When You Haven't Got A Chanse

I knew she was going to knock before she reached my door. The energy coming from her seeped through the walls like sweat through a white shirt on an angry summer day. And stank nearly as much.

I told her to come in.

"Oliver Chanse?" Her voice was anxious, but innocent. Her eyes said she never could be.

"That's me."

"I need your help."

I motioned to a seat with as much welcome as I could pretend to have.
"No one comes here unless they do."

She sat slowly, guarding herself with a faux silver purse. If I had my guess, she was trying to shield herself from the real silver dip pen I had in a stand on the desk. It was mostly for show, but I kept it out with a mercury filled ink well. Her kind were usually quick to leave once they sensed the metals, and I was always happy about that. But she didn't leave as her eyes widened when she saw it before darting away. She was definitely nervous, but she sat on the other side of the desk in front of me.

That scared me. Something big enough to make one of them stay, even this long, couldn't be good.

"What can I do for you...eh, Miss?"

"You know what I am?"

"Afraid enough to be here." I leaned over the desk from my chair. She reacted, leaning back in hers. "Question is, why?"

Her eyes tried diving to the floor, but bounced back up once to look at the pen before dropping again. But her nervousness seemed to be exiting through her hands. I was sure her purse would tear apart if she twisted it anymore.

I got up. Her eyes stayed down but her energy followed me to my liquor table, then back to the desk with a fresh bourbon for both of us. I used one to move the pen closer to my side.

"It won't burn as much as what you're used to," I said, and held out a glass. "But it seems like you could use it."

The glass was in her hand before her eyes could come up to meet mine. The alcohol forgot to move with it, and floated through the air to fill it again before she took a sip.

"Cheap." She let herself start to feel some ease. I couldn't let that happen. I was no friend to her kind, and I needed her to remember that.

"But I'm not." I returned the pen to it's place before I sat. Her guard came back up. "And you seem to need me." I swallowed half of my drink and took a breath.

"What are you here for?"

"Both my charge and my lord are missing." Her second sip emptied her glass. She started to lift it to the desk, but reconsidered and placed it on the floor to avoid the metals.

"So, what's that got to do with me?" I played it calm, but I didn't like what she just sent my way. Charges and lords don't just walk off without a reason. Never without anyone knowing, at least.

"They're not the only ones."

That wasn't good. Norin demons aren't known to disappear. They're all connected to something like a psychic web. Each of them knows where all the others are, at all times. And none of them could just say goodbye. Two of them completely missing couldn't mean anything but foul play, and it would send waves of psychic pain along the web for all of them to feel.

But the webbing repairs itself over time, as long as it isn't damaged badly. Many more Norin go missing before those repairs can be made, though, and it's tantamount to an extinction, or genocide. The web can't sustain itself. The demons start unraveling. Wherever they are when that happens becomes bathed in bodies and blood. Innocent, and their own.

"How long ago?"

"Less than forty-eight hours."

"How many?"

"Fifte—" It was a blink and miss it moment, but her face went pale, then blank. Then back, but bereft. "Seventeen. Now." She sucked the air out of the room before giving it back. "You felt it yourself."

She was right. A shadow of feeling, walking down my back. Echoes of realizations my reactions knew before I could understand. Leftovers from months in and out of comas, in field hospitals during the Inter-war. Part of the receiptless gifts from experiments on soldiers who'd lost pints of blood. Mixtures of fluids from different monsters that we were supposed to have eliminated, then forgot about. A handful of us survived the transfusions. One of us survived the explosion.

None of us recovered.

The rest of my bourbon went the way of my emotions. "Got a history? Meetings? Places? People they would know, or didn't want to?"

She took a small notebook from her purse, then reached for the silver quill. Her hand sparked with a scream and turned blood red as she almost touched it. She must have been terrified, if she'd forgot about that. I gave her a few seconds to recover, then toss her a ball point when the burn healed. But I stopped her. "I haven't agreed."

"You haven't refused."

"I'm human. I could."

"Just barely." She paused. "You won't." Her words weren't filled with the confidence most demons had when they were convincing a human of what to do. She was making a bet on her first real experience with having to rely on hope alone. And I toyed with the thought of making it a bad one.

"My payment?"

She opened the notebook, and starting writing. Fast. "The first half is already being wired into your account." She handed me three pages of writing before I could tell what she was saying. "The second half, when you find them."

"What if I can't?"

She only took half of the rooms air, this time. "Then, I won't live long enough to give you the rest." She stood. "No Norin will."

I nodded. She walked out. I got another bourbon. Then I felt the relief of her energy leaving the property.

I picked the pages up for a quick once-over, before dropping them to the desk and deciding to let the whole thing settle for the rest of the day. But, just before five, I went ahead and called the bank. She wasn't lying, and I wasn't going to be poor for a few more years, at least.

I had a new case, and a little more than a few hundred of those demons in the area to worry about. But them, and the couple of thousand in the rest of the world were going to wait until morning. I ignored the shadow feeling that reappeared along my spine - Eighteen. Now. - and left the office to head home.

….to be continued....