Hector Ghosh
It's hotter than Malfeas outside and the public library has air conditioning and a coffee shop and the higher up in the seven-level building they go the less bodies they encounter. This was mostly Hector's idea. He treats cities the way humans treat zoos. Sometimes he tells stories about San Jose or San Francisco or wherever he was out in California when he still lived with his parents and all his stories involve stupid things he saw other people doing.
The story he tells Tamsin after they've wandered upstairs to the Western History / Genealogy level has to do with how he got involved with Sept of the Cold Crescent last night.
"You remember Snails and Tails, right, from the powwow?" Maybe she doesn't but he doesn't give her rank and auspice while they're out in public. "I went over to the Broadway building yesterday to be all oh hey guys what's up and she grabbed me all my boyfriend's cousin's uncle Gerhart was shacked up with this one eye-having denture-wearing ex-con lady lives off of Colfax and we haven't seen him in like three weeks go with Jack and figure out what's going on."
He stops to slurp smoothie through its straw.
"Jack has a motorcycle. It was badass. We should get a motorcycle."
TamsinTamsin treats cities like they're cities. They're places to be. They're just normal places to live and there's nothing wrong with them. That's how she usually treats cities. Occasionally, just occasionally, she gets this look in her eyes as she watches people go on, and it's not melancholy or sad, but it is distant, and something beneath it seethes, but it hasn't boiled over because it's been kept in check by bewilderment. Still, that look. It's the look of a creature, not of a girl. And it was evident earlier tonight, with the moon singing the marrow up out of her bones, playing puppet mistress with her heart, sticking its painful fingers into her brain all la dee da hear me hear me, and so there's a low simmer that Tamsin is keeping in check today, the hardest of days.
She likes libraries though, and listens to Hector with a skeptical and then curious expression, hissing when he slurps on his drink " - keep it down, yo, we're not supposed to bring drinks into the liberry - " yeah, she says it like lie-berry.
"I guess we could. Be hard to sleep in, though, and also - here's the real shock, I know - to pay for. So what happened next, Heck?"
Hector GhoshHe scowls and waves his hand not at her, because that would probably piss her right off with the moon being what it is, but in the general area of the nebulous figures of authority around these here parts. Nobody's going to ask them to do anything. Maybe if it was just Tamsin, or if it was Hector three months ago. But normal people are a lot more reluctant to approach the young man now and if he were a rapscallion sort he would delight in the relative freedom he has compared to Before.
Eyes traipse over the spines of the books they pass by but he doesn't seem too terribly interested in what the 10th Mountain Division was up to or the lineage of the European settlers in this state.
"So we took the bike out to the old lady's place--" And here he pauses to remember how cool that ride was without effusing it to Tamsin, it being irrelevant to the story, but she's seen that look in his eyes before and heard that sigh like it's a shame he has to stick to the plot when so much other cool stuff happened. "--and went upstairs. And other than the fact that the hallway smelled like a cat box and there were all these gnarly stains on the carpet and the floorboards sounded like they were going to bomb out from under us any second we didn't get any real harsh vibes until we knocked on the door. These two ladies were talking and when they heard us they just shut up and nobody said anything for a while and then one of them started walking towards the door real slow.
"You know that icewater-in-your-guts feeling you get when you know there's Something on the other side of a door but the door's still shut so you're just stuck there for a long time trying not to imagine what it is?
"We knocked a second time and then the old lady opened the door and she had this glass eye in that didn't match her other eye and it looked like she just had a real cruddy pair of dentures in her mouth, made her jaw look all--"
He juts his out here as far as it'll go. The story isn't the same without visuals.
Tamsin"So gross. Were the dentures evil?" Tamsin says, warily, pulling on her toes and digging her heels into the floor, knees tucked up against her chest, chin resting on her knees. She sits up suddenly, "Were they controlling all the old ladies, making them all evil?"
Hector Ghosh"... that would explain a lot," he says, slow and wide-eyed, like he's staring back on the course of events and awed that this didn't occur to him before now.
He takes another quieter tug off his smoothie. Building suspense. Oh yes.
Tamsin"Yeah! And uh. Eviller than usual, I guess. I've never met one of those nice old grandma types. My grandma is mean. She once told me that if I stuffed my bra it'd just make it look like my chest needed wiggle lessons from my hips so not to bother."
Tamsin is content to wait for it. To wait for it. To wait for it. Respect, after all. Respect the story.
"So?" she prompts, eventually.
Hector GhoshWhen Hector tries not to laugh it comes out his sinuses. Now he laughs but just tries not to laugh too loud and ends up sounding like they're hunkered down in the AV club room getting ready for a LAN party. That back-of-the-throat croaky sort of laugh that announces NERD to anyone who overhears it.
"Wiggle lessons," he says.
So?
"Alright so she's standing in the door acting all weird and we're still feeling that something-isn't-right feeling. Jack decides to look across then and the old lady's giving us static, like yeah he ain't here he went to church tell him I want my good china back and there's someone sitting on the couch behind her but we can't see who it is. And I'm asking well where's the church and who's in there with you if Gerhart isn't here, you know, and then Jack says we ought to get out of there, only not really, he just wants them to think we're going so we can sneak in a window.
"The old lady turned around and started saying you see honey that's why God gave you these gifts to fight the ones who still hold onto these things and the girl's all no mama and it was like, alright, if Gerhart left nobody would really blame him, those two are kooks.
"And we snuck up the fire escape outside. Don't know how Jack managed to get up there without waking up the entire neighborhood. You seen this guy? He's shorter than me and he's built like a bulldog, you know, all solid and shit. And the apartment had an air conditioner in it, too, so we had to open the window and move that thing and then sneak in and they had no clue we were there. It was bad ass.
"And then he Spartan-kicked the door open and did one of those Rambo twist-their-head-so-their-neck-snaps moves and it turns out--" His voice drops to a whisper here. "--fangs, man. She had fangs."
Tamsin"Then what?" Tamsin is frowning. "Did it stay down? I mean, there was still the second one, right? Did you find any sign of Gerhart?"
Hector GhoshHis voice comes back up from its whisper to settle in respectable-library-volume territory.
"Well the younger one was sitting on the couch when we came in and didn't notice us until... I mean maybe she didn't even notice us then, I tore her throat out straightaway. Left her alive, though, she might know something. The old lady didn't go down easy, after Jack tried the Rambo thing he drop-kicked her face but she got up on her knees and started praying. I ended up putting her down. The one on the couch couldn't move because--"
He holds his free hand up to his throat and makes a vague grasping motion that is apparently meant to indicate the damage he'd done.
"--but then she started twitching like she was about to get up so Jack smacked her head on the floor and we called Snails and Tails. And then we found Gerhart under the bed. And in the bathroom. And the refrigerator. The stove. Might have been bits of him we found in the stove. Couldn't really tell what it was, it was all cooked."
Slurp.
TamsinTamsin blinks at that conclusion, just once. This long blink, like she is taking it in, committing it to memory, which is exactly what she is doing.
"How'd you know it was him, then? Did you find a head, or do some dna analysis, or ask a spirit to say what was up?"
Hector GhoshHis eyebrows lift for the duration of his slurping and turn into a scowl when he takes the straw out of his mouth.
"Can't even drink my drink without you wanting gross details," he says. The smoothie is all but gone though. He'll hold onto it until they pass by the coffee shop again and he can put it into a recycling bin. "What do you think I am, an amateur? I asked a freakin' Water spirit hanging around in the kitchen. You know those guys love to hear themselves talk. Besides, the arm we found under the bed had a tattoo on it that happened to match the tattoo on the arm of the dude in the photo we found in the apartment.
"Did I mention the Bible passages pasted up everywhere? There were like, three of those things just lying around. All highlighted and shit. Found a calendar, too, to some cheery-sounding place called Church of the Covenant. It was totally a ritual sacrifice to appease the blood gods. Case closed, yo." A beat. "Well no not really now we gotta figure out where Church of the Covenant is and go in and kill all of them, but the Case of the Missing Bone Gnawer Dude is closed."
Tamsin"Hey. Hey, I don't know I'd've trusted any spirit hanging around a place that foul. If ever a den needed cleansing," Tamsin says, but she's smiling when she says it, a reflexive and comfortable thing, though the smile fades into a grimace at the tattoo and the arm.
Instead, she's just frowning, then, "Yeah. I guess so. Hey, maybe the librarian will know where it is."
Hector Ghosh"Or," he says, "she'll call the cops and tell them some degenerate-looking kid rocked up to the reference desk and she thinks he might have the next Patty Hearst with him and they're asking about some culty-sounding church oh god please come quickly."
Tamsin"Dude. That name doesn't sound any more cult-y than, like, any church's name. Like the Church of Perpetual Hope or the Church of Good Immortality or the Church of the Lady of Forgiveness. C'mon. 'Sides, you don't look that degenerate. But I'll ask later on my own if it makes you feel better." Tamsin sticks out her tongue, to really punctuate her maturity level here, and also to do something silly and dispel the ghost of horrors which she is supposed to be fighting, which has taken her out've the world she wants to be a part of. She was a part of. (But she wasn't ever supposed to be. Changeling-girl.)
Hector GhoshYou don't look that degenerate.
He snorts but lets her finish.
"Okay, yeah, you go ask, I'm going to see if I can go to the bathroom without security hassling me. Let us reconvene at the place where the door is."
Tamsin"Just take a shower, and you'll look a lot less degenerate. Maybe do something with your hair, like cut it. I'll totally help."
Tamsin stretches then holds out a hand, as if she needs help up. Which she doesn't. But it's natural to do anyway. If he leaves her hanging, she's left hanging, and mutters about his lack of chivalry. Otherwise, Tam: she stretches, bones popping, heart suddenly hot with the desire to get the hell out of here, and heads off to find one of the librarians.
Librarians always know stuff, man. They always do.
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