is worse than when humans do it.

The snake's tongue flickers out as it holds his gaze, tasting the air. For a second, Dipper thinks he smells fir trees.

Then the coachwhip rears up fully and barrels away, through the bushes, in the direction of the outbuildings.

“Did you see that?” Dipper demands, forgetting the thorny tangle in his chest for a moment as he turns back to Bill.

“I'm standing right here,” Bill points out, “so, yeah, pretty much.” There's a faint frown on his face, thoughtful, interested.

“And?”

“And it didn't attack you,” Bill murmurs, still frowning. “Which makes this weirder than I thought.”

Dipper frowns at him. “What do you mean?” That’s one of the things Dipper thought was the least weird about this snake; coachwhips look a little freaky, but they’re not aggressive. Most of the ones Dipper has seen were either already on their way somewhere else or lying in the middle of the path, waiting to be stepped very, very carefully over.

Bill ignores him. He thinks for another long moment, tugging absently at a barely-visible crease in his lapel.

“We gotta go back to Lux,” he says, sudden and decisive. “I have a theory.”

Bill doesn't say anything more about his theory on the way back to Lux. He does try to engage Dipper on a couple of other topics – dogs in vests, potentially-apocalyptic applications of theoretical physics. Eventually, Dipper cranks the radio well past a comfortable volume, and the demon gives up, lapsing into disgruntled silence. He spends the rest of the drive alternately drumming his fingers on the dashboard and singing along to whatever the radio is playing in a mixture of Spanish, something Slavic-sounding, and a language Dipper has never heard before that contains a lot of guttural throat noises and makes him feel vaguely jittery.

He wants to tell Bill to cut it out, or at least stop showing off. But if he does that, they'll argue, and either the demon will threaten him again, or...

Well, he won't. He'll say something scathing about Dipper's lack of cultural appreciation, or his dismal grasp of other languages, or possibly just the deficiencies inherent in the human ear canal, and Dipper will say something equally scathing about the songs being in English in the goddamn first place and what it says about Bill's appreciation of culture that he has to convert them into his weird franken-lingua to enjoy them, and the drive will slip away while they snipe harmlessly at each other.

He's not sure which would be worse, so instead he just tightens his hands on the wheel and doesn't say anything.

The demon vanishes almost immediately once they’ve reached Lux, leaving Dipper to make his way up to the… penthouse? Apartment? Dipper has never had a great grasp of architectural terminology; he’s not sure what name you give to “the lavishly-furnished set of rooms at the top of a nightclub in which, inexplicably, if perhaps appropriately, the devil lives”.

Now that he thinks about it, does Bill own this building, or is he paying rent? Probably not the latter; if it’s not his outright, he must have some kind of arrangement in place with the landlord. Doubtless the poor man is getting paid in mushrooms, or something. Well, maybe not ‘poor’; he owns a building in downtown Los Angeles, so he’s probably forgotten what money is, if he ever knew.

Besides, mushrooms are expensive, Dipper reminds himself, and also, you’re at work, and we should probably think about this later.

He scrubs a hand over his face and looks around. Ronnie is lounging on the penthouse’s gigantic U-shaped couch, watching an old episode of The Daily Lives Of These, Our Lives. Dr. Morton is staring broodily into the eyes of a woman Dipper is pretty sure isn’t his wife, gesturing animatedly with a scalpel as he talks about the complexities of neurosurgery.

This is your chance, Dipper. Talk to her.

“I think this might have been the storyline that got them sued,” he comments, perching on the arm of the sofa. “The first time, that is. They don’t use real scalpels on set anymore, and they had to pay a bunch of money to all the extras who lost an eye.”

Ronnie snorts, but doesn’t look up at him. Okay. Could be worse.

“So, uh.” He rubs the back of his neck. “You must have worked for Bill for a long time.”

This does, at least, get her to mute the TV and look up. Her eyes are a deep, rich brown that he has absolutely no reason to be unsettled by, except that in the afternoon sunlight, they almost seem to flash dark, dark red. She’s also staring at him, intent and unblinking, with a faint scowl on her face that suggests that whatever he has to say next had better be really, really great.

“What…” He is almost certainly going to disappoint her. “What’s that like?”

He’s definitely disappointed her. Ronnie rolls her eyes, folding her arms as she huffs out a sigh.

“I followed him through the gates of Hell,” she says, as if that’s supposed to explain everything.

“Oh.” Dipper swallows. “Uh. Cool.”

“Oh, yeah.” She still hasn’t blinked. “It rules. I love watching daytime TV and enabling the alcohol problems of the rich and famous while my boss – ” she flings out one arm in a frustrated, Bill-indicating gesture “ – chases his latest bipedal hyperfixation.”

“Hey, I’m not – ” A hyperfixation, Dipper wants to say, except that Bill does seem pretty single-mindedly focused on making his life impossible, which leaves “bipedal” as his next port of refutation, and even he has to admit she has him dead to rights on that one. “I don’t want him – hyperfixating on me either,” he tries instead. “Trust me, I wish I could leave the two of you to it. Whatever ‘it’ is.”

“Well, you can’t,” she grunts, flipping through a few channels. “You two are all – ” She twiddles her fingers spikily in midair, miming a level of perceived entanglement that makes Dipper’s stomach hurt. “It’s the worst. He was changing even before he met you, but now…”

Something about that gives Dipper pause. Ronnie is being irritatingly vague, and she clearly doesn’t want to talk to him. He might have given up on this conversation entirely, except that…

Ronnie’s angry. That much is obvious. But beyond that, lodged underneath the veneer of sulky frustration like a stone in a shoe, is something sharp-edged and insistent. He can see it in her face, in the needlepoint precision of her gestures.

It’s almost like she’s – hurting.

He was changing even before he met you.

“What…” Dipper clears his throat. “What was he like before?”

“Here we go!” Bill bursts into the room, dusty and triumphant, and makes a beeline for the two of them. He’s holding two giant, leatherbound books, which he dumps unceremoniously into Dipper’s arms. “If I’m right, you oughta find the answers in one of these.” He thinks for a second. “Well, maybe both. Kinda… half and half, maybe? I’d keep notes.”

Dipper looks down at the books, and then up at Bill. The demon’s smile is perfectly innocent.

“It’s your theory,” he says. “Shouldn’t you be doing this?”

“It’s your case,” Bill says, serenely. “How are you ever gonna learn if I just give you all the answers?”

“I would learn the answers that way,” Dipper grits out. Bill flaps a hand dismissively at him.

“I’ll give you a hint,” he says, generously. “You wanna look for hearth spirits. In their… different forms.” He dusts his hands off briskly. “I’d get started, if I were you,” he continues. “You’ve got a busy evening lined up, right? Getting the apartment ready for guests.” His grin is brief and brilliant, and it chills the blood in Dipper’s veins.

“You’ll bring your sister by,” he says. “Won’t you? I’m dying to meet her.”

The words echo in Dipper’s ears as he leaves the club; they swim in the edges of his vision as he’s driving home, climb the walls of the stairwell as he trudges up to his apartment, flash before his eyes when he presses them shut.

Stupid, he thinks, viciously. Stupid goddamn stupid idiot. Oh, he’s gonna win the Stupid Awards, for sure. They’ll put his stupid picture in the Hall of Stupid Fame, next to Elmo Stink and that one guy who thought he could make a deep-sea submersible out of carbon fibre.

How could he have let this happen? He let a demon – the literal devil – into his job, into his thoughts, into his life. For all his bravado, all his determination, he hasn’t even really thought about getting rid of Bill for at least three weeks; he’s been too busy adjusting to life with him. Like that was ever the goal. Like that should even be possible.

And now… well, it’s now. And Bill is dangerous, just like he’s always been.

And he knows Mabel’s coming.

Dipper glares at the books sitting on his kitchen table, thumps them a couple of times for good measure, and grabs for his phone. He has to fix this.

He’s going to fix this.

“Interesting choice of meeting place.” Detective Canaan sets a glass of what looks like bourbon onto the table, slides into the booth and sits down.

The bar is dark, dingy, and active, if not crowded. Smoking in bars has been illegal since 1995, but somehow a faint, barely-perceptible odour of tobacco lingers in the air. It's 3A.M. on a Thursday, but this is place is never really empty; there's always someone newly off-shift and in need of a drink.

“It's, uh, an LAPD institution,” Dipper says, pulling nervously at the strings on his hoodie. It's true; he doesn't come here very often, but it's the most well-trodden police hangout in the district.

(Bill wouldn't be caught dead in a cop bar.)

Part of him had expected Canaan not to show. Part of him – the sick, squirmy part that aches when he thinks about his lost OSHA jokes or runs his thumb absently over the crescent of scars on the back of his hand – was kind of hoping he wouldn't, because that part of him doesn't really want to do this. Partly just because he doesn't know Detective Canaan from... well, Adam; he's basing his entire reading of the situation on Bill's reaction to the other detective, and Canaan's reaction to Bill. He's either about to make one ally or two enemies, and the ‘one ally’ scenario still comes with a side of one very powerful future enemy; Bill doesn't know about this meeting yet, but it's only a matter of time until he finds out what Dipper has done. What he's about to do.

There's no coming back from this. But he doesn't have a choice. Whatever fragile, fluttering thing had been taking shape between him and Bill, he can't risk his safety – Mabel’s safety – to try and preserve it. He shouldn't have let this happen to begin with; it shouldn't have taken being slammed against a car for him to realise that making friends with the devil on his shoulder was an objectively terrible idea.

This is just the way things are. Dipper knows that.

It – hurts, though, all the same.

“Thanks for coming,” he continues. “I, uh, I know it's – late.”

“I'm a night owl.” Canaan shrugs. “And I assumed you'd want to speak – undisturbed.”

“Yeah. Uh.” Dipper picks up his beer and takes a sip, more for something to do than anything else. “I'm not supposed to be talking to you.”

“Of course not.” Caanan swirls the liquid in his glass, disinterestedly. His eyes remain on Dipper's face.

So he's not gonna give me anything to work with. Fair enough, Dipper supposes; he was the one who called a late-night clandestine meeting, so setting the tone is probably his job. He takes another sip of beer that he doesn't really taste, clears his throat, and just comes out with it.

“I know what he is,” he says, over the uneasy ticking of his pulse. “Bill, I mean. I didn't want to work with him, but he – trapped me into a deal. It was the only thing I could do to survive.” God, I hope I'm right about this guy, he thinks, imagining the explaining he's going to have to do if it turns out Canaan is a perfectly normal human with the weirdest case of Just One Of Those Faces ever.

He picks at the label on his beer bottle. “I don't know why he's interested in me,” he continues. “He said – he wants to figure me out, and then he'll decide what to do with me.” He lets his voice tremble, just a little, to show how serious he is. “I think he's going to kill me. I'm – worried about what he might do to my sister.” He sets the bottle down, leaning forward over the table. “If you're here to send him back, I want to help.”

Canaan doesn't say anything for a long, tense moment. His face is completely impassive; Dipper runs through three potential worst-case scenarios in the time it takes the other man to take a sip of his drink. If he thinks I'm crazy...

“My name,” Canaan says at last, with an air of sombre finality, “is Amenadiel.” He pulls up one of his sleeves, showing Dipper the beginning of a tattoo on his wrist: three interlinking cogs, with a fourth disappearing under the fabric further up his arm. (Two of the cogs have eyes at their centres; Dipper fights off an involuntary shudder.) “I am the oldest of my Father's angels. And I'm here to bring Bill home.”