The Pilot
The chapel was tightly packed.
The pews were all full, a sea of people dressed in black, and Guy felt awkward as he stood up at the lectern, his eulogy roughly scribbled on the page in front of him but somehow seeming useless. Whenever he looked down at it, it was just a jumble of letters on the page. He inhaled, slowly, reached up to adjust his tie, but it didn’t help the gnawing discomfort or the twist in his belly.
He hated crowds. At least when he was speaking over the cabin address, no one was looking at him.
“You know,” he started, looking out over the front row, meeting the tearful gaze of Richie’s sisters, of his and Richie’s nieces and nephews, “Richie always did the talking between us. I’ve never really been the sort to be good at giving speeches – I always used to say I sounded best when I talked to people like I was talking to ATC. It’s easier for me, having a… having a script, with the right words to choose from.
“Richie used to tease me for it. He’d roll over next to me in bed once he woke up in the morning, and he’d say something like… “Romeo India Congo, heading kitchen for breakfast, requesting clearance for departure.” I’d be doing the crossword on my phone or something, and he’d, um, he’d nudge me when I ignored him. “Control,” he’d say. “Control, please acknowledge.”
“And when I told him he could ruddy well piss off, he’d say, “Wilko!” and roll out of bed.”
There were a few chuckles around the room, and Guy smiled, weakly, even though the ache in his chest wouldn’t go away, and his throat felt thick, but he wouldn’t cry, not in front of anyone.
“Richard Jones was my co-pilot for twenty-six years, and my partner for twenty-seven,” Guy said, spreading his fingers on the surface of the lectern, pressing the pads of his fingers against the wood, squeezing as tightly as he dared. “People always ask if we met on the job, but we didn’t, actually – we met in the cinema. His date had stood him up, and he asked if the same thing had happened to me, and I told him no, but none of my friends liked rom coms as much as I did, and I’d be damned if I missed out on Groundhog Day because of them. He asked me for a drink after, and made fun of me for liking Bill Murray.
“And as a partner, flying, he was… brilliant. He’d always start a new flight by saying, Let’s go go go, Guy! and it used to drive me mad – can’t tell you what I’d do to hear that again.
“All of you know, Richie was funny, charismatic, kind to a fault. I don’t think a month went by in all the time I knew him where he didn’t come to me with some stray animal – a foster cat, a sick badger, once, very memorably, a snail with a broken shell! – and insisted we had to look after it, or get it to someone who could. He loved animals, Richie did, and people. And, although I can’t understand why, he loved me too. Loved everyone in this room, in fact.
“And I think he’d be so, so happy to see everybody gathered together – I suppose the only reason he’d be upset, looking down on us now, is that he wouldn’t be able to force us to have karaoke at the wake, make us all sing along to Mary Wells.”
The laughter was louder, this time, and Guy smiled, trying to ignore the burn in his eyes. “That’s what he would have wanted. Everyone laughing.”
It didn’t rain at the funeral, or at the wake, but it rained the next few days afterward. As Guy packed his cabin bag for Paris the Sunday after Richie’s funeral, he kept getting distracted by the grey skies outside, the dark drizzle that came down. It felt surreal, packing his case alone – it wasn’t as though he and Richie had never taken solo flights, because they had, all the time, but the packing, that was never alone.
Richie would always be hovering over his shoulder as he packed, teasing him for the way he folded his shirts, his socks, or he would lie back on the bed and smile at Guy as he moved around the room, or sing to him, play that awful ukulele he never seemed to have in tune.
The bedroom was very quiet now, and the ukulele sat untouched on top of the wardrobe. Richie’s side of the bed had never seemed so cold.
“Hey, Guy,” Owain greeted him when he arrived at the airfield, and Guy let Owain pull him in for a loose hug, Owain’s hand resting on Guy’s shoulder as he leaned back. Owain’s expression was serious, grave, as he said, “You sure you’re up for this today?”
“Yeah, I’m ready,” Guy murmured. “I’m grateful to be out of the house, and I hate to leave Garth sitting pretty.”
“Well, no passengers today, just your cargo outgoing and your cargo incoming. Danny will be coming along as crew.”
“Wilko,” Guy murmured, and set about the systems checks, gathering the weather report, the flight report. He had been right, in what he’d said to Owain. It was comforting, to bury himself in heading calculations and paperwork, rather than lying around feeling the pang of Richie’s absence, and even though he knew it was short-lived, he would let himself enjoy the relief in the meantime.
The rain was easing off by the time he was sat at the flight column and working on the internal checks, and when Danny ducked his head into the flight deck, Guy greeted him with a small, tight smile.
“It’s good to have you back, Captain,” Danny said lowly. “I’ve been working with Holly and Loretta the past few weeks – I love Holly to pieces, but she isn’t half particular about things.”
“And I’m not?” Guy asked.
“No, you are,” Danny said. “It just doesn’t feel as personal with you.”
Guy exhaled, leaning back in his seat. Richie would have had something clever to say about that, but Guy wasn’t really good at that sort of thing, and he didn’t know what to say at all.
“I, um, I just wanted to say sorry about Rich. He was a good bloke.”
“He was,” Guy murmured. His chest felt tight, the flight deck abruptly something claustrophobic, and he squeezed his hands around the flight column, looking forward. “Listen, Danny, I need to get on with my list here.”
“Cargo’s loaded, anyway,” Danny said, his voice low. “Give me a minute, and I’ll make tea.”
Danny, thank God, mostly left him be for the next while. He slipped in to silently put down Guy’s tea, and then left him alone in the quiet of the fight deck, the familiar rumble of the plane beneath him as he started each engine.
“Golf Alpha Foxtrot, you are cleared for take-off, runway zero-two.”
“Acknowledged,” Guy replied, and he breathed evenly as he took hold of the flight column, feeling the familiar, comforting roll of Garth’s wheels over the tarmac. She went smoothly, like she always did, although the flight deck felt empty – this was a cockpit made for two operators, not one. “Okay, Richie,” he murmured to the empty seat beside him. “Taking off.”
“Let’s go go go, Guy!” came the response, and Guy’s blood went cold as he turned to the seat beside him, still empty. He just managed to grab a proper hold on the flight column again, heaving in a gasp, staring out at the rolling tarmac ahead of him.
“Richie?” he asked, hearing his voice crack in the middle.
Silence.
He didn’t know whether to be broken or relieved.
“Play with me,” Kaito said, and Velma caught the ball when it was thrown at her the cool rubber of the cheap football smacking against her palms, still dewy from the grass outside, and she groaned. “How old are you, eight?” she demanded. She threw the ball back at her brother overarm, and moved fast enough to close the patio doors before he could kick it back. It hit with a rubbery clap of sound against the glass, leaving a wet streak, and she stuck her tongue out at him. “Kaito!” Daisuke snapped, and Kaito stood back with his hands up, turning around and returning to his football training on his own, alternating between kicking the thing against the back fence and keeping it up on his knees and his toes. “Here,” he murmured, and Velma took the proffered kitchen roll, wiping the grassy wetness off her fingers. “How many sports does he have to play?” “Oh, I don’t know, all of them,” Daisuke murmured, waving one hand as he went back into the kitchen, returning to the cake he was in the process of decorating. It was delicate work, complicated, and although it contained so much fondant icing Velma was fairly certain eating even a thin slice of it would make her vomit, it looked incredible. Her father had made six tiers of cake, enfolded with grey fondant, and he’d marked out the separate bricks with a scalpel before painting over it with a darker icing paint. It looked real, looked like it would be just as heavy as real brick if you tried to pick it up, and she sat down at the kitchen counter to watch him work. She’d enjoyed doing this ever since she was a child, sitting down and watching her father transform icing and sponge cake into something unbelievable, able to just talk, listen, watch. Snowdrop, Kaito’s cat, enjoyed the same thing – as soon as Velma sat down, Snowdrop hopped up beside her, and she watched as he leaned his chin against the marble counter, leaning awkwardly against it with his eyes lidded, his gaze on Daisuke and his tools. “How late were you two up last night?” Daisuke asked. “’Til four,” Velma muttered, reaching up and wiping one of her eyes. “I said so long as we watched Cyberchase first, we could watch whatever movie he wanted. He chose It. Both chapters.” “Well, you had that coming.” “Yeah,” Velma muttered, copying Snowdrop and putting her chin down on the back of her folded arms. Snowdrop leaned in, butting his blunt skull against her elbow, and she reached for him, dragging her thumb down between his shoulder blades and listening to him purr. “He doesn’t even like Stephen King. Only picked it because he finds that killer clown job I did a few months ago so funny.” Daisuke didn’t quite hide his chuckle. “Just like everyone else, I suppose,” Velma said. “Sorry, darling,” Daisuke murmured. “But you have to see that there’s a certain humour in coming home and announcing to the family you were nearly killed by a plastic clown.” That had been a spirit with a mean sense of humour. It had come into one of the London theatres in a collection of old mummers’ masks, made of straw, and once set loose in their props department, it had kept playing pranks on the theatre workers, making lights flicker, taking the pins out of chairs so that they collapsed, hiding things, painting messages on the walls. That was just with the actors and the stagehands, of course. When Velma had gone in, and it had perceived her as a threat, it had ended up animating a clown mannequin and picking up one of the fire axes. She’d had to burn off the clown’s arms and legs, locking it limbless in a chest it couldn’t get out of again, before handing it off to someone who could actually contain it in the long-term. “I’m meant to be an antiques dealer,” she muttered, leaning in and letting Snowdrop bash his face against her cheek. “That’s what it says on my business card. Things shouldn’t try to kill me just because they think it’s funny.” “Did you explain that at the time?” Daisuke asked wryly, and Velma scoffed, leaning back and letting Snowdrop clamber into her lap, dropping his weight against her chest and leaning into the crook of her arm. “Any big jobs lined up this week?” It had been nearly a year since Aunt Ginchiyo had handed her business off to Velma, and it was true, her business card did say she dealt in antiques – as well as haunted and enchanted objects. Kaito seemed to have an idea of her as a monster hunter, but that wasn’t what it was, not really. She didn’t deal with anything violent as a matter of course: most of the work she did was in buying and trading furniture, or in estimating values for people who were more ignorant in the field – after jobs like that, the most common work she had was in assessing enchantments on objects people had come across, whether it was some old thing in the attic or something they’d bought, and making sure they were still functional and safe to use. “Not yet,” she said. “I’ve sold on everything I got in that storage auction the week before last, as of yesterday, and I have some meetings scheduled for next week – mostly just some assessment stuff. Hamish says he wants to start teaching me how to enchant things myself.” Daisuke’s lips quirked up at their corners and, putting the turret he’d been painting aside for a moment, he looked at her, still smiling. It was a small smile, fond, but after a few moments of her father silently looking at her, she shifted her grip on the fat tuft of white fur in her arms, looking back at him properly. “What?” she asked. “Oh, nothing,” he murmured. “Just… You know, you used to be so set on art curation, but you’re really in your element, doing this sort of work. I’m just happy to see you happy, that’s all. And still my little girl dressed all in orange.” “I like orange,” Velma said. Kaito’s ball smacked against the kitchen window this time, and Snowdrop leapt out of Velma’s arms and into the air, leaving Velma hissing at the scramming the cat left over her arms. “Please,” Daisuke said, beseeching as he picked up his brush. “Make him stop doing that.” Groaning, Velma climbed down from the stool and went to the patio door, beginning to tug on her trainers.
Her phone rang as she settled into the driver’s seat of her car, and she flicked her finger over the screen to answer it, leaning back in her seat as she pulled on her seat belt. Hamish didn’t start talking immediately, but Velma didn’t need to ask why – she could hear the familiar clatter and bang of Hamish trying to juggle things out of the way to prevent them from being broken. “Velma,” he said, finally, in a stern voice that wasn’t actually aimed at her, no matter that it was her name she was saying. “Hey,” she said. “I’m about to drive over.” “Don’t,” Hamish said. “I have a job for you first.” Velma glanced at her phone, her brow furrowing. It wasn’t uncommon for Hamish to get jobs for her, because he often referred people to her when they needed a specialist, and the man was, in most respects, a recluse, and almost never left his shop if it could be avoided. “You need me to pick something up for you?” “It’s potentially a haunting, actually. A friend of mine, Captain Guillaume Holland, he gave me a ring this morning – his husband died a few weeks ago, and since he’s returned to work, he’s been hearing his voice in the cabin. Quite distressing for him, as I’m sure you can imagine.” For once, Hamish’s voice wasn’t terse and a little bitchy – he genuinely sounded concerned, and she shifted in the chair, adjusting her grip on the wheel. “Shit,” Velma murmured. “Yeah, I’d say. Where am I going, old man?” Leaning forward, she switched tabs on her phone, bringing up her maps app, and as Hamish read off the address to her – a house in the suburbs here in Nottingham – she tapped it in, pressing enter. “How’d you know him?” “He’s a pilot with Zeus Charter Limited – Richard was, too, of course – and he’s delivered things for me before. Guillaume is a mundie, but I’ve known Richard ever since he was a little boy – his mother was a professional clairvoyant, and regularly commissioned custom bits and pieces from me. As the children of such people so often are, he was quite comfortable with the subject of death. The idea of the prospect being so distressing as to trigger a haunting seems… out of character.” Hamish’s voice was very quiet. “You okay?” Velma asked, hesitating with her hand on the key in the ignition. “Quite alright,” Hamish said. “He was only fifty-six, that’s all. Quite young, in the scheme of things.” “I’ll go see him,” Velma murmured. “I’ll talk to you later.”
Velma parked her car outside the drive of the Holland-Jones home, surprised by the extent of the street parking available, and she stepped through the gate into their garden. It was a rather typical terraced house, with a long strip of garden in front, meeting the fences of the houses either side, and the outside walls were yellow and red brick. The garden was loosely kept, neat, but not in the antiseptic way that some people’s gardens looked – it was obvious at a glance that they’d spread meadow seed instead of lawn, different flowers sprouting up from the ground, and from every tree, many of which were fruit trees, hung bird feeders or insect hotels. Against the front wall of the house, beside a patio bench and an outdoor coffee table, there was arranged a collection of ceramic gnomes, and Velma couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose at them, set in rows on their shelves. She hated gnomes. Once she looked past them, though, she saw other, subtle signs that someone magical had once lived here, even if Mr Holland wasn’t a magic-user himself. Carved at the base of the doorframes, she could see the little symbols that pointed to a ward structure on the boundaries of the house, and when she crouched down, leaning to peer underneath the jutting lip of the windowsill, she could see a strip of neatly painted icons in a row along the base of it. Ringing the doorbell, which chimed merrily, she stood back on the welcome mat, which was emblazoned with the message, NO TRESPASSING: WE ARE TOO BUSY TO KEEP HIDING THE BODIES. She exhaled a low huff of amusement, not quite a laugh, and slipped her hands into the pockets of her jacket, leaning back on her heels. The man that came to the door was old, but not elderly – there were only patches of grey in his sandy-brown hair, and he had more freckles than liver spots. He was tall, slender, wearing a blue cardigan that was too big for him, wrapped tightly around his body – it was unfair to guess, Velma supposed, but nonetheless, she guessed that it had been his husband’s. She noted the signs she had come to recognise in the victims of a haunting – the shaking hands, the dark shadows under the eyes, the look of desperation. “Mr Holland,” she said gently, taking her hands out of her pockets and clasping them over her belly, raising her head slightly. “My name is Velma Kuroda, I’m a specialist – Hamish sent me over to help.” “He texted me your business card. I didn’t realise you’d be so young,” Mr Holland said, but he nodded all the same, stepping back and letting her over the threshold. He flicked the key in the lock behind them, putting the chain in place, and he tugged on the door handle twice before he seemed satisfied that it was locked, then leading her then out of the hall and into a modest kitchen, gesturing for her to sit. “You’re Scottish?” “I’m from Glasgow,” Velma said, nodding when Mr Holland raised the container of tea bags on the kitchen side. There were more symbols at the base of the doorjambs inside, and although she couldn’t see any hanging charms, she expected there was more warding further into the house. “Richie was from Kirkintilloch,” he said quietly, giving her a weak smile. “Hamish, ah— Hamish told you…?” “He said that you’re a pilot, and that your husband died recently, that you’re worried it might be a haunting,” Velma said, leaning back slightly in her chair. “You weren’t raised with magic yourself, were you, Mr Holland?” “Please, call me Guy,” the old man murmured as he poured the steaming water from the kettle, keeping his back to her. “And no, no, I wasn’t. My first exposure to magic I really recognised was when I first started dating Richie – his mother drilled into him and Carol and his other sisters a lot of home security awareness. He had charms all over his house, and I noticed them, asked about them. I could feel that they were significant, somehow. I’m not able for enchantment myself, but I’m sensitive enough to it that I could walk with Richie through magical areas in one city or another.” “That’s pretty rare, you know.” “He did say, once or twice,” Guy said, setting a mug of tea beside her, setting down a little milk jug and a sugar pot, too – novelty things, the milk pot shaped like a cow, the sugar pot shaped like a badger. “He explained it to me, that… That most magical properties are in another dimension, but that they’re layered over the same geography? Something like that. And that some people are able to cross between those dimensions, and some aren’t.” “That’s right,” Velma said, nodding her head as she slid her hand around her mug of tea, watching the old man. Guy had sunk down into the other chair at the little table, looking small, tired. “The vast majority of the world, even if they wanted to, couldn’t sense most magical beings, or visit magical places – it mostly runs in families or communities, as far as humans go, but some people are just randomly more sensitive.” “Is that why?” Guy asked, staring resolutely at his black tea, not meeting her gaze. “Is that why he’s haunting me?” “No,” Velma said softly. “No, Guy, that’s not how it works. Even if you didn’t have any sensitivity to magic at all, if this is a haunting, you might still feel the effects.” Guy sighed, hunching his shoulders more, and Velma squeezed her hands around the mug in her hands, feeling the heat of it against her palms. “Can you tell me more about what you’ve been experiencing?” “It, ah, it started a few weeks ago. A few days after Richie’s funeral. I had my first flight since he died, out to Paris. And, and everything was going alright, until I went to take off, and I heard his voice, right next to me in the flight deck. I shook it off, thought it was wishful thinking, but then… Then, once I’d been up in the air for nearly an hour, I heard him talk right in my ear, asking me what our flight time was. Dropped a few hundred feet, made my flight crew hit his head in the galley, I was so shocked.” Velma could see the distress in the twist of his mouth, the deep furrow of his brow and the wrinkles on his forehead, but she could see it, too, in the shift of his shoulders, the anxious shake of his knee as he tapped one slippered foot against the floor. “I keep hearing it whenever I’m in that flight deck, now – and not just in the flight deck, but in the cabin, the galley… I thought I head him leaning over my shoulder while I was doing the walkaround, and I nearly hit the deck.” Guy reached up, wiping at one of his eyes, and then he let out a shaky breath, putting his hands down on the table. “I loved Richie more than anything,” Guy said, in barely more than a whisper. “But this, this isn’t him, it’s just… The dead are dead. Richie’s explained hauntings to me before, I know that he wouldn’t want to be… He always said ghosts are just painful for those that are still alive. He wouldn’t have wanted to be this.” “I know,” Velma murmured. “It’s a lot to already be dealing with grief, without being worried that your husband’s unhappy in death. Guy, do you know much about the definition of a haunting? What it is, what sets it apart from other things?” Guy shook his head, silent, and Velma took a sip of her tea before setting the mug aside and setting her elbows on the table, her hands together, her fingers interlinked. “So… There’s two main classifications of a ghost, right? Sometimes, after someone dies, normally after being in a heightened emotional state, there’s a transference of… They call it life force, but it’s not like a soul or anything like that. My aunt used to explain it as like drawing a chalk outline around a shadow, or like a recording of an echo – basically, the combination of that heightened emotional state and the sudden stop that comes from dying makes a burst of outward magical energy. That magical energy then gets attached to an area, or an object, becomes imprinted on it. “The residual life force mimics some common behaviours or language, but only a handful of them, and they’ll basically play on a loop. This is what we traditionally refer to as a haunting – it’s what you might think of as a ghost, whispers in a corridor, a person walking down a corridor and then disappearing. Some particularly powerful hauntings, they’ll go through a person’s whole daily routine, and just repeat it. There’s no personality to it, no awareness, it’s just a projection.” Guy was listening intently, his expression serious. He didn’t say anything, didn’t try to interrupt, not even to ask questions – she had to wonder if he felt out of his depth, dealing with this whole thing, a mundie with no frame of reference. “And then there’s what we call an apparition. Now, an apparition can start out from a haunting, or it can happen spontaneously just like a haunting can. Basically, a spirit that lacks much of its own form will attach itself to the life force, and will copy some of the traits. It’ll be a facsimile of whoever the original person was – it won’t be corporeal or anything, but it will be able to act a bit more randomly, and you’re able to interact with it. Spirits don’t normally mean any harm by it, it’s just that they’re kinda simple? Not stupid, just that they experience the world and feel feelings in a way that we don’t – some of them are very impressionable, so they copy the echo of a death as close as they can to better experience it, but it’s never actually, you know, the person that died.” That seemed to make the old man relax, if only slightly, and as he nodded his head, he shifted his position, sitting up straight, although he kept his arms crossed very tightly over his chest, his hands still folded tightly into himself. “It isn’t to a schedule,” he said softly. “It isn’t… regular.” “Have you tried having a conversation with it?” “No. No, God, no,” Guy said, the words spilling out of his mouth so rapidly it was like he’d been waiting to say them, and he stood up from the chair, keeping his arms tightly crossed over his front even as he paced the kitchen. He looked funny while he did it, his picture-perfect posture and high chin at odds with the anxiety radiating from him in waves. “No, I… The first time, the first time, I murmured the same thing I always used to say to Richie when we flew together, and he— the ghost, that is, it replied. But after that, it was always unprompted, and it only ever talks to me when I’m alone. No one else at the airfield’s noticed anything, and it never talks when I’m on the phone or talking to ATC.” It didn’t sound like an apparition, in all honesty. Velma hadn’t actually dealt with that many true apparitions, anyway – she’d read up on some of the science of it, when she’d first taken over her aunt’s office, had read some of the books she had to hand on the subject. Hauntings themselves were rare, and hauntings that intersected with the cross of a nearby spirit that actually took an interest were even rarer. Spirits themselves were complicated – most of them were incorporeal, vague wisps of life that sort of sprouted up from nothing where there were pools of latent magic on the air, and Velma would be the first to admit she didn’t really get them. Most of the time, when someone called her out to deal with a ghost, it was because the Office of Unlicensed Spectres had a backlog like nobody’s business, and they prioritised cases where people’s lives were at risk – they dealt with poltergeists and screaming spirits, or dramatic hauntings in public places, not one apparition that was making one private pilot a bit upset. In this case, it wasn’t as though Guy had even called them – she wasn’t sure if he knew how to even get into contact with the local government office, and even if he did, there were all sorts of extra hoops you had to jump through, being someone like Guy. “Guy, I’m sorry to ask this, but could you tell me how Richie died?” She was delicate in asking the question, keeping her voice quiet, but Guy did inhale sharply, looking at her, his lips twisting. “It was a brain aneurysm,” he murmured. “We have to do a lot of health checks, as pilots, you know. We need good heart health, good lungs, good… Me and Richie were both fit. He was fifty-nine, and you never would have thought it, to look at him. It didn’t…” Guy filled his lungs, his nostrils flaring, and then he looked down at the tile, his lips pressed together. “He had a headache. Not a very severe one. He took an aspirin, went to bed a bit early. I followed after him an hour or so later and he was still alright, we talked, watched an episode of this awful sitcom Richie liked, and... Well. I woke up the next morning, and he was dead. No warning.” At home, in bed, in one’s sleep, suddenly – no big emotional outburst, no trauma, no drama. And in any case— “And you only hear him at the airfield?” Guy had got a defocused look in his eyes, staring at some fixed point in the middle distance, eyes misty, but now it faded away, and he turned to look back at her, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Yes. Yes, only at the airfield – usually around Garth, our Do 228.” When Velma kept looking at him, uncomprehending, he added, “The plane.” “Right,” Velma said. “So, what is it that you do, with an— an apparition, you called it?” “With an apparition, there are a few potential options.” Velma said, her voice low. “But honestly, Guy, this doesn’t sound like a ghost to me. For the most part, only certain kinds of deaths – usually of certain kinds of people – create them, and nine times out of ten, proximity makes the biggest difference. If Richie died here, at home, it wouldn’t make sense for his apparition to haunt the airfield.” “Then… what?” There were explanations that came to mind. A demon or a faerie that found it funny to mess with grieving widowers or some teenager experimenting with magic that felt the same; a minor curse, inlaid in a talisman or something; good, old-fashioned hallucination. In the case of the first or second, depending on what sort of ward structure Richie had put on their house, it was possible whatever it was couldn’t follow Guy home, that it couldn’t cross the threshold – anti-pest enchantments were standard in most common home wards, and the more complicated ones even tripped up certain big feelings of ill will. “I’m really not sure,” Velma said. “I’d have to have a look.” “Magic isn’t an exact science,” Guy said, tapping one of his fingers against the side of his arm. “That’s what Richie used to say – his mother was a professional, but even she struggled with unpredictable elements, when things went wrong, sometimes even when they went right.” “It can be unpredictable,” Velma agreed. “But I’ll do what I can to help.” “And what if you can’t?” She didn’t let herself bristle at the sharpness in his voice – she knew that it came from fear more than anger, and there was no sense in getting defensive. She’d go mad, if she got defensive every time. “Well, it depends on what the problem is. I know other specialists, and the benefit of me coming in to examine this thing, even if I can’t do anything, I can probably put you into contact with someone who can. Hamish wouldn’t have passed my details on to you if he didn’t think I could do something though.” Guy nodded, slowly, and adjusted the set of his cardigan on his shoulders. “I suppose we have to go to the airfield.” “If you could clear it with your boss, and your security, I could have a look without you,” Velma suggested, but Guy sighed. “No, no, my— my employer is mundane, like me. It’s Sunday, and the airfield will be very quiet today, best to… best to just go. Excuse me, I’ll, ah, I’ll just get my coat.”
Velma Kuroda drove a bright orange Ka. When Guy had opened the door to greet her, he had initially been taken aback by the amount of orange the girl wore – jeans and a jacket made out of the same frayed, orange denim; burnt orange basketball shoes; a polo neck that rode the line between red and orange very closely. She wore thick, black-framed glasses, although Guy was fairly certain the glass wasn’t prescription, and her black bob was perfectly kept, not a hair out of place. He had never seen a girl wear so much of one block colour before, and he supposed it was no surprise that her car should match the aesthetic. It wasn’t just the orange that overpowered, though. Seated in the passenger seat, he looked between the Scooby Doo air freshener, the Scooby Doo sticker on the steering wheel, matching the Scooby Doo seat covers. On the back window, there was a decal of the Scooby gang running away from silhouetted monsters. “So,” Guy said. “You like cartoons?” “I like a cartoon,” Velma said. “… I see.” Guy had only met Hamish MacKinnon once. It had been a few weeks after he and Richie had moved to Nottingham, back in ’99, and they’d still been getting the new house together when Hamish had sent Richie the invitation to come along. It had been nice, sitting with the old man and hearing the stories he had to tell about Richie as a little boy, and when Richie and Guy had shown him some plans of their house, he’d even made some custom shelving units for them – a housewarming gift, he’d called it. He always sent a card at Christmas, and for both of their birthdays, no matter that he barely knew Guy at all. He’d sent a card and a bouquet of rainbow lilies for the funeral, and Guy had sat for nearly an hour holding the flowers in his lap, thinking how much Richie would have loved them. He hadn’t come to the funeral. He was a recluse, Richie had said – he never left the bounds of his shop, but the card he’d sent had been thoughtful, and the flowers had been nice. When envisioning Hamish’s friends, he didn’t know that he would have imagined an orange-clad Japanese girl, but— Well. It was difficult to imagine much about a man that you only knew through greetings cards and one nice afternoon twenty years ago. Guy looked to the car’s dashboard. He shouldn’t have been surprised, he supposed, by the little figurine of Velma Dinkley stuck next to the tax disc, or the bobblehead of Scooby Doo beside it, but what did surprise him was the carving on the outside of the glovebox. It was Japanese, he thought, but he didn’t know what it meant, and he reached out, tracing the neat carving of lettering. “What does it say?” “Oh, it’s kind of abstract,” Velma said, glancing over. “It’s kind of a fusion of different Japanese enchantment schools? Some of the symbols are the same as katakana, but it’s its own thing. I only know what some of them stand for – my grandma did it for me when I got the car.” “It’s a ward?” Guy asked, and when Velma looked at him, surprise showing on her face, he explained, “Before we were allowed to put any furniture in our home in Nottingham, Richie put wards in the house.” “I noticed the carving at the base of all the doorjambs. Cymru school, pretty traditional. It’s the dominant enchantment school across Cymru-Loegr, Alba – across most of the continent, actually. Myrddin Wyllt invented it, adapted it from the fae schools of the 11th and 12th century. Um… Merlin,” she added, when he looked at her blankly. He tried to imagine the idea of Merlin as anything other than a cartoon wizard with stars embroidered on his hat, but it didn’t quite work – several of the words Velma used as a matter of course seemed to exist a little bit far beyond his comprehension. “You must think I’m very ignorant,” Guy said quietly. “Knowing so little about a world that I know is just a step away. But I, ah. I like aeroplanes. Technology. I like things that are solid, that I can understand. I felt like I was introduced rather too late to magic, to pick it up. Magic always seemed safe, comforting, when I saw it in Richie’s hands. I always felt like if I held it in mine, it would burn me.” “It’s not an uncommon way to feel,” Velma said as she made the turning into the airfield. “Magic’s overwhelming sometimes for people that grow up with it, let alone people that don’t get introduced to it until later. My brother is a bit like you – he’s kind of down-to-earth, and a lot of magical stuff… I wouldn’t say it intimidates him, exactly? But he doesn’t get it, it’s the opposite of intuitive for him.” “That doesn’t make him feel left out?” Guy asked, tilting his head. “In a family like yours?” Velma laughed, quietly. “Uh, no. No, Kaito is pretty much impossible to make feel left out.” Guy didn’t have any siblings. He’d been an only child, and his parents had stopped talking to him when he’d come out of the closet – Richie was all he had left, really. Richie’s sisters were kind, of course, but Eve and Sandra lived in Kirkintilloch still, and Carol had a big family of her own to look after. They were meant to rescue animals. They’d fostered cats and dogs before, but they were going to adopt some of their own this year, once Richie retired. Richie was going to keep chickens, and maybe a goat – he’d made a list of his favourite cats in the Nottingham rescue centre. “Guy?” He raised his head to Velma, standing outside the car, the door open, leaning in to look at him. “You alright?” “Yes,” he said softly, pushing open the door and swinging his legs out of the car. “Yes.” None of the security stopped them as they made their way over to Garth – he and Richie did have part-ownership of her, after all, if only a small part. All Guy’s, now. He’d trade it away without hesitation. He was quiet as he watched Velma walk around the plane, examining her from the outside – he was quiet, too, once he used the keys to let her in, watched her carefully walk along the cabin, empty of cargo or passengers, watched her sit in the flight deck and murmur under her breath. Velma carried a brown leather briefcase, and she rummaged through it a few times as she walked the plane back and forth. She made some notes in a notebook, walked around using a charm as a pendulum. It all seemed… Silly, somehow. Devoid of real magic – but then, who was he to know what real magic was? “How long have you been off from work, Guy?” “A little over a week,” Guy said softly. “Is that— Is that important?” “Yes,” Velma murmured. “Yes, I think so. Otherwise, I, um, I don’t think this would work. Okay, so what I need you to do is go shut the cabin door, okay? Then close the curtains, and I’m going to shut all the blinds – keep the lights off. We want it to be as dark as possible.” Guy’s blood felt cold in his veins, and he swallowed, shifting slightly on his feet. “If this is— A, a séance, I really don’t—” “No, no, Guy,” Velma said, and she reached out to him, touched her fingers to the side of his shoulder. “It’s nothing like that, I promise. This isn’t an apparition, it never was. And it’s nothing that can hurt you, I swear, it doesn’t mean you any harm. This is…” Velma breathed in, and then exhaled, giving him a small smile. “This is sort of a case of cultural differences.” “Cultural differences?” “Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s the best way of explaining it.” The fear didn’t fade away, remaining tightly knotted, a ball of painful twine in his chest, and this all felt surreal – magic had always been a thing at the periphery of his life, Richie’s territory, a few little sparks in the distance or crossing into his line of sight now and then. This situation, this was too… too involved. Too much. It was too much to be dealing with, on top of the ache of everything else, but he didn’t have a better way forward, so he obeyed. He pulled the door closed, neatly closing the thick curtains that separated the tiny galley and the flight deck doors from the rest of the cabin, and closed the window shutters that Velma hadn’t got to yet, one by one. When Velma closed the curtains at the cargo end of the cabin, the flight deck was dark. “Can you sit on the floor?” Velma asked. Even in the darkness, she looked so brightly orange, the only thing really visible the colour she was made up of. “I’m not that old, you know,” Guy said, and he braced himself on one of the seat arms, sinking slowly down onto the non-slip mat that made up the main corridor of the cabin. Across from him, he saw Velma sink down to the floor a few feet from him, and he wondered— Would Richie have found this easy, were the positions reversed? He didn’t know. He didn’t like the idea of Richie grieving for him, Richie being alone, without Guy – Richie would have coped better than Guy, perhaps, but Guy didn’t want to think of him coping. Guy didn’t want to think of him dead, either. “So just sit still, okay? No sudden movements, and try not to shout or yell.” “Why would I shout or yell?” “I think it’s just going to be a bit of surprise, that’s all. Um, give me a second with this spell, I’m not great at them.” He hoped the darkness could hide his furrowed brow. Velma began to speak softly in a language Guy didn’t really recognise the sound of, soft and low, full of strange vowels, and the light that peeked in from the edges of the window shutters and eked in through the curtains faded, slowly lowering the plane’s inside into deep and plunging depths of darkness. He’d only ever experienced darkness like this on cave tours Richie insisted on, at those moments where they turned off the lights and left everyone in the complete black that you found when you were far below the ground. He remembered the first time they’d done one – he’d been frightened, at first, but the caverns had been wide and high-ceilinged, not the cramped tunnels he expected to struggle to crawl through, and when the guide had turned off the lights, he had stood in horrified awe, aware only of Richie’s hand in his, Richie’s warm thumb stroking circles over the back of his hand. Now, he folded his hands together in his lap, squeezing one hand in the other, and blinked away the slight wetness that formed at the corners of his eyes, not quite significant enough to be called tears – not just yet. “Can you call out to it, Guy?” Velma asked. In the darkness, her voice seemed so much louder, and Guy remembered all the times, the past few weeks, that Richie’s voice had come so suddenly in his ear. “Some people want to be ghosts when they die,” Richie had murmured to him once, shaking his head at some silly haunting program on the television as he’d changed the channel. “It’s selfish of them. Ghosts are nothing but salt in the wounds of the living, that’s what my mother used to say to us.” “I don’t want to,” Guy whispered, not wanting his voice to fill up the small, dark space the way that Velma’s did, not wanting it to ring loudly in his own ears, like hers did. “I don’t want to.” “Guy,” said Richie, in the darkness, and Guy felt himself sob, the sound wrenched from his throat, his hands going up to his mouth, pressing tight against his lips. The tears were hot on his cheeks, his eyes tightly closed, and he was shaking all of a sudden, unable to stop. In the darkness, it sounded too real, too real and too loud and too much like Richie, too much like a dead man Guy wanted back, and he couldn’t bear it. And then his voice again, off-key and full of laughter, “—stuck like glue to my guy…” “No, please, please—” “It’s okay,” Velma said. “It’s okay, it’s okay, look. Look.” “I don’t want to, I don’t want to, please—” “Just open your eyes,” Velma said, and her voice was so soft and quiet. “Just open your eyes, Guy, and you’ll see.” Initially, he saw a haze of yellow through teary vision, and he reached up to wipe hard at them, trying to dry his eyes with the backs of his thumbs. He blinked a few times, still trembling, and he stared at the little yellow glow of light in front of him on the cabin floor, floating a few inches off the ground. He could sort of make out a head and a body, limbs, but no features – it was a little, six-inch silhouette of something approximating human, only half-opaque. “Go, go, go, Guy,” it said, in Richie’s voice, and he stared down at it, uncomprehending, his mouth dry, his throat full and thick. Velma said something in that language again, and the little thing turned, floating on the air. It didn’t have a face, but somehow Guy could see its confusion, its uncertainty, as it looked back at him. “No Richie?” it asked, in a tiny, mellifluous voice, sounding like someone had smoothed the sounds of a plastic recorder, the sound strange, not suited to forming words. “No Richie?” “What is it?” Guy asked, choked on the words as he got them out. “This is a fire sprite,” Velma said. “It’s a— it’s a fairy?” “No. It’s a kind of spirit, actually, but not the sort we were talking about earlier. Fire sprites are semi-corporeal – people do often mistake them for pixies, though, which are a kind of faerie.” The sprite floated closer, and when Guy slowly put his hands together, his palms up, the sprite landed down on top of them. It felt… warm. Barely any weight to it at all, no heavier than dandelion fluff, emanating a soft and comforting heat. Velma talked in that language again, and this time, the sprite responded – once again, in that strangely melodic voice, in the same language Velma spoke, lilting as it did. They spoke back and forth, and as they did, the sprite sat down in Guy’s palms, its legs out, peering up at him, he thought. “It’s not great on estimating time, but it’s been here a while,” Velma said softly. “You guys fly out to any of the islands up north very often? It says it’s from an island.” “Tiree,” Guy said, swallowing. “We fly out to Tiree once a month.” “That’ll be it.” “No Richie,” it whispered, sounding miserable. “Where’s Richie?” “Richie died,” Guy said, his voice shaking. “Richie died.” “Oh,” it said. “Oh…” He didn’t know how such a small thing, so lacking definition, could sound so sad, but it leaned forward, wrapping its— its arms? its vague limbs? – around his thumb. It was hugging him. “Richie gone.” “Fire sprites are shy about strangers, but they’re inquisitive, curious – they like to explore, see things, meet people. It likes the sound of the plane engines,” Velma said softly. “It wasn’t trying to be cruel to you, it just… it liked Richie’s voice, too, so it copied the sound.” “I liked his voice, too,” Guy said to the sprite, disbelieving. “I bet he liked you. I bet he liked you— very much.” “I love my Guy,” it said, in Richie’s voice, making the base fall out of Guy’s stomach, and then it followed up, as if in response, in Guy’s own, “He loves you too.” It shifted, its light changing slightly, brightening in a flicker for a moment. In its own voice, then: “Loves you too. Guy over the border. Can’t follow him there.” “The border?” Guy repeated. “Can’t follow,” the sprite said sadly, seriously – he got the impression it would be shaking its head, if it entirely understood the concept. “Can’t follow.” “The wards on your house keep out most potential pests – small faeries, small demons. Sprites, too.” “How could this thing be a pest?” It was… It was good. He knew it, knew it from the feel of the thing, the little glow of warm light, knew it from its soft voice – how could anyone think of this thing as a pest? It was precious. “They don’t do any damage,” Velma said. “They’re just included in most pest control charms because when they accumulate it can disturb your sleep – when they sing, when they do their little light show. Imagine a few dozen of these guys floating around in the dark while you’re trying to sleep.” “I wouldn’t mind that,” Guy whispered, and Velma chuckled. “Why is it— Why is it here?” “Good rumble,” the sprite said. “Good men.” It was quiet again, then said, softly, like it was worried about being impolite, “Hungry.” “Hungry?” Guy repeated. “You’re hungry? What do you eat? What does it eat?” “Berries, flowers,” Velma said. “It’ll be able to eat back in your garden – assuming you want to bring it home?” “I do, if it wants,” Guy said. “Do you want to come home with— with me?” “Can’t follow,” it said, once again in that sad voice. “Can’t follow.” “Can you change my wards?” Guy asked. “Change them so it can come in?” “Um, yes,” Velma said, slowly. “But I’ll, um, I’ll have to call Hamish to figure out how to do it properly, I wouldn’t want to mess anything up.” “No Richie, no Guy. No rumble. Can’t follow. Hungry. Too long.” “I’m sorry,” Guy said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know that you… I didn’t mean to leave you, I’m sorry, I’ll take you home.” The words spilled out of him all at once, guilt burning out the grief that had been weighing him down, but then he faltered, uncertain. “But we— I can’t… No, no, it’s not a pet. Me and— it’s why we couldn’t ever have a parrot, isn’t this… isn’t it meant to be wild? This sprite? I can’t keep it hostage.” “These things can fly a few hundred miles in one night,” Velma said. “Richie didn’t catch it or anything, it’s… It’s here because it wants to be here. It likes the plane engines – it liked Richie, it likes you. I expect it thought if it used Richie’s voice, that it could talk to you better. Its English isn’t too great – it finds Gaelic easier – so it probably thought a voice you knew would help. It didn’t realise you’d be upset.” “Go, go, go, Guy,” it said softly. “No Richie.” The tears slid down Guy’s cheeks, fat, warm droplets that slid down to the stubble on his jaw, stubble he’d barely thought to bother shaving since he took his leave of absence. “No, no Richie,” he agreed, bringing the sprite up to his chest, feeling it warm against his chest, his heart. “I miss him too.” “Miss him,” it agreed solemnly, cooing lowly when Guy began to sob again, leaning its body against him. “Miss him.”
The sprite was sitting in the fruit bowl in Guy’s kitchen when Velma got off the phone with Hamish, and Velma smiled at it, sitting in three quarters of a plum, chewing the pieces of flesh it could pull out of the open wall, slurping it down. It was messy, sticky and amorphous, turning a funny yellow colour as it ate more, and she couldn’t help but smile at it – it was cute. It was late in the afternoon, now, past five – it had taken her hours going over each of the enchantments in the house, texting a picture of the symbols to Hamish and then carefully putting into place the corrections he sent back. “Thank you,” Guy said. “Thank you, I never… Thank you.” “It’s okay,” Velma murmured. “I just like to see a happy ending. I’m really sorry, Guy, about your husband. I hope this can help a little.” “It does,” Guy said. “It— it does help.” Velma smiled, packing her notebook, her enchanter’s chalk, and her pocket knife back into her briefcase, and Guy looked at her, seriously, looking uncertain for a few seconds, and then he said, “Do I— Do I owe you money? You’re a private specialist, after all, you—” “No, sir,” Velma said, shaking her head immediately. “No, um, whenever Hamish sends me somewhere, he always covers my fee. We have an arrangement.” “Oh, no, he can’t—” “You’ll have to argue with him if you want to argue it, Guy,” Velma murmured, smiling at the old man, and Guy inhaled, looking down at the sprite again. He stepped forward, and Velma thought for a second that he was going to hug her, but he seemed to reconsider it, putting out his hand instead. Velma shook it, squeezing his hand, and then she stepped back, putting her hands in her pockets. “It was good to meet you, Guy,” she said softly. “Call me if you ever need anything.” “Thank you,” Guy said. “Go, go, go,” said the sprite, and Velma watched the way Guy smiled as he looked down at it, felt warm, felt like she’d done well for the day. “Go, go, go,” Velma agreed, and gave them both a wave on her way out.
“You sure you don’t mind?” Velma asked. Her voice was quiet, she knew – she felt muted, now, kept thinking of poor Guy Holland on the floor, sobbing with the little sprite clutched to his chest. She couldn’t even imagine what it must be like, losing your spouse, even without all that came after. “I know I said I’d come around after I finished with Mr Holland.” “Certainly I don’t,” Hamish replied. “Go be with your family, play some manner of sports game with your brother. It’s the sort of balm one needs, after the day you’ve had, I expect.” “It wasn’t that much effort. It only took so long because I’m so shit at enchantment.” “It’s not about effort, dear girl.” “I can come pick you up on the way if you want,” Velma offered. “You can come play football with me and Kaito.” “I thank you graciously for the offer,” Hamish said. “I might be more willing were you to suggest the two of you spend a cheerful afternoon flaying the skin from my bones.” Velma laughed, shifting her hands on the wheel. “I’m just saying, you’re part of the family too.” “If you like,” Hamish replied, but she could hear the slight warmth in his voice, honey-sweet under the stern, grumpy exterior he could never quite keep up over the phone. She heard a glass smash on the phone, then heard the old man curse. “Oh, you little devils—” “I’ll leave you to play clean-up,” Velma said. “See you tomorrow, Hamish.” “See you tomorrow, my dear,” came Hamish’s reply. She crept into the house, when she got to her parents’ place, picking up the football from the gardenia plot in the front garden, and she found her brother laid out on the sofa in the living room, idly paging through his phone. The ball hit him smack in the head when she tossed it at him, and she laughed at his shocked groan, running out into the back for him to chase her.
“Play with me,” Kaito said, and Velma caught the ball when it was thrown at her the cool rubber of the cheap football smacking against her palms, still dewy from the grass outside, and she groaned. “How old are you, eight?” she demanded. She threw the ball back at her brother overarm, and moved fast enough to close the patio doors before he could kick it back. It hit with a rubbery clap of sound against the glass, leaving a wet streak, and she stuck her tongue out at him. “Kaito!” Daisuke snapped, and Kaito stood back with his hands up, turning around and returning to his football training on his own, alternating between kicking the thing against the back fence and keeping it up on his knees and his toes. “Here,” he murmured, and Velma took the proffered kitchen roll, wiping the grassy wetness off her fingers. “How many sports does he have to play?” “Oh, I don’t know, all of them,” Daisuke murmured, waving one hand as he went back into the kitchen, returning to the cake he was in the process of decorating. It was delicate work, complicated, and although it contained so much fondant icing Velma was fairly certain eating even a thin slice of it would make her vomit, it looked incredible. Her father had made six tiers of cake, enfolded with grey fondant, and he’d marked out the separate bricks with a scalpel before painting over it with a darker icing paint. It looked real, looked like it would be just as heavy as real brick if you tried to pick it up, and she sat down at the kitchen counter to watch him work. She’d enjoyed doing this ever since she was a child, sitting down and watching her father transform icing and sponge cake into something unbelievable, able to just talk, listen, watch. Snowdrop, Kaito’s cat, enjoyed the same thing – as soon as Velma sat down, Snowdrop hopped up beside her, and she watched as he leaned his chin against the marble counter, leaning awkwardly against it with his eyes lidded, his gaze on Daisuke and his tools. “How late were you two up last night?” Daisuke asked. “’Til four,” Velma muttered, reaching up and wiping one of her eyes. “I said so long as we watched Cyberchase first, we could watch whatever movie he wanted. He chose It. Both chapters.” “Well, you had that coming.” “Yeah,” Velma muttered, copying Snowdrop and putting her chin down on the back of her folded arms. Snowdrop leaned in, butting his blunt skull against her elbow, and she reached for him, dragging her thumb down between his shoulder blades and listening to him purr. “He doesn’t even like Stephen King. Only picked it because he finds that killer clown job I did a few months ago so funny.” Daisuke didn’t quite hide his chuckle. “Just like everyone else, I suppose,” Velma said. “Sorry, darling,” Daisuke murmured. “But you have to see that there’s a certain humour in coming home and announcing to the family you were nearly killed by a plastic clown.” That had been a spirit with a mean sense of humour. It had come into one of the London theatres in a collection of old mummers’ masks, made of straw, and once set loose in their props department, it had kept playing pranks on the theatre workers, making lights flicker, taking the pins out of chairs so that they collapsed, hiding things, painting messages on the walls. That was just with the actors and the stagehands, of course. When Velma had gone in, and it had perceived her as a threat, it had ended up animating a clown mannequin and picking up one of the fire axes. She’d had to burn off the clown’s arms and legs, locking it limbless in a chest it couldn’t get out of again, before handing it off to someone who could actually contain it in the long-term. “I’m meant to be an antiques dealer,” she muttered, leaning in and letting Snowdrop bash his face against her cheek. “That’s what it says on my business card. Things shouldn’t try to kill me just because they think it’s funny.” “Did you explain that at the time?” Daisuke asked wryly, and Velma scoffed, leaning back and letting Snowdrop clamber into her lap, dropping his weight against her chest and leaning into the crook of her arm. “Any big jobs lined up this week?” It had been nearly a year since Aunt Ginchiyo had handed her business off to Velma, and it was true, her business card did say she dealt in antiques – as well as haunted and enchanted objects. Kaito seemed to have an idea of her as a monster hunter, but that wasn’t what it was, not really. She didn’t deal with anything violent as a matter of course: most of the work she did was in buying and trading furniture, or in estimating values for people who were more ignorant in the field – after jobs like that, the most common work she had was in assessing enchantments on objects people had come across, whether it was some old thing in the attic or something they’d bought, and making sure they were still functional and safe to use. “Not yet,” she said. “I’ve sold on everything I got in that storage auction the week before last, as of yesterday, and I have some meetings scheduled for next week – mostly just some assessment stuff. Hamish says he wants to start teaching me how to enchant things myself.” Daisuke’s lips quirked up at their corners and, putting the turret he’d been painting aside for a moment, he looked at her, still smiling. It was a small smile, fond, but after a few moments of her father silently looking at her, she shifted her grip on the fat tuft of white fur in her arms, looking back at him properly. “What?” she asked. “Oh, nothing,” he murmured. “Just… You know, you used to be so set on art curation, but you’re really in your element, doing this sort of work. I’m just happy to see you happy, that’s all. And still my little girl dressed all in orange.” “I like orange,” Velma said. Kaito’s ball smacked against the kitchen window this time, and Snowdrop leapt out of Velma’s arms and into the air, leaving Velma hissing at the scramming the cat left over her arms. “Please,” Daisuke said, beseeching as he picked up his brush. “Make him stop doing that.” Groaning, Velma climbed down from the stool and went to the patio door, beginning to tug on her trainers.
Her phone rang as she settled into the driver’s seat of her car, and she flicked her finger over the screen to answer it, leaning back in her seat as she pulled on her seat belt. Hamish didn’t start talking immediately, but Velma didn’t need to ask why – she could hear the familiar clatter and bang of Hamish trying to juggle things out of the way to prevent them from being broken. “Velma,” he said, finally, in a stern voice that wasn’t actually aimed at her, no matter that it was her name she was saying. “Hey,” she said. “I’m about to drive over.” “Don’t,” Hamish said. “I have a job for you first.” Velma glanced at her phone, her brow furrowing. It wasn’t uncommon for Hamish to get jobs for her, because he often referred people to her when they needed a specialist, and the man was, in most respects, a recluse, and almost never left his shop if it could be avoided. “You need me to pick something up for you?” “It’s potentially a haunting, actually. A friend of mine, Captain Guillaume Holland, he gave me a ring this morning – his husband died a few weeks ago, and since he’s returned to work, he’s been hearing his voice in the cabin. Quite distressing for him, as I’m sure you can imagine.” For once, Hamish’s voice wasn’t terse and a little bitchy – he genuinely sounded concerned, and she shifted in the chair, adjusting her grip on the wheel. “Shit,” Velma murmured. “Yeah, I’d say. Where am I going, old man?” Leaning forward, she switched tabs on her phone, bringing up her maps app, and as Hamish read off the address to her – a house in the suburbs here in Nottingham – she tapped it in, pressing enter. “How’d you know him?” “He’s a pilot with Zeus Charter Limited – Richard was, too, of course – and he’s delivered things for me before. Guillaume is a mundie, but I’ve known Richard ever since he was a little boy – his mother was a professional clairvoyant, and regularly commissioned custom bits and pieces from me. As the children of such people so often are, he was quite comfortable with the subject of death. The idea of the prospect being so distressing as to trigger a haunting seems… out of character.” Hamish’s voice was very quiet. “You okay?” Velma asked, hesitating with her hand on the key in the ignition. “Quite alright,” Hamish said. “He was only fifty-six, that’s all. Quite young, in the scheme of things.” “I’ll go see him,” Velma murmured. “I’ll talk to you later.”
Velma parked her car outside the drive of the Holland-Jones home, surprised by the extent of the street parking available, and she stepped through the gate into their garden. It was a rather typical terraced house, with a long strip of garden in front, meeting the fences of the houses either side, and the outside walls were yellow and red brick. The garden was loosely kept, neat, but not in the antiseptic way that some people’s gardens looked – it was obvious at a glance that they’d spread meadow seed instead of lawn, different flowers sprouting up from the ground, and from every tree, many of which were fruit trees, hung bird feeders or insect hotels. Against the front wall of the house, beside a patio bench and an outdoor coffee table, there was arranged a collection of ceramic gnomes, and Velma couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose at them, set in rows on their shelves. She hated gnomes. Once she looked past them, though, she saw other, subtle signs that someone magical had once lived here, even if Mr Holland wasn’t a magic-user himself. Carved at the base of the doorframes, she could see the little symbols that pointed to a ward structure on the boundaries of the house, and when she crouched down, leaning to peer underneath the jutting lip of the windowsill, she could see a strip of neatly painted icons in a row along the base of it. Ringing the doorbell, which chimed merrily, she stood back on the welcome mat, which was emblazoned with the message, NO TRESPASSING: WE ARE TOO BUSY TO KEEP HIDING THE BODIES. She exhaled a low huff of amusement, not quite a laugh, and slipped her hands into the pockets of her jacket, leaning back on her heels. The man that came to the door was old, but not elderly – there were only patches of grey in his sandy-brown hair, and he had more freckles than liver spots. He was tall, slender, wearing a blue cardigan that was too big for him, wrapped tightly around his body – it was unfair to guess, Velma supposed, but nonetheless, she guessed that it had been his husband’s. She noted the signs she had come to recognise in the victims of a haunting – the shaking hands, the dark shadows under the eyes, the look of desperation. “Mr Holland,” she said gently, taking her hands out of her pockets and clasping them over her belly, raising her head slightly. “My name is Velma Kuroda, I’m a specialist – Hamish sent me over to help.” “He texted me your business card. I didn’t realise you’d be so young,” Mr Holland said, but he nodded all the same, stepping back and letting her over the threshold. He flicked the key in the lock behind them, putting the chain in place, and he tugged on the door handle twice before he seemed satisfied that it was locked, then leading her then out of the hall and into a modest kitchen, gesturing for her to sit. “You’re Scottish?” “I’m from Glasgow,” Velma said, nodding when Mr Holland raised the container of tea bags on the kitchen side. There were more symbols at the base of the doorjambs inside, and although she couldn’t see any hanging charms, she expected there was more warding further into the house. “Richie was from Kirkintilloch,” he said quietly, giving her a weak smile. “Hamish, ah— Hamish told you…?” “He said that you’re a pilot, and that your husband died recently, that you’re worried it might be a haunting,” Velma said, leaning back slightly in her chair. “You weren’t raised with magic yourself, were you, Mr Holland?” “Please, call me Guy,” the old man murmured as he poured the steaming water from the kettle, keeping his back to her. “And no, no, I wasn’t. My first exposure to magic I really recognised was when I first started dating Richie – his mother drilled into him and Carol and his other sisters a lot of home security awareness. He had charms all over his house, and I noticed them, asked about them. I could feel that they were significant, somehow. I’m not able for enchantment myself, but I’m sensitive enough to it that I could walk with Richie through magical areas in one city or another.” “That’s pretty rare, you know.” “He did say, once or twice,” Guy said, setting a mug of tea beside her, setting down a little milk jug and a sugar pot, too – novelty things, the milk pot shaped like a cow, the sugar pot shaped like a badger. “He explained it to me, that… That most magical properties are in another dimension, but that they’re layered over the same geography? Something like that. And that some people are able to cross between those dimensions, and some aren’t.” “That’s right,” Velma said, nodding her head as she slid her hand around her mug of tea, watching the old man. Guy had sunk down into the other chair at the little table, looking small, tired. “The vast majority of the world, even if they wanted to, couldn’t sense most magical beings, or visit magical places – it mostly runs in families or communities, as far as humans go, but some people are just randomly more sensitive.” “Is that why?” Guy asked, staring resolutely at his black tea, not meeting her gaze. “Is that why he’s haunting me?” “No,” Velma said softly. “No, Guy, that’s not how it works. Even if you didn’t have any sensitivity to magic at all, if this is a haunting, you might still feel the effects.” Guy sighed, hunching his shoulders more, and Velma squeezed her hands around the mug in her hands, feeling the heat of it against her palms. “Can you tell me more about what you’ve been experiencing?” “It, ah, it started a few weeks ago. A few days after Richie’s funeral. I had my first flight since he died, out to Paris. And, and everything was going alright, until I went to take off, and I heard his voice, right next to me in the flight deck. I shook it off, thought it was wishful thinking, but then… Then, once I’d been up in the air for nearly an hour, I heard him talk right in my ear, asking me what our flight time was. Dropped a few hundred feet, made my flight crew hit his head in the galley, I was so shocked.” Velma could see the distress in the twist of his mouth, the deep furrow of his brow and the wrinkles on his forehead, but she could see it, too, in the shift of his shoulders, the anxious shake of his knee as he tapped one slippered foot against the floor. “I keep hearing it whenever I’m in that flight deck, now – and not just in the flight deck, but in the cabin, the galley… I thought I head him leaning over my shoulder while I was doing the walkaround, and I nearly hit the deck.” Guy reached up, wiping at one of his eyes, and then he let out a shaky breath, putting his hands down on the table. “I loved Richie more than anything,” Guy said, in barely more than a whisper. “But this, this isn’t him, it’s just… The dead are dead. Richie’s explained hauntings to me before, I know that he wouldn’t want to be… He always said ghosts are just painful for those that are still alive. He wouldn’t have wanted to be this.” “I know,” Velma murmured. “It’s a lot to already be dealing with grief, without being worried that your husband’s unhappy in death. Guy, do you know much about the definition of a haunting? What it is, what sets it apart from other things?” Guy shook his head, silent, and Velma took a sip of her tea before setting the mug aside and setting her elbows on the table, her hands together, her fingers interlinked. “So… There’s two main classifications of a ghost, right? Sometimes, after someone dies, normally after being in a heightened emotional state, there’s a transference of… They call it life force, but it’s not like a soul or anything like that. My aunt used to explain it as like drawing a chalk outline around a shadow, or like a recording of an echo – basically, the combination of that heightened emotional state and the sudden stop that comes from dying makes a burst of outward magical energy. That magical energy then gets attached to an area, or an object, becomes imprinted on it. “The residual life force mimics some common behaviours or language, but only a handful of them, and they’ll basically play on a loop. This is what we traditionally refer to as a haunting – it’s what you might think of as a ghost, whispers in a corridor, a person walking down a corridor and then disappearing. Some particularly powerful hauntings, they’ll go through a person’s whole daily routine, and just repeat it. There’s no personality to it, no awareness, it’s just a projection.” Guy was listening intently, his expression serious. He didn’t say anything, didn’t try to interrupt, not even to ask questions – she had to wonder if he felt out of his depth, dealing with this whole thing, a mundie with no frame of reference. “And then there’s what we call an apparition. Now, an apparition can start out from a haunting, or it can happen spontaneously just like a haunting can. Basically, a spirit that lacks much of its own form will attach itself to the life force, and will copy some of the traits. It’ll be a facsimile of whoever the original person was – it won’t be corporeal or anything, but it will be able to act a bit more randomly, and you’re able to interact with it. Spirits don’t normally mean any harm by it, it’s just that they’re kinda simple? Not stupid, just that they experience the world and feel feelings in a way that we don’t – some of them are very impressionable, so they copy the echo of a death as close as they can to better experience it, but it’s never actually, you know, the person that died.” That seemed to make the old man relax, if only slightly, and as he nodded his head, he shifted his position, sitting up straight, although he kept his arms crossed very tightly over his chest, his hands still folded tightly into himself. “It isn’t to a schedule,” he said softly. “It isn’t… regular.” “Have you tried having a conversation with it?” “No. No, God, no,” Guy said, the words spilling out of his mouth so rapidly it was like he’d been waiting to say them, and he stood up from the chair, keeping his arms tightly crossed over his front even as he paced the kitchen. He looked funny while he did it, his picture-perfect posture and high chin at odds with the anxiety radiating from him in waves. “No, I… The first time, the first time, I murmured the same thing I always used to say to Richie when we flew together, and he— the ghost, that is, it replied. But after that, it was always unprompted, and it only ever talks to me when I’m alone. No one else at the airfield’s noticed anything, and it never talks when I’m on the phone or talking to ATC.” It didn’t sound like an apparition, in all honesty. Velma hadn’t actually dealt with that many true apparitions, anyway – she’d read up on some of the science of it, when she’d first taken over her aunt’s office, had read some of the books she had to hand on the subject. Hauntings themselves were rare, and hauntings that intersected with the cross of a nearby spirit that actually took an interest were even rarer. Spirits themselves were complicated – most of them were incorporeal, vague wisps of life that sort of sprouted up from nothing where there were pools of latent magic on the air, and Velma would be the first to admit she didn’t really get them. Most of the time, when someone called her out to deal with a ghost, it was because the Office of Unlicensed Spectres had a backlog like nobody’s business, and they prioritised cases where people’s lives were at risk – they dealt with poltergeists and screaming spirits, or dramatic hauntings in public places, not one apparition that was making one private pilot a bit upset. In this case, it wasn’t as though Guy had even called them – she wasn’t sure if he knew how to even get into contact with the local government office, and even if he did, there were all sorts of extra hoops you had to jump through, being someone like Guy. “Guy, I’m sorry to ask this, but could you tell me how Richie died?” She was delicate in asking the question, keeping her voice quiet, but Guy did inhale sharply, looking at her, his lips twisting. “It was a brain aneurysm,” he murmured. “We have to do a lot of health checks, as pilots, you know. We need good heart health, good lungs, good… Me and Richie were both fit. He was fifty-nine, and you never would have thought it, to look at him. It didn’t…” Guy filled his lungs, his nostrils flaring, and then he looked down at the tile, his lips pressed together. “He had a headache. Not a very severe one. He took an aspirin, went to bed a bit early. I followed after him an hour or so later and he was still alright, we talked, watched an episode of this awful sitcom Richie liked, and... Well. I woke up the next morning, and he was dead. No warning.” At home, in bed, in one’s sleep, suddenly – no big emotional outburst, no trauma, no drama. And in any case— “And you only hear him at the airfield?” Guy had got a defocused look in his eyes, staring at some fixed point in the middle distance, eyes misty, but now it faded away, and he turned to look back at her, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Yes. Yes, only at the airfield – usually around Garth, our Do 228.” When Velma kept looking at him, uncomprehending, he added, “The plane.” “Right,” Velma said. “So, what is it that you do, with an— an apparition, you called it?” “With an apparition, there are a few potential options.” Velma said, her voice low. “But honestly, Guy, this doesn’t sound like a ghost to me. For the most part, only certain kinds of deaths – usually of certain kinds of people – create them, and nine times out of ten, proximity makes the biggest difference. If Richie died here, at home, it wouldn’t make sense for his apparition to haunt the airfield.” “Then… what?” There were explanations that came to mind. A demon or a faerie that found it funny to mess with grieving widowers or some teenager experimenting with magic that felt the same; a minor curse, inlaid in a talisman or something; good, old-fashioned hallucination. In the case of the first or second, depending on what sort of ward structure Richie had put on their house, it was possible whatever it was couldn’t follow Guy home, that it couldn’t cross the threshold – anti-pest enchantments were standard in most common home wards, and the more complicated ones even tripped up certain big feelings of ill will. “I’m really not sure,” Velma said. “I’d have to have a look.” “Magic isn’t an exact science,” Guy said, tapping one of his fingers against the side of his arm. “That’s what Richie used to say – his mother was a professional, but even she struggled with unpredictable elements, when things went wrong, sometimes even when they went right.” “It can be unpredictable,” Velma agreed. “But I’ll do what I can to help.” “And what if you can’t?” She didn’t let herself bristle at the sharpness in his voice – she knew that it came from fear more than anger, and there was no sense in getting defensive. She’d go mad, if she got defensive every time. “Well, it depends on what the problem is. I know other specialists, and the benefit of me coming in to examine this thing, even if I can’t do anything, I can probably put you into contact with someone who can. Hamish wouldn’t have passed my details on to you if he didn’t think I could do something though.” Guy nodded, slowly, and adjusted the set of his cardigan on his shoulders. “I suppose we have to go to the airfield.” “If you could clear it with your boss, and your security, I could have a look without you,” Velma suggested, but Guy sighed. “No, no, my— my employer is mundane, like me. It’s Sunday, and the airfield will be very quiet today, best to… best to just go. Excuse me, I’ll, ah, I’ll just get my coat.”
Velma Kuroda drove a bright orange Ka. When Guy had opened the door to greet her, he had initially been taken aback by the amount of orange the girl wore – jeans and a jacket made out of the same frayed, orange denim; burnt orange basketball shoes; a polo neck that rode the line between red and orange very closely. She wore thick, black-framed glasses, although Guy was fairly certain the glass wasn’t prescription, and her black bob was perfectly kept, not a hair out of place. He had never seen a girl wear so much of one block colour before, and he supposed it was no surprise that her car should match the aesthetic. It wasn’t just the orange that overpowered, though. Seated in the passenger seat, he looked between the Scooby Doo air freshener, the Scooby Doo sticker on the steering wheel, matching the Scooby Doo seat covers. On the back window, there was a decal of the Scooby gang running away from silhouetted monsters. “So,” Guy said. “You like cartoons?” “I like a cartoon,” Velma said. “… I see.” Guy had only met Hamish MacKinnon once. It had been a few weeks after he and Richie had moved to Nottingham, back in ’99, and they’d still been getting the new house together when Hamish had sent Richie the invitation to come along. It had been nice, sitting with the old man and hearing the stories he had to tell about Richie as a little boy, and when Richie and Guy had shown him some plans of their house, he’d even made some custom shelving units for them – a housewarming gift, he’d called it. He always sent a card at Christmas, and for both of their birthdays, no matter that he barely knew Guy at all. He’d sent a card and a bouquet of rainbow lilies for the funeral, and Guy had sat for nearly an hour holding the flowers in his lap, thinking how much Richie would have loved them. He hadn’t come to the funeral. He was a recluse, Richie had said – he never left the bounds of his shop, but the card he’d sent had been thoughtful, and the flowers had been nice. When envisioning Hamish’s friends, he didn’t know that he would have imagined an orange-clad Japanese girl, but— Well. It was difficult to imagine much about a man that you only knew through greetings cards and one nice afternoon twenty years ago. Guy looked to the car’s dashboard. He shouldn’t have been surprised, he supposed, by the little figurine of Velma Dinkley stuck next to the tax disc, or the bobblehead of Scooby Doo beside it, but what did surprise him was the carving on the outside of the glovebox. It was Japanese, he thought, but he didn’t know what it meant, and he reached out, tracing the neat carving of lettering. “What does it say?” “Oh, it’s kind of abstract,” Velma said, glancing over. “It’s kind of a fusion of different Japanese enchantment schools? Some of the symbols are the same as katakana, but it’s its own thing. I only know what some of them stand for – my grandma did it for me when I got the car.” “It’s a ward?” Guy asked, and when Velma looked at him, surprise showing on her face, he explained, “Before we were allowed to put any furniture in our home in Nottingham, Richie put wards in the house.” “I noticed the carving at the base of all the doorjambs. Cymru school, pretty traditional. It’s the dominant enchantment school across Cymru-Loegr, Alba – across most of the continent, actually. Myrddin Wyllt invented it, adapted it from the fae schools of the 11th and 12th century. Um… Merlin,” she added, when he looked at her blankly. He tried to imagine the idea of Merlin as anything other than a cartoon wizard with stars embroidered on his hat, but it didn’t quite work – several of the words Velma used as a matter of course seemed to exist a little bit far beyond his comprehension. “You must think I’m very ignorant,” Guy said quietly. “Knowing so little about a world that I know is just a step away. But I, ah. I like aeroplanes. Technology. I like things that are solid, that I can understand. I felt like I was introduced rather too late to magic, to pick it up. Magic always seemed safe, comforting, when I saw it in Richie’s hands. I always felt like if I held it in mine, it would burn me.” “It’s not an uncommon way to feel,” Velma said as she made the turning into the airfield. “Magic’s overwhelming sometimes for people that grow up with it, let alone people that don’t get introduced to it until later. My brother is a bit like you – he’s kind of down-to-earth, and a lot of magical stuff… I wouldn’t say it intimidates him, exactly? But he doesn’t get it, it’s the opposite of intuitive for him.” “That doesn’t make him feel left out?” Guy asked, tilting his head. “In a family like yours?” Velma laughed, quietly. “Uh, no. No, Kaito is pretty much impossible to make feel left out.” Guy didn’t have any siblings. He’d been an only child, and his parents had stopped talking to him when he’d come out of the closet – Richie was all he had left, really. Richie’s sisters were kind, of course, but Eve and Sandra lived in Kirkintilloch still, and Carol had a big family of her own to look after. They were meant to rescue animals. They’d fostered cats and dogs before, but they were going to adopt some of their own this year, once Richie retired. Richie was going to keep chickens, and maybe a goat – he’d made a list of his favourite cats in the Nottingham rescue centre. “Guy?” He raised his head to Velma, standing outside the car, the door open, leaning in to look at him. “You alright?” “Yes,” he said softly, pushing open the door and swinging his legs out of the car. “Yes.” None of the security stopped them as they made their way over to Garth – he and Richie did have part-ownership of her, after all, if only a small part. All Guy’s, now. He’d trade it away without hesitation. He was quiet as he watched Velma walk around the plane, examining her from the outside – he was quiet, too, once he used the keys to let her in, watched her carefully walk along the cabin, empty of cargo or passengers, watched her sit in the flight deck and murmur under her breath. Velma carried a brown leather briefcase, and she rummaged through it a few times as she walked the plane back and forth. She made some notes in a notebook, walked around using a charm as a pendulum. It all seemed… Silly, somehow. Devoid of real magic – but then, who was he to know what real magic was? “How long have you been off from work, Guy?” “A little over a week,” Guy said softly. “Is that— Is that important?” “Yes,” Velma murmured. “Yes, I think so. Otherwise, I, um, I don’t think this would work. Okay, so what I need you to do is go shut the cabin door, okay? Then close the curtains, and I’m going to shut all the blinds – keep the lights off. We want it to be as dark as possible.” Guy’s blood felt cold in his veins, and he swallowed, shifting slightly on his feet. “If this is— A, a séance, I really don’t—” “No, no, Guy,” Velma said, and she reached out to him, touched her fingers to the side of his shoulder. “It’s nothing like that, I promise. This isn’t an apparition, it never was. And it’s nothing that can hurt you, I swear, it doesn’t mean you any harm. This is…” Velma breathed in, and then exhaled, giving him a small smile. “This is sort of a case of cultural differences.” “Cultural differences?” “Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s the best way of explaining it.” The fear didn’t fade away, remaining tightly knotted, a ball of painful twine in his chest, and this all felt surreal – magic had always been a thing at the periphery of his life, Richie’s territory, a few little sparks in the distance or crossing into his line of sight now and then. This situation, this was too… too involved. Too much. It was too much to be dealing with, on top of the ache of everything else, but he didn’t have a better way forward, so he obeyed. He pulled the door closed, neatly closing the thick curtains that separated the tiny galley and the flight deck doors from the rest of the cabin, and closed the window shutters that Velma hadn’t got to yet, one by one. When Velma closed the curtains at the cargo end of the cabin, the flight deck was dark. “Can you sit on the floor?” Velma asked. Even in the darkness, she looked so brightly orange, the only thing really visible the colour she was made up of. “I’m not that old, you know,” Guy said, and he braced himself on one of the seat arms, sinking slowly down onto the non-slip mat that made up the main corridor of the cabin. Across from him, he saw Velma sink down to the floor a few feet from him, and he wondered— Would Richie have found this easy, were the positions reversed? He didn’t know. He didn’t like the idea of Richie grieving for him, Richie being alone, without Guy – Richie would have coped better than Guy, perhaps, but Guy didn’t want to think of him coping. Guy didn’t want to think of him dead, either. “So just sit still, okay? No sudden movements, and try not to shout or yell.” “Why would I shout or yell?” “I think it’s just going to be a bit of surprise, that’s all. Um, give me a second with this spell, I’m not great at them.” He hoped the darkness could hide his furrowed brow. Velma began to speak softly in a language Guy didn’t really recognise the sound of, soft and low, full of strange vowels, and the light that peeked in from the edges of the window shutters and eked in through the curtains faded, slowly lowering the plane’s inside into deep and plunging depths of darkness. He’d only ever experienced darkness like this on cave tours Richie insisted on, at those moments where they turned off the lights and left everyone in the complete black that you found when you were far below the ground. He remembered the first time they’d done one – he’d been frightened, at first, but the caverns had been wide and high-ceilinged, not the cramped tunnels he expected to struggle to crawl through, and when the guide had turned off the lights, he had stood in horrified awe, aware only of Richie’s hand in his, Richie’s warm thumb stroking circles over the back of his hand. Now, he folded his hands together in his lap, squeezing one hand in the other, and blinked away the slight wetness that formed at the corners of his eyes, not quite significant enough to be called tears – not just yet. “Can you call out to it, Guy?” Velma asked. In the darkness, her voice seemed so much louder, and Guy remembered all the times, the past few weeks, that Richie’s voice had come so suddenly in his ear. “Some people want to be ghosts when they die,” Richie had murmured to him once, shaking his head at some silly haunting program on the television as he’d changed the channel. “It’s selfish of them. Ghosts are nothing but salt in the wounds of the living, that’s what my mother used to say to us.” “I don’t want to,” Guy whispered, not wanting his voice to fill up the small, dark space the way that Velma’s did, not wanting it to ring loudly in his own ears, like hers did. “I don’t want to.” “Guy,” said Richie, in the darkness, and Guy felt himself sob, the sound wrenched from his throat, his hands going up to his mouth, pressing tight against his lips. The tears were hot on his cheeks, his eyes tightly closed, and he was shaking all of a sudden, unable to stop. In the darkness, it sounded too real, too real and too loud and too much like Richie, too much like a dead man Guy wanted back, and he couldn’t bear it. And then his voice again, off-key and full of laughter, “—stuck like glue to my guy…” “No, please, please—” “It’s okay,” Velma said. “It’s okay, it’s okay, look. Look.” “I don’t want to, I don’t want to, please—” “Just open your eyes,” Velma said, and her voice was so soft and quiet. “Just open your eyes, Guy, and you’ll see.” Initially, he saw a haze of yellow through teary vision, and he reached up to wipe hard at them, trying to dry his eyes with the backs of his thumbs. He blinked a few times, still trembling, and he stared at the little yellow glow of light in front of him on the cabin floor, floating a few inches off the ground. He could sort of make out a head and a body, limbs, but no features – it was a little, six-inch silhouette of something approximating human, only half-opaque. “Go, go, go, Guy,” it said, in Richie’s voice, and he stared down at it, uncomprehending, his mouth dry, his throat full and thick. Velma said something in that language again, and the little thing turned, floating on the air. It didn’t have a face, but somehow Guy could see its confusion, its uncertainty, as it looked back at him. “No Richie?” it asked, in a tiny, mellifluous voice, sounding like someone had smoothed the sounds of a plastic recorder, the sound strange, not suited to forming words. “No Richie?” “What is it?” Guy asked, choked on the words as he got them out. “This is a fire sprite,” Velma said. “It’s a— it’s a fairy?” “No. It’s a kind of spirit, actually, but not the sort we were talking about earlier. Fire sprites are semi-corporeal – people do often mistake them for pixies, though, which are a kind of faerie.” The sprite floated closer, and when Guy slowly put his hands together, his palms up, the sprite landed down on top of them. It felt… warm. Barely any weight to it at all, no heavier than dandelion fluff, emanating a soft and comforting heat. Velma talked in that language again, and this time, the sprite responded – once again, in that strangely melodic voice, in the same language Velma spoke, lilting as it did. They spoke back and forth, and as they did, the sprite sat down in Guy’s palms, its legs out, peering up at him, he thought. “It’s not great on estimating time, but it’s been here a while,” Velma said softly. “You guys fly out to any of the islands up north very often? It says it’s from an island.” “Tiree,” Guy said, swallowing. “We fly out to Tiree once a month.” “That’ll be it.” “No Richie,” it whispered, sounding miserable. “Where’s Richie?” “Richie died,” Guy said, his voice shaking. “Richie died.” “Oh,” it said. “Oh…” He didn’t know how such a small thing, so lacking definition, could sound so sad, but it leaned forward, wrapping its— its arms? its vague limbs? – around his thumb. It was hugging him. “Richie gone.” “Fire sprites are shy about strangers, but they’re inquisitive, curious – they like to explore, see things, meet people. It likes the sound of the plane engines,” Velma said softly. “It wasn’t trying to be cruel to you, it just… it liked Richie’s voice, too, so it copied the sound.” “I liked his voice, too,” Guy said to the sprite, disbelieving. “I bet he liked you. I bet he liked you— very much.” “I love my Guy,” it said, in Richie’s voice, making the base fall out of Guy’s stomach, and then it followed up, as if in response, in Guy’s own, “He loves you too.” It shifted, its light changing slightly, brightening in a flicker for a moment. In its own voice, then: “Loves you too. Guy over the border. Can’t follow him there.” “The border?” Guy repeated. “Can’t follow,” the sprite said sadly, seriously – he got the impression it would be shaking its head, if it entirely understood the concept. “Can’t follow.” “The wards on your house keep out most potential pests – small faeries, small demons. Sprites, too.” “How could this thing be a pest?” It was… It was good. He knew it, knew it from the feel of the thing, the little glow of warm light, knew it from its soft voice – how could anyone think of this thing as a pest? It was precious. “They don’t do any damage,” Velma said. “They’re just included in most pest control charms because when they accumulate it can disturb your sleep – when they sing, when they do their little light show. Imagine a few dozen of these guys floating around in the dark while you’re trying to sleep.” “I wouldn’t mind that,” Guy whispered, and Velma chuckled. “Why is it— Why is it here?” “Good rumble,” the sprite said. “Good men.” It was quiet again, then said, softly, like it was worried about being impolite, “Hungry.” “Hungry?” Guy repeated. “You’re hungry? What do you eat? What does it eat?” “Berries, flowers,” Velma said. “It’ll be able to eat back in your garden – assuming you want to bring it home?” “I do, if it wants,” Guy said. “Do you want to come home with— with me?” “Can’t follow,” it said, once again in that sad voice. “Can’t follow.” “Can you change my wards?” Guy asked. “Change them so it can come in?” “Um, yes,” Velma said, slowly. “But I’ll, um, I’ll have to call Hamish to figure out how to do it properly, I wouldn’t want to mess anything up.” “No Richie, no Guy. No rumble. Can’t follow. Hungry. Too long.” “I’m sorry,” Guy said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know that you… I didn’t mean to leave you, I’m sorry, I’ll take you home.” The words spilled out of him all at once, guilt burning out the grief that had been weighing him down, but then he faltered, uncertain. “But we— I can’t… No, no, it’s not a pet. Me and— it’s why we couldn’t ever have a parrot, isn’t this… isn’t it meant to be wild? This sprite? I can’t keep it hostage.” “These things can fly a few hundred miles in one night,” Velma said. “Richie didn’t catch it or anything, it’s… It’s here because it wants to be here. It likes the plane engines – it liked Richie, it likes you. I expect it thought if it used Richie’s voice, that it could talk to you better. Its English isn’t too great – it finds Gaelic easier – so it probably thought a voice you knew would help. It didn’t realise you’d be upset.” “Go, go, go, Guy,” it said softly. “No Richie.” The tears slid down Guy’s cheeks, fat, warm droplets that slid down to the stubble on his jaw, stubble he’d barely thought to bother shaving since he took his leave of absence. “No, no Richie,” he agreed, bringing the sprite up to his chest, feeling it warm against his chest, his heart. “I miss him too.” “Miss him,” it agreed solemnly, cooing lowly when Guy began to sob again, leaning its body against him. “Miss him.”
The sprite was sitting in the fruit bowl in Guy’s kitchen when Velma got off the phone with Hamish, and Velma smiled at it, sitting in three quarters of a plum, chewing the pieces of flesh it could pull out of the open wall, slurping it down. It was messy, sticky and amorphous, turning a funny yellow colour as it ate more, and she couldn’t help but smile at it – it was cute. It was late in the afternoon, now, past five – it had taken her hours going over each of the enchantments in the house, texting a picture of the symbols to Hamish and then carefully putting into place the corrections he sent back. “Thank you,” Guy said. “Thank you, I never… Thank you.” “It’s okay,” Velma murmured. “I just like to see a happy ending. I’m really sorry, Guy, about your husband. I hope this can help a little.” “It does,” Guy said. “It— it does help.” Velma smiled, packing her notebook, her enchanter’s chalk, and her pocket knife back into her briefcase, and Guy looked at her, seriously, looking uncertain for a few seconds, and then he said, “Do I— Do I owe you money? You’re a private specialist, after all, you—” “No, sir,” Velma said, shaking her head immediately. “No, um, whenever Hamish sends me somewhere, he always covers my fee. We have an arrangement.” “Oh, no, he can’t—” “You’ll have to argue with him if you want to argue it, Guy,” Velma murmured, smiling at the old man, and Guy inhaled, looking down at the sprite again. He stepped forward, and Velma thought for a second that he was going to hug her, but he seemed to reconsider it, putting out his hand instead. Velma shook it, squeezing his hand, and then she stepped back, putting her hands in her pockets. “It was good to meet you, Guy,” she said softly. “Call me if you ever need anything.” “Thank you,” Guy said. “Go, go, go,” said the sprite, and Velma watched the way Guy smiled as he looked down at it, felt warm, felt like she’d done well for the day. “Go, go, go,” Velma agreed, and gave them both a wave on her way out.
“You sure you don’t mind?” Velma asked. Her voice was quiet, she knew – she felt muted, now, kept thinking of poor Guy Holland on the floor, sobbing with the little sprite clutched to his chest. She couldn’t even imagine what it must be like, losing your spouse, even without all that came after. “I know I said I’d come around after I finished with Mr Holland.” “Certainly I don’t,” Hamish replied. “Go be with your family, play some manner of sports game with your brother. It’s the sort of balm one needs, after the day you’ve had, I expect.” “It wasn’t that much effort. It only took so long because I’m so shit at enchantment.” “It’s not about effort, dear girl.” “I can come pick you up on the way if you want,” Velma offered. “You can come play football with me and Kaito.” “I thank you graciously for the offer,” Hamish said. “I might be more willing were you to suggest the two of you spend a cheerful afternoon flaying the skin from my bones.” Velma laughed, shifting her hands on the wheel. “I’m just saying, you’re part of the family too.” “If you like,” Hamish replied, but she could hear the slight warmth in his voice, honey-sweet under the stern, grumpy exterior he could never quite keep up over the phone. She heard a glass smash on the phone, then heard the old man curse. “Oh, you little devils—” “I’ll leave you to play clean-up,” Velma said. “See you tomorrow, Hamish.” “See you tomorrow, my dear,” came Hamish’s reply. She crept into the house, when she got to her parents’ place, picking up the football from the gardenia plot in the front garden, and she found her brother laid out on the sofa in the living room, idly paging through his phone. The ball hit him smack in the head when she tossed it at him, and she laughed at his shocked groan, running out into the back for him to chase her.
Cast of Characters
- Guy Holland (Protagonist, POV Character)
- Richie Jones (Supporting Character)
- Velma Kuroda (Protagonist, POV Character)
- Kaito Kuroda (Minor Character)
- Hamish Angus MacKinnon (Minor Character)
Short Story
Ao3-Style Tags
A specialist in magical antiques, Velma Kuroda, is called out to help a grieving captain with the ghost of his partner.
Rated T. Published 9th May 2020. 10,000 words.
Setting: 21st century. Nottingham, England.
Characters: Main characters are a cis white gay man mourning the loss of his husband, and the two of them were pilots together; Velma is a cis mixed race Japanese lesbian.
Genre & Tone: Contemporary Fantasy, Mystery, Procedural, Slice-of-Life, Sad, Humour
Themes: Grief, Mystery, Magical Realism, Exploration, Haunting
Content: Fae & Faeries, Aeroplanes, Sad With A Happy Ending
Content Warnings: Mentions of Homophobia, Grieving Process
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