until we're gone
The hotel conference room smelled of stale coffee and that powder used on carpets, along with a clashing riot of perfumes.
“Oh, Doctor Strange?” said one of the women- she was about the age he'd appeared to be, with callused hands and a direct expression, if you ignored the circles under her eyes. The contrast with her pale skin and freckles made that hard. “Perfect! My cousin mentioned you.”
“Mmm,” Stephen tried for non-committal. It wasn't that he didn't... okay, he didn't trust Leo Scott, mostly because the man was one step up from a con artist. Jessica Jones had broken his nose, and he'd bought her lunch as a thank you.
“Did he try to fleece you, too?” she laughed. “Mom won't let him in the house. I'm Georgia, by the way, the coffee hasn't kicked in.”
“Wait, I thought Jenny called in the expert,” said another, a Korean woman who had bitten nails and was wearing a floaty sort of floral dress.
“I did, Serena,” said number three, who had on a National Parks t-shirt and looked like she'd had good work done on her face, as he'd have pegged her as being a few years younger than the others.
Or, he thought, taking a second gland, she had very good illusions on, to hide more than a few things.
Which is why he shouldn't have been surprised when Grace Learmont walked in behind him, wearing a Miskatonic University sweatshirt and leggings with some kind of lacing up the sides.
“That would be me,” Grace said, hauling a messenger bag on the table. “Hello, Doc. Hello, ladies.”
“Hello, Lady Grace,” he said, enjoying the way she nodded her head to grant him that minor victory.
Grace Learmont, Fiona had told him when she was done calling him an idiot, was a forensic engineer who came from a family of seers in Scotland.
She was also the younger daughter of Tom Learmont, a skilled seer, and the Queen in the Midnight Court, and acted as a troubleshooter for her mother and various changelings who knew she was a soft touch. (He'd not dealt with what was called the fae much, to be fair, not with Otherworld the more likely source of any troubles. The set of thirteen courts was better at self-policing, from what he'd gathered.)
“You were a bit vague about what was going on,” Stephen said, watching Grace rummage around her bag.
“Well, we didn't... have that much information,” Georgia admitted, rubbing her arms. “And we didn't really think much of it until last year, and it's not like there are many of us left.”
There were six women crammed into the room, not counting Grace. He raised his eyebrows, content to let her fill the silence.
“Well, we were a big swim team, there were twenty of us,” she said, chin up. “We were a good team, we worked hard...”
“We played hard, too,” said another, a black woman who was in those sweeping pants from the sixties and a bright blue top, looking like she was about to go to a meeting. Possibly because her fingers were drumming on a laptop. “Remember that time Chris had an open dare to see who'd swim in Crater Lake at midnight?”
“I wasn't on that trip, Kayla,” said the fifth woman, suntanned and with one arm in a sling. “Mom wanted me back in San Francisco instead.”
“Probably a good thing we didn't go there,” Serena laughed. “We would have ended up trying to swim to Alcatraz.”
“Nope, not even then,” said the sixth, who was wearing duckie pajamas and had her silver-streaked hair in a braid. “I'm a fucking night shift nurse, I know better now, but even I'd have known not to go in that Bay.”
“Can we please get back to the bit where you just suggested that fourteen women died?” Grace asked, trading a look with him.
“Well, it wasn't all at once,” Georgia said. “It was Becks, first.”
“And her boyfriend was an asshole, so him driving into a river didn't really surprise us,” said the woman with a laptop. Kayla, right.
“You forgot drunk,” the nurse added. “Brady didn't put much effort into anything not football or kegstands. She kept saying she wouldn't ride home with him when he was drunk, but...” she shrugged. “Graduation party.”
“Three of the others were car accidents, too- well, two car accidents and Finley and her motorcycle,” Jenny added, ticking it off. “Finley was about seven years ago, May was ten, and Patty was three years ago?”
“And then Laurie had an accident with some construction equipment last year,” Georgia added.
“Scaffolding collapsed on her,” the woman in the sling said. “That's when Georgie here realized that it was a bit weird for coincidence.”
“Danielle died after giving birth about two years after graduation,” Serena mused. “We probably should have thought of it then- she wasn't even twenty-five.”
“Well, my jackass cousin didn't tell me he did magic until I saw him do it,” Georgia huffed. Jenny looked a bit guilty at that.
“And Heather OD'd after she had a bad fall that broke her shoulder,” Kayla added. “We didn't find out about that until Laurie's funeral.”
Stephen tried to keep track of how many women that was. Grace was taking notes on her phone, thankfully.
“That's seven of them,” Grace said, looking up.
“Chris OD'd too, took something at a party and mixed it with booze,” Georgia said. “Vanessa's husband killed her...”
“We can't prove murder, Georgia,” Serena said, sighing. “I told you that.”
“Yes, Miss Prosecutor, she stabbed herself twenty-six times,” the nurse rolled her eyes. “I've got a bridge to sell you if you believe that.”
“Vanessa Gregory?” Grace asked, eyes flicking up from her phone to catch the women nodding. He'd need to ask someone about that later.
“Claire died in a break-in gone wrong, fifteen years ago, Polly supposedly drank bleach on Ambien three years ago, both Sarahs died of drowning, and Molly died of a snake bite about nine years ago,” Jenny finished, the fae woman looking helpless. “It wasn't all the same thing, and aside from maybe Sarah T, Polly, and Danielle, they didn't seem weird when you looked at each one.”
“Then we realized that none of them were cancer or anything like that, even Danielle's was a tear that made her bleed out, not a disease, which was a bit odd,” the woman in the sling said. “And they never caught who killed Claire, and just a lot of little bits of weirdness.”
“Then Bridget had a weird patient, and got saved by a weirder patient that I'm pretty sure is one of you guys,” Kayla added, nodding at Strange.
“He said his name was Danny?” Bridget added. “Rich white guy, likes dragons?”
“I know who you're talking about,” Stephen nodded, trying not to rub his temples. He'd ask Danny Rand about it later. Or ask Luke Cage, the man was easier to deal with. “So it started when you were about twenty-two, and has continued until now.”
“Twenty years,” Jenny agreed.
He didn't have a timeframe for all of them, but fourteen deaths over twenty years was a useful starting point- it wasn't annual, or apparently on a regular time frame. Opportunistic, most likely, something that nudged probabilities. Though how that covered the murders, he wasn't certain. Possession?
“What kind of weird patient?” Grace asked. “Like, mutant, magic, stalker...”
“Stalker,” Bridget nodded. “Midlife crisis type, I thought, but usually they go after the younger nurses, since they have less experience. He tried choking me after my shift.”
“Hmm,” Stephen leaned back on his chair to think. Danny would have noticed a possession. Probably. Hopefully.
Though this was leaning towards something like chaos magic.
“And there was a truck that tried to hop the sidewalk and run me down,” Georgia said, biting her lip before drinking down more coffee. “Leo's actually the one who got me out of the way, that's when I told him about the deaths and he told me to talk to you.”
“Did you happen to do anything out of the ordinary before the first death?” he asked.
The women all looked at each other.
Honestly, if they'd done something stupid with an Ouija board, he was going to have words with the fae woman. She should have noticed something earlier.
“It was spring break, that last year, and we were... it had been a fantastic year, and we were all close, and it seemed like it would be less stressful than Cancun,” the woman with the cast said. “We could all be together.”
“Crystal found the place,” Jenny added, looking at the blonde. “It was caving, and there was a lake for swimming, and the weather was perfect, so we figured we'd go out in the woods.”
“Someone stashed an old chest,” Bridget said. “And Sarah K thought it might be old treasure, so we opened it.”
“No treasure?” Stephen asked. It wouldn't be that easy, that they had some cursed gold to cleanse.
“A candle,” Jenny looked miserable, not looking at a very unimpressed Grace, whose eyes were darkening and whose ears were pointed.
Grace was likely to ream the changeling out after this.
“And Chris lit it, later that night, in the cabin,” Bridget offered. “Most of us were asleep, I think only Becks and I were up. She was dealing with her boyfriend, crying and regretting coming. I think Chris lit it to get her to stop.”
“But I remember having terrible dreams,” Serena admitted, hugging herself. “They seemed so real.”
“Polly woke up and got rid of everything in her stomach,” Kayla added. “I couldn't breathe.”
“There was no candle, either,” Serena thought it over, twirling a lock of hair. “I kind of thought someone had thrown it away to get to Sarah K.”
“I think it consumed itself in setting up this curse,” Stephen mused. “Thankfully, I should be able to erase the curse this afternoon, if Grace is willing to help me prevent it from lashing out.”
“Safety first,” Grace winked at him. “But probably a good idea.”
And she meant that more than the women seeking them for help knew- if any of the women had an aneurysm or heart murmur hiding in them, they would most likely have died in the first couple of years.
How terrible could it be?
~
Grace was leaning against him after the others had left. “I want pizza.”
“Pizza sounds nice,” Stephen agreed, trying not to look around the room. Hopefully he wouldn't be held liable for the scorch mark on the table. Or the broken chair leg. Or the bit of blood on the wall.
Grace was rubbing one cheek, where a very pointy stiletto shoe had cut almost deep enough to showcase her teeth through the hole. It seemed to be healing quickly enough. “We don't have to handle clean up, will we?”
“No, I believe this is under Georgia's name,” he said, shaking his head. “All is well, now. Though I noticed that the changeling woman...”
“Jenny is part water spirit, which is why I think she deluded herself that there was nothing supernatural going on,” Grace stood up, rolling her bruised and battered legs. “She didn't want to admit that she swam on an Olympic track, though thankfully she wasn't stupid enough to try for the team and admit she can breath underwater and all that.”
“And then when Leo Scott told his cousin to call me, and revealed that magic is real,” Stephen nodded. “All without her telling her friends about it.”
“Yeah, she fucked up, and her punishment's knowing that if she'd recognized the magic earlier, we could have saved most of them,” Grace shrugged. “She'll need to live with that the rest of her life.”
He nodded, before deciding to take a plunge. “If you really want pizza, would you like to try out a place not too far from my home? It's quite good.”
She gave him an assessing look for a long moment, and he tried not to squirm.
After a long, panic-inducing moment, she nodded. “That sounds good.”
He offered her an arm. “Well, then, let's get out before anyone sees this mess.”
She laughed as he opened a portal.