P. Stormcrow

He’s awake.

Her head pounded as she resisted the urge to run down the hospital hall. Still, she kept her pace brisk as she turned another corner until she arrived at his room.

The bed was empty. Her stomach lurched and panic welled within her as a thousand half-formed scenarios played out in her mind until a little side door opened and Agent Jackson emerged, buttoning his shirt.

Finn flushed and spun around, pressing her back against the wall. The sight shouldn’t have made her so flustered.

“Stop hovering and come on in.”

She inhaled, straightened her top, and walked in as if she hadn’t seen a thing. 

The smirk on his lips, however, told her he may have glimpsed her reaction. Somehow, his smugness reassured her far more than the fact that he was getting dressed, enough that she rolled her eyes and grinned too.

“I didn’t think they were letting you out this early,” she commented as she watched him gather his personal effects.

“Well, I see no reason to be lazing around here when I can do so in the comforts of my home.” He paused and turned to face her in full. “Since you’re here, drive me back?”

“Sure.” 

“Excellent!” Jackson threw one last thing into the gym bag and slung it across his body. “But first, let’s go grab a celebratory drink!”

“What?” Finn stared at him, so stunned that she didn’t even recover when he grabbed her arm and dragged her out of there.

Everything became a blur, and she drove on autopilot with him directing her until they ended up in a little Irish pub, almost hidden in the half-basement of an old building. They sat in front of beautiful lacquered wooden bar, amidst the dimly lit atmosphere with fiddling music playing overhead.

“Did you whammy me with some kind of magic?” Finn asked as she peered at the pint of beer—not Guinness—with suspicion. Because that was a thing that could happen. She had learned that the hard way over the last few days.

Jackson threw his head back and laughed. “No. I can smell it, but that doesn’t mean I can use it. Just a plain ol’ human here.”

“Huh.” Finn sampled the drink. It has fruity notes of apricot. Yummy.

“I read your report.” Jackson’s voice softened, and she had to lean to catch his words. “I’m sorry you had to deal with all that after.”

She turned to stare up at him. “You took a bullet for me. Sorta. For the case. To give me a clear shot. You’ve got nothing to apologize for.”

He chuckled again and raised his glass. “Still, you had to write all the reports. So this round is on me.”

She lifted her own to clink with him. “Well, I can’t say no to that.” Another swallow and she peered at the drink. “This is fantastic.”

“Dwarven beer. There’s not a single thing that can compare out there.”

“What?” She stared at him in shock.

“Kidding.” He winked and grinned.

Or is he? Are dwarves real? She rubbed her head, wondering how many much fiction was no longer fiction. Damn.

“You look like you have questions.” He made a come hither motion. “People from the agency hang here, and it’s a bit of a safe space. So go ahead, lay them on your partner.”

The din was loud enough to cover their conversation anyhow, as long as they didn’t raise their own volume. So, she blurted it out without thinking. “What’s your first name?”

Jackson’s eyes widened in surprise, and a chuckle escaped his lips. “It’s Damien.”

Damien Jackson. Damien Jackson. The feel of the name settled in her head. Of course it would be something like that. It suited him. After a second of silence, she realized he was still staring at her, so she grinned and held her hand out. “Pleased to meet you, Damien Jackson. I’m Finley Reed.”

Amusement danced in those cerulean depths as he accepted and shook it. “Finley outside of work?”

“Finn. Just Finn,” she replied.

“All right, Finn. What else?”

Who was your last partner? How did you recover so fast? What is real and what is just a story? How did you get started in The Aberrant Control Division? Jackson—Damien—was correct. She had a lot of questions. But some she would discover in time. Instead, she picked something a little closer to home.

“There are… some things that bothered me about the case.”

He tilted his head, but waited, giving her space to formulate the right words.

“I didn’t think Phillip would pull some classic villain line. But he screamed out in the end ‘you have no idea what you’ve done’—” she added air quotes—”like he was one.”

“Hm.” He took a long draw of his own beer. She hadn’t voiced her question, but she could see that he was trying to find the right words.

“To be honest, he’s not wrong. The department predates me for many years, but we still only know a little about the paranormal world. We try to consult with others—”

“Wait. Others?” she interrupted.

“You’ve already met a witch. Would it surprise you that druids, shamans, and other spiritual figures across other cultures exist?”

She sighed and slouched. “Fair enough.”

She could hear the laugh in Damien’s voice as he spoke next, but that fades to mode somberness. “Point is, there are times of emergency such as in Phillip’s case where understanding has to take a back seat. He wasn’t just a haunting. He had become a class five intelligent murderous haunting. Not only had he killed multiple people, but he had figured out a way to keep them from passing on so that he could use them as batteries to fuel his own revenge. And he was so powerful he could send messages to those outside of the boundaries of his anchor.”

“You mean Virginia?”

He nodded, his lips set into a thin line. “She told me he talked to her in her dreams.”

The implications threatened to overwhelm her, and it took all her willpower to suppress a shudder. “Well shit.” She drank again.

“Pretty much.” Damien sighed. “So when it gets to that point, it’s no longer about laying a lost soul to rest but about making sure he doesn’t murder another person. It became a race against time, because his powers were growing by the second.”

“Like a serial killer.”

“Yeah.”

She could follow the logic, but it didn’t answer her original question. “So we don’t know what—” She stopped herself from using the device’s actual name. “What those things do to him. It.”

His shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “It punches a whole through the veil and sucks him back through but yeah, your guess is as good as mine beyond that.”

Finn groaned. A regular bullet with a human was much simpler. Or was it? Because who knew what happens after death?

Well, becoming a ghost was one possibility.

She was going to get a headache.

“Hey.” Damien placed a hand on her shoulder, its heat a comforting warmth. “Have you seen Doctor Laurent yet?”

She shook her head. “Got an appointment with him tomorrow at nine though.”

“Talk to him about this and listen. He won’t have all the answers, but he’s great at helping you sort through the jumble in your mind.” Damien’s sympathetic smile was almost her undoing. “I’ve been there.”

Well, at least it was an excellent distraction from the other crumbling parts of her life. “I’ll try.”

“Good.” He resettled in his bar chair, wrapping his hands around the pint again.

“So, are we going to pay Mrs. Dawson a visit?” Finn asked after a while. Because she had so many questions about that mother-daughter pair, too.

He considered for a moment. “We should, but let them have some time first. They have a lot to sort through given you saw Emily there too.”

She shifted in her seat as she recalled the older witch’s commanding presence, such a different person from that suburban mom she was projecting. Or was it that different?

Her phone’s ringtone blared, interrupting her train of thought. Around her, conversation halted as everyone turned to her. The bartender, a towering gruff man with a braided beard that would do a Viking proud, came thudding towards them.

“Let’s take that outside, shall we?” Damien muttered and waved at the giant behind the counter.

“Go on, I’ll start you a tab.”

Puzzled, Finn stared up at her partner as he ushered her out before she recalled how he had made her bag the phones before they stormed the school. “Shit, was that place…?” She pointed over her shoulder as they stepped out into the early evening crisp air.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not as sensitive. Answer your phone.”

As sensitive as what? She dug into her pocket, pulled out the device and without looking at it, picked up the call.

“Finley Reed. Sign the damn papers.”

What the fuck? Didn’t she block Kaden’s new number already? Oh shit. She had forgotten, caught up in the case. She considered hanging up, but she couldn’t run forever, so she pressed the screen to her face and gave Damien a brief nod, walking three steps away.

“I said I wasn’t going to until the terms are fairer,” she replied through gritted teeth. In public, she tried not to explode, though what she wanted was to break into expletives.

“That’s bullshit. You’ve moved. You don’t need the car or the house.”

Finn counted to ten under her breath, then started from zero once more. 

“Finley. You better still be there.”

White fiery anger erupted in her head, blinding her vision. “Fuck off, you piece of shit. Don’t call me again.” She hung up and spun around, only to run into Damien.

He didn’t say a word, but the sudden compassion in his eyes was more than Finn could bear. Drink. She needed another. Several other ones. She hunched her shoulders and barreled past him, back into the pub. To her relief, nobody paid her any attention as she reentered and made a beeline straight for the seat she had vacated before. Without waiting for her partner, she downed the rest of her beer in one go.

She flagged the bartender down and pointed to the bottle of amber liquid behind him. “That. Please.”

The man was just returning with her drink when someone spoke up from next to her. “Finn?”

Damien must have caught up to her. She held up the shorter glass. “To our first solved case then!” With that, she downed the contents. 

Her partner pursed his lips into a thin line and glanced at the bartender. But before either could comment, she shook her now empty cup at larger man. “Another.” And when the Viking lifted one thick brow at her, she gave him a sarcastic smile and added, “please.”

Damien let out a long sigh and slipped back into his chair. He opened his mouth, then closed again.

“Asshole ex,” she offered without him asking. And she was holding it together until that call, too. Fuck it. Her partner might as well learn now what a hot mess she was in truth outside of the job.

“Ah.” 

That was it. She turned to find understanding fill his face. It didn’t matter. Understanding didn’t help fix her life. But she found the pressure on her chest easing just a little, and after a few slower sips, she realized she had been bracing for judgement. But it never came, not from him.

“Here. Give me your keys. I will drive you home after,” he offered instead.

That seemed smart. And for once, smart didn’t seem so bad. She dug into her pocket, fished the tangled mess out, and handed them over. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. That’s what partners are for.”

Huh. She supposed so.