The Leaky Cauldron
Just before 6:30 PM, a few hours following this thread
Friday, December 23

The Leaky Cauldron was still warm and bustling with delighted activity several hours after he'd first arrived, with nearly every table packed and the noise of the crowd creating a cheerful cacophony.  While he'd been lingering, Kurby had watched as the post-work crowd had transitioned into firmly celebratory libations, as one wave of patrons trickled out just as another came bursting in. 

He had been drinking since he’d arrived at the pub earlier that afternoon with Blake.  Over the past few hours, Kurby had traded the lager he’d been drinking with Blake to a crisper cider, and finally, when he’d decided that he couldn’t drink much more liquid without feeling like he was going to explode, onto sipping at a Firewhiskey. Somewhere in the mix, he’d also ordered a basket of chips, with the expectation that his evening appointment was probably going to expect him to buy her dinner in return for showing up.

Nemo had agreed to meet him at half-past six. The American witch never seemed thrilled at following his instructions, though, so Kurby had expected her to arrive late, if only to petulantly show him that she wasn’t at his beck and call. As a result, it had been a little surprising that he spotted Nemo weaving her way to him through the Leaky Cauldron crowd even a few minutes before the clock on the wall had chimed out its call for six-thirty.

The werewolf hunter raised an eyebrow at her as she slid into the chair across from him.  Half the chips were gone, and the ones that were remaining were probably cold; he nudged the basket towards her anyway.

“Merry Christmas,” he greeted her nicely. Picking up his small glass of Firewhiskey, he raised it in a mock toast and then brought it to take a sip.  “If you want somethin’ alcoholic, you’ll have to order it yourself.”

"Hey," Nemo said, breathless and pink from the cold. A smile flickered over her face, a little like a bird who'd gotten into a shop. Happy for the warmth and fries, wary of the people inside, and not being able to help the need to take wing. She put her heavy bag on a chair, peeled off a glove and picked into the fries right away.

"I don't drink," she said, but she could see he did. And had. There were a few empty glasses alongside the one he already had. She furrowed a brow in noticing. Had he had the strange three days she'd had?

She'd as told and stay away from Grimshaw's, to keep her hat on, to stay out of the way. It was enough resentment to make any teenager stew in her own soup. Nemo found that any moment she wasn't thinking of something else, she was thinking about the room full of bones, the book of names, the warm little bone flute. She'd plied distraction with a few sets of Christmas busking and letting an artist look right through her.[1] But it didn't stop the nightmares.[2] Dreams full of wailing and handfuls of teeth.

"What? Didn't you think I'd show?" she asked him, holding the thick-cut chip between her fingers like a cigarette.  "Oh, darling."

1.	22 Dec 2011 - Hey Girl in the Strobing Light
2.	22 Dec 2011 - Teeth In Your Hands

Nemo slid into one of the empty chairs, as comfortable and at ease as she'd been in the Muggle coffee shop earlier that week.[1]  The kid seemed to have a well-practiced knack for blending in almost everywhere, from busking on the magical streets in Diagon to ordering him around after inviting herself into his own flat.

Her assumed manner made the werewolf hunter give a quiet snort.  He'd presumed she'd come, even if he might have predicted that she'd be late.  Even with everything else that was circling around him in the world right now, it was impossible to get Grimshaw's out of his head.

There was something calming about finally being able to focus on the tailor shop again.  There had been too many things to think about in the past week: outfall from the last full moon, planning for the next, Bruce Ballentyne's return as his supervisor, the mess with Savvina Katopodis and Knox Greyfriar, the strange werewolf hunting tools that had been sent anonymously to Hogwarts and the Ministry.  But now, for once, he could afford to set the complexity of all that aside and concentrate on the one problem that seemed to always be lingering in the back of his mind. 

The warm breeze that smelled faintly of honeysuckle and cinnamon.  The whispers.  The bones.

"I ran into your mate Abigail's older sister when I went to the library[2] on Wednesday," he said, preferring to get straight to the point.  He raised an eyebrow at Nemo as he set his glass of Firewhiskey back down on the table, reaching into the pocket where he'd tucked the small stack of articles. "She was there lookin' for the same sort of things that I was.  Apparently your friend gave her a drawing of the glyph."

1.	Monday, December 19 - Holly and Ivy, Wood and Stone
2.	Wednesday, December 21 - Answer me this

"Fantastic," Nemo twanged, sarcastic and flicked the french fry back into the basket. She pushed her chair back from the table. Everyone had been busy but her, and Abby had been passing notes. From a distance, Nemo knew this kind of temper wasn't hers, this hot little jealousy. She pursed her lips and shook her head to try and quiet the foreign possessiveness.

"Sorry. You have something."

He'd withdrawn a bundle of papers from his pocket.  They'd agreed that Kurby would look into the history of building, see why there might be a tomb in the basement, or what kind of shop sits in a mummified sort of stasis and then out of nowhere lights up and screams at you. He'd see if there'd been any other deaths, other than the one Nemo had tried to find out more on.[1] Then something twisted her stomach.

"Did you go back without me?" Nemo asked struck by a sudden sadness. Kurby and Abby's sister. He'd never go on his own, so he'd found someone else. Someone he trusted more than her, someone who wouldn't get in his way. Kurby had her drawing, she'd stayed away like he asked. She'd fallen for it. Her head started to swim and she covered her face with her hands, startled by the up-welling of emotion. She'd been keeping it all at bay, apparently, but here again where she could talk about it and think about it, it was all going to come up at once.

They were so close to Knockturn now. Wouldn't take more than ten minutes if they hurried.

1.	20 Dec 2011 - Procedure and Protocol, Quills and Queues

Kurby had been in the process of shuffling the articles together, neatening the stack so that he could hand them to her, when Nemo spoke up again.  He blinked, looking up at her.  Had he gone back?  With everything else that had happened this week, he'd barely had time to complete the task he'd said he would. 

But no -- Nemo was hunched over now, drawing herself in, looking actually, legitimately upset after her question.  The werewolf hunter opened his mouth and then closed it again, brows knitting.  Knockturn wasn't far from his flat.  There had been more than one time in recent weeks when he'd been laying in bed trying to fall asleep or just woken up in the morning, when the faint memory of a warm breeze still lingering from whatever his dreams might have been had almost made him consider it.  But why the hell would he walk back into that place before he knew what he was up against?

"No," he said shortly, and slapped the pile of articles down on the table in front of her.  "I went to the damned library just like I told you I was goin' to."

He hadn't included everything that had rolled out through the magical printing press, but he'd brought a copy of all of the relevant clippings.  A few advertisements for Grimshaw's spread over a couple hundred years, the gossip item about Faustina Grimshaw making a donation to the church in Godric's Hollow in memory of her parents.  And then the murders.  The girls who'd been murdered twenty-eight years apart, including Fortuna Sangwine in 1984.[1]

"There's a, uh, thing there," he added, nodding to the parchment that he'd just dumped in front of her.  Explaining the magical printing press was complicated, and he wasn't exactly sure how to make it understandable for someone who hadn't been there.  "It, uh, helps you search for old articles that mention certain words?  And then it prints them out, so you can read through 'em all.  Those're the ones that mentioned Grimshaw's." 

1.	Knockturn Body Identified; Vampires Suspected

Nemo jerked up from her hands with a sniff when Kurby tossed the papers down in front of her.  She glanced up and checked his face to make sure he wasn't lying to her.  He looked like he mostly did, irritated and serious. It occurred to Nemo that there wasn't much sense in them as a team. Maybe they were drowning and pulling each other under. For a moment, he looked like a stranger. But as he spoke in his peculiar accent, the feeling of alienation began to fade. After all, they'd made spaghetti together - morbid metaphors dissolved over a shared meal.

She sat forward to examine the papers, gently spreading them out on the worn tabletop. She took her time skimming them, confident that Bagnold wouldn't mind the silence. As she read, she kept moving the pages around, inch by inch, all the while picking at the french fries. After a few minutes, she sat up and licked the salt from her fingers.

"Mm. I need some water," she said with a fake smile and got up and left. At her seat, she'd arranged the articles about dead young witches in chronological order.

Nemo disappeared through the dinner crowd, nudging her way up to the bar. Her heart was beating hard against her ribs. Grimshaws was eating girls, was all she could think behind the casual hollow smile. And that ledger - there was no such thing as an innocent book of names and Kurby had been transfixed. She was sure of it now. She left a knut on the counter for a tip and returned to the table.

"I find myself asking," she said before taking a sip of cold water. "What it is about teenage girls that make us just so murder-able. I mean," she sipped the water again. "When's the last time you heard of a good necromancy scroll that was looking for thirty-five year-old bachelors? I've never seen one."

She dug into her bag for her black-cat cigarette case, foolishly lost and foolishly found. "Can't go anywhere these days," she said, using a plastic lighter in shaky hands.

Kurby waited silently as Nemo began to read, and then as she went to go fetch a glass of water from the bar.  The weight of the week was wearing on him, and he took a moment to rub his hands over his face.  Normally, this was the time of month in between full moons when the whole of the Capture Unit had a chance to relax — to stand down, to breathe, to regain a bit of sanity before the pressure started to ramp up again.  But for the past two months, there hadn’t been much of a chance to.

Nemo returned before too long, glass of water in hand.  ”I find myself asking...” she began, and Kurby gave a loud snort.

“Well, maybe that’s why it brought me along this time,” he said, flashing her a sharp smile.  “It realized it was bein’ a bit too damned predictable.  Thought it would change things up a bit and pick a new target.”

It bothered him whenever he gave himself a minute to think about it.  The strange voice could have easily called out to Nemo before he’d come across her that night, could have probably avoided bringing him along altogether.  But it had not only drawn him in with her; it had left him the ledger, sitting out on the counter and open to a page with a name that he knew.    Then, after Nemo had apparated away, there had been a silver key.

He shrugged and looked back at her, lifting his glass of Firewhiskey to sip at it again.  “Aileen Reid noticed that most of the deaths are twenty-eight years apart,” he said, a bit quietly.  “If the pattern continues, the next one would be 2012.”

"You're a real funny guy, Bagnold," Nemo said. It took three or four clicks of the lighter before the little black cigarette took. She took a draw, closed her eyes and tried to think.  Kurby had done his homework with Abby the Elder. They were finding more of a pattern than just the victims.

The span of time that the deaths and other strange things covered was longer than a normal time span. If it was all some serial killer they'd have to be held together with jinxes and twine, they'd be so old by now. That left many a more unsettling option. Secret organizations, ancient revenge curses, or other longer-lived beings. Vampires, maybe. Her stomach turned over. What was with this city.

She opened her eyes, catching Kurby go swimming in his whiskey. He looked like he hadn't slept in days and Nemo wondered if this man really was 'okay'. For as much doubt he seemed to have for her ability to function, this grown-ass man seemed like a frayed knot.

"How did they die?" Nemo asked. It was probably in the clippings laid out in front of her. She moved a hand to adjust one corner so it was square with others. "Are their names in the book? We should go back and get that book."

As soon as she said it, she lifted her hand in retraction.

Kurby shot the kid another smirk, just to demonstrate that he did indeed happen to have a sense of humor on very rare occasions, and then went back to sipping his whiskey, waiting for her to finish digesting the clippings that he'd brought her.

"How did they die?" Nemo asked.  Kurby glanced over at her, but before he could open his mouth to respond, she went on.  "Are their names in the book? We should go back and get that book."

The werewolf hunter paused, tilting his head to the side as he considered.

That...was not the worst idea, he thought carefully.  If they went back to the tailor shop, maybe the ledger would be there again.  Being able to look through it a second time would at least let them confirm if the dead girls had been customers there, and they might be able to see if they'd been going there in conjunction with anyone else.  It would also allow him to look more closely for Lorelei Hunt's name, and Nate Briggs, and really anyone else who might have conveniently done business there. 

He could even spend more time examining the pages with his father's name.  He'd been too shocked the first time to look for any pattern, but if he had a second go at the book, maybe he could actually start to make sense of things.

He looked back at Nemo, still holding the glass in his left hand.  Pressing his mouth shut, he paused for a moment, and then met the girl's gaze.

"You reckon it would be there if we went back?" he asked breezily, as if it didn't matter at all.

If anything, at the least, Nemo had expected a glare from Kurby for suggesting they go back again, and then some terse detailing of means of death. Nemo's mouth curved into a frown and she flared her little nostrils as Kurby seemed to be considering. He'd said it over and over - they weren't going back until he knew what they were getting into - but one mention of that creepy-ass ledger and he was putting on his boots.

"Eh-eh, no. No."

Nemo snapped her fingers in front of Kurby's face, holding her cigarette away with two fingers. What was going on? They had a system. The system worked. The system called Kurby Hates Fun.

"Are you high, dude? Do I 'reckon', yeah, I reckon it would be, yes," she kicked him under the table. "The literal only reason I haven't gone back shopping in that haunted hell hole is because I knew you'd be pissed. Keep it together."

She sucked hard on the cigarette.

"Ow!"  Kurby jerked back at the sudden assault, nearly spilling his drink.  That had hurt.

"What the hell," he growled at Nemo, shooting her a dirty look.  He set his glass back down on the table, then reached down to rub at his injured shin.  At least he didn't need to worry about the kid defending herself if someone accosted her alone in a dark alley, he thought sourly.  As long as she had her boots on, the damn little musician would be fine.

Scowling, he scooted his chair back six inches, positioning both of his knees so that his legs would hopefully be out of her reach.

"I'm just askin'," he grumbled at her.  Making a face, he picked up his drink again.  "Besides, if the goddamn pattern from the articles still holds, the next death isn't goin' to happen until 2012 anyway.  We've got a week and a day left," he finished sourly, as he raised the glass to take another much-needed sip.

Big scary werewolf officer barking 'ow' and sulking as if he didn't routinely dance with death or whatever, that was rich. Nemo let him have his moment and only felt slightly sorry.  Maybe he wouldn't have bolted, but she'd felt better nipping it in the bud. If they'd gotten any kind of momentum, Nemo had serious doubts that she'd have been able to keep her head. The memory of holding her teeth in her hands was hard to shake. She absently scratched her ear where a breeze ticked her hair.

She leaned forward on her elbows and gazed over the clippings at Kurby who had moved away from her. Nemo ashed her cigarette in the empty fry basket.

"I don't know about that math, man," she said, calmer but tense. "Seems like shit goes down in that shop whether Mars is in retrograde or its Shark Week or not. The timing feels weird."

Nemo sighed. All of her objections felt like lies in her mouth, as though she was trying to convince herself as much as Kurby Bagnold.

Even though he'd Trolled out of Astronomy, he knew what 'Mars is in retrograde' meant.  But...

"What the bleedin' hell is 'Shark Week'?" Kurby demanded, still sounding sour.

He sighed almost in conjunction with Nemo.  Setting his drink back down on the table, he squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his hands over his face.

She was right.  He knew she was right.  He was usually the one snapping at her about not going back to the shop until they knew what they were up against.  Until they knew...  He'd always applied that condition, as if they had both already accepted that it was inevitable that they were going to return at some point.  Rather than being a matter of if, it was merely a question of when.

But would they ever know?  Kurby had no goddamned idea.  The stint in the library hadn't really gotten them anywhere, aside from having a better idea of what fate might await a young girl like Nemo next year.  He didn't know if a visit to the church in Godric's Hollow would result in any more knowledge.  As was true too frequently in recent days, right now he just felt tired.

Swallowing, he straightened in his chair once more.

"All of the deaths were different," he said, returning to the question that he'd ignore earlier.  He nodded to Nemo's arrangement of newspaper clippings as he picked up his Firewhiskey again.  "Seemed like all of the ones we looked at were missin' some body part, though.  Head, blood, eyes..." 

He trailed off, and then took a drink, savoring the alcohol as it burned his throat on its way down.

Kurby demanded to know what Shark Week was and Nemo flickered a smile. Considering how he reacted to flip phones and ball point pens and Johnny Cash, she was thinking he wouldn't enjoy knowing about the Discovery channel's annual atrocious pop culture television mummery. Nemo stuck her hands in her hair and pulled it up on top of her head into a messy bun.

"It's a muggle thing,"  she said, "you don't wanna know."

Of the two of them, Nemo had assumed she was the worse off for everything. The constant feeling of vigilance that had come on and never left, the always hearing something just out of earshot, the dreams, the obsessive thoughts, and yes, the fear - Nemo thought that maybe she'd been the one worse haunted by it. Perhaps that was teenage self-focus, or her own ideas of what grown men reacted to.  But looking at him now, he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Better for them both Nemo had no mothering instincts.

He came around with more information. Nemo felt more comfortable with her hair off her neck.

"Aw, someone's building a friend," Nemo said and started to some something dissonant, a song they'd done in school.

"And I'll take ... your hand ..." she plinkity-plinked her fingers on the edge of the table like a piano and then stopped. She turned her head and her gaze went distant, trying to think.

"Shit, is that even possible?"

Every so often, Nemo dove deep into her Muggleness, pulling it tightly around her like a thick, warm blanket that he didn't have any hope of penetrating.  He would have wondered if it were an American wix thing, except for the fact that neither Harper Graves nor Lazarus Blackburn ever did that.  Even Laz, with his strange, halting way of speaking and his vampiric nature, seemed more firmly a part of magical culture than Nemo often did.

Was that why Nemo had run away?  It occurred to him suddenly that he knew very little about the young American musician.  She could have been a Muggleborn who was never quite understood by her non-magical parents, but she could have just as easily been rebelling against a more traditional pureblood family like his.

Well, maybe not quite like his.  Nemo seemed to move between magical and mundane worlds even more smoothly than his sister Rosheen did.

He didn't get Nemo's reference, but at her question, he paused, brows knitting as he tried to follow her train of thought.

"What...like buildin' a person?"  He frowned, reflecting on his own now.  He hadn't quite thought about it in those terms, but considering that there was a different missing body part every time that there was a murder...

"Seems like an awfully slow effort, doesn't it?" he asked, dark eyes flicking back over to her.  "One body part every twenty-eight years."  He gave a sharp, humorless smile and a quick shake of his head.  "Just wait until they get to the teeth."