“You know smoking’s bad for you, right?” Barbie started, the

  ghost leaned against the hood of my car beside me. A single raised

  brow making her shrug, “smells bad too.”

  “I’m a werewolf,” I muttered, not that it wasn’t an argument

  I was used to, flicking the finished butt onto the small pile of four

  others gathering at my feet. Not really wanting another one so soon

  and all the same fishing it out with my currently one good hand and

  lighting another as I added on, “besides, you’re from the

  fifties, not going to tell me smoking’s a healthy part of a woman’s

  diet or something?”

  “It’s unladylike,” the girl tried countering, arms crossed and

  pacing the floor ready to start, “I mean, come on-” before a door

  slammed nearby.

  The ghost gone before the sound finished echoing, leaving me alone to

  think on that for only a few seconds before two familiar forms

  started towards me.

  Elizabeth familiar enough, she was a tall and pale woman, almost

  skeletal in appearance in her black dresses that clung tight to her

  body. Today’s a thicker woolen one over which she wore a purple

  coat that would have come to her knees and a black sunhat. Her smile

  thin, no honest human scent to her behind the roses and vanilla

  barely covering the scents of various magical ingredients.

  The woman beside her familiar enough, though only for the fact I’d

  just recently met her. Today wearing a pair of jeans and a black

  sweater, eyes still hidden behind a pair of sunglasses she looked me

  over with some curiosity before she asked, “Mary, was it not?”

  “Chasseresse?” I did my best to remember, the look of

  disappointment in her eyes making me add on, “said to call you

  Chasse.”

  “Right I was, you make the name sound ugly,” Chasse scolded with

  a few clicks of her tongue. The older werewolf strolling over with a

  casual air and reaching out, the wolf growling even as she ignored

  the gesture to pluck the cigarette from between my lips and took it

  to her own. Disappointment turning briefly to disgust as she

  complained, “cheap too,” even while she took another draw.

  “Nice to see you too,” I complained, fetching another cigarette

  for myself the woman at least moved to light for me, “payment’s

  on the hood, if there’s any problem with it let me know.”

  Elizabeth chuckled at that, taking the bag up and barely looking

  inside as she admitted, “I trust you better than most, and I trust

  Goodfellow even more. Besides that, it’s no big loss of mine if the

  potency is a little off or the amounts less than desired.”

  I nodded, ready to ask her more when I noticed Chasse’s eyes on me;

  the sunglasses doing little to hide the way they seemed so focused on

  me. Her expression unreadable under the look, and my own stare back

  doing little to discourage her. The woman only shrugging after a few

  seconds and admitting, “The Lady made no lies about you.”

  Elizabeth didn’t let me focus on that too long before she started

  towards the building once more, gesturing us along as she started,

  “come on, Mary, Chasse was just helping me go through some files in

  my small unit, that’s mostly just the boring stuff. Your dad’s

  present’s in the one where I keep all the fun stuff, need to get a

  trunk out of there anyway.”

  Chasse and I both following without little question, I realized I’d

  lost whatever point I was about to make and instead asked, “The

  Lady having everyone working this week?”

  “Not work, or… well, finding the right files were, but that

  wasn’t much trouble,” the witch brushed off the complaint,

  leading us down halls and halls of identical orange doors, “for me

  it’s just party preparation, getting Chasse some contact

  information I didn’t know if I still had. The Lady does this big

  gathering every five years, people from all around the region send

  representatives and negotiate territories and treaties again, even

  some people from Europe come by. It’s mostly a party, excuse to

  make sure everyone knows whose in charge of everywhere and have some

  fun, but you know how that goes.”

  “Think I saw Tracker talking that out with her, she’s leader of

  the local Purists now?” I asked, a quick glance to Chasse as though

  the woman would have any idea.

  Tracker would have been considered leader of the Purists on

  principle, though I doubted very many covenants attended the event,

  and probably none from

  even the other side of the

  Mississippi. It’d probably have been a small miracle if they did

  everything that got anything resembling global recognition.

  All the same, I hadn’t had any real contact with the Purists in

  over a year, and she probably knew more than me if she knew anyone in

  the region.

  Didn’t mean Chasse let it on if she did, the woman not even looking

  at me as she admitted, “work for the fey now, Procya’s cousin

  sends me to check on the affairs here every few years. He fixed my

  eye.” a quick glance back and wink of her yellow eye making it

  actually feel like an almost tempting prospect. I was already

  basically owned by The Lady, how bad could working for a fey be if I

  could have depth perception again?

  Well, probably pretty bad, and I wasn’t leaving the best

  impressions with them and they’d own me after any

  deal I could make there.

  Eventually we stopped outside a locker door Elizabeth unlocked for

  us, holding the door up just long enough for all three of us to go in

  before letting it fall once more behind us. My eyes even unable to

  see in the resulting dark, though the overwhelming smell of old

  assaulting me while I was ordered to avoid moving. Elizabeth

  fumbling in the dark for only a few seconds before florescent lights

  buzzed overhead and the locker was filled with cold white light.

  A pretty large storage unit, or at least I thought it was, the unit

  itself was probably a little bigger than my bedroom on all sides.

  Shelves and boxes lining the walls and multiple in the center

  creating alleyways of space with barely any room to squeeze between

  them. Rust lining most of the metal shelves, trunks that looked like

  they were from a half hundred decades spaced apart, stacked, and slid

  onto shelves, and old cardboard boxes stacked in even more places.

  Chasse seeming almost speechless as me even as Elizabeth quickly

  looked around, taking up a familiar hand mirror off one shelf and

  stuffing it in her pocket with a small glare my way. The woman

  muttering to herself several seconds before admitting, “okay, feel

  free to dig around a little bit, might take a bit to find everything.

  Might… take a minute, but I know everything’s here. Mary, you’ll

  know your thing when you see it, mahogany case with gold accents,

  family crest and name on the top.”

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  I nodded a few times, body barely moving until Chasse smacked my

  shoulder and I started to look around. Eyes first scanning a few

  shelves hoping it’d pop out to me, especially with some improved

  eyesight, before realizing it was probably at least a little buried

  and I needed to look through a few boxes.

  That not helping either as I opened the first, an old paper ream box

  from probably the fifties, and found miscellaneous junk from what was

  probably across hundred years tossed in. A sigh escaping me even as I

  dug through pocket watches, jewelry, and a number of home tools with

  my one good hand before deciding that box was at least probably a

  dead end.

  My hope for a quick search dying as I opened the box next to it and

  was greeted by piles of loose photos. The desire to get this over

  with outweighed by curiosity as I picked a few up and asked, “not

  big on photo albums?”

  “Oh, meant to organize those back in the eighties and never got

  around to it. Feel free to look through, nothing I’m horribly

  ashamed of in there.” her words the encouragement I needed to keep

  going until I found one that made me a little curious.

  A black and white photo of Elizabeth in a silky gown that barely

  covered her body laid across the lap of a man in black robes, black

  beard and hair shaggy and unkempt, eyes bearing down into the camera

  with an almost unblinking menace in the still frame as I held it up

  for her. Knowing I was probably going to regret it as I asked, “one

  of your exes?”

  “Mary, that doesn’t narrow it down at all, there’s a glass

  harmonica here for a reason. I-” and she stopped herself as she saw

  the picture, a small bit of rose to her cheeks as she looked away and

  answered, “I was taking a vacation in Russia and was a very

  desirable woman, Mary, you need to understand I was wanting to

  memorialize getting a night with Grigori. You get it, right?”

  I didn’t even bother answering that he didn’t look my type,

  tossing the photo back in the box and ready to call it there before I

  found the explicit boudoirs when a photo caught my eye. Color, though

  with the yellowish tinge old photos had, the sleeve of a leather

  jacket barely visible from what peaked over the edge.

  A quick glance to confirm Chasse and Elizabeth weren’t looking and

  I slid the photo out, keeping it in the box and laying it out as I

  took in the scene in front of me.

  Not an intimate moment (thankfully) or an extreme close up, but three

  woman sat in a bar’s booth together. Elizabeth in a dress covered

  in tassels, a woman with black hair I didn’t recognize on sight

  wearing a floral patterned button down with her head on the witch’s

  shoulder, and a third woman. Curly auburn hair cut to the chin,

  leather bomber jacket worn over a flannel shirt, cheek leaning on a

  hand holding a burning cigarette with a probably half-drunk smile

  across her face.

  My face, or at least close enough you could have convinced me it was

  mine with only a little prodding. Another quick look to make sure

  Elizabeth and Chasse were still searching, heart racing, and another

  long look at the photo. Eyes the same shade of brown as mine, though

  she still had both hers at the time, a small piece of deer antler

  around her neck carved with the Silver Moon’s rune, the jacket

  my dad supposedly still repairing it, though with

  none of the patches or marks it’d had even when I’d first been

  given it.

  Fingers flipping to the back only long enough to read Elizabeth,

  .

  January 24 and confirm my

  suspicions.

  My awe only broken by Elizabeth letting out a happy noise as she

  declared, “oh found it!” while I quickly shoved the photo in my

  back pocket before she rounded the corner. The woman looking overly

  proud of herself while she gestured me to follow her through the

  aisles to one corner of the room. The box she’d described laid on a

  shelf with an old oil painting pulled from against the wall and

  propped up across a piano.

  A man and woman in powdered wigs, clothes that were similar to though

  probably older than the ones Calliope wore. The woman sat in a chair,

  the man stood beside her with one hand on her shoulder as they stood

  with a proud boredom you saw in those sort of paintings. Elizabeth

  almost looking more excited about the painting even while I took the

  box up and looked it over.

  The wood a little weathered, though no where near as bad shape as I’d

  have thought for being stored here, even the latch was still easy to

  undo once I sat it down. Loudly opened to reveal a pair of silver

  accented flintlock pistols on a soft fabric, alongside all needed to

  load them. A quick glance at the top confirming the barely known

  crest and the plaque

  “His wife gave the dueling pistols to me after he died, bought the

  painting pretty cheap at an auction a few decades back out of

  nostalgia,” Elizabeth explained with a barely contained laugh while

  she looked it over a final time, “she was a werewolf you know?

  Pretty well respected family too, before she went to sea. Guess you

  got a little of that on both sides, huh?”

  “Hunters seem to be bad at avoiding that I’m finding,” I

  agreed, latching the box back even as I told her, “Dad’ll love

  it. William’s the one who made our name big in America, he was

  probably half my bedtime stories. Though… well, the werewolf thing

  didn’t get mentioned.”

  “Eh, none the kids or grand kids became one so didn’t really need

  to be a big deal in the family history I guess. Settled down once she

  had the money and a pardon, liked she could call a place home without

  needing to become a housewife. Think she mostly just ran a small

  trading company with a few ships those last decades she had, helped

  pay for a bunch of girls in the areas to get educations and took on a

  couple apprentices from them,” Elizabeth admitted fondly, moving on

  to start looking through a few of the trunks, “good woman, better

  than most at the time if you need one family member to be proud of.”

  “Don’t know if I want to,” I admitted.

  The dueling pistols a little awkward to carry, I did my best to hold

  them under my bad arm before letting out a hiss of pain and went back

  to awkwardly gripping it in one hand. The witch looking at me only

  briefly concerned as she kept going through trunks and asked,

  “injured?”

  “Couple mercenaries went after Vergil,” I admitted hesitantly,

  only a moment later realizing that I was supposed to tell her as I

  quickly added on, “looks like they’re targeting different

  supernaturals, figure tell you to be safe. You know?”

  The witch let out a small grunt, not seeming bothered by it as she

  finally pulled out an old looking leather wrapped trunk. Chasse

  summoned over with just a few snaps of Elizabeth’s fingers and

  picking up the trunk herself as the witch explained, “I should be

  safe, my home has enough wards and spells on it that any attack is

  likely to end badly for the attacker without me noticing they were

  there. Allie was planning on staying home anyway, and just bought

  that… what was it? The silk game? Whatever it was, she brought home

  plenty of groceries last night and seemed happy to spend a few days

  in her room. Even if I’m attacked out and about, my magic stops me

  from dying, so I’m likely the safest person in this room. You’re

  the one who should be careful, you’re going to that party in a few

  days aren’t you?”

  I looked at her for a moment, not sure how to respond and only after

  a second reminding her, “I didn’t know about it, why would I go?”

  The witch looked confused for a moment and snapped her fingers,

  laughing a little as we started out of the locker and she explained,

  “so different groups and people get to send different amounts of

  representatives. Some of the bigger ones get a few people, some just

  get to go alone, most groups get an Ambassador and a Knight,

  basically a bodyguard. Martin’s made token appearances to the last

  few of these as the representative of the hunters, usually brings his

  wife or another hunter with him. I wasn’t thinking, thought you

  might have been filling in for him as the daughter but-”

  The conversation was cut off by a phone ringing, Chasse pausing long

  enough to realize it was hers and lower the trunk to her feet.

  Flipping her phone open, which probably surprised me more than it

  should have, and letting out a series of grunts into it which didn’t

  even both passing as words. The speaker on the other side too muffled

  to make out the words of, but the cadence unmistakable as anyone

  other than The Lady.

  The two continuing like that for only a minute or so before Chasse

  hung up, turning back to me with a small nod and announcing, “your

  dad got shot, Lady told me not to tell you.”