Chapter Text
The door opened roughly, hitting the backstop with a light ping. That wasn’t heard behind her gruff voice as she glared at whoever was disturbing her quiet night.
“What?” she snapped, before taking in the person before her. For some god forsaken reason, Agent Vidal stood before her. Her face was mostly blank besides a slight smirk tugging at the corner of her lips, as though she was laughing at a joke that Agnes wasn’t privy to.
“Did you know that it is a universally acknowledged truth that a lady cop cannot be good at her job and have a healthy personal life at the same time?” The anger Agnes felt melted away into a mixture of confusion and annoyance as she stared at the other woman. Why the hell was Vidal at her house? Wasn’t it torture enough for them to have to work together?
As if Vidal knew what was going on in her head, she pulled a pizza box out from behind her back. Agnes brows furrowed slightly – the box should not have been hidden that well.
“Hungry?” the Agent asked infuriatingly.
“No.” Agnes replied petulantly, only to be contradicted by the growling of her stomach moments later. She scowled at the laugher in Vidals eyes. “Fine, but you aren’t staying for long.”
Agnes had barely stepped aside when Vidal brushed past her and into the empty house. She stared out the open door for a moment, wondering how she had gotten there, before taking a deep breath like the department mandated therapist had told her to do in high stress situations (Agnes believed this to be bullshit, it did nothing but make her slightly dizzy) and finally closed the door.
Most house guests, uninvited or otherwise, would wait for the host to lead them further into the house. Unsurprisingly, Vidal didn’t wait for her to head further into the house and instead made herself at home. Agnes walked into her opening all the cupboards in the kitchen, pulling out plates and other utensils they may need. She put the spare beer in the fridge but kept two of them out (they were sweating, obviously out of the cooler at the liquor store). It appeared as though she knew her way around the house… like she’d been there before.
Instead of kicking her out, Agnes stood frozen. She could almost see it: in another world, Vidal moving around in an outfit almost like something out of friends while lecturing her on the importance of regular meals; Agnes telling her about some new diet fad she wanted to try and Vidal telling her that she didn’t need to; black and white, nineteen sixties’ dresses talking about their husbands over cocktails. Those moments blurred together in a painful bloody haze before clearing and placing her back in the now; where her and Vidal were still in their work clothes, greasy pizza on the last clean plates from the cupboard, and beet bottles being opened with a hiss.
She missed the way Vidal stared at her, head tilted, waiting.
“You’re looking at this pizza like it’s the best thing you’ve ever seen.” Vidal teased her, a plate being shoved at Agnes with barely restrained strength before Vidal took her own and headed towards the living room.
“Please, Dominoes is hardly a luxury.” Agnes scoffed as she followed a step behind her, still slightly mystified by Vidals knowledge of her home. Had she cased the joint? Because Agnes definitely hadn’t had her over – the only reason she was now was because of a lapse in judgement. They hadn’t seen each other in four years, yet she acted as though she’d been living just down the street the entire time.
“I’m sorry, milady, next time I’ll get you something from Pinos. Is that more to your taste?” Agnes rolled her eyes at the dramatics, eyes following Vidal as she sat down in the threadbare armchair that sat in the corner. She flopped down onto the couch and brought the beer bottle to her lips as she stared at the other woman, trying to understand why. Why was Vidal in her home? Why did she bring pizza and beer like it was some sort of peace offering? Like Agnes was her wife and they were in some lovers spat and Vidal was trying to get out of the doghouse?
Agnes took a bite of her pizza despite her body’s attempt at fighting against the action. It tasted, well, like pizza: sweet tomato sauce, cheese, and some sort of processed meat.
“Not horrible.” She relented after swallowing. Agnes noted the way Vidals eyes were locked on her, following the movement, before they flickered back to hers. They were dark, darker than their usual caramel brown. “If you want to stay on my good side, next time get margarita from Pinos. None of that pineapple shit.”
“You like pineapple on pizza, Agnes.” Vidal said casually, tongue curling around her name. She leaned back in the chair, one leg crossed over the other, beer bottle dangling between her fingers. “You like how the sweetness after its cooked almost hides the acid of the fresh fruit; as well as how well it melds with the tomato sauce for a sweet/salty effect.”
Agnes stared at her, the words filtering through her brain. Her hands fell limp into her lap as her plate balanced precariously on her knee. Her gaze dropped, hiding the contemplative look that Vidal wore. The words became jumbled, a headache forming as she tried to recall ever having liked pineapple on pizza. Every search through the past came up blank, a red haze encroaching on her vision as she looked back up again.
“There’s going to be a next time?” Vidal teased; the previous conversation lost. She took a ridiculously large bite of her own slice, practically folding it in half. Agnes blinked. “Did you know that Pineapple on pizza was invented by the Canadians?” Agnes took a bite of her own pizza. She’d forgotten how hungry she was until that moment. She demolished the slice, then reached out to the box on the table for another.
“The Canadians should stick to their syrup.” She mumbled around a mouth full. When she swallowed, she looked at Vidal fully. “Why are you here?”
“Can’t a girl come visit an old friend without an ulterior motive?” She asked innocently, the foot in the air tapping an invisible pattern. Vidal reached back out for her bottle, pinching the neck between two fingers, and taking a sip – her eyes never left Agnes’ as her head tilted back.
Agnes swallowed thickly. “We were never friends.”
An impish look crossed Vidal’s face. “That’s right, there was always something more there. Wasn’t there?”
“We were colleagues.” Agnes argued. “Barely. And after what you did to me…” she shook her head angrily, shoving the rest of her crust into her mouth then dusting off her fingers on her jeans.
“What did I do to you, Agnes?” this time her words weren’t teasing. Instead, Vidal looked at her with her head tilted slightly, some sick illusion of concern in her wild eyes.
“You–” the words caught in her throat, disappearing as quickly as they came. Agnes could see the word in her mind, taste them on her tongue. They all jumbled together: you took credit for the case I’d done most of the work on. I took a bullet for you, and you repaid me by taking over what should have been my big break. You took my precious time with my son. None of those words would exit her to be heard. They were stuck, frozen in a sea of memories that seemed to be poking at the holes in her memory. “You know what you did. I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“Hm.” Vidal hummed noncommittally, looking at Agnes with that infuriating look of I know something you don’t. “We’ve put an APB out about our girl.”
“Right, like that’d going to do anything.” Agnes rolled her eyes. “Look, I get you’re used to the big city and all that. But we’re not in New York or Salem. We’re in Westview. And let me let you in on something: Westview and Eastview have had a rivalry since before the cities were even incorporated. They won’t help us.”
The other agent had the audacity to look amused. “Oh Agnes, such little faith in fellow man.”
Agnes didn’t break eye contact. “You have no idea.”
Both had leaned forward, neither daring to break first, until they were only inches away from one another. Vidal tilted her head slightly, eyes sparkling.
“Agnes, I understand that you think you have to do this yourself. That I’m just trying to take over your investigation for shits and giggles. But I do want to work together on this. I won’t take your credit, I promise.”
“Your promises mean little to me.” Agnes whispered.
“I’ll prove it to you.” The air from her words tickled Agnes’ face as Vidals voice lowered. “My department didn’t want to take this seriously, but there have been some reports of sightings of people hanging around the woods where Jane Doe was found. They said there was a woman out there vaguely matching her description, muttering about her children and chanting in what they think is Greek or Latin. And some talk of some mythical book.”
Agnes stared at her, alarm bells ringing in her head. A book? Could this have anything to do with the missing book from the library? Abruptly, she pulled away from Vidal and stood up. She ignored the clattering of her plate as she shoved it onto the living room table.
“See yourself out.” She said gruffly and headed towards the door. She let it slam behind herself, not before Vidal looked after her knowingly.
The precinct was all but abandoned by time she arrived. Sure, the night watchman and a few of the cops who drew the short end of the stick were there, lazing around. She glanced at their screens as she passed, noting the YouTube or steaming videos they watched as they waited for the night to pass. Westview was a relatively quiet place at the best of times, let alone at night at the beginning of October. Kids weren’t out terrorizing the streets yet, teenagers weren’t playing shitty pranks, and people weren’t out driving while drunk after parties. What did they need to be hypervigilant for? This wasn’t Eastview.
The rows of computers leading to her office were still lit up. She found, once inside the room, there was no point in drawing the shades like she usually did since there was barely anyone there. So, she left them open, the sea of computers her own discount version of a city skyline.
At her desk, she flipped through the files left behind by the others working the case after she’d left. There was even a file by forensics, hell, even one from Vidal. The contents showed nothing new, though. At least, nothing that caught her well trained eye. They were at a dead end and rapidly approaching the end of the first critical forty-eight hours.
“Shitty small-town bullshit.” Agnes muttered to herself as she closed the forensics report. Underneath was the library circulation card, staring back at her. She threw the file to the other side of the desk and regarded the evidence. It was still in its baggy, no indication that it had ever been lying out in the forest on a rainy day. Agnes flipped the pen around in her left hand, her other elbow resting on the desk with her head against her right. The legal pad in front of her had no new notes, only what she had gathered earlier that day.
This book, Dialogue and Rhetoric: Known History of Learning and Debate, had to be the key to all of this. She glanced over at one of the rookies reports about it.
Andrew Ugo had published the book back in the mid-sixties. While Agnes didn’t even pretend to understand the workings of libraries, she didn’t think that one would usually have a science book this old. She was pretty sure that even Dottie was able to weed out that outdated of information. It had to have some sort of relevance to the case though, because why else would the circulation card be out there?
Of course, there were other options. The circulation card even being out in the woods could have just been a coincidence. Some shit had kids could have stolen the book from the library before the fire, dropped that on their way to destroy it, and Jane Doe just happened to be left in that exact spot. Alternatively, the killer could have left it there as some sort of bizarre calling card (the Library Killer did not have a good ring to it). Or, it could have been left there purposely to throw them off.
God, she needed a fill night’s sleep. Agnes groaned, she was starting to sound like some crack head conspiracy theorist; but at this point, perhaps what they needed was to think outside of the preverbal box. What was that fictional detective saying? One you eliminate the possible, only the impossible remains.
Sighing, she looked down at her notes again. She had circled Andrew Ugo’s name, though realistically he wouldn’t have had anything to do with this considering he’d been dead for two decades.
Suddenly, a flash of inspiration hit. An idea from one of those old puzzle books about codes – she’d had them lying all over her house when she’d lived in Salem. Her son–
Pain erupted and she moved back on course.
Agnes underlined the capital letters of each word in the title, then wrote them down underneath.
DARKH–
The pen dropped out of her hand. Her head pounded, not only with pain but with what sounded like chanting. Sounds only distinguishable as words because of their cadence, but the meaning lost to her. Though, if she tried to concentrate, then maybe–
Agnes gasped, startled, and the world fell back into place (blissfully silent) as the Chief appeared in the doorway of her office.
“Go home, Agnes.” He said, too much kindness in his words for her. More kindness than she believed she deserved.
“I am home, Chief.” She replied, righting the pen in her hand and looking back down at her notes. The word she believed she had written was gone, just an incomprehensible mix of letters. There was a pause, then footsteps. She thought that maybe he’d finally left her alone.
But then her lamp clicked off.
“Hey!” she looked up at him.
“Go home.” He ordered and stared at her for another minute before walking out of the office. Agnes put her head in her hands and sighed, resigned to the fact that if she stayed any longer, they would probably put her on leave, again. Then this case would never get solved, and this poor woman would never get the justice she deserved.
There was a crowd in front of her, littering the small building. A boy on stage, familiar yet so distant, as if an echo of a figure from another time.
“Down, down, down the road, down the witch’s road.” He sang; voice clear as the crowd clamored.
“Do you really think it’s good enough?” his voice echoed in her mind, while the one on stage continued to sing.
“I do.” Her voice was far away, through water.
“Burn and brew with coven two…”
Agnes’ eyes opened with a gasp. The little boy was back in her dreams. His voice – the melody was still there even as the lyrics were lost to her subconscious. She could still hear him though, as he spoke to her. He was so familiar–
She threw back the covers and hastily got out of bed. It was still dark beyond the curtains, the sky barely lightening along the horizon. She made her way across the room silently as if there was another person in the house sleeping and threw on some old leggings and a shirt that said Bohner Family Reunion – where it had come from, Agnes wasn’t too sure. But thinking about it caused her brain to hurt, and she didn’t want her headache that she already had from the lack of sleep to get worse, so she let it go.
Leaving her phone behind, Agnes grabbed her head lamp and headed out of the house and down the road. At first, she jogged slowly knowing that if she tried to go any faster, she’d regret it due to not stretching. But after she exited her neighbourhood and headed towards the highway out of town, Agnes kicked it up. Pumping her arms, she pushed her body as hard as it could go. She ignored the stitch in her side, the pain in her calves, and the burning in the lungs. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t run like that since she her life took a turn for the worst and she stopped believing that it would ever help.
At some point, she’d slowed back down to a jog, finally stopping by a split in the trees a couple miles out of down. She bent over, resting her hands on her thighs as she took big gulps of air, her lungs crying out for the oxygen they had been deprived of.
When she was finally able to breathe, she stood up again. A car drove past her in that moment, and the man driving stared at her as he passed. She held up a hand in a begrudging acknowledgement before turning towards the trees. With her breath (mostly) back, she noted the police tape attached to the trees and torn from the window.
Ah, the crime scene.
Agnes hadn’t realised she’d run that far, glancing back down the road it didn’t feel as far as it had been to get to it. She decided though that she might as well continue through the forest. She’d looked at the maps enough yesterday to know that it eventually connected to a trail in town, so with that knowledge, Agnes headed down the hill and into the trees.
It should have been harder for her to recognise the place where they’d found Jane Doe. The rain had washed away all traces of the investigators and forensics, the creek rushing harder – any evidence that may have been there now lost. There was no crime scene tape by the water, blocking the area off from people that may be walking in the woods like she was. But still, the closer Agnes got to the area the more she could see where the body had laid. In her mind, there was a red line surrounding where the body had been on the ground, the line following the contours of her broken limbs. To the side, the piddle where she’d pulled the locket out of had grown. Her hand reached up to her own neckline as if to reassure herself, but it wasn’t there.
It wasn’t hers to wear.
Shaking her head, she stood up from where she had ended up crouched on the ground and headed down the path that followed the creek. While her gaze generally stayed looking forward, making sure she didn’t trip on any fallen debris, Agnes still looked around every couple of feet as though some new evidence would suddenly make itself known. Logically, she knew there’d be nothing new. The body had been cold when they’d gotten to it, rigor mortis already set in. They had probably been too late, even then.
Agnes’ body screamed at her, muscles aching, and finally she slowed to a walking pace. The light was making its way through the foliage, and she reached up to click the headlamp off. Rainwater that had collected on the path soaked through her shoes, and goose bumps started to appear on her bare arms. But Agnes didn’t notice, her mind disappearing even as her body stayed there.
Because she wasn’t walking through the woods outside of Westview. She was running through a field.
“Nicky!”
The boy’s name was suddenly clear, causing her stomach to drop. Her voice called out again in desperation.
A childish giggle.
“I’m here mama!”
She turned quickly.
Then she was falling sharply on rocks and roots.
“God damn it.” She groaned as she struggled onto her knees, then looked back at the offending tree root.
It was typical for her mind to transfer her Nicky onto whatever fucked up trauma story her sleep deprived mind had conjured up. Agnes sighed and stood up, her knees creaking slightly in protest. When she was upright, she turned and paused for a moment.
None of the maps that the team of detectives had looked at the day before had shown any indication of inhabitants in the forest near where Jane Doe had been dumped. They’d had a ten-mile radius searched – so why was there a cabin in the woods where there should have been none?
If Agnes was to follow procedure, she knew she should continue to the nearest house and report her finding. Have a proper forensics team come and do a sweep, gather evidence, check to see if there was any indication that Jane Doe had been there before she died. The forensics team hadn’t found this before, an obvious red flag. And, what if whoever lived there saw her and got the hell out of dodge before she could get back with a team? This could be an opportunity for a sorely needed lead.
She stepped off the path, heart thudding in her chest, and headed to the cabin. The two steps up to the door moaned ominously under her weight as she shifted. Anges glanced down for a moment before knocking hard on the door.
“Westview Police! Open up!”
The only sound was the birds chipping as the sun continued to rise behind the cloud cover.
Anges knocked one more time to be polite, but when there was no answer, she grasped the door handle. Except, before she could turn it, it opened on its own.
“Hello?” her voice didn’t waver, even if something inside of her was screaming danger. She ignored her gut and stepped into the dark building. There were twin windows on either side of the space that should have let light into the room, if it wasn’t for the fact that they were boarded over. There was broken glass beneath them on the floor. She reached up to turn her head lamp back on.
The artificial light highlighted the grunge that covered the room. It wasn’t just dust, but a thick layer of sediment that spoke to the building not having been used for a long time. Curiously though, there was a set of footprints in the dust on the ground. She followed them across the room, weary of every creak of the rotting wooden floor beneath her threadbare Nikes.
The path ended at the bookcase. It was full of books, but there was one glaringly empty spot where there was an additional spot cleared of dust where the book had been dragged out of place. Agnes turned, her eyes sweeping the room. It would have been amateur hour if the book had been left.
And of course it had.
This was easy. Too easy.
The same hushed sounds, a whisper, filled the air around her as she stepped closer to the book. Combined with the searing pain in her head she was becoming familiar with, Agnes had half a mind to step back, go find a phone to make the call about this place. But she wanted to figure it out without Agent fucking Vidal. The closer she got to the book, the louder the noise was, and the more details she could make out: the black leather cover that was shredding around the edges, the faded gold leaf on the spine, the cord tying it together obscuring the embossed pentagon and title.
Liber Damnatorum.
A pull in her gut brought her closer, momentum pulling her hand towards the book. The cover soft beneath her fingers as the chanting got louder and clearer.
Agatha Harkness
Agatha Harkness
Agatha-
Her whole body erupted in pain before everything went black.