#mortemoppetere

This particular case seemed to be something in that vein. A client had gotten a package with what turned out to be a cursed artifact inside. They’d managed to remove the curse in question — they were a skilled spellcaster, and someone he hoped to keep in his back pocket as a potential contact if this case played out well — but they wanted to know where the package had come from. If someone was out to get them, they’d reasoned, it was better to know who that someone was. Emilio had been more than happy to take on the case, especially when the spellcaster offered to pay half up front. 

He’d done a bit of digging so far. A few shady business owners who’d been willing to let him take a look at their security cameras in exchange for favors later, a little old fashioned snooping, a couple of stops in the liquor store for mostly unrelated reasons, and here he was, standing outside an abandoned theater that seemed to be the residence of a courier who delivered shit like this. The job market in Wicked’s Rest was a strange one. Propping against the wall, he waited for the kid to appear. It didn’t take long. He’d been there a minute, maybe two when she slipped down a fire escape, package in hand. He approached her with a nod. “Maebelle Knot?” His accent curled uncertainly around the name. “Hoping to ask a few questions.”

— 

Maeby liked when the world was quiet. Hearing aids turned almost off, just the gentle hum of whatever music today felt like. It was a classical sort of day. All cellos and violins. Deep cascading rhythms, charging off and dancing along the melodies. The morning had thus far been a peaceful affair. One delivery, then a big wait until her next pickup. Maeby even had a chance to go home, stock up on road snacks and take a quick cat nap. 

(Lord knows she wasn't sleeping well at night anymore. What with all visions of great monsters, gnashing teeth, hard scales, and terrible things she was to become.) 

It was only on the return, going back from her restful little nest that some stranger broke the placid pleasantness. Maeby scowled at the words she couldn't quite hear, but the lips that looked an awful lot like they were saying their name. She did not know this man. He had not earned the right to call her by her full name. But the fact that he knew it at all wasn't a good one. (Unless he was saying something else entirely, perhaps Bay Hell Nod?) Maeby glanced sidelong towards the end of the alley, a quick consideration on how hard it would be to bolt past a guy like this. 

Why was he here? Who the hell was he? 

She opted for something else, feigned ignorance. “Sorry–” she pointed towards her ears and the matte plastic that stuck out even amongst the piercings and whatnot. “Don't know directions to any sable pond.” Maeby embodied a rather lackluster approximation of apologeticness and stepped to the side, gripping her longboard tighter as she made for the exit. 

—

She was younger than he thought she’d be. He hadn’t been able to get an exact age in his research — given the state of where she was living, he doubted she’d signed a lease for him to pull — but she looked around Nora or Wynne’s age, give or take a few years. She looked about ready to bolt, too, and Emilio really hoped she wouldn’t. There was no way in hell he’d be able to keep up with her. His bad leg flared up with a brief flash of pain at the mere thought of it, like the limb itself was warning him against the concept of anything more intense than a casual stride. If she ran, he’d have to come back another day, stake out the theater over and over and over again until she grew tired enough of his presence to speak to her. 

Luckily, she didn’t run right away. Instead, she pointed to her ear — he didn’t know what the plastic was — and said something that didn’t make sense. It took a moment for him to put two and two together, to connect the thing in her ear to the nonsensical response to his question. He thought of Jonas, who required Emilio to look directly at him and speak slowly, enunciating in ways that often felt unnatural with his accent. He could do that for this kid, too. The problem was, he got the feeling she was intentionally misunderstanding him.

Gritting his teeth, he stepped in front of her again, fishing his phone from his pocket and typing on the screen. Need to talk to you about something. He flipped it around so the words were facing her, expression neutral. “I can talk,” he looked her in the eyes as he would Jonas, spoke slowly and carefully, “or I can type. Typing will take longer. I have plenty of time. Something tells me you have less.”

—

Man, this would have been a wonderful time to turn into a great big man eating monster. Maeby itched at the back of her neck. Shifting uncomfortably as the rough patch there seemed to spread with her unease. More scales, but not enough to do anything with. Still it was kind of dumb to think like that, the kid chastised herself. The monster she was turning into was the one that ruined her life. It was the reason guys like this were probably looking for her. 

He didn't look like a cop. Maybe he was… the guy who owned the theater? Or worse, maybe her parents had somehow figured out where she was. Sent someone to drag her back. And she'd never get a cure before the worst happened. Before she turned into a monster and ate them all. 

Mr. Whoever was talking slowly. Over enunciating and pulling out his phone to type on. Great. Maeby’s scowl turned farther south. Souring more and more as it looked like this was a conversation she might actually have to have. A long sigh rolled from her chest and up and out. She carefully twisted the dial on her aid till the volume of the world matched something like ‘normal’ and the music all but faded away. “What.” Not exactly a question, not an invitation, either. If he had something to say, he better spit it out. 

—

She looked uncomfortable, and Emilio forced himself not to give a shit. If she was out here delivering cursed objects to people, he needed to get to the bottom of it for her sake as much as for the sake of the people who her deliveries were affecting. He knew firsthand what a cursed object could do to someone; memories of the cursed necklace that sent him to the roof of his apartment building gripped him by the throat, reminded him of where he might be now if Teddy hadn’t shown up to drag his drunk ass to their shitty houseboat. Shit like this was no joke. Uncomfortable or no, he needed to make her face it.

Her expression shifted, stormy look clear on her face. She seemed to recognize that Emilio wasn’t going anywhere, and that was good. That would save him a lot of time. He was a stubborn piece of shit, but his life was a lot easier when he didn’t have to be. He preferred being able to get things done without resorting to a shouting match outside an abandoned theater, especially when said shouting match was with a fucking kid. 

So it was a relief, really, when the kid reached up to the hunk of plastic in her ear and did something that seemed to make her hear him a little better. It was a relief when she demanded to know what he wanted. Even her clear irritation came as a relief in its familiarity; Emilio knew what to do with that far better than he did with most other emotions. He pocketed his phone and crossed his arms over his chest, tilting his head slightly with a nod. “You deliver things.” He tried to speak clearly, even though he thought whatever she’d done with her ears meant she could hear him now. He didn’t want to give her an excuse to drag this shit out. “Yes? You delivered one to a guy a few blocks from here. A, uh…” He struggled to find the word, fingers tapping against his arm uncertainly. “Box. With uh, dancers.” Hopefully, she’d know what he meant.

—

Mr. Sinclair was going to get a sternly worded letter at this rate. Some kind of big complaint. Possibly even a condemnation. The not-cop was asking about her deliveries, and that sent her mind from concerned to cranky. It was bad enough that the old vampire bossed her around and made her run halfway across the city just to turn around and go to the other side for these special deliveries, now Maeby had to deal with some angry customer or whatever. 

“Don't know what's in them. Not my job. I just put them where the package says. All complaints can go–” Quite suddenly the kid shifted in demeanor. Stopping short of outing her employer. Something she'd promised not to do. 

(Weirdly to Mr. Sinclair's strange assistant, not to him, though. Maeby didn't really understand why that was such a specific distinction he had, or why it was an…exceptionally well kept promise. But then again, she hardly understood half the shit going on since she got to town.) 

“Up your butt and around the corner.” She deflected, crossing her arms and taking up a post leaning against the brick wall behind her. A wrinkle tilted her nose up, like she'd caught a whiff of something rank. “Why do you even care?”

—

Now that was interesting. He caught it, the moment she almost gave away more than she meant to. The way her body stiffened, the way she faltered. It meant there was something more to tell, meant she wasn’t the top of the food chain here. Emilio wasn’t particularly surprised by that; he doubted a kid was the one running an operation sending out cursed objects to people, especially when the kid in question didn’t set off any ‘undead and probably a lot older than they look’ alarm bells in his head. She was hiding something; that meant there was something to hide.

He studied her for a moment, brows raised. She was standoffish, she clearly didn’t want to talk to him. He’d run into kids like her a thousand times in this town, knew most of her act probably was an act. He didn’t think she wanted to hurt anyone. In his experience, most kids didn’t. (On some level, he knew that was a biased way of thinking. There were kids who were shitty, kids who reveled in causing others pain, kids who wanted nothing more than to hurt people. But Emilio had a hard time seeing that, had a hard time accepting it. To him, kids were the only ones ever awarded the benefit of the doubt. Everyone else got the full dose of his paranoia.)

“It hurt somebody,” he commented, idly pulling out a pack of cigarettes and putting one in his mouth. He held it between his teeth as he continued. “The person who wound up with it. They were lucky — they knew how to fix it before it got bad. But the next person might not. Or the one after that, or the one after that. More stuff like this gets delivered, someone could end up real hurt. I don’t think you want that.” He lit the cigarette, taking a long drag. “Or maybe you do. But I don’t.”

—

Maeby bristled. Her heart picked up and she tried to look anywhere that wasn’t at this stranger. Her face felt hot, but it remained in that tight scowl. Trying to look unaffected, and failing quite spectacularly. The cool of the bricks behind her was the only thing grounding her well enough to keep tears from forming. She hated confrontation. The first sign of it usually meant shutting down in one way or another, but this was different. Much much more at stake than someone who potentially might maybe get hurt. 

Exactly what she worried about was true? So what? More people would get hurt, she reminded herself, if she didn’t get the cure. If she followed in the steps of every monster on the silver screen and destroyed whole towns, cities, states. Catastrophizing? Maybe. But Maeby was still a kid. Pretty sheltered one at that. With a mind that tended to take things literally. So when a scary witch tells you quite cryptically that ‘you will destroy everything you care about’ then a week later the first scale appears, well. Maeby believed it. 

“Not my fault.” She lied. Or at least, deflected again. “Maybe they ordered it like that. I’m just delivering them.” Maeby had to keep delivering them. She had to find out everything there was to know about Lamia, and how to stop being one before it got bad. “Why not go bother someone else. I don’t have to talk to you.” 

—

He’d rattled her. She was trying not to show it, but she wasn’t as skilled in keeping a straight face as he was in seeing past them. He took note of the way she leaned back, the way she looked shaken by the bluntness of his words. He’d meant to make her lose her cool, but he still felt a stab of guilt at the success. Emilio took no real pleasure in questioning kids like this, didn’t find it nearly as fun or rewarding as interrogating people a little older, who tended to deserve rougher handling. 

It’d be easier if she just told him what he needed to know. He wasn’t lying about his intentions; his client had managed to break the curse easily enough, but not everyone who got a delivery from this kid would be a powerful spellcaster. Sooner or later, someone was going to get hurt. Irreparably so. Emilio wanted to prevent that for the kid as much as he wanted to prevent it for the potential victim of the next curse she dropped off someplace. Hurting people wasn’t an easy thing to deal with, to stomach. It wasn’t the kind of thing most people came back from. Emilio would know better than most; he was one of the ones who never made it back.

“Maybe it’s not your fault,” he agreed with a shrug. “You didn’t know what it’d do. But I’m telling you now. You know now. So the next one you drop off, if it hurts somebody… Harder to say that’s not your fault. One after that, too. And after that.” He took another drag from the cigarette, turning his head away from her to exhale with a sigh. “You don’t have to talk to me,” he agreed. “But I’m going to find out what I need to know. Could find it out from you. Could find it out from someone else. Doesn’t matter much to me, but might make you feel better if you’re the one helping. Feels better than hurting, sometimes.”

—

“Yeah, well– some of them are good too.” She shot back. Face red hot and steaming. “Life-saving even.” The only other time Maeby had been approached after delivering something, it was pretty much the opposite of this. And only because the person was there when she dropped the package off. And they insisted she stay for its opening. 

Maeby didn't know why but the person was really compelling. Like they couldn't leave if they wanted to. Something about them just pulled her right inside. It all turned out okay, even if it was odd. The package had some great thing the woman had been looking for for ages and she said that she'd just die without it. So, life-saving. Right? Then she just gave Maeby a cookie and sent her on her way. Weird, but she never really thought about it much after. 

“You aren't going around and fucking up regular postman’s days. They deliver shit that could be good or bad or neutral.” The young courier defended her position. It wasn't exactly perfect and she knew that, but it was necessary if she didn't want things to get worse. “Why don't you go find the people sending the packages then huh?? They're the ones who—who– who” She fumbled, tripping over her words as her frustration grew. “who are actually doing the bad things, Mister Tough Guy??” 

—-

“You willing to roll the dice like that?” It was a genuine question. Was she okay with delivering packages that might hurt people if the tradeoff was packages that might help them? There was give and take with everything; Emilio knew that better than most. It was the same with what he did, sometimes. You hurt some people to help others. But how much control did she have? She seemed uncertain, seemed like maybe she didn’t know what was in those packages before she dropped them off. What was the ratio of ones that hurt versus ones that helped? Did she know? Did she want to?

He snorted at her defense, leveling her with a deadpan expression. “If I got a call about a postman’s package nearly killing someone then, yeah, I’d go fuck up their days. But I didn’t. I got a call about yours.” He couldn’t solve every goddamn problem in the world, and there were days when he hated himself for that. There were days when he read about ‘animal attacks’ in cemeteries and figured they were his fault, days when the weight of the world fit pretty snugly on top of his shoulders. He was learning to accept that he needed to do what he could, to save who he could save. This case was one someone had brought to him. This courier was standing in front of him. He could investigate this one. Maybe it’d make up for the ones he couldn’t.

“That’s what I’m trying to do, kid. How do you think this shit works? You start at the bottom, you work your way up. You’re on the bottom. I talk to you, figure out who you work for. Then I talk to them, figure out who paid them to have the package delivered. Then I go to that person, figure out why. If I could start at the top, I’d do it. But people like that are pretty goddamn good at hiding. Easier to find the people who are doing the bad things if the ones who don’t want bad things to happen will help you.”

—

It weighed on her. Of course it did. How could it not? As much as Maeby Knott wanted to pretend she was the aloof unaffected punk who could take the hard knocks and still be cool, she was more the sheepish kid who was scared shitless over all the sudden changes to her life. They had moved out for the first time, had to rig together every scrap to make some manner of home here in Wicked's Rest. 

Part of that was the job. 

Trickling information down from someone who, as the stranger put it, was at the top. Mr. Sinclair was smart and ancient. He was a fucking vampire for real real and he wasn't afraid to flex the strength that gave him even for small bouts of ire. Maeby shuddered to think of what it might look like if he got properly angry. 

Even if that wasn't a problem, Mr. Sinclair was the only hope for a cure. Maeby couldn't jeopardize that. Not even for someone trying to do the right thing. 

“Well, better figure all that out then, huh?” She barked, the heat rising behind her cheeks. She couldn't look at him anymore. Couldn't stand to be here, or anywhere that people's eyes could cast upon her. Whenever things got like this, it felt like the world could read her every thought. Felt like her heartbeat gave away every secret. Almost frantically, she turned to her board. Realizing then she'd been gripping it so tight her knuckles had gone white. Maeby dropped it to the ground and brushed past the man in the leather jacket. Escaping before the tears threatened to well, or god forbid, fall. 

—

It was clear he’d gotten to her, but it was just as clear that she wasn’t going to tell him what he needed to know. It would have been easier for the both of them if she would have, would have meant less trouble in the long run, but it was what it was. Maybe she was afraid of her boss, he reasoned; whoever was in charge of sending cursed objects out to people doubtlessly carried some power, and she was just a kid. Maybe whoever was over her head had her locked into something tight, and her fear clamped her jaw shut tighter than anything else could ever hope. 

Or maybe she believed what she was spouting. Emilio thought of himself at that age, defending the Cortez code so vehemently that anyone who questioned it for a second saw him spitting venom in their direction. It had taken a kid of his own for him to figure out the things he’d been taught hadn’t been entirely true, and even now he sometimes found himself defending the person he didn’t want to be anymore. 

Whatever the reason, though, it was clear that Maebelle Knott was a dead end, that Emilio would need to take the investigation in another direction if he ever hoped to solve it. If she’d been someone else, he might have pushed more. Someone a few years older might have found themselves shoved against the wall, might have felt a blade against their chest in a quiet warning. But this was a kid, and Emilio couldn’t bring himself to threaten her. Instead, he nodded as she dropped her board and brushed by him.

“Probably be seeing you around,” he called after her. This client wouldn’t be the only one who came to him with some kind of problem that led back to her. He was sure of that. “Hope I’m not telling you about someone one of your deliveries killed next time.”

—

Maeby’s mind was a staticky mess. Pushing out and in, in all directions. Fighting a losing war against morals and judgment and whatever the hell the greater good was in this situation. There was no other greater good for her, than stopping this tide of destruction that was heading her way. Who knows how fast. Could be tomorrow, could be a week from now. But whenever that reptilian curse reared its ugly scaly head, the greater good was in more danger than receiving mystery packages from a mildly magical source. 

As the young soon-to-be-monster sped off, away enough that she only barely caught the stranger’s final jab, but it was enough to seal the coffin on her most current breakdown. The guy already knew where she lived, so she didn’t have to go skate around the neighborhood before circling back to the one place she shouldn’t be disturbed. But maybe it helped get out some excess energy. Maybe it took their mind off of the obvious long enough for her to calm down. Maybe it was all an escape, in a way.