Midnight came and went. A call came in too, but did not pass by so easily.

Vrr vrr…

After searching by the light of his hands for the right dial, Rai cranked up his computer speakers, so he could enjoy the villainous cackling of the witch in Witch Part 8, instead of having to consider who might be calling him.

Vrr...

Was it Neon again? He was supposed to be in police custody too, along with half the gang, after all those threats. Bodily harm, family maulings, home destruction, culminating in good old death threats. As Sao predicted, messing with Arilla had certainly limited any friendship possibilities with Neon. Rai almost felt bad.

Vrr…

Neon had told him he’d never be safe. He’d better watch his back.

The memory of having his head split on the dirty downtown urinal was far worse than the the pang of any fleeting friendship. Those porcelain bowls had rounded edges, but they could still crack your skull wide open, so what was the point?

Vrr...

Unidentified number. Rai muted the movie and picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hello.”

And no more. What a fabulously productive call. Rai turned the volume back up. A tinny scream exploded from the speakers as the witch started to melt. The actress had some mighty lungs.

“Oh my god. Is everything okay?” the caller cried.

Down went the volume again. “Yes. Just having some friends over. Who is this?”

“It’s… it’s Carion Fleming. Is this...”

“Oh, Mr. Fleming. This is Rai.” He sounded stiff, even to himself. “What are you calling about?”

“You’re the supervisor. Can I speak to the other one... Sao? Is he there?”

“No. He’s out for the night. I can try to reach him, he’ll pick up if it’s-” The phone roared with the sound of a passing vehicle. “Where are you, Mr. Fleming? Are you home?”

“No… I… I’m out.”

Rai paused the movie and stared at the phone. Could Fleming have somehow found he was to be brought to the station the next day? Possible. Loose lipped cops let the Daily Papers know all about the case. And now they might have sent Carion Fleming on the run. “Is there something on your mind? We can talk face-to-face. Let me know where.”

“No, there’s no need for that.”

“Are you stuck somewhere? I can send someone to help you get home.”

“I can get back myself, but...”

“It’s midnight, Mr. Fleming. We still aren’t sure what’s behind the incidents your family have experienced, and it will be safer if you’re at home. With your wife and Karik.” His reasoning was flimsy, like a hasty cardboard sign, he could already feel it teetering. Rai wondered how Sao would have put it, to get Carion simpering at his feet. “Please. I know it’s not easy, but at a time like this, they need you.”

“I… you’re right.” Fleming heaved a sight that must have emptied his body, and Rai heard a car door shut. The line suddenly got quieter: Fleming was in his car. “I’m sorry about what happened at the hospital.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“It was inappropriate of me, especially in front of Karik… and Sao with a condition, you said? God, you think I would know better, with Art always warning me of her conditions.”

“Sao is absolutely fine. I’ll get him to call you tomorrow, if that will put your mind at ease. His condition’s pretty mild.” Rai thought. “It’s a skin thing.”

"That sounds serious enough. I shouldn’t have a laid a hand on him, or anyone. It was all my fault, I should have stopped Art, I should have said something to Red but I... I’m surprised you didn’t arrest me there and then.”

Rai laughed, though his throat felt dry and numb. “Arrest you? Your family’s been through enough.”

“Yes. But maybe I should have kept my hands to myself. I should have insisted you stay. Because after that, Kris… she was...” Fleming’s voice dissolved into a snuffling noise. “So many things I should have done differently. So many.”

“No point in worrying about the past,” Rai offered. “Just be there for the ones you have left.” That sounded wrong.

“Yeah. I will.” With a long sigh, Fleming’s voice pulled together, wavering only at the beginning of his next breath. “I… I hope this isn’t being too optimistic. What will you do when you catch the one behind it all?”

“Um… When we do...” Rai inspected his hands for answers. “We are obligated to give a fair trial. And our magic prosecution rules are… varied. For circumstances, and intention. But looking at the, um, resulting losses, this person will probably be looking at some decent jail time.”

“That’s all?”

“Well, jail won’t be pleasant if you know what I mean. Children were harmed, so the other prisoners won’t show any amnesty toward--” What was he saying?

“I see.” Fleming went silent for a minute. Rai didn’t move. The gored witch on the screen, her face peeling off in muddy chunks, also waited patiently. The way the makeup caked off her skin reminded him of Sao, and of Cadmus. No - Cadmus wasn’t patient.

“I’m sorry,” Fleming said.

“Sorry?” Rai repeated, his mind still on witches.

“For waking you up.”

“That’s alright. I don’t sleep.”

“Well then, you really should get some sleep.” Then a laugh. Rai had never heard Carion Fleming laugh before. “Sorry, parental reflex. I’m glad you were awake to talk. I have to go now. Let Sao know I called.”

“Alright.”

“And that I’m sorry.”

“Yup. I’ll tell him all three times. ” Rai tried to stir up a casual laugh in himself, but by the time he got started, Carion had hung up.

---

Daybreak. Or was it?

“Get dressed. I’m sending a car to get you.”

What a terrible dream.

“Are you there? You have maybe twenty minutes.”

Phone dangling from his fingers, Sao clung onto his dresser in an effort to stay upright, drifting in and out of a very appealing slumber. The slice of sky he could see through the curtains was a liminal silver, with no sun but no stars - early morning? He was afraid to look at the clock. The hour wouldn’t matter to Rai.

He tried anyway. “Rai, it’s 4 in the morning.”

“It’s five. Dress warm, put on a real coat.” Rai paused, as if waiting for confirmation. Then, with alarming softness he asked, “you worked on the emergency hotlines over winter, right?”

“Yeah. Yes.” Sao tried to unearth some socks. “A few years running.”

“Have you ever had to talk someone out of doing something stupid? I mean, can you tell when someone’s about to do something dangerous for themselves or others? Even if they don’t say what the plan is, can you tell what they’re thinking? What do you say? If they’re apologizing for everything, is that bad?”

“Um, I…” The strange line of questioning was making him doubt he was awake. “You mean, if they’re upset?”

“Standing-at-edge-of-a-building upset.”

“Of course I’ll try to comfort them as long as I’m on the line, but I can’t know where they are unless they tell me… plus, I’m no a psychologist, so if there's any risk at all, I pass on the call to a senior - if a caller is suicidal--”

“Never mind. I don’t think he killed himself.”

An icy jolt had him wide awake. “Who?”

“I told you when you picked up. Western station got a call about a body. It’s Carion Fleming.”

Sao ground his palm into his bare face. “What a terrible dream...”

“What was that?” His moment of mourning was over. Now Rai was just irritated. ”You have about ten minutes. Get dressed.”

---

At the center of a small enclosure formed by police tape and cars, Carion Fleming lay on his back, head tilted over the edge of the sidewalk, limbs askew except for his greying right hand which hung over his stomach, as if he were trying to preserve some modesty by covering what little he could of the carnage pooling from him.

A monstrous diagonal slash had gone through his shirt and transected his neck, chest with an angry crimson line, splayed wide with the angle at which he’d fallen. A second, only marginally shorter slash below it, had torn open his stomach. The sidewalk around him was black with frozen blood.

Sao tried not to look at the man’s face first, and by the end, still didn’t really want to. He made the briefest glance, and frowned, leaned for a closer look.

“He looks so calm,” Sao said. From his expression, Carion seemed to be in a contented sleep. Those eyes that had burned so harshly were now shut.

“Yeah. He was bleeding out. Maybe resigned himself to his fate.” Rai mumbled. “There’s kind of a trail, he made it a little way down the street. He didn’t die instantly.”

Sao made a face. A blackened strip of blood trailed from Carion to a few feet away, in front of a house that appeared to be abandoned, lawn overgrown with a creaking fence ready to collapse with the slightest touch. The lawn was far worse than any he'd seen at in Sparrows' neighborhood. By the dockside there seemed to be a constant wind, the movement of cranes and cargo - but here on the Western Highway, things were stagnant, something like smog hanging overhead.

The whole row of houses around Carion were in disrepair, though a few had cleaned, functional cars that looked newer than the houses. Of course, the local cars all paled in comparison to the cherry-red convertible parked at the end of the street, gleaming proudly, waiting for its owner to return it to the clean snow-covered lot of Fleming manor. It was also ringed with a thin layer of police tape.

“He came out here on his own,” Rai said. He was focusing so intently on his feet that Sao moved to inspect them too. “What are you looking at?”

“I don’t know.” Sao lifted his head, but Rai’s stayed down. “Something wrong?”

“He called the office.” Early morning traffic thundered across a nearby overpass. Wheels of a container truck bumping over a loose manhole sent shotgun blasts of sound through the streets. Rai's brow creased into itself. “I think he was already out of the house at the time. Don’t ask me why he called. He asked for you, but he just wanted to apologize for what happened at the hospital.”

“Oh...”

“And he asked what we would do with the killer once we caught him. Them. I don’t know.” Rai shoved his gloved hands into his pockets. “He didn’t sound too happy about it. I was wondering if he somehow found out he was under suspicion, and was making a run for it. But this is a hell of a place to run.”

“Did anyone living on this street recognize him?”

“It’s hard to get these people out of bed; nobody claimed to know him or see what happened. It happened a couple hours after midnight. Any noise tends to be trouble at that time, and half the houses on this street are abandoned.” Rai glowered at the houses in question. “I considered that maybe he was just… trying to get away from the stress of home, like Kris. But this place isn’t exactly easy to reach. It doesn’t seem like a good place to rest your mind, either.”

Another freighter boomed past. “No, it doesn’t.”

“He also got out of his car. Only thing I can imagine is that he saw something: someone in trouble? A lost kid? Maybe he tried to break up a fight and got the brut of it. None of that explains why he was here to begin with.”

“Robbery?”

“Nope. Whoever was around when this happened didn’t take anything. Wallet, watch, keys and phone were still on him. Ah. And a knife.”

“A knife?”

“Same kind they found at the place Chiro died. A knife from the Fleming kitchen, so presumably Carion bought it, and it ended up being the weapon that killed him. Seems his attacker was wearing gloves, not a surprise in this weather, but it doesn’t help. We can’t get any fingerprints. Whatever went down, if he was armed, he was expecting trouble.”

“Was he expecting this, though?” Sao folded his arms and wished he had worn a thicker coat after all. “He must have had a reason to come out here. I wouldn’t think he’d run away from his family especially after losing Kris. Perhaps Red or Art found out that he was performing some magic ritual that brought trouble to them…?”

“That would be a reason to run. And possibly to arm himself. But still… the Western Highway is no safe haven. Junkies and muggers under every bridge, and the gangs? Forget it.” Rai smiled blindly, but no dreamlike state would have been strong enough to withstand the otherworldly scream that came from behind the police barrier behind them.

Over the ringing in his ears, Sao heard the shrill cry dissolve into the sobs of a woman and the shouts of a man and the mindless wail of a child. He tried to take himself further away, listening to the freights thumped onto a ramp, the noise muffled with distance. But there was a quiet voice at his shoulder, so low and muddled he was hoping it wasn’t real, a police officer was telling him, “The family are here.”

---

The Fleming family, all three that remained, were being escorted to the ambulance, but threw off the officers, flung back the tape, and surged onto the scene. Red led the charge, radiating leonine rage. “What have you done?”

“Mr. Fleming--”

“What did you make him do? Why was he out here? What did you say to him?”

“Mr. Fleming,” Rai said in a voice like pulled wire, “We don’t know why he was here.”

“You people are useless. I was willing to work with you, even after you broke into my home, you wound us all up saying you’d help and that you care, and look what you’ve done. Do not touch me!”

Red’s voice hollowed the air, silencing even the wind.

“If you hadn’t interfered,” Red’s face was flushed. “If you hadn’t stuck your nose into this, Kris would still be alive. And now Carion, how do you think Art feels?”

Art was thrust forward as proof so suddenly that Karik lost his grip on her sleeve. For the first time, Art seemed unable to speak.

“I’m sorry,” Sao said, feebly trying to guard the view of her husband spread over the sidewalk behind them.

“Yeah…” Rai remained where he was. “Art, did you hear anything about Carion leaving the house last night? Did he act strange, get any weird calls? Any reason why he may--”

“How dare you!” Red swept back in, wildfire of beard and hair and billowing coat. “What are you insinuating about my daughter? What?” Spittle flew from his lips, hitting the pavement, bubbling his next words. “That’s your job! You promised to help, but you’ve only made this worse. This demon, this curse, this nightmare -- it’s going to kill us all! You’ve sentenced us to death! I should have known better than to trust you. The police are bad enough, and letting you creatures in, letting you run your mouth -- you know nothing about having a family. And you know nothing about magic, do you? You--” He coughed. “You know nothing--”

“Did you?” Rai asked.

Red’s face had gone a breathless shade of purple.

“Did you find out what Carion was? What he knew? Because for some reason, last night he thought to get away from the house. He knew something about the magical aspect of this case all along.”

Red’s eyes went wide. “Carion. Did he... was he the one...”

Art, recovering her voice, grasped her father’s arm and pressed her face close. “No! He only--!”

The great flaming head of Red Fleming turned on her, eyes and mouth gaping with sudden emptiness, the rest of his body following in such a violent arc that his arms went swinging, and Sao though he was going to pummel his daughter right in front of them. But instead, Red’s arms flew past without brushing so much as a hair. He lost his balance and pitched forward, crashing to the ground in a pile of convulsions.

The ambulance staff rushed to his side, but Art reached him first. Seeing his mother begin to summon her voice once again, Karik did not hesitate to begin screaming with a tearless but nevertheless despairing wail.

---

Sudden cardiac arrest, Cole the surgeon declared, and wheeled Red into the operating room. Unsure what to do with themselves, Rai, Sao, Art and Karik, and a good chunk of police presence remained at the doors until Red was wheeled back out. In an ironic twist of fate, Red Fleming was settled back in Central hospital Room 201, among two familiar neighbors. Of course, none of the men had ever met. The two had remained in a coma since Red’s last visit and Red himself was unconscious once again. The three beds lay peacefully in their docks.

Sao waved at Plato, who was checking the vitals of the patient to Red’s right-hand side. Plato shot a few nervous looks at him, more nervous looks at Art, and gripped the frame of the bed he was attending, ready to haul it out again if she gave the order. “Is this okay?” he asked.

Art ignored him. Karik, sensing he was needed, replied “it will be okay.” He may have simply been repeating what he heard. Plato smiled weakly at him.

“Give her some time,” Sao whispered. “Let’s wait downstairs.”

Rai grit his teeth. “Are you kidding? We can’t let those two out of our sight until they’re put under police protection.”

“Do not talk about me behind my back,” Art said.

They both jumped.

“Mrs. Fleming, we have some questions for you, before we leave.”

“I know.” Art paused. After a beat, Sao realized this was normally when another Fleming would be expected to cut in. But there were none. With a lowered look at Karik, Art sighed and said again, “I know.”

They were given a private meeting room at the end of a first-floor hall. Cadmus unlocked the door, giving Rai a sort of imperious look, perhaps because he was supposed to be suspended, or because of the other dozens of things that had gone wrong, but had the sense not to say anything. Art sniffed with distasted as soon as she stepped in. There were no windows and the walls smelled of stale soap.

Rai, Sao and Art seated themselves. Karik opted to sit in the corner with his back facing them.

“I’m sorry about everything, Mrs. Fleming,” Rai said.

“No, you’re not.”

“I guess it’s not something we can understand.” Rai folded his hands, to give them something to do. “But right now, we need to know as much as we can about what happened to Carion.”

“You saw what happened.”

“Yeah, and it was a lot worse than what happened to Chiro, Kuro and Kris, wasn’t it?” Rai clenched his hands together and dropped his tone. “It could have been an accident. Sure. But if not, it’s a bad sign. I take it you realize the three deaths before his weren’t accidents, right? The criminal has gotten more violent, or there might be someone else involved. But to find this person, we have to know what Carion was doing around the Western Highway.”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you ever been there before? Could Carion have known someone from there, are there any acquaintances of his you may have heard of, but aren’t too familiar with?”

“I don’t know. I told you, I don’t know!” Art’s voice rose and cracked in the same breath. “No. No, Carion wouldn’t. He was so private. And happy just being at home. He has no friends. He doesn’t keep secrets.”

Rai threw Sao a knowing look. “About the bones and the wax circle in your garden. We suspect--”

“I knew about those.”

“Mrs. Fleming, I know it must be a shock but...” Sao said.

“Do not patronize me.” At this, Karik whined curiously, and Art pulled him over before continuing. “We were married, do you think he really would have gotten away with that without me noticing? And the children’s hands? He would have been mincemeat, if I hadn’t been the one who asked him to do it.”

She turned her hands up on the tabletop, revealing a faded brown scar over the left palm. Rai’s look at Sao was now one of bafflement.

“The bones, the circle, and the blood -- they were all there because I told him to lay them out. I was the one who asked him to create a spell. We directed it with, bought the materials ourselves. The spell was to... save my father. I know, it’s illegal - animism, uncontrolled magic, animal sacrifice. But no person was harmed, animists aren’t military wizards, they can only run blessings. The children's blood came willingly. Carion made sure...”

“And the animal?”

“Well, of course we had to use one.” Art made a face. “It was just a pig. We bought it from the farm, a small one just outside the city, drove it home ourselves and… Carion wasn’t a monster, you know. He was ashamed of it all, terrified even, back in his hometown the villagers were one thing, but even his own people - his own family - they beat him for being too soft to slaughter the sacrificial pigs. It took him hours to muster the courage to do just one. His brothers were true barbarians, and if you’re going to start dragging Carion through the mud I’ll be expecting you to do something about those people first.” She inspected the cut on her hand again, wistful. “It was all a terrible experience for him, he said he’d never look back. It’s my fault that he was forced into this. But his ritual worked, I knew it would.”

“Red came home.”

“Yes. My father recovered, after all the doctors and nurses were saying he needed extensive surgery, all sorts of expensive medicines and implants and rehabilitation that would have consumed the rest of his life. He was already so careful, what sort of life would he have left? With Carion’s help, he was revitalized, but thanks to these awful accidents he…” She did not explore Red’s condition further. “Of course my father knew nothing of the spell. That’s why he hired those miserable exorcists. He doesn’t know much about Carion’s past, and I’d like to keep it that way. They always got on well...”

“And Chiro?”

“We didn’t involve him. Chiro was… impulsive. He was fond of Carion too, but I just knew in some fit of temper he’d use it against us. Blackmail, public humiliation. Even the children knew him well enough to keep quiet. So we conducted the incantation at night, out in the garden, after he was asleep.” Despite it all, Art’s voice carried no spite for her brother. “He knew nothing either. Until Chiro found the container of blood we used for the ritual. The day of his accident. Perhaps he tried to move it, or the intruder knocked it on him…”

“There was a container?”

“Yes. Carion moved it to the shed as soon as the groundskeepers notified us that they had found the body. Blood and equipment was being shifted all over the place, they didn’t notice. I should have reminded him to clean up earlier. I thought he was going to.”

“You and Carion talked about cleaning the yard the day that we visited,” Sao said.

“Yes. It dragged on. We got busy after my father came back from the hospital - then there was the snow - I should have just cleaned it myself.” Art ran her hands over her face, and her hair, which crackled with static. “He wasn’t lazy. Maybe he was afraid of facing the scene again - all that blood in the ritual, and again of Chiro. He was afraid of it all, Carion was desperate that nobody found out that he was using his magic again -- animal cruelty charges and seeing the scars on his children’s hands would have surely brought the wrong questions -- having his past dug up again would have killed him. Forget about prison, just a trial would have been the end. He was...” Art sighed. “We just hid the ritual for him, at first. But then things got worse. He couldn’t live with himself, thinking he was the reason Kuro and Kris were killed. I just need you to know. He was a good person.”

“So that’s why you hid it from the police. Sent us to check on a list of unrelated names.”

“Have you been listening?” Art cried. She grasped at her hair, dried bronze strands glinting like needles. “We gave you those names because you were asking about the deaths of my son and brother. That’s another thing entirely. Carion was only responsible for the spell in the garden.”

“Could that spell have backfired?”

“You don’t know?” Art’s natural look of disgust was warming up again. “All this lecturing, I explain all this to you, and you don’t even know what I’m talking about.”

“Carion’s ritual is a bit of a variation compared to animists we’ve spoken to,” Sao said, knowing full well that they had only spoken to one.

“Well, I don’t know what sort of magic those people are running, but animists only perform blessings. Carion was sure. Ambiguous as it sounds, I don’t think harming your own family is a blessing in any way. Carion was timid, but he knew what he was doing. He would never have performed the ritual if he wasn’t sure what it would do. Those… beasts hammered the habits into him.”

“Beasts…?”

“His brothers. Oh, you know all this. But did you hear how we met? I was spending some time at our property out west. I found Carion in hiding. Those people of his wanted him to slaughter this animal, just a small pig, and he took the animal and hid with it behind the house. The farms were looking for him, his family was after his head, all of them were disgusting people, even pigs were more civilized. He was so upset, to the point of tears, but it was all for the animal, never for himself. I saw that he was different and I knew I could trust him, because he was like us. Everyone was against him.” She smiled at that. “My father was surprised when we were engaged. He and my brother always joked that I would never fall for anyone, that I would never so much as feel sorry for another being. But Carion changed that. I worried, sometimes, but he never left my side. I always trusted him and he gave me no reason to think otherwise. So when he assured me that there was no way his blessing could have… taken Chiro and Kuro like that. Or Kris. Our babies. I...” She closed her eyes.

“He was sure? And you’re-”

“Of course I am. If he had thought magic would help in any way, if there were any possibility he could reverse it, he would have done anything. These are our children we’re talking about! He did so much for my father, he would have done all that a hundred times over if it was for our kids. And… I know you haven’t seen us at our best, so how would you know? But he loved all of them.”

She touched Karik’s hair gently. The child pulled himself up to look at them over the table, with the yellow eyes he’d inherited from his father. With a grimace, the look was uncanny, but then he broke into a smile. Sao tried to smile back.

“Mrs. Fleming, did Carion ever suggest that the deaths weren’t magic-related?” Rai asked.

“I don’t know. We didn’t speak much in the last week or so. I was mad, he was upset too, and my father - you saw him. I… may have assumed the spell had gone wrong, that it was Carion’s fault. He should have cleaned the circle and bones earlier, there must have been more he could do. I know now that he did the best he could, but I didn’t listen...” Art’s voice broke, and this time made no attempt to come back. “I should have listened. I did everything wrong, I never listen - and now everyone looks at us like we’re the killers. Like we deserved it.”

“Mrs. Fleming, there's a chance these were all unfortunate accidents,” Rai said, but his voice was lost to Art’s weeping.

“Nobody’s here for us now, how am I going to take care of Karik? By myself? Me? I can't do anything. There is already so much I should have done differently. Oh god, the money...”

“How is your financial situation..?”

“My father is stuck in bed again. He might be here forever. We can’t afford it. After last time, after the exorcism, we-- I-- I can’t-- ”

She inhaled sharply. Karik, the ever-present herald of his mother’s cries, began a high-pitched moan. His mouth open like a void, he was quivering, arms tucked into his coat. Something big was coming, and in this small room, they would be crushed. Rai knew it too. His back was pressed flat against the square casing of his chair, trying to distance himself from the coming storm. Sao’s eardrums were sore, as if he were already hit. His mind scrambled. Then his hands landed on his wallet.

“Mrs. Fleming,” Sao said, louder than he’d ever heard himself before. “I think I know someone you can talk to.”

The moans stopped. Art Fleming descended from her trance and stared at him. Sao pulled out a small neatly folded napkin. On it, Umbre’s phone number in his own perfect print.

“We spoke to Mr. Umbre as part of your list. I think he’s been hoping to hear from you.”

“Umbre. Uncle C, not our real uncle but he lived with us some time. I don’t know what he told you but, we… we had an argument, just a while ago. It was stupid, but everyone was tense...”

“He mentioned it. A misunderstanding about the will being exacted too early. But he told me sees you as one of his own children. And parents, for their children… give him a call if you think it’s needed.” Sao eyed Karik, who was smiling blissfully. He knew.

“Yes…”

A true smile crossed Art’s face. Perhaps it was an illusion after seeing her in nothing but frenzies of grief or rage, but Art Fleming had a luminous, almost youthful smile. It warmed the room.

No more was said. Rai got up to open the door, Sao following him. Art got up, taking Karik by the hand. As they passed into the waiting police escort outside, Karik stopped in front of Sao, and waved. Then he held out a fist.

Sao shook his head, but Karik thrust his his hand out again to insist. This time, there was a soft crackling as his fingers shifted. Sao held out his palm, and Karik dropped something into it. By the time Art turned to see, Karik was merely waving again.

“Smarter than they think he is,” Rai said once the Flemings had rounded the corner and out of sight.

“He is.”

“He likes you.” Rai said.

Sao inspected the foil-wrapped caramel in his hand, slightly mashed and dusted with lint, and smiled.