Virga: Act 4E

A Virga Mystery: BALANCING ACT

ACT 4e: OF PARENTS AND PROGRAMMING

First, by August, Melissa and Trixie had toned down their sniping at each other. This was largely due to how Trixie was very preoccupied with the immense computing task we’d given her, and as such remained mostly in her room.

I realized that her inexperience with field work had been a source of insecurity, one she masked through humour and conflict, to avoid appearing stupid. So having it scaled back by choice worked out.

[caption id=“attachment_2011” align=“alignright” width=“202”] MELISSA VIRGA
Commission from Shirley[/caption]

Meanwhile, Melissa’s own insecurity - about whether I was in love with her, or with witchcraft - was put to bed within the first couple weeks of my return. Granted, she was still vexed with how her “rival” Trixie would shake her chest at me (particularly if it was over breakfast, because there occasionally wouldn’t be a bra involved yet, and that is damn distracting) but I explained (in private) how it was a coping mechanism for Trixie.

Meanwhile, Trixie seemed to be handling her relationship issues by vanishing on Friday nights and arriving home Saturday morning looking disheveled. (“Yes, it’s what you think,” she told me once, when I asked her. “If you must know, the challenge of programming a sophisticated magical neural net gets me hot and bothered, and a vibrator is not a great way to ever find myself a permanent relationship like yours, so what do you care anyway?")

To avoid getting into deeper trouble, I simply said Trixie could talk to us if there were problems. With that, enough said about my roommates (Agency-mates?).

As far as the three factions went - recall the Crazies, who wanted Melissa dead, the Rationals, who wanted to petition her, and the Worshippers, who wanted her venerated - we didn’t see much of them. At first.

It probably helped that, with Melissa’s true location submerged, we’d put out a few false trails in other locations around the world. It’s also possible that Melissa’s parents were running interference somehow.

The first evidence that we weren’t invisible was near the end of June, when a guy refused to leave the front stoop of the apartment until he’d been allowed to touch Melissa’s hand. And present her with a rose. (“I’d almost prefer we see more of the type of people who are trying to kill me,” Melissa admitted that night. “At least I know how to handle them.”)

She did throw the rose out of the back window, over concern that it was booby-trapped. I suppose that was possible.

In July there was more of a shift. A guy came into the office claiming that he was being stalked by a demon, only to pull a bunch of files out of his briefcase and then begin a lecture on the benefits of urban fantasy entanglement.

A week after kicking him out, there was a ticking package left on our doorstep. After dunking it in water, we determined from the card that someone had tried to give Melissa a new clock. (We really should get the batteries fixed in the old one. The fact he/she didn’t know that the present wasn’t useful was somewhat heartening.)

Then the first Crazy. Someone in the apartment downstairs admitted to me that he’d let in a guy dressed in robes and a pointy hat; supposedly a knife salesman. We were out at the time, and there was no sign of the guy later.

We extended our protective wards out that day, from covering only Melissa’s apartment area to the entire building. As much for our safety as to avoid further issues with the other tenants. Also, fringe benefit, the wider net interfered with Melissa’s parents spying on us. So, one less thing for me to worry about.

Speaking of her parents, as far as I knew, they were continuing to work on the spell that would suspend all electronic activity on Earth, which would allow them to cast the ‘Merlin Reinforcement Spell’, for lack of a better phrase.

Melissa still didn’t think the latter would work, and still wasn’t sure why. If her parents knew we were working on a backup plan, they said nothing.

At any rate, none of the factions impacted our daily lives, aside from our decision to wear protective wards when out in the city. And speaking of being out, the Agency did get a number of supernatural cases that summer, though they were pretty routine.

And what is routine for us, you ask?

Let’s summarize it as: -Person comes into office with a problem (“I think there’s a curse on me” / “My garden gnomes are coming alive at night” / “My roommate has become invisible”). -Melissa (disguised) and I listen and diagnose (“It’s not a curse, there’s a devil on your left shoulder controlling your actions” / “Simple case of possession” / “Sounds more like your roommate became half an inch tall”). -We take payment and remedy the situation (“We’ll distract the devil by creating an angel on your right shoulder” / “Don’t blink, don’t look away, and tape this scroll onto their pointy hats” / “Leave this small cake out with a sign reading ‘Eat Me’.”).

For some cases, the field work is necessary (for instance, to locate the origin of a problem, so that there isn’t a new curse next week, or in that one case, to locate the tiny roommate), but all these kinds of cases tended to take less than a week from start to finish.

But make no mistake. While the cases were routine, there was definitely an uptick in supernatural events, the longer into the summer that we got. It was simply in frequency, not scale.

That is, there was nothing I know of on the order of Amy’s knife remaining as a lamp, and certainly nothing that made us think elves were about to invade from a nearby realm or anything. (Spoiler: They don’t.) But maybe these things were happening in more rural areas, so don’t get the wrong idea.

Then in early August, Alicia Wing came by. That was a big deal.

Alicia runs a small store of mystical artifacts and trinkets, the location of which is half hidden above a bookstore. She’s been Melissa’s ingredient supplier for at least the last four years, and is very tolerant of the witch’s quirks, such as her calling at three in the morning looking for an ingredient for a spell.

I’d gotten to know her reasonably well too, but had never before seen her outside of her business. Alicia had always given me the impression of being a sixty-something Chinese shut in; the white haired woman was simply there whenever we needed something, wearing traditional garb, her store perpetually cluttered and always faintly smelling of incense.

So I was a little caught off guard when she buzzed to come into our apartment building in the middle of the day, and looked to be wearing a floral print dress and straw hat.

“Mel, did you or Trixie order something from Alicia’s?” I asked.

Melissa, still sitting at her desk, looked up at me. By this point, she had dispensed with any sort of illusion spell so long as she was in the apartment, and I’d effectively returned control of the office space to her.

“Not me,” she said. “And I doubt it was Trixie - you want to risk disturbing her?”

I glanced at Trixie’s bedroom door. “Pass. Could our supplier have been recruited by one of the faction groups then?”

“Let her up and we’ll find out,” Melissa concluded.

I let Alicia come up.

“I’m sure you’re wondering why I seem to be making a house call,” the older woman said as I let her in the room. “Know that this is more of a case, along with a chance to finally settle your bill.”

I stared. “Our bill?”

It struck me then that she’d always extended us so much credit that I had no idea how much we still owed to her. In a business like ours, you’re pretty much fortunate when you’re making ends meet. Then again, maybe the same could be said of Alicia.

“Your bill,” Alicia repeated back, with a hint of a smile.

I looked to Melissa once more. “Uhm, Mel, check the third file folder in the second drawer, how much DO we owe Wing’s Mystical Collectibles and Assorted Knickknacks?”

She went to have a look. Then shook her head slowly. “Did you drop a decimal when summarizing the account back in April, James?”

I went to have a look myself. “Oh. That’s not good.” I looked back at Alicia. “Please tell me we’ve at least paid you something in the last four months.”

“Something,” the older woman said, nodding. “Interest accruing can really be a problem though, can’t it?”

“Well, you’re welcome to repossess a lot of stuff,” Melissa offered. “The way things are now, I don’t think I’ll be using most of it this August, and things are a little up in the air after that.”

“I’m aware,” Alicia said. “Chosen One.”

I tried not to frown at the title. “ARE you with one of the factions…?”

“No,” Alicia assured us. “But I know this city. And they are closing in on you. At present, they’re largely cancelling each other out.”

“Cancelling out? What do you mean?” I said, at the same time as Melissa said, “I wondered about that.”

I turned to look at Melissa. “You know what she’s getting at?”

Melissa nodded. “I saw a shifty looking guy with a rifle in a trench coat at the corner last week. He was chased away by what I assume to be a small group of Worshippers. And a Rationalist got his iPad zapped and deleted by examining rather too closely our ward across the street. The one meant to protect against bladed weapons.”

“And there was a worshipper in my store looking for leads,” Alicia agreed. “She decided to move on after being subjected to a librarian’s lecture about the dangers of fantasies coming to life.”

“See James, anyone in the Crazy faction can’t attack me by conventional means,” Melissa concluded. “The Worshippers wouldn’t allow it. While the Rationals can bore Worshippers to figurative death, convincing them to give up. Unfortunately, they ignite blind rage in the Crazies, to the point where that group don’t care anymore, which is why I got that death threat in the grocery store yesterday. It’s all a cycle.”

“You mean the fact that the groups are at cross purposes has been working in our favour,” I summarized.

“Correct, but it won’t last for much longer,” Alicia cautioned.

I turned back to her. “You get that from a crystal ball or something?” I wondered.

“Or something,” Alicia repeated back, again almost smiling.

“Okay,” Melissa concluded. “So you said you had a case that would settle our debt.”

Alicia nodded. “I want you to obtain a particular mystical artifact for me. A collector who lives overseas took it from my family some time ago. If you can return it to me, I’ll consider your debt to my store paid in full.”

Melissa frowned. “One artifact? It’s worth all that?”

“It’s worth all that,” Alicia affirmed. “And it will, incidentally, retain its value regardless of your upcoming decision. Because it’s an orb that gives one the ability to look into their personal future. Even alter that future. This makes it very valuable.”

“And very difficult to get,” I reasoned. “Since if you have it, you’d see anyone else trying to obtain it.”

“Precisely,” Alicia agreed. “Except recently, Melissa’s become a bit of a focus point. Ironically, this means she’s best suited for a stealth mission into Lord Mortum’s European abode, as signs will point to her still being in this town.”

“I don’t do break and enter though,” Melissa protested. “I stay within the law, not to mention within the country.”

Alicia wasn’t about to back down. “I have a person on the inside. You can teleport right inside Mortum’s castle, at which point you merely have to deal with his security force, get the orb, and teleport out. An orb, I remind, that was in my family originally. I have the papers to prove that. Also the orb will square your financial debt to me.”

“Still a form of theft,” Melissa said, hesitating. “Have you not tried other means to obtain it?”

“I have,” Alicia assured. “He’s very stubborn.” She paused a beat. “And his security force is zombies.”

“Fuck,” Melissa swore.

I’m sure I’ve heard her do that less than a dozen times in all our history together, so for her to do it now, I knew it had to be serious.

“I have your cooperation then?” Alicia said.

Melissa’s jaw was tight. “Yes.”

“It can only be you, of course. Your other associates must remain here.”

“Understood.”

“Very well. I’ll return tomorrow with the castle layout, once you’ve made preparations.”

With that, Alicia departed, and I turned an expectant gaze upon Melissa. The emotional walls that I’d worked my way around over the last few years now seemed to be firmly back in place. She continued to look at the closed front door.

END ACT 4