[Indigo]

Rexus sat in a booth in the diner and tried not to be too obvious about watching the door. He knew perfectly well that it wasn't working, but it gave him something to focus on.

Over the last few weeks he'd developed a certain feeling of being watched, almost everywhere he went, and he knew it to be absurd and irrational, and it would not go away. There was nothing much interesting about his appearance under normal circumstances; he was a man of average height and average build, a wearer of henleys and cuffed jeans and the same crumpled black windbreaker in basically any weather, with a weird nick in the bridge of his nose that you could only see from a certain angle. But...some things had happened recently. They'd put a thin white streak in his shoulder-length black hair, and a haunted look on his face, at least when he looked in the mirror. He had a sense that these things might give someone a reason to look at him.

Or possibly it was something else. He hoped it wasn't something else, which was one of the reasons he was here.

The door opened and admitted a hatchet-faced man, tall and lean in a way that somehow reminded Rexus of a hunting dog, and with a pale pink ponytail that pinged something at the back of his brain. There was no time to analyze what before the man turned and met his eyes.

He'd thought he was sitting still, but now he was frozen, ancient terror seeping into his veins without doing his mind the courtesy of telling him what it was about. A waiter seemed to be trying to get the man's attention to no avail, which didn't help matters; Rexus would very much have liked to convince himself that this stranger wasn't looking at him at all but was peering at some detail in the photos on the wall behind him, or something along those lines, but there was no chance of that now. For a moment he smelled blood.

Then another man entered behind the first, and the first one turned and touched the second one's shoulder, bent to whisper something in his ear, and left.

Rexus was beginning to regret some of his decisions.

[Indigo]

The second man looked in Rexus's direction and frowned, not at all reassuringly, before making his way over and sliding into the other side of the booth. "Mr. Flint," he said, folding his hands on the table. "Rochester Peck. We spoke on the phone."

This, then, was the wizard. Rexus was not impressed—he looked more like a librarian than anything else—but also not quite foolish enough to say so, and anyway he was desperate enough to try anyone who seemed to know what they were doing. Besides, from Peck's expression, the lack of enthusiasm was mutual.

"Ah. Yes," he said, because he had no idea what you were supposed to say to a person like this. The phone conversation had been very brief and very nervous on his part and he could hardly even remember most of it now.

A thin crease appeared between the wizard's eyebrows. "You were fairly vague about the nature of your problem the other day," he said. "I was hoping you could elaborate."

"Right." Rexus had thought about this a lot over the past few days—how to explain without revealing too much, and for that matter without making himself look completely useless—to the point of practicing in front of the mirror until his sister caught him at it and mocked him mercilessly, which was probably fair. He said, "I think I mentioned I've been doing some...limited magic at home, over the past few months. I haven't had any trouble until recently." An acknowledgement that he was an amateur while implying he basically knew what he was doing. "But lately I've noticed signs of an...well, I guess you'd call it an infestation. Not the kind that I can get rid of with mundane methods, and my own skills aren't really up to the task."

Peck listened attentively to this and then waited a few moments, as if he thought there might be something else; then he adjusted his glasses with a fingertip and sighed. "Mr. Flint," he said, not unkindly, "I'm not an exterminator. I know these types of situations can be difficult for the inexperienced to handle, and if you'd like I can put you in touch with the new Union dispatcher so you can get some hunters out to take care of your problem. But that's really not the type of work that I do, myself."

[Indigo]

"I—" He should have foreseen this, probably, and figured out a better way to explain himself, one that didn't imply he had the magical equivalent of rats. Without revealing too much. Somehow. Maybe he should've let Glory come to this meeting after all, because while she might be impulsive she had something of a way with words. Too late now, of course. "I don't know that the Union can help me," he said, and hoped he sounded like someone who knew what the Union even was.

"Oh, I'm sure they can," Peck said with a dismissive gesture. "No job too big or small, as they say. I know of one group, they're not local but they have an excellent track record, I can get you their leader's contact information and you can reach out to them directly if you'd rather not go through dispatch."

"I-it's just—" He stopped, and took a deep breath, and tried to sound like less of an idiot. The wizard was frowning slightly at him now, which didn't help his focus. "It's something of a complicated situation. I don't know if this is the best place to—"

"Mr. Flint," Peck said. "You're a necromancer." He said it as if it were of no great import, as if it were obvious to anyone who looked at Rexus, which sent a whole new spike of panic through him.

"I-I-I don't—I don't know what you..." He trailed off, because it was pointless. Hinting and careful avoidance were one thing, outright denial quite another.

Peck, for his part, appeared unperturbed. "You are. I'm not going to argue with you about it." He extracted his phone from his pocket and began tapping out a message as he spoke. "My husband smelled it on you from across the room."

"I didn't think it had a smell."

"He's a werewolf." This, too, seemed inappropriately casual, though it felt distantly familiar for some reason. "It's different for them. I imagine you thought I wouldn't help you if you told me, but honestly, it's just a matter of incompatible job descriptions. You need a specialist, and I'm the wrong kind."

Except that Rochester Peck had a reputation for discretion, and Rexus wanted to keep the number of people who knew about this as small as possible, for oh so many reasons. None of which he could readily tell Peck about, certainly not in public. In his desperate scramble for another argument, two facts bouncing around his brain knocked together: werewolf. Pink hair. Could be a coincidence, but was that really the most likely explanation?

"Your husband's a Whitecreek," he said. "Is that common knowledge?" Hopefully there was an implied threat in there. He didn't really know how to make those happen.

Peck stared at him for a moment, and then shook his head. He didn't quite smile. "You don't even know what that means, do you? You just heard it somewhere and it sounded important."

"I..."

"Oh, Mr. Flint." He sighed again. "You're in way over your head, aren't you? The question is—in what? No, don't answer that." He stood, and handed Rexus his coat. "Come on, then. It looks like I'll be helping you out after all."

[Indigo]

The necromancer had a car. For some reason Rochester hadn't expected that, possibly because the poor kid exuded way too much anxiety to operate a motor vehicle, but that might be the unusual circumstances. He drove in tense silence, occasionally glancing at Rochester as if he were a bomb that might go off.

Rochester's phone buzzed, which was a welcome distraction from that discomfort.

You were right Flint is incredibly haunted

told u so :3

Maybe one day he'd figure out how to get Art to stop texting like a middle schooler. This was probably not the moment for it. Instead he sent back:

I think he wants me to do an exorcism

you???

I know but he obviously has no idea what he's doing + someone has to deal w/it

He eyed Flint again, the white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, the tension in his jaw. The shapeless mist curled around his head, only intermittently visible, and only to someone who already knew it was there. There was, naturally, a stigma around necromancy, and that largely explained Flint's reticence, but seeing what followed him, Rochester was inclined to speculate that there was more to it than that. Something spilling paranoia into his ear.

It was going to be like pulling teeth to get him to explain how this had happened—that much was obvious from their previous conversations. But it had to be done.

ok well don't get eaten by a ghost

I don't think that's how ghosts work Art

just lmk if you need backup ok?
I love you

He looked at that capitalized, fully spelled out sentence, with no emojis or cutesy text emoticons, for a long time. Rochester didn't have a lot of experience with ghosts, and as far as he knew neither did Art. The Whitecreeks had never been involved with necromancy or—whatever category exorcisms were in, which might be reverse necromancy but probably not—and a werewolf's nose was only as knowledgeable as the werewolf it was attached to. But if Art was that worried...

The car stopped. "We're here," Flint said, unnecessarily, and got out of the car before he could answer. He glanced at the house number, craned his neck to see a street sign, because he wasn't worried, not really, but if he'd learned anything in a long magical career it was to always have a backup plan.

Call me in 1/2hr and if I don't answer come to this address. I love you too.

[Indigo]

In a way, going into the house reassured him. It was entirely unremarkable: small but not enough to be called cramped, no pets, no obvious necromantic paraphernalia. There was a pile of junk mail on a table by the front door. Flint picked up an envelope from the top of the stack and scowled at it, the strongest expression to appear on his face so far, startling in its intensity; a moment later he dropped it and led Rochester into the living room.

A young woman sat on the couch, scrolling through Netflix at superhuman speed. She turned around at their entrance. Her face had some similarity to Flint's without the hollow-cheeked exhaustion, topped with hair cropped short and dyed blue. She said, "Um?"

Flint had frozen up again, one hand on the door frame. "Glory," he said. "You told me you were going to be out all day."

"I changed my mind. Does it matter?" She studied Rochester's face with uncomfortable intensity. "Are you having some kind of—"

"Please don't say whatever you're about to say, oh my god."

This seemed like a situation Rochester wanted to head off as quickly as possible. "Mr. Flint," he said, "sooner or later I'm going to need you to explain to me what's going on here, or I can't help you. That might be easier with the cooperation of everyone involved?"

"She's not—"

"Oh," the woman said. "I see what's going on here." She extended a hand in Rochester's direction. "I'm Glory Flint, Rexus's sister. I'm gonna go ahead and guess that you're here about the ghost in the attic."

"Rochester Peck." He shook the offered hand and looked over at Flint—Rexus—who looked like he was going to be sick.

"You can't just say that," Rexus said. "Have you just been telling people—"

"Of course not," Glory said. "I'm not stupid. But this whole...thing you're having about this isn't gonna help anyone. Come upstairs, Mr. Peck. We'll explain on the way. And I mean a real explanation, not whatever Rexus told you before."

"He didn't tell me much of anything," Rochester said.

"Yeah, that sounds about right."