in technicolor

Coming off the collar situation, Brett wasn’t surprised to find the night crew laying low over the next couple of weeks. Just because they’d out-smarted the developers of the thing didn’t mean that they weren’t still spooked by the whole series of events.

Or so Brett thought.

His assumption began to be amended when Foggy arrived to bodily drag him away from his desk in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon, when both of them were supposed to be doing their damn jobs.

“Brett,” Foggy said seriously, in the eye-searing sunlight two blocks away from the station. “This shit has gone on long enough.”

Which shit? Brett had innumerable piles of shit around him at all times. He was gonna have to be more specific.

“The ghost shit,” Foggy said with his hands. “The fucking ghost shit, man. Don’t get me wrong, I love me a good ghost hunt, but this? This is just getting out of hand.”

Woah. Okay. Back-track. What ghost shit?

Foggy stared at him emptily for three long beats. Then glared out into the street in abrupt cold fury. So cold he didn’t even seem to be sweating in his suit, despite the heat from the sun and the heat wafting up from the pavement.

“I’m going to commit homicide,” he decided out of nowhere.

“Alright, you go do that,” Brett said. “Don’t give them my name when they bring you in.”

“Nope, you’re now my accomplice,” Foggy said. “Come on. We’re going.”

“What? No, man. I’ve still got fours on my shift.”

Foggy’s eyes were almost grey in the piercing sunlight.

“You’re coming with me,” he said. Or rather, threatened.

Every summer of highschool, Brett had fallen prey to these very eyes and those very words. And because back then, he had had maybe half the backbone that he had presently, he’d given into the inevitable fairly easily, although not without the requisite moaning. In the absence of multiple bits of metal littered around Foggy’s face, Brett felt a little more courageous in the face of this new version of the inevitable.

“No,” he said. “I’m not going, Fogs. We did the ghost thing, we did years of ghost things. We’ve done enough ghost things for a lifetime.”

“This isn’t a just ghost thing, Mahoney. This is homicide,” Foggy said.

Oh, yes. How could he have forgotten?

“Man, who are you trying to kill?” Brett asked, hating the answer already.

“Karen.”

Unexpected. But okay.

“She’s your firm partner, Foggy. You cannot kill your firm partner, you will be the first suspect.”

“You don’t know that. We’ll make it look like Frank did it. Come on, I’m a lawyer, you’re a cop. We cannot fail.”

This was the start to a horrifically bad comedy.

“No,” Brett said. “We can fail. We can very much fail. Very badly. Look, obviously you’re upset about something, so why don’t we grab a beer and—”

“If you do not come with me right now, I’ll just murder her on my own and move to Georgia.”

This fucking guy was always going on and on about how dramatic Matt was and yet here he was, threatening to destroy his own life for Brett’s goddamn attention. Fine. Whatever. He’d bite.

“What, pray tell, has Karen done which warrants her untimely demise?” Brett asked magnanimously.

“Ghost things,” Foggy said immediately.

“You know mud?” Brett asked him. “That’s how clear you’re being right now.”

“It’s doesn’t matter, man. Are you in or are you out?” Foggy demanded. And it was exactly like they were back in fucking highschool, standing outside the school gates in converse sneakers.

Brett felt bullied. Peer-pressured.

He needed an adult.

UGH.

“We’re not committing homicide,” Brett said with a menacing finger.

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever, come on,” Foggy said.

Maynard and Ellen stared at him in silent shock when he came back into the station and said that he had to take a half day.

“We’re in the middle of a case,” Maynard said.

“And I understand that,” Brett said.

“But we got shit to do,” Foggy finished for him, flagrantly ignoring his promise to shut the fuck up and let Brett handle this.

Maynard and Ellen stared at Brett with eyes that spoke of disappointment. ‘You continue to fraternize with the enemy’ that set of brown eyes said.

It’s not like he wanted to. It just—they’d never been on the opposite side of Foggy’s bullying, okay? He was a dick and a force of nature, and no one would ever believe Brett because Foggy looked, at his most furious, like an offended shih tzu. No one would ever understand.

When they were eight, Foggy had completely intentionally let Brett fall from the monkey bars and sprain his wrist because he refused to be ‘it’ in their game of tag. And then, when they were fifteen and Brett had gotten a crush on this girl Carrie in their class, Foggy had stared at him silently and pointedly every time he mentioned her. And most importantly in that particular scenario, even though he was friends with the girl, Fogs had specifically chosen not to tell Brett that Carrie couldn’t ever remember his fucking name, despite the fact that they sat together in Spanish. So when Brett finally worked up the nerve to ask Carrie out, Fogs stood by and fucking let her call him ‘Brandon,’ when she accepted.

It was bullying. It didn’t look like bullying. But it was bullying.

Psychological torture.

It was either that or admitting that he had maybe not been the most graceful social being as a child and Brett refused to suffer such insult.

“Brett, you are not taking a half day to go play cops and robbers with this guy,” Maynard said.

“It’s not a joy ride, it’s—” Brett started.

“Murder,” Foggy finished for him.

Their half of the bullpen went quiet. All eyes on them.

“I’m sorry, what?” Ellen squeaked.

“Homicide,” Foggy clarified for her. Brett closed his eyes. One time. He needed this guy to shut up this one time.

“BRETT,” Ellen barked in alarm.

“He’s being a dick,” Brett said. “We are not going to commit—”

“Potentially double homicide, we’ll know better when we get there,” Foggy said.

Their half of the station remained horrified.

“Foggy’s cousin’s in some shit,” Brett lied. And then before the fuckhead could ruin it, he said “We’re going to go make sure she’s not hurt.”

The relief on everyone’s faces was gratifying. The heart clutching was, too.

“I’m going to strangle the guy who touched her with my bare hands,” Foggy assured Ellen and Maynard cheerfully; he always game to distort reality, so long as he wasn’t the one who’d be blamed for it when they got caught.

“Okay, uh. Well, maybe don’t do that,” Maynard said. “Hope she’s okay.”

Ah, she’d be fine. Brett? Not so much.

“Dude, you made me lie to my coworkers, what the actual fuck is going on?” Brett demanded as Fogs dragged him down the street by his sleeve. He didn’t say. Was too determined to get them to the secondary location in his head.

Brett realized belatedly that they looked like a mobile kidnapping situation. He ripped his arm back and at Foggy’s exasperated whine, told him to chill the fuck out and explain himself.

And then he had an aneurysm because fingers danced along his shoulders and he turned around and nearly decked Matt in the middle of the sidewalk. He did not, thank god. Because that would look not just bad, but horrendous for everyone involved.

“Ghosts,” Matt said when Brett threatened him like he’d threatened his partner.

“Ghosts,” Brett repeated, just to be sure he’d heard right.

“Ghosts,” Matt said again, and Brett realized that he was being extremely serious about this. And, actually, that wasn’t seriousness, that was…anxiety?

For real?

“Matt, there is no such thing as ghosts,” he said. Matt glared at him and slunk away to attach himself to Foggy’s arm. He said nothing. Foggy gave Brett flat eyebrows for both of them.

“We gotta kill Karen,” Foggy reiterated.

They did not need to kill Karen.

“The office is haunted,” Matt said tightly.

What, now?

“It’s haunted,” Matt insisted. “There are feet in there with no heartbeats.”

Woah.

Wait, no. Get yourself together, Mahoney. They’re fucking with you.

“This isn’t funny, you two,” he snapped.

“I know,” Matt said. “My priest doesn’t believe me.”

“You told your priest?” Brett asked.

“Yes, but he keeps saying that even if they are real, they’re probably just lost souls, which is fine, but honestly? I don’t care what kind of souls they are, they need to fucking go.”

Brett needed a second here. Matt sounded like he actually believed what he was saying right now. And he’d talked to his priest about this and that seemed to be going a little far, even for him.

“Why do we have to kill Karen, then?” Brett asked Foggy. Matt jerked and turned towards Fogs in shock. So he evidently hadn’t been in on that discussion or been listening the first time around.

“We’ve gotta kill Karen?” he repeated.

“Yeah,” Foggy said.

“Why?”

“’Cause she brought ‘em in.”

Matt didn’t like that. Didn’t want to believe that. His knuckles tensed around the handle of his cane.

“She didn’t—she wouldn’t—she said—”

“She lied, Matty. It wasn’t a boardgame, it was a Oija board, like I told you it was. I don’t know why you’re in denial of this.”

There was a pause between the two of them.

“Foggy, I don’t want to kill Karen,” Matt said delicately.

Foggy had no time for this nonsense.

“Tough,” he said in his bully voice.

It took some prodding and a whole lot of frustration on everyone’s part, but Brett eventually got the whole story here.

It was summer and summer reminded Karen of living in Bumfuck Nowhere, Vermont and that reminded her of fireflies and camping and all that shit together reminded her that she was a sadist with two captive victims at her disposal.

Karen was way into ghost hunting and the occult during the warmer months and she had been trying to sneak some of that shit into the offices of Nelson, Murdock & Page so as to ensure that she was not the only one experiencing whatever it was that she was conjuring. She had tried to get Castle to endure this shit with her, but Castle had the good, Catholic sense not to put up with that shit. He bailed early and was presently refusing to take Karen’s calls. Peter and his friends, it turned out, were usually game to feed Karen’s impulses because they were going through that fun teenage phase of seeking out reasons to be scared shitless, like Brett and Foggy had done all those years ago.

But whatever it was that Karen was messing with had gotten too much for the Spidey crew, because they bailed like Castle had and had complained to Matt that his bestie was making them all too afraid to sleep alone at night.

Matt had told Karen to tone down the ghost stories and she had, as she was wont, heard that as ‘ramp it up.’

There was a reason that she was Matt’s other best friend.

But Karen had apparently failed to consider the fact that the Devil was maybe a teensy-weensy bit terrified of the supernatural like his gun-toting, Catholic compatriot and so apparently had snuck a Ouija board into the office without Foggy or Matt’s intervention. She’d stayed late the last Friday and the other two had thought nothing of it, until Matt realized that he’d forgotten something at the office on Sunday and had stopped by after church to grab it, only to realize that people were inside the place. Given the fact that only three people had keys to the office and, as far as he knew, he was the only key-holder there, he prepared himself to handle a load of burglars. Only, when he opened the door, he found no burglars. No anyone, actually. Not a trace, not a smell. Nothing.

But he swore he’d heard voices and footsteps.

He’d written this off as a misplaced sound. He explained to Brett that sometimes, his hearing confused him because if he didn’t focus on it, he fell into the habit of just assuming that sounds which were loud to him were close by. That correlation didn’t always work in real life.

But then on Monday, Matt and Foggy had come in early and had heard the same sounds. Foggy had heard them, too, and so asked Matt to see if he could tell more about the people they were about to call the cops on. But Matt got confused because he couldn’t hear any heartbeats, even when he pressed his head against the door. With the number of feet moving around, he was adamant that he would have at least been able to catch a snippet of someone’s heart beating. And yet there was nothing. And by that point, Matt was freaking out so that he could only hear his own heartbeat, so they’d resolved to open the door and deal with a load of potential assailants.

But there was no one in the place.

Karen arrived afterwards and blew the whole thing off, but throughout the next couple of days, Fogs had felt his hair being fucked with and Matt kept coming out and moving around people in the waiting room who he didn’t realize weren’t there. And apparently, that whole morning, the office had been cold enough to see your breath.

And Foggy was understandably fucking done. And Matt was, for once, naively hopeful that it would pass if they just ignored it long enough. The role reversal was extremely entertaining. But more importantly, Brett wanted nothing to do with this shitshow.

Nothing.

Nope.

He did not fuck with the supernatural. He had learned from his experiences in childhood that nothing good ever came of that.

But still, he wasn’t convinced that throttling Karen was the solution to this problem here. Maybe just getting her to admit what she’d done would be sufficient for them to find a way to undo it.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Foggy said.

No, sir. That’s what you’re saying now that you’ve put a mile between yourself and your haunted workplace. There had definitely been talk of homicide prior to this.

“Okay, so I overreacted, whatever,” Foggy admitted. “The point is that we can’t live like this for any longer, or I’m gonna explode.”

Evidently.

“Okay, so where is Karen?” Brett asked.

“She took the day,” Matt said.

Of course she did.

“Can you find Karen?” Brett tried. Matt didn’t seem to be in a Daredevil-like mood. In fact, he seemed very much to have laid that whole ‘man without fear’ thing aside for the moment, which was so uncharacteristic that Brett felt kind of sorry for him.

“Maybe,” Matt said. “But she’s not at home, I already checked there.”

“Maybe with Castle then?” Brett offered. Matt shrugged weakly.

“He’s really not into ghosts,” Brett murmured to Foggy as they set off to find Castle and maybe Karen.

“No, he grew up in a haunted orphanage,” Foggy muttered back. “And he has a hard time telling when things are real and fake with this stuff, ‘cause you know, he can’t just see that it’s nothing like we can.”

Fuck that. God, no. Brett really did for sorry for the guy now.

Castle was unusually patient with Matt when he finally nosed him out of hiding. He did not begin the conversation with the usual rain of insults or bullets.

“I told her not to mess with that shit,” Castle said, shaking his head. “I told her, but there’s so much shit online and you know how it is. Tell her not to do something and she’s guaranteed to do it out of spite.”

But Karen wasn’t with him and no, Castle hadn’t seen her since Friday last. He did confirm that he’d noticed her eyeing up Ouija boards online the week before. He’d confiscated the phone while she was with him, but obviously the masculine censoring didn’t go down well and so she’d left pretty pissed off.

Castle thought that there was a chance that she was off with her friend Patricia Walker, Jessica Jones’s adopted sister.

“That girl has got a crush on her that you can see from space,” Castle said, allowing Matt to wrap a rosary around his wrist before they left. “She’d do anything for Kare’s approval. Maybe she cajoled her into being her accomplice.”

Now that sounded pretty Karen-like. It was as good a lead as any.

Matt didn’t actually know Jessica Jones’s sister. Foggy had only met her once and briefly. But they both knew Jessica and Jessica answered the door with half her usual level of attitude for them. A little desperately, actually, now that Brett thought about it.

“Thank fuck you’re here,” Jessica said. “Danny thinks the place is haunted and I need someone to get him out of my goddamn walls.”

Rand was not just insistent that the place was cursed, he was damn sure of it and he’d taken out the drywall next to a closet, to Jones’s associate Malcolm’s despair, and was now rooting around the space between the walls, trying to find what he seemed to think was the source of the evil.

He had with him a mixture of herbs and incense that was burning lightly and the whole place smelled strongly of ginseng.

Malcolm, bless him, appeared to have been bargaining with Rand for quite a while by the time they got there, trying to lure him back out of the dark with various promises.

“I called Colleen, but she says that it’s easier for her to just let him be weird sometimes,” Jones huffed. “Luke tried to pull him out before he left for work, but you can see how well that’s worked.”

“Do you think your place is haunted?” Brett asked her. She gave him a weird look.

“Duh?” she said. “I’m here.”

Uh. Was that supposed to be a joke?

A noise brought both of their attention back to the wall and they saw that Malcolm and Foggy were now both trying to call Matt back.

“Oh, perfect,” Jones said. “We’ll just flush one idiot out with the other, why didn’t I think of that?”

Were she and Matt friends? It was hard to tell.

There was a scrape at the wall near them and then a scuffle and a muffled scream which had to be Rand since Matt knew exactly who he was looking for.

“Dude, what the fuck?” Matt’s muffled voice chided. “Put that shit out. That’s for sick folks.”

Brett looked at Foggy who shrugged.

“They are sick folks,” Rand’s muffled voice snipped back.  “They’ve got a sick baby.”

“No,” Matt said, “They’ve got a sick no one and a dead everyone. Now put that out, it ain’t helping jack.”

Brett didn’t really understand until Jones asked him if he really didn’t know that Rand and Matt came from somewhat similar cultish upbringings . Then he had only more questions about the level of crossover that occurred between those respective cults and then he had questions about how the hell Matt and Danny were so drastically and emphatically not the same kind of cultish martial artists.

“Oh, that’s easy,” Jones said, “Danny’s from a monastery and Murdock’s from an army.”

When she put it like that, the difference became crystal clear.

Matt’s so-called-army training made him less invested in Danny’s religious cleansing ritual and so he manhandled the guy right back out of the hole which he’d crawled through to begin with. When they were both out, covered in plaster dust, Matt took Danny’s little metal bowl of herbs and trashed them right in front of the guy, immune to his anguished cries.

“This,” Matt said, shaking the empty bowl at Danny like he was a naughty puppy, “Is just gonna encourage them to stay.”

“But,” Danny said.

“No buts,” Matt snapped. “No more of this shit. We’re not trying to make friends. If you really give a shit about their souls, then you’ll encourage them to move on.”

Brett was struck by the realization that Matt was the senior soldier in that relationship. That was super strange to see.

Matt gave the metal bowl back to Danny and Danny hugged it close to his chest with distraught, downturned eyes and a wobbling lip.

“No one even asked you,” he muttered. Matt jerked his way and Danny flinched back with a defensive arm up before you could even say ‘uncle.’ Matt sniffed at him and bared his teeth a little, then dropped the menacing and wandered back over to Foggy, who grumbled and started dusting him off.

“You’re mean,” Danny accused. “And I don’t see why we shouldn’t try to help them.”

“Because—” Matt started.

“Because they aren’t real,” Jessica finished before he could. “And because you’re pissing off my neighbors.”

“Trish thinks they’re real,” Danny pointed out.

“Trish is very susceptible to bullshit,” Jessica sighed. Malcolm made a face that agreed that statement.

“Would Trish happen to be with Karen right now?” Foggy asked.

Jessica and Malcolm shared an exhausted but knowing look.

“If Trish was with Page then she would never shut up about it,” Jessica said.

“She’s obsessed,” Malcolm added.  “It’s kind of sweet.”

“It’s horrible,” Jessica groaned.

“It’s very sweet,” Malcolm amended. “Little baby bird trying to get senpai to notice her.”

“I am going to puke,” Jessica announced.

“Hypothetically,” Foggy said, “If Karen was summoning demons with a Ouija board in our office, would Trish be likely to partake in that?”

There was a long silence in the room.

“Oh definitely,” Malcolm said.

“100%,” Jessica agreed. Then grimaced. “Why are you asking?”

“Our office is haunted,” Matt told her.

“You think everything’s haunted,” Jones reminded him.

“That’s because we walk on the graves of dead people everywhere we go,” Matt told her solemnly.

Brett decided that this was maybe something rooted a little deeper than religion for Matt.

“It’s New York, Murdock. The whole thing’s built on the backs of the dead and the dying,” Jessica said. “And anyways, if we’re all constantly haunted, then why aren’t you freaking out all the time, then?”

“Oh, I am,” Matt assured her.

“Hi, I’m sorry to butt in here,” Foggy said, “But we could really use someone calling Trish to see if she is with our troublemaker because I need to start planning my legal defense.”

Jessica chuckled.

“You couldn’t scare either of those two even if you tried, Nelson,” she said, “But sure, gimme a sec.”

She went to pick through all the shit on her desk to find her phone and then dialed.

They all waited.

And waited.

Trish didn’t pick up. Jessica didn’t leave a voicemail. She hung up and then tried again. And then again. Then she tried Karen. And when all of that didn’t work, she chewed her lip and looked up at Matt who, for obvious reasons, didn’t meet her gaze.

“Well alrighty then,” Jessica said. “Malcolm, get your boots.”

Brett had never been on Jessica’s good side and so had never seen her work on a team. She worked mostly by locking arms with Matt while both of them shunned Danny. It was kind of cruel. Danny wasn’t the worst kid. He had loads of merits. He just didn’t carry around the other twos’ burden of edginess; that wasn’t his fault.

Danny took it more or less well.

“Me and Luke work together more than I work with those two,” he explained.

It really didn’t bother him, then?

“Nah, what business do I want with a load of wet blankets?”

Danny stopped walking when he realized that Matt and Jess had both frozen dead ahead of them and were staring back at him in complete silence.

“That’s my cue,” Danny declared, and then gunned it the opposite direction.

“They are literal children,” Brett hissed at Foggy as they pressed forward and Matt hung Danny upside down from a tree while Jessica promised (emptily) to catch him if he fell. Malcolm laughed.

Jessica was damn sure that she knew where Trish would take someone she was trying to gain the approval of. They’d hung out in this place a couple of times when they were kids, she explained. It was a sheltered little alcove wedged between a church and an ancient, stuffy restaurant. It had a great view, that alcove, but you had to climb a chain-link fence to get there.

It was very teenager-appealing.

But when they got to this mysterious alcove, no one was there; it was just filled with beer cans and cigarette butts and so they had to try somewhere else.

After a few more unsuccessful attempts, Matt, Jess, and Danny decided that the solution to this was to roleplay.

Danny was given the role of Ghost #1, Matt played Karen and Jess played Trish. They all did a shit job. But somewhere in between Danny’s artful flailing, Jessica’s horrifying valley-girl impression, and Matt’s insistence that he was a strong, independent woman, the three of them came up with the idea that they were going about this the wrong way.

And they all hurried off to harass Luke Cage.

“You three are so annoying,” Luke said into his palms out back behind the bar he worked at. “So unbelievably annoying.”

“But also unbelievably charming, yes?” Matt asked him.

“You’re especially annoying.”

“Luke, if we were all former coke-addicts and adrenaline junkies with a strong need to prove ourselves to some omni-present force, where would we go?” Danny asked.

Luke surveyed him over the tops of his fingers and then rubbed at his face again.

“What? Oh, we meet at Heston’s for drinks sometimes,” Claire Temple said over Luke’s speaker phone.

Well, at least now Brett knew who balanced out all the madness on this team.

Heston’s was a dive bar which reminded Brett strongly of Josies’. Their two blonde co-conspirators were chatting at a table in the back. Karen had a notebook in front of her in addition to her phone, which she was busily scribbling in, while Trish watched with her chin rested between two palms. Trish saw the troop of them first and unsubtly panicked.

She freaked and, while Karen wasn’t looking, made large ‘go away’ gestures with her hands.

Jessica acted dumb and looked towards the door and then pointed at it. Trish nodded enthusiastically and then, upon noticing Karen looking up for a second, adopt the good old, tried and true, giggle-and-wave-dismissively technique. When Karen looked back down, Trish glared at Jessica and pointed sharply at her and then the door.

Jess pointed at herself and then the door.

Trish nodded.

Jessica pointed at herself and then the door again as though to really make sure.

Trish clenched her jaw and curled a fist, promising pain upon her sister with her face. Jessica whacked Malcolm in the side, pointed at Trish, then at herself, and then at the door and Malcolm made a wide ‘Oh!’ face and repeated the gestures and it was at that point that Brett came to understand that the two of them were taking the piss.

Jess was just here to embarrass her sister in front of her crush.

As a younger sibling who had done the exact same thing multiple times in the past, Brett could respect that.

Karen noticed Trish making an ‘I’m going fucking to pound you when I get out of here,’ gesture with her hands before Trish did and looked over her shoulder to see the rest of them. Foggy put a hand on his hip.

Karen beamed like the goddamn sun.

“Foggy,” Karen cooed sweetly once everyone was sitting in the corner with her and Trish. Foggy’s face remained sour.

“Foggy-bear,” Karen said, reaching over and rubbing light circles into his wrist with her thumb.

“Why did you curse our office, Karen?” Foggy asked flatly.

“Because I love both of you and thought we could use a little summer fun,” Karen said without missing a beat.

“Our clients are terrified, Karen. Matt’s terrified—”

“I’m not,” Matt interrupted. Foggy ignored him.

“Matt is nonfunctional; you have rendered him useless.”

“I’m not, though,” Matt tried, but was resolutely ignored by the other two.

“That’s okay, he’s more of a mascot for the office than anything else,” Karen said.

Matt gawked in offense. Jessica took his hand and patted it delicately in sympathy. Danny did the same for the opposite shoulder.

“Un-curse the office,” Foggy demanded.

“I can’t,” Karen said, wriggling in her seat. “I tried.”

“What do you mean you tried?” Foggy demanded.

“I mean I tried, but the internet only cares about putting ghosts into places, not taking them out. Everyone just keeps saying we need to help them move on.”

Brett had taken a half day for this bullshit. And he wasn’t entirely sure now that he regretted it. Watching Matt slap a hand over Danny’s mouth and tell him that if he even thought about bringing up the healing herbs, he’d dump him in the river was far more entertaining than it had any right to be.  

“UGH, I knew it,” Foggy groaned. “What are we supposed to do, Kare? We can’t work like this.”

“Uh. Well,” Trish said, “The folks online said that sometimes, you can put things in your house to scare the spirits away.”

Foggy glared at her and then glared at Karen. Karen held up her notebook with a huge list of things written under the underlined title ‘Ward off evil spirits.’

Foggy looked to Brett for strength and he almost laughed out loud.

“That’s fine, Karen, but what happens if the spirits aren’t evil?” Brett pointed out gently. “What if they’re good spirits and are just confused.”

“Then we heal them,” Danny burst out from around Matt’s hand.

“Oh, right. Danny, you’re a monk, right? Can you heal them?” Trish asked.  

Danny said “what?” just as Matt and Jess said “No.”

“Danny’s not a monk, he just grew up around them,” Malcolm clarified for Trish.

“Maybe you can fist them instead?” Trish asked.

“Girl, what?” Danny repeated.

“Yeah, Danny, you gotta fist ‘em,” Jess snickered. Matt thought she was funny. Both their IQs dropped around the other. That was noteworthy.

Foggy groaned and rested his hand on his arms in despair.

“It’s fine,” Karen said,  “I have an idea.”

Did she now?

“I told you, I’m not a witch,” Peter snipped at their ever-growing group. His friends on either side of him looked at him in surprise at the same time which outed that lie before it was even finished. Peter noticed this and shoved the guy at his right.

“I’m not,” he said. “My aunt’s a witch. It’s different.”

May Parker was highly entertained by all of them.

“Ouija boards are bad news if you don’t know how to use them,” she lectured Karen gently.

“Yes, ma’am,” Karen said, looking properly chastised.

“Well, there’s not much to do now but to learn to live with your new friends or to coax them along on their way,” May said.

“The latter,” Foggy emphasized, “We would love to do the latter.”

“Well, you can try—”

“An onion,” Peter interrupted. May patted at him and told him that that was very good remembering, which left everyone else nowhere closer to understanding anything than when they’d started.

“Most of the stuff that Peter and I do is preventative,” May explained. “Since you’ve already got spirits in your place, you might try putting salt in the corners of the room or pentagrams around your workspace.”

Pentagrams. This women was actually suggesting pentagrams right now.

“You can brush mint on the doors, too,” Peter offered.

“You could try that,” May said indulgently. “But since you used a Ouija board, I imagine that your best bet at this point might be a priest. You don’t know what kind of spirits you’ve got floating around.”

“I KNEW IT,” Matt roared from the back.

“Father, father, father, please.”

This man had to be a saint. No one could tolerate Matt’s agitation for as long as this guy had.

“Matthew, Matthew, Matthew, no,” Father Lantom said without missing a beat.

“But my clients!”

“Matt, this is just your imagination, son, we’ve already discussed this.”

“My clients, Father!”

“Your clients are just fine, you’re working this up into something bigger than it is.”

This was the kind of priest the world needed, Brett decided. Someone who recognized the line between superstition and anxiety.

“I’m not, though. Foggy, tell him,” Matt pleaded.

“Sir,” Danny piped up, “I have tried to heal these spirits, but they’re very stubborn.”

The priest paused and gave Danny a curious look as though trying to decide if he and Matt had the same affliction.

“Father,” Karen finally said, coming forward. “This is maybe my fault, I kind of got a little excited with a Ouija Board, so uh. Maybe you can make an exception just this one time?”

There was a long silence as Father Lantom assessed her.

He dropped his head and sighed.

Father Lantom fetched a Sister to come with him to bless the office (he refused flat out to perform any exorcisms whatsoever) and this tiny nun grabbed ahold of Matt’s ear without so much as a by your leave and yanked him down to whisper furiously at him.

“I didn’t do anything,” Matt whined like an eight-year-old.

The nun would hear none of it.

“I gave you a crucifix to put up on your wall,” she said. “Where is your crucifix?”

“I can’t put an impaled man on my wall, Sister,” Matt growled, trying to extract his ear from her grip, “I work in an office of Law. That’s basically a threat.”

“You can and you will,” the nun snapped. “You hear me?”

“Don’t have much choice,” Matt quipped back.

“Are you talking back now?”

“No, ma’am.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Now that right there was worth the whole day of ridiculousness.

The priest blessed the offices of Nelson, Murdock & Page. And then, for shits and giggles, he blessed the office of Alias Investigations. The Sister confiscated Karen’s Ouija board and had a very quiet but harsh conversation with her outside in the hallway.

Brett felt a little silly saying it, but as Father Lantom made his way out of the building and back towards the church with Sister Maggie at his side, he could help but notice that the place felt lighter.

Karen appeared, pouting and rubbing at her jaw.

“No more Ouija boards,” she said dolefully.

“Thank you,” Foggy said.

“’Til next year.”

“KAREN.”

Brett came back to work the next day and had to come up with a spectacular lie about how Foggy’s cousin was fine, but there had been a whole lot of drama in getting her sorted out. He texted the story to Foggy in case of cross examination and got a thumbs up in return.

FN: Sister Maggie put a crucifix on the wall

FN: she really screwed it in there, Matt’s been trying for ages to get it off

BM: maybe tell him which way to turn the screwdriver?

FN: nah it’s more fun to watch him suffer

BM: foggy that’s your boyfriend

FN: I know and he wants to do it himself so I’m gonna let him do it himself.

FN: nevermind he’s making Karen help him. Karen is a better house husband than he’ll ever be.

BM: okay so date her

FN: NO

FN: I haven’t forgiven her for cursing this house of law

FN: oh by the way

FN: Peter and his aunt are making us charms to ward off evil. I dunno if you wanted one but I don’t think that matters they want to know if you’re allergic to any kind of herb

BM: they do not have to do that they literally do not

FN: I’m telling them you’re not allergic

BM: foggy don’t I have so much shit on my desk

FN: nah man. This last week has been proof that we need all the help we can get. You will take the baby witch’s weird herbs and you will like it

BM: oh my god fine

Peter put into one of his hands a little bundle of dried leaves and into the other a small collection of beads.

“Keep them with you at all times,” he said.

Mmmmm, sure. Whatever you want kid. Brett would put them in his glove box.