Chapter Text
The Problem had infected the world for at least fifty years. ‘The Problem’ was ghosts. Ghosts—the spirits of people who had been brutally murdered, committed suicide, or died another sort of gruesome death—came out at night, once the sun had gone down, usually, and with one touch could kill a person. Ghosts could also look someone in their eye and ‘lock’ them into a state similar to that of a coma, where the person ghost-locked was in a permanent state of physical and emotional paralysis.
(There were stages to ghost-lock and ghost-touch, too; three of them: stage one was the minor stage, where, if given a shot or two of adrenaline within fifteen minutes, the victim could survive with no further issues. Stage two was where a ghost touched you close to your heart, or if a ghost looked you in the eye or otherwise drew you in and held you there for more that a few minutes, you would have difficulties in your cognitive function for a few hours and some memory issues, but otherwise, if given an adrenaline shot or two within ten minutes, you would be fine. Stage three was death in the case of ghost-touch, or a full comatose state with ghost-lock. For longer than five to seven minutes of a ghost drawing you in or looking you in the eye, you would die. For ghost-touch, you only had to be touched over your heart or gone without an adrenaline shot for more than ten to fifteen minutes before you were dead. In the first twenty years of the Problem, thousands upon thousands died and just as many were ghost-locked because people didn’t know that adrenaline shocked the system enough to eliminate the effects of ghost-touch or ghost-lock.)
The world sought to find a solution to what they’d named the Problem. Agencies rose up, researchers researched, and curfews were put in place to limit the amount of deaths caused by the Problem. What was found was that iron, salt, Greek fire, and silver helped stave off and sometimes even stopped the ghosts, and that children—adolescents, mostly—could sense ghosts. The children were labeled as ‘talented’. Their talents faded as the children aged, but the world essentially had an army, now.
Agencies then employed the children with Talents to go out at night and rid the world of ghosts. The children were armed with several types of weapons, but their most notable weapon was a rapier. Children learned to fence and learned to defend against ghosts, which were attached to objects called ‘sources’, and if the source was covered up with silver netting or contained within silver-glass, the ghost would disappear. Sources were then generally destroyed, and the ghost along with it.
The world had found a solution to the Problem.
~*~
Anya found herself in London at the age of fifteen. It had been her dream to go to London, and Anya figured that that was as good a place as any to run away to. Plus, there were lots of ghosts—this being the epicenter of the Problem since it had begun—and just under a hundred agencies in the city alone, one of which was bound to hire her.
In a world of ghosts and those who hunted and destroyed them, as well as those who hid from them, Anya was a Listener. She could hear ghosts—what they said—and the stories behind their deaths. She also had the talent of touch, where she could touch an object, whether it be a source or something that had the echo of death attached to it, and could listen to what it had to ‘say’. She could even see ghosts, although her talent of sight wasn’t as good as her Touch or Listening.
Anya had dreamed of finding a job with Rose and Briar, the greatest agency for fighting ghosts, and the company of the famed Cynthia Rose and Jack Briar, who had revolutionized ghost fighting. Cynthia Rose was also the only person to have been able to communicate and actually have a conversation with the most dangerous and rare type of ghost, a Type Three.
As soon as she’d gotten to London, which was the home of the Rose and Briar headquarters, Anya attempted to apply as an agent finished with her grades one through four. The training agency’s records in DEPRAC—the Department of Psychical Research and Control, a government organization that tackled the Problem and monitored ghost fighting and training agencies—revealed her to have only finished half of her fourth grade, though, and she was denied. She was similarly refused at seven other agencies, and soon found herself in a busy café two hours before the night curfew.
In front of her was a list of the local agencies she’d found, and all but one was crossed out. At the bottom of her list was a Desmond & Co., with an address very near to that of the café she was in, if her map was right.
With a distressed feeling building in her chest, Anya hoped that this last chance wouldn’t fall through. She closed her notebook, gathered her measly funds—funds that she had depleted much of for the train ride to London—her bag, and her rapier, and made her way out of the café.
35 Portland Row, the home of Desmond & Co., was on the corner of its block. Anya rang the doorbell, her other hand on the handle of her rapier, and waited nervously. The door opened after a lengthy moment, and a tall boy with blond hair styled in a spiky up-do smiled at her from the other side.
“Are you Arif’s new girl?” he asked, looking her over.
Anya blinked, her eyebrows knitting together. “Who’s Arif?”
The boy’s smile fell. “Guess not—he’s the donut guy around the corner.” The boy went to shut the door, looking disappointed. Behind him, another blond boy, although slightly shorter and with a less modern and fashionable haircut, ran to stop him.
“Ewen!” the shorter one cried. He had a bowl cut. “She might be someone for the interview!”
At this, Anya nodded, and both boys scrambled to open the door wider.
“My apologies, miss,” the one with the bowl cut said, scowling at the taller one.
“She’ll probably bolt, anyway,” Ewen said, shrugging and closing the door behind her.
Anya looked at the boy with the bowl cut. “Are you Mr. Desmond?” she asked, her grip on the bag hanging over her shoulder tightening. She could feel sweat beading on her temple. She needed this job.
“No,” Ewen said, rolling his eyes. “He’s Emile. Damian’s in through the living room with another interviewee.”
Emile glanced behind Anya before looking back at her with a tight smile. “By the looks of it, though, it won’t be long before you get your chance.”
Anya nodded and looked away, quieting.
Ewen turned to Emile, muttering, “I thought the one in there was the last person to go!”
“I guess we were wrong,” Emile said, glancing again over at Anya. “But—“
A scream cut through the air. Anya stiffened, her grip tightening on her rapier. A young girl ran from one of the other rooms in the hallway and towards the front door, escaping quickly. With her eyebrows raised high, Anya looked back at the blond boys in front of her, but they made no response, Emile instead gesturing for her to go through the doorway the girl had first run through. Grimacing, Anya stepped through the doorway, Emile and Ewen following behind her.
“I guess you were right, Damian,” Emile said, stepping over to sit on the couch closest to the window. Ewen sat in the armchair beside that couch, and Anya decided her safest bet was to sit on the couch across from the two blond boys. Once she’d sat, she looked up at the other boy in the room, who was presumably Mr. Desmond.
“No,” the other boy (presumably Mr. Desmond) said, still turned away. “I checked the list again, and you two were right. There’s no one else to interview.”
“Then who’s this?” Ewen said, sounding a little frustrated. “She said she’s here for the interview.”
The dark haired boy turned around, staring at Anya with narrowed eyes. “Who are you?” he repeated.
“I’m Anya,” she said, swallowing thickly. The boy had dark green eyes, and they were highlighted by the similarly dark circles beneath his eyes.
“Anya what?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“What’s your last name?” he asked, eyes still narrowed and his mouth bordering on a frown.
Thinking for a brief moment, she chose the name her first orphanage had given her, and the name that was on her agency certificates. “My name is Anya Forger.” After a second, she whispered, “Sorry,” and looked away. It was things like these that put others off, she felt. The things that led to so many of the mistakes of her past. Her inability to understand the ‘basic’ things.
“No need,” the dark haired boy said, sitting down beside Emile. “I’m Damian Desmond, of Desmond & Co.”
“Nice to meet you,” Anya said, but she didn’t look up at him.
Mr. Desmond stared at her, but the girl still didn’t look up. Instead, she handed him a folder from her side bag. He opened it up, examining her certification and resume.
“It says you here that you trained up north, in a few different places. I presume you got your grades one through four?” He didn’t let her reply. It was a lie—she hadn’t finished her fourth grade. At least, not quite. “No references?” he asked quietly.
“No,” Anya said. She bit her lip. “My last job with an agency… ended abruptly.” No need to tell him that every one of her jobs with an agency had ended abruptly.
The boy moved on with a nod. “It also says here that you’re a Listener,” Mr. Desmond said. He hummed.
“Y-yes,” Anya said, looking up at the boy. “I am, but I have a little bit of Sight and Touch, though they tend to overlap and enhance what I hear.”
Mr. Desmond looked back up at her, smiling the slightest bit. “Ewen and Emile have a bit of those, too. I’ve just got Sight. You know, death glows and trails—the residues of death.”
Anya nodded, but didn’t say anything more.
“Alright, then,” Desmond said, closing her folder and setting it aside. “Let’s get on with the interview and begin the tests.”
“Tests?” Anya said, her voice catching nervously. “The ad didn’t say anything about tests.”
Mr. Desmond looked up at her again, his hand in the middle of pulling a cloth from an object on the table between them. “Oh,” he smiled again, the thing slight, “right. I prefer not to gauge a person’s Talent on referrals, references, or what they say. It’s easier to determine the strength of their Talent and any lies with tests like these. To see it with my own eyes.”
Anya nodded, uneasy. “Alright, then.”
Desmond pulled the cloth from the first object and leaned his elbows on his knees. “Tell us what you think this is.”
Reaching a hand out, she tapped a finger on the jar. Yellow light flashed inside the jar, swelling along the glass like smoke. A face could be made out, with two deep cavities for eyes and a wider but shorter cavity for a mouth. Steeling herself, Anya tapped at the glass again. The ghost faded, but now the jar was light enough to see a chipped skull atop the base.
“It’s a ghost jar,” Anya said, “a silver-glass, made by the Wise Corporation. I thought only Rose and Briar had these? It’s holding a ghost, and the source is obviously the skull. It’s an angry ghost, restless. I couldn’t tell you what sort of ghost it is, though—a phantom or a specter, perhaps?”
“Good, good,” Mr. Desmond said. “And there’ll be time for stories later.” He pulled off the cloth from the second item, a small pocket knife. “What of this?”
Anya grabbed the knife and held it in her hands, closing her eyes at the not-unpleasant hum of energy of holding the relic. Her eyes shut and the world around her faded away with a thick pulse, and she heard gunshots distantly.
“Gunshots,” she said. “And some shouts.”
“Oh, no,” Ewen said, “that sounds bad.”
“No, no,” Anya said, frowning and shaking her head. “The energy in this is positive. There’s no suffering, and it’s not violent or sad.” Opening her eyes, she set the knife back on the table. “It belonged to someone happy. Someone gentle. There’s nothing bad coming from this.”
“It was Ewen’s uncle’s knife,” Emile said, smiling. “He took it with him hunting.”
“He even had it when he keeled over from a stroke,” Ewen said, frowning. “Always had it with him.”
“Story time later,” Mr. Desmond said, removing the cloth from the next object, which was an expensive watch.
Anya picked it up and held it in her hands, again closing her eyes. With a thick pulse, the world around her faded away again. Screams tore through her head, as did grunts. She shifted uneasily.
“Screaming,” she said softly. “Running, too—chasing someone. Violent. So much pain.”
Mr. Desmond hummed, but no one said anything.
After a second, a sharp pain staggered through her body. With shaking hands, Anya put the watch back on the table, a disgusted look on her face masking the fear she’d been momentarily overwhelmed with. “The energy in that is horrible—very dark. You shouldn’t have anyone hold that, least of all in the context of a job interview. What the hell was that?” she asked, trying to mask the fear in her voice with anger. It had scared her, more than she cared to admit, and it had reminded her of all of the botched cases from her childhood.
Mr. Desmond was calm in his response. “It’s a memento from my first successful case. Have you ever heard of the mass murderer Harold Beck?”
Anya shook her head vehemently. “No, and I don’t think I want to.”
Mr. Desmond looked at her for a moment, and then nodded.
“Sensible choice,” Emile said. “The man was trouble, for sure.”
Mr. Desmond removed the cloth from the next object, this one a cup. “Give this a go, then?”
Anya grabbed the cup and held it in her hands, her eyes closed, but felt nothing. It was silent. “Nothing at all,” she said. Her eyebrows knitted together, she opened her eyes.
“Are you sure?” Mr. Desmond and Ewen asked.
Anya frowned, but closed her eyes again, searching and searching. Nothing came. “I’m sure,” she said firmly. “Absolutely positive.” Opening her eyes again, she set the cup down and stared at the three boys before her.
“I should hope so,” Ewen said with an almost cruel smile. “It’s mine and Emile’s toothbrush cup.”
Emile cracked a grin, chuckling to himself quietly.
After a second to think, she flushed. They were laughing at her . Anya stood abruptly, grabbing her folder from the corner of the table and stepping free of the couch. “I didn’t come here to be made fun of or laughed at,” she said quietly, trying to hide her reddened cheeks. As she stepped towards the doorway, though, Mr. Desmond spoke.
“Wait,” he said, standing from the couch. She stopped, glaring back over her shoulder at him. His hand, reached out as if to stop her from across the room, fell limply to his side. “Miss Anya Forger, it was a test. You passed with flying colors.”
She didn’t move, didn’t relax. The blond boys’ laughter still echoed in her ears. “Did I?” she asked, her voice icy.
“Feisty,” Ewen muttered, smiling.
Anya swung her glare over to Ewen, curling her hands into tight fists around the strap of her bag and her rapier. Her cheeks didn’t feel so hot, now—she wasn’t embarrassed. She really was angry this time. “Come over here and I’ll show you just how fiesty I am,” she hissed.
“Okay,” Ewen said, laughing a little.
“I’ll wait, then,” Anya said, and swiped a cookie from the plate beside the boy’s chair.
“You may have to wait a bit,” Ewen said with a cruel smile, “as this is a deep armchair. It can take a while to get out of.”
“I have all day,” Anya said, finishing her cookie. She reached for another and bit into it.
Ewen looked over at Mr. Desmond and nodded. “You’ll have to tell her about the cookie rule, Damian.”
Emile smiled a little and nodded, too.
She hesitated. Her curiosity won out. “What’s the cookie rule?” Anya asked, only glancing quickly over to Mr. Desmond before her gaze landed back on Ewen.
“The cookie rule,” Mr. Desmond said, “is that members of the agency can’t take more than one cookie at a time. Each member has to have one at a time, in strict rotation, before one can have another cookie. It keeps things fair,” he said with a slight smile.
Anya paused, and looked over at the dark haired boy. “Members of the agency?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Members of the agency. You passed, remember?”
“Oh,” she said. She relaxed a little. “Thank you, Mr. Desmond.”
“Damian,” he said. “You can call me Damian.”
“Alright, Damian,” she said. Her anger fell away into embarrassment again. Anya looked down at her feet, scuffing one toe of her boot against the other.
“Okay, then,” Emile said, standing with a broad smile. “Shall I make some tea?”
“Yes, please,” Ewen said with a heavy sigh.
Damian moved around the table and held out a hand to Anya. “Can I take your bag for you? I’ll give you a tour of the house.”
Anya hesitated but shook her head. “No, thank you. I’ll carry it.”
Damian nodded and gestured for her to follow him back into the hall. She followed, a hand on her bag and one on her rapier, although she wasn’t as tense as before.
The hallway stretched from the front door to the staircase, with doorways on each side of the hall. To the right was the living room, which she’d exited, and to the left was the library. A smaller door, between the staircase and the living room, led to the bathroom. On the second floor was Damian’s room and Ewen and Emile’s room, and on the third floor was a room which Damian insisted she stay out of and never open. Damian then led her up to the attic, where he opened up the curtains over the windows.
“I grew up in this room,” he said quietly, “and if you don’t have other sleeping arrangements, you can sleep here. Of course, I do charge rent, but it’s nothing terrible and it’s from your wages.”
“Thank you,” Anya said, going to stand beside him in front of the window.
“It has a bathroom, too. There’s a bigger one, downstairs, but that’d mean sharing with Ewen, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
She smiled, although it was tense and fell away quickly.
“So you’d like to stay here?” he asked. “And you’ll take the job?”
He looked almost desperate. The setting sun made his eyes and the circles beneath them seem darker and his skin seem paler. The sleek black of his suit jacket didn’t help matters. The boy clearly needed sleep.
Anya knew her answer—she had known it down in the living room, when he’d said “members of the agency”—but she couldn’t help searching his gaze anyway. “Yes,” she said after a long moment. Damian sighed, and his expression relaxed as he looked away. “I’ll take the job, and if it’s alright, live up here.”
“I made the offer,” he said offhandedly. “Of course it’s alright.”
“Thank you,” she said, again, softly.
“No need,” he said, just as quiet, moving to stand on the top step of the stairs to go back down. After a moment, he cleared his throat. “Would you like the rest of the tour? You can leave your stuff up here, if you’d like.”
Nodding, Anya set her bags on her bed, but left her rapier in its sheath at her side. She followed him down the stairs, all the way to the first floor, where they went down only a few more steps to the kitchen.
Windows were curtained in the corner, and Ewen was standing at the oven, frowning over a kettle while Emile chopped vegetables at the counter. In another corner was a glass door leading outside, into what she assumed was a garden. In the center of the room sat a table with four chairs and a white table cloth. On the cloth, as Anya stepped closer, was writing. Ewen is a dick! Emile, could you make some tea please? Damian, don’t forget the rent… Ewen is an artistic genius. DEPRAC called! Why was that ghost so scary?! Can’t I get some peace and quiet?
“This is the most important room,” Damian said. “It’s where we eat, and also where we think.” Tapping the cloth, he smiled over at her, the thing as slight as before. “We’ve come across the breakthroughs of several of our cases at the Thinking Cloth, among other things.”
“Like insults?” Anya asked, smiling wryly. No one smiled back. Her expression fell.
“Yeah,” Ewen said. “Sometimes it gets rough. It doesn’t mean we aren’t friends, though.”
I never said that , Anya thought, frowning.
“She didn’t necessarily say that,” Emile said quietly.
“Whatever,” Ewen said. It appeared he would be the least welcoming, despite his previous good mood. Anya hoped she didn’t have to interact with him much, but wasn’t holding out too much hope.
After a long moment, Damian moved to another door in the kitchen. This one was wooden and had two thick strips of iron bolted to it. Opening it for her, he gestured for Anya to go through. On the other side was a spiral staircase down into a wide basement.
In one corner of the room, shelves were arranged with boxes, books, and papers stacked in some sort of system she couldn’t wrap her mind around.
“That’s Emile’s filing system,” Damian said. “He’s an amazing record keeper, and has been documenting everything on the Problem since he started here. He also does research on our cases and files them here.”
Damian walked over to the middle of the room, where a structural support pole stood. Attached to it was a panel of buttons and switches.
“This is Ewen’s invention. It helps to keep us in shape and ready for ghosts. The smoke jets simulate a variety of attack patterns, to help us in offensive and defensive moves.” Flicking a few switches on, Damian set off a few of the overhead nozzles. In random places, smoke was shot down from the nozzles. Anya watched this curiously. “Of course, you’ll be proficient already with a sword, having passed your fourth grade.”
Anya smiled, uneasy, and nodded.
Damian flicked off the switches and turned to another section of the room, which was turned into a smaller room with locked entry. As he unlocked the door, he continued to speak.
“This is the high security room,” he said, opening the door and guiding her through the doorway. “Here we have our flares, bombs, crazy mixtures that Ewen comes up with, and the sources we locate and secure.”
Anya hummed a response and stepped outside of the room with Damian, watching as he locked it back up again.
After doing so, he gestured behind her to a dryer, washer, and small table. “That’s the laundry room, too, by the way,” he said. “It’s small, but it gets the job done. You can do your own laundry, if you’d like,” he said, reaching up a hand to push through his hair. As Damian ducked his head down, his eyes narrowed and his mouth twisted. For a moment, he looked almost… awkward.
It didn’t take too long for Anya to catch up. Three boys and one girl, and all of them teenagers? It was obvious to her—she would do her own laundry. “It’s a nice set-up,” Anya said, nervously wringing her hands behind her back. The awkwardness made the air feel thick.
“We’d like to think so,” Damian said quietly, glancing up at her under dark lashes. He relaxed the slightest, but stayed where he was.
After a moment of silence, she asked a question that had been on her mind for much of the afternoon. “You don’t have any supervisors, do you?”
“No,” he said, looking over at her. At this, they made their way over to the stairs and back into the kitchen. He didn’t say anything more, and Anya was too uneasy to push.
Comfortably, and as though he’d done this often— which he probably does, this being his house , Anya thought frustratedly to herself—he sat down in one of the chairs at the table. Hesitant, she, too, sat, in the spot he pointed her to, and tried to relax a little.
“Supervisors often get in the way for us,” Damian said. “Plus, it’s not like we legally need them, so long as we pay our bills.”
“Which we sometimes don’t,” Emile said, looking over his shoulder at Anya with a small smile. She smiled back, although it was tense.
“But we’re still afloat,” Damian said sharply, rolling his eyes a little. “And we don’t need supervisors.”
“I hope this isn’t a problem with you,” Ewen said, turning to her with a narrowed, still almost angry, gaze.
“I have a lot of bad experiences with supervisors,” Anya said, staring back at Ewen. “It makes sense to cut them out, really. Especially when you consider their lack of sensitivity to ghosts.”
Ewen grunted in response, but moved to the table and set a cup of tea down before sinking into his chair. He didn’t look at Anya again. Emile continued at the counter, although now he was stirring the vegetables in a pan with what smelled like butter.
“Well,” Damian said, sighing and glancing around the room at his silent employees before looking at Anya. “Welcome to Desmond & Co. It’ll be nice to have you here.”
~*~
When Anya had finished settling into the room in the attic, she headed downstairs. On the landing of the second floor, the one with the boys’ rooms, she hesitated, gazing up at the door Damian had told her to stay out of—the one he’d called ‘private’.
Ewen came out of the room beside her abruptly, dressed only in an oversized t-shirt, underwear, and socks. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said lowly. “But it’s forbidden.”
Anya startled, looking at him with wide eyes.
“The door?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest. His gaze was hard.
“Y-yes, the door,” Anya said, trying not to stare at the boy’s odd choice of wardrobe and trying not to appear unsettled by his still almost cruel looks.
“It’s forbidden, and you can’t go in there,” he said, unmoving.
“I was just going to get a glass of water,” Anya supplied, fingering the cuffs of her sweater. Unlike her new colleague, she was dressed warmly, in overalls and a large sweater with thick socks.
Ewen stared blankly at her. “Then you’ll have better luck in the kitchen.”
Glancing back up at the closed door, Anya nodded absently. Looking back over at Ewen, who was standing in front of her still, she asked, “Why does he keep it shut?”
“I have no idea,” Ewen said, his voice still frosty and low.
“How long have you lived here?”
“About two years,” he replied shortly.
“So you know him well?”
“Well enough.”
“I’m just wondering,” Anya said, looking down at her feet, “how he came to live here. I’m guessing it belonged—”
“To his parents?” Ewen interrupted, speaking faster, now. “Why not ask him yourself? He’s usually in the library at this time of night, and I’m sure he’s less desperate for the bathroom than I am right now. So, if you’d excuse me.”
Ewen brushed past Anya quickly, not saying another word or looking back, headed presumably to the bathroom below. Anya flinched away.
“Don’t mind him,” Emile called from within the boys’ room, his voice quiet but not angry. “He gets short when he needs to piss.”
Anya nodded, but didn’t reply, instead making her way down the rest of the stairs with considerable speed. Ewen hates me , she thought to herself, with a pit of unease growing in her stomach. He definitely hates me. She didn’t want to be caught on the stairs with him when he finished in the bathroom.
She stepped into the library, which was silent but dimly lit. Damian sat in one of the armchairs by the fire, reading a magazine. “Hello,” she said softly. “Am I... interrupting anything?”
Damian turned to her and shook his head, closing his magazine but keeping his place with a finger. “No, no. Come in and sit. Couldn’t sleep?”
Anya walked over to the other armchair and sat gingerly. “No, I’m just not tired.”
“Alright, then,” he said, and went back to his magazine.
After a moment of silence, she looked over at Damian and asked him what he was reading.
“Just this,” he said, holding up the magazine. It was one of the social ones that detailed the events going on, the ones with all of the celebrities. He looked back at her with a small smile. “It helps to keep up with what’s going on in town. Parties and things, that kind of nonsense.”
“Any recent ones?” she asked, if only to keep the conversation going. It seemed that Damian didn’t hate her—or, at the very least, if he did, he didn’t do so so openly.
“DEPRAC held one just last week,” Damian said, turning the page of his magazine. “Everyone who’s anyone was there.”
“Were you?” Anya asked, leaning towards him. He shied away, so she moved back. “Can I see your picture?”
He didn’t look at her. “No,” he said. “I wasn’t there. So, no, you can’t see my picture.”
She didn’t say anything for a bit. When she did, she was quieter. “When the advert said that this was a prestigious agency—that’s not strictly true, is it? You said you’d only been working for a year, and I’ve read the papers, but none of them mention you. It was a lie, wasn’t it?”
Damian looked at her now. Worry crossed his face, as did a flash of desperation. “Mild exaggeration. Lots of people make them. Like you, when you told me you had finished your fourth grade.” Anya flinched, frowning and biting her lip. “I called DEPRAC earlier.”
“I’m good enough, I promise,” Anya said, almost pleading. “I’m sorry. I just— with the way things ended with my last agency, I...”
Damian leaned closer, setting his magazine aside. “Look,” he said softly, no longer as tense, but quite firm nonetheless, “whatever happened then is in the past. What counts now is the future. I believe that you’re good enough to be here. I saw it with my own eyes.” He paused. “And trust me, Desmond & Co. may be a new establishment, and even a little bit unorthodox, but one day it will be one of the most successful agencies in London. And I want you to be a part of it.”
Anya continued to worry at her lip, but replied, “Thank you.” After a moment of hesitation, she continued. “T-there’s just... one other thing. You said I’m good enough for you, and you’ve seen what I can do, but...”
“But what?” he asked.
“How do I know you’re good enough for me?”
He smiled, and this time it was not slight at all. “Well, you’ll have to see that for yourself.”
~*~
The first case that Anya got to work on—in the field, and not just with the tedious research that Ewen insisted she stick with until she learned how things worked around the small agency—was for a Mrs. Hope on 62 Sheen Road. Ewen and Emile had decided to stay behind at Portland Row, prepping the research for the next case, so it was just Anya and Damian on the porch of Mrs. Hope’s house that evening.
The afternoon was misty and damp, quite cloudy, and a little chilly, even to Anya, who had on a pair of thick leggings, a skirt that came a few inches short of her knees, long socks, heavy boots, and a thick undershirt under her heavy jacket. In her pocket was a pair of gloves and a beanie, just in case. She was prepared for however cold the ghost haunting 62 Sheen Road might make things.
Beside her, Damian wore a dark pair of jeans, a pair of boots, a few layers for his top that was concluded with a thick sweater and his signature coat, and, like her, he had gloves and a beanie in his pocket. He had just knocked on Mrs. Hope’s front door, and they were both waiting for the woman to come and let them in. A second before, Anya had spotted a dark shape moving within the house, but other than that, things didn’t look good.
“Can you sense anything?” Damian asked, turning to glance at her. In the biting fall wind, his eyes were narrowed, but he was as calm and collected as ever.
Anya didn’t move, but tuned in to her other senses. Nothing, yet. She said as much to Damian, who nodded.
“Nothing much on this end, either, except the dim death glow of a mouse or vole in the yard.”
Anya didn’t say anything, thinking about the dark shape within the house.
Behind them, on the path to the porch, a woman approached. Anya turned as Damian did, but she didn’t move to greet the woman. Something rooted her to the spot and caused unease to pool in her stomach.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “I didn’t think you all would be on time.” She stayed about ten feet back from the porch, unmoving from that point. Damian went to go meet her. Anya let her other senses overwhelm her carefully, but still, there was nothing. Except—
“Where are your supervisors?” the woman asked sharply. The noise cut through Anya’s concentration, and it was broke, but the unease in her stomach grew nonetheless. Something was definitely amiss. The sun was not even set, and there was something ghost-related going on in the house already. Anya put her hand on her rapier, clenching the handle tightly.
“At Desmond & Co.,” Damian was explaining, calm as ever, with a gentle smile only reserved for clients, “we don’t use supervisors. The law states that a supervisor is only required if the agents are undergoing training. It’s true that some other agencies always use supervisors, yes, but that’s their own policies that require that. We’re fully qualified and independent, and so find it unnecessary.”
The woman narrowed her eyes at us, peering up at Anya pointedly, who still had her opposite hand gripping her rapier tightly. “Alright, then,” she said. “If you say so.”
Damian smiled placidly.
“Is there someone else at home?” Anya asked with uncertainty. Perhaps she had imagined the presence of a ghost. It was to be expected—it was her first case in a long while, her talents were bound to be sketchy and jumpy at the first case back. (But even she knew this to not be true.)
“No,” the woman said, her eyes widening slightly. She stepped a couple of feet back, further away from the house. “I have the only key, and no one else lived with me, except for my husband, bless his soul.”
Damian looked back over his shoulder at Anya, questions in his eyes. But Anya only nodded and, with great restraint, removed her hand from her rapier. Think of the client, she told herself. Keep them calm.
“Just a question, ma’am,” Anya said carefully. “I only wanted to make sure that no one else was inside, so we weren’t surprised if anyone was. Standard questions, you know.”
Damian nodded, smiling wider at the woman. “Yes, of course.”
The woman nodded, too, and hesitantly stepped closer, but only to hand Damian a folder before she hastily stepped back. “Those are the forms you sent,” the woman said.
“Thank you, uh,” Damian hesitated, raising his eyebrows at the woman.
“Mrs. Hope,” the woman said, “the one who called. My apologies, I must have gotten ahead of myself.”
“No need to apologize, Mrs. Hope,” Damian said, tucking the folder inside his coat.
“Alright, then,” Mrs. Hope said, looking out over the horizon, barely visible through the row of houses across the street. “It’s almost curfew, and I must be off.”
“Goodnight,” Damian said. “Get home safe, ma’am.” With a smile, he turned back to Anya, stepping quickly up to where she still stood. “What happened?” he asked quietly, leaned in close and with a hand on her forearm. He was gentle, but questioning nonetheless.
Anya glanced back through the windows in the front door, peering carefully into the darkness. “Something was inside the house.”
Damian followed her gaze, his hand tightening around Anya’s arm as he stepped closer to the door and slightly between her and the door as he tried to see what she had seen—what was now gone. “And? Did you hear anything?”
Anya shifted, her hand going back to the handle of her rapier. “I thought I did, and I was trying to listen for it, to focus, but…”
Damian looked back and gave her a small smile, gentle. “Mrs. Hope.”
“Yes,” Anya said, looking up at him.
“Why don’t you try again, now that she’s gone?”
“Alright,” she said, and tried to relax, taking a deep breath. Closing her eyes, she tuned in to her other senses, listening carefully. Biting her lip, she opened them again, to find Damian looking at her with something she couldn’t define. “A knocking. It’s faint, very faint, but it’s there.”
Nodding, Damian leaned over to grab one of the bags they’d left on the porch. In the bags were filings, chains, silver nets, flares of all kinds, and other tools that they—Desmond & Co.—found useful in finding, securing, and destroying ghosts, like crowbars, small shovels, and bags of tea. Anya, too, grabbed one of the bags, but left her rapier hand free to grab her weapon—just in case. In front of her, Damian unlocked, and then held open, Mrs. Hope’s front door, offering for her to go first.
Anya stepped through the door quickly, refusing to hesitate on the threshold. Damian followed in behind her, shut the door, and together they set their bags down, letting their respective talents take over.
Anya stiffened slightly, as Damian let out a whoosh of air beside her.
“Death glow, very bright, at the foot of the stairs,” he murmured. “I almost need my sunglasses.”
“The knocking is louder in here,” she whispered, closing her eyes and listening harder. “I can’t tell where it’s coming from, but I’m sure it will become stronger.”
“It’s colder, too—about ten degrees cooler than outside.”
Anya opened her eyes. Damian was standing at the foot of the stairs, now, looking up. He’d left his bag at the door. Anya followed him, careful to be quiet and keep her other senses open.
“Long, steep flight of stairs,” he said.
As Anya turned beside him, to look up the stairs, two sharp crashes came loud in her ears. Air moved violently against her face, and before she could react, something heavy, large, and horribly soft landed where she stood. The impact jarred her teeth. Anya fell away from Damian and the foot of the stairs, pulling her rapier from her belt with incredible speed. But the stairs were empty, and there was no ghost, and no body to be found.
Leaned up against the banister, Damian stared at her—he hadn’t heard or felt a thing. “You alright, Anya?” he asked.
Shaking, she slipped her rapier back into its sheath at her side. She nodded, trying not to look too afraid, or feel it, either. It was dangerous—fear—inside a haunted house. Ghosts fed off of fear.
As if to prove this, the knocking sound grew louder. Taking several deep breaths, Anya forced her body to relax. Gradually, the knocking sound grew quieter, but still it continued.
“Just an echo of Mr. Hope’s last moments,” she said. She wished Ewen had told her how Mrs. Hope’s husband had died, instead of just saying that he did, and did so gruesomely. Ewen’s dislike of her had reached new heights, it seemed.
“Well,” Damian said, turning back to their bags, “shall we make for the kitchen? The sun hasn’t set, so we ought to have some time for tea before we find ourselves a ghost.”
Anya took another deep breath, and, steeling herself, walked past the base of the stairs. She followed Damian into the kitchen and picked up one of their bags along the way.
Some tea would do her good, probably. Settle her nerves.
Hopefully.
~*~
The kitchen was through one of the only doors in the hallway on the first floor. It was a neat room with white walls and a warmer temperature than that of the hall. The knocking sound Anya had heard had all but faded, and she couldn’t hear the crashing from the stairs. Damian spotted no ghosts or other residues of death in the kitchen, either, but his eerie calm from in the hallway hadn’t changed. Anya, however, was still slightly tense.
For all of the excitement of being on a case and working with Desmond & Co—and without adult supervisors—Anya was still the slightest bit out of practice with good cases and how they went. All she’d ever really known—all that had ever really stuck—was the mountain of bad cases where her teammates had died or been ghost-locked. None of them had been any fault of her own, except the fact that she hadn’t been more insistent in her warnings of danger, but she still harbored the immense guilt over the ghost-locked and ghost-touched people she’d left behind each time she’d run away from an agency.
Good cases were few and far between for Anya. She only wanted to do her best, now, with Desmond & Co., but, with the help of Ewen’s still almost cruel comments over the past few months, and with the help of the nightmares she often had, her doubts were overwhelming her.
Tea will help, though , she hoped yet again.
Damian had prepared some before they’d left and kept it in a tall thermos. Now, he took two tea cups from Mrs. Hope’s cupboards and poured them both generous servings.
The tea was still warm as Anya brought the cup to her lips. At the table, between sips of tea, Damian laid out the forms Mrs. Hope had filled out, Ewen’s transcript of Mrs. Hope’s initial call, and Emile’s bit of research. They had also both been briefed on some other research Ewen had done—separately, much to Anya’s worry—and this would all help to make a hopefully smooth-going case.
After finishing most of her tea, Anya set aside her cup and went through the clips and pouches on her belt. She’d done so at Portland Row, too, but it never hurt to double-check. Someone had died from another agency the week before after forgetting to restock their magnesium flares. Damian did so as well after seeing Anya finish. She finished her tea as he did.
“Ewen briefed you on the previous owners, right?” Damian asked, sitting down at the small wooden table in the center of the kitchen. “Annabel Ward and her disappearance?”
Anya nodded, relieved. She had gotten the same information, then. “Yes, he did.”
“Good,” Damian said, flipping through Mrs. Hope’s filled out form. “Mrs. Hope said nothing of Ward in her calls or in her forms.”
“What did she say about her husband?”
Damian paused before reading over the statement aloud to her. “She said that he had just recently retired and moved his study upstairs for the view from the balcony up there. He’d talked about how chilly it became at night, but otherwise voiced no suspicions. About three months ago, he was up late one night in the study. Mrs. Hope had gone to bed, but had heard some large crashes, woken up, and gone to investigate.”
“Mr. Hope’s fall,” Anya said quietly. At her side, the thermometer clipped to her belt beeped. The sun had fallen over the horizon, now, and the temperature had dropped a few degrees. Pulling out her notebook and a pen, she jotted down the room and the temperature, as well as the time.
Damian nodded. “She assumed he’d gone to get a glass of water. Other than this, though, nothing much is useful. She talks about their previous house and their relationship, but, as far as I can tell, it’s just fluff. They didn’t have any issues with the house until after her husband had died, when she began to feel an ‘unwelcome presence’. Ewen said Mrs. Hope had seen a ‘moving shape’. Other than that, everything she’s said to us is useless.”
As Damian said this, Anya took the time to record the things she’d heard with her talents and the dark shape she’d seen when they’d first arrived. After she finished, she looked up. “She said they were happy?”
Damian nodded. “So, probably not murder or anything like that, but he could be coming back for any number of reasons—something left undone, or something he still wanted to do.”
“Anything else about the moving shape?” she asked.
Damian looked back at the papers in front of him, shifting them around until he came to the one he was looking for. “It was, and I quote, ‘a moving shape that appeared in the back bedroom and followed me out across the landing.’”
“Nothing else?”
“Nope,” Damian said, popping the ‘p’ sound. He leaned back, narrowing his eyes. “But what else can we expect? She’s an adult.”
“Did she feel any sensations?”
“Ewen didn’t tell you?”
Anya stilled. “Didn’t tell me what?”
With a muttered curse, Damian dragged his hands over his eyes in frustration. “Well, he could have failed to mention any number of things to you.” Glaring out towards nothing in particular, Damian continued. “Ewen said that Mrs. Hope called again, just before we were to come out here. She said that she had felt as if something was looking for her, that it knew she was there, but that it couldn’t find her. And,” he said, his gaze softening as he turned to look at Anya, “the thought of it finding her was more than she could bear.”
Anya cleared her throat, trying to remain calm, despite knowing that Ewen might have left some key information out of his briefing for her. “So a purpose? That suggests a Type Two.”
“Yes, so be on guard for that sort of thing.”
Anya nodded, looking away and biting her lip. Tears welled in her eyes. She was such a wimp, wasn’t she—crying over spilled milk, really; Ewen had probably just forgotten to mention the purpose thing. But even she knew that it was likely more than that. The boy hadn’t ceased to make comments towards Anya and ‘forget’ key information that he was supposed to tell her in the few months she’d been at Desmond & Co. Honestly, it would make her more angry than anything, except she was already guilty over the deaths and ghost-locks of her past, and she wasn’t absent of the doubts concerning her place at the small agency. Ewen’s comments only fueled these feelings. What if she missed something vital tonight, and it cost her her life, or, worse yet, Damian’s life?
With a growing panic, Anya continued to spiral in her thinking. At her side, the temperature on her thermometer dropped a few degrees. A few feet away, Damian watched her, questions in his gaze. After a moment of hesitation, he stood, and, cautiously, walked over to lean on the other side of the corner of counter where she stood. Resting his hands on either side of him, his fingers curling over the lip of the counter, he leaned closer to her, waiting for her to look him in the eye.
She stared, unseeing, out of the window across the Hopes’ front yard. Tears swam in her eyes, and she still worried her lip with her teeth.
“Anya,” Damian said. He leaned back slightly as she blinked and looked over at him. “You alright?” he asked.
She nodded and looked away, down at her feet. Damian tapped the toe of his boot up against hers, and she looked back up at him under the curtain of her pink bangs. Her green eyes shone.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said with a small sniff. She looked away again.
“It’s not nothing if it’s making you react this way,” he said quietly.
After a moment of hesitation, she shook her head. “I just—Ewen. He hates me, doesn’t he?”
Blinking, Damian thought it over. “I don’t think he does? I mean, he… he was hesitant towards bringing someone else into the agency, yes, and he is a bit… tetchy, but…”
“Why would he not tell me about the ghost’s purpose?” she asked, her shoulders creeping up closer to her ears. Her hair, usually falling past her shoulders, scrunched up under her chin.
“Maybe he forgot?”
“Like he’s forgotten to tell me when dinner is, or how you all like your tea, or where the flares are, or that Emile’s allergic to fresh fruit ?”
Damian’s mouth twisted down. “Okay, I see where you’re coming from. Maybe he doesn’t tell you the things he should, but he doesn’t hate you. I’m sure of it.”
“How can you be so sure, though?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “You just said that he could have ‘failed to mention’ a number of things.”
Sheepishly, Damian smiled. “I didn’t mean that—I was just frustrated.” His smile fell, though, and he sobered up. “But Ewen was the one who first openly suggested you being part of the agency. Plus, he does talk about how good you are at Listening. And he likes the way you wash the dishes. I know that he doesn’t hate you.”
Anya rolled her eyes, sniffing, and looked Damian in the eye. “Then why does he treat me like this?”
Damian didn’t have an answer. Or, well, he did , but it wasn’t his to tell. “You’ll… have to ask him about that,” he said, shrugging and smiling slightly but sadly.
In truth, Ewen was afraid and angry, but not at Anya.
It hadn’t been but two months since the death of their last employee, and Ewen was afraid—afraid that the same thing, a ghost touching Anya, and them not having enough adrenaline to shock her system, would happen. And Ewen was angry—angry that things were moving so quickly and that she was being shoved into their lives like nothing had happened—like no one had died—to bring her there.
But that wasn’t Damian’s story to tell, he felt. It was Ewen’s.
Anya shook her head and pushed her hair back from her face. From the pocket of her skirt, she grabbed a hairtie, and, sweeping her hair back into one hand, tied her hair up into a high ponytail. Damian watched her as she did this, making a mental note to talk to Ewen about his behavior when they got home.
As much as he understood his friend’s behavior, Damian didn’t condone it.
“Would he have forgotten to tell me anything else?” Anya asked, wiping her eyes of her still-unshed tears. At her side, the temperature rose again, just slightly. “Anything that could put us in danger?”
“No,” Damian said, his voice firm. “Ewen wouldn’t do that.”
Anya turned and put her tea cup into the sink behind her. “If you’re sure.” Then, she turned to the table, organizing the papers there once more and stacking them into a few piles. Damian hesitated only briefly before stepping over to help her.
“He wouldn’t put you in danger,” he said softly after a long moment. “I just want you to know that, Anya. He can be snarky and sometimes even mean, but… he does care.”
Anya didn’t respond. She finished stacking the papers and was putting them into the folder, sliding the yellow thing across the table without another word.
“Anya,” he said quietly.
She put her gloves on, but left her beanie in her pocket.
“We should get going,” she said, “don’t you think? Mr. Hope isn’t the only one at work here tonight—I definitely sense someone else.”
Damian gave her a long look, and reached over to gently grab her wrist. “Anya,” he said, pleading with her to look up at him.
She did, although her expression was open and plainly trying to keep it together. Damian hesitated, on the edge of something.
“I think that’s a good idea,” he said instead, letting her wrist go.