P. Stormcrow

“You know, when you said you’d handle it, this wasn’t what I thought you had in mind,” Damien muttered as he sat perched on a steel table, holding as still Ashe could while Olivia paced around him, kaleidoscope in hand.

Reed’s smirk was both infuriating and amusing. Fine. He deserved it. She had been right to chew him out for stepping into the line of fire on this one.

“Hm. Interesting.” Olivia chewed the bottom of her lip. Interesting didn’t tell him much, especially coming from her. She used the word in all sorts of ways, but usually in relation to a complex problem.

“What’s the verdict?” Reed asked before he could. 

“You found nothing else at the theater?”

They both shook their heads. The scent of magic was heavy close to the screen but faded to about the same around the seats. The digital pets continued their angry dance, but the red threads Reed had glimpsed earlier had dissolved quickly once the movie ended. 

“Interesting.”

There was that word again. Damien sucked in a breath and expelled it from his lungs. “How so?”

“Well, if it was an old theater, I would suggest maybe try the projection room and see if there was something by haunting the projector or even the film itself. But these days, they use digital files, especially the big office ones.”

“So what? Ghosts in wires?” He had meant for it to be a jest, but the stares the ladies leveled him with told him they had taken his words with all the seriousness in the world.

“Remember how Phillip could manipulate technology and electrocute people through keyboards?” Reed circled around the table he sat at and crossed her arms.

“You mean your first case?” Olivia joined her. 

The speculative glint in the younger girl’s eyes provoked a sense of unease in him. He was used to women’s stares, didn’t mind them, but this new level of objectification made him feel like a science experiment. And he wasn’t sure if that was far from the truth.

Reed checked her watch. “I’ll head back and check their projector room.”

“Good idea,” Jackson pushed himself off the table.

“No,” Reed stopped him with a palm to his chest. “You’re staying here where the wards are stronger. We can’t risk putting you in front of whatever this is now that you’re marked.”

“Agent Reed has a point. Besides, you’d be perfect for testing some of the new stuff I’ve been working on.” Olivia tried to give him puppy eyes, but she ruined the look with an undisguised, gleeful grin on her lips.

“Good. I’ll be back soon.” With that said, Reed gave a firm nodded and marched out of the room.

He stared after her, rendered speechless. Oh, he knew his partner was a force to be reckoned with and would one day be an equal peer once she got over her rookie days, but never did he expect it to be so fast or that she would take charge and boss him around. Nor did he see the ganging up on him with Olivia coming.

“If you burn a hole through my door, I’m going to be pissed,” Olivia warned as she stepped away to rummage through her cabinets. “That’s some crush you have on Agent Reed.”

“Huh?” Damien snapped out of it, his heart almost stopping at the casual comment. Found out? No! She was his partner, for fuck’s sake. He wasn’t sure if the unease he felt when Olivia returned was more from her inquisitive smirk or from the tray of various nineties paraphernalia she brought with her. 

“Oh, come on. You’re super protective of her and don’t think I haven’t noticed all those hugs and little touches.”

Fuck. Damien pushed his hair back, racking his brains on how to explain their gestures. They kept both of them steady, for reasons that had nothing to do with intimacy. 

“She’s my partner and still new to the division. Of course, I’m going to be protective,” he explained, opting to address the easier of the two accusations. He straightened and sniffed. Magic hung in the air, a mix of confusing scents emanating in particular from the tray. “Now, explain to me what you have there.” No, he wasn’t above using distraction to dodge the more complicated answers. Because he didn’t know if he had ones that would satisfy even the skeptic in himself.

“Well, first off, this fellow here…”

***

Finn considered asking Agent Koo to come along with her but in the end, decided against it. The fact she wasn’t a fan provided her with a certain immunity, and she had no intentions of putting herself in danger. This was just a routine check.

As she stepped outside, a blast of heat from the late afternoon sun made her cringe. She didn’t look forward to the oven that her car had become.

Her phone rang, and she picked up without a glance, half expecting it to be Jackson, ready to nag her about staying safe.

“Finley Reed, just how long are you going to drag this out?”

Shit. She had been so caught up in her new job, she had barely spared him a thought. To her surprise, the rage she expected to rise from hearing his voice didn’t come. Instead, she let out a long sigh. “Your lawyers haven’t sent over anything since the last revisions mine asked for.” Hell was going to freeze over before she allowed him to push all his debt on to her. “When your side is ready, they can contact my lawyer. Meanwhile, please stop calling me, especially while I am working.” Jackson would be proud of how level headed she sounded.

“Oh, you mean your ghost cases? What are you? Too busy chasing Casper around?” His voice turned nasty and she could picture that perfect subtle sneer his lips twisted into. 

Okay, now the rage was there. Of course Kaden would have found out she got transferred to The Strangers. And he had always been a judgemental asshole. Her only regret was that she didn’t see it earlier.

Well, if civil wouldn’t work…

“Look here, dickhead. Think about the kinds of things I’ve seen and people I’ve met in the last few months. Things that normal law doesn’t cover. Would you like to find out what I’ve learned since? Whether you believe it or not, do you really want to take the chance? Because a good ol’voodoo doll looks pretty good right about now—” the correct term was an effigy and she had no idea how to use one but he didn’t need to know that—”Oh and did I mention I found some of your old stuff mixed in with mine the other day?”

The silence that followed was like music to her ears.

“This isn’t over,” Kaden growled at last before he hung up.

Finn pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at the now darkened screen with a long sigh. No, it was far from over. 

The call soured her mood as she drove to the movie theater. A quick flash of her badge was all it took before the assistant manager came out to lead her to the projection room. Luckily, she had arrived between showings.

A look through her kaleidoscope showed the same wisps of red energies swirling around all the equipment involved in playing the film in abundance, from the computer storing the files to the projector, showing the visuals and the audio apparatus responsible for the sound. It almost convinced her that something was haunting this place, if not for Jackson’s flippant comment. Following her intuition, she asked for her escort to show her to the main server room.

The girl in the blue collared polo shirt rubbed her arm as she walked. “Is there anything else I can help you with… Ma’am?” 

About to say no, Finn studied the young one beside her and glimpsed her name tag. “Daisy, right?”

“How? Oh!” Daisy gave a nervous chuckle and pointed to her left side. “Of course. Yeah.”

Finn aimed for a friendly smile and wished that Jackson were here. He was better at this than her. “How long have you worked here?” 

“Um… almost a year now,” she replied in a small voice, her eyes wandering anywhere except meeting hers.

“And have you noticed anything strange while working here?” 

Daisy shrugged in that nonchalant way all teenagers had mastered. “We get some odd people sometimes, I guess.”

“Anyone noteworthy in the last week or so?”

At least she paused to consider this time, but at last, Daisy shook her head. “Been pretty quiet. Nothing big premiered except for that live action and it’s petered off since the first rush of fans.” She reached down and unlocked the door.

“This is where we store all the files and send them to the different theaters.”

“Do you have someone on hand to let me into the system?”

Daisy brightened. “Oh, I can do that for you. No problem.”

“Thanks.”

While Daisy got settled and logged into the computer, Finn studied everything with her equipment again. More of the same energies surrounded the machinery, but no more or less than in the other room. Puzzled by the lack of variation, she chewed her lips and returned to hover over Daisy’s shoulder, watching her work her magic on the keyboard. 

Although the program was a custom build, the interface with its various playlists looked familiar enough. “Wait.” Finn placed a hand on Daisy’s shoulder and pointed to the screen. “What’s this?” Appended to the filename of the actual movie were some garbled symbols she didn’t recognize. In fact, it surprised her that the entire system hadn’t thrown an error given the oddity.

Daisy shrugged. “I think the original files sent to us came that way. I don’t like messing around with renaming stuff.”

“I see.” Finn wanted to take a picture of the screen but dug into her messenger bag for a notebook and copied each symbol by hand. It could be nothing, but she wouldn’t ignore anything out of the ordinary. “Thank you.” When the girl bobbed her head, Finn patted her on the shoulder and turned to leave.

She just hoped that Olivia had come up with some stronger protection for Jackson, because he would need it if he was going to survive the night.