#wickedpara

@kadavernagh

First day. Cece had to admit that she was a little nervous. She knew she could do the job. That part didn’t scare her. But a job was about a lot more than the work that she did. The irony of Cece working for a police department had not escaped her. Though she supposed working for the police was better than running from them. She had spoken to her new boss over the internet and hadn’t gotten a good read on her. If she couldn’t get along with Doctor Kavanagh, would she be able to stay here? She supposed she could find another job – move again if needed. But the whole point of this job was to settle down finally. She would get along with Doctor Kavanagh, or she would learn how to.

Cece was deadest on arriving early. First impressions and all that. Coffee Plus had a longer line than Cece had anticipated which put her a bit behind schedule. A quick glance at her watch told her that all hope was not lost to get there early. At the very least she would be on time, which was still better than being late. Or did being punctual infer that someone was neither early or late, but exactly on time? Not important. The important thing was that Cece was arriving at the office and still had… five minutes to spare. She was out of breath from practically jogging and she had barely taken even a sip of her coffee, but she was here. She paused outside, gave herself some time to unzip her jacket and straighten her blouse, try to blindly fix her hair and finally took her first long drink of the coffee she had carried for blocks.

The place was chilly, though not nearly as cold as it had been outside. It seemed no matter how many layers Cece had piled on herself she couldn’t stop the cold from getting her. Cece wasn’t convinced she would ever feel warm ever again. Her cheeks might be permanently blushed. As soon as she was in the lab she spotted who she assumed was Doctor Kavanagh.

@mor-beck-more-problems

Cece had shown up at the diner way too early. Force of habit, she supposed. She sat her in car, the music playing quietly just to avoid sitting in complete silence. She watched people as people showed up, one after the other. Cece would not say she was necessarily suspicious of Morgan, but she was paranoid by nature. As unlikely as it was, Cece had to at least consider the possibility that this was a former member of the coven who had somehow tracked her down already.

But assuming that Morgan was who she claimed to be, Cece had to admit she was intrigued. Even as part of a coven, it was just an unspoken agreement that they did not use their magic in public and didn’t tell anybody the truth of what they were. To the public eye, they were just a bunch of weird, gypsy nomads. Cece needed to figure out if Morgan was claiming she was a witch in the sense that she burned incense and lived by her monthly horoscopes or if she truly was a practicing spell caster. Cece wasn’t sure what she would do once she knew, but if there were other witches in White Crest, Cece would like to know who they were.

Inviting her to move in had not been the plan, but Cece couldn’t really help herself. All she could picture was herself at sixteen. Being taken in by the coven when her own adopted family no longer wanted her. The coven had ended badly for Cece but that didn’t mean they had to end badly for others. Monsters or no, they had still offered Cece a home when she had none. The least Cece could do was extend that same olive branch to someone else in need. Besides, it wasn’t like the move would be permanent. Just a temporary roommate until Morgan figured out a new living situation.

Once the arranged meeting time came closer, Cece collected her things from her car and got them a table in the diner. She flipped through the menu absent-mindedly, taking note that they only served breakfast before ordering a black coffee. The place smelled of grease and syrup which wasn’t entirely unappetizing. It just served as a reminder that Cece was starving. But she could wait until Morgan arrived to order food.

While Cece waited, she flipped through the folder she brought to show Morgan. They weren’t professional photos but they highlighted enough of the home to give her an idea of where she would be staying. Cece had found a nice, two story cabin near the woods passed the East End. It didn’t fall in any neighborhoods, but on a road that lead directly into town one way or towards Harris Island the other. There were three bedrooms, two up on the second floor and once that Cece was currently using as storage on the main floor. Her grand idea was to turn it into an office space. The yard in the back was fairly small, cut off by the forest that Cece may or may not own a portion of. When she had purchased the land, she had really only cared about the house. All she knew was that the forest went back about half a mile before running into the river behind it.

A witch hunter. Cece hadn’t come across one of those in what had felt like a lifetime. She remembered it vividly. Seven, eight years ago maybe? Cece was still fairly new to the coven, inexperienced with magic and wide eyed at the prospect of learning the coven’s ways. Of course, this was before she had learned the truth about those assholes. A witch hunter had crawled its way into one of the coven member’s lives. A nasty excuse for a human, the man seduced her, tricked her and then murdered her. He thought he had hit the jackpot. An entire group of witches? All to him. Cece was big enough to admit that she was terrified to discover her coven member’s body. To learn about the man planning to hunt them down. He came for them, big ego and even bigger balls. Cece watched as they teared the man from limb to limb. The sight should have been horrifying, if she wasn’t so fucking impressed.

A lot of time had passed since then. Cece hadn’t met any witch hunters, at least not any legitimate ones. But she wasn’t the same inexperienced little witch that she had been at seventeen. She had learned to be proactive. To think as a problem solver. To consider all options before rushing into things. Was this considered rushing into things? Cece didn’t think so. As she walked into the leather shop, Cece had a pretty clear sense of mind. This was a scouting mission. To size up the competition and figure out just how to deal with the problem at hand.

She made her way to the counter first thing. She clutched her purse close to her. In case things went south, she would need some magical backup. Blanche had passed along as much information as she could, and Cece was thankful for that. Blanche had warned her that she had a suspicion that the hunter was undead. Cece didn’t have much experience with zombies, Remmy being the most that Cece knew about them. But she was familiar with vampires. She had a simple plan. Get in, learn about the bitch and then deal with her accordingly. Of course, she was joking. She was here to observe only. Nothing else would be done until she knew more about this Miriam Flemming.

“Hey. I’m here to see your boss. She should be expecting me.” She smiled at the woman sitting at the front. The woman made her way to the back, assumingly to fetch Miriam. Cece passed the time by sampling the merchandise. She ran her hands along the leather fabrics as she passed by them. The leather jacket was a look, one that Cece could and had rocked for years. But she was from LA. Nothing but faux leather for her. She hadn’t planned on actually buying anything from the shop, but damn these leather jackets were hot. It wasn’t long before Miriam herself came strolling out into the shop. Cece gave a low whistle when she walked out, “That’s one hell of a jacket.” She pointed at the jacket the woman was wearing, “I’m assuming that it’s one of yours.” She made her way across the aisle and held her hand out to the woman, “Cece Bishop. Pleasure to meet you.”

Another day, another murder. Another murder, apparently another crime scene for Cece to investigate. Cece did not typically show up at the crime scenes. The Crime scene investigators usually took charge on the crime scenes and gathered any evidence before packing it up and shipping it to the lab for testing. But this had been a special case. A murder victim, in the middle of an alleyway in the Bend. A juicy case for sure, but hardly an uncommon one. People turned up dead in White Crest alarmingly often and the Bend was the just the right amount of sketchy that it attracted some of the odder cases they would come across. Cases weird and common enough that it was actually pretty normal to hear about the weird bodies that turned up there. Cece walked onto the scene with her evidence kit in tow.

They asked Cece out this time because of the substance near the bodies. Actually, bodies seemed to be a pretty loose term considering the state of the two bodies quarantined off by yellow caution tape. Both bodies were just discovered hours before, but by the time the police had arrived at the scene both bodies had completely decomposed. Cece bent down to get a better look at the two bodies abandoned near the dumpster. Their skin had greyed out and sat sagged and wrinkled, clinging to the skeleton. Cece pulled on gloves and poked around the bodies, grabbing pieces of flaked skin and shed hair off the ground and dropping it into evidence bags. The bodies were weird enough, but technically speaking that was Regan’s area of expertise. Cece was here for the syringes they had found on the scene.

They were near both of the victim’s bodies. Curiously, Cece pressed against the arms of victim’s arms to get a better view at their forearm. It was hard to tell due to the condition of their bodies, so she couldn’t tell if there were any needle marks in the arm. If this drug had anything to do with the state of the victim’s bodies, this case would be right up Cece’s alley. If she was being honest, she probably had a better chance of figuring this case out than most. The sudden decomposition implied magic, something that Regan was wildly ill prepared to conclude for herself in an autopsy. She bagged up the syringes and stood back up from the bodies.

Cece was not officially in charge of anybody on the CSI team, but given that she was pretty controlling by nature, giving orders tended to come naturally to the toxicologist. “I need you to get these to my lab right away.” She handed the bags off to one of the investigators and slung her evidence kit over her shoulder. “Hey, has anybody here seen anything?” she asked another investigator. Their knowledge was limited, but they did point her in the direction of a witness that stood standing on the outside of the tape. A tall man, though most people were tall in comparison to herself. He wore a suit and dark glasses and stood wildly out of place in the Bend. Taking a witnesses statement was definitely not her job or her responsibility. But she wanted to know what he knew. Since she couldn’t trust normal people to solve a case like this, she figured she could find out what she could. “Yo, you.” She pointed at a police officer, motioning him over with her hand. “Notepad and pen please.” She flashed him a smile when he complied, “Thanks officer.”

She made her way over to the tape to greet the man, a smile on her face. At least he was cute. “James Bond, such a pleasure.” She held her hand out to the man, “Cece Bishop. I work with the police. I heard you may have seen something regarding the case. Care to tell me about what you saw? Spare no detail.”