Chapter Text
2023
London, England
“What’s going on? Why am I here?” Crystal asked, glancing up at her tree before turning to the table where her ancestors sat.
“You called out to us when you were searching for your memories.” Iris responded, getting up from the head of the table and making her way around towards Crystal.
“But I already have my memories back.” Crystal frowned.
“You do now. And then some it seems.” Iris smiled, glancing to the others who grinned in response as though they were all in on some joke Crystal wasn’t getting.
“What does that mean?” Crystal focused on Iris.
“While you were asleep your mind went searching for your memories and that power of yours kicked in, we reached across time to find a path back to your memories and now you know how to get them fully back and a few more things that lay down that path.”
“Wait, wait. Are you saying that everything I remember doing after what? Going to America? Hasn’t actually happened and that was all some… vision of the future?” Crystal asked, glancing around.
“Of a potential future, yes. There is no ‘The Future’ just a whole lot of possibilities waiting to be explored.” Iris gestured towards the tree, “Like a tree branching out in different directions.”
Crystal thought for a moment, “So I could change it?”
“Of course. But keep in mind the more changes you make, the less clear the path you already know will become and that could mean you miss something important.”
“So I could fix some things but make others worse?”
Iris nodded, “Yes but that’s always the way with the future, just most of the time we’re not aware of what we might miss out on.”
“Well,” Crystal sighed, “I know what I might miss out on if I don’t at least try, so I have to.”
Iris nodded, moving away to take her seat at the table once more, “Well then, time to wake up and get to it then.”
Crystal woke up to the sounds of a whispered argument.
“Okay. I get it now. You’re jealous there’s someone else here.”
“Jealous?”
Crystal opened her eyes to look at the boys, “Fuck.”
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“So you’re saying that,” Charles started holding up fingers to tick things off, “you have some of your memories back but not all of them.”
“Yeah, I hadn’t eaten all of them before I ended up back here.”
Charles nodded and held up another finger, “That the rest of your memories are currently being held hostage by the demon who was possessing you.”
“He took them at some point while he was possessing me and held them over my head afterwards.”
“Right, also,” he added another finger, “that you know all this because while you were asleep you saw a vision of a potential future and you have a whole bunch of the women in your family living inside your head?”
“I’m not sure that living inside my head is right? I still don’t really understand how that works but the point is I have powers outside of the usual psychic stuff that I’m still trying to figure out.”
“Yes, I am sure you are very powerful which would explain how a demon was so easily able to overtake you.” Edwin remarked, glaring at her.
Crystal groaned and started pacing, “Jesus, I really don’t wanna tell you this cause I know how you’re gonna be about it especially right now but I guess I gotta. He didn’t exactly take over by force.”
“What does that mean?” asked Charles.
“So, when I met him I thought he was a normal guy and we fell in love and then when I realised I still thought we were in love so… I let him in.”
Both boys stared at her.
“You let him in?!” Edwin exclaimed after a moment.
“Yes, I know it was extremely dumb, believe me, I get that. So yeah, because he knows about my powers he wants back in and he will follow me around the world to try but I have no plans of letting him back in again and I know demons can’t repossess someone once they’ve been exorcised out of them.”
“How do you know so much about demons?” Edwin asked, narrowing his eyes at her.
“Because you taught me about it when I was worried about David maybe being able to repossess me.”
“Hold up. The horrifying, powerful demon that was possessing you is named David?”
“Yes, Charles. God, I wish there was an easier way to show you…” Crystal paused in her pacing, turning to look at them, “I could just show you with my powers.”
Edwin pulled back from her, going even more rigid in his posture. Charles stepped in slightly so he was more between Edwin and Crystal. It broke her heart seeing them treat her as a potential threat when she remembered them as some of her closest friends but they didn’t know her yet.
“Look, no offence but we don’t really know you so we’re not super into the idea of just letting you into our heads, yeah?” Charles said.
“It’s ok, we don’t have to do that,” she said, holding up her hands and backing away, hoping to put them more at ease, “we can just keep talking, yeah?”
“Certainly, though I am not sure what you could say that would convince us of this whole seeing the future malarkey.”
Crystal took a deep breath, she knew she couldn’t afford to get into a fight with Edwin since Charles was now wary of her too, “Look, I can tell you some of the things that I know are going to happen soon, like the ghost postman is gonna show up soon and one of the things he’ll have for the agency is a missing persons flyer for Becky Aspen, her case is the one we went to America for.”
“You very easily could have sent that flyer to us yourself.” Edwin replied.
“How would I even do that? Even if I hadn’t been possessed by a demon for the last couple of weeks and then been with you the whole time after that, I don’t even know how things get into the ghost post,” frustration bled through into her words despite her best efforts. She took another breath to calm herself, “Ok, besides the whole potential future events thing. There’s also the fact that we became friends in that time so I know a bit about you two that I wouldn’t know otherwise.”
“Like what?” asked Edwin.
“Like, I know you spent a bunch of decades in hell because of some kind of clerical error, according to what Charles told me,” Edwin turned to Charles, who looked back at him with wide eyes shaking his head and shrugging, “So I know you’re on the run from Death. Uhhh, I know that Charles really misses spaghetti…” she trailed off, realising that all the stuff she knew about Charles was:
- Extremely personal
- Mostly not stuff Edwin was aware of at this point
- Unlikely to win her any points in getting them to trust her if Charles just chose to deny a bunch of it which was pretty likely
“That’s all you know about me, that I miss spaghetti?” Charles had that smile on his face, the one that was far too guarded to be genuine.
“Anyone who has spent sufficient time looking into us would know these things given our own discussions of them, on their own they do not fully prove that you are indeed a friend.”
Crystal swiped her hands down her face groaning again, “Okay, there are other things I know but I didn’t wanna bring them up cause they’ll make you uncomfortable and some of it is stuff you don’t really know about each other but I have to give you something, so…”
“Don’t really know about each other? We have known each other for over 30 years and you claim to have learnt more about us in a possible future timeline than-”
“Charles uses mirrors to keep an eye on his parents,” Crystal blurted out, wincing then giving Charles an apologetic look, “Sorry Charles, in the future I saw you showed me because you wanted me to show me that you understood what it was like to have a home but not be able to get there,” she took another deep breath, “and you asked me to promise not to tell but I really need you to know this is really real. Because it's the only way I can try to help make things better.”
Edwin looked at Charles who was staring intently at Crystal, he glanced between them, “Charles? Is that true?”
Charles turned to Edwin, swallowing hard, “Yeah… yeah, it’s true mate.” he looked away.
“And you do this regularly?” Edwin continued to watch him.
“Usually when you’re out of the office, picking up books or ingredients.”
“So you only do this in the office?”
“Yeah, I mean before we had the office I would do it at wherever we were based but yeah.”
“Right,” Edwin looked down, frowning, then glanced up at where Crystal still stood watching them, “well either you’ve found a way to spy on us within our own office without us noticing or your claims are indeed legitimate. Should this missing persons flyer appear as you’ve stated-”
“Mail call!”
All three of them jumped, turning to the ghost postman as he strolled up to the desk and upturned his mail bag onto it, nodded at them and strode out through the wall.
Edwin leaned forward picking up the pile and starting to shuffle through it before pausing and plucking out a single sheet of paper dropping the others to the desk, “Charles,” he handed the paper across.
Charles took it looking over the details then up at Crystal then back to Edwin, “Looks like we’re going to America then?”
Edwin pulled out his notebook, “Presumably we already solved this case in the future you saw, so what details can you give us?”
Crystal nodded, moving forward to sit in the seat they usually reserved for clients, “It’s a witch named Esther who’s responsible for the kidnappings.”
“Plural? There are multiple missing children?”
“It’s only Becky who’s still alive, she’s just the latest victim. Esther made a deal with Lillith for immortality but not eternal youth so she kidnaps girls to feed them to her giant snake to keep her young.”
“Hang on, so we’re facing a witch who’s immortal and keeps a giant snake to feed little girls to?” asked Charles, looking concerned.
“I assume we snuck in and retrieved the girl secretly to avoid this immortal witch?” Edwin asked.
“That was the plan,” Crystal confirmed, “but Esther got back too quick, she caught us. I think she suspected something was up with our distraction from the beginning.”
“So we will need a different distraction then,” Edwin noted.
“No,” said Crystal looking at them intently, “No distractions this time, last time she cooked up multiple revenge plans after we got away and kept getting other people caught up and hurt in them. And as long as she’s around, she’s going to keep kidnapping little girls to feed to her snake, we need to stop her.”
“And how do you propose we stop an immortal witch?” Edwin asked.
“Well first I need to have a chat with Lillith,” Crystal started.
“The one who gave this witch immortality?” asked Charles.
“Yeah,” replied Crystal, “She’s the goddess of wronged women and Esther’s been using her gift to murder little girls to stay young, she’ll be pissed off enough to do something and powerful enough to do it. Then we need to kill Esther’s snake, it’s the source of her power as well as her youth, kill that and she’ll fall apart.”
“Alright, so how do we kill the snake?” asked Charles.
“Um, I’m not sure,” replied Crystal, “Last time you took care of it while Ni-” she cut off with a shuddering breath, “While we were busy. But when you showed up I think you had a sword instead of your usual cricket bat so I think you used that?”
“Well I’ve got a bunch of different swords around, I can show you them, see if you recognise it?”
“Sure,” Crystal nodded, “I’m not sure how accurately I’ll be able to pick it out, I was kind of… distracted at the time.”
“What was I doing during this time? Surely I would have researched what kind of weapon Charles should use before we asked him to fight it?”
“It wasn’t really a planned fight,” Crystal stated, “You know how I said Esther came up with a bunch of revenge plans?”
The boys nodded. “Well, in this one the plan was to kidnap both of you and she had created this machine that would torture a ghost and give her magical power in exchange for their pain. She chose to strap you into it and had kept Charles locked up in her kitchen.”
“Bloody hell, how’d she even get us?”
“She blew up the butcher shop, we were staying at the apartments above it,” she responded to their questioning look, “I didn’t really see what happened but-but I was told there was something about trapping you in a glass box with magic?”
“That sounds like a containment spell, I should be able to identify it, I will need to reference Minor Arcana volume 2, it has a number of details on various containment spells. It will be good to not only have a plan but to have a good idea of this witch’s arsenal going in. Do you have any details about the machine?”
“I saw it, it was horrible. It had iron straps to hold you in place and a bunch of things that looked like cow prods or something that she activated with magic, they made you turn all blue and blurry and…” Crystal trailed off lost in the memory.
“Hey,” Charles offered, “It’s alright, it hasn’t happened yet, yeah? And we’re gonna make sure it doesn’t.”
“Yeah,” Crystal gave him a small smile, “Umm, I’m pretty certain she didn’t actually have it when we first went there, Mick said she’d built an awful device when we went to him for supplies so I think it was new.”
“I take it this Mick character runs some sort of store in which to gather supplies for fighting witches?” Edwin asked.
“More of a general magical supplies store. It’s called Tragic Mick’s Magic Tricks, we got a few things for different cases there, he really knows his stuff, though I wouldn’t put much faith in any lucky charm he might offer.”
The boys glanced at each other, noticing the bitter tone she had ended on.
“Look, the people who are gonna know more about what Esther might have access to right now are in Port Townsend, and we’re gonna to need to catch three flights and a ferry to get there so I should probably go start arranging tickets for myself, which is gonna be a lot easier now that I know where my passport and all my credit cards are.”
‘Hold up a tick, ‘we are going to need to catch three flights and a ferry’? Why would we be travelling through mortal means?”
“Because I can’t mirror hop, Edwin, and I know you prefer it because it’s a lot faster but I need to be there to talk to Lillith so you’d have to wait for me either way, beside I think you secretly enjoyed talking my ear off about demon stuff while I couldn’t respond without looking crazy last time so I’m sure you’ll find something to do this time too.”
“Well it seems like you found the information useful at least.”
“I did, actually, thanks.”
Edwin didn’t seem to know what to do with being thanked for a lecture he didn’t recall providing so simply nodded and moved on, “Are there any topics you think might be useful beyond information on containment spells, witches, Lilith and devices on extracting power from ghosts?”
“There’s a pink book called Paranormal Parasites that we’ll need later, possibly one on forest elementals, I think it was called something like Interdimensional Creatures?” As she said this Charles moved over to the book shelves and started pulling things out.
“Interdimensional Creatures and Oddities?” he asked, holding up a book.
“That sounds right,” Crystal replied.
“We will be facing one of these?” Edwin asked, flipping through the book Charles had put in front of him.
“Probably not, it was another one of Esther’s revenge plans, if we stop her at the start we’ll probably never need to deal with that.”
“But it is wise to be prepared just in case,” Edwin said, nodding at her, “Anything else?”
“If you have anything on people seeing potential futures or people who seem psychic but have a different kind of power, I wouldn’t mind reading it for my own reasons. Especially if the power runs in the women of the family.”
“Hmmm, that would make it difficult to track unfortunately, since in much of the world family names are passed from the father not the mother, so it is much easier to lose track unless records were being deliberately kept on the family lines, does your mother also have this power?”
“I don’t think so, she’s never talked about it or shown any sign of being aware of the things I see.”
“If it skips generations it will be even more difficult to track. I will see what I have in our collection for you to browse but we may need to do more research on your family tree specifically at some point.”
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“Hey Charles?” Crystal approached him, while they waited for Edwin to select the books he wanted to bring with them.
“Yeah?”
“Sorry about telling Edwin about the whole mirror watching thing.”
“Nah, it’s alright. He’s probably not gonna be happy about it, probably gonna get a bit of a lecture about being careful about interfering with the living.”
“I don’t think he’s going to do that actually.” Crystal said looking over to the nook Edwin was standing in.
“No? He doesn’t like us messing about with the living, he says the living are-”
“Messy, I know. But he cares a lot about you and, I dunno, I think things would be easier for both of you if you talked about some of this difficult stuff more.”
Charles’ eyes narrowed, “What else did I tell you?”
“A few things,” she looked down, “about your dad,” Charles inhaled sharply and looked away, “Some of it, some of it came out into the open because of things that happened and while I can stop some of those things I don’t know if I can stop all of them, I don’t even know how… I don’t know how some of it started, to be able to stop it.”
“Well,” Charles gave her a small smile, “we’ll work on it together yeah?”
“Yeah.” Crystal smiled back.
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Crystal sat on the first of the three flights she knew she’d be taking, making notes in the notebook she’d picked up at the airport about everything she could remember happening in the potential timeline and how she thought various things connected. Edwin, when he had noticed this endeavour had nodded in approval, before whisking Charles away to the other end of the plane for a private conversation, so far the length of the plane was providing a bit more privacy than their games cupboard seemed to. To round out her notes she made a list of goals she wanted to achieve, even if she didn’t know how she was going to do it or if it was possible:
- Bury David, Get Memories back
- Stop Esther
- Make sure Edwin doesn’t piss off any cats
- Stop the Dandelion Sprites
- Stop the Devlin house loop
- Stop that woman from jumping off the lighthouse
- Stop the Night Nurse from taking Charles & Edwin
- Convince Maren to turn herself in?
- Stop Edwin being taken to Hell
- Save Niko
She had to try.