Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The radio was silent. That shouldn’t have been the first thing that struck Agnes O’Conner as she drove out to the crime scene in the middle of nowhere. Yet, it was strange. She was sure she had taken this road outside of Westview before, had listened to the shitty twenty-first century bands as they played with too much autotune while staring at the trees that seemed to come out of a fantasy novel rather than the middle of fucking nowhere New Jersey.

Even the silence couldn’t get to her though, finally off riding the desk and able to get out into the world again. To help people. She’d rot away if she had to keep filing Lestrade’s paper, listening to True Crime podcasts by people who’d never know what it was like to be out in the field, and playing copious amounts of mindless games. She even found herself humming some song she couldn’t name, the one that used to play out of a stuffed animal that was in her house for too long after the tragedy.

The windshield wipers moved rhythmically. It wasn’t raining too hard, but enough that they needed to be on at a regular slow interval. At least the fog was lifting in the trees.

Agnes was the only one on the road, which made sense it being late Monday morning. It would have been beautiful autumn, perhaps a scene out of some classic novel she was forced to study in high school, if it hadn’t been for the murder scene was driving up on. Roadblocks and yellow tape cutting off the rural road, lights flashing and corners van already on the scene. She parked off to the side, pulling up the e-brake on her old car that she wouldn’t get rid of, and putting it in park.

When she stepped out of the car, coat undone because despite the rain and changing leaves it still didn’t fully feel like autumn, and badge swimming from her neck, she let out a deep sigh – the hauntingly familiar scent of wet plant matter instantly clinging to her. Tapping her finger against the car door as she looked out at the scene.

Agnes was in the business of finding assholes who did this to other human beings, but that didn’t mean the question of what kind of person would do this to another person, didn’t enter her mind freely. To have their lives ended so violently, and being left out to be forgotten, was unforgiveable.

Grabbing the two coffees from the car, she closed the door behind herself and headed towards the scene.

“Another beautiful day.” She said as she reached the caution tape. Herb Feltman, the forensics expert she had worked with on almost all her cases since transferring to Westview four years prior, turned around from the cop he’d been talking to.

“Hey neighbour.” He walked over to meet her at the tape and reached out to take the second coffee from her. She handed it over; having known he would be out there already. Herb was usually at the scene before her, talking to the cops that had been first on scene or found the body, making sure that nothing was disturbed so the techs samples would be clean. “Surprised to see you out here, Detective.”

It wasn’t lost on Agnes that nobody thought she would be allowed at a crime scene anymore, let alone one as high profile as this. Punch an ME once when they dare to tell her what to do, and suddenly you’re considered a loose cannon.

“There I was, sitting on my duff, playing Candy Crush, happy as a clam, enjoying the fruits of my undeserved disciplinary action…”

“You punched a suspect.” Ah, she’d forgotten about that one.

“Oh, now a convicted felon. I can’t be right and wrong at the same time.”

“Yes, you can.” Herb says, though Agnes continued on with her story.

“When the Chief calls and tells me, ‘Hibernation’s over. Got a case only you can solve’.” She put her arms out as if to say what can ya say? “Direct quote.” She added at Herbs expression. “So?”

He sighed, unconvinced but at least with a coffee in hand and one of the more competent detectives on the force there, he lifted the caution tape so she could enter the scene.

The anonymous caller that had called it in had made it appear as though they found the woman on the side of the road when they went to take a piss. That was seeming more unlikely to Agnes the further they walked into the woods, especially the further down the hill they went and closer to the creek that went through the area. Her good mood was dissipating the closer they got to death – and the muddier the ground got. She hadn’t exactly worn hiking shoes.

“Jane Doe. Found her down here by the water.” Herb explained to her. “Dispatch was tipped off by an anonymous call.”

“Mmm.” She took in her surroundings. Isolated. Alone. “Somebody didn’t want her out here alone.”

“This is all she had on her.” Herb reached into his pocket, pulling out an evidence baggie with a brown piece of paper in it. He handed it over to Agnes, and she took it, making sure to only touch the bag and not the item inside.

“What’s this? From a library book?” Agnes may not have been a prolific reader, she wasn’t sure when the last time she had actually been to the library was, but she was pretty sure the systems were automated and didn’t use that system of check out anymore.

“Westview branch.” Convenient. She’d have to go check it out. Perhaps Dottie still worked there…

“Cause?” she moved on, they didn’t have all day, after all.

“Blunt force trauma.” Agnes raised a brow, looking around – back up to the road where the cars were and the officers milling around, and then back to the creek.

“Not much of a drop around here. She fall?”

“She was crushed.” Herb explained. She turned to look at him, slightly surprised.

“By what?” what could possibly have crushed her in the woods. Herb would have told her if it was a crushing injury by a car, he wasn’t the kind of person to draw this sort of thing out.

“Something big. And heavy.”

“So, she didn’t die here.” It was the obvious conclusion, though one that gave them more questions than answers. As Agnes looked around again, there was an unsettled feeling in her gut, pulling at her brain. “She is dead, though, isn’t she, Herb?”

“Oh, she’s really, most sincerely dead.” He assured her.

“Never know.” Stranger things had happened, she caught his eye and winked. Turning back towards where they were walking. Why had she done that? He didn’t comment though, hadn’t seemed to even really notice.

Techs were on the scene, some with their cameras out, the shutter sound seeming out of place in the quiet woods; others putting down evidence tags. Agnes and Herb stopped right beside the slight drop to the body, and she let out a deep sigh.

Just from there we could tell it was a she – a woman. Probably mid to late twenties. Bare footed – looked as though she had been running from… something. She shook her head slightly as she took in the tears in the clothing. The woman had to have been terrified.

Her hands caught Agnes’ eyes. As Agnes zoned in, her hand reached up to her neck, grasping for… something. She couldn’t identify what she felt – shock, obviously at death (no matter how many dead women she had seen, there would always be a sense of shock) but something else as well. Something familiar about her blackened fingers. It was almost as if she had charred her fingers or ran them through coal.

Maybe she was an artist.

“I’m not a witch. I don’t cast spells. No one taught me magic!”

Agnes felt hot. Like a flash. She tugged on her collar for a moment, hoping that it would give her some relief.

“Get samples from both.” She replied to Herb, though his words never fully penetrated her consciousness. She stepped away from him and down the short hill, but not yet towards the body. The techs were still there, and she didn’t want to get in the way. Instead, Agnes perused the scene, trying to get a lay of the land. There were no obvious drag marks, no footsteps or broken branches. There was barely even a path to where they were, just a thin bike trail that the towns youth liked to use in the summer, as well as some trashed beer cans from high schoolers bush parties.

It was possible that the rain had washed that evidence away.

It was eery out there. The woods around them had a story to tell about this woman, but it was just a matter of getting it out of the branches and leaves. That would be the hard part: without any witnesses, the case would be a dead end from the start.

Something shiny caught her eye- and while Agnes wasn’t one for the finer things, that did cause her to pause. There shouldn’t have been anything worthwhile that far out. But in the puddle caused by the unseasonable rain, there it was: pendent. She walked over and bent down, forgoing the regulation gloves as she reached into the surprisingly clean water to pull it out. It was created with some sort of metal – brass, perhaps – and a purple stone with three white figures on it.

A cameo. She had a girlfriend in college who had been in art history. Had been obsessed with those things. Agnes had thought it was useless but, well, look at that.

The pendant caused her to pause though. Again, it felt like something was pushing at her brain. A headache? Maybe because she was guzzling coffee as usual. She stayed crouched down though, staring at it. The pendant shouldn’t have been out there. It should be-

“Find something?” Herb cut off her thoughts, and Agnes let out a little gasp, closing her fist around it.

“Nah.” She stood back up, stealthily putting it back into her pocket. It felt warm against her, as though it was meant to be there. Her mind went back to the case, the headache disappearing as the pendant went out of sight.

“They’re set to roll her. You ready to see?” Agnes held onto her cup slightly tighter, watched as Herb took a sip of his own. In one gulp, she drank the rest of her lukewarm cup.

From beside the forensics kit, Agnes watched as the techs rolled her – one at the feet, one at the shoulders, and one around the middle. Her limbs were starting to loosen, she’d been there a while if rigor mortis was dissipating all on its own. The three techs then stepped away from the scene, letting Agnes take over.

Herb watched from afar, but Agnes ignored his looks. She knew he was there to make sure she didn’t compromise the remains, compromise the case like her superiors believed she had done to the last one.

She crouched down next to the woman, taking in her face. Slight features, a slightly up turned nose, red hair coming out of her hood. Green eyes open, as if watching her attacker. Agnes shook her head slightly at the brutality of it all.

“Who are you?” she whispered as though the body would speak right back to her. That was how it felt sometimes – that those bodies could speak to her from beyond the grave. That talk was all bullshit though – it was their injuries that told the stories, not some movie-ghost shit.

Taking in the bruising on her face, the smudged makeup, Agnes felt what she felt for most victims: sadness; but it was compounded by something else. While she had seen many victims in her days, but none of them like this. Even in a city like Salem; so definitely not in a village like Westview. “What happened to you?”

“You okay, Agnes?” Herb called out, making her realise she had been over the body for much longer than she had expected – or needed to be. She took a breath, annoyed at his question. A girl was dead, how was she supposed to be, okay?

“How do you mean?” she asked, coldly.

“You don’t seem like yourself.” He seemed almost confused, worried. And the last thing she needed was someone to be worried about her. Agnes had learnt long ago that those that cared about her got hurt, so it was better to have no one.

“Oh yeah?” she clicked her tongue slightly, using the back of her sleeve to wipe her eye – though if anyone had suggested there was a tear there, she would shoot them herself. “And who is that exactly?” finally, Agnes stood back up and looked over at him, pulling off the nitrile gloves aggressively. “I’ll try to be more cheerful for you next time, Herb.”

At least he had the decency to look ashamed.

“But right now, this unidentified woman lying dead in a creek, has just got me down in the dumps.” She started to walk away, throwing her used gloves into the pile of the other forensics equipment. “Let me know when the dental records come in.”

Another day, another dead body, another case.

Chapter Text

The drive to the library was relatively uneventful. Westview could be considered one of the more idyllic places to live in the United States, especially considering it was in New Jersey versus another more desirable state. There was barely ever any traffic – something that Agnes both loved and loathed. Sure, it meant she could get to her destination quickly, meant that there weren’t traffic jams or idiots on the road; but it also meant that she didn’t get that slow start to the morning that people got in the cities. It was almost too quiet, quiet enough that thinking was even difficult.

And thinking was a large part of her job, considering she needed to take into consideration the suspects and evidence that they had collected so far. She had always found that part of the job better in the car rather than her desk. Apparently, that wasn’t in the cards, though.

The drive into town seemed to go by faster than normal. It was almost as though most of the roads in Westview had disappeared and her drive was a straight shot rather than a twisting annoyance. Usually, the only way to get into town was to go around the parameter, but apparently not today.

There were only two blocks between the only parkade in town and Agnes’ destination: the library. She figured she might as well stretch her legs, who know how much exercise she’d get once she was back at the station. The two blocks seemed to go by quickly, and she noted the new coffee shop on the corner and made a note to stop in before she headed back to the station. Maybe a sweet treat would make her coworkers seem less obnoxious.

Unfortunately, her pleasant mood (though only pleasant in relation to her usual mood, which was anything but) was destroyed when she finally got to the library and saw through the windows that there was a large line up at the front desk. And that there was only one person working. She huffed in annoyance, not getting why the library of all places was so busy when those people could get their precious books on their phones. The line seemed even longer when she entered, and she made a noise of annoyance before deciding it would just be easier to push her way through to the front.

“Ah- official police business.” The crowd didn’t part easily, but they all gave her weary glances as she moved through them.

“Hey!” one of the customers grunted, grumbling under his breath about the abuse of power. Agnes ignored him, it wouldn’t do her any good to get in a fight with a civilian. Again.

“Excuse me.” She mumbled as she pushed past another woman and finally got to the front of the line. Her annoyance doubled though when she saw the woman who was working the desk. A woman who hated her.

Granted, it wasn’t exactly Agnes’ fault. She’d gone into that bar three years ago with the express intentions of a quick fuck, it was the blonde that believed they could be something more and was bitter when she was turned down. Multiple times.

Dottie Jones. Ugh.

“You use that line at the supermarket checkout, too?” Dottie asked cheekily, a hint of venom in her voice as she crossed her arms in front of her on the desk. Agnes had been in this business long enough to be able to read the subtle body language of the librarian: the way she crossed her arms as if she could create a barrier between herself and Agnes. It was a subtle way of expressing a desire for space, much more subtle than a sign that said back the fuck off. Briefly she wondered if the act was just for her, or if Dottie was always this frigid.

“Only suckers wait their turn.” Agnes had done her time waiting for her turn. She had waited for years. For promotions and for chief to realise that she wasn’t some woman that was going to leave the force after she had a baby. She hadn’t waited for years, finding that taking the bull by the horns was a much better (and faster) way of getting what she wanted. Some may have said it was an abuse of power, but she would just reply that it was a more efficient way of getting everything done and people to move faster.

“How can I help you, Agnes?” Dottie asked, sounding much too tired for a Monday morning. Agnes almost wanted to smile, to toy with the other woman as though she was her prey. Unfortunately, her job said otherwise. She reached into the pocket where she had placed the evidence bag Herb had given her earlier and placed it on the counter.

“Found this on a victim.” Agnes held the baggie out to Dottie, not letting go, watching with eagle eyes as the librarian leaned over the counter to see the contents a bit better in the light streaming through the window.

“Ooh. Who’s the victim?” There was much too much curiosity in her tone. Probably one of those True Crime obsessed women with too much time on their hands. “Is she dead?” Agnes tilted her head slightly, curious. She never said the gender of the victim.

“Now, why do you assume it’s a woman?” she inquired. Perhaps there was something their little town librarian had been hiding.

“I don’t know.” Dottie shrugged, but she could hear the hesitance in her voice. “Sounds more titillating.” Agnes made a noise of annoyance as Dottie flipped over the tag to examine it. The tag hadn’t changed from when she had seen it early, still no names. Not that she expected them to just appear, that would be ridiculous. “There are no names on here.”

“But there are dates.” Agnes replied, popping a piece of gum into her mouth and chewing slightly obnoxiously, enjoying the way it caused the other woman to flinch slightly.

“We don’t use cards anymore.” Dottie said finally, dismissively, putting the bag back down onto the counter. “Everything’s digital now. Sorry.” She didn’t sound the least bit sorry. Agnes was annoyed, wasn’t the whole point of a librarian to be able to find information on books?

“Well, thanks a bunch for your help, Dottie. You’ve been an absolute angel.” Dottie rolled her eyes at Agnes’ sarcasm, coming to expect it from the brash detective. She had been that way the first time they’d met too, so it wasn’t as though it was completely out of the ordinary. “Incidentally,” Agnes continued with a small smirk on her face, before she grabbed the evidence bag and turned slightly towards the crowd, though keeping her face on Dottie and raising her voice: Where were you last night between the hours of 1:00 and 3:00 am?”

The blonde sighed harshly at the disturbance and grabbed the baggie from Anges still outstretched hand, resignation on her face.

“I guess I could run the book title.” Her voice was quieter now, a much more appropriate tone for a library. Agnes turned to look at her, brows raised, unimpressed; though, there was smugness swimming in her blue eyes.

“Oh, can you?” at least her presence hadn’t been completely undermined. Her tone had the desired effect, with Dottie chuckling nervously as she looked between the library card and the computer.

“Dialogue and Rhetoric: Known History of Learning and Debate by Andrew Ugo.” She read off the screen, typing for a second more.

Honestly, Agnes had been hoping for something a bit more… telling. All this told her was that the person who got this book was incredibly boring. Hopefully it wasn’t the dead, because that would be a drag; at least if it was the killer, they could narrow down their so-far non-existent suspect pool.

“Yeah. I’m thinking erotic thriller?” Dottie continued to type, ignoring her last comment.

“Huh.” Her hands lifted off the keyboard slightly, with slight surprise.

“Huh, what?” Anges went on her toes to lean over the desk, trying to see the computer screen.

“This book wasn’t checked out.” She paused for a moment, probably for suspense. “It was stolen. Three years ago.” Agnes’ eyes were drawn back down to the library card, her curiosity spiking. Who in the world would steal a book from the library? Specifically, who would steal that book? Her only idea was that perhaps it had been a teenager who wanted the thrill but was too scared to steal a kitkat from the gas station.

“But we have plenty more copies in natural sciences.” Dottie continued, pointing to her right. The expression on her face told Agnes that she had used up her allotted time. She was thankful for that, not sure how much more of the blonde she could take. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

Grabbing the library card off the counter, Agnes looked at the library card intently for one moment as she chewed her gum loudly.

“Yeah, I’ll excuse you.”

Wandering off in the direction that Dottie had motioned towards, she wondered when the last time she had actually been in a library was? It had been a long time, that was for sure. It could have been when she was in university, making out with girls between the stacks before finals. Or… a time closer than she remembered it being. Four years before, a little hand in hers as they headed to the reading circle. His excitement over the newest Magic Treehouse book that the library had brought in, infectious.

That time felt like it happened a century ago versus not even half a decade. Half a decade since the worst moment of her life. She hadn’t been back to a library since she had last taken him, instead avoiding the place he had loved so much. Agnes wouldn’t say it was exactly because of that, but it was a large contributing factor. Her short-loved therapist had suggested she go visit the library when she had first moved to Westview, something about exposure therapy, but that plan had been axed as soon as she had seen Dottie through the windows. Of course the person she fucked then ghosted when she first got to town would be the librarian.

The non-fiction section wasn’t very large and was tucked into the back corner of the library. She supposed that not many people were into going to the nonfiction section these days considering they weren’t a college town and if the uninspired wanted recipes they could just check google. If she knew anything from the yapping of one of the interns, it was that crime, and something called romantasy were the biggest book trends right now. And those weren’t found alongside books about dog training and the American presidents.

The first aisle she walked down was a bust, mostly filled with books about pirates and the 16^th century America. She walked to the end of the history section, then walked along the back wall and read each of the plaques stacked to the stacks.

American history

Geography

Physics

Chemistry

Natural sciences were the obvious next step, but Agnes didn’t make it all the way there. Instead, she was frozen to the spot when she looked at where the books should have been and was confronted with a charred mess left by some sort of fire. A hole was left between the books in the exact spot where the book she was looking for was located. Everything else around it covered in soot and fire debris, but appearing almost… undamaged.

“There was a fire.” Agnes heard the whisper behind her and turned around with a gasp. A man looked at her from between the stacks, and swore she recognised him from somewhere; but that place alluded her.

“Was… everything destroyed?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper. He seemed to regard her, trying to decide if this was information that she should have. Not as a cop, but as a person. Finally, he nodded. Never breaking eye contact. Never blinking.

“Every last copy.” He stared at her for another minute, as if goading her into remembering something she obviously didn’t. Finally, he turned and walked away, disappearing back into the main area.

Agnes stayed from for a moment, staring at the spot where the man had been; then finally slowly pivoted back towards the shelves in question. Her eye caught the spot where the fire had been again, the wheels in her brain turning. This couldn’t have been an accidental fire, the fact that a specific set of books were targeted an indication of that.

Almost robotically, Agnes turned on the spot and walked away from the natural sciences section and into the main portion of the library. The mysterious man was gone – as was the line up. Dottie was still at the front desk, typing on the computer; but the closer Agnes got to her, the more the words on the screen seemed distorted like she was looking through choppy water.

“Why didn’t you inform me that there was a fire?” she all but demanded once she stopped at the desk. Dottie didn’t look up at her this time, her eyes still glued to the screen in front of her. Agnes glanced at it again, confirming that there was… something. What that something was though, she couldn’t say.

“What fire?” Dottie asked, all emotion lacking in her voice.

“The fire that destroyed the natural sciences section.” Agnes said slowly like she was talking to a child. This tone didn’t seem to bother Dottie though, who continued to stare at the screen dispassionately.

“It’s fine.” Dottie barely looked at her, but her words seemed to break through something in Agnes that was quickly trying to stitch itself back together. Finally, Dottie turned to look at her, worry etched on her brow. “There was no fire, Agnes.”

Suddenly, as if there was someone else pulling the strings, Agnes turned abruptly away from Dottie and headed out the front doors of the library.

“Don’t be shy, Agnes!” Dottie called out after her.

Agnes didn’t take notice of her words though. Her eyes glances around at the people who were milling about, but at the same time barely noticed them as she walked past. She was on autopilot, someone else controlling her muscles; she didn’t fight back against it though, uncharacteristically, as if her spirit had been broken by this invisible force before. The people she passed ignored her for the most part, almost awkwardly avoiding her gaze, but some greeted her as if they had known her for years despite Agnes not being able to place them. They were greeted back by silence.

She even passed the coffee shop she’d wanted to stop at without a second glance at the inviting interior. It was only once she was safely inside her car that Agnes was able to stop the automatic movements. She flexed her fingers, the joints popping with each movement. Looking around wearily though, Agnes rubbed her face roughly before turning the key in the ignition and putting on her seat belt.

Pulling out of the parking garage, she tried to focus on what little she knew:

First of all, the woman appeared to have been crushed by a great force – but not a car.

Second, she had been dumped, but there were no marks leading to or from the body.

Third, at some undetermined point there had been arson committed at the library, but it had never been reported.

Fourth, perhaps she’d played a bit too much candy crush when she was on her leave. It may have melted her brain a bit, because there seemed to be some… gaps.

The fifth, and final fact: there was something about the dead woman that Agatha knew. A feeling beyond the sadness she usually felt for the victim. That feeling was just out of Agnes’ grasp, though, and disappeared without a trace.

Chapter Text

Considering her lapse in control and therefore missing the café she’d planned to get breakfast in, on her way to the station Agnes stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts to get another coffee. She also got a chocolate donut for good measure, a way to soften the blow that her only lead so far had been destroyed by an apparent arsonist.

She finished the coffee before she got back to the station, and decided to leave the paper cup in her vehicle where it would rot with the rest of them. Parking alongside the police cruisers on the side of the building, she exited her vehicle with her donut held between her front teeth, and her paperwork for her reinstatement in her hands.

“Morning, Detective.” One of the officers (Vargas? She questions internally, never having felt the need to learn their names) greeted. He stared at her for a moment like seeing a ghost. She looked down, slightly embarrassed about her appearance, and cleared her throat.

“Good mornin’.” She mumbled around the mouthful of donut. She continued to walk, trying to ignore the officers behind her but, in a moment of weakness, sneaking a peak behind herself to make sure they weren’t staring at her. When she was sure she was in the clear, she shoved the rest of the donut into her mouth and chewed it carefully.

The station was relatively quiet, which shouldn’t have been a surprise considering they were in Westview. She walked past the desk for a moment to throw the wrapper from her donut in the garbage before stopping at the front desk. She traded her paperwork for her building pass.

“Thank you.” The officer behind the counter nodded at her as footsteps appeared from behind.

“Glad to have you back, Agnes.” Chief Phil Jones greeted her, walking from one of the conference rooms to be beside her. Agnes didn’t look back at him as she walked into the bullpen.

“Glad to be back Chief. And no, I do not accept your apology.”

He laughed sarcastically, an indicator that there would be no apology given. Granted, it wasn’t like she was put on probation unreasonably; but Agnes didn’t see it that way. Her whole life was her work, and without it, what was she?

“Yeah, so Agnes…” he started, but she cut him off.

“You hear what happened at the library?” did the arson happen while she was off? That was plausible, though, didn’t make it any less confusing why she hadn’t heard about it. It wasn’t a lot for someone to just text her, or for to read about it in the paper. It appeared to have been completely covered up.

“No, I…”

“Someone torched one of the stacks.” She continued, ignoring him when he tried to interrupt. The walk to her office was a familiar one, something of a comfort.

“No.” excuse me? What did he mean no. She had seen it with her own eyes.

“Like, took a flame thrower to it.” she had seen a couple of arson cases like that before, but not since Salem.

“Oh. Yeah? I’ll have one of the guys follow up.” He said to placate her, almost as if he didn’t believe her. She wasn’t stupid enough to believe those idiots would get anywhere with the case. They’d make a report of it and then let it rest. “But listen, Agnes…”

His humming and hawing was annoying her. She turned around quickly, making quick work of dissecting his appearance. “You got a spot on your shirt.” He looked down at the stain, somewhere between coffee and some sort of dark fruit.

“Oh.”

“And your tie.” She placed the files down on her desk.

“Ah, cripes.”

Agnes knew it would be the pot calling the kettle if she started on about how the men in the precinct didn’t know a thing about professionalism. She wasn’t exactly the stark professional that she had been back in the day. She wore civilian clothes to the office – she had for years, insisting that she didn’t need a uniform for people to know who she was. And, okay, maybe she could have dressed a little bit more... put together; but if she was going to go galivanting through the forest like earlier that morning, she’d be wearing her flannels, and nobody could complain about it.

“You makin’ breakfast smoothies again, Chief?” she asked, slightly condescendingly, pouring herself a coffee from the pot behind her desk. It appeared someone had known she was going to be in the office today and had prepped it for her. “You know you’re supposed to put the lid on before you blend it.”

“Yes, I know, umm…” he needed a moment, slightly frazzled at the whirlwind that was his best detective, “Listen, Agnes…”

This wasn’t the first time, and she doubted it would be the last, that the Chief had bumbled like this. It happened every time he had to tell her something that she wouldn’t like: such as when she was put on probation, or when they had changed the coffee from Van Houtte to Starbucks. Honestly, she didn’t know whether to be flattered he was only like this around her, or offended.

“You’re about to tell me somethin’ I’m not gonna like.” She sighed, taking off her badge and ripping it when the chain got tangled in her ponytail.

The Chief took a breath. “Soil samples from under the fingernails and toenails of the Jane Doe came back.” That was… oddly quick. Those results usually took a couple of days, even when sped up. She tried to shake off those thoughts though as she took off her coat and hung it on the back of her office chair. Never in her career had samples come back from the lab that quckly, even in Salem when the station had its own lab and didn’t need to ship everything off to Eastview. “They don’t match the soil she was lyin’ in.”

“That’s no surprise.” She shrugged lightly. “We assumed she’d been moved.” She told him, sitting down in her chair and pulling up to the desk. Her work laptop sat on one corner, closed, just where she’d left it. The little map on the United States uncovered. It felt good to be back where she was meant to be. Powerful. She leaned back, hands behind her head, relaxed on her throne.

“There were traces of a particular microbial sediment only found in Eastern Europe.” The fact that the forensics lab was actually being competent and getting stuff done was overshadowed by European soil. How would that have even gotten to New Jersey without it having been deliberately brought in a baggy? By the expression on his face, Agnes could tell that this fancy soil wasn’t the reason why he thought she wasn’t going to be happy.

“Now get to the part I’m not gonna like.” The Chief didn’t need to speak again though, because she could see her just behind him. The person she wanted to see least on the planet standing in her office doorway.

“Here I am.” Standing there was Agent Rio Vidal, looking more like an actor in a movie than an agent. Her suit jacket was open and the top buttons of her white shirt undone casually. Her badge swung lazily from the chain around her neck, and despite being inside she wore sunglasses. Though, she looked those off dramatically with a little smirk as she walked into the office.

It was no secret across agencies that the small-town detective hated the Agent. Though it hadn’t always been that way.

The first time that Agnes had met Rio Vidal was just after she had been promoted to detective within the Salem PD. She’d been assigned a relatively new case that seemed destined to go cold: a serial killer going after seemingly mundane middle-aged women. It had seemed strange at first, considering the serial killers she had studied in her criminology classes seemed to go after sex workers, young women, or gay men.

The FBI had been called in after three months, when all the police’s leads had dried up, but the killings still continued with increasing frequency. The SVU had been precise, picking apart their every move with a fine-tooth comb. It would have been humiliating if Agnes hadn’t been so fascinated with their methods – in particular, the methods of one green agent.

Rio had been new to the unit at the time, having just been granted Special Agent status and placed on the team. Unlike the older men who belittled the police officers and believed they couldn’t do their jobs; Rio had acknowledged that they had done the best with the information and resourced they’d had. It was a change of pace that none of them had expected.

She and Agnes had ended up working closely together on the case, even having the breakthrough after many sleepless nights that it was not a single killer, but a group dubbed the Salem Seven. Always leaving behind a signature of a bloody pentagram with a. medieval script style S on the inside. They’d realised that not only were there inconsistencies in the killing methods, but also that there was small deviation between each different person’s signature: all leaving their own individual mark.

One member of the group had been careless though, and on a night when Agnes should have been home with her young family celebrating her sons birthday, she and Rio had gone on a stakeout. Had caught Snake (the only name they were able to get on her) – though, not before Agnes caught a bullet to the shoulder.

To add insult to injury, when the press conference happened, Agnes hadn’t been mentioned. Instead, all accolades went to the SVU and Rio.

Agnes swore she would never work with the FBI, and especially Vidal, again after that.

Agnes shifted uncomfortably in her chair at the sight of the woman.

“Okay.” She said, more to herself than them, before addressing the Chief, refusing to look at Vidal. “Fancy dirt always attracts the attention of the Feds.

“Agent Vidal is an asset here, Agnes.” The Chief tried to mediate. “More brain power and more resources mean you get to the finish line faster.” To the leadership who didn’t get their hands dirty it was always about quotas, getting cases closed quickly; never about doing it right. Her eyes locked onto Vidal, whose tongue poked at her cheek as though she was holding back from speaking over him. “Strength in numbers. Teamwork makes the dream…”

She’d had enough of this. “Eat my ass, Chief.”

For his part, the Chief didn’t seem startled or put out by her words. If anything, he looked as though he was expecting them. Vidal chuckled, looking down with a look that Agnes refused to look into.

“I’ll leave you to it, then.” He said, taking his leave and stepping out of the office before more vitrail could be spewed. Vidal looked amused at the exchange, listening as his footsteps slowly disappeared as he entered his own office.

Agnes scoffed. Of course the Feds would be called in as soon as there was even a hint of boundary lines being crossed; and of course it had to be Agent fucking Rio Vidal who they sent in.

Wasn’t her unpaid probation humiliating enough?

Shaking her head in disbelief, Agnes watched as Vidal slowly walked though her office. Watched, waiting for some sort of judgement from the other woman as she took in the messy but impersonal office. The disastrous desk, the garbage can filled with energy drink can and donut wrappers, and the bookshelf stuffed with different manuals that Agnes could attribute to each case she’d worked on since transferring to Westview. Taking everything in until finally she reached the small couch against the far wall.

She placed the casefile down on a box of old, closed cases, and then sat down on the only clear spot. Once settled, Vidal leaned back, all too relaxed. The more relaxed she was, the more on edge Agnes became. One of Vidals arms rested on the back of the couch, and the other on the wooden armrest. Just… surveying her, for a moment, as if watching prey. Tongue in cheek again, before finally speaking.

“It’s been a long time.” That was on purpose, Agnes wanted to scream. Almost sympathetically, her old bullet wound twinged.

“What are you doing here?” Agnes asked, arms crossed over her chest, keeping herself from yelling at the other woman. It didn’t occur to her that it was the same position she had silently been judging Dottie for being in just two hours before.

“My job.” Something about those words sounded much more sinister than they were intended to be. Something tugged on Agnes’ brain, something telling her that she should be worried. But she ignored it, just as she usually did when her brain was trying to tell her something for her own self-preservation.

 “You wanna take control of my investigation.” Agnes surmised. Something akin to… amusement, flickered across Vidal’s eyes.

“No.” she said, letting out some cross between a sigh and… another sound that Agnes refused to name. She readjusted on the couch, eyes darkening slightly as she regarded her. “If you wanna be in control, you can be.”

Agnes sighed, resigned.

“She…” Agnes hesitated for a moment. Never before had she personalised a victim like she had in that moment. Yes, all the victims were people. This one was a person with a family who was probably missing her. But it was much harder for her to compartmentalise her job if she thought of her as a whole person. “The body was moved across state lines. Is that your play?”

Vidal didn’t seem to be listening to her, granted, even back in the day Agnes didn’t know if she truly ever listened. Dark eyes were once again looking around the office, studying, before they landed on Agnes.

“Is this really how you see yourself?” she asked, staring at her as though she could see her soul. Agnes stared back, brows furrowing slightly with confusion. In what way had anything she had said related to the way she saw herself? What was that even supposed to mean?

As if she could see what she had done to Agnes’ brain, Vidal switch gears. “Sure. Let’s talk about the case.” She shot her one more curious look before reaching over to grab the case file from where she’d haphazardly placed it. “What are your theories? How’d she end up in the ravine?”

Agnes scratched her forehead slightly in thought. She knew she’d have to share information and theories with the Feds, they were unfortunately on the case as well; and she didn’t exactly want to be fired for being uncooperative. That didn’t mean she’d make it easy in Vidal though.

“No drag marks. Thinking the perp carried her.” She tilted her head back, moved uncomfortably in her seat as the feeling from early came back. The feeling of her body being… wrong. Like she was inside some costume that didn’t fit properly, but the zipper was stuck.

“Uh… seems logical.” Vidal got up from the couch and walked over to the desk. “But, hm, you don’t really believe that because… oops.” The photos flopped down onto the desk in front of her. Photos the techs had taken at the scene. Another red flag rose in Agnes quickly, one that said while yes, they would have probably gotten those photos today, it still seemed too early for them to be developed. The techs needed to get back to the lab, to process them before sending them over. Everything in this case was moving… oddly quickly.

Just as quickly as those seeds of doubt took place though, they disappeared again.

“No tracks for the perp.” Vidal continued. “Not a lead disturbed before Forensics showed up. It’s almost like she just,” Vidal wiggled her fingers in the air, “magically appeared.” Her emphasis on the point wasn’t appreciated. Her actions, the look in her eyes, it was almost like she was trying to get Agnes to remember something.

Agnes just tilted her head and scoffed.

“Let’s stick to reality here, yeah?” Magic wasn’t real. It was something that parents told their kids to get them to eat their vegetables. She should know, she had used it many times.

“Sure.” Vidal was annoyingly calm.

“If there’s one thing we can agree on, it’s that these cases are always about the place. The specific small town. The history of it, the people in it, the secret buried beneath it.” as she spoke, Agnes leaned closer to Vidal, looking up at the woman who sat perched on her desk. “That’s where the answers lie.”

Vidal nodded, look equal parts chastised and amused, which was in turn not amusing to Agnes. While Agnes studied her, the other woman looked out the office windows to the bullpen – though it didn’t seem as though she was looking at the officers, and instead something else that the Detective couldn’t see.

“Well,” she turned back to look at Agnes, “who better to solve the mystery than one of Westview’s very own? Yeah, you’ve lived here your whole life. Isn’t that true… Agnes.”

Those words. She was sure they were true but… doubt lived inside her. Agnes continued to stare up at her, almost as if frozen in place. The cogs in her mind turning, trying to reach for some piece of information, something that would give this whole interaction some context she felt like she was missing. There were large gaps though, perhaps from the years of not caring for her body and letting herself be thrown around my criminals.

Yeah, that was it. Just a bit of head trauma.

Agnes broke out of her trance quickly, laughing slightly and rolling her chair back so she could stand up. She walked over to the door, almost on autopilot, and leaned back against the glass door and stared at Vidal, leaning her head towards the open doorway.

“I don’t want you here.” It was the first whole piece of truth she had spoken.

Vidal seemed to have been expecting the words though, and stood up from her spot on the desk without a word and gathered her files – though left the photographs. She walked past Agnes, only pausing for a moment to study her.

“Te veo.” She finally said as she left, walking through the bullpen with purpose. Agnes turned and quickly closed the door, leaning back against it for a second before scoffing and heading back to her desk.

One thing was for sure: she didn’t need Rio Vidal. She could solve this case on her own.

Chapter Text

Is this really how you see yourself?

She ran through a field. At least, she thought it was her – feeling it and seeing it at the same time. The blade of grass, or weeds, or wheat (she wasn’t truly sure) brushed up against her as she moved through it. She wore a large dress, a frilly hat, and was calling out a name – though whose name she couldn’t tell as it sounded to her own ears like she was underwater, and someone was trying to talk to her through it.

Her running was hindered by the dress and soft shoes and the eyes staring through her back from the building she’d left behind. Her legs burned and her heart felt like it was about to beat itself out of her chest by time she made it to the edge of the forest. She turned frantically, and despite the eyes she felt on herself saw nothing but empty field behind her and a small building beyond.

The frantic feeling seemed to increase, desperation filling her. She turned and continued to run right into the forest. The tall grass seemed to disintegrate, and it seemed as though her body knew this land even if her brain didn’t – jumping over rocks, avoid roots, all while speeding up. Even the rocks that she didn’t miss and that cut into her feet didn’t slow her down. The path with the creek in the distance almost reminded her of the body–

The world darkened and suddenly it was night. There was still adrenalin running through her veins, but now she was lying down on the rough ground. She didn’t care about the rocks that were crushed under her ribs and dug into her spine. She had apparently found what she was looking for – familiar soft brown hair running through her fingertips, a small body lying beside hers, pressed up against her looking for heat in the brisk night, breathing deeply. Still, her heart raced as though she is looking down the barrel of a gun.

Time was running out.

Agnes gasped as she sat up in bed, the world spinning with the fast movement. The sun was just barely shining through her bedroom window, the curtains doing nothing to curtail the light. She took another deep breath, the memory of the dream already gone, though left her with an unease deep in her chest. Letting out the breath, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and reached for her phone on the nightstand.

6:30am.

Fuck.

With a groan, she stumbled out of the bed and headed towards the washroom. She didn’t bother with the light as she went to the toilet, then stood in front of the mirror and stared back at herself. Everything felt wrong. It felt as though she was looking at herself through film, highlighted only by the weak light across the room. Her hair was a rat’s nest, dark circles prominent under her eyes indicative of the sleepless nights that were a staple in the detective’s life.

Her brain told her it was time to shower, her body moved the other way to get dressed into a pair of clothes that laid on her bedroom floor but thankfully didn’t smell.

Normally, Agnes didn’t dream; but when she did, she’d remember what it was about. She hadn’t dreamt for years though – not since she moved to Westview from Salem. Now all she ever remembered about her sleep was restlessness, unease, a feeling of suffocation, and a red haze that always seemed to explode just before she woke up.

This time though, was apparently different.

Agnes had assumed she didn’t remember, but as she went through the motions she felt almost as though she did. But it didn’t feel like a dream, it felt like a memory. A memory of someone in a field, looking for… someone. The harder she tried to remember, to concentrate on the name being called out, the more her head hurt; until it felt like there was a blinding force suffocating her, and she stumbled into her bedroom wall.

When it cleared again, she didn’t remember anything.

She grabbed two Tylenol from the bathroom cabinet – then a third just in case – before heading downstairs.

She didn’t bother with breakfast, nausea still present in her body and instead poured herself some of the old coffee from the pot into her #1 Detective mug and threw it into the microwave. Agnes scowled back at her reflection in the glass. Nothing in town would be open yet, so she couldn’t canvas the area – but, she supposed, that doesn’t mean I can’t get started here.

Theoretically (or, really, based on the instructions from the department mandated shrink), the best way for her to start the day was slow and relaxing. No social media (not that it held any particular interest to her), no Candy Crush, and most definitely no case work. She could read a book or maybe watch the news, but neither of those options particularly appealed to Agnes. What was the point of reading about someone else’s shitty life when she was living her own?

Sure, she hadn’t always thought that. As a child and a teenager, the library was one of the only places she could go to escape her life and mother. Children in the stories seemed to have it worse than her, which made her own life seem like a fairy tale. But when she got older and joined the force, she learnt that the bullshit people dealt with in novels was just a mask for the bullshit that happened to them in real life. Then when he was gone, what little appeal that had been left had disappeared. Suddenly, that way of escaping reality was gone too, and she stopped reaching for books and their shitty lies.

Agnes reached for her phone but paused when her eyes caught the small evidence bag across the table. She should have left the evidence bag at the station, but there it was and now the brooch taunted her. Her hand left her pocket and instead she got up slightly and leaned across the table like metal to a magnet and pulled the baggie closer without thought.

The light from the ceiling was better than the overcast sky of yesterday. With better lighting, she could see that the stone was purple and the chain gold or at least plated to look gold. Agnes wasn’t much for jewelry, but even she could tell this seemed expensive for costume jewelry. As she stared at it, her hand moved up towards her collar, reaching, before dropping down again. A confused expression crossing her face before she pushed the chair back with a. loud screech and looked at the time.

7:45am.

Eh, close enough.

Agnes arrived at the Pawn Shop exactly when it opened – which, if someone who knew her saw her, they would know something was off. Agnes was never on time. Norm seemed unimpressed when he saw her – she didn’t think too much of it though. Nobody ever seemed particularly impressed when she arrived.

He let her into the shop anyway with a bored expression.

The place always reminded Agnes of a hoarder’s house mixed with every child’s dream. Neon signs on the walls claiming that they bought gold, pictures and guitars hanging where they could. In a glass case there were guns, ranging for valuable to probably stolen. Beside the guns sat valuable Pokémon cards, jewelry, green cups with little cards claiming they were Uranium glass. Off to the side she could see the little binder that held pictures of the antique furniture that Norm sold – though most of that was kept in a secret warehouse.

(It wasn’t that secret; it was his garage.)

Norm’s look of boredom disappeared once she handed him the brooch.

“Oh, it’s real all right.” He’d said once he’d analysed it under the stretched out magnified glass. “And it’s a beaut.” He’d used a rag to slightly polish the stone, and Agnes had to begrudgingly agree. He looked up at her eagerly. “Where’d you get it?”

She didn’t have time for small talk.

“Mind your beeswax, Norm. Where’s it from? How old is it?” he sighed at her blunt tone and went back to his examination.

“North America. New England, maybe. Late 17^th century, I guess. It’s made from cowrie shell.” As annoying as the man was, he knew his shit.

Agnes shifted her weight slightly as she took in the information. As much as she just wanted him to get on with it, there was still her natural curiosity. She was a curious, nosy, person after all. Asa child, Agnes would ask so many questions her mother would beat her; now those questions were considered useful so long as they pertained to the case.

Which this did.

Theoretically.

“What’s a cowrie?” she asked in a less hostile tone than before.

“Sea snail.” Before she could ask him why he didn’t just say sea snail in the first place, he pointed at the three figures. “And these hotties here.  That’s Triple Goddess. Maiden, Mother, Crone.”

“What, no Working Professional Goddess?” she asked, and Norm chuckled – though she had a sneaking suspicion it was more out of professional curtesy then finding her funny.

He fidgeted with the brooch for a moment, then, before their very eyes, it opened with a barely audible click. Not just some gaudy brooch, Agnes concluded, it’s something that holds a clue. Inside was a small lock of brown hair, curled around the oval shape of the opening. It looked like it had been held there for years.

“Looks like your brooch is a locket.”

Something about it… Agnes’ brows furrowed the longer she stared at it. Something nagged at her brain, a memory that wouldn’t come forth, telling her that she should know what it is, where it came from. Staring more specifically at the hair, something inside her started to hurt. It was like a piece of herself was missing. And it wasn’t as though that was an unfamiliar feeling, but she didn’t understand why the victim’s brooch was evoking that feeling in it.

Not some stranger’s brooch, her–

“You looking to tell it, Agnes?” her thoughts were broken, but her eye contact with the brooch didn’t waver. Something inside her whispered at her to grab it, put it in the pocket over her heart and never let anyone touch it again. The detective in her, though, knew that wasn’t what was needed.

“How much you offering, Norm?” she asked instead, eyes following it as he placed it down on the counter.

“For you? Two hundred.” He said casually.

“Great.” He looked pleased for a moment until she grabbed it off the counter with a reflex that felt ingrained in her muscles. That feeling of loss and emptiness didn’t disappear when the brooch was in her hands again – but it did help. “Now I know where to start the bidding on eBay.” She snapped it shut and placed it in her pocket, then turned on her heel and walked out of the store.

Even though she was late, the office was still quiet when she got in. As she passed by the bullpen, she could hear the remaining officers chattering about a high profile hit and run; some even glanced up at her as though it was her that had hit the person and had run off without a trace.

She’d only done that once. And it wasn’t even a person, it was a garbage can. Still, apparently, she’d never live it down.

Not in the mood to deal with the idiots, she closed her office door and sat down in her chair heavily. The case files on her desk glared up at her, but at the same time the brooch seemed to be burning a hole in her pocket. She did try to focus on her job, but the words from the file swam in front of her eyes until she finally pulled the locket out of her pocket.

Why wasn’t this right by the body? She questioned quietly as she clicked it open again. Just like in the Pawn Shop, the lock of hair pulled something in her chest and caused her to pause.

Mama, what do we do with the hair we lose?

The voice in her head was quiet but persistent – the voice of a child. For a moment, her mind went to a certain child, the hardest one she’d lost – but that thought was fleeting before she pushed it away as she always did. Those thoughts were for the nights when shew as drunk off cheap wine and could afford to let her emotions get the best of her; not for the precinct where anyone could see her. She had a reputation to uphold, after all.

Without thinking, she slowly pulled the hair out of the locket and held it by the tied end. Her mind was frozen, her eyes glazed over, a headache forming in her mind, as she lifted it out and ran it over her chin, her lips. It was soft, so familiar. Unease, tension, and heartbreak filled her.

Before she could look to see if there was anything else in the locket, sharp laughter broke her out of her trance. Her hand dropped, the lock of hair falling back into place as she snapped the locket shut. The officers sat around one of the desks, laughing at whatever Officer Vergas had said. All the officers except one. One Agent Rio Vidal, who leaded against one of the desks and stared into Agnes’ office.

When their eyes met, the Agent’s lips twitched into a smirk and her head tilted; dark eyes drifting to the locket still in Agnes’ hands.

In return, Agnes glared and shoved the locket back into her pocket. She got up and headed to the windows. Vidal almost looked pleased, at least until Agnes grabbed the cord and yanked the blinds shut.

Chapter Text

“Detective O’Connor, you got a minute?”

After another night being haunted by strange dreams she couldn’t remember resulting in little sleep, the last thing Agnes wanted was to talk to one of the beat cops she oversaw. They were all annoying, thinking they were a better detective than her just because of the appendage between their legs. But, after glancing up and seeing the look the Chief shot her from across the room, she decided it was probably in her best interest to humour him. She put on her best face and turned to look at him, hoping that the irritation in her eyes was evident.

“Yes?” her tone all hostility.

“Webbers analysis came in.” the officer explained, some of his bravo gone. He stepped fully into her office without invitation, thankfully stopping before the rug under her desk. In his hands, he balanced a paper cup of stupidly expensive coffee from a shop in town, with the casefile pinched between his fingers. In his other hand he held his tablet – which Agnes hoped contained more information on the case and was not evidence of the officer being a Gen Z iPad baby. “His results confirm that Jane Doe fell from a height of at least five hundred feet before being crushed.”

“She was found in the middle of the woods.” Agnes stated, staring at him as though he had just announced that the newest form of human had two heads. “There’s no evidence that her body was moved.”

“You’re forgetting that she had foreign soil beneath her nails.” To Agnes’ annoyance, Agent Vidal appeared behind the officer like the snake she was. She looked all too smug – and much too comfortable; her fingers curled around the cracked and stained station branded coffee mug, she took a sip of the questionable contents as though daring Agnes to say something. Her cellphone was held loosely in her other hand as though she didn’t actually know what to do with it.

“I almost forgot about your fancy European dirt.” She said dryly, eyes holding onto Vidals for a moment. The officer clearing his throat caused her to break contact, her blue eyes going to him for a moment before going back to the phone in her hand.

“We also have that analysis back–”

“Sokovia. Or, more accurately, the former Sokovian territories.” Vidal interrupted without a hint of remose.

“That’s old news.” Agnes let irritation creep into her voice as she held up her phone, indicating she’d already been given that information, and looked between the two. Her vision stayed on Vidal though as she slipped between the door and the officer, slinked across the open space in front of the desk, and draped herself across the open spot on the couch. “Back to the crushing.”

Agnes looked back at the officer, scowling.

“Right.” The officer nodded, his bravo no longer present as his forehead glistened with sweat. “Well – from the degree of crushing, it appears as though she had to have been crushed by something heavy.” Agnes groaned, moving her hand in a hurry up motion. “It, uh, had to have been something heavier than a car.”

“Heavier than a car?” Agnes raised a brow, hoping for something more, and glancing over at Agent Vidal for a moment who didn’t seem to be at all interested in the information. Or, she already knew it judging by the expression on her face.”

“Like, well, a two-storey dwelling.”

Was he serious? She stared at him for a moment, taking in the way he shifted nervously and his hand twitching like he was fighting against wiping his forehead before remembering he was holding a ridiculous number of things.

Finally, Agnes let out a short, annoyed laugh.

“A house? What’s next? Flying monkeys?” she rolled her eyes. “News flash: just because Wicked was made into a movie, doesn’t make the Wizard of Oz real, Toto.” Agnes leaned back in her chair, propping her feet up on the open desk drawer. “Come back when you have actual useful information.”

The dismissal was probably a tad harsh, and Agnes could already imagine the field day that HR was going to have when a complained was inevitably filed. It would just be another complaint to add to her already bursting file. It wasn’t her fault her workers thought they could talk to her.

The officer stayed in the office, ignoring the dismissal, hovering in the doorway awkwardly. From the corner of her eye, she could see the amused look on Vidals face, which caused her own scowl to deepen.

“What?”

“The crime scene techs mapped out the location of the body in accordance to landmarks in the vicinity–” he struggled for a moment, moving the items in his hands so he could pull something up on his tablet. Neither woman moved to help him, instead just watching as he struggled. Finally, he turned the screen towards Agnes. She reached out to take it from him, and looked down at the map. It was probably something pulled off google maps with some dots placed on it. There was the location of the body as a blue dot, an arrow indicating how far the body was from the road.

“And this tells me what, exactly? She already knows how far she was from the road. It wasn’t a coincidence that she was found, though the anonymous caller makes it harder to find out the circumstances.” Her tone was bored as she held the tablet back out.

“Patience, Aggie.” Vidal taunted.

“Don’t call me that.” Agnes snapped back with a glare most would be terrified of, though it seemed to just amuse the Agent more than she already was.

“There’s no buildings.” The offer cut in, his eyes darting between his two superiors. He obviously wanted to get out of the confrontation. “Forensics have concluded, as you said before, that the death was caused by a fall followed by crushing. We already know that there was nothing around that could have caused the crushing fractures but look – there are no buildings anywhere near the body either. And it wasn’t like she fell from a tree, there was no physical evidence of her climbing one prior to death.”

Agnes’ head tilted in thought as she zoomed in on the map. As much as she loathed to admit it, the officer was right: there were no buildings close by, and no cuts, scrapes, or other evidence under the nails or on the hands to show that the victim had been climbing a tree. The only evidence they had that this was a body was killed in a separate location was because of the stupid soil.

“Aircraft?” Agent Vidal spoke up lazily. “That would account for the fall.”

“The fall was antemortem, crushing was the cause of death.” Agnes said, slightly distracted, for once no hostility in her tone.

“And ATC said there was nothing in the airspace around our proposed time of death.” The officer added.

“Lots of rich around here, though.” Agnes looked up at him. “They might not think they need to talk to ATC. Get a list of people with access to places, jets, helicopters – hell, jetpacks, anything that can get them into the air – within a hundred miles.”

“Got it.” The officer (Agnes finally looked at his nametag, Jimenez), said.

“And Jimenez–” he turned back to look at her. “Good job.”

“Thanks, Detective.” He grinned, something akin to a school boy getting a gold star on a spelling test, and stepped out of her office.

Agnes continued to ignore the other person in her office as she looked back down at the files spread out across her desk. She reached over to turn on her computer so she could look at the results for herself. The eyes that stayed on her though were irritating, something about Vidals look making her uncomfortable by causing an unfamiliar warming feeling in her gut. Her body apparently didn’t agree with her that Vidal was a menace that needed to get the fuck out.

“You can go.” Agnes finally said coolly, not looking up from her monitor.

“I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out yet, Agatha. You’ve always believed you were the smartest person in the room.” Agnes looked up at her, her expression twisting and confusion filling her eyes at Vidals words. Who was Agatha? And why did that name stir something–

Everything froze. There was searing pain for a moment, red and hot in her brain, before all her thoughts disappeared and her face went blank.

Understanding crossed Vidals face, though what she was understanding Agnes didn’t know. It obviously wasn’t her blatant hint for her to leave.

“Do you really think it was someone who didn’t report themselves to ATC, Agnes?” Vidal asked, no hint of her previous question in her tone.

“It’s possible.” Agnes mused, leaning back in her chair further. “Though my gut is telling me its unlikely.”

“Are you sure that’s not the donut you had for breakfast?” Vidals hands shot up in surrender, though a feral grin spread across her face. “Just saying. When’s the last time you ate a proper meal?”

“I’m a detective, not a chef.” Agnes snarked, turning back to her computer. “Why are you really here, Vidal? This seems a bit beneath you.”

Instead of answering, Vidal got up from the awkwardly low couch. She headed to the door, turning slightly when she got there to wiggle her fingers at Agnes and ignore her question completely.

“Te Veo.” She said, the door slamming and the blinds on it rattling behind her.

It anyone ever said that Agnes was good at housekeeping, it was a blatant lie. She could blame her mother for using cleaning as a punishment, or that she was just too busy, but all of it would be a lie. In reality, it was that when she started something, she always seemed to forget about it in the middle of the task. She could start something, get distracted, then find the unfinished project three days later. Once thing she needed to get done was laundry, unless she wanted the other officers to complain about her smell as well as her attitude.

Agnes put on a true crime podcast – probably a bit on the nose for the detective, but she lighthearted banter between the hosts at the beginning and end were what made it a lot better than her day job – and got to it.

Sometimes, it felt like someone else was controlling her. She would start working on a task, and then suddenly it was completed, and she couldn’t remember how she got there. Take driving to work or eating dinner (if she remembered to eat in the first place. She was a detective, not a dietician). It appeared as though the tasks miraculously being completed was continuing, because as soon as she left the laundry room and headed towards the kitchen to get a snack (she maybe had leftovers in the fridge, though who knew how old they were), the timer dinged.

She frowned, turned on her heel, and headed back into the laundry room. She thought perhaps it was just a faulty machine, that wasn’t uncommon in Westview. Living in a small town meant there was only one person there who fixed appliances, and they were often booked solid. Usually, she would just stick some duct tape on it and call it a day. But no, when she got there the timer was at 0, and when she opened the door the scent of warm, clean laundry wafted out.

Pausing for a moment, something rebooted in her brain. There were no more thoughts of getting food from the fridge, the list of avenues they needed to go down for the investigation, or Mrs. Hart across the street who had once against asked her if she’d come over to help her hang up her new television. It was all gone, replaced by TV static. Then, just as fast as it happened, everything went back to normal – the internet started back up, the antenna on the TV was moved into a better position.

Her laundry was shoved from the dryer and into her basket, and she balanced it on one hip as she headed up the stairs towards her bedroom. She needed to fold her work shirts and put them away before they wrinkled too much and maybe change her bed sheets.

The second floor of Agnes home had three bedrooms and a bathroom. She glanced at the first door; the room had been converted into her home officer when she’d moved to Westview. It was probably the room she spent the most time in. The second room was her bedroom, but she bypassed that as well. Instead, she ended up at the third door at the end of the hall. It was closed, sealed tightly. A small blue sign with indistinguishable words on it hung crookedly off a nail – really, the only sign that this place she inhabited was a home.

This room was the only one in the house that she never went into. It wasn’t like she didn’t know what was behind the white door (or did she? Sometimes she wondered what exactly she did know about herself and her house – though that was mostly when she was deep in the bottle). The door symbolised the door she had closed on the things about herself she wanted to hide. The depression, the deep self-loathing, the emotions that technically made her human but also made her a liability in the field. If the other officers knew about the emotions she tried to hide, they might not have respected (or feared) her in the way she expected them to.

Her fingers closed around the cold metal of the door handle, her wrist slowly turning. She paused though, this time not because of the dog in her brain but because of knocking on her front door. Her brow furrowed. It wasn’t the consistent, fluttering knocking of Mrs. Hart, or the perfunctory two knocks that was followed by the clattering of a casserole dish being placed down on the wooden porch. No, this was three solid knocks, a momentary pause between each bang.

While her coworkers knew where she lived, Agnes was confident than none of them liked her enough to come over for an unannounced visit. That itself was enough to have Agnes on edge, her hand leaving the handle behind and the laundry basket being dropped in the middle of the hallway. She stopped at the top of the stairs, watching the shadow behind the frosted glass beside the door shift their weight. For a second, it appeared as though they would leave.

Knock knock knock.

Or not.

It definitely wasn’t someone from work.

Agnes huffed, annoyed that her precious solitude was being interrupted. She stomped down the stairs petulantly, turned the lock on the door, and opened it wide.

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.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t that Agnes didn’t trust the information that Jimenez had given her the day before; it was just that sometimes, if she went to the lab and talked to the techs themselves, the information she received was much more nuanced than what was printed in a black and white report given to her in a manila folder. 

She rubbed her forehead as she exited the elevator, entering the hallways that led to the morgue and labs, a headache brewing behind her eyes. She hated it down in the basement. It was just as sterile as the last time she’d been forced to go down there before she’d been suspected: bleach and antiseptic smell, metal doors that reminded her of old school prisons, and frigid temperatures. Westview wasn’t like New York, there were no state of the arc facilities they could use with observation windows and high-tech computers. They were lucky that the technology they had was from the early 2010s – up until two years before, they were still using systems from the nineties. 

The cement floors and grungy off-white subway tiles made Agnes, for a moment, remember the time when she had stayed in New York when she was young and ambitious. When she believed that a degree in criminology and sociology would help her be more respected as a woman in the field when she joined the force. All that had done was cause the other rookies to call her ‘nerd’ and ‘shrink’ during training; something that she had shaken off for the most part but still followed her around occasionally when working on cases with her old classmates.

Halfway down the hall, and down a little ramp later, she arrived at the double doors she was looking for; the little plaque beside them indicating it was the morgue. She pushed open the right door, shivering slightly at the little woosh of air pressure changing as she entered the room and let the door close closely behind herself. It was even colder in there, almost as though she had stepped into one of those walk-in refrigerators that professional kitchens had. The assistant pathologist, Jonathan Ruch, stood at one of the workstations along the wall, filling something out on his government issues clunky laptop.

“Detective.” Rush greeted without looking up from what he was doing. Rush had been the assistant pathologist for as long as Agnes had been in Westview – perhaps longer. He had long since surpassed his job title, completing the main duties of pathologist while the head pathologist, Dr. Carré, filled out paperwork from his cushy office and sent the police their reports. “What can I do for you today?”

“I’m here to review the information provided about Jane Doe.” Agnes said as she stepped further into the room. Her nose wrinkled slightly – even though the strong antiseptic smell that permeated the air, the underlying notes of death were still strongly present. Even after working years in the field, it was something she didn’t think she’d ever get used to. She kept her eyes on Rush, refusing to look over at the storage on the side that housed the bodies, or the drain in the floor stained from years of blood and other bodily fluids that bleach couldn’t get rid of.

“Which one? We have many.” Right. It was hard for Agnes to think about all the unidentified Jane Doe’s in the morgue; but car accidents and other deaths happened more often than people wanted to think about, and sometimes those involved were too scared of the repercussions (even in accidents) to come in and claim the bodies. So, those women would say on ice, forever in limbo waiting for their deaths to be solved. At least until there were too many, and they were buried in numbered graves forever unidentified.

Agnes hoped this wouldn’t be another lost case.

“Jane Doe 361.” Agnes replied, making it to the station. She watched as Rush closed his current case and moved through the filing system to open the right one.

“Didn’t Carré send this over?” he asked as he glanced up at her. Call it incompetence or simply the system failing, but it was uncommon for files to either be sent late or forgotten about all together.

“You did, but I’d rather get the information from you personally.” Rush hummed in acknowledgement as the file opened.

“You flatter me, O’Conner.” Agnes rolled her eyes as the file popped up. He rolled down from the first page describing the case numbers and dates, onto the picture of Jane Doe taken after they received her in the morgue. Her face was crushed, and red hair matted with blood and dirt.

“Is the colour real?” Agnes asked.

“She’s part of the two percent.” 

She raised an unimpressed brow. “I’m assuming you’re not talking about money.”

“No.” Rush laughed. “Only one to two percent of the population are natural red heads; and an analysis of the melanin and pheomelanin in her roots prove that she’s one of them. Might be useful for the updated missing person’s report.”

Agnes looked over the screen as he scrolled down into the report. “I take it that means there were no hits on missing persons?”

“Nope.” He tapped his fingers on the desk. “And we can’t complete a facial reconstruction with the current damage to her skull. Clark is working on a digital reconstruction as we speak.”

“Let me know when it’s done.” Agnes took one more look at the document. “Is there anything else?”

“Not on my side.”

She nodded and took a step back towards the door. The smell was getting to her, the decay almost smelling stronger. She hated how decomposition smelt; how pungent it was. It made her eyes water and the inside of her nose burn. 

“A bit squeamish, detective?” Rush teased.

“Just tired.” Agnes gave him a look as she turned. “Herb in his office?”

“Yup.”

“I’ll leave you to it then.” She nodded goodbye to him and stepped back out into the hallway. Once the morgue door has shut again, she took a deep breath. It wasn’t much better out there, the antiseptic still making her head swim, but at least there was no underlying death. Then, Agnes continued on. The hallway echoed with the squeaking of the leather soles of her shoes against the worn cement. In the distance, she could hear the beeping of machines in the lab signaling tests were complete. Occasionally, as she passed drains, she could smell the sewer, the smell coming up the old pipes as if to remind them that one day they’ll be underground too.

Herb’s office was, thankfully, at the other end of the basement. Agnes never fully understood while the Chief squirreled him away down there and didn’t put his office on the second floor with the rest of them, but she never once actually questioned her boss’s decision on it. It wasn’t her place – not her circus and not her monkey. Though it would make it easier to talk to him.

Agnes wracked her knuckles against the door twice before pushing it open. Herb was on the phone but still motioned her in with one hand. The door closed quietly behind her as she entered the room fully and walked over to one of the chairs in front of Herb’s desk and sat down, one leg crossed over the other. 

Even if the room was windowless, the chief forensic examiner had made the place seem less bleak. There were different lamps everywhere as well as some smaller plants with little circular grow lights. There was even a framed picture of a window hanging on the wall that made it look like there was a view of the ocean. Agnes remembered when he’d been promoted three years prior, and his wife had brought over the picture. Some of the rookies had taken the piss out of him over it – joking that the only way the mole people (also known as those who worked in the basement) got a window was if it was fake. Uncharacteristically, Agnes had found the gesture endearing. Not that she’d say anything.

Herb had transferred to the Westview Forensics Lab from New York the same month she’d transferred to the Westview PD from Salem. They had come up in the Westview force together, even if they were working in different departments. And while yes, Agnes trusted the others who worked here – she had to, otherwise she wouldn’t be able to do her job – Herb was the one she trusted the most. She knew he wouldn’t sugar coat information and would actually take his time to look into each aspect of the case. To most people, this was just a paycheck. To him, it was personal.

“What can I do for you, Agnes?” he asked as he finally placed the old black phone down into its cradle. It was one of those phones from ancient times, with a curly cord that only went so far and got tangled in everything.

“I know your department sent us the file, and I just talked to Rush, and he told me there were not hits with missing persons so we’re waiting on a reconstruction, but I wanted to hear the rest from you.”

Herb leaned back in his chair, the old contraption groaning under his weight. Agnes got up and walked over to the small minifridge in the corner of the room and grabbed a bottle of water before heading back to her seat.

“Well, as I said in the report,” he shot her a look, one that said both why are you making me tell you this in person when I compiled a nice report for you , and one that said Agnes, what rabbit hole are you going down this time and will you be able to dig yourself out? Both looks were still filled with a fondness that came from working together for ten years. “Jane Doe. Red Hair, green eyes, mid-thirties. Cause of death was definitely asphyxiation due to crushing. She has numerous injured that were caused antemortem due to a fall, but the crushing by a great force was the ultimate cause of death. Her ribs were all but shattered.”

“What kind of force are we talking about?” Agnes asked. 

“You know those videos of people putting stuff like watermelons of crayons between two metal plates and crushed? Like that.” Agnes winced slightly as the thought, readjusting in her seat. “What’s causing the most confusion for the analyst is the fact that while there is no indication that she was moved to where we found her, all the evidence we gathered from her clothes, nails, and hair, were all from Eastern Europe.”

Herb bent over to rifle through the bottom drawer of his desk where the open casefiles were kept, and once he found the right one placed it on the desk facing Agnes. He opened to the document containing the data on the samples taken. “Sokovia; or what was Sokovia. Which is interesting considering its now considered a dead zone. The UN has the place surrounded by barbed wire – it’s almost as locked down as Chernobyl. No one goes in or out. Not even Dark Tourists.”

“Dark Tourists? What are those?” Agnes asked. “Is it one of those stupid trends?”

“People who go to places that are considered dangerous or have had natural disasters happen. Chernobyl, Hiroshima, Alcatraz, those sorts of places.”

Agnes let out a deep sigh and decided she didn’t need to get into the whole ethics because going to places where atrocities happened. “So,” she changed the subject back, “how did she get there?” she leaned back in her chair, looking over the printout. It contained information about the PH of the soil and the mineral composition, but nothing she would necessarily deem super important. “Is it possible she was frozen?”  

“We ruled that out.” Herb explained. “When someone’s frozen, their cell walls break due to the ice crystals formed inside. There was no evidence of that. There would also have been different stages of decomp at different parts of the body due to body defrosting at different rates. Time of death is about what we originally speculated – within twenty-four hours of finding her.”

“So, she was crushed but there was nothing to crush her; fell but there’s nothing around the crime scene tall enough for her to have fallen from and cause the damage; and moved but not moved?” Agnes recapped. “Sounds like some sort of impossible riddle.”

“Isn’t that what all crimes are?” Herb asked wirily as Agnes reached out and picked up the photo. “What I found interesting was her fingers.” He flipped through one of the pages until he got to the photo he was looking for. It was a close-up of her hands, and her fingers from the second knuckle to the tip, were black. “It’s like the tissue decayed without any physical signs besides decolouration. There was even still blood pooling present, so the supply hadn’t been cut off.”

“Could the colour be some sort of tattoo?” Agnes asked, her eyes stuck on the photo. Even if she had wanted to put it down, she couldn’t. It felt as though the photo was stuck in her hands. Her own fingertips tingled as if recalling the sensation of the nerves and skin slowly dying off. Her stomach felt heavy. In her mind, she could see the tissue of the fingers disappearing and leaving only bone, bare but still attached.

“That’s what we thought too. But nope, it’s definitely her skin. We took a sample, and the cells but the cells hadn’t been starved – which doesn’t make sense. You can see why we haven’t been able to get anything conclusive.” Herb gently reached out and took the photo from her. Agnes was still entranced by it, her fingers tingling and her head teaching up to touch the back of her head where there was suddenly a deep throbbing. “You sure you’re alright, Agnes?”

“What? I’m fine.” Her head snapped back up to look at him. “Got anything else for me?”

“Well… we had Carré do the initial autopsy due to the situation, but Rush went over everything this morning to make sure it was all up to snuff. You know how Carré is.” Nobody knew how that man was still head pathologist. “And he found some– well, I don’t know whether to classify them as burns or tattoos.”

Agnes raised a brow. “How were they not caught before?”

“We couldn’t see them at the crime scene due to them being beneath her clothes. But otherwise, I’m sorry, Agnes.” He knew how little stock Agnes actually put in the word sorry , but Agnes knew this wasn’t actually Herb’s fault so let it go. Herb reached over to an envelope of recently printed photos on the corner of his desk and flipped through them. Agnes wasn’t sure how he could tell which photo was from which case, but from the middle of the pile he pulled one out and placed it on top of the file for her to see. 

The photo was of the victims back. What was first obvious was the bruises and angry scratches from her cause of death. Then, once she looked past the horror, she was able to see the angry red marks etched into Jane Doe’s skin. They looked deliberate; and Anges then understood what Herb meant by not knowing if they were burns or tattoos – they appeared to be some sort of hieroglyphs or…

“ These are runes, Wanda. In a given space, only the witch who casts the runes can use her magic. ”

Agnes blinked. “What do these mean?”

“Not sure,” Herb said apologetically, “Rush said he was going to look into it, but there was a crash on the town boundary, so he’s been swamped and hasn’t had the chance.”

Agnes hummed and nicked the photo off the desk, folding it in half and putting it in her coat pocket. “Can I keep this? Thanks.”

“Sure, Agnes.” Herb said while putting the file back together and into the drawer. “Are you sure there isn’t anything I can help you with?”

“I’m fine.” Agnes said again, gritting her teeth as she headed to the door. “I owe you one.” She opened the door and headed through, not bothering to close it.

“No, you don’t, friends help out free of charge.” Herb called out after her. Agnes waved him off as she headed towards the elevators, only stopping when she started to pass the morgue. Something had been stuck in her mind… While Herb had mentioned that there had been a crash this morning, Rush hadn’t been working on any autopsies when she went in to talk to him. Glancing around to make sure there was no one watching, she cracked open the door and popped her head in. Agnes tried to ignore the putrid smell as she looked around. There were no bodies out, no tools to indicate a recent intake, and Rush was nowhere to be seen.

Agnes pondered this on her way to her car. Why would Herb tell her there was a crash that took up Rush’s time when there was no evidence in the mortuary that there had been a crash? She hadn’t even heard about it over the radio this morning, or received anything on her phone about it when she got home–

Why hadn’t she been home?

“ I want more time!”

“You have betrayed your coven.”

“Dude, I think she’s finally waking up.” Agnes groaned, her muscles screaming and her ears ringing. Her whole body felt heavy, and she couldn’t place where she was due to her brain being foggy. When she opened her eyes finally, the sky through the autumn leaves was cloudy, the texture of the clouds indicating it was going to rain soon. 

The two teenage boys who were staring down at her jumped back when they saw her eyes open, looking as though they had been burned. It took Agnes a couple moments, but she scowled up at them. 

“Uh, hey detective O’Conner.”

“Thomas.” She pushed herself up with one arm, and the other went to the back of her head where the throbbing originated. “What are you doing?”

“You were passed out.” The other boy helpfully said. Agnes looked over at him critically. He must have been new to the Haggerty household. His ginger hair was cropped close to his skull, a sure sign of Delores Haggerty who was known to cut off all her fosters sons’ hair when they first arrived at her home to starve off lice.

“Figured.” Agnes groaned, as she finally pushed herself to be sitting all the way up. She winced and her fingers moved through her hair at the back of her head where there was a large knot forming – probably from hitting her head when– wait, what had happened? Once minute she had been in a small cabin looking at some ancient book, and the next she was waking up with two teenagers hovering.

As she now looked at the structure, she could see it wasn’t even a proper building. But Agnes swore it had been – and the dark couldn’t have deceived her that much, could it? The image of weather wood siding, broken glass, and dusty footprints were imprinted in her brain. But now looking at it, she could see it was completely different from what was in her mind. A stone structure with no roof, just the skeleton of a building long since decayed. Her eyes moved on from the crumbling stone and to the trees around her. She realised it was light out now, though the sun was hiding behind the clouds as the rain started to fall.

Thomas shifted awkwardly beside her, from the balls of feet back onto his ankles, still crouched down as though he had anticipated needing to help her.

“Do you want me to call the station?” he asked hesitantly, his fingers flexing.

“No.” Agnes snapped, then cleared her throat. “No, I’ll be alright. What are you two doing out here so early?” Even though she had offered, Agnes knew how Thomas felt about the police. Agnes had been in town long enough to know about the Haggerty’s; and even though there was never any physical evidence so she couldn’t legally do anything about the situation, she knew what went on behind closed doors. It wasn’t hard to guess.

Thomas had been her first call when she started out in Westview. He had been a scared kid then hiding out in the woods because that was better than going back to where he was living. When he didn’t come back with her willingly, Agnes had sat down with him in the cold leaves. They were there for hours, sitting in silence, until he was finally ready to go back. She never pushed him; and years later, Thomas seemed to have not forgotten that and trusted her. As much as a kid with rotten luck could.

She swore she wouldn’t do anything to break that trust.

“We were walking to school.” The younger boy budded in, as if Agnes didn’t know that this path was very far out of way of the school. She hummed lightly and looked down at her watch.

“Well, you better get going.” She prompted, nodding at the path towards town. “You don’t want to be late. School is important and all that bull– stuff.”

“Right.” Thomas didn’t look convinced, but he stood up and dusted off his jeans. “Are you sure you’re okay, Detective O’Conner?”

“Just peachy, Thomas. Go. I don’t want to have to drive you in the cruiser if you don’t show up.” They both knew that she would never do that. If not because Agnes was not a truant officer, then because she didn’t even have a cruiser in the first place. Just her shitty little car her ex left her. The boys didn’t say anything else though, just threw a hand in the air as a departure acknowledgement and then ran off through the trees towards town.

Agnes waited until they were out of sight before focusing on the matter at hand. Looking at the sky again, she figured she had been passed out for at least an hour, and in conjunction with the painful knot on the back of her head, knew she probably had at least a mild concussion. If she was smart, she would head back into town and to the clinic or the ER. If she hadn’t left her phone back at the house, she could have called the Chief to let him know what happened (she probably wouldn’t though). What would he even say: that she was an idiot for going into a strange building without back up? Or would he think she’d officially gone off the deep end, and considering the cabin apparently didn’t even exist, he may not have been far off?

Sighing, she stood up slowly, making sure that she didn’t feel dizzy as she did. The last time she had asked for help, she’d been stabbed in the back, so she wasn’t going to now. Even if her head throbbed from where it had hit the ground. Agnes’ life had been built on – not the will to live, exactly, but being stubborn enough to survive those who wanted her dead. And since she couldn’t have been thrown backwards that hard and far on accident, someone (or something) definitely wanted her dead.

Muscles tense, she walked back towards the entry of the structure and looked in. There was no table or bookshelves. There wasn’t even a floor, not exactly, just dirt and rocks, some weeds popping up where they hadn’t been drowned out by the near constant rain, and litter from local teenagers partying. Turning away, she knew there was no point of her being there if there wasn’t anything for her to investigate. It was just some shitty stone structure more suited to archeologists than her.

Maybe she had slept walked there – though, that would have made sense if she was wearing pyjamas instead of her running clothes.

Agnes let out an irritated huff. She turned to quickly to leave and had to reach out to the wall to steady herself when her head started to swim. That’s when she heard it, a dull thunk of something falling onto the compact ground. She frowned and went on her toes to look over the partial wall.

Maybe she wasn’t going crazy after all. Because there lying on the ground was the book from the cabin. It almost fell as though it was staring back at her – the leather cover, the pages held together by a string of hide. It looked more like something someone would find in a museum in Salem than in the woods outside of Westview.

Agnes reached up and threated her fingers through her hair to touch the back of her skull once more. How had she been missing that piece of time for long? And why did it hurt so much to think about it. Even now, the memory started to turn fuzzy as she unlocked the driver’s door and sat down heavily inside. Her mouth tasted like copper, and she opened the bottle of water she had grabbed in Herb’s office to wash it out. 

Her whole body started to ache as if she’d just completed a full body workout. She leaned back in the seat with her eyes closed and reached over to put the keys in the ignition and turn on the car. The radio started instantly, some Nick Cave song filling the vehicle. Agnes turned her head tiredly, eyes catching on something on the floor of the back seat.

Resigned, she reached over and grasped it, her shoulder stretching painfully. When she pulled it forward, Agnes was able to see what it was. Some sort of book bound by leather. Her mind went back to the fuzzy memories of that morning, looking at the book laid out on the table of the cabin that didn’t actually exist. Somehow, the book existed; and somehow, she got it out of the woods and into her car.

Despite the car idling in the precinct parking lot, she flipped open the book. While the cover had no indications of what the book was, the title page at least had some words. Though, those words were in Latin and therefore she couldn’t read them. What she could read though, was the very old cursive on the top right corner.

Agatha Harkness.

She shivered.

Why did she recognize that name?

Her head pounded to the point where she could feel it in her ears, but she continued to flip. While the font appeared to be in Gothic, it seemed as though it hadn’t been some mass production. The pages were old, yellowed with what looked like darker staining. Thick. The text was in Latin, just like the title page. But, in the margins there were words written in blotted black ink. The script was the same as the name on the title page, but smaller and cramped, as though there was no extra paper for the owner of the book to have written their notes down on. Each page was like this, meticulous notes that looked like something by a university student – and many words she didn’t understand. Some words of the text were underlined, and some crossed out and replaced. The penmanship never changed even as some of the ink appeared scratchier as if it was running out, or others were eating through the paper.

There was something about this book that made Agnes believe it had something to do with Jane Doe’s death. It was just too convenient finding it there in the woods. Had it been calling to her? Agnes had felt compelled to go to it. Or, more likely, had someone placed it there? She supposed the real question was, was the book placed there as a red herring or was it actual viable evidence? If the latter was the case, then Agnes knew she needed to take it into evidence. Get it dusted for prints (though hers were all over it now, so that would most likely be inconclusive), perhaps send out from some historian to date it and an expert in Latin to decipher it. But…

She looked down at the book. She couldn’t do it.

The book called out to her; an indistinguishable whispering so quiet she could barely even hear it besides the tugging in her mind. It was the same with the broach, stashed away safely in her jewellery box back home. She couldn’t take it in for the techs to mess with, couldn’t let it be destroyed in the search. Even if she also wanted answers.

She flipped through a couple more of the pages, then frowned as a thought went through her mind. Agnes reached over to the glove box and pulled out the small notebook she stashed there for when she got called to a crime scene, and a pen. She quickly wrote down her name as well as the date, just for a sample, then held her notebook up beside the book. Oddly, her writing and the annotations were the same; albeit hers was less cramped in a small space. How could this book have her writing in it, when she hadn’t written in it?

With an irritated huff, she slammed it shut and placed it back on the floor and covered it with her spare crime scene jacket. She looked down at her notebook, half sitting on the centre console, and threw it back into the glove box. Though, she found herself hesitating for a moment, her eyes still caught on the writing, before closing the door and putting the car into drive.

The rain hadn’t let up since the morning, getting worse throughout the day, but Agnes needed to get back out into the woods to get answers. There had to be more evidence out there that she’d missed. Perhaps she was becoming obsessed, going in circles, but her gut was telling her there was something out there.

With the windshield wipers on high, she reached over and flicked the radio away from the depressing music.

“ Mommy’s not sleeping, honey. She’s just resting her eyes. ” Spoke an eerily familiar woman on the radio, but one that no matter how hard Agnes tried to picture her face, just made pain erupt.

“ Mom, my head feels weird. It’s, like, really noisy. I don’t like it.” Agnes felt her chest tighten slightly at the familiar voice, childish laughter echoing. She reached out to switch the station, loud static making her jump before it landed on one.

“ Actually, I did overhear a couple of lads at work remarking on a few unsavory characters settling in the neighborhood. Now, who knows what those ne’er-do-wells might be up to? Robbing houses, vandalizing property.” It was a British man this time. Agnes frowned, looking away from the road for a second and down at the stereo to see the station number. Why did it sound like it was some old comedy?

She turned the dial again.

“ What do you say to silver dollar pancakes, crispy hashbrowns, bacon, eggs, freshly squeezed orange juice, and black coffee? ” it was the woman again, but the cadence of her voice has changed. 

“ I say… I don’t eat food.”

“That explains the empty refrigerator! ”

Agnes bypassed curious and instead screamed in frustration, spinning the dial hard, running through the stations. At the same time, her phone lit up on the passenger’s seat. Backstabber . She glared at it, having no patience for dealing with Agent Vidal. She reached over to send her to voice mail, looking away from the road.

Apparently, the radio continued to believe that she needed to listen to the strangely familiar voices that made the pain of getting shot feel like a massage. 

Agnes looked up just as a voice on the radio started to speak again “ Your magic’s no good here .” It wasn’t just any voice though. No, she would recognise that voice anywhere–

Before her thoughts could go any further, a figure in black appeared on the road in front of her, barely visible through the rain. Agnes slammed on the breaks, but it was no use as her car slid across the slick surface. The figure went over her hood, and the impact jolted her card as the car skidded over the embankment; thankfully stopping short before it hit any of the large trees that lined the road.

Dazed, it took a moment for Agnes to realise what had happened. All thoughts of the book and her handwriting were forgotten. The airbags in the car didn’t go off, her face felt tender from where it had hit the steering wheel, and she felt something warm dribbling down her face. 

Oh, and she’d hit… something.

Shit .

Agnes scrambled out of her vehicle and ignored the pain in her body as she scrambled back up the embankment to the road.

She was alone.

Chapter Text

That night passed slowly. The tow-truck took longer than it realistically should have for where her car had gone off the road. Agnes tried to rationalise it: maybe it was because she had called from her personal cellphone rather than her radio; but even then, would they have answered faster? At the point where her car had gone off, she was closer to Eastview than Westview, and it would just be like one of the Eastview townies to make someone from Westview, even a detective, wait for help.

Thankfully, her car was salvageable. An officer from the Eastview force arrived with the tow-truck driver as the sun was starting to rise and watched with pure amusement as a hook was tied to the bumper of her car and it was pulled out of the bushes.

“It doesn’t look like there’s been anyone else out here, Ms. O’Conner.” The officer, Jones, said with a self-righteous smirk on his face, ignoring the fact that she’d introduced herself as detective. “Have you been drinking tonight? 

“No.” Agnes snapped, too agitated and tried to be dealing with this. “It’s Detective O’Conner.”

“Right, detective,” he turned away from her and towards his own vehicle, obviously not believing that there was anything worth investigating, “I’m going to hazard a guess and say you’ve been working overtime? News travels fast – y’know, about the murder. No closer to answers than you were the moment they picked up the body.” Jones tutted.

“There was someone, right over there.” she ignored his jab and insisted, not caring how desperate she sounded. Agnes knew what this looked like, she’d been on his side of this interaction many times before she’d been promoted. Late night driving, sight limited due to rain and fog, brought up ghosts that people often weren’t ready to admit were haunting them; and it seemed, no matter how embarrassing, that she’d fallen down the same hole.

“Sure, detective.” The officer turned back towards her car for a moment. The driver had just unhooked the car from the truck. It didn’t look much worse than it had before it’d gone off the road, though the front bumper was a little worse for wear, hanging off slightly on the right – and one of the head lights was busted in, but nothing that would stop her from driving it. “Be sure to get that headlight fixed, you wouldn’t want to get a ticket.” Jones said casually before he finally headed towards his cruiser.

“That’s it?” she glared at his back, at the cocky way he walked, at his pure inability to do his job. “You’d be a horrible detective.” Agnes scoffed and stalked towards the driver’s door of her car. She pushed past the tow-truck driver, who looked as though he would’ve liked to be anywhere else, and yanked at the handle.

“Some of us are happy with what we have. Maybe you should try it.” Jones called out to her just as she got her door open and threw herself into her car. She didn’t reply, only slammed the door.

By the time Agnes made it back into town it was too late for her to go home and try and get any sleep. While the sun was up, it was hidden behind the persistent cloud cover that gave way to the perpetual gloom that seemed to encompass the town. Against her better judgement, Agnes downloaded the Starbucks app and used mobile order instead of going into her local small coffee shop. Her fingers drummed impatiently against the steering wheel at the irritating amount of people in the drive through line, more lining up behind her and down the street like they hadn’t heard of just parking and going on. 

“Grande drip coffee, no cream or sugar.” the too-cheerful barista said as she handed her the white cup. Agnes tried to smile back at her, she wasn’t a complete monster, but she was sure it came out as more of a grimace as she pulled away from the window. She took a sip but immediately sputtered on the drink when it burnt her tongue. She pulled it away, glancing at the cup (why would they draw a cat on it? What was the point?) before she placed it in the cupholder and moved her hand back to the wheel as she took a sharp turn out of the parking lot.

Luckily the morning turnover hadn’t happened yet. The night shift stragglers barely looked up from their computers as they went past, though some did look up when she didn’t comment on the games of solitaire they were playing rather than doing paperwork. Agnes placed her coffee in her office and slipped into the woman’s locker room without fanfare. She quickly showered, being sure not to get her hair wet so it wouldn’t be obvious that she showered at work rather than at home. Her spare hairbrush barely made it through the tangled mess, so she threw it back in a non-regulation ponytail. Then, she changed into the spare clothes she kept at the station – though, unfortunately, her spares happened to be more formal than her usual outfits.

Thankfully, the officers entering the precinct for their day shifts were too scared of her to comment.

Well, except for one person.

“You clean up well, Agnes.” Vidal called out shamelessly from where she stood leaning against the counter. The water cooler was to her right, gurgling loudly as someone poured water into one of those ridiculously large mugs that were trending online. Agnes didn’t bother responding verbally, instead grunting in response as she barely spared the agent a glance. She stalked back to her office, beelining for her desk where her coffee sat – hopefully not frigid and instead a much more manageable temperature. 

Unfortunately, footsteps followed her into the office. She didn’t exactly care (or, at least, pretended not to care) until she went to shut the door of her office and a foot stuck itself between the frame and the door itself. Finally, she looked up with a glare that would usually melt the strongest off officers; but didn’t faze Vidal one bit. Instead, the other woman looked… amused. At least, until she got a good look at Agnes’ face, then her expressions morphed into one of concern.

This wasn’t a fight Agnes currently had the energy for. 

“Can you fuck off?” Agnes asked at the same that that Vidal demanded: “What happened?”

Agnes pinched her nose, backing away from the door as Vidal slipped the rest of the way into the room and shut it quietly behind herself. She reached over and flipped the shades on the window – Agnes hoped that the officers would just think it was them discussing something private to do with the case, and not something, well, private. It didn’t appear like any of them noticed, but she figured they’d still be gossiping soon enough. Retired ladies had nothing on bored small-town cops.

“None of your beeswax.” Agnes snapped and turned away. A hand shot out and gripped her wrist, though, stopping her from heading over to her desk and instead tugged her back until her feet were planted in front of Vidal. Agnes shifted uncomfortably under Vidal’s gaze as the other woman’s free hand lifted to cup her cheek, thumb rubbing softly under where a bruise had formed on Agnes’s cheekbone.

“Agatha.” Her voice was tender, too tender.

“Agnes,” She emphasised, annoyed, “you got a brain injury or something?” she yanked her arm away from the agent. Vidal stopped her for a moment, standing close, something shimmering in her eyes that Agnes couldn’t place, before she finally let her go. 

“What happened?” Vidal repeated, voice softer like Agnes was a wild animal she was trying not to scare away. She didn’t move from her stop at first, even as Agnes rounded her desk and sat down heavily in the chair.

“Do you have any new information, or are you just here to bother me?” Agnes deflected, wiggling her mouse to get her computer to turn on. Vidal didn’t answer at first and instead continued to stare at her unnervingly. 

“You don’t like people helping you.” Vidal observed instead, sitting down on one of the chairs across from Agnes’ desk. Her head was tilted slightly, looking at her like she was trying to see inside her brain. Agnes shifted uncomfortably. “Would letting me in really be that bad?”

“If you’re just here to lecture me, the door is right there.” her hand waved towards the door – if it was a show, the door would have opened on its own like magic. Unfortunately for Agnes, this was reality and magic wasn’t real.

“Just like old times.” the agent’s voice was wistful, even with the glare that Agnes levelled her with. There was once a time when her glares would cause the person on the receiving end of it to shutter, but Vidal simply looked… amused. “I think I know what you need?”

“A lobotomy?” Agnes quipped as she lifted the paper cup of coffee to take a sip.

“To get laid.” The coffee rushed out of the cup at the same time that Vidal spoke, the drink going towards Agnes lungs and choking her in her shock. She sputtered, rushing to put down the cup with one hand as her other thumped on her chest trying to dislodge the liquid so she could breathe again. Once she could get some air she looked up at Vidal with a red face.

“Fucking – excuse me?” she said through violent coughs. She looked at Vidal as though she was insane, and through the slats in the blinds could see some of the officers looking over at her office wondering if the agent or detective had killed each other. “What did you just say to me?”

Vidal just looked at her at first. Her expression was calm as though she hadn’t just said something completely outrageous. As though what she said wasn’t just a weird violation of HR, but also something much too familiar. Something that maybe they could have joked about years ago in Salem – but that time had passed.

“I said –” Vidal crossed one leg over the other, “Jimenez let me know this morning that they talked to Eastview PD and found someone in the area who may be able to help with the identification of the tattoos on Jane Doe’s body.”

Agnes stared at the agent for a moment scrutinizing her words. Was she being truthful? It was hard to tell with Vidal. Besides, what she had said before was nowhere close to finding someone who could identify the tattoos. It was all too strange – strange enough that Agnes could feel a headache forming behind her eyes, a headache that didn’t have to do with the accident she was in not even twelve hours earlier. Finally, she cleared her throat.

“Who in the area?” she asked, grabbing a handful of tissues to mop up the coffee that had spilt.

“Some lady, Calderu, I think her name is, in Eastview. Jimenez sent me her website. Definitely hasn’t been updated since 2005. Looks like she’s into all that new age bullshit. Crystals, incense–”

“Crystal balls and tarot cards?” Agnes asked with a raised brow. “It seems like you’re telling me we’re getting out information now from one of those so-called Etsy witches. Have an ex you need to curse, Vidal?”

“Please,” Vidal scoffed, “my ex is already cursed.” Agnes couldn’t help herself as she gaffed at her words, though she cleared her throat to try and cover it. Apparently not well enough, as Vidal looked all too pleased with herself. “I admit, this may be kind of… sketchy.”

“Sketchy?” she repeated, brow raised.

“Uncommon, strange, not exactly peer reviewed,” Vidal raised a brow, clearly challenging Agnes to let her finish, “as you are aware, we have no other leads. You’re telling me you’d rather sit here, twiddling your thumbs, hoping that some sort of evidence will appear out of thin air? When, rather when waiting, we could go out on a limb and talk to this lady? Even if she is crazy?”

Agnes groaned and leaned her head back against her seat. She hated it when Vidal had good points – it went against everything inside her that told her to ignore the other woman. Yes, this was quite possibly insane and most definitely wouldn’t hold up in court; but what other options did they have? Vidal was right – they had no leads, and if they kept going like this the case was going to end up in the freezer before they had any chance to get started.

“Fine.” she sighed, tipping back the rest of her coffee before tossing her cup in the garbage. “Let’s go.”

“Just like that?” Vidal asked, not in disbelief but with something unnameable tinging her voice.

“Just like that.”

Vidal insisted on two things: one, that they take her car and that she drives; and two, that they stop to get coffee and breakfast before they head onto the road. Agnes held her tongue at these demands, because as much as she would have preferred to be in control, she knew her own vehicle was in no shape to be driving a little over an hour to Eastview. Already she was having to rework her savings in her head to get it fixed – getting a tow truck when it inevitably broke down on the highway was out of the question.

Dunkin’ in hand and Vidal behind the wheel, the two sped off through the changing trees.

The thing about Westview and Eastview was that they were both relatively cut off from the rest of the state – and nothing was more indicative of this than Westview. It was at the furthest edge of the state, the so-called beach front barely accessible. The closest town was Eastview, and even with going slightly over the speed limit, it still took a little over an hour to reach Eastview city limits. And that drive went through a long stretch of forest, and while it was gorgeous (especially in the autumn) it had little cell service, no gas stations, and if you got stuck in the winter you were sure to get hypothermia before someone found you.

 Thankfully, the radio still worked. Barely. It seemed after almost every song, before the announcers would start to talk again, static would appear, and they’d have to flip through the channels until they found another that worked. That could have been bypassed if Vidal had kept CDs in her vehicle, but Agnes was quick to learn the vehicle was incredibly impersonal. So, they had to listen to whatever the radio deemed available. Most of the music was stuff that kids listened to these days: upbeat tunes with lyrics that talked about depression, death, and romance. Otherwise, silence filled the SUV, only broken up by when Agnes occasionally flipped the page of the casefile she had on her lap, or Vidal’s fingers tapping on the steering wheel.

“Remember, we don’t need to just know what the tattoos are,” Vidal said after she glanced over at Agnes’ notes, “we need to understand what they mean together.”

“I was getting there.” Agnes grumbled but still obediently scribbled down Vidal’s note in the margin of the file. With her pen hovering over the paper, she glanced over at her. “You actually think they mean something important for the case?”

“You don’t?” Vidal shot back, almost sounding surprised.

“Kids don’t get tattoos these days that mean something important. They get them because it’s cool or trendy or fits some aesthetic they’ve seen on tiktok.”

“I’m surprised you even know what tiktok is.” Vidal raised a brow and flicked on the windshield wipers as rain started to splat down. “You’ve always hated modern technology.”

“I’m not a luddite.” Agnes cut in, offended. “You knew me years ago.”

“So, you’re doing tiktok dances in your spare time?” she asked, amused.

“Absolutely not. But I'm still not the same as I was back then. Nobody is.”

“How did I change?” Vidal’s voice was quiet, curious, and most definitely irritating – and Agnes wasn’t exactly in the mood to humour her with flowery language. Her face hurt too much for that.

“You didn’t,” she turned her head to look at the trees passing outside, “you’re incapable of change.”

“Now, Agnes, you know that’s not true.” Agnes glared out the window and watched discretely as Vidal’s expression morphed to amusement in the reflection. Her tone spoke more to explaining something complicated to a child rather than her colleague. “You just need to look a little closer.”

Rather than respond, Agnes looked back down at the file. Her knuckles turned white where she gripped her pen as she clicked the end of it aggressively. Vidal didn’t say anything else, she just glanced over at Agnes with her tongue pressed against her cheek. She reached out slowly to turn the radio station when it once against turned to static.

Agnes flipped to the next page, righting the papers when they went over an invisible bump in the road. Peeking out from behind the main papers in the file were some of her notes – specifically the note containing her word play for the Darkhold. The word made the headache behind her eyes worse, made her wish for the blankness that pressed in on all sides. She figured she might as well as the kook in the woods about this while they were there. She sighed and finally flipped the casefile closed and rested her elbow on the window with her head tilted against her hand as she watched the trees go by. The closer they got to Eastview, the foggier it got; the wet clouds curling around the trees and cutting them out of sight.

They hit another bump in the road. If this had been her car, the alignment of the wheels would be shot, the engine would be screaming for a rest, and the air pressure in her wheels would be almost non-existent. Vidal drove a very different kind of vehicle from her though: a shiny black SUV with tinted windows, an innocuous license plate, and a laptop hookup on the inside. There were specialty seatbelts for prisoners in the back, yet it still had heated seats like having a cold ass in the back was inhumane.

The radio crackled against slightly, sounding like it truly was really ready to give up on living. Then, suddenly, the GPS made them turn abruptly onto an innocuous dirt road. The gravel jerked the vehicle, and Agnes reached up to grab the handle, her jaw clenched.

“Jesus, can’t you keep this thing steady?” she yelped as one of the tires spun out before gaining traction and continuing them further. Vidal didn’t grace her with an answer as she focused on the road. The rain almost seemed to let up under the thick foliate, only to splatter occasionally in big splotches on the windshield. You could have never been able to tell there was even a road there from the puddles that seemed to swallow the ground whole. Agnes gritted her teeth as they went on, at least pleased that the continuous state of amusement that Vidal seemed to be in vanished the further they went on the road from hell.

Agnes didn’t have a weak stomach, but she still felt her stomach flip as she closed her eyes when they hit another rock. She counted down slowly from five and could only imagine that the bruise that had cemented itself onto her face would be getting a friend soon enough.

She only opened her eyes when the ground finally flattened out, and the guitar solo in Burning Down the Prairie abruptly cut off. They pulled to a stop in front of an old house. If Agnes didn’t know better and was a fan of irony, she would have called it a witch’s cabin in the woods. It wasn’t technically very cabin-like with three stories and a steep gabled roof, faded shingled siding and upper windows with single burning candles in each that glared down at them and a peeling wood door. It looked at them as though it felt deep disappointment at their very existence.

Besides Vidal yanking the emergency break into place and twisting the key, neither woman made to move from their seats. The engine shut off, the hum of it leaving behind an uneasy silence. The chill started to make its way into the car despite the closed doors and windows, but neither woman moved from their seats.

“Remember, this is my investigation.” Agnes said as she finally broke the silence.

“Remember this is my expert witness.” Vidal countered.

Agnes snorted, “Slow down, hotshot, we’re not in court yet.”

“I didn’t have to include you in this, Agnes.” Vidal reminded her. “This was an act of goodwill.”

“Didn’t you?” she looked over at her with a raised brow. Vidal ignored her and tilted her head to the side slightly to get her attention. The door to the house had opened, and a figured stepped out. 

“Looks like someone is expecting us.” she said as she opened the door into the rain. Through the water Agnes could see a woman with haunting eyes staring at then knowingly. “Come on, detective, let’s show them what we can do when we work together.”