Chapter 113: Rest ti
"How is this possible?"
The Jester’s ga had ended, that much was certain. The castle’s chanisms had all run their course. A projection left behind after the fact made no sense.
Unless she wasn’t a projection.
Sa appearance, entirely different in nature.
A wraith, sothing like Rick, a person who had died under the weight of overwhelming emotion and refused the river’s passage, remaining in the world as a residue of what they’d felt, human grief hardened into sothing that qualified as a Demon.
"...Once the Alp’s Shadow business is handled, I’ll co back for this."
He exhaled quietly, turned back to the driver, offered a few words in response to whatever he’d just been saying, and thanked him genuinely for coming back despite everything.
The city appeared around them before long. He said goodbye at the curb and walked back to the guesthouse.
He was halfway down the hallway when he heard voices. He put his back to the wall and looked.
IFSA investigators, outside Ms. Club’s room. Two of them, voices deliberately low.
His hearing closed the gap.
"Anything?" Rough voice, slightly graveled.
"Nothing. She cleared the room before she left. Only thing remaining was a three of clubs, special material, not ordinary cardstock. So kind of symbol.
You know how these unofficial supernatural organizations love their playing card designations."
A pause.
"Beyond that, a substantial collection of... intimate goods. Every variety imaginable. Enough to stock a dedicated shop."
Raphael tilted his head and moved quietly to the stairwell above, looking down through the railing.
Two investigators ca out of the room and walked toward the stairs. One wore red gloves, formal clothes, a face with considerable mileage on it.
The other was younger, bright gold hair, a church dallion around his neck, an old double-breasted coat, manner much older than his face suggested.
The red-gloved one stroked the stubble at his jaw.
"Miguel, I’m still curious, why is a church deacon involved in an incident like this?
These situations usually go to Tribunal mbers.
And undercover work, deep infiltration, that doesn’t sound like it fits soone whose job is delivering sermons."
The one called Miguel shook his head, voice carrying the unhurried warmth particular to clergy.
"The Tribunal has no patience. They always reach for the extre solution, it works most of the ti, but not here. Infiltration requires patience they don’t have.
For the protection of the believers of all Gods, we do what is necessary. And I’m not an ordinary pastor.
When the situation calls for it, I know how to use a weapon to make my argunt."
The red-gloved investigator, apparently belonging to a denomination that had complicated feelings about the phrase allGods, let sothing slightly crooked into his expression.
"I still can’t understand why, during the Great lting Pot era, the major churches agreed to coexist and build a single multi-faith institution.
The internal conflicts have never stopped, the mutual attacks go on no matter how many tis they’re prohibited."
He shook his head.
"I’ve heard there’s trouble now too. The business about reopening the Harvest Goddess’s Black Truffle Monastery, that’s been causing an uproar among the faithful everywhere.
Everyone who follows that tradition knows what that place is. A monastery that was stained with blood during the age of tragedy."
Miguel smiled with the ease of soone who has made peace with institutional complexity, young face carrying old composure.
"A powerful external threat creates internal unity. The Northern and Southern Federations demonstrated that principle when they rged centuries ago, and again when they separated. History finds its own level."
His tone stayed mild.
"The past is the past. A decade and more has softened many things. I don’t know much about the Black Truffle Monastery specifically, but the arguing will probably run a while before anything is decided..."
Their voices faded as they descended the stairs.
Raphael stood in the silence they left behind.
"The church wants to reopen that monastery. Why?"
He hadn’t expected to collect anything about Evelyn’s past while standing in a guesthouse hallway. He held it for a mont.
"And that Miguel, going undercover sowhere, sowhere dangerous enough that the Tribunal passed it off entirely, and connected sohow to Ms. Club..."
He paused.
"Nothing to do with ."
He said it, and didn’t quite believe it even as it left his thoughts. He had the Prophet’s damned mark to thank for that, any situation where he had even a one-percent connection would find itself revised upward to ninety-nine.
"Damn it. I might already be tangled up in this. Fine. Sleep first."
He shook his head and let himself into the apartnt.
Quiet inside. Everything where it had been left, tidied.
"Elena?"
A mont passed. Then the familiar barefoot-on-hardwood pattern, pat pat pat, and the bedroom door opened a crack, and she confird it was him before coming the rest of the way out.
"Oh, good, if you’re back that ans those people outside are gone, right?"
She was still in her pajamas, sleep-soft around the edges, one hand attempting to do sothing about her hair.
"They didn’t co to question you?"
She shook her head.
"I was worried soone might rember
from the café. Just in case, I asked the landlady to adjust the records for this room, mark it vacant.
Those investigators seed to have other priorities. They ca through briefly, then went next door and stayed there a long ti. I didn’t dare go out, so I just... stayed in bed."
Raphael nodded and described what he’d overheard in the hallway, leaving certain details out.
"The person next door is likely involved in sothing serious. Those weren’t ordinary police, they were agents. If you see her again, tell , and keep your distance. She may be dangerous."
Elena, who had witnessed enough of what he was capable of to take this kind of guidance at face value, nodded without argunt. A small trace of regret crossed her face.
"That’s a sha. She was always pleasant. And I still haven’t returned her things..."
She glanced at the bag of novelty items in the corner of the sofa.
Raphael’s expression flattened.
"Throw it out this afternoon. Don’t keep it in the apartnt."
Elena nodded like a bird pecking grain, then asked with genuine curiosity:
"How did your errand go? Everything work out?"
Raphael opened his mouth and genuinely didn’t know where to start, his body offering its own opinion on the matter with every passing second.
"I’ll tell you tonight. Can I use your bed? Don’t wake , I don’t need lunch."
He didn’t wait to see her reaction. He went to the bathroom, and stood under the hot water until the last of the dried blood and forest mud went down the drain and the tension that had been sitting in his back since the night before finally, slowly, released.
Outside the door, Elena knocked. Her voice ca through muffled, but the urgency in it was perfectly audible.
"You... when you sleep, don’t go through my clothes! Don’t take anything! And don’t do anything strange!"
Raphael found himself genuinely smiling.
"Read fewer of those comics. Your imagination is doing all the work."
A strange silence from outside the door.
"...I don’t read those."
The muttering ca a little while later, very quiet.
---
What followed, Raphael rembered only in pieces.
He got out of the shower. The exhaustion that had been waiting patiently through the whole night finally stepped forward and took charge.
His head found the pillow and that was approximately the end of his conscious participation in events.
But the alertness that belonged to transcendents persisted underneath sleep, assembling ambient sounds into sothing like awareness without quite waking him.
Small footsteps entering the bedroom, moving carefully. The wardrobe opening.
Then: a sharp inhale, the kind that was clearly heading sowhere loud.
And then a very deliberate, very controlled stop, followed by a hiccup.
Ah. Right. He’d apparently been too tired to dress before sleeping. That would explain the reaction.
In the dark of half-sleep, Raphael felt sothing that was almost peace. This small witch was unreliable in a number of specific ways, but she was one of very few people he could share a space with and simply rest.
Partly because she genuinely couldn’t threaten him. Partly for reasons he didn’t examine closely.
The evening ca. The wakefulness that ca with the vampire’s constitution arrived with it, sharp, clean, total.
He sat up, stretched the sleep out of his limbs, the moonlight through the window catching the lines of his shoulders. He dressed and walked out.
Elena was on the couch with the radio, turning it in her hands, focused on sothing.
She looked up when she heard him.
"Oh, you’re up." She waved him over. "Co here, quick. There’s sothing on."
Reviews
All reviews (0)