CASE 245
The Liminal Party Guest
The Liminal Party Guest
Case Writeup:
Who is Charlie Stoneacre? That was the question Ingrid Gatz, wife of media mogul Howard Gatz, wanted answered. A young, eccentric party phantom, a flapper no older than sixteen with a laugh like clinking champagne flutes, had started slipping herself into every soiree in a town. It's duck soup to snag an invite for the Gatz affairs, Howard distributes those like raffle tickets, but Charlotte Stoneacre was threading herself through the Ritz like a needle through silk. She was never on the guest list, never on the arm of some swanky senator's son, but she was always there. From gatherings at the Evendim, to jazz nights as Monty's, from rooftop ragers to those backroom bangers where invitations are guarded like state secrets, Charlie was there, batting eyelids at the band and pretending she'd invented the Charleston. Howard had no beef; he liked another young doll at his parties. But Ingrid - well, she had standards. So, at the lady's insistence, Howard sicced his fish wrapper, the Inkblot Gazette, on the trail. When editor J. P. Grindstone threw in the towel and begrudgingly admitted that Charlie Stoneacre had given his newshawks a clean sneak, Ingrid called in a real gumshoe. Like every case Gray took, it smelled like a dead hoofer - but enough green will turn the wisest head to cabbage. For the next month, Gray was spiffed out at all the swankiest soirees on Ingrid's dime. Taking Ingrid's money was his first boner but the detective would have bet his bottom nickel that no-one's past is non-uprootable. He'd have lost a nickel. And he did burn through almost all the dough Ingrid had fronted him chasing the same deadends that had sent Grindstone hat-clutching. Gray leaned on contacts, greased palms at City Hall to peek at personal records he'd never have afforded on his own quarter, even sent catburglar, Rumpleteazer Softpaw, shimmying through chimneys to sneak into the kind of parties Charlie was effortlessly crashing. But all Nine-Lives uncovered was a goose egg for Gray and a Fabergé knockoff for herself. No-one seemed to know Charlotte Stoneacre outside the parties, and not in the usual manner of a dame with a dozen monikers. Because everyone knew Charlie. They knew her face, her voice, her laugh, her shoesize. She was too public to hide in a separate identity. And yet, no-one had so much as seen an auburn bob or a dimpled freckle or a size-two kitten heel more than 200 ft away from a punch bowl, gramophone or dance floor. Then there were the photographs - same night, same girl, multiple shindigs across the city. Gray would have chalked it up to a fast cab, but he was certain no-one in this city could hail one of those things. Unless she had the same flavour of hack-attracting juju as the Webb kid. And speaking of the kid, Gray tried very hard to put it off, but eventually even he had to concede that there was no mundane explanation for Charlie's existence. So after a few choice cusses to Sal Friday about not taking magical cases, Gray brought the problem to his occult contact, Axel Webb. Kid was grinning like a philatelist in a post office, eagerly checking impossibilities off his list. Not a spirit, not a poltergeist, not any kind of undead. Holy water didn't sizzle, unholy water didn't burn. No fangs behind that playful smile. Cold iron didn't phase her, she was wearing silver, and she couldn't be summoned to one of those circles Axel usually bothered Gray's banged up brother with. Every spell, potion and whatever other hocus-pocus the kid tried came up empty. Even that blasted lantern from CASE 214 confirmed she was on the level. Normal, uncursed human... Curses. Then at one of the parties Axel was getting dizzy from all the rings Charlie was dancing around him. Kid's a natural with voodoo hokum but get him caught up talking to a girl his own age who flirts back and he's like a baby bird in a twister. Axel had been grilling her - maybe not the third degree, but he'd managed a couple - trying to gauge her reaction. But it was all mirrors and horsefeathers. She thought he was a riot and the little scholar had no playbook for that. Eventually, while Axel was nervously hypothesising, aloud to her, that perhaps she might be a mass hallucination and maybe not real at all, Charlie leaned in and kissed him. The mouth kind, not the fist. Kid would have been less floored if she had just slugged him but he wasn't complaining, and it did stop him running his mouth. When they were done, she teasingly demanded if that was real enough for him, he just kinda admitted that, yeah it was. In the end Gray had to give up the ghost, although as his little smartmouth sidekick pointed out, Charlie was conclusively not a ghost. Gray went back to Ingrid to throw in the sponge, having already spent the advance. Ingrid didn't give up graciously and Gray didn't give refunds, but with no further leads she was forced to let the matter drop. Gray is now no longer invited to any of the Gatz parties. And neither is Charlie, but of course, she shows up anyway.First Kiss:
Moot
Case Update:
October 1929. The now slightly older kid, Axel, conducted some divinatory hokum on some nasty-looking and nastier-acting pliers belonging to the tooth-pinching pipsqueaks calling themselves the Tooth Mob. Kid spaced out long enough to enter the absinthe-tinted kingdom of the absinthe-tinted Kingpin of the Seelie Court herself.Turns out Little Miss Stoneacre's got herself embroiled in a fizzy little bargain with the viridian don, allowing her to zap between and liven up every shindig in town, in exchange for ceasing to exist anywhere else. All the while, the Seelie Court harvests the frivolity and joy Charlie's presence amplifies, and cashes it in for whatever's the going rate for the party that never stops.