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It is important to know that the universe does not care about you. You are just one body on one planet that orbits one star, one of the many bodies that orbits that star, and among stars, it is just one of billions in our galaxy, and just one of billions of galaxies in our universe. The universe, to say the least, has other things to worry about than such an unfathomably small fraction of a whole. When bad things happen to good people, it is useless to blame the universe, because the universe will never notice either sleight.
Magic, however, is watching with incredible curiosity. That’s not to say that magic makes things happen, though at the same time, what is result without cause? Magic instead makes shifty eyes at things, clears its throat at the right time, smiles at the worst times. Magic doesn’t steer, it nudges.
Elliot felt the nudging, and as far as she was concerned, magic could eat an entire dick. She stood out in the rain, which was to be expected this late into the year, but it had been clear moments before, and now it was as if the rain had always been there, would always be there, why wouldn’t it? It felt… well, wrong wasn’t the right word. It felt on purpose.
She kept moving forward, until she reached the King County Medical Building. Z waited there, holding an umbrella, looking for all the world like she was enjoying herself. And honestly, Elliot liked the rain. She liked how light reflected off the wet city streets, the gloominess, even the cold, just a little. But even in her short time in Seattle, she knew no one carried an umbrella, unless you were a tourist. Z made it look natural, and when Elliot looked closer, she noticed that Z was way too dry for a city where the rain came at you sideways.
“Morning!” Z said. She closed the umbrella, and Elliot saw the rain drops bouncing off of an unseen shield above her. Elliot breathed out a sharp breath through her nose. Z laughed and opened the door for her.
The reception area looked perfectly in place for 1996, though it looked like the purples and blue-greens of the past had been painted over to look more up to date. A woman sat behind the desk, tapping away at an indifferent computer.
“Can I help you?” The woman asked.
“We’re here to see someone,” Z said, not stopping. A guard stepped in front of her and pointed her back to reception.
“Name?”
“Meryl Kim,” Z said.
“Department.”
“Medical Examiner.”
“They don’t take visitors.”
“Hm,” Z said. “She’ll see us.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
Elliot noticed Z slowly reach into her pocket and retrieve a charm. It looked like a dark red glass marble wrapped in silver wires, as if to hold it to a necklace. Z held it gingerly, and Elliot could have sworn it started to glow.
“Yes,” Z said, looking the receptionist in the eye. “Yes, I do.”
The receptionist blinked and shook her head, and then fell into Z’s gaze. “Ah, yes, you do.”
“May we go in?” Z asked.
“You may go in. First elevator bank on the right.” The receptionist said.
The room, Elliot could see, had grown darker. She could see her breath, and she held herself to keep warm.
The security guard stepped aside and let Z and Elliot pass through. Z grabbed a couple of Visitor badges from the desk. She handed one to Elliot, found the elevators, and pushed the down button.
“What the hell was that?” Elliot hissed.
“Sometimes people need to be persuaded,” Z said simply.
“Are their minds melted? Did you melt their minds?”
“They’re fine,” Z said, returning to her sunny demeanor. “They won’t remember a thing.”
Elliot thought about this. Magic. Of course. She should be used to this by now.
The elevator opened to another boring reception area. This time, however, the desk was empty. Z pushed her way through a double door into a world of stainless steel and concrete and harsh light. Elliot squinted as she entered.
“Hello?” Z called out. There was some shuffling somewhere around the corners of the space, and then a head stuck out from behind a wall.
“Z!” It must have been Meryl. She was lynx, or maybe bobcat, Elliot could never tell the two apart. Something about tails? She wore her long headfur pulled back into a ponytail, the headfur between her tall tufted ears a cute pixie situation. She was a little shorter than Elliot, but her energy filled the room. She nearly sprinted across the floor, and Z caught her before she could tackle her in her blood spattered apron.
“Hey!” Z said, holding her back. “I also don’t want to look like a murder victim.”
“Oh, right, right, right!” Meryl pulled her apron off and jumped into Z’s arms. “Hi! You came to visit!”
“I did!” Z said, and kissed Meryl on the cheek. “I’m showing Elliot around.”
Meryl gasped, looking over at Elliot. “Oh my god, you’re Elliot!” She all but tackled Elliot, hugging her tight. “Are you going to join us? We’re all so excited!”
“Ha, thanks,” Elliot said. Meryl let her go and looked back over at Z. “Has she met everyone?”
“You’re the last,” Z said. “We lost our jobs, so we’re looking to see if anyone needs help.”
“Oh no! You didn’t tell me!”
“Ty knows. Did she not tell you?”
“No! What the hell?” Meryl put her hands on her hips. She turned back to Elliot. “But you’re here now! What can you do?”
“Uhm,” Elliot said. “Nothing yet? I’m really good at being not noticeable?”
Meryl raised an eyebrow. “That might actually be useful. Let me show you what I do.” She took Elliot and Z over to a box of gloves and fresh aprons. “Put these on. This job is messy sometimes.”
“I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t be messy,” Z said to Elliot.
“Hey, one of us has a medical degree here. I think I know how messy things should be.”
In the corner where Meryl had been working, a body lay on an examining table. Meryl has already started the autopsy, cutting a Y-shaped incision in the chest.
“You’re a coroner,” Elliot said.
“Medical examiner,” Meryl said. “There’s weird legal differences as to what that means. I think in Louisiana coroners get to have guns.”
“Meryl cuts the dead into chunks,” Z said.
“Yes, but before hand, I need to find out how they died. That’s the money maker.”
“You don’t know?” Elliot asked quietly.
“They bring people to me when they don’t know how they died.” Meryl wriggled her fingers in the air. “Turns out I have a knack for it.”
Meryl waved a hand, and as if a veil had been pulled away from the examining bay, a dozen candles appeared around them. The lights dropped, and the cold room grew colder. Meryl took Elliot’s hand, and then Z’s. “You ever done a spell before?” She asked Elliot.
“Uhm…” Elliot said, her eyes going wide.
Meryl gave her a soft smile. “Just focus on directing your energy to me.”
Elliot nodded.
Meryl took a deep breath. For a moment, she concentrated, metering her breathing, her eyes closed, her ears twitching just a little. When she opened her eyes, they glowed faintly, and she exhaled an electric fog.
Meryl fixed her eyes on the corpse, the former person in front of her, and said, “Hey! Hey guy! Hey buddy. What happened? How’d you yeet off this mortal coil?”
Elliot started to speak when the man sat up, or rather, an etherial form of him did. His body lay cold and stiff on the examiner’s table. The man looked around, his eyes wide, almost panicked. And then his shoulders slumped.
“Oh, this isn’t good, is it?” He said. More than anything, he sounded tired.
“Hi,” Meryl said. “I think it depends on what you believe.”
The man said nothing to this.
“Okay so,” Meryl said. “My name is Meryl Kim, I’m Assistant Medical Examiner for King County. We’re talking today because you died.”
“Yeah, it’s starting to seem like that,” The man said. “Who are they?”
“Colleagues,” Meryl said.
“Do medical examiners always hold hands and light candles?”
“It helps the spell work,” Meryl said.
“See, I thought the candles would have been for the smell,” The man said.
Meryl beamed. “Glad to see you’re in good spirits.”
“I guess it can’t be helped, I’m in some kind of spirit already.”
“What’s your name?” Meryl asked. “We’re going to be working together, so it’d be polite to have a name for you.”
“Joe Deacon,” the man said.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Deacon,” Meryl said. She motioned to the witches beside her. “This is Elliot and Zerina. We’ve been tasked with figuring out why you died.”
“Well that’s…” Mr. Deacon started. And then he stopped. “Huh. That’s funny.”
“You can’t remember,” Meryl said. “Happens all of the time.”
Mr. Deacon’s spirit turned and swung his legs over the edge of the examining table. He seemed to be testing his purchase on the ethereal plane. He looked down at the floor, and then sat up straight. Far enough, Elliot guessed.
“Surprising,” Mr. Deacon said. “I can remember everything that happened in my life. Everything.” He hesitated. “Oh god. Oh no.”
Meryl waited, still watching him with her sunny disposition. “Everything,” she said.
“When I was in high school, there was this girl, Jennifer Keeley. I adored her. I was going to marry her, I knew it. And so I went to ask her out. I got up to her, face to face, and I said, ‘Jennifer…’ I had this speech memorized. It was going to bring her to tears. ‘Jennifer, everyday I spend in your presence is like heaven.’ And then I farted. Just right there. And I panicked and ran away and we never spoke again.”
“I don’t know why you’d lock that one away,” Z said. “That story rules. You ever puke on anyone?”
Meryl elbowed her. “Think back, if you can, to your last memories. Is there anyone that would want to kill you?”
“Jennifer Keeley,” Z suggested.
Meryl rolled her eyes.
“You made a powerful enemy that day, Joseph! A powerful enemy!”
Meryl motioned to Z with her head, and silence surrounded Z. She kept talking, but Elliot couldn’t hear a thing she was saying.
“No enemies,” Mr. Deacon said. “At least, I think so. I was as kind to everyone as I could be.”
“Not your family?”
“I don’t have any.”
Meryl thought a moment. “When we found you, you had no identification, no distinguishing marks, nothing. Forgive me if this is rude, but who would miss you?”
“I have a job. Aw dang it.” Mr. Deacon frowned. “I’ve probably lost my job.”
“You’ve got a few bigger fish to fry than that, buddy,” Meryl said. Z laughed silently next to her, and then said something Elliot couldn’t hear.
“Lemuria,” Mr. Deacon said. “I’m a janitor, over at that new building in South Lake Union. Bunch of programmers, they’ve said. I must have died on the job.”
Meryl nodded. “Doesn’t explain why they took your clothes, but it might explain the heart attack.”
Mr. Deacon looked sad. “It wasn’t much of a life,” he said.
“Aww, buddy,” Meryl said. “We’re all trying our best, okay?”
Mr. Deacon nodded.
“I think we got everything we need,” Meryl said. “I hope the afterlife is good to you, Mr. Deacon.”
“Is the guy in the suit with you too?” Mr. Deacon asked.
Elliot looked to follow his gaze, but didn’t see anything.
“Hat or no hat?” Meryl asked.
“No hat?” Mr. Deacon said.
“Nice. Thanks, Mr. Deacon. Goodbye.”
And with that, the lights in the room returned, and Mr. Deacon’s spirit evaporated.
Meryl let Elliot and Z go. Suddenly, Z could speak again.
“Don’t you dare mute me again,” Z said. “I swom to jom.”
Meryl leaned in close to the body. “You see it?”
Elliot looked around. “Uhm…”
Z looked closer too. “Oh. Oh wow.”
“I don’t see anything,” Elliot said. “Except a dead guy.”
“Mr. Deacon,” Meryl corrected. “There are the faintest traces of a spell on this body.”
“Didn’t we just do a spell?” Elliot asked, leaning in a little closer.
Meryl slowly followed an unseen line up Mr. Deacon’s torso. “This isn’t our magic. It doesn’t feel like either of you.”
Z leaned closer to Meryl. “What does my magic feel like?”
Meryl rolled her eyes again. “Elliot’s is distinct. It’s anxious and timid and eager at the same time.”
Elliot didn’t know how to feel about that. But it wasn’t untrue.
“That’s not who I asked about,” Z said.
“Yours feels like a goblin that got into too much caffeine.”
Z laughed. Elliot did too, just a little.
“But this,” Meryl said. She handed them both gloves to put on. “Help me flip him over.”
Carefully, they rolled the corpse onto its stomach. And Elliot saw for the first time what they had been looking at.
She had seen it before, of course. It was like something that hid in the corners of her vision, but right in front of her. But now she could see them, lines, lines all over the body. They looked like the trail of a dot on an old, burnt out CRT screen. There was the glowing, thaumic void, running in even lines, parallel to each other, bending at neat angles, and all pointing to one solid dot on the back of his neck.
Meryl pushed them back. “This is dangerous. I’ve never seen this before.” She went to her desk and began to rummage through it, until she found a piece of chalk. She drew a circle around the examining table. “Keep that shit in there,” she said, and the chalk glowed in acknowledgement.
“There’s structure to that,” Z said.
“Like the nerd,” Elliot said.
“What is happening?” Meryl said softly to herself.
“Hey,” Z said. Elliot looked over. Z was on her phone. “Get to Meryl’s work as soon as you can. Yeah, it’s serious. Things are getting really weird.” She hung up. “Gimble’s coming.”
“Good,” Meryl said. “Something’s wrong.” She looked up at Elliot and smiled. “Magic!”
[g]