“I was thanking her for helping me kill time! Don’t read too much into it! Humans are moving bags of meat! I’d never lift a finger for any one of them! It just feels gross to take and never give! Remember that!”
“I hear you.”
That was all he could say.
Humafu reached for the top of her head, realized she didn’t have her sunglasses with her, and swore under her breath.
Then she jabbed her thumb at Rico. “She can be a bit of a dipshit,” she elaborated.
Rico immediately bowed her head. “This dipshit humbly apologizes,” she said.
Humafu said something indistinct. Rogue was feeling like he had a handle on the power balance between these two. Rico had worked out how to defuse Humafu’s temper before she could blow her top. Otherwise, they’d never get along. Perhaps this was why Rico could peel the Sleepless away once she entered her quarrelsome phase.
“Go on, scram,” Humafu said. “I’ll chew her out later. Detective, you wanna survive the morrow, don’t you tell a soul.”
“……I hear you.”
“Then move your ass!”
Just to be extra sure, he glanced at Rico, but she simply bowed her head, seemingly unfazed. He got the impression they’d been through this circus before, and she was used to it. As he left the kitchen, he heard Humafu yelling again. Feeling slightly uncomfortable, he jammed his hands in his pockets.
He moved across the hall to the elevator, and descended.
The reference room was a floor below the witches’ living area. This floor also held the meeting room they used for briefings. Using only the dim lights at his feet, he located the door and opened it—to find a tall, gaunt figure in the middle of the aisle.
“Another one?” Rogue muttered.
Another witch.
She was flipping through a file, and her head swiveled at his entrance.
“Why, hello, Detective. Tee-hee-hee.”
Angene, the Professional.
Her frame—taller than his own—was also clad in white pajamas. A different design from Humafu’s, these had a hood, which was pulled up.
“……Is there a rule that everyone here is up at night?” Rogue asked.
Angene seemed to find that funny. Her shoulders quivered, and she let out an unsettling chuckle.
“Tee-hee-hee. I wouldn’t know. It depends on the individual, I imagine? I simply find sleep dreadfully dull, so I rarely get more than two or three hours.”
“I realized there’s some individual variance, but…”
He looked around.
Being the basement, the reference room was pretty sizable. The shelves were jam-packed, like files on every case in Elayl were stored here.
“Something on your mind?” Angene asked. “Or are you looking for something particular?
“I guess you could say that…”
“I requisitioned everything here from our superiors, so it should be fairly comprehensive.”
“By ‘superiors,’ you mean…the Two Great Houses?”
“Yes.”
“You, personally?”
“Yes.”
Odd, Rogue thought. Could witches get in touch with the Two Great Houses? He could see that happening if they went through Rico, but…
Not really getting it, he moved on.
“You seem like you know everything.”
Work with her at all, and you soon got that impression.
“I don’t know about everything, tee-hee-hee.”
“……If, say, a ‘gate’ appeared in your dreams…what would you make of it?”
“Tee-hee-hee, you’re looking for a fortune teller, Detective.”
That sinister giggle clearly indicated she was having fun at his expense.
“Was this gate open? Or was it closed?”
Rogue hesitated. “……I open it myself. It’s quite large.”
“You’re hurrying within this dream?”
“……Yeah.”
“You have to get through the gate?”
He was feeling increasingly mortified by this. He’d brought it up himself, but he was the supervisor here; he was the one who should be handling requests like this.
“You don’t want to go, but you do so anyway. Yes, tee-hee-hee. Not a good portent.”
He wasn’t exactly seeing the funny side of this.
“……Dream fortune-telling isn’t an exact science, is it?”
“Tee-hee, no. It’s purely personal interpretation.”
He should never have asked.
Rogue hung his head, then said, “Uh, do we still have the file on Chronos?”
“That’s in the archive on F twenty-seven,” Angene said. “But it’s digitized, so I’ll send it to your phone. Or would you rather I fetch the physical copy?”
“I’d appreciate that…but do you need anything from me?”
Asking any other witches for help meant putting his life on the line.
But Angene just bent down, leaning in, a sliver of a smile on her lips, and peered into his face with the one eye not hidden by her hair.
“Wh-what?”
He saw his baffled face reflected in her left eye. That eye swept him from head to foot.
“……Seriously, what…?”
“…Do I ‘need’?” Angene asked. “At this point in time, I have nothing I need from you.”
“……”
She pulled away, weaving off through the shelves, her feet making no sound. She was soon back with the file.
“Tee. Hee. Here you go.”
“……Yeah, thanks.”
He took the file from the witch’s hands. Their eyes didn’t meet—he had to look up just to thank her.
“You’re welcome.”
With that, he left the reference room.
He and his “partner” started working the scene at nine.
They were canvasing for information about John Brown—the human bomb—at the address the curator had given them. The Sixth Ward, Lot 153. It was an old rental home, and their first interview was with his landlord.
John Brown had left home before the museum opened at ten and returned by eleven at the latest on weekdays. No car—he commuted on a bicycle. He lived alone, his parents had both passed away, and no other relatives had ever visited. He’d attended a college run by the church, and he and his friend had been working at the museum for a year since graduation.
The landlord rattled off all this like a broken radio.
“He was such a good boy. Never complained about his misfortune,” she said, nodding to herself.