09 August 2012
Tuesday, 8pm
Kurby Bagnold's first floor Diagon Alley flat

Natalie 'Nemo' Morrow, an American witch of seventeen years, had been distracted all day. Haunted nearly, by a dream that would not dissipate. She'd nearly walked into traffic in Picadilly, she'd broken string tuning her violin - the string had snapped up at her face and cut her lip - and she'd text Abby when she'd meant to text Dido. Nemo was not unused to freaky dreams that lingered, that you felt in your teeth for days, or made shadows darker. She kind of delighted in them, easily fantasizing they meant something or that they represented a parallel existence in which her touch could turn boys to mud. But this dream seemed different. It seemed like a threat. It had with it that pull, that haze, that draw that she'd felt about the bone flute and the wailing siren-song of Grimshaw's Tailoring and Alterations.

In the dream, Kurby Bagnold had died. That werewolf hunter bachelor who lived alone, who was sensitive and brooding, but easily attached. He was brave, too, and even though he wasn't always kind about it, he'd looked out for her, dragging himself out of his comfort zone to make sure she wasn't in peril.

By the time summer night was falling, Nemo knew she'd never be settled until she saw Kurby Bagnold alive. It felt silly, but her insides had to be set right. She hadn't seen him all spring or summer, though she was half aware of his moments. Abby had mentioned that Kurby and Abby's intimidating sister Aileen had been meeting regularly to keep looking into the Grimshaw deaths. Anyway, it was too late in the night now to find him at work, and Nemo chose to avoid most agents of government when she could. (Abby and Kurby were the rare exceptions, thrown together by fate, so they were.)

So here she was at his first floor London pad. Nemo was dressed for summer. She had a short straw-colored bob with her signature heavy bangs, and wore a white tank top off the shoulder. Her black bra straps showed. On the bottom, ripped jeans and a plaid flannel around the waist. She had her enormous bag with her, as always.

Nemo rapped on the door.

For a long moment, it seems as if the American witch may have poorly chosen the night of her visit: no sound came from inside the flat, and there was no hint that anyone was home. But then the surface of the wooden door seemed to shimmer like a pearl for a moment, and then came the click of a lock.

A moment later, the doorknob turned and the doo eased itself open, revealing the werewolf hunter.

 Kurby Bagnold looked as if he were solidly in the ebbing phase of his monthly rhythm of stress: he looked a little worn, but he'd shaven recently and his fatigue seemed more like the typical result of a long day at the office than the drained exhaustion that immediately followed a full moon. He was dressed in all black, though his clothes looked more suitable for lounging at home instead of stalking around Knockturn Alley, with just a glinting chain around his neck and a couple of rings instead of his usual visible complement of silver. Past him wafted the faint smells of something roasting in the kitchen.

He regarded her silently for a moment, one eyebrow arched and right hand still firmly on the door, looking more cautious than truly surprised to see her. If Nemo No-Last-Name was going to drop in to see him, of course it was going to happen right around dinner.

"Y'know," he informed the little witch, with the straight face of someone imparting gravely serious advice, "owls still work even if you're tryin' to reach someone without numbers."

In the too-long lingering moments that Kurby delayed answering his door, the sour knot in Nemo's stomach betrayed her superstition. She'd been right! He was -

The door opened and Nemo visibly sighed, but held back a proper smile as Kurby was not leaping to be welcoming. When Nemo had tried to bully Kurby in the past, it had not worked. She knew better now. He preferred when people were nice.

"Just 'number'. It's a 'phone number'," she said, correcting his muggly terminology. Then added in a wincing vocal fry, a sheepish way to almost apologize, "I didn't think you'd be busy?"

Nemo had never known Kurby to have friends or anything to interrupt than his brooding solitude. Last time she knew him to have a visitor, it was a massive bleeding Scotsman supermodel.

"Can I come in?" Nemo prompted and raked her fingers through her chopped hair.  The smell of something home-cooked reached her now. It was a slightly embarrassing trend that she had exploited him for food, entirely by coincidence. She didn't do it to anyone else, and she really was quite generous with everyone else - this scrumbly old wolf-cop just brought out some of her worst qualities.

She re-hoisted her bag up onto her shoulder, standing on a mat making it feel heavier. It felt an odd moment to proclaim her purpose, that she just had to see him alive before she could sleep. The age difference was awkward, likely for them both, but they were tethered somehow, even after these last several months.

Thinking all of this, she let out a puff of air from her cheeks, not entirely composed and confidently aloof as she normally was.

He'd been about to crack a grin at the now-infrequent visitor, but then Nemo went and did exactly as he should have probably expected: corrected him and implied that he had nothing better to do on a boring weeknight than sit around by himself in his flat. Kurby gave the little witch a sour look, although he didn't hesitate too long before pushing the door all the way open. At least the kid's attitude made him relatively confident that she was exactly whom she appeared to be.

Any sense of eeriness he'd felt at her sudden reappearance had been pushed aside by annoyance at her greeting. Kurby waited for the kid to enter before shutting and locking the door again, shifting his wand back to his left hand to reset the wards. These past few months had been relatively quiet, but the werewolf hunter still kept up his usual watchful guard. Lorelei Hunt and Cinaed Tawse were still out there somewhere, and he wasn't about to let carelessness be what finally tripped him up.

The small flat still looked much like Nemo may have remembered: the main room was simply furnished, with a gray sofa and a dark blue armchair arranged around a wooden coffee table. A couple of ancient-looking books had been left carelessly on the coffee table, along with a stack of crinkled parchment. A tall bookshelf stood along one wall, filled mostly with what looked to be reference books on defensive charms and magical metalworking. Next to it, a section of silver chain mail had been spread on top of a wooden desk; post-full moon repairs had apparently been underway on the werewolf hunter's gear.

Across the room, a large window let in the faint light from tonight's half-moon, providing a view onto Diagon Alley below.

Sighing, Kurby crossed his arms as he turned to carefully survey his teenaged visitor. Tonight, Nemo looked much more Muggle than witchy. She'd cut her hair since the last time he'd seen her, but other than that, she looked to be all in one piece: no missing fingers or other body parts, no strange signs of a pentral's change to her appearance, nothing to signify that anything serious was amiss.

But he wasn't about to believe for a moment that this was a social visit. There was a prickle of dread starting deep in his stomach, but Kurby firmly pushed it aside; that wasn't how the magical world worked, and he wasn't about to let himself get sucked into worrying about it. Any number of troubles could have driven Nemo here: a run-in with the Aurors, drama with Abigail, an encounter with the haunted tailor shop.

"What's wrong?" he asked, brows knitting. Dry humor never landed with Nemo, but somehow he still felt obligated to try, even if only to lighten the tone for himself. "If it has somethin' to do with the Ministry, I'm off work until eight sharp tomorrow."

It wasn't the welcome she'd hoped for, but at least he'd let her in. Nemo made a promise to herself, as she came in past him, that she'd be a total mouse of a guest and let the man get on with his sad evening as soon as she was done. As soon as she set her soul straight about him not being dead.

She lowered herself into the nice chair and setting her bag right at her feet to take up as little space as possible. She had a moment before Kurby pushed to the point to glance around his space. His things were everywhere, and every corner recently engaged. She saw the signs of his work, which apparently, was his whole life. Only from this chair did she notice for the first time a gently moving photo of a woman who looked a little like him, wolfishness in her grin.

He made some comment about this being about work, and Nemo didn't catch the intent of the tone. She made an unattractive grunting sort of laugh. "Ugh-huh, ew no."

Definitely nothing to do with the Ministry.

The way he'd furrowed his brows just then, just this specific angle of his face and the light - the dream flashed in her mind's eye again and she pressed her hands beneath her knees before wincing. He was drowning.

"It's weird, okay? And you can't fun of me when I tell you." Then, quickly, "can I get a thing of water?"

Whatever was wrong, it was so urgent that Nemo had had to come straight to his flat on a Thursday night. But now it was weird. And he wasn't allowed to make fun of her.  And now, suddenly and in inexplicably quick succession, she had an urgent need for a glass of water.

Kurby widened his eyes at her, his frustration showing. Part of him couldn't help but wonder if maybe he should have spent longer quizzing her at the door, if maybe this was all some sort of conniving trick to gain access to his flat while his guard was down, but most of him was simply annoyed.

Rolling his shoulders back in exasperation, the werewolf hunter looked up to examine the ceiling. It didn't do any good to get mad at Nemo. If he snapped at her now, she'd accuse him of crawling up her arse, or would stomp off and refuse to talk to him, or she'd run and vent everything she knew about him to her newest bestest best friend, who probably worked for the Ministry in the most inconvenient position possible. (Bruce's assistant was a good guess.) None of those things would address the situation that had brought her here -- and as teenagerly annoying as Nemo could be, the little witch had never been one to drag a problem to him without reason.

Even so, she knew where his damned sink was. The kid could get her own bleeding glass of water.

In a painfully dramatic show of acquiescence, Kurby jerked his head toward the kitchen, as if giving the girl permission to intrude further. Then, rolling his eyes, he stepped over to begin organizing the discarded chain mail that he'd left on his desk.

Somehow, it didn't seem likely that he was going to get anything else that he'd planned done tonight.

Incredible. Kurby's sullen reluctance was almost as much proof-of-life as Nemo really needed to abandon her quest and take the matter up with Virgil who'd at least offer her gillyweed. Nemo honored her promise to herself and kept to herself any withering retorts to his grouchy silence. She rose and went back to the kitchen.

The oven was working on something. The cutting board and scraps in a colander told the story of a roast with carrots and potatoes. She saw bits of garlic and red onion paper and little green herbs that she wasn't bougie enough to identify. It was all so warm and human, a contrast to the closed-off wench of a man out there. It made her hungry. She found a glass, filled it up just half-way from the sink, and took a sip.

London water tasted sharp to her still sometimes.

The silence of churning water. City noises suddenly muted and muffled, then returned, then muted, then returned as heads struggled to stay above the surface.

Nemo made a little noise to herself to fend off the sudden sense-memory of the dream. Then she resolved herself. She took another quick drink from the glass and moved into the doorway to the living room where Kurby was at the desk.

"I dreamed you died," she announced. She said it matter-of-factly. If she'd tried to be tender it would have come off insincere as he was being rather ungrateful that she'd come to check on him.

The werewolf hunter's motion stilled as her words registered. Slowly, silently, Kurby glanced up at her, his face inscrutable. But if there was something that he was looking for in the little witch's own expression, it clearly wasn't there.

Wordlessly, he draped the chain mail over the back of the wooden chair, taking a moment to balance it so that it wouldn't slide off. Then, still silently, he headed past her into the kitchen.

The little room was heavy with the smell of roasting dinner. He'd been much more of a Firewhiskey drinker when he'd been younger, but he still kept a bottle on hand for the nights when ale wasn't enough. It took Kurby a moment to find the bottle stashed away on top of the icebox; a moment longer to unscrew the cap, his movements perhaps a bit less practiced than usual. He stayed quiet as he located a glass, and then carefully poured out a generous helping.

Finally, resignedly, he turned back to face the kid, leaning back against the counter behind him. Further conversation stayed on pause until he had taken a sip.

"Well, good news," he said at last, finding her gaze. He gave a half-shrug, as if the opposite thought had just occurred to him. "Or bad news, maybe. I didn't."

Nemo watched Kurby's silent movements through his own house, to his freezer, to his bottle of Ogden's Old. She'd only ever seen him with a pint in hand. In the small space of the kitchen, even in the heat and smell of the dinner-cooking, Nemo could sense his humanity. But for the first time since she'd met him, there was something uncomfortable about him - the kind of thing that might have, in a previous life, made her leave a party.

But she stayed, crossing her arms over her chest.

"You're allowed to worry about me, but I'm not allowed to worry about you?" she said, impatience creeping into her tone. She elaborated. "It's happened to me before, where I dreamed someone died and ... they had. Now, I just don't want to fuck with it. I can't sleep until I know for sure."

A short pause.

"It was a Grimshaw's dream."

It wasn't so much that no one was allowed to worry about him as it was that worrying about him was a complete and utter waste of time. Unfortunately, arguing with Nemo about this fact felt about as futile as trying to brush off Rosheen. Kurby refrained from responding. Instead, he took another sip of the Firewhiskey while watching the little witch warily. As he swallowed, the burning liquor gave him something to focus on, a way to ground himself outside of the unsettled feeling that was rising in his stomach.

Death dreams. In his mind's eye, he could see Alec Carter's body as they'd found it in the study, sprawled bloody and lifeless under the silent grandfather clock. It was too easy to slip into the memory of standing in the middle a darkened room, shadowy furniture all around, staring at the inside of a shuddering door as the pounding from outside grew louder and louder. Nemo's comment that this had happened to her before did nothing to calm the precarious sensation that was making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

The mention of Grimshaw's was somewhat a relief. The werewolf hunter let out a breath, his shoulders relaxing slightly. It probably said something that a spooky tailor's shop was the preferable threat.

He paused for a moment, clearly gathering his thoughts as he glanced up at the ceiling.

"I've been havin' dreams about Grimshaw's, too."

He hadn't really admitted this part out loud much before -- he'd mentioned it only briefly to Nemo back when they'd first fallen into this mess,[1] and not at all to Aileen Reid, who had become something of a fellow hobbyist when it came to the haunted shop. It was much easier to focus on the obvious mystery; doing so allowed him to ignore the parts he didn't want to think about, like the storefront's seemingly strange magnetic pull, the eerie whispers, and the uncomfortable connections to other parts of family history.

"What'd you dream?" Kurby glanced sidelong at Nemo, brows knitting. "Was it about the light?"

1.	December 19, 2011 - Holly and Ivy, Wood and Stone

Nemo smiled and brightened. She wasn't crazy, something was going on, and Kurby was being cooperative. Signs of a good night sleep (when she eventually found her bed) were promising. Nemo hopped up on the counter, her small frame fitting in. She'd forgotten for the moment her personal vow not to impose on the fussy man's space.

"You drowned," she answered, holding the nearly empty glass in her lap. She spoke in a velvety alto, slow and almost sleepy. "We were both in the water. It wasn't a river or an ocean, the water was still except for us. You were sinking and I couldn't pull you up. Something was dragging you down. To a light."

The image of Kurby's pale face made stranger by the backlit glow of dark water was stuck in her mind's eye. His gaze fixed directly on her, lifeless and unconcerned.

"Wait, how do you know about the light?" Nemo set the glass down. Her mouth dropped into a knowing 'o'. She whispered, "oh my god, you had a dream too. Last night."

She stared at him, her expression begging for confirmation. The conclusion would have been superstitious pishposh only fit for storybooks unless you'd spent the last six months dealing with a carnivorous tailor shop and cursed tombs and deadly songs - then it made complete sense.

The werewolf hunter flicked his gaze briefly toward the ceiling, a show of annoyance intended to ward off too many uncomfortable questions. But there wasn't an easy way out of this one: either he admitted to having an inauspiciously-timed dream the night before, or he played it down as being so common-place that it would raise other lines of inquiry.

"There...wasn't a lake," he admitted uneasily. "We were back in that crypt under the church in Godric's Hollow. The one with the light.[1]"

He hadn't mentioned that to Nemo again either, not since it had happened over eight months ago. They'd never really talked about it afterwards: not about the great and terrible light that had filled up the underground cavern, nor the sarcophagus that had opened up at the song from Nemo's flute, nor the ladder inside it reaching down into the darkness. His head had felt fuzzy for days afterwards, up until the portentous Wolf Moon had shattered any attention he might have paid to the haunted shop.

Kurby shrugged, giving Nemo an awkward sideways look as he took another sip of the Firewhiskey. He'd already given up enough that it felt wrong not to confess the rest of it.

"There was a song," he said simply. "You were in front of me. When the light hit you, it turned you all golden, and you just --"

There wasn't a helpful way to end that sentence, so he just gave a flutter of his left hand, leaving the rest up to imagination.

1.	January 1, 2012 - Hollows and Staves, Ghosts and Graves

Nemo was not disappointed. She listened with a soft attention reading Kurby's expression as much as listening to what he was saying. She tried to forgive his earlier eye-rolling and reluctance, though this was getting more difficult. No one wanted to be treated like a constant annoyance. Someone less sure of herself might begin to doubt oneself.

After he finished, she let her mind fill in the blank. She painted the image of herself dissolving into that same light that swallowed Kurby down in the drink.

"She's golden, she's wonder," she muttered, unable to help herself, "he's drowning, he's under."

It was not unlike Nemo to indulge in lyrical witchiness.

"Well. I haven't gone back - to Knockturn Ally at all, actually," she said in a more normal tone of voice. "Sometimes I think about the song but I can never remember the melody."

She slid down off the counter again to refill her glass. The kitchen was small and she indicated her intention to get at the sink with that little nod people did.