Absit Omen RPG

"She's wearing blue jeans," Agatha informed her husband as soon as he appeared, as if he could not see. It was important Genevieve not have the last first word of this reunion. Agatha, enveloped in extant velvet from the 1920s, had checked in on their guest on an off for the last forty minutes, sort of skimming the edges of the kitchen, making little comments having missed actively disliking the witch during their exile.

Barnabas Cuffe looked a sort of graceful, dapper catastrophe, his white-grey hair wild, his bespoke cravat loosened, his one-of-a-kind shoes scuffed. He stepped out of the large fireplace, dropped his suit jacket over a chair and picked up his smoking jacket. He fumbled this last part looking between Agatha's manic smugness and, well, yes, Genevieve Garcia-Gamp calling him a coward.

"Coward?" he sniffed. He had more to say, but Agatha interrupted, again.

"Cowardly was that spread on the summer collections. Corsetry for June? Oh my god." Agatha laughed. She'd taken the Witch Weekly at their secret hole at Camden Town Hookers - she'd taken anything there was, anything to survive the ordeal of being in the dark.[1] Cuffe had just spent the entire day back at the helm of his ship, the Daily Prophet, deflecting questions from all the nosy no-talents who certainly didn't have questions about how they'd continued to be paid! Now, he'd expected to come home and have a proper sleep in a proper bed without worry that a vampire would change his mind about a contract! But no. Genevieve was here.

"Has she been squatting here this whole time? Check the wine cellar, Agatha. See that she's left us something." He said this as much at Genevieve as to her.

1.	17 August 2012 - From Beneath The Earth

17 Aug 2012
Sunrise
Camden Town Hookers

Barnabas Cuffe and Agatha Pendragon emerged from the doors of a pub in Camden like cicadas from beneath the earth. For months the pair had lived in dark solitude, all but dead to any who knew them. They had followed the fruitless investigation into their disappearance in the Daily Prophets brought up to them by one of the few vampires who knew they occupied that particular room.

The room had cost them heavily in gold and other favors but the secrecy had been complete, totally unmatched, the best blood could buy (speaking metaphorically). They could afford it, indeed, they could not have afforded not to. With Theodora Kingstreet on another murder spree, somehow loosed from inside her cell, Barnabas and Agatha could take no chances. They'd had no choice but to disappear.[1] They'd fled to the vampires but they may as well have fled the earth with no intention of returning until the blood had stopped shedding (speaking quite literally).

And that day had finally, finally come. Kingstreet had been convicted and the hole in Azkaban that had allowed her activities stoppered up. Barnabas and Agatha walked the still quiet streets now, dark sunglasses and fine clothes. Cuffe used a beautiful cane, for show. Agatha was ostentatious under a parasol.

"I do hope the elves have tended the orchids," Agatha said.

Barnabas lit his pipe with his wand, not so brazen in these early morning hours. "If you told them to, they'll have done it. Heaven f&@ing help them if they've touched my office."

He was off elves now, and on to editors.

"Imagine doing something so macabre without a body," Agatha said adjusting her glasses.

Barnabas Cuffe puffed away. "Bodies, my arse."

"Oh, it's lovely to be out." Agatha was off bodies now. She took a deep breath. "Shall we have breakfast?"

Cuffe shook his head. "You go without me."

"Oh, Cuffe, not work, not already. You're wan." Somehow she managed to make it sound like a jab.

Cuffe sniffed. "At least I'm not dead this time."

"Thank Merlin," Agatha said.

1.	24 Jan 2012 - Without a Forwarding Address

When: 2006
Where: Grand Association pour les Supérieurs Publications (GASP), Paris

It was one of magical publishing’s grandest events when media moguls from all over the world joined together to pat themselves on the back, chuckle at each other’s short-comings, and envy each other’s successes. They gave themselves awards and ate pungent cheeses and drank fine wine.

Barnabas Cuffe counted himself among the event’s most notable guests. While the Daily Prophet was by no means the largest or most illustrious publication in the world, his force of personality was enough to carry his reputation. He was dressed in a red velvet smoking jacket. His wild grey hair framed his balding head like a crown. On his arm was his handsome and glamorous wife Agatha Pendragon in luscious peacock.

He held a small group of Americans in thrall with some anecdote about how in his youth he’d all but stolen an entire printing press from a rival publisher.

“It’s a matter of drive, you understand. You’ve got to have the balls of a dragon. Balls of a fucking dragon!” he said and took a deep pull from a foul cigar.

“Balls of a dragon, hmmm.” Hank Flutterly, Editor for New York City’s Evening Babel, smirked across at Cuffe. “You must be talking about your prodigé, Barney. Now that’s a witch with balls of a dragon, bud. Great big hunking balls.”

Cuffe nodded and laughed not immediately catching onto Flutterly’s meaning. He had a great many employees who’d probably consider him a mentor and he gladly took credit for their success. But after a second or two he realized he wasn’t sure who Flutterly was talking about.

“Who’s that?” he asked, still smiling.

“Yes, Hank, dear, he’s got so many,” Agatha said in her rich voice that had won her so much fame on the Wizarding Wireless Network.

“Who’s that!?” Hank gasped, agawk. “Who’s that?! Oh no need to act so coy, Barney old boy! Queen G! That beauty courting Mervin Primbly over there. Bloody good job, you did there!”

Cuffe wrinkled his nose. Being out-of-the-know was a no-no. No one wanted to be a No Know let alone Britain’s most connected wizard.

“Who the bloody hell is Queen G,” he sniffed. Both he and Agatha looked over their shoulders. Standing next to a beanstalk of a man, the South African book publisher Primbly, was the back of some tarty witch. He didn’t immediately recognize her, not until she turned.

His eyes went wide. Agatha laid a hand on his arm and began to snicker behind her hand. It couldn’t be.

“Gamp…” he whispered. He slapped a smile on his face, but it came off as a painful wince. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said and wound his way through the crowd to investigate.

“Gamp,” he said more loudly as he approached, still not convinced it could possibly be the mousy good-for-nothing blunted-quill of a reporter he’d fired, oh, utterly decades ago.

Well, it was the mousy good-for-nothing blunted-quill of a reporter who’d quit on him exactly 3 years ago. Genevieve Garcia Gamp turned on her heel to come face to face with a brute of the past. She couldn’t very well call him a ghost; for while he was old, grey and coffin dodging, he was also loud, obnoxious and unpleasant.

It took a moment for Gen to get over her surprise at being approached. Only a moment; she’d expected he might appear. On his arm was Agatha Pendragon, his rather gorgeous and famous wife. But Gen wasn’t looking at her. Instead, she drew an equally fake grin onto her own painted expression.

“Mr Cuffe! What a wonderful surprise!” She glanced to Primly beside her, “Mervin, I take it you know Barney Cuffe? He edits the Daily Prophet. A great stepping stone to success, eh?”

A muscle under Cuffe’s eye sort of twitched, but then he understood. She was here as Mervin Primly’s date. How she’d caught the attention of anyone sophisticated and successful enough to be invited to the GASP Gala, he couldn’t divine, but it was the most likely scenario.

Agatha seemed to have made the same assumption. She offered her bejeweled hand to Mervin and Genevieve in turn.

“Agatha Pendragon. Enchanté. You must excuse Barnabas. He’s very rude,” she said.

Cuffe wrinkled his mouth suddenly feeling he’d left good company for worse.

Still smiling, Gen took Agatha’s hand with a firm shake of her own.

“Genevieve Garcia-Gamp. Pleasure.”

Agatha laughed. At her. At her husband. At the absurdity of what was unfolding.

“So lovely you could come,” she said. To Mervin she asked. “How on earth did you make this acquaintance.”

Gen, not exactly practiced at schooling her expression, raised an eyebrow as she withdrew her hand.

“Who wouldn’t want to know our up and coming star, Queen G?” Mervin shrugged and glanced at Cuffe. “I bet you’re kicking yourself now, Cuffe.”

Barnabas, who was becoming deeply uncomfortable by all of that, barked out a laugh. Rising star? He barely remembered her name! He would say she’d crashed and burned but you had to get off the ground before you could fall that far.

“You’re joking! Her?”

Barnabas Cuffe and Agatha Pendragon's London House
2pm, 24 January 2012

The posh London house were Barnabas Cuffe lived with his wife Agatha Pendragon was empty. Empty of course was the house of its occupants, both Barnabas and Agatha as well as the two house elves. But empty, too, was the house of every twig of furniture, any scrap of paper, all of Agatha’s wardrobe. The fine cigars were gone as was the chest they were kept in. The wine celler was only a cellar, lacking any trace of its namesake or original purpose. There was no bed in the bedroom, and no one living in the living room. The kitchen maintained its sink, stove, icebox, and cabinets, but there wasn’t so much as a tea saucer or grain of rice in the place.

Barnabas Cuffe and Agatha Pendragon had gone and left no forwarding address.

The entire evacuation had been accomplished with great efficiency despite the volume and detail required. The house elves with their ancient and paradoxical powers had no trouble blinking everything away while Barnabas tended to his papers and effects and Agatha to her scotch and sapphires.

One afternoon, Barnabas had swept into the house much earlier than his normal arrival home from the Daily Prophet and he found his wife in the sitting room sitting in a chair. (This was before they’d vanished the chairs.)

“Pack your things,” he whispered sharply. “It’s &@^$ing happened, it’s time, why are you still sitting there? The chair’s going, it’s all going.”

Agatha without any alarm because she didn’t yet know what the alarm concerned replied without looking up from her book.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Alfred of St. Ruan’s is all aflush over the advances of King Richard the Lionheart and so help me if you snap me from my revelries I shall hex you terribly.”

Barnabas moved at her swifly and positioned his face inches from her ear.

“She’s back,” he said. “She is back and she’s coming.”

That caused Agatha to lower the book. (An old favorite, historical Byzantium, heretics, fey magic, shame and lust, and Anglia.)

“You don’t mean…?”

“I do mean.”

Agatha rose from her seat quickly, the book abandoned. “Well, we’ll have to be leaving now. Not a word to anyone.”

“Not a word to anyone,” Barnabas echoed. Then he moved to leave. “We’ll take everything. The elves can do it, but you should handle -”

“I’ll handle the scotch and sapphires,” Agatha finished his sentence.

“You handle the scotch and I’ll -” Barnabas said.

“You’ll handle your effects, your papers. The elves can take everything else.”

“Stop doing that.”

“I won’t. Go.”

Barnabas hesitated a moment, then went back to his wife and kissed her on the forehead.

“No one can know. We’ll leave no trace behind. She’ll not find us this time,” he said gravely.

“No post either, make sure the owls can’t forward,” Agatha advised.

“Especially no the post.”

13 January 2012
Friday the 13th @ 7am
Daily Prophet Headquarters
Diagon Alley

The glass front doors of the Daily Prophet blew off their hinges, spraying glass onto the reception area. Fortunately for the welcome witch, she’d seen it coming and ducked behind her desk.

Barnabas Cuffe, editor of the illustrious and reputable Daily Prophet, stormed in after his assault. Red-faced, wild-haired, and moving with the fury and intensity of a much younger wizard. In one hand his wand. In the other, the remains of a mangled copy of this morning’s edition.

“Death cometh!” he shouted, nearly screaming, his eyes huge beneath his bushy eyebrows. “Death %&#*’ing cometh for whoever of you knuckle-dragging ink-trolls bollocks this up so $&#’ing badly!”

Cuffe had come down to breakfast to find a copy of his own newspaper tarnished with a vile flier, a rogue pamphlet, a violent scrap of badly written used toilet paper.[1] It was enough to send him into an unparalleled fury.

Not everyone had arrived to work yet, but those who had jolted up from their desks or froze in their paths. Cuffe’s tantrums were not completely unusual, but he’d never blown anything up before. No one dared say a word, let alone ask what had happened.

Cuffe’s frown contorted his face as he glared around the room as if anyone could be the offender. The reporters - no, the prose was too competent. The copy editors - no, they’d never have allowed the sentence fragments. The press-masters and apprentice tinkerers! It had to be one of them! Slipped in the offending leafs just before the stacks of papers were bundled with twine! But it could be the owl keepers. Oh, it must be the owl keepers. Only the most deranged spent the early mornings on a cold roof talking to birds! But it could be the newsies. The &$@’ing newsies with their big mouths and thumbs up their arses!

It was then that one of the thumb-sitting newsies came rushing in out of breath. Not quite noticing the destruction even though she had to tread over broken glass, she nearly ran into the editor shouting.

    “We have to pull the paper! We have - someone’s stuck something …” She trailed off when she processed the scene. Shakily she handed over a copy of the invading page.

Cuffe stared at it before swiping it away, crumpling it up, and throwing at the nearest head.

“No shit, Sherlock! What the bleeeeeeeding hell are you all waiting for! Pull the $@&!ing edition!”

Only then did the room jump into action. A dozen wix snatched up coats and brooms and hurried past the editor and out the door. The owl delivery was a foregone conclusion, but at least they could pull the paper off the stands.

Someone cleared their throat at Cuffe’s elbow and he turned slowly. It was his assistant holding out a cup of tea.

   “Cuppa, there, sir? You seem a little fussy.”

Fin

1.	13 Jan 2012 - Eradicate the Werewolf Threat

Manipulative little shit! Cuffe clamped a bony hand on the boy's shoulder and pressed him back down in his chair.

"I wasn't born yesterday, Mr. Garcia. There are several things that I won't be bloody doing today including: allowing you run of the city only to wind up missing or worse; be swayed by your lisping adolescent poppery; and halting the business of this newspaper to fetch you &$*#!'ing jaffa cakes and read you stories."

Cuffe tapped his chin, working on actually how he was going to avoid doing those three things. From the bullpen, above the sound of typewriters and the humming printing press, a bark of laughter seemed to pierce through. Cuffe laid his finger on the intercom.

"Get me Sellerflick."

   "...sir?"

"Lesserflax. You know who I mean. The kid. The loud one."

   "Ah, yes sir. I'll send him up."

Cuffe smiled down at Dante.

"It is..." he responded and set the paperweight down on the corner of the desk.

"I don't know what's more uncomfortable," Barnabas mumbled, slowly circling towards his chair. "That you've done opposition research before coming here or that you've managed to babble out a better profile than my writers seem capable of. You seem like the kind of child who would take the latter as a compliment but I'd caution against that; it's a dismally low standard."

Cuffe, keeping an eye on the little boy, pressed a button on a brass contraption sitting on the desk. "Katie, get me ... Thursby."

        "She's out, Mr. Cuffe. Covering the Gamp proceedings."

Cuffe paused, finger on the button. "Groust?"

        "Not in this week."

"Cartwright. "

        "Sir, I--"

"Oh, piss off."

Cuffe released the button and frowned. He'd be having meetings throughout the morning. What in the world was he supposed to do with a child?

Barnabas aggressively pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn't need an image of Genevieve cinematically half-submerged in what he hoped would be a very opaque merlot in his head.

"Tickle his what-?" Cuffe blinked and moved to get her back, but she was quick on those heels and throught he glass doors he could see Dante was in his office.

"Gamp!" he barked at her, trying to move in two directions at once. He tapped the glass of his office. "You! Don't touch anything!"

Then, back to the balcony.

"Genevieve!" He bit back several impatient words as he watched her go. "Good *&#%'ing luck, then!"

He waved a hand then strode back into his office and snatched back his heavy paperweight from the darkly-curled little boy. Cuffe stared at him for a few moments, pacing a little. He looked like his parents. Clean, as well. Dressed smartly. Barnabas had two children of his own, and from them a half-dozen grandchildren, but it had been a very long time since any of them were small and even longer that Cuffe had taken any responsibility for their care or nurture.

"I take it you know who I am, then?"

He'd called him 'crust bucket' on the stairs. Cuffe narrowed his eyes.

Cuffe's bushy eyebrows shoved themselves together, dramatically wrinkling his tall forehead. The little boy had the bearing of a city squirrel who could, at any moment, run up a trouser leg and cause who know what kind of personal or professional or political disaster. However old Dante Garcia was, he had reached whatever developmental stage included 'cracking wise'. Cuffe wasn't sure if he should buy the little fellow a stiff drink or drop a sickle in Genevieve's hat as tip for her brilliant talking beagle.

He continued a stern visual inspection until Genevieve lead him a few steps away. His gaze lingered on the grinning boy, worried that any second lacking in supervision and he'd start chewing on something.

"Agatha is still cross with me for your coming over the other night and so she has punished me by agreeing to this. And you. She doesn't like you. Can't imagine why. What am I supposed to do with him? There's nowhere else you can keep him? Surely the Ministry of Magic has ... childcare?"

"And that's the last time! Congratulations! Send the wizard as !@#$'ing cake because that's the last time he drags the Daily Prophet through his gutter," Cuffe shouted down from the balcony. It was early yet, only about eight in the morning on a Tuesday, so there hadn't been an excessive amount of events occurring to piss him off too deeply. He was in an almost pleasant mood.

He barked an abrasive laugh at the muted reply from his politics editor. "Oh, you tell him I said that. Get his response in writing and we'll put it with the obituaries."

Yes, today was going to be a good day and then he saw two people who were going to wreck all of it.  It was Genevieve Garcia-Gamp, dressed in black, and her little boy. His face fell. That was today. Piss! Of course it was today!

Leo Gamp's release trial, the letter from Genevieve sent to their home, a place to stow the kid, his wife Agatha's community-minded passive aggressive voluntolding agreement, and her subsequent trip to sunny Santorini with her girlfriends, leaving him holding the, um, bag.  He ground his teeth, searching for an excuse to get him out of this but each one of them tasted horrible because it would be a categorically despicable move to abandon a mother and her child in their hour of need. Shit and biscuits!

"Genevieve, you look perfectly deadly," he said as they came up the stairs. "You got our owl then. Agatha sends her warmest wishes from Greece. And that must be Dante."

How old was the boy? Cuffe could never really tell anymore. He looked no younger than any of the idiots that came through the revolving door of first-level assistants, but on the other hand he realized he didn't know when children learned to wipe their own noses. Cuffe was staring.

Overheard at a Notting Hill dinner fete thrown by Agatha Pendragon and her husband of twenty years Barnabas Cuffe: not so vague declaration that Genevieve Garcia-Gamp could be Cuffe's own daughter. Now wouldn't that be a family reunion...

And things were back to normal. A strained, struggling attempt at the acerbic combative normal that existed between Genevieve Garcia-Gamp and Barnabas Cuffe. It was a jarring transition, but somehow comforting. Although Genevieve calling him 'Daddy' was becoming a disturbing new motif...

He laid his palm to his face and braced himself to return to his evening.

Fin

"Wait."

It wasn't the first (or second) time the old man had implored the younger witch to stay. Who could blame her for trying to leave, though? Not a minute seemed to pass in this house that didn't bring with it messages that Genevieve was unwelcome. Cuffe felt terrible. He felt worried, shocked, off-his-foot, and terrible.

"You don't have to go. You..."

He wrung his hands.

"Kingstreet has ways. I don't understand it, but even locked up in Azkaban, she's dangerous. There's no way to know if what she says is true. If you ask me, I'd wager she doesn't even believe objective truth exists. But that's not the point. The point is ... "

The point that he'd missed over and over tonight.

"Leo. Whatever happens with your husband, the truth will come out and you, eh, won't be left out in the cold. In it to the end. Dear Merlin."

A bit shocked he'd said it, he found a glass and drank from it.

Agatha got to her feet in a snap, an attempt to compose herself. She looked down on Genevieve.

"I think you should go."

She then looked over the Barnabas as to assign him the task of making sure the job was done. Soon she was at the twin handles of the double doors.

"Agatha!" Barnabas protested. She looked at her husband over her shoulder.

"I trusted you. You told me this was over." With that, she left. Even before the door closed, the remaining despondents could hear her melodic Wireless voice ringing and singing apologies and greetings to the guests, as if nothing had happened at all.

Barnabas was left standing deflated in front of a tear-streaked Genevieve.

"Well, &@$#."

Barnabas spun away in a tumultuous effort to contain his anger and frustration, but immediately whirled back for another go. Genevieve now believed Leo Gamp, her murderous, vindictive, threatening, violent - ! She believed he was innocent? That he'd been framed! She-!

But before the irate editor could shout another word, he was stop-stayed by a single raised finger from Agatha who looked suddenly shocked. She stared at Genevieve wide-eyed.

"You... you've had contact with ..."

Agatha had clearly not heard as much as she claimed she had. She'd been stunned that her husband would bring up Kingstreet's name in their home, revealing to the editor of the Witch Weekly that they'd had dealings, but she didn't have time to process why. Her silencing finger held up to her husband began to shake.

"Kingstreet? How? Why? What has she done, Genevieve?"  Agatha drew back and furrowed her brow, her own anger creeping in. "Why have you come here?"

Barnabas defied the silence and interjected in a bizarre attempt to defend Genevieve.

"She couldn't have known."