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When they returned to the chateau, Widow was the first to notice that something was amiss.
“Sombra,” she said, body rigid, expression indicating the scent of prey. She dropped her bag on the sprawling front porch as the sound of the boat that had ferried them over puttered away back toward the mainland.
“Yeah, I see it,” the hacker responded, placing her luggage by Widow’s. The door to the chateau, locked tight when they’d left, was ajar.
“Did we leave it unlocked?” Sombra asked, knowing full well they had certainly not left it unlocked. It looked as though someone had jimmied it open. To be fair, Sombra thought, the uninspired 19th century security keeping the place safe was more than a little lackluster.
“We did not,” was Widow’s terse reply, her pursed lips making her look more annoyed than concerned.
“Come on. Let’s walk around the terrace,” Sombra suggested, lowering her voice and listening for anything out of the ordinary. The chateau was quiet, unlived-in, and too far from any population of humans for noise to carry. The only sound was the gentle lapping of water against the island it was built on as the wind rippled it against the shore.
Widow nodded, wire-tight like a cat ready to pounce. Neither of them were armed, so it would be wits and situational awareness until they figured out what was going on or managed to make it upstairs. Sombra hadn’t touched her machine-pistol in over a week. Frankly, she kind of missed the feel of metal in her hands.
They stepped up onto the terrace, newly cleaned since their arrival, and assessed the situation. Nothing outside had been disturbed, but when Sombra peeked over the railing, she saw something decidedly out of place.
“Hey spider, look,” she whispered, pointing down at a small dinghy floating in the water. It had been tied to a stake someone plunged into the small amount of land rimming the chateau, inconspicuous and away from the primary dock they used.
“That does not look like a particularly intimidating craft,” Widowmaker replied, leaning over to get a closer look.
“There’s a lunchbox in it,” Sombra agreed, frowning. “A purple lunchbox.”
“At least it’s our aesthetic.”
Sombra snorted. “So probably not assassins. Let’s see what we’re dealing with.” Stepping slowly closer to the kitchen window, she leaned around the edge of the wall to peer inside. It seemed to be undisturbed at first glance, but after a moment’s surveillance, Sombra saw something move.
“There’s someone in there,” she whispered, watching them wander around. “It’s a fucking teenager.” She squinted. “With a flashlight and a camera.”
“Excuse me?” Widow asked, incredulity lining her features.
“Wait, no. There’s a whole bunch of them.” Throwing caution to the wind, Sombra knelt before the window and watched as four teenagers wandered around the kitchen. They were clearly unaware that the electricity worked, shining their flashlights over the unfinished interior, pulling open cabinets and shrieking each time one of them attempted to scare the others.
“There are children,” Widowmaker said, peering over Sombra’s shoulder. “Wandering through my house.” She sounded half annoyed, half in awe of their temerity.
“Seems that way,” Sombra said, trying to keep the amusement from her voice. This was rich. “They’re going into the foyer. Come on,” she said, running around the terrace to follow them. Widowmaker sighed, following at a much less expedient pace.
The reluctant duo crouched under one of the exterior windows, its slightly ajar state providing them with the perfect opportunity to eavesdrop on the teenage interlopers.
“They keep saying fantôme,” Sombra asked, their rapid, giggling young French slightly beyond her comprehension. “Are they talking about what I think they’re talking about?”
“It seems they are in search of una fantasma,” the spider translated, frowning, watching the teens as they traipsed around uninvited through her home.
“No way,” Sombra hissed, turning so fast she almost hit Widowmaker as her head whipped around. “Do they think the place is haunted?”
“It does appear that way,” the spider replied, deeply unamused by the situation.
Sombra gave Widowmaker a pointed look.
“What,” the spider asked, deadpan.
“I have an idea,” Sombra replied. “It’s a really good one,” she said as Widowmaker raised an eyebrow, looking decidedly unconvinced. “I just need to get to our bedroom.”
“Come here,” Widowmaker said, standing up and holding her arm out.
“Is now really the time for snu-oh!” Sombra yelped as Widow grabbed her around the waist and they shot into the air after her grapple. With grace and more than a little strength, the spider hoisted them over the balcony to their bedroom, setting Sombra on the ground before the hacker had a chance to finish her sentence.
“You brought your grapple to Paris?” she asked, partially impressed and partially indignant. “Even I left my translocators at home.”
“Semper paratus,” Widow replied, shrugging. “I always have my grapple.”
“…always?”
Widowmaker smiled.
“Noted,” Sombra said, grinning mischievously.
“Shall we begin?” Widow asked, brushing some dust off the tips of her boots where they’d scraped against the side of the chateau on their ascent.
“Adelante,” Sombra grinned in response, opening the door for Widow and stepping into their bedroom after her.
Sombra unearthed her rig from where she’d stored it under the bed, snapping it easily into the ports along her spine and hands. As she was slipping her translocators around her waist, she heard the telltale sound of a gun being loaded behind her.
“What are you doing?” she asked, straightening her hoodie back over her gear. It felt odd being without it, but it grew cumbersome in some of their more intimate encounters, and aside from playing pranks, she’d not needed it at the chateau.
Widowmaker looked through the scope and tested the gun for integrity before flipping it over her shoulder. “For hunting children,” she said nonchalantly.
“Seriously, Lacroix?” Sombra asked, narrowing her gaze. Widowmaker looked back at her, confused. “Holy shit Widow, we’re not going to kill them.”
“We’re not?”
“No.” Sombra sighed, rolling her eyes. “We’re going to scare them.”
“Death is scary,” Widowmaker replied, her lack of comprehension both horrifying and hilarious at the same time.
“Dios, araña,” Sombra shook her head. “Just follow my lead.”
Bolstered by the assumption that they were alone, the teenagers were not subtle as they explored the chateau. They weren’t careful, either, and after Sombra and Widowmaker encountered the third upended can of paint, Sombra wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop the sniper from wringing their necks even if she’d wanted to.
“Where did they go?” Sombra mused, keeping an ear out for laughter or the sound of running feet. On cue, Widowmaker activated her visor and slowly scanned the chateau.
“Basement,” she said, doing another sweep. “Four of them.” She paused, deadly quiet. “Near my wine.”
“We’ll keep your sauvignon safe, spider,” she said. “I swear to fuck if they let Toulouse out,” she threatened low, tiptoeing past their sitting room and making her way into the kitchen toward the basement entrance.
Widowmaker disengaged her visor and walked over to the stove, pulling open a cabinet beside it. “Here he is,” she said, and Sombra looked over right in time to catch Toulouse’s sleepy stretch of white socks and a toothy yawn.
She breathed a sigh of relief and yanked open the temperamental door. “Después de ti,” she gestured, and Widowmaker stepped past her into the cold stone staircase leading into the basement of the chateau.
The teens were easy to find. Between the sound of their nervous giggling bouncing off the walls at odd angles and Widow triangulating with her visor, they managed to cut around them using the old servants’ passages Sombra had found when they’d first arrived at the chateau.
“Wait for it,” she said, one hand on Widow’s arm to keep the sniper from stepping out before her and clotheslining the kids in her anger. She activated her camo right as they were about to turn the corner, and as they passed by her position, stepped out behind them.
Reaching out toward the shorter of the boys in attendance, she flicked the baseball hat he was wearing off his head and onto the dusty old stone floor.
The boy whipped around looking angrily at his friends. “Who did that?” he asked, camera waving around in search of the culprit.
“Did what?” replied one of the girls, a dark-eyed child no more than fifteen years old.
“Knocked my hat off,” he replied, still angry, but a shadow of concern crossing his face. The camera’s ON light glowed dimly as he leaned over to snatch his hat from where it had landed.
Sombra took the opportunity to step by and tap the girl on the shoulder.
“Who just touched me?” she asked, indignation shifting slowly into fear.
“Would you two stop trying to scare us?” the taller boy said, scowling at the dark-haired girl and the boy with the hat. “It’s not working.”
Sombra raced past them again, casting a glance at a sullen Widowmaker still hidden in the alcove with her arms crossed, and began knocking on the wall, slowly walking closer to them until she was near enough to the dark-haired girl to breathe on her neck.
“Laisser,” she whispered, breath heavy on the girl’s skin. Before she could react, Sombra slapped the flashlight out of her hand.
“I’m out of here,” the girl said, turning on her heel and marching as quickly as she could down the hall they’d arrived through.
“Virginie, where are you going?” the other girl, a tall, willowy blonde called after her. The boys shrugged. One of them picked up her discarded flashlight and they hurried after her.
Sombra reappeared next to Widowmaker, not earning so much as a small jump from the spider. “You see?” she said, her grin encompassing her entire face.
“Yes,” was the spider’s response. Despite the shortness of her answer, Sombra could see a shallow, mischievous smile begin to grow.
“I’m going to nuke the camera. You want to take the upstairs and I’ll flush them out?”
“Oui,” she replied. “I will hang around the foyer.” Activating her visor, Widow turned right out of the corridor they were sequestered in and returned to the main floor of the chateau.
“Time to crank it to 11, chiquita,” the hacker said to herself, cracking her knuckles. “Just like back home.”
She followed the group easily, occasionally shuffling something behind them, moving a few objects perceptively as they turned to look. They argued with one another, convinced that someone in the group was pulling a prank meant to frighten the rest of them into admitting they were scared, but none of them able to explain how, precisely, they were doing it so adroitly.
As the boy with the hat argued with the taller boy about the overturned table they’d just passed, Sombra tiptoed up to him and ran a hand along the camera. Had they been looking, they would have noticed a flash of purple light as she erased their footage and destroyed the ability to create more. Sombra had been duped by a kid with seemingly inconsequential knowledge before; she’d be damned if she let it happen again.
Stepping back, she sighed, and casually tipped an old candle onto the ground like a petulant cat with a glass of water.
“Did you hear that?” the taller boy asked, looking nervous despite his previous mocking of the girls.
“Hear what?” Sombra replied, and this time as the four turned to the sound of her voice, she reappeared, purposefully glitching her camo so that only her eyes and the vague outline of her body appeared in and out of focus. “Bonjour.”
This time all four of them screamed, backpedaling so fast the dark-haired girl tripped over the taller boy, splayed out on the ground, conveniently right into the base of Sombra’s translocator.
“Hey,” she said, grinning as she appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, in front of the fallen intruder. She waved mockingly, blowing her a kiss.
As the four teenagers ran from the catacombs, she pressed the side of her earpiece. “Incoming,” she said.
“I’m in position,” was the spider’s response. Laughing and deeply pleased with herself, Sombra reactivated her thermoptic camo and raced to beat them upstairs.
Their fear lost a bit of steam on the cumbersome stairway to the kitchen as they made their way back to the foyer. Despite what they clearly perceived as a ghostly encounter, the boys at least seemed more excited than worried.
“That was wild,” the shorter boy with the hat said, his laughter nervous as he leaned over with his hands on his thighs to catch his breath. “Bet I got it on camera.”
“Wild?” the dark-haired girl replied incredulously, shooting daggers at the boy. “That was an honest to god ghost, and it could movethings,” she said, shuddering. “Big things. It could hurt us.”
“You’re overreacting,” the taller boy said, although the tremor in his voice betrayed his true feelings.
“Well you can’t say I was seeing things, can you?” she retorted indignantly, hands on her hips. Her blonde companion was conspicuously silent, eyes flicking from shadow to shadow as she waited for the chateau’s ghost to show itself again.
The boys looked down, neither willing to contest what they had all seen. Sombra held both hands over her mouth, holding back a wicked laugh at their expense.
Widowmaker took this moment of contemplation as her cue and descended from the ceiling, silent as an actual ghost, plucking the boy’s hat from his head. As he reached up, confused, she zipped back into the alcoves, safe under cover of darkness.
“What happened?” he asked, looking around. “Who keeps taking my hat?”
“No one, dipshit,” the taller boy said, looking ill at ease. The girls, for their part, were done with the chateau, begging to go.
“Enfants,” came Widow’s singsong voice, the deadly edge inflecting it sending chills down Sombra’s spine. “Je te vois.”
“Jean-Claude, let’s go,” the dark-haired girl hissed, nails digging into his arm.
“Tu veux jouer?”
“Where did that come from?” he asked, looking less and less like defying her wishes as they edged together toward the door.
“Ici.”
The four teens looked up to see Widowmaker, in all her dark and deadly beauty, descend in a flash from the ceiling above them. She landed with a sudden, rough impact against Jean-Claude’s body, sending the other three flying and him with a crack to the floor.
“Please leave,” she said, standing from the boy’s prone body. Reaching down, she grabbed him by the collar and lifted him high into the air. “Now.” She pushed him away roughly and he struggled to keep his balance.
“Shit,” he cursed, suddenly becoming the biggest proponent of leaving the chateau as he shoved past his companions and out the door.
With that final act of brutal haunting, the four teens ran screaming from the chateau, echoes of “Aller!” and “Des fantômes!” lingering long after they’d frantically pushed their boat into the water. They heard the splash of oars as the terrified children paddled away as quickly as they could, watching until their boat was well out of sight before grabbing their discarded bags and closing and locking the doors behind them.
“An exciting homecoming, indeed,” Widowmaker mused, sighing down at their luggage.
Sombra grinned, rising up on her toes to give Widowmaker a kiss. “Can we do this more often?”
The sniper smiled slowly back at her. “Can I kill one next time?”
“Maybe.” Sombra paused. “Yeah ok, sure.”
“Deal.” Lifting the hacker into her arms, she carried her upstairs.