“Where have you been?” Jill set the chili mocha before me and drew the privacy drapes as she sat down across from me. “We’ve only been hearing fragments of rumors and we were starting to get worried. You usually don’t stay away this long!”
It was nice to see I still had a private booth at the cafe. The black oversized witch hat waiting for me made me raise an eyebrow, though. “We? And who is ‘we’?”
“Officially, everyone that comes here!” She laughed. “That you need to care about? Me, my boss… and Roger.”
I froze in mid sip and glared at her over the rim of the mug. She only giggled in response. “You, because I hope we are still on friendly acquaintance terms. Your boss, because I give the cafe just enough of a notorious reputation to draw in tourists and hipsters with money to burn. That, I get. But Roger? Last I heard, he was busted for being a troll trying to pass off as a human.”
“Yea. That would be the night you fixed my bracelet. That boom we heard in the freezer? That was him tripping a trap meant for you.”
I choked on the coffee. “Wut. Trap? Huh?” I chugged the rest of the coffee and sent her for another mug. That’s not what I heard…
Jill returned quickly and made sure the privacy curtain was fully closed before picking up where she left off. “So you know the rumor there was a non-human in this cafe, right?” She winked. “It seems someone decided to set you up to be the non-human of note. A shape-changing spell was hidden under the table. I don’t know if it was timed to go off or not, but while you was helping me in the freezer, Roger slipped in your booth and tripped it! Oh Weaver! I wish you could have seen it! He was a big, stinky, TROLL!” She laughed deeply.
“The Envoy showed up, and guards, and a lot of paparazzi, and there were questions and investigations, and wouldn’t you know it, so many people asked me why I wasn’t wearing my bracelet anymore. Health codes you know. And oh my, what a mess. The cafe was shut down for a couple of days until we could get everything repaired. There was debris everywhere! Oh. That reminds me. Hang on, I have something for you.”
She slipped out again while the cafe owner stuck his head in the booth. “Oh, hey, Weaver! The last time I saw you, there was a troll! Is Jill telling you? Don’t worry about keeping her from duties, it’s pretty light right now in here, and you know she is assigned to be your personal server when you’re here. Have to keep my star attraction happy, you know. And how do you like the hat? The Envoy himself left it here for you. Said something about expectations and revelations.”
He ducked out when Jill ducked back in. In the mean time, I bitched at myself for being careless again and inspected the hat. It was a simple “witch” hat devoid of any hints, scents, or threads of workings. An unusually tall peak that was held up with flexible boning. Inside the tip of the hat was a paper. I pulled it out as Jill clunked something on the table.
“Your reputation spreads, as does expectations of you. You may never settle down into the City, but you have been working for it nonetheless. I am amused, however, that no matter who speaks of you, never mind if of good or ill, they all have the same word on their lips. Makes me wonder, if you do accept this hat, what are you going to pull out of it?
Ever your humble servant,
Envoy”
Cheeky shit.
Jill smiled as I grumbled my opinion about the Envoy and his gift. I tossed it to the side, with full intent of keeping it, and turned my attention to the little plastic baggie on the table. As I picked it up, she started to explain. “This was left behind when Roger the Troll was taken away. To everyone else, it looks like rubble. But to me… well… I thought it was interesting so I found all the pieces and bagged it up, just in case.”
Inside the baggie were little small fragments of a black material. They sparked when jostled against each other, and despite the plastic, I caught a scent of a familiar type of magic. Stonework. But the material looked like shattered metal.
Jill took the baggie from me. “Don’t recognize it? Neither did I at first, until I saw Roger after he had been restored to humanity and realized what was missing from him.” She moved the pieces around in the bag, creating more sparks from the material. She arranged it into a particular shape and slid the bag towards me. I recognized the remnants at once.
The black ring that Roger was wearing, the one that he had asked me about because he was unable to remove it, the one that smelled of stonework magic, was now shattered into tiny pieces. Each one looked like it could have been worked free from fresh asphalt. To Jill, however, each piece shone brilliantly.
“Why hold on to this for me? I’m sure the authorities would have very interested in any magics Roger had on him before his… accident.” I pocketed the baggie as I teased her for it.
“The authorities were looking for anything that could hang you, actually. Which reminds me…” An unusually serious look crossed her face. “There have been… rumors… my friend. Rumors about you that concern me.”
“Information for information. You tell me the rumor, I’ll tell you the truth.”
She asked of several things, most of which were simply the rumor mill working in overtime. Until…
“So you probably had no involvement in the slaughter at the orgy.” I coughed suddenly, and turned several shades of red while Jill looked at me oddly. “You couldn’t have. It was fully investigated. The Envoy put out an official response!”
“I may have to add some rum to this coffee. While I decide, do tell me the official narrative of this slaughter at this orgy.”
“An upper crust faction with upper crust members doing upper crust things. In this case, an orgy was held, with the usual trappings of decadence. Except a wild animal was held in a cage in the middle of the festivities. The animal, a tiger, was teased mercilessly by revelers when when they weren’t fucking each other’s brains out and somehow the cage holding it was released. The tiger, which had been deprived of food to better make it more exotic looking went on a rampage and killed each and every attendee of the orgy. No survivors. The tiger was tracked down and killed before anyone else was hurt.” She looked at me oddly while I cried true remorseful tears into my empty coffee mug. “But… you were never mentioned… you weren’t even in the City at the time!”
I didn’t look up at her. I stared into the empty mug and told her of how I woke up at the orgy, already drugged and in emotional shock from what was going on around me. The host had meant to trigger a normal human’s sympathetic reaction. Exposure to active sexual images provokes a sexual response. He didn’t know about the horrors I’ve been through. I wasn’t aroused, I had shut down. When I realized where I was, I became angry. But instead of just leaving, or causing some non-lethal form of destruction, I let my shadow self out to play. I knew I would kill them. And I wanted to. Because they were trying to use sexual response to leash me. And I wasn’t having any damn thing to do with that. I admitted to killing everyone there except for one person. The survivor was tasked to deliver a message for me. I guess I was too sloppy in my lashing out, and the message recipient decided to finish what I started.
Jill did not reply. She just sat quietly and read the visual clues my nervous handling of the empty coffee mug spoke. “Oh.” She stilled my hands with her own. “I am not afraid of you, if that is what you are worried about.” That made me laugh.
“Any other rumors?”
“You still game on playing?”
“There is one story left to confirm. But I’m not volunteering shit. If you want to know, you’ll have to nail it.”
She threw several wild and truly fanciful rumors at me. Some of them were actual scuttlebutt flying around, and some of them were things she made up on the spot.
“Okay. No more games. I already knew this involved you, but in an involuntary nature. And that’s only because I saw you with my own two eyes. But I didn’t know how to help you. By the time I found out how, the situation has already resolved itself.”
“You saw me? When?”
“When the entity possessed you and completely reworked your appearance. Weaver Ravencloaked walking around with white robes and a white featureless mask? Or have you forgotten, I know your heart no matter what form you take. Or what takes your form. I just don’t know how it happened, or how it ended.”
“A Demon. No particular name. Just a demon, and not of the Judaic nor Christian tradition, either. Let’s just say I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t know if I was lured there, or if the Demon saw opportunity and jumped on it. But I was possessed. Again!” I banged on the table in still unresolved frustration. “Ke used me as a means of getting into the City, to claim three souls that were due to kir. The three debtors had hidden in the City thinking ke couldn’t reach them there.”
“Three? The ‘serial killer’ only had two victims before being chased off by a group that was waiting to ambush him. The first was killed at the deceased’s birthday party. The second was killed at a ambush meant to trap the killer.”
“The first is right. The second probably wasn’t recognized as a murder. Because he surrendered to the Demon, the only wound incurred was a small papercut. The third was supposed to be killed on the third night, but the Demon was ambushed. I know for certain, the third soul was not collected. I suppose whoever died at the ambush was either one of the defenders, or the debtor killed after the Demon was chased off. Because all it would take is the Demon’s weapon to merely break the skin of the debtor for him to die.”
Jill reached across the table and pulled the cloak away from my chest slightly. “Well, I see only Weaver Flameheart now. So, how was it resolved?”
“There were those that allowed the Demon leeway to collect his debts, provided ke didn’t fuck with my daily life or interfere with me directly. An agreement was struck. Ke broke the agreement. Last I saw of the Demon, ke was being torn to pieces. And that’s that.”
I yawned. I was exhausted. The recent days have not been gentle with me, Waking, Dreaming, or otherwise. I needed deeper sleep. “I gotta bail, Jill. Would it be okay if I left the witch hat here? I’m curious what reactions it is going to incur.”
“Oh, absolutely! It’s become a tourist attraction! All the attention has paid for the cost of repairs several times over!”
“I know someone that would be interested in these pieces of Roger’s ring. And speaking of bullshit, I want to make it clear that no matter my role in Roger’s arrival, he has naught to do with me now. If he tries to set himself up as the Cafe Sage again, feel free to fuck with him as much as you want. Hell, I might even join in, and wear the damn hat.”
We both laughed. She pulled the empty mug towards her. “Good travels Witching Weaver. You’ll always have a seat and a coffee here waiting for you.” She left the booth with the mug, but left the privacy curtain closed. I closed my eyes and surrendered to deeper sleep, leaving all semblance of lucidity.