Chapter Text
Willow Park knew bad hair days, and usually she could keep a handle on her unruly locks, but today they were persistently annoying, which was souring her already dreary mood. She raked her fingers through her thick blue frizz, tugging at the choppy ends and sticking out her chin toward the dirty glass mirror of the public bathroom—so rusted she could barely see the extent of her grimy face and greasy locks. Three times already she’d tried to wrestle the ends into braided pigtails, but even that reliable strategy failed when her last hairbinder snapped and lashed her across the cheek.
Willow twisted the ends, doused them with the foul-smelling public water, and teased them into a mat. Nothing could keep her from looking like she’d been living on the streets for the last two weeks. Which, she guessed, she had been. Still, if Willow was going to have any chance of getting a dry place to sleep and a warm meal, she needed to look presentable. She’d already been turned away by enough agencies, and the nights were getting colder. If Willow didn’t find somewhere soon, the cold would be the least of her worries—what with the Problem getting worse every day.
At last, Willow went to her last resort. She grabbed the swiss army knife from her ratty backpack and sawed through a good four inches of her hair on each side. The blue tufts—all teased and strangled—fell to the ground like flower petals on an unkept grave. She evened out the hair in the front, cut herself a little curtain of bangs, and chopped a rough line through the weave across her forehead. Through the new haze of blue in front of her circular glasses, Willow peered into the dingy mirror and gave herself a scowl.
Still covered in mud, in her sweat-stained white shirt and rumpled tie, Willow looked two years older, trying her hand and being sophisticated—and failing. At least the frizz was mostly scattered across the damp bathroom floor now and not creeping its way into Willow’s stony eyes through hazy lenses. She kicked a tuft off her shoe, rinsed her knife in the sink, and dried her hands poorly on the little remaining toilet paper in the one functional stall. With that, Willow shouldered her bag, rehooked her rapier into her belt, and ducked onto the street.
Morning had broken about an hour ago, but the city was slow to wake. Vibrant streaks of orange cut across the sky, a heavy fog in tow, leaving the whole place under threat of a ghostly fire. Fitting, Willow thought as she marched her way across the park where the public restroom sat. She would have hailed a cab and saved herself the twenty minute walk through a back neighborhood, but Willow didn’t have the money, nor did she have the time to explain to a cab driver why a uni-dropout was trudging through the streets in mid-October with a rapier, a shoddy haircut, and a ruined school uniform. No wonder the other agencies hadn’t believed Willow’s lies—she looked about as far from a graduate as a bright-eyed freshman, and about as skilled as one, too.
The walk across the lower part of the city reminded Willow how much she missed the countryside, which in turn reminded her why she could never go back. Every street she crossed was riddled with garbage—old newspapers bemoaning the worsening of the Problem and the need for more gifted children, bloody rags from outbursts of tuberculosis, human waste. As the morning dragged on, adults emerged from their homes in neat suits and carrying slick briefcases, off to the jobs society deemed ‘important,’ when the truth was, they were outlets for humans with little else to do but worry—who couldn’t help solve the ghost Problem even if they tried. Silly, Willow thought, that these people demanded more children in uni, more soldiers in the army against the dead, and their day-to-day weighed so little on any results—anything substantially related to the war. As careless as if they didn’t care.
By the time Willow reached 35 Portland Row, Marylebone, her hair had reverted to its natural state of frizz—albeit four inches short, uneven, and incredibly noticeable. She hoped her charm would make up for the discrepancy in her appearance, but who was she kidding? Willow was charming when she was confident, and it would take a whole lot less rejection to get her that way.
She adjusted her rapier on her hip, climbed the cracked steps of the squashed townhouse, and rapped on the door.
For a moment, no one answered. Willow scratched her arm. That newspaper ad had probably been fake anyway. Who ran a ghost hunting agency from a townhouse? What sort of low-ball agency had to work out of such a shabby, cobweb-encrusted, broken-down—
The door squeaked open on unoiled hinges. For a moment, Willow thought a ghost had done it, because she didn’t see anyone there. Then she looked down to see a young man—probably her age—with tightly-coiled, buzzed hair and a single earring in the shape of a mirror. He wore a cozy green sweater and a pair of trousers—not exactly professional, Willow thought, but nice enough.
Willow cleared her throat. “Um, hi. Are you Hun—”
The young man held up a hand, cutting off Willow’s words. His expression was brutish, like a bodyguard or a bouncer, but being a foot and a half shorter than her, it left Willow suppressing a snicker by biting her lip—her anxiety left on the steps behind. Then, like snow melting in springtime, the young man’s expression shifted, twitched, and broke into a toothy grin. “I’m just messing with ya. What, did you think I was going to beat you up or something?” The way he said it, Willow knew he was aware that his size made the thought ridiculous.
Willow gave an uneasy smile. Actually, now that she thought of it, his short stature shouldn’t have been a shruggable factor—he could easily crush her with whatever Talent he possessed. She rubbed her arm and tried for a nervous laugh. “I’m here about the opening?”
The young man pointed knowingly. “Of course you are. You’ve got the look of an agent. Well? What are you waiting for? Come inside, it’s freezing out. I’ll put on some tea.” He stepped aside and gestured through the door, where a cozy hallway bathed in warm lamplight awaited.
Willow hesitated. When was the last time she’d actually entered a building for an interview? Usually they took one look at her papers—at her failed fourth grade—and slammed the door in her face. This guy hadn’t even mentioned papers. And what did he mean—she had the look of an agent? Aside from her school clothes and rapier, she could have been any kid on the street, not one Talented enough to be an agent. At any rate, Willow couldn’t trust a guy she hardly knew. She wasn’t about to follow him off the street and—
“Are you hungry?” the young man asked. “I’m baking a meatpie—I’ll be out of the oven in about ten minutes. You’re welcome to some of it—whether we hire you or not.”
Willow followed the young man into the townhouse.
An umbrella rack held a smattering of rusty rapiers beside a coatrack overflowing with jackets—some of which had cobwebs, and looked far too large for any child agents. The newspaper ad had claimed this agency to be completely youth-run, but Willow didn’t believe it. The house looked old but well-kept—dusted bookcases, swept floors, and a creaky but sturdy staircase ascending to higher floors as the hall stretched down the narrow length of the house—branching into a living room and a kitchen beyond.
The young man led Willow into the living room—decorated the way an old cat lady might, with flowers in vases, doilies, and scenic paintings on polished bookshelves. Willow sat at the edge of a sagging couch, trying not to bite her fingernails. She smiled nervously. “So, I suppose you want to see my papers, huh?”
The man frowned. “Me? Oh, oh, no. I’m not—you thought I was—” He laughed and pointed to the kitchen. “I’m going to put on the kettle and check the pie. I’ll be back in a minute. Feel free to move around.” He cleared his throat, hesitant to move. “He’ll be down to conduct the interview shortly. I’m Gus, by the way.” And the strange young man named Gus hurried off to the kitchen just as the wafting scent of savory spices hit Willow’s nose.
She sat back a fraction, then stopped herself. What was she doing? She’d let a strange man lure her into his home with the promise of baked goods after a sketchy newspaper ad claimed this to be a ghost hunting agency, which Gus had neither confirmed nor denied—if that was really his name. And who was this other guy she was supposed to meet? She didn’t know what to think of any of it. Part of her wanted to run before Gus came back. Part of her longed for a decent meal, for shelter from the cold, even if it was only for half an hour. Part of her wondered if this might be the agency to accept her—they hadn’t slammed the door in her face.
After a few minutes, Willow’s anxiety forced her to stand. She paced the small room, chewing her lip to keep from biting her nails. The books on the shelves were old classics mostly, with titles too faded to read, or historical accounts of the earlier years of the Problem, or biographies of dead men. The paintings were pretty but boring—something you might glance by in an art museum on your way to the token exhibits. Even the vases had a certain plainness about them—vessles for flowers and nothing more. It made Willow all the more curious. In a townhouse occupied by child ghost hunters, the most interesting things were the cracks in the walls and the cobwebs almost intentionally ignored in dusting. At least, Willow thought so, until she noticed the chest.
It sat between an arm chair and the unlit fireplace the way a side table might, except no lamp or stack of books rested atop it. Ornate, with handcarved flowers, the iron hinges looked timeworn but sturdy, and a heavy padlock clasped the thing closed. Willow knelt down beside it and brushed her hand atop the surface. Immediately she Heard whispers, hisses, restless spirits in another plane. Death, or worse. There was something cursed in that chest, and Willow wanted no part.
She shot to her feet and turned on her heel, headed right back for the door and the unhappy chill of the outside. After her last mission, after her expulsion from uni, Willow would rather rot than play with ghosts of that caliber, or even listen to their haunting moans. Anyone who dared keep them in such close proximity to where they slept had a death wish, besides.
But as Willow made for the hall, a creak sounded on the stairs. A shadow brushed against the wall, darkening the cozy lamplight as a figure descended the old wooden beams.
Willow noticed his shiny black wingtips first, then his ironed slacks, his crisp white shirt with black suspenders and a tie, and a matching suit jacket draped across one shoulder. When he rounded the banister and stepped into the living room’s door frame, light bathed his face—sickly pale, with his chin tilted up and the confident edge of a grin tickling his lip. He was about her age, with blond hair short on the sides and spilling into his eyes on top, which might have been fashionable if he’d styled it past combing it back to fit the rest of his slick look. He had a clip missing from his left ear and a scar tickling down its base to match one twisted up his cheek, both of them dwarfed by the patchwork scar eating the right side of his face. The skin looked burned, but not melted—a ghostly injury, to be sure, but nothing like what Willow had ever seen before. She couldn’t stop horror from spreading through her gaze, horror that someone so young could master the same superiority as an adult and simultaneously the pain of a seasoned ghost hunter. But from the way he held himself, the sharpness of his eyes, it hardly seemed to matter, which made Willow wonder—why should she care what horrors he held in the past? He clearly had better things to discuss—things Willow would happily listen to.
She blinked. Why had she thought that? What sort of mind control was making her forget her edge in the presence of his smug confidence?
The man cleared his throat, nodding his chin to her, making Willow realize she was standing, staring, almost gaping at him.
Willow staggered back, madly straightening out her tie and brushing back the frizz from her hair. “Hi! Um, you’re the—are you in charge of this—I mean, you’re just a kid so I don’t—you must be—I’m here about the job?”
The man raised an eyebrow. “Just a kid?”
“I found this place from a newspaper ad. It said it was run entirely by children—ghost hunters, I mean. People who still have Talent.”
“We are the youngest ghost hunting agency in London, yes,” he said.
“So you are Hunters Inc.?”
The man nodded. “That wasn’t clear? I told Gus we should put a sign on the door. What were you doing, walking into a house without knowing…” He cut himself off. “Doesn’t matter. The name’s Hunter. Caleb Hunter.” He held out a hand. “Pleasure to meet you, um…”
Willow shook it. “Willow Park.” He had a firm grip. “Did you want to see my CV? You’re the one interviewing me, right? Gus was unclear about the whole situation.”
“I’ll take it.” He gestured to the living room seats as Willow rustled through her bag and pulled out a rumpled collection of papers.
She passed it to him, wondering if his eyes were lingering on her wrinkled shirt and dirty glasses, or if her anxiety was making her imagine it. It couldn’t stop her knees from shaking as she took a seat on the couch opposite his armchair and stared as he leafed through her papers. He’d reject her. Willow knew it. Any moment, he’d connect her shoddy dress with her failed fourth grade and send her back to the streets.
“No letter of recommendation?” He eyed her over her papers.
Willow shook her head. “My last employment ended abruptly. If you want details I can…”
“No, it’s fine.” He folded her CV and tucked it in the breast pocket of his white shirt. “We here at Hunters Inc. prefer to measure the skill of our employees on performance, not reviews. As soon as Gus gets back, we can start with the tests.”
“Tests?” Willow’s throat felt dry. “The ad didn’t say anything about any tests.”
A clatter of dishes alerted Willow to Gus, jaunting his way through the inlet to the kitchen with a tray much too big for him balanced between his arms, a china teapot and several teacups dancing atop. He placed the tray on the room’s central table and began pouring steaming cups of warm chamomile, a scent Willow breathed with pleasure—such a change from the constant chill.
“Right on time,” Hunter said, nodding to Gus. Then, to Willow, “It’s agency policy for all agents to partake in the hiring process of a new recruit.”
“All the…” Willow frowned. “You mean it’s just the two of you?” Suddenly Hunter’s professional stature, the dark look in his eyes, carried a different weight. This wasn’t someone with the brute strength of a seasoned ghost hunter, this was a pair of boys playing make-believe in a dollhouse. “I’m sorry, I think I read this all wrong. Maybe I should—”
“Cookie?” Gus passed Willow a steaming teacup and offered her a plate of snickerdoodles.
Willow begrudgingly accepted both. She tore into the cookie, forgetting to swallow her bites, until she realized Hunter and Gus were staring at her. Willow slowed, chewed, and set the second half of her cookie on the arm of her chair. She cleared her throat. “So, tests?”
“Right.” Hunter took a sip of his tea and stood, letting his suit jacket lay draped across the back of his chair in a way simultaneously nonchalant and professional. The way he stood, Willow wondered if he knew he was cosplaying a numb-minded adult, or if it was desperation to make his agency seem a little more real. Whatever the case, Willow couldn’t peg this Hunter guy; he scared her, confused her, intrigued her, and that was before she took into account whatever was stirring in her stomach that told her to forget her questions and hang on his every word. It was why she hadn’t walked out the door already. That, and the food.
“You think she’s ready for the tests?” Gus leaned back in his chair. “She hasn’t stopped shaking since I opened the door.”
Willow scowled. “I can hear you, you know.”
“You already made tea, Gus,” Hunter said. “We might as well see if it was a wasted pot.”
“If she’s anything like the others, it will be,” Gus muttered, but he watched intently as Hunter made his way to the ornate chest in the corner of the room.
Pulling an old iron key from his breastpocket, Hunter knelt and unclasped the lock from the chest. Willow felt her heartbeat quicken. She clutched the edge of her seat, knuckles white, wishing she’d left when she’d had the chance.
What he pulled from the chest made Willow wish she’d stayed in the countryside with its torment and death. It was a cylindrical glass canister filled with blue and yellow mist. The seal had been fashioned from iron a long time ago, because rust crept into the glass, sealing the noxious fog so tightly nothing could twist it open. And as Hunter heaved the thing from the chest and slammed it onto the coffee table, the swirling tendrils of fog contorted behind the hazy glass.
Willow leaned forward. Whispers followed the jar like snakes hissing through dry grass. She squinted. Something moved beyond the fog, beckoning her, coaxing her to reach out and… Willow’s fingers brushed the glass.
In an instant, the blue and yellow fog vanished. Hovering in an opaque blue liquid was a skull with cognition beyond its vacant sockets. It screamed, launching forward, and Willow jumped. She fell off the couch, shaking, before her trembling vision returned to the skull in the jar, and she realized it wasn’t going anywhere. Whatever they’d done to it, it was trapped.
Gus keeled over, laughing. “See? I told you she couldn’t take it.”
Hunter held up a hand, quieting Gus’s cackle. To Willow, he said, “Are you alright?”
“Fine,” Willow managed. She pulled herself back to the couch and rubbed her legs. Her eyes hovered on the skull—swirling in liquid. Its eye sockets looked normal, but the rest of the skull had a strange shape—a forehead elongated into a peak at the back of the cranium, an almost snout-like contortion erupting from the nose and mouth, and jagged teeth falling from the jaw like mandibles on an insect. “What is…” Willow pointed to the skull.
Hunter smirked. “Well that’s the test. What do you think it is?”
Willow studied it. “It’s powerful, whatever it is. It’s got to be a Type 3 ghost. The skull is the Source, the jar is the seal. But why do you have it? Shouldn’t you bring it into the furnaces and get rid of it for good?”
“The skull is the Source,” Hunter confirmed, ignoring Willow’s questions. “It’s a Titan skull—that’s why it looks that way.” Just as fast as he’d taken it out, Hunter covered the jar with a cloth and placed it back in the chest as if he’d never removed it. He spoke no more about what the skull meant, or why he had it, or how dangerous it might be. Instead, when he returned, he placed three small objects on the table beneath a cloth, returned to his seat, and gestured to Willow. “You’re a Listener, you said?”
Willow had forgotten that she’d given him her CV, and for a moment she wondered if he was a mind reader. Then she nodded, and said, “I have Touch and Sight too, but the Touch sometimes leads into Listening. The ghosts talk to me—tell me their stories though cursed objects.”
“And what’s your discipline?”
“Plant magic.”
“I see. Gus is a powerful illusionist, but not much else. And I have the Sight—I can see death-glows—the residue ghosts leave behind.” Hunter didn’t mention his discipline. Willow didn’t ask.
With that, he pulled the cloth from the first object and gestured toward it. “Tell me what you can about this.”
It was a crystal ball—a rather small one, too. It had a purple glow to its opaque surface, but after the skull in the jar, Willow hardly blinked at it. With a hesitant hand, she plucked the thing off its stand and twirled it in her fingers. Then, removing her tether from the plane of vision, Willow pressed her eyes shut and concentrated on the voice of the ball. “I hear static,” Willow said, opening her eyes. “A voice—I can’t make out the words, but it’s firm, commanding. It’s a pleasant memory.”
“That belonged to my father,” said Gus. “He was a reporter. An Oracle, too. And a comedian. It’s where I get my charm from.” He punctuated with a grin.
Hunter nodded. “Good. And this?” He pulled back the cloth further, revealing a deck of yellow and purple playing cards. No, not playing cards—Willow realized as she set down the crystal ball and picked them up—tarot.
She leafed through them. The Three of Swords, the Hanged Man, the Tower stared back at her. Past or future, Willow had to wonder, hers or someone else’s? All the same, she pressed her eyes shut and felt the slip of the cards in her fingers. Almost immediately, she recoiled. “These are filled with hate. Death. I hear screams—hundreds of them. Where did you get these?”
This time, Hunter gave her an answer. She almost wished he hadn’t. “My first job,” he said. “A torrent of ghosts cut loose from the Demon Realm, devoted to senseless murder. I stopped them, but not before they took a toll.”
Willow shook her head. The Problem had planted trauma at every doorstep. Part of her wanted to comfort Hunter, but the rest of her started into his hardened eyes, and an inkling of fear crept down her neck. How exactly had he dealt with a mass intrusion of demons without an army of agents?” He didn’t seem horrified by the memory, either. If anything, he looked a little bit proud.
Willow replaced the tarot cards. When Hunter unveiled the third item, Willow expected the worst, and she wasn’t sure what to make of what she saw.
It was a key—an old one, for an ancient lock. The shaft was rusted iron, with a faded yellow sigil of a cat’s eye carved into the base.
Willow braced herself, picked the thing up, and Listened.
Silence. Empty, deafening silence. It was as though she’d plunged into tar, into the darkest room she’d ever be, so devoid of sense she could hear her own heartbeat and the blood pouring in her ears. Willow opened her mouth. “I hear…” She almost made something up—something to magnify the haunting feeling from the mute object. Then she faltered. “I hear nothing.”
Hunter and Gus exchanged glances. Willow cursed to herself—they’d throw her out now for sure. Instead, Hunter gave a slow nod. “And you’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” Willow said, her throat dry. “I’m sorry. If you’re looking for someone with more Talent for things like this, I can’t help you.” She made to stand.
Hunter held up a hand. “You’d be surprised how many people come in here telling tall tales about this key—if half the stuff they said was true, it’d be the most haunted key in all of London.”
“So it’s not—”
“It goes to my bedroom. I’ll take it back, if you don’t mind.” He grinned and held out a hand, obviously quite pleased by his little ploy.
Willow tossed him the key. “If this is some kind of joke to you, I’ll save you the laughs and let myself out.” She stood, snatching up her half-eaten cookie and taking a bite.
Gus gave Hunter a smirk and a shrug as if saying, I told you so, which only made Willow’s anger flare.
How dare they make her the brunt of their comedy when she was homeless, jobless, practically starving? She pursed her lips. “Thank you for wasting my time with your half-cocked joke of an agency. Don’t bother with newspaper ads. You’ll never hire anyone.” At least she finally had this Hunter guy pegged—a joker. A prank. “You weren’t kidding about being the only youth-run agency in London—you’re both a pair of children!” She huffed and turned on her heel.
A blaring scream came tearing into the room from the kitchen. Gus hopped up. “The pie! I’ll be right back.” He gathered up the teacups, piled them on the tray, and practically danced out of the room, unswayed by Willow’s sour mood. He hardly seemed to care about her at all.
“So that’s all I am,” Willow spat at Hunter. “Some entertainment to tide you over to dinner? I hope the next ghost you fight drags you to the Demon Realm to rot.”
“Miss Park, if I may.” Hunter slid his suit coat off the armchair and slipped into it, taking care to fasten the button and straighten out every last wrinkle. He tugged the cuffs. “We are an established agency with a steady income. We have every license of the larger corporations, who, by the way, turned their nose up at your failed fourth grade. You don’t think I didn’t notice that, did you? Those tests are no prank, Miss Park, but a necessary siphon for all the Talentless high achievers. Trust me when I say—you have plenty of Talent, and a strong Magic discipline.” A smile crept across his face as he took a step closer to Willow, so she couldn’t move from his constricting gaze. “Besides, you ate the snickerdoodle. Any agent who eats one of Gus’s baked goods owes him twelve years of unpaid service.”
Willow blinked at the joke, caught unawares, at least, until she comprehended the words. “Wait. Any agent?”
“That is, if you’re still interested in the position?”
It took Willow a moment to regain control over her thoughts enough to consider it. Could she put up with these jokers, especially if their agency wasn’t in the least bit legit? Could she put up with someone who made her insides jumble into knots with a single stony stare? She certainly had some research to do on this Hunter character and his rep sheet. Was he really nothing but a joker? She had trouble believing it. And on the other hand, accepting the job meant a roof over her head. Warmth.
That pie smelled really good.
“I’m not a punchline to your sick jokes,” Willow said.
Hunter shook his head. “Definitely not.”
“You’re a real agency.”
“Absolutely.”
Willow stuck out her chin. “You swear it?”
Hunter closed the gap between them, so close they were peering down each other's noses, and Willow could see the deepening extent of Hunter’s stony eyes—eyes mysterious and almost other worldly. “I swear it.”
“Fine,” Willow decided, “Then I accept.” She embraced Hunter’s firm handshake with a flutter in her stomach.
“Excellent! Let’s eat. Then I’ll give you the tour. I think you’re going to like it here.”
Willow wondered if she would. She could get used to the cooking, at least. And soft sheets. But something about the creak of the floorboards, the whispers in the walls, and Hunter’s paranoid mutterings made Willow worry what secrets the house, its owner, and all of Hunters Inc. were hiding. It probably had something to do with the locked door on the second floor. The one Hunter refused to let her near, refused to elaborate on, refused to acknowledge at all aside from “that’s personal. Don’t go near it. Ever.”
Yeah, Willow was going to crack open this mystery and get to the bottom of Caleb Hunter and his stony, stony eyes.