Rai and Sao were unceremoniously tossed out after the whole ordeal. They sneaked a few photos and Rai managed to keep hold of the sheet of paper the Flemings had prepared with names of possible villains. But the bones were not to be moved. As if they were her own child's remains, Art would not let them go. There were immediate talks to call a doctor, a cleaner, an exorcist. The best they could find.

Red needed to lie down after returning to the house; Art and the children followed suit. Carion was left to lead the stragglers to the gate. His body seemed to sag, sinking, his strength fragmenting with each step.

“I’m sorry,” he said faintly.

“No, we should be the ones apologizing,” Sao said. “This must come as a shock. I’m sorry we don’t know more about this possible magic effect, but I assure you, the whole department will do what we can…”

He was rambling. He noted that Rai did not look very sorry.

Carion was silent until they reached the gate. Beside the stone pillar, in a small gravelled lot with canopies, were three cherry-colored vehicles, with shining, elegant shapes Sao had never seen in the city. “I’ll drive you to where you came in.”

“No, it’s fine,” Rai said, possibly thinking of his own wreck.

Carion unlocked the gate and remained standing there, not exactly watching them but simply unable to move.

“Art is...” he said, just as Sao was about to turn his back. “I know Art can be hard to talk to. But she cares for Kris and Karik… and Kuro, still, more than anybody. She just feels so strongly, it’s killing her. And her father. They’ve been through so much but this nightmare just keeps coming back. We’re not mad. I just want you to know, any trouble we caused you, any discomfort, I know it looks bad, we do live comfortably in terms of money so we may have no right to complain, but…”

“A mother would give all the money in the world for their child.”

Unlike Rai, Carion seemed to get it. “I never had much before I became part of this family. But I know I’ll never find anyone out there like Art. The kids, Red and Chiro too, I just want… I don’t want to lose them.” His yellow eyes lowered, but with a languishing intensity that did not know where or how to run. “I know it will be hard, and we need time but... of course, we want to know what happened. I'm sorry that little list of names is all we have to offer, I just can't imagine anyone who would want to hurt Kuro... or anyone of us like this. If it was someone we know..." He suddenly shut his eyes, drawing himself together. "Please, look into those names. It doesn’t matter how long it takes.”

“We will.” Sao thought. “As long as it takes. You’re a good father, Carion.”

Still lost in his thoughts, Carion thanked them, and receded back behind the gate and into the forest.

Rai was already halfway down the street. Sao was in no rush to catch up. Imprints of the house were still on his mind. The high walls, the rushing beams and windows full of snow and wonder. But you never knew what horrors waited outside, behind the nearest tree. To be a child, and not know…

They found Rai’s old heap of rust at the base of the forest behind the Fleming property, got in and slammed the door shut. Rai wound the heater up like he was reeling a fishing line. The vents crackled.

“Too loud?” Rai asked.

“A bit.”

“You turn it down.”

The car became antarctic. Sao gave up and curled into his seat sullenly. Ignoring him, Rai gave the Fleming’s list of names a once-over. He scowled.

“A throwaway.”

“Hm?”

Rai stuffed the paper into an alcove in the dashboard. “I know some of these names. Temple Clinic, International Ship and Road, Shadow Works. These are big names. They aren’t going to talk to us. The Flemings just handed us the list to get us out.”

Sao closed his eyes. “Did you hear Carion, though? He didn’t have to say any of that, but he did, and he asked for our help.”

He heard Rai huff.

“Can we at least try? For the dead child and his uncle? For Central HQ’s peace of mind?”

“HQ doesn’t care, there must be thousands of unsolved files just lying around. If anything the admins would probably love for us to take all the Flemings’ hints and let this one die.”

“I thought this was important to you?”

“Oh, I’m not giving up. Let’s say I’m testing a theory. If it does prove to be some magical interference, we’ll all learn something, something that could help with future curse cases. I was willing to look into it, because nobody else was.” Rai was frowning straight at him when Sao opened his eyes. “You’re interested for another reason.”

“Enlighten me.”

“You actually like the Flemings.”

Sao thought on this and snickered. “Am I back in the third grade? Kids kicking balls around me going Sao has a crush, I bet you li-ike-”

“Get a hold of yourself. What I mean is you, for whatever reason, understand or want to understand what they’re going through. Spouting up nice lines like ‘all the money can’t buy a kid back’, was it? And once you’re all smiling and nodding along you think they’d never lie to you. And all that deranged screaming’s all part of the perfect family life.”

Sao sighed. “Of course I didn’t enjoy that.”

“You know what I mean.” Rai jabbed a finger. “You hardly tried to talk back to them. They were clearly walling us off and you were just keeping your mouth shut. It’s like you started thinking you were part of the family. That’s risky. They’re suspects too.”

“You suggested we shouldn’t aggravate them.”

“You went right up to the most volatile thing in there and got him to shove you over.”

It took Sao a while to link the line of thought to Karik. “He’s not a thing. And he wasn’t particularly volatile, until his mother walked in.”

“I told you that once the mom revs up things would get bad. Everyone who was around them in the hospital knew, so I warned you. And you saw how she was for yourself.” Rai’s eyes narrowed. “Or did you?”

Sao wondered if he could just step out and walk to a bus stop. But the snowfall had begun again, misting the street with a cool but impenetrable grey. He breathed a long white cloud said, “Maybe it’s the place. The house, I mean. I didn’t expect to see anything resembling countryside in Central. I was caught up in my memories of the old school, things were just so similar… the white, the wood and the hills that seemed so far from everything...” He gazed up at it again. The house was completely out of sight. “Recollections of the tutors. Stern women getting upset over nothing, me being able to do nothing but wait it out.”

“Is that really something you thought as a kid?”

“You never met my tutors.”

“So it’s not like she reminded you of your own mother, or anything.”

“It absolutely wasn’t that. You know I’d put any thought of my actual family household out of my head soon as it came up. I could only wish--” Sao smiled. “Is that what you really thought?”

“I want to know this won’t trigger any… personal drama. I remember you talking about…” Rai waved the thought away. “Bad times before. Sensitive stuff.”

“Well, I’ve just clarified my stance on mothers, but if you’re bringing it up...”

“Oh, so we’re bringing my mom into this? She and Art are in leagues of their own. My mom’s never raised her voice as long as anyone’s known her. For her LF pals, that’s a long time.” Rai huffed, the sound too brutish to be called a laugh. “Though, neither Art nor Mom are going to be churning out winners. I could be dead in a ditch and that wouldn’t interrupt her winter nap.”

“Sorry…?” Sao murmured, unsure if he was apologizing or asking.

“So that’s a little compliment for your Flemings. At least Art really does care about her kids, or is putting a lot of effort into looking like she does. Don’t think the family was big on Chiro, though. It was like that for me too, my mom was...” Rai bit his tongue.

“Forget it. I’m not in the mood for psychoanalysis.”

“Me neither.” Rai gunned the car backward, and made a turn onto the main street. “Well, you did end up pulling down the bones, so that’s something.”

“Thanks, I think. I didn’t get much of a look at them before Art snapped them up. And the shadows were all over the place - my photos are all blurry.”

“I’m pretty sure I saw ribs. Almost human size.”

“The skull wasn’t human, though.” Sao grasped the overhead handle as the car bumped onto a bare highway. “Pig?”

“If we’re thinking of animals, that’s a decent start. Someone making a statement. Or part of a magic spell.”

“And what of the wax circle? How did you know?”

“I saw the edge and some of the runes while we were snooping. Blood sacrifice on a magic circle, I mean, you could get that even from the old movies. I’ll have to ask the chief to find someone who can read the runes, could take a while. In the meantime, the force, by some miracle, might pick up investigation. If not, we just hope nothing else happens to the family until we learn more.”

They shuttled on.

Once cars began to appear around them, and traffic lights began dotting the streets, Rai grew irritated. “Damn. Wish we could have taken some of the bones. Snuck out a small piece… you wouldn’t happen to have..?”

“No.” Sao smiled ruefully. “In my period of weakness, I didn’t think of it.”

“Damn,” Rai said again. “All those strings dangling off the roof and we didn’t even…”

The car’s axles jingled. Something was loose. The noise was a bit like bones in the wind. Sao turned up the radiator and wondered.

---

They were hunched at a crumb-filled table over chainstore coffee, chainstore tea and some dry sandwiches. It was mid afternoon and long past lunch, so they had their choice of seats and Sao found that they once again claimed a window view. In the reflections, laid over the dulled wintery streets, he saw the dancing blue flashes that were Rai’s fingers. Rai was looking up the contact information for the Fleming’s list on his phone.

Left to his own devices, Sao checked his brewing tea and bit into his fish fillet sandwich. His tooth met something hard with a mild crunch and he gingerly removed a fishbone. Feeling sorry for himself, he looked out the window again, into the grey gloom, and thought of the gazebo.

“Rai. About the bones. When I spoke to Karik, he was holding a string, some sort of odd necklace. The pieces were smaller than ribs or skulls, not really easy to identify, but now that I think back, they could have been bones.”

Rai looked up. “The kid had bones in the house?”

“I’m not sure, they could have been. And a similar sort of string that was used to tie the ones hidden in the gazebo roof, if brown twine is enough of a match...”

“Think back. Did the mother see him with this thing?”

“It’s hard to say. He was holding it in his hand when the shouting started. Art was upset, but I don’t think it was because of the thing he had, she didn’t look at it. Of course, if it really was just a toy, it could be something she already knew of and wouldn’t take notice.” Sao put down his sandwich. “No, I don’t think it was a toy. There were sharp edges. He cut himself while having that fit.”

“More blood, more bones.”

Like an incantation in itself. “But what do the bones mean? Could he have brought the curse into the house? Could he have unknowingly...”

Rai was back on his phone, tapping at a manic clip. “We don’t know what kind of spells might call for bones. Well, it would have to be a pretty crude one assuming blood and bones were needed. Military-trained spellcasters don’t want those kinds of biohazards, don’t need ‘em anymore, anyway. But ignoring the magic aspect, where would a kid like that get a string of bones?”

“From his own garden, it seems.”

“Or the person who put them in the garden.” Rai put his phone down with such an impact Sao wondered if it cracked. “The family was out to dinner when Chiro died,” Rai said, “but all we really know about Chiro’s scene was that there was blood. The investigators didn’t get to look for bones and wax, plus it snowed over a few more times… but Karik was probably in the house when Kuro wandered out. If the bones or wax happened to be set out then… and he picked up some of the spell components...”

“He could have witnessed something, if not someone.” Sao groaned. “Is it possible he made a spell go awry?”

“What was the spell supposed to do in the first place, then? And who was casting it?”

“Karik would be close as we get to knowing. As much as I feel for him and his… predicaments, he seems like he’d make a difficult interview.”

“You think Art will even let us get one question in?”

Bland, hopeless laughs from both. Rai banged his fist on the table. The man behind the steel sandwich counter gave their table a worried glance.

“When that’s put on the table, somehow the list doesn’t seem so bad.” Rai picked up the phone again, setting off the screen. The LED glow seemed somewhat dull in comparison to the organic light of Rai's hand, now that he was excited. “We’ll do it your way, for now. Give them the benefit of the doubt, and call up some people on their suspect list. There’s still the question of the blood.”

---

The fog sank slightly at sunset, plowed through by the after-work rush of buses and cars, it scattered without any time to recollect itself. Traffic lights twinkled festively on the bridge. There was a good deal of honking car horns from across the waterway, but after the day’s discord and haze, it all felt pleasantly clear. Everything in its place. And a comfortable distance away. Sao felt nothing but the cool curve of the park bench and the smell of frozen grass.

Rai returned from his safe, comfortable distance across the lawn and slammed himself down on the other end of the bench. “Fucking useless.”

“What did they say?”

“The clinic won’t give out any information to my level of clearance. By the time I hung up the woman was saying she hadn’t even heard of the Flemings.”

“They’re private for a reason.” Sao rested his head on the back of the bench. His calls to a boutique cleaning company and log warehouse had been somewhat more fruitful. He learned that neither company had done business with the Flemings in years after ‘professional disagreements’. Both businesses had continued to flourish. The question of blood had seemed a bit too silly to throw in.

“I’m gonna let the office soak in the poison overnight,” Rai said. “Pests should all be gone by morning. We can meet back there on Monday. So you can head home for today and work from there. Or start the weekend early. You got transcripts to work on?”

“Not many.” Sao rolled the thought about a bit before offering, “Perhaps I can help with the Fleming case.”

“Good. I’m going to try to catch the groundskeeping company before closing hours. And maybe dig around for the whereabouts of that gang they bunked with at the hospital. And whatever else I get to.”

“I see, we can meet up-”

“No, I need you to finish up the calls for me.”

Sao smiled while groaning, grating as he could. “Can I come gang hunting instead?”

“You won’t like it,” Rai snorted, sweeping out the (now crumpled) leaf of paper. “It’s call center for you. There aren’t too many left, though you can redial any of them if you think you can get something out of them. Be professional.”

Sao skimmed the sheet. Midway he caught one Dr. Cadmus’s name and smiled. There was a big red cross by it. Many of the names were marked in some sort of Rai-devised code.

“What’s this name with the star?”

“Not sure what to make of them yet.”

“So why the star…?”

“There's a reason I have nothing to say about them.”

Sao collapsed onto the cool iron armrest of the bench with a heaving sigh. He could feel Rai’s blistering gaze on him.

“I’m just kidding,” Sao said, and rose. “Anything to help. And as long as it takes.”

His face must have grown serious at that because Rai eased up. “If it takes us anywhere.”